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96: Get Real Nutrition with Special Guest Jordan Rubin

Transcript of Episode 96: Get Real Nutrition with Special Guest Jordan Rubin

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and special guest Jordan Rubin.

Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 96. I’m Meredith and I have Dr. Pompa here. We have a very special guest with us today. We have Jordan Rubin joining the show.

Before I officially introduce him, I know you guys have heard a lot about him. We’ve talked a lot about his products on the show, but I’m just going to read a little bit about him, and read his bio, and then we’ll jump in and Jordan will be able to share his story with us.

Jordan Rubin, one of America’s most recognized and respected natural health experts, is the New York Times best-selling author of the Maker’s Diet and 24 additional titles, including his latest work, Planet Heal Thyself. He is an international motivational speaker and host of the weekly television show Living Beyond Organic that reaches over 30 million households worldwide. Jordan has lectured on natural health on five continents and 46 states. Jordan is the founder of Garden of Life, a leading whole food nutrition supplement company and Beyond Organic, a vertically integrated organic food and beverage company. I have the amasai and the SueroGold right here, which we have talked a lot about.

Dr. Pompa:
We love those products!

Meredith:
Love that stuff! In 2015, this year, Jordan launched Get Real Nutrition, a certified organic, non-GMO, a real food nutrition company utilizing cutting edge fermentation technology, producing an indoor-nutrient farm located on Central California’s coast, and Heal the Planet Farm, a regenerative permaculture retreat located in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains, which is within the Beyond Organic Ranch.

Jordan resides in Missouri, California and Florida with his wife Nicki and their children, so welcome, Jordan, to Cellular Healing TV.

Jordan:
It’s good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Meredith:
We’re so excited to have you. I know you’ve known Dr. Pompa for a long time. You guys are great friends, so it’s such a blessing to actually have you on the show now.

Jordan:
This is really my first officially broadcasted Google hangout. I’ve tried this before, I just hung out with the people that were presenting, which was also good, but it’s even better to be in the homes or cars or ears of listeners. It’s very exciting.

Dr. Pompa:
Jordan, we’ve actually been trying to get you on the show for quite some time, but honestly, you’ve been working on these new products for the last two years, and you have been very busy. The timing is absolutely perfect, as we just launched these products.

We have both been just waiting for this moment where we have – I guess it’s been almost a year now or maybe more that you flew me out there and I saw that process. I’ve been coming out of my chair waiting to bring this to my clients and those that have watched Cellular Healing TV since that time, and here we are, Jordan, so timing is perfect.

You know what? I bet, Meredith, we have people that might not know Jordan’s story, so, Jordan, I think just starting at the top – I mean, Garden of Life, I think that if people walked into Whole Foods they would see Garden of Life products. Some people probably don’t know that you actually sold that company and originated this product some years ago, but tell us your story. Bring us along, because you, like me, got very, very sick and that’s really where Garden of Life came from in this whole process, so give us a brief story.

Jordan:
Absolutely, well I was a teenager of 19 years and grew up in a hippie, health-nut household, so Dr. Pompa, my father went to the same chiropractor school as you do, after going to another chiropractic school after going to naturopathic school, and so I was born with a silver sprout in my mouth, as I like to say. I was a health-food nut kid in the 70s and 80s, and man I paid dearly for it.

I can tell you today eating healthy organic is cool or kids have it made in the shade, but when I was younger, I was ostracized, made fun of, and all my friends said that I had nothing good to eat at my house. The food was awful, and I rebelled. While we had a household that was fairly healthy, I wasn’t immunized as a child.

We didn’t go to excessive use of medications. I was probably on antibiotics three times in my life, so I was different than most, but for whatever reason – call it inherited weaknesses, genetics with a little bit of epigenetics – I started to develop serious digestive symptoms, which ultimately culminated in Crohn’s disease, Crohn’s colitis to be exact.

I had 18 other illnesses, from rheumatoid arthritis to symptoms of chronic fatigue, parasitic, bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, you name it, and ultimately suffered from wasting disease that saw me go from 185 pounds at 6’ tall to 104 pounds in a wheelchair, and Dr. Dan, as you did, I tried everything. I tried seven different doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, diets, the yin/yang. I went from a macrobiotic to vegan to all fat.

Nothing helped me until two years after my illness when I was literally hanging on for dear life. I met a man who told me that if I eat a diet based on the Bible and history, I can be well. I followed for 40 days a health plan that restored my life. It was real foods, fermented foods, a combination of animal foods, high in good fats and plant foods and a powerful probiotic substance that, despite trying 30 different brands of probiotics with no results, this one made a difference.

I was learning how to transform my own life in 1996 and 1997 and accidentally launched a company called Garden of Life in order to share the message of health and hope. I wrote my first book called Patient Heal Thyself, which you read and we have a connection there, and the rest is history.

Meredith read my bio. I’ve been kind of busy the last 20 or so years. I love what I do, but more than anything, I’ve seen the deficiencies. Dr. Pompa I got to go to your last seminar. I love what you teach. We’re so in step on what you do. I think we spur each other on, but bottom line, my goal more than anything is to give people hope that tomorrow can be better than today, so let’s try to do some of that over the next few minutes.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely, and you know it’s funny. From the Garden of Life, Beyond Organic products, I promise you, many of our people watching this, our followers, have been touched by those products. She held up the amasai and those products. Yeah, there they are, the amasai and SueroGold, and other Beyond Organic products, even the cheese, so what you offer is really amazing, unique bacteria, and we fasted so many people on the whey water, which was inspired by you. We love that and appreciate that.

I have to laugh, because I know you very well, we’re good friends, but Jordan doesn’t even like to get his hands dirty, and yet he moved to a farm, Beyond Organic, with almost 9,000 acres raising these special cows that are really genetically different than the majority of cows or where dairy comes from in the United States; grass fed, beyond grass fed, beyond organic, hence the name. I’ve been to that ranch, I think, four times and just love it every time. I had some amazing experiences there.

He moved to the ranch. Jordan, I mean, even the inspiration of these new products really has really come out of being on the ranch; from the city to the cowboy, if you will. A guy who didn’t want to get his hands dirty today in the soil and loving it. Tell a little bit about that soil.

Jordan:
I dug in a lot more than soil. I wish that was all I had dug into. Actually, Dr. Dan, you were just in my hometown of South Florida. I was a kid of the suburbs, and here I was running Garden of Life. I was traveling around the world writing books about food, health, eating the best things I could order from mail order and sometimes going to the health food store and these back-alley coops, if you will, to get my raw milk and I developed an extreme passion that one I wanted to be a farmer. That day happened at the end of 2009.

I had a life-changing experience involving cancer, which we’ll have to talk about on another program, so make a note, listeners, we’re going to do a “To Hell with Cancer Program.” Let’s throw that down. I think that will be a good one too. That is something that was amazing that happened in my life and God just worked a miracle.

Dr. Pompa:
A lot of people don’t know that story. They know you’re Crohn’s story, and you told that story, but very few people know about the cancer. My gosh! Meredith, write down that as a show, because folks have to read this story. It really defies everything. You know it’s God and God is behind it, which always leads us to the next product. Anyway, go ahead. I just had to add that.

Jordan:
I decided that I wanted to be a farmer, so I bought a farm. I didn’t buy the farm. I bought a farm. I began to learn, truly for the first time in my life after 15 years in this industry and natural health, all the studies, hundreds and hundreds of books, and thousands of articles, the steps necessary to regain our health and life back.

For a year and a half to two years or so, I operated this vision to create the world’s healthiest foods and beverages, vertically integrate it, and bring all the good stuff back, and we did it remotely. I was in Florida and the farm was in Southern Missouri. Then, I felt God call me to move there and I did, and so for about a year and a half, and I thought this was forever.

I learned everyday what it was like to produce food. I can tell you both that I complained just like anyone when organic raspberries are $5.99 for a pint. I complained, but I will never complain again after trying to grow raspberries, because I can tell you we have a very blessed existence where we can go to a store and buy something organically and eat it as opposed to the backbreaking, thumb bleeding, crop issues, and pests, organic farmers are awesome. Unfortunately, there’s less and less of them every year in America, but we’re losing ground to big agriculture, big farmer, and big food. Anyway, that’s also for another discussion.

I went into farming, and not only did we create foods from the ground up, but we offered amazing tools and resources, as you mentioned, such as the first cultured whey beverage in the history of America commercially available. How cool is that? After thousands of years of history and the first one in America, we introduced this amazing Kenya, Maasai-tribe inspired building beverage called Amasai, obviously, cheese, and so many other great products to Beyond Organic. That was a really amazing time, and products continue to make a difference.

From Missouri I had an opportunity to come to Central California to work on research and development of a new concept that could transform organic botanicals in a way like never before. I came for three days to run some tests, came back for three weeks, brought my family for three months, and I’m here and a half later. This latest endeavor is designed to take nutritional supplementation to the next level.

Garden of Life was amazing. I was able to start that company. That company was acquired and I started Beyond Organic. Those products are wonderful and still in existence today, of course, and -inaudible- nutrition is really the next iteration of nutritional supplements, nearly 20 years in the making, and I believe they’re the first of their kind.

I think, as you can see, Dr. Pompa, with your own protocols, they’re a great enhancement to anything you’re doing, or they can provide a foundational program for someone who’s newly initiated to nutrition and is looking for organic, non-GMO, real food, sprouted, fermented, plant-based, gluten free, -inaudible- at all. It’s a really unique product line based on a process here in Central California.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and I hope in this show we can even bring out just how amazing these products are. When I went out there, whenever that was, there you were doing something that I realize was never, ever done before, ever. I was stunned. Meredith, we should put up a picture of me eating these new concoctions and these plants that have grown for the first time. I hope we can really just get people to understand just how amazing this is and what a breakthrough it was.

I walked away that day, and I said that God has truly given this man visions into health that are needed at the right times. I know it was an inspired process that God gave you that people really need. I hope we can capture that.

The only thing that I understood at that time when you were explaining this process to me, you said, “Look, in nature sometimes these mushrooms can grow on different things in nature and extract these things that we as humans could never even extract or utilize, and it makes – I don’t want to say a mushroom – but a different plant that contains things that would we would never be able to duplicate anywhere.

There are mushrooms that grow on birch trees as an example, and it extracts certain things from the birch tree, and these new plants that grow really contain things that are used today in cancer research. It’s a new biology, if you will, so you were taking mushrooms instead of growing them on birch trees, but growing them on things that we know already have major nutrition value, and things that we probably don’t even realize. Things like curcumin, milk thistle, amazing herbs that we already know have healing value in the body and growing these new plants. Here I am looking at these plants with crazy colors and different things. These have never been grown before. I immediately wanted to jump in and eat them, and I think I did that day.

To the best of your ability, describe this process so they can at least have an idea of how special these products really are, and then we’ll talk more specifically about the product.

Jordan:
We created three unique fermentation processes. You and I are both fermentation geeks. I want everyone to understand that the amazing yogurt, kefir, amasai, fantastic sauerkraut, miso, natto, pickled ginger, pickled cucumbers, or kombucha are all fermented foods and they have one thing in common. Now, this is something I learned, Dr. Dan and Meredith. I thought I knew about fermentation. How many “I thought I knew” have we had over the years? I thought I knew this. I thought I knew that.

I consumed as many fermented foods as anyone. I made them, promoted them, you name it, but what I realized is that fermented foods contain beneficial organisms, but what’ s more important is the food substrate that they have modified. I’ve often said, probiotics are great, but I’d rather throw away the probiotic and keep the fermented food if I had a choice, because the food is what provides the body with easily digestible nutrients, beneficial compounds, and helps to create an environment in the body for health and homeostasis. All of those fermented foods I mentioned, the yogurts, the kefirs, the sauerkrauts, the kimchis, the kombuchas – they have one thing in common. They are fermented with single celled organisms.

Let’s talk about biology. You have one cell, you’re a primitive. If you have trillions, you’re a human and sometimes primitive still. Theoretically, the more cells you have, the smarter you are, right? I know some of us think, “Hey, you’re missing a few cells.” What I realized was, is taking a single-cell organism and fermenting cabbage to make it sauerkraut is awesome, but visually, what does it look like? Wilted cabbage.

We, for years, fermented green food, berries, and whatever, and all it looks like was mushy or wilted berries and green foods. I had a vision in my mind of mushrooms or fungi as creating massive different almost, as you mentioned, plants, but different substances out of something that existed. If you grew chaga on a birch tree or if you find it, you see a tree and then you see this massive fungal protrusion. They were creating dramatic visual change based on what you see. You see the dead birch, and later you see this big mushroom cap, so I realized that there was something different about reishi, shiitake, maitake, lions mane, and all these tonic mushrooms.

In the single-cell organisms, we use the bacteria in yeast to ferment foods, so I said what if we took a fungi culture multi-cellular fungi and fermented foods with it, and what we got was a greater creation of metabolites and extracellular compounds. What are some of those compounds? Most pharmaceuticals today – penicillin is a cellular byproduct of fermentation. Statin drugs are the same thing. The list goes on and on.

We see that multicellular fungi create massive amount of extracellular compounds, antioxidant enzymes, like SOD, catalase, glutathione, polysaccharide such as beta glucan and glycol proteins. The list goes on and on, and those, as you mentioned earlier, are what are being studied throughout the world as beneficial compounds to the immune system.

Just to recap, take a great herb, put it through one of our three processes. We call them the MycoBiome transformation system, because we’re creating a MycoBiome mass, or the MycoBiome transformation system, a mycological biomass. You take an herb, put it through the process – a combination of herbs, juices, etc. – they come out fused with powerful components, but if here’s the most amazing thing. The fermentation process that we employ, which is just unbelievable, it really is simple to explain. Fermentation accentuates the positive and eliminates the negative.

Let me take wheat, for example. I would not say that a frequent listener or viewer to your program would think that what is on the top of your list of foods that you like, right? We know that people have consumed wheat for thousands of years. Jesus was referred as the bread of life, and some of us can really reconcile that, right? I mean, bread’s bad and Jesus is good. How does that work?

If you put wheat through our fermentation process, you can reduce the gluten in the wheat by over 99%, and infuse the wheat with beta glucans, alpha glucans, and immune-enhancing substances. Could you imagine training in gluten for immune-enhancing substances? We don’t make wheat bread, unfortunately, for those of you who are thinking this is amazing, but imagine if you could apply that to every substance known to man? Imagine how daunting of a task you would have if you thought of doing this and then had the entire world’s botanicals at your fingertips. This is what we started with that culminated in the creation of Get Real Nutrition.

Dr. Dan and Meredith, being able to take something and make it better and remove the bad stuff is pretty amazing. I often have said, “Gosh if I could ferment other areas of my life.” Imagine fermenting your financial situation or your relationships – you know, accentuating the positive and eliminating the negatives. I’ve tried to figure out a way to ferment my kids. I’m still working on that.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to use that. You know, you really got inspired by this because you – from the guy who didn’t want to get his hands dirty to being so into compost. In compost, we see bad soil become not just good, but amazing. I mean, to folks listening, this process that God has established in nature is really what you’re relying on to make these foods better than good, incredible. What you’re saying is, look it’s not just about the bacteria, the probiotic if you will. It’s not just about the organism It’s about what this process does to the food to make it bioavailable for most people who have inflamed guts and inflamed cells, usable at the cellular level. That was the thing that just struck me and got me very excited.

I’ll tell you, Jordan, I have a lot of clients who are extremely sensitive, and so far, the clients that have not been able to take even a regular supplement that 99% of the population is able to take and feel better, they feel worse, has been able to take these products and actually feel better. I think it has a lot to do with the bioavailability through this process, so, you know, I almost – you know, you have, like I said, a process. How is this different than regular fermentation? You kind of answered that, but I just want to put a magnifying glass on that, because people are thinking we’re talking about maybe just regular, fermented food. Kind of focus on that a little bit.

Jordan:
I eat fermented foods. Yesterday I drank about 80 ounces of raw kimchi juice. It lit me up and it was really good. I consume kombucha at times. I consume raw pickles, you name it. I consume, obviously, fermented dairy, amasai square, where you named that.

What I don’t get in my diet and what you don’t get in your diet, who are watching and listening, is the fermented botanicals utilizing multicellular organisms. I have not consumed fermented schizandra, and even if I did, it wouldn’t have been fermented with reishi. Who would have ever thought of doing this? Bottom line, we’re giving people foods and herbs, botanicals, that they can’t get in their regular diet, but they are very friendly to the body.

I want you to understand that there are different kingdoms we’re talking about here. There’s the plant kingdom, and we’re part of the animal kingdom, and we act like it most of the time. Fungi are a different kingdom, carrying characteristics and genetic material with both plants and animals. Fungi are great decomposers and great translators, so what we’re using is the fungi to translate the power in these botanicals to us.

Turmeric is great. Curcumin is one good component. Ashwagandha is great, withanolides are the active ingredient, but there are 62 metabolites in ashwagandha that we know of. We want all of them to be potentiated for us to consume, so the best way I can describe how this fermentation is different – it’s more complex and it does a greater job of transforming a food or herb into something much better. It’s that simple. It looks different. It behaves differently.

You can go to getrealnutrition.com and see pictures of before and after. I love before and after, of course. This fermentation visibly is different than any fermentation I or you have ever seen. I didn’t invent turmeric nor was I the one millionth person to say it was good. I was probably the ten millionth person. I didn’t invent any of these botanicals. God created them. We’re just making them more usable by the body and the best part is we don’t have to throw anything away.

Dr. Dan, curcumin extract wastes 98.6% of turmeric. What if part of the 96.8% is actually good for you? What if science doesn’t know it yet? This is a zero waste, completely transformative process that makes nutrition user friendly, safe and effective.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and I think that this process has never been done before. In nature, who knows? Utilizing these super herbs that we already know have amazing qualities and taking it through this amazing fermentation process, we have, again, I don’t even know what to call them – these plants, these things that you grind up and create something new. I remember when I was there, literally I couldn’t wait to get my hands on and I had just had to eat some. We have that picture that we showed at my seminar. I don’t have it today. I should have thought about it. There I am eating this stuff and I actually liked it. They’re all kind of looking around, saying, “Well, he didn’t die.”

Jordan:
That was quality trial testing.

Dr. Pompa:
Little did I know that I was the guinea pig for this whole thing. Actually, what was amazing is I kept eating it. I actually kind of liked it. I’m different folks, but we know that. That night I woke up in this sweat literally. The next day, I said, “Jordan, I woke up in the absolute drenching sweat.” I remember back when I was sick, every once in a while I’d wake up in the drenching sweats. It happened. I’m not telling you folks to eat that. What we have now is much better in controlled little powders, pills, and capsules, but it just shows you the power that those foods did to me, whether it was the myco, the microbe, but it was just the amazing qualities obviously that those herbs carried right into my cell that obviously had that effect.

Jordan:
Dr. Dan, here’s an interesting point. What you consumed was a combination of ganoderma lucidum, which is a red reishi, turmeric, holy basil, ashwagandha, aloe vera juice, and then chia and -inaudible-, which is an amazing seed from South America.

I bet you have eaten one or all of those substances before, either in your diet or in supplementation, and you wouldn’t get the same type of cleanse, but the combination of all of them are what really took that to the next level, and the fact that you consumed six bottles worth in one sitting, but otherwise, no big deal.

Dr. Pompa:
Leave it to me. I know Meredith has some great questions, but just talk a little bit about the 10 promises that you have with this. I think it’s unique, as far as product goes. I don’t know anyone else who can claim all 10, so go through those very quickly.

Jordan:
Absolutely, and this is really important to understand, because there’s a lot of misconceptions regarding nutritional supplements.

1. We are real food, so very product in Get Real Nutrition’s lineup comes from ingredients that are foods, beverages, herbs, spices, etc., they’re all real with nothing extracted, isolated, or purified.
2. They’re all certified organic. Every product is organic, making Get Real Nutrition the only broad-spectrum, certified organic, brand of supplements ever. There’s never been an organic brand of supplements.

Dr. Pompa:
Even the capsules are organic.

Jordan:
Even the capsule is fermented. We use capsules, but we also use powders.

3. Non-GMO. I don’t need to get into too many details. We’re big believers in heirloom, open pollenated, freedom of seed protection, and all that stuff. We hate GMOs. This is a completely non-GMO line, tested and verified. Then, we get into some of the really good stuff.
4. We’re gluten free, so all of our products are safe for people that are gluten sensitive.
5. We are plant based. I do eat an omnivorous diet. A conscious omnivore am I, but in this particular line, we’re plant based, and I feel like we can reach a broad audience that way.
6. We are sprouted, so every ingredient that we have that’s a seed in our formulations is germinated in our own facility and then fermented. This is also the only product line that has every single active ingredient going through a fermentation process. There’s not a fermented ingredient in the product.
7. The entire product is created as food and fermented. That is absolutely amazing.
8. We are free of the eight common allergens. We have a facility and a testing procedure that makes us free of dairy, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, fish, and shellfish. Those eight foods or groups make up 90% of allergic reactions, which is mind boggling. We are free of the eight common allergens.
9. We are handcrafted. I don’t know about you, but I love handmade products. I always go to farmer’s markets or health food stores, and I want the product that is artisanal and local. We must make our product with real people and real hands for the process to work, and we’re proud of that. We’re proud of being an American-made, handmade product line.
10. We believe in regenerating the environment, so we don’t use bottles. All of our products are packaged in compostable cartons and recyclable pouches, decreasing the carbon footprint dramatically with less shipping costs, less fossil fuels, and zero waste if you compost the outer carton and recycle the inner pouch. That’s also a first of its kind where our industry has good products in bottles, but those bottles oftentimes end up in landfills. That’s millions of them.

We call these our 10 promises and these are the pillars that Get Real Nutrition stands on and that alone, in my mind, is enough of a reason for you to vote with your dollars and make Get Real Nutrition your foundational brand. It really is that differentiated and that special.

Dr. Pompa:
I want to talk a little bit about it; there are 16 different products and how to use those, but before I do, Meredith, you always have great questions.

Meredith:
I’m just thinking perhaps of some first-time viewers too that aren’t familiar with fermentation even. I’m wondering when you start, you choose the mushrooms. How do you pick which products go into which blend, and maybe if you could just kind of get into the nitty-gritty of the fermentation process a little bit more too so we can understand.

Jordan:
That’s a great question Meredith. As I mentioned, we have two processes. One uses fungi or mycelia, myco, the other uses bacteria, particularly a bacillus, which makes our probiotics.

Our fermentation process really undergoes five steps and it’s certainly worth seeing visually, but suffice it to say that the processes can take from 10 to 90 days. It is a slow process anyway you look at it, and it really travels through our system as one food, one biomass. When we do that, we take the appropriate culture and match it to the botanicals based on the system of the body we want to affect.

I know that sounds very ambiguous, but we ran over 1,000 tests to determine which cultures match with which foods and which combinations would support the immune system; which combinations would support the brain; which combinations would support cleansing, liver health, cardiovascular health; and which combinations would support metabolism, fitness, blood sugar, and wellness, and that’s really how we constructed it.

What you should understand is that certain botanicals are great for all four of those conditions -inaudible- and some fungi or bacteria are good. We try to create products that individuals could quickly identify as their area of need or their practitioners could say, “Here’s a good starting point for you.” We do really have four products and each have four strategic solutions.

If you’re listening and 16 products, our goal is to see each person who’s listening or viewing begin a journey that will culminate in four foundational products and will help you understand which to choose based on the categories of immune system support, cleansing, brain health, or fitness. Certainly, there are some related areas that go with those.

Dr. Pompa:
When you say that there are really four products, we have your probiotic line.

Jordan:
Yes, probiotic.

Dr. Pompa:
Then, we have the omega line.

Jordan:
Real omega.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, then we have the metabolite line, and then we have the super juice line, which I love those. I eat them right from the little scooper. I like chew on them and I absolutely love them. I actually crave it. I’m not kidding. As we’ve been talking, I almost want to break and run downstairs and show people how I do it. I still might do that, because I actually like it.

Jordan:
You know what, Dr. Dan? It’s pretty interesting. People should hear this, so right now, I’m using all the products, but I take turns. I just got the multi-metabolite fit and I’m a big cinnamon fan. Cinnamon is amazing. It’s great for blood sugar. It’s great for creating an environment in the gut, and when cinnamon goes through the fermentation process, it tastes a little bit differently, but it still has that “bam.”

We’ve got cinnamon, ashwagandha, aloe vera juice, and we’ve got cordyceps sinensis, which is an amazing fungi, so I took a tablespoon of it in 16 ounces of water this morning, and I’m wanting it again now as well. I’m telling you, Dr. Dan, people don’t believe us when we say that when you expose yourself to amazing compounds and nutrients your body craves it. This is what that’s about, but you’re right. We have real probiotic, real omega, multi-metabolite, and fermented super juice.

Multi-metabolite and fermented super juice are powders that you can mix in smoothies, water, eat it out of the bag like Dr. Dan said you could. You can bake with them if you want to do so; put them in your cereal. We give you lots of instructions on our site on how to do use them.

Real probiotic and real omega are capsules, and each of these four product categories make up a new innovation in nutrition, and it’s great to expose yourself to one, but we certainly would love you to consume all four.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think that that’s the question I’ve gotten most often. This is directly to the public. You all can buy these right off our website. Meredith can tell you how to do that, but it’s not straight to the physician. This is straight to the public, so I get the question, “How do I use this?”

You have these four categories, but then you have the categories within that, like you said. You have the cleanse line, a bit, you know, so kind of walk us through. My listeners say, “Yeah, I want to try this. Where do I start? I want to try some of these products.” There are 16 different products you’re going to see when you go to my website. Where do I start, Jordan?

Jordan:
I often will say, and this has been my life story when it comes to nutrition, start with a probiotic, the gut, first. I recommend that you choose a real probiotic that’s appropriate for you. We’ll get to that in a moment. That’s a capsule. You can take it with meals or without meals. Three are recommended a day. This is the first certified organic probiotic supplement in capsules ever available, sprouted, fermented, and amazing. It’s dairy free, soy free, utilizing bacillus subtilis. Another study came out today showing that bacillus subtilis supports immune system function in addition to the gut, so start with real probiotic. I don’t think a single person, Dr. Dan, that you or I know can’t benefit from a little bit of gut fortification, if you know what I mean. Certainly you and I have definitely benefitted.

Next, multi-metabolite, and you might be saying, “I’m all about multis, but what’s a multi-metabolite?” I believe the oldest and newest frontier of nutrition lies in the plant compounds known as metabolites. I don’t take a multivitamin. I take a multi-metabolite. That’s what I can’t get. I can get vitamins and minerals in my diet, even if my diet was poor. Everything is fortified these days. You’re getting some vitamin C; you’re getting some crummy vitamin D. You’re getting some B3, and not in the best -inaudible- vitamins.

You can’t eat and not get vitamins, but what you’re missing is the powerful compounds found in plants. Multi-metabolite gives you protection that’s 5,000 years in the making. Every herbalist, traditional Chinese practitioners, and ayurvedic practitioners care about vitamins. They want you to consume botanicals to bring you into balance, and the botanical metabolites are what get you.

There are some multi-metabolites of powder. It comes in the four strategic solutions, immune, cleanse, fit, and brain. You mix it in your smoothie. You mix it in your veggie juice. You mix it in your suero, and your amasai. It’s great in smoothies. Every day you’re getting between 28 and 45 fermented botanicals that you aren’t consuming today. That’s a great way of protection, so that’s kind of our second product.

If you’re going to take two or three, take fermented super juice. It’s exactly what it sounds like. There are 33 vegetable organic vegetable and fruit juices fermented with a powerful culture. I juice. I drink juice, but I never drink collard juice, kale juice, pomegranate juice, concord grape juice, blueberry juice, or blackberry juice. I never get it all – ginger, onion, it’s amazing. That’s a powder that you can also add to a smoothie or a juice, and it comes in immune, cleanse, brain, and fit.

Lastly, real omega – this is the first plant-based organic omega 3 capsule. It’s not a high-potency fish oil. It’s not flax or chia that you put on your salad. It’s a targeted omega with multiple cofactors utilizing all sprouted and fermented seeds and it is also a capsule. That’s the four product-system within the categories, and then you can choose immune, cleanse, brain, or fit.

Know some of you are thinking, “I want to boost my brain and I want to get fit.” Trust me when I tell you, every probiotic is going to support your gut. If you want more immune support, we give you targeted botanicals for that. This time of year, it’s probably a good idea, right? If you want to cleanse in a few months, you can switch to the cleanse formula.

The base is always going to be there for real probiotic for the gut, multi-metabolites, cellular protection. Fermented super juice, getting all your juices, and real omega is going to help your heart, like an omega will, but you decide or your practitioner can decide. If you want to focus on immune support, brain support, cleansing, or fitness, and if you’re perfectly healthy, which most people aren’t, but if you’re pretty healthy and you’re an athlete and you want to build muscle and lose a little fat, balance your blood sugar, fit is great for you.

If you’re over 50, no offense Dr. Dan – I turned 40 and you turned 50 – you can still beat me in many athletic events, so I’m not even going to go there, but anyone who’s listening who is really over 40, the brain formulas will be great for you if you can’t decide otherwise.

The number one concern we have as we age, according to research, is not our physical body breaking down, it’s our brain. I’ve had relatives with dementia. Using hericium erinaceus or lion’s mane, which is a powerful fungi – research it; it’s amazing. All of these formulas are powerful. Cleanse is great for liver. It’s great for your heart. This is not a short-term cleanse. You can do this for a long time.

Dr. Pompa:
We have a lot of people doing detox, and it supports all of those detox pathways, and the liver. When you look what’s in it, you’ll say, “Oh my goodness.” It supports the kidneys, the liver, and the gut, so I love it.

Jordan:
Absolutely, and I think what it’s important for people that say, “I want to help all of these things. I want brain, cleanse, fitness, and to boost my immune system.” You can go ahead and try one of each of the four products, real probiotic, multi-metabolite, fermented super juice, and real omega and mix and match. Maybe it’s real probiotic immune; maybe it’s multi-metabolite fit; maybe it fermented super juice cleanse; and real omega brain. We call that sort of the everyday wellness program.

Pick and choose and get a little bit of everything, but here’s what I can tell you. If you get real nutrition into your life, no matter how stringent or hardcore your health plan is, you will start to feel inner wellness, well up inside your body. You’re really going to feel it because you may have never had a supplement that’s all food, and you’ve definitely never had powerful botanicals fermented with multi-cellular mushrooms. That’s the “secret sauce,” if you will. Getting it in your body, you’ll begin to crave it, not because it’s sweet; not because it’s salty; and not because it’s full of fat, but because it’s real and your body thrives on real nutrients.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely; there’s where you start folks. I think that’s great advice, Jordan. I think you answered that question. Meredith, did we get any other questions in, even from our doctors? I know they always want to ask certain questions.

Meredith:
I didn’t get anything from them, but I’m kind of wondering too with some of the other supplements, would there be any contraindications with medicines or other supplements? Can we just kind of take these freely?

Jordan:
This is a great question, Meredith. I’m going to add to that. Here’s the inevitable. If I’m pregnant or nursing, can I take these? Folks, these are real foods, but as with any dietary supplement, if you’re pregnant or nursing, talk to your healthcare practitioner.

Can kids take the products? Because of regulations, they’re formulated for adults. I typically look at an adult more by size. I give my kids these products; however, they are formulated for adults for their needs, so take it for what it’s worth.

As far as contraindications, we believe these products are safe. They’re free of the top allergenic foods. We believe that because they’re fermented, they’re more absorbable, but everyone is sensitive to something it seems. I can’t even get everyone to drink water without having a reaction, so look at the ingredients.

If you’re concerned, start small with just a little bit, but I do believe that even sensitive individuals can thrive on these products. If you’re taking other supplements, because we don’t have isolated vitamins and minerals, there’s not going to be too much -inaudible- or vitamin A, this can go right along with your current supplement regimen or it can start a new supplement regimen, and if you’re taking medication, I would certainly separate the medication usage by about an hour from taking these Get Real Nutrition Products.

Dr. Pompa:
My battery on my computer faster than normal, so I hope I don’t lose us here. I have 5% left, and my cord’s all back there, so I just saw it and thought why is this thing dropping like crazy? We’ve got to make sure that we finish right on time for Dr. Pompa’s computer.

Jordan:
You need to develop a computer, like a computer Get Real Nutrition infusion, you know, to give your computer some multi-metabolites.

Dr. Pompa:
If my computer just shuts down, Jordan, I love you and I love that God uses you to create these products. Meredith will finish the show. It’s remarkable. I think my concern is that people have to understand what this process is.

I feel blessed because I saw it. I saw these things growing that have never grown before, and pulling out and extracting, you know, like you said, we pull out curcumin and the turmeric plant – it’s like, what about all of this? We haven’t even discovered what these things are yet, well, these products contain that and more, and it’s through this special fermentation process – I guarantee that these products contain things that I probably haven’t eaten or been exposed to in a good way my whole life, perhaps.

Our food supply, Jordan, is just so different. We used to consume plants in nature and live on farms and the soil – we probably got some different -inaudible-. I just feel like this marriage of us and plants has been disrupted. That is a big problem.

Now, look, we lost Jordan, or is that my computer?

Meredith:
Oh, uh oh. It looks like we did lose him.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, boy. My computer is actually doing well.

Meredith:
His is dying and his is gone now. Oh man,

Dr. Pompa:
I’m sure that Jordan will, in fact, call back in, but you know, Meredith, I said my biggest fear is that people really don’t understand how amazing these products are, because when you look at and read the ingredients, I mean, you can see all these amazing different herbs in here. On this page, you can see that he pulls out some of the herbs that most people are familiar with, but if you look at the ingredients, remember all of these herbs in each of these products have gone through this fermentation unique process. I’m telling you, Meredith, I don’t know if you saw the pictures of me with these plants. I’m calling them plants, but I don’t know what to call them, but they grew up like –

Jordan:
Those were our experiments that we left for six months in a place we forgot about. What’s amazing is, is we grew these cultures on grape pomace from our local winery. We grew them on ginkgo; we grew them on turmeric; we grew them on elderberry; and garlic. Each of these fungi took on different shapes, but when you had seen multiple versions it would be absolutely amazing. It would have – they would look like family members if they grew on the same substrate. The fungi are taking these botanical compounds and making them more absorbable. It’s amazing.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it is. I was just amazed at the process and Jordan, I was just showing some of the literature that you have, and how you poured out some of the herbs in each product. That’s another thing you can do. You can look and, say, “Oh, oh, I take turmeric.” Do you want a better turmeric or you can say, “Okay, well here, -inaudible-” or aloe vera, so you can see what products those different herbs are in, and of course, it’s the synergy that herbs work best in.

It’s never as powerful with just taking one thing like turmeric, but it’s when you take it with the synergy of other herbs that affect your brain, for example, it really where you get more power. Of course, the fermentation on top of that, so that’s another way that you can look at what products you want to take just by looking at what’s in them is a great thing.

Jordan, we’re out of time here and my battery might die anyway, but any last words – something we missed, something that you’ve got to tell them?

Jordan:
I’m just really excited that I’m a part of what you’re doing, and I hope that Get Real Nutrition will make an impact on your health, your clients’ health, your doctors and their patients, and anyone who’s listening. Check out the website. Look a little bit into these products, and if you begin a Get Real Nutrition regimen, you will feel the difference. You can get real with nutrition you can feel. That’s what it’s about. Many times we take products and we do it for insurance purposes. Take this product to supercharge your life, and think you’ll feel the results that organic, real foods can make.

Dr. Pompa:
Getrealnutrition.com for more information, and you can buy them on our website at Drpompa.com. Meredith, do they have to put anything? Do they just put the product name? What’s the best way to find them?

Meredith:
You can just go to revelationhealth.com and in the search bar just type in “Get Real” and all 16 products should pop up so you can see them all. You can get the information on Jordan’s website and then get them on revelationhealth.com. We are so excited to offer them, and to continue to learn more, because they just seem too special and there’s no way that we could get all of this nutrition from going out and trying to get it in our diet. It’s a really amazing, new product, so we’re so excited to have them in our store. Thank you so much, Jordan, for this information. It’s really, really very exciting.

Jordan:
Thank you for having me. I look forward to being back. We’ll talk about “To Hell with Cancer” another time.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. We love you, Jordan. We’ll talk soon.

Meredith:
Thanks everyone for watching. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you next time.

95: GMOs with Special Guest Dr. Stephanie Seneff

Transcript of Episode 95: GMOs with Special Guest Dr. Stephanie Seneff

With Dr. Daniel Pompa and special guest Dr. Stefanie Seneff.

Meredith:
Thank you for joining us today. Happy Friday. We have a really special guest for you today. Dr. Pompa and I will be interviewing Dr. Stephanie Seneff, and we’re so excited to have her on the show. Before I introduce her, I’d like to read a little bit about her so you guys can learn a little bit about her. Then we’ll jump in to today’s topic.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff is a senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She received her BS degree in biophysics, MS and EE degrees in electrical engineering, and a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science all from MIT. In recent years, her research has mostly focused on the relationship between nutrition and health.

She has written over a dozen papers and various medical and health-related journals on topics such as modern-day diseases and the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health. Welcome, Dr. Seneff, so excited to have you here today, and hello, Dr. Pompa.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I’m here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Stephanie, you’re in –

Dr. Seneff:
I’m in Hawaii.

Dr. Pompa:
What island are you in there?

Dr. Seneff:
Hawaii, my favorite, the one that’s lush and beautiful, Kauai.

Dr. Pompa:
We got a foot of snow last – I just came off the ski, and you just came out of a pool. Am I right on that?

Dr. Seneff:
I was in the pool. That’s right. We’ve got two different –

Meredith:
I’m in a rainy office builing here in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Seneff:
You’ve got the worst of the lot.

Meredith:
Oh, gosh!

Dr. Pompa:
Modern technology. Yeah. It’s amazing. We’re in some beautiful places, so that’s great. You know, I thanked you at the top of this show, before we even started the show, Stephanie, because I follow your work. I’ve read all of your studies. I’m so grateful, honestly. I’m so grateful, I can’t express how grateful I am.

I teach doctors around the country. My goal is to get out a message of cellular healing, and cellular detox, and, really, these unexplainable illnesses that we’re in just epidemics of today. Your work applies to this, I think, more than any other, honestly. I can’t get a sentence out of my mouth when I’m teaching if I don’t talk about the gut, leaky gut, and the causes, which, I believe, today’s show really is the number one cause of this epidemic , so hormone problems, autoimmune, autism, you name it, we can talk about.

With that said, Stephanie, our listening audience knows a whole lot about gluten. Would you agree with that, Meredith? Everyone knows about gluten. My gosh, I heard people joking about it in the restaurant this morning. Everybody knows about gluten; however, I wrote an article a while back called It’s Not Just About Gluten. Stephanie, what is the bigger culprit than gluten? At the top of the show, that pulls us right into what we need to talk about.

Dr. Seneff:
Right. I’ve got an echo. It really gets into the issue of glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the pervasive herbicide, Roundup, which is used enormously and increasingly every year on our core crops. I need to get into the GMO Roundup ready crops, of which, wheat is not a GMO Roundup ready crop. In fact, when I first saw the issue of gluten intolerance, I was puzzled for that reason. I thought, “Well, wheat’s not Roundup ready. It shouldn’t have a lot of glyphosate on it.” I was thinking, “Maybe glyphosate is causing this,” because there was a very strong correlation between the usage of glyphosate on crops and the increase that we’ve seen in a lot of things, one of which is celiac disease.

What I found out by looking is that, in fact, they do spray Roundup on wheat increasingly, routinely, right before the harvest. This is an increasing practice. I was stunned when I saw that because then I really got serious about trying to see could I explain this? Could I explain gluten intolerance on the basis of what I know glyphosate does to human biology? I launched a big effort with Anthony Samsel, and we published a long paper where we looked at all the different features of celiac disease. Every one of them, we could find a way that glyphosate could cause it, particularly the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which they have a much higher risk to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. People who have celiac disease have a much higher risk. That’s been directly connected to glyphosate poisoning.

Dr. Pompa:
Let’s back up for one second because number one, I want you to say why do they have more of this chemical sprayed on it, and glyphosate, just for our viewers, is the number one herbicide/pesticide used in the world. I used to specify it with Roundup, which you mentioned the word Roundup ready, and I’ll explain what that actually is. This chemical used to be just in this Roundup, which is the number one herbicide. Now, I think their patent has opened up, that, really, every company around the world can get this glyphosate, which is this active ingredient. We’re going to talk about the problem with it, a lot of your studies showed, that are creating a lot of these diseases. Okay, what is GMOs, and why is glyphosate sprayed in a massive amounts on these crops?

Dr. Seneff:
Right. The GMO crops are – there’s only a few. There’s less than a dozen of these GMO crops. Many of them are the core crops of the processed food industry. You have corn, soy, canola oil, which is a very cheap oil that’s used a lot in foods, especially in the processed foods, sugar beets, that’s a source of sugar, and then cotton, tobacco, and alfalfa. That’s pretty much an exhaustive list of the GMO crops – of the crops that are GMO-engineered to be Roundup ready.

We hear so much today about anti-GMO movement and all this stuff about the GMO and whether there’s a problem with it. I’m not going to say there isn’t a problem with the GMO, but there is certainly a problem with the fact that the GMO allows the crop to be sprayed with Roundup without dying. This is a unique property of these crops. Every single plant on the planet dies if it’s exposed to glyphosate except for these special crops that have gotten the bacterial gene inserted into their own genome to protect them.

The fact that all the other plants are killed – this is a universal herbicide – out to tell you something about the toxicity of this chemical, in general, to life.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. The fact is is they’re raising these crops basically to be able to withstand a lot of this chemical. Number one, we’re able to keep the weeds at bay, supposedly – I know there’s problems with that, now – and pests, and obviously it’s going to help farmers having increased yields. You said something. You actually said, “Wait a minute. What about the fact that it’s being sprayed on every conventional grain today through a process called desiccation?” They’re actually doing it to kill the plant before harvest. It causes it to shrivel. It’s called desiccation. Then it increases yield. Now we’re being exposed with every conventional grain, especially the GMO plants that you just mentioned. Can we even avoid this chemical today?

Dr. Seneff:
I want to say that I just today discovered that it’s sprayed on peanuts right before the harvest. I’ve been hearing all of this about peanut allergy, and I’m suspecting now that that’s also caused by glyphosate with the same process that’s going on with gluten intolerance. It’s really disturbing, the amount.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Seneff:
It’s been increasing every year because of their GMO Roundup ready weeds, essentially, that are developing. In these crops, of course, the industry somehow didn’t anticipate this. They should have. As they expose these weeds to glyphosate, the weeds got smart, and they actually became more and more resistant. They could tolerate more and more glyphosate, so they had to use more and more every year. They said they would use less, but they used more.

Dr. Pompa:
More.

Dr. Seneff:
Alarmingly more, like 800% increase over the last 10, 15 years in the use of glyphosate on crops, incredibly escalating exactly in step with the rise in autism in this country.

Dr. Pompa:
You have some of those graphs. I remember seeing – with the rise in dementia, with the rise of Alzheimer’s, with the rise of autism. As glyphosate amounts went up, these diseases went up. Again, coincidence? Maybe, but when you look at the numbers, it’s pretty hard to say coincidence. Tell me a little bit about your research there.

Dr. Seneff:
Right. I’ve just been amazed. In fact, I’m collaborating now with Nancy Swanson. It’s quite remarkable to me that when Anthony Samsel and I – he’s the one who got me started. I should go back – actual bit of history. Don Huber was the one who originally – Professor Don Huber, who’s a professor from Perdue. Outstanding man, very, very intelligent, and extremely well informed on plants. It’s his area of expertise. I heard him give a two-hour presentation a little over three years ago. It’s hard to believe it’s only three years because it’s been such an incredibly intense three years of my life.

Dr. Pompa:
I agree.

Dr. Seneff:
He gave this presentation, and I was on the edge of my seat. I saw right then and there that this was the reason why we had an autism epidemic. I had been looking at autism for the previous five years and coming up frustrated because I saw all these symptoms in autism, like the gut problems, that I couldn’t explain, and the vitamin D deficiency, all these things that I couldn’t explain with the things that I was looking at. I didn’t think to look at Roundup because, like everybody else, I believed it was harmless.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Dr. Seneff:
Don opened that window for me. Then Dr. Mercola is the one who introduced me to Anthony Samsel. He’s really a remarkable man. He and I have collaborated now on four papers. We’re working on a fifth one and a sixth one, probably, right now, working on more research to work out different aspects of glyphosate. It is an amazing molecule, really fascinating, actually, because of the many different ways in which it can disrupt biology. It’s just incredible. How they ever got it past the regulatory agencies is what puzzles me.

Dr. Pompa:
To this day, they’re claiming it’s still safe. When you look at Monsanto’s mantra, they’re still saying that it’s safe for humans. I know that they’ve changed their tune, right?

Dr. Seneff:
Yeah. The WHO, of course, just this past March, recognized that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen. That’s a big deal. The IARC in Europe, their regulatory agency, just said, “No, it’s not.” Different people are being influenced by different parts of the science. If you look at what the industry portrays, it’s in their extreme best interest to pretend that this chemical is not toxic. Then the regulators are just believing it because I think they don’t want to face that fact that they’ve got to find a different way to do agriculture.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like overuse of antibiotics in the soil. Now you become addicted. Now, it’s like, how do you live without an antibiotic? How do you live without this chemical, even though it’s causing long-term problems? You brought up autism, and we’ve tailed on a few other diseases. How does glyphosate really affect all these different conditions? I think that’s the question that people might be skeptical about. It’s like one chemical, it can cause autism. It can be linked to Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and all these conditions.

 Dr. Seneff:
Obesity – yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
How is that possible?

Dr. Seneff:
I know. I would have been surprised, myself. I didn’t finish my story about Anthony. I got way bent in the history of things. I was working with Anthony. We wrote our first paper, and we tagged all these diseases that we suspected glyphosate would cause based on what it does to biological systems. After that paper was published, I got contacted by Nancy Swanson, and she showed me all her charts that were showing perfect correlation between the rise in glyphosate.

I hadn’t even looked at those data when we wrote our paper, so it was really serendipitous that the diseases she was finding were correlated with glyphosate were the same ones we had written about without knowing that there was that strong correlation. It was quite remarkable. Nancy and I have now continued to collaborate. I’m really enjoying working with her, and I’m covering all kinds of new correlations. Basically, we make a great team because she goes through and finds the things that are correlated, and then I go through the science to try to figure out, “Why would this be?” It’s incredible.

This molecule is a monster, and it affects biology in so many ways. One of the things is that’s it’s a patented anti-microbial agent. That was a patent that it received before it received a patent as a – first of all, it was patented as a chelating agent, so it would clear pipes of metals. It would clean the pipes. Then it was patented as an anti-microbial agent, and finally, it was patented as an herbicide.

Those two features, the chelation of metals and the anti-microbial effect have huge, huge consequences to our biology. You can imagine because the gut microbes are going to be sensitive. It’s just basically like having an antibiotic. I think all the problems we’re having with antibiotic resistance in the hospitals – we have this huge problem with these monster bugs that people can’t – you throw every antibiotic at it, and it won’t die.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Dr. Seneff:
There is the antibiotics that they’re feeding to the cows intentionally to make them grow faster, but there’s also glyphosate as an antibiotic being fed to the cows every day. They get GMO Roundup ready corn and soy feed. That’s their diet. The cows are being exposed to lots of glyphosate every day that’s causing antibiotic resistance in their gut, and then producing all these antibiotic resistance microbes in the world.

Dr. Pompa:
Part of the answer to the question is, “How does it affect so many diseases?” because it has such a negative impact in the microbiome, which is related to – speaking about gut bacteria as related to our immune system and even how the brain works. Matter of fact, if we look at autism, we know it affects this brain and the second brain, right?

Dr. Seneff:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
We know that both brains are affected. Reading your research, you showed that glyphosate destroys certain bacteria that we need to make neurotransmitters – it’s called a Shikimate pathway – for our brain to work. Okay, so if we here via glyphosate, now we’re not making the chemicals that our brain needs to actually work.

I’ve got a novel concept. Let’s just give people serotonin uptake inhibitors and more medication instead of realizing what’s going on, why we have depressed teenagers, teenagers that are reaching out to drugs, and more and more autism. Then, not to mention the fact that your work showed that it created– opens up the gut, even opens up the tight junctions, which again, are making – I said that the big problems isn’t gluten. It’s just allowing to cross over. That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing it connected to different diseases, I’m sure.

Dr. Seneff:
Absolutely! Fortunately, researchers are now really looking into the gut microbiome. It took them a long time to realize how important it is to our health. Of course, because it’s failing, they’re noticing its importance. Lactobacillus is the microbe that gets started first in the gut. That’s the microbe that drinks milk, basically. When the baby’s born and it’s nursed, you’re feeding lactobacillus. You need to make that bacterium grow a lot because it will really keep your gut healthy.

Lactobacillus is especially sensitive to glyphosate because it is unusual in its dependence on manganese. Glyphosate really chelates manganese. This has been shown in studies on cows. It prevents access to manganese. The lactobacillus can’t thrive, and that means a vacuum to allow the pathogens to overgrow. That’s how you get all the disruptive gut problems.

The gluten, in fact – not only does the gluten leak out because the gut’s leaky, but also, there’s a problem with digesting the gluten because glyphosate gets in the way. Normally, there’s a step that takes place in the breaking down of gluten that involves forming cross-links among different amino acids in the molecule. Glyphosate gets in the way and prevents those cross-links from happening, and then also binds. Once glyphosate is bound to the gluten, the gluten looks like a foreign molecule, and the body develops and antibody to it. That’s how we theorize in our papers how it’s happening.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s safe to say if we can fix the glyphosate problem, we could fix the gluten problem.

Dr. Seneff:
I absolutely think so. If you look back before we had glyphosate, we didn’t have – we had very little gluten intolerance. Gluten intolerance was just – I didn’t even know about it when I was a child. I never heard of it.

Dr. Pompa:
Really, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Good old Norman Borlaug disrupted and changed gluten in dwarf wheat. That was all the way back in the ‘70s. My generation, I’m 50, I don’t know anyone that had a gluten issue. Nobody had a gluten issue. We can’t blame Normal completely. This glyphosate really is the bigger issue.

Dr. Seneff:
Absolutely. I really think it’s causing most of the food allergies, maybe even all of the food allergies. Obviously, we had food allergy before glyphosate, but the epidemic, the increase, I think, is being caused by glyphosate, mainly by glyphosate. I think there’s some issues with the vaccines, as well.

Dr. Pompa:
Talk a little bit about some other things that the glyphosate does. I know it makes heavy metals more toxic. This is another problem in autism, and Alzheimer’s, and, really, so many diseases today. How does it make things more toxic, and how does it affect the brain in other ways?

Dr. Seneff:
It’s amazing what it does to iron, actually. I’ve been looking a lot at iron lately. Very fascinating. Today, we have, actually, worldwide, an epidemic in anemia. Many, many people suffer from anemia, including in the United States. We also have issues with iron toxicity at the same time, too much iron. Both too much iron and too little iron are a problem. It’s very, very difficult to get to that sweet spot where the iron is just right. The reason is because our body is no longer able to manage iron properly because glyphosate messes up the whole system of managing the iron. That’s what glyphosate will do with all the minerals. It binds to them and builds this cage around the minerals so that – the cells can’t gain access if it’s hiding inside this glyphosate molecule.

Then it basically carries the mineral, whatever it might be. It might be a toxic metal like aluminum, or it could be iron, which is both toxic and essential at the same time. Many of the minerals are like that. Manganese is like that, too, both toxic and essential. The body uses these in very, very important ways. Many of the enzymes depend upon one or more metals to be able to capitalize the reaction. If they can’t gain access to those metals, the enzymes don’t work.

At the same time, glyphosate will carry that metal through the blood to get to the terminal vasculature areas, the places where the blood equilibrates with other fluids. That’s going to be, for example, the kidneys and the urine, or it’s going to be the cerebral spinal fluid in the brain. You can have the pineal gland and the pituitary gland, which are linked to the cerebral spinal fluid, or in the jaw, the salivary glands. All of those areas are the most acidic areas of the blood. Under acid conditions, glyphosate unloads its cargo.

What happens is glyphosate carries these toxic metals into those particular places, unloads its cargo, and at that point, both the glyphosate and the metal become toxic. It’s really a very big problem. That’s why you have kidney failure. Kidney failure is totally an epidemic in step with glyphosate usage on crops.

In fact, agricultural workers in certain countries like Sri Lanka and in Central America, the workers that are working the sugar cane fields – sugar can is sprayed with glyphosate right before the harvest. These workers are dying in record numbers of kidney failure at a young age. Sri Lankans have linked it to glyphosate and have banned glyphosate as a country. The entire country has banned glyphosate usage anywhere in the country as a consequence of this evidence.

Dr. Pompa:
It seems like other countries are banning it, GMOs even. Here in the United States, we have your research and others, and yet, there’s no pullback at all. How do you explain that?

Dr. Seneff:
I don’t explain that. I am shocked. I really thought that I lived in a pretty decent country, and I’m telling you that I am getting extremely discouraged with my government. I just feel like they’ve been bought. It’s amazing. I’m not naturally an activist. I like to just do science. I love science. I’d be happy to just hide in my lab and write papers if I could get by with it, but I feel it’s necessary to get this message out.

I have friends who are activists, and they have sent off so many letters to legislators around the country, and they admit to me – one of them is extremely frustrated. He send out probably over 100 letters, and he hasn’t gotten anything back from anybody, other than maybe some form acknowledgement that the letter was received. Nobody has ever responded.

Dr. Pompa:
Have you had any threats? Monsanto has a lot of money. I’m sure they’re very upset about your research. Has MIT been – are they trying to come in at you?

Dr. Seneff:
It’s remarkable. I’m very proud of MIT. I think it’s a really fantastic institution. MIT is pretty tolerant, I think, of – we have Noam Chomsky, and he’s done a lot of activism. They have not told me anything about not doing – they haven’t tried to stop me from doing anything that I’ve done so far. Also, my funding agency has been very supportive, and they’ve continued to fund my work, which is remarkable, I think. It’s very hard to get funding, of course, to do the kind of stuff I’m doing.

Dr. Pompa:
I hope more shows like this make it more plausible, that’s for sure. I know that when we look at – I teach a lot about dementia, and really, this is a growing, growing, fast epidemic. I know that you – in some of your papers, you talk about how glyphosate disrupts something called cholesterol sulfate. I love telling people. I love the shock. Could heart disease actually be a cholesterol deficiency? Some of your work actually shows that it is. I love that. I call it the 180 degree opposite.I always say, “In health, if you want to know where health lies, it’s 180 degrees opposite of where you think.” Cholesterol is one of those topics. Explain a little bit about – how could heart disease be a cholesterol deficiency? How does that play into Alzheimer’s in the brain? Glyphosate is really a problem when it comes to this cholesterol sulfate or cholesterol topic.

Dr. Seneff:
It is. It’s really quite remarkable because the liver actually produces cholesterol sulfate and ships it out through the bile acids to the gut. That helps with the digestion. Bile acids, of course, help digest the fats. Eventually, the cholesterol sulfate ends up in the cheadle micron, which gets sent back into the body via the lymph system. It lands in the blood. The first place it joins the blood is right before it enters the heart. The body has set up a mechanism by which the liver directly delivers cholesterol sulfate to the heart via the cheadle micron. The heart loves the cheadle micron. It will take the cheadle micron as a source of fuel given a choice.

There was a study that was done in vitro on a rat heart. Even between LDL and cheadle micron, the heart would rather consume energy fuel from the cheadle micron. It’s really interesting to me that there’s a set-up to really, really supply the heart with cholesterol sulfate. I think both the cholesterol and the sulfate are absolutely essential for the performance of the heart. It’s a muscle that can’t relax. It has to work all the time, and it needs a lot of energy. The sulfate is really, really important for supplying the energy.

This is based on a very complex mechanism involving water, actually, gelled water. It’s a very, very interesting space that I’ve been studying with some very smart people. I’m learning a lot from these people who are experts in this area, such as Jerry Pollack, of water and the power of water to actually generate electricity under the right circumstances, but those circumstances involve sulfate. When sulfate’s deficient, the heart doesn’t have enough electricity. That’s going to cause heart failure.

Dr. Pompa:
People have to understand that sulfate and cholesterol come together because cholesterol just can’t be free-floating around by itself. It’s either carried in a particle or connected to sulfate. As a matter of fact, that’s part of the link of why we’re seeing it as a link to Alzheimer’s, etcetera. Back up. Glyphosate affects this cholesterol sulfate, and we need this cholesterol sulfate for our heart. We need it for our brain. Therefore, cholesterol – and people who are low in cholesterol, for goodness sakes. We have this combination of cholesterol and sulfate being attacked. Is this why we’re seeing so many increases in these brain diseases?

Dr. Seneff:
Absolutely! Cholesterol is really, really important in the brain. The brain has 5% of the body’s weight and 25% of the body’s cholesterol. The brain loves cholesterol, and it desperately needs cholesterol to be able to transmit nerve signals. You don’t want to have insufficient cholesterol in your brain. In fact, I’ve seen studies on the elderly.

There was a wonderful, 17-year study that showed – and they looked at three different measures of cholesterol. All three measures, and of course, all three together, especially showed the people who had low levels of cholesterol has increased dementia, increased problems with their brains, and increased frailty, and also shorter lifespan. Everything was bad with respect to low cholesterol. It’s amazing to me. Of course, also, there’ve been studies on Alzheimer’s, and they’ve shown that people with Alzheimer’s have low cholesterol. The ones with worse Alzheimer’s have lower cholesterol. Very, very well correlated with these problems.

Meredith:
What are you saying is low? What would you recommend as far as good cholesterol levels go?

Dr. Seneff:
That’s not a question I can answer because I really feel that whatever the level is is good. Your body is smart. If you’ve got a problem, your body’s going to raise the cholesterol, and that’s a good thing. The issue really is more about oxidation. If you have oxidized LDL, that’s an indicator of a really big problem. You’re going to have oxidized LDL if you’ve got glyphosate poisoning. Glyphosate causes the oxidation damage. It’s been shown in multiple studies in the liver to cause increased release of these toxic oxidizing agents that are going to mess up molecules in the body.

I didn’t finish the story about glyphosate and bile acids. Bile acids don’t flow because glyphosate messes up the enzymes, which are the cytochrome P450 enzymes in the liver, that make the bile acids. Those enzymes also activate – the same enzymes activate vitamin D. We have a vitamin D deficiency epidemic today, also in this country. I think it’s directly attributable to glyphosate’s poisoning of those enzymes that active vitamin D in the liver.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow! That’s amazing. The cholesterol subject is – I’m so glad you said the fact that wherever it is is where the body wants it. Actually, I had low cholesterol before years and years ago. I was probably 170, which is an open window for neurotoxicity and ended up becoming neurotoxic. The irony was this: When I was trying to figure out what was wrong, all of a sudden, I saw that I had very high cholesterol. I said, “That must be a mistake,” learning now that cholesterol actually raises the blood brain barrier. Again, my innate intelligence knew better.

There’s a higher mortality, meaning death, for lower cholesterol than higher cholesterol. I want people to understand that and hear that loud and clear. The cholesterol sulfate combination that this glyphosate disrupts is why we’re seeing – with the increase of glyphosate, we’re seeing a climb in all these different bring conditions and hormone conditions. Cholesterol stabilizes hormone receptors, so there must be a correlation there, as well, with the cholesterol sulfate.

Dr. Seneff:
Because glyphosate disrupts the adrenal glands’ ability to make sulfated sterols. There’s things like DHEA sulfate, and there’s all the sex hormones that are sulfated like testosterone sulfate and estrone sulfate from estrogen. Cortisol is also sulfated. All of these things are sulfated in transit, and that sulfation process is messed up by glyphosate.

The adrenals have been shown to be a huge decrease in the production of testosterone, for example, in the presence of glyphosate. It messes up the ability to produce all these really important hormones. Of course, it also messes up, as you mentioned before, the neurotransmitters. Both of those together – neurotransmitters also transmit sulfate. They also are sulfated in transit. This process of sulfation is just a marriage. Sulfate by itself, free sulfate, is a problem in the blood. It’ll make the blood turn into – it’ll gel the blood just like it gels the blood to make electricity. It can’t gel the flowing blood. Flowing blood has to flow.

The body has come up with these clever mechanisms to transport sulfate by attaching it to either all these sterols like the vitamin D sulfate, cholesterol, the sex hormones, DHEA, all of these things, cortisol, and also thyroid hormone. They’re all sulfated – and methionine – I mean, not methionine – all these neurotransmitters, which come from that pathway that glyphosate disrupts. The gut microbes make the precursors to these neurotransmitters, and that’s serotonin, melatonin, and melanin, the skin-tanning agent, thyroid hormone. They all come from that pathway.

You’ve got both of these enormously important groups of molecules disrupted by glyphosate, all of which are able to transport sulfate. You get a huge problem with sulfate deficiency under these circumstances.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s remarkable! Here we are today, everyone’s trying to lower their cholesterol, which you’re saying cholesterol’s the most important thing for the cell, the nerve system, and then sulfate. We have glyphosate affecting the sulfate, and it’s amazing that we don’t even see more disease, really. Cholesterol is being targeted. The sulfate’s being targeted. Our gut bacteria are being targeted. Glyphosate literally affects the most important things that we need, but it explains why we’re seeing the rises in all these different conditions.

When I heard that – how does glyphosate affect diabetes? I was saying, “How could that be?” It even affects the ion transport, which affects ATP, our energy, which is another thing that we’re going to see linked to fatigue, I’m sure.

Dr. Seneff:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
You might want to explain that a little bit.

Dr. Seneff:
Oh, yeah. It definitely hits the mitochondria very badly. It’s been shown in multiple studies with multiple animal models that glyphosate messes up the mitochondria, which are the organelles in your cells that produce ATP. ATP, of course, is the energy currency of life. When you don’t get enough ATP, you get tired. That’s how you get chronic fatigue syndrome, I’m sure. I really feel confident that that’s a consequence of the muscle cells’ impairment in their ability to make ATP. That probably comes back from their deficiency in cholesterol sulfate.

Dr. Pompa:
It causes these ion leaks, which we need to make ATP in the mitochondria. Last week, I interviewed Thomas Seyfriend, and he’s saying, “Look, cancer is a metabolic problem.” What happens first, and this was all the way back from Warburg’s theory, is mitochondria gets affected. Something damages the mitochondria. Then all of a sudden, we have this odd fermentation in [00:32:03] produce ATP in a different format. He’s saying this is the problem. My gosh. You need to get together with Seyfried because this will be another paper.

Dr. Seneff:
I know.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It’s damaging mitochondria, what’s causing damaging mitochondria and ion leaks. Come on. Glyphosate has to be – leading to cancer in this route.

Dr. Seneff:
Absolutely. In fact, it’s remarkable, the correlations between glyphosate and a number of different cancers that Nancy Swanson has found, pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, all of these, and probably prostate cancer, as well. Not as clear there. All very strongly correlated with glyphosate usage on crops.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. If it affects ATP in the mitochondria, it’s going to lead to cancer and host of other unexplainable illnesses that we see today. Meredith, I know you have other questions. I don’t want to hog all the questions because I’m all excited.

Meredith:
Just thinking with a layperson’s frame here, too. This is some heavy science that you guys are talking about. I think it’s so important for us to understand these episodes. I’m going to have to re-watch, too, because it’s a lot of amazing information. Perhaps someone’s just sitting here, and watching the show, and wondering, “Okay. How does this affect me? I feel like I eat pretty well,” but maybe – a lot of people out there want to lose weight, especially this time of the year with the new year coming up. I know that you’ve said that GMOs increase likelihood of being obese. Maybe if you can talk about that a little bit.

Dr. Seneff:
I’d be delighted, yeah. In fact, it’s very interesting. Early on, when I started looking at glyphosate, I came across a paper. The paper was arguing that sugar was contributing to the obesity problem in the US. They showed a plot that went all the way back to the 1700s, and they showed the trends of obesity. You could see that we were getting obese slowly over the – say, the second half of the 1900s, like 1950 to 1975. There was a positive slope. We were getting fatter.

Nineteen seventy-five, it hit a corner. All of a sudden, we started getting fatter faster, much steeper slope. Nineteen seventy-five was when glyphosate was introduced into the food chain. I don’t think that’s coincidental. I think that glyphosate was causing – is continuing to cause the obesity epidemic, which is, by the way, still getting worse today. We’re about as obese as you could possible imagine, and we’re still getting fatter. It’s incredible, so many people in America that are just insanely overweight. You wouldn’t have ever – if you saw someone like that when I was a child, you would stare at them because you’d be so surprised. Now, we see so many of them that it’s just part of the – normal. It’s considered normal to be 300 or 400 pounds. It’s incredible.

There’s a reason for that because glyphosate – I mentioned the CYP enzymes in the liver that make the bile acids. Those CYP enzymes are also really, really important for detoxifying a whole bunch of toxic chemicals including drugs that we might take. We have all the PCBs. There’s lots of stuff out there in our environment that’s also toxic, the insecticides. Many of them are not water-soluble. We depend upon the CYP enzymes to convert them into a water-soluble product that can then be excreted. If the CYP enzymes aren’t doing that job, those fat-soluble, toxic chemicals have to be stored somewhere in order to keep our body from being damaged by them.

Dr. Pompa:
Fat cells.

Dr. Seneff:
It’s very convenient to have a big belly where you can just dump all these toxic chemicals that you can’t deal with, just dump them into that big belly. If you start losing weight fast, you’re going to release all those toxins, and they’re going to cause damage to your brain, for example.

Dr. Pompa:
We see that, Stephanie. Here, a new epidemic is weight loss resistance, the inability to lose weight despite what people eat and how much they exercise. I’ll tell you, we people all the time lose 10 or 15 pounds, and not only do they plateau, but they also stop losing weight and even gain weight back. I keep saying, “Weight loss today has more to do with toxins’ effect on hormones than anything else.” Here, glyphosate playing a major role in that. I didn’t know that correlation like that, exactly at 1975, we saw that rise. Very interesting.

 Dr. Seneff:
Yes, very interesting. Nancy has shown that hospital discharge data that obesity is highly correlated with glyphosate usage on corn and soy crops. It’s going up with a very strong correlation just like, also, diabetes, and, as I mentioned – and even LDL, by the way. LDL levels in the population are going up despite this aggressive use of statins. They’re going up in step with the increase use of glyphosate. I think it’s causing high LDL, and I’ll tell you why.

When the liver can’t produce the cholesterol sulfate and ship it out through the bile acid, it has to ship the cholesterol out some other way. The way it does it is by packaging it up inside those LDL particles. It’s stuck having to send out LDL instead of sending out bile acids directly into the blood instead of sending bile acids over to the gut where they can be used to help digest the fats. It really messes things up in the liver.

Dr. Pompa:
The number of particles of cholesterol’s more damaging than your total cholesterol.

Dr. Seneff:
Yes, the small, dense LDL particles. Those are the ones that cannot return to the liver because they’ve been oxidized and glycated. They’re such a mess. They’ve just been completely gummed up, and the liver won’t take them back under those circumstances.

Another thing interesting – I could get into statin drugs for hours, but it’s also PCSK9 inhibitors. I don’t know if you’ve heard of those. That’s a new drug that they’re really getting excited about to lower cholesterol even more than what you get with statin drugs. It’s a shot that you take. It’s really scary. PCSK9 inhibitors inhibit this enzyme called PCSK9 in the liver. What’s really interesting about that enzyme is that it binds to sulfate and becomes inactive. That enzyme prevents the LDL from coming back.

If there’s enough sulfate, then that enzyme is naturally inactivated, and the LDL comes back. An important reason why the liver can’t take back the LDL is because it doesn’t have enough sulfate. The reason why it doesn’t have enough sulfate is because of glyphosate. If you just poison that enzyme, you let the liver take back the cholesterol, even though it can’t afford to do so because that’s methyl sulfate, you’re going to end up with fatty liver disease. We have an epidemic right now in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I think it’s caused directly by glyphosate. PCSK9 inhibitors are going to make it worse.

In fact, the early evidence coming out already is showing that PCSK9 inhibitors cause fatty liver disease. They’ve never shown that they actually improve heart health. They’ve only shown that they lower cholesterol. They’re marketing them like, “Oh, this is a great solution for getting your cholesterol down to 0,” which is so insane. I just get so upset by this craziness that we live under right now with the medical system.

Dr. Pompa:
Doctors are just buying into it because they don’t have time to look at the literature. They don’t read literature. They’re just doing what they’re told. The drug companies come in, the reps come in, and, “Here’s another lowing cholesterol” – look, most doctors believe that cholesterol is the enemy. They do, Stephanie.

Dr. Seneff:
I know.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know.

Dr. Seneff:
I know that because I have people who tell me, “My doctor has told me I simply cannot – I have to take this statin drug. What can I do? My doctor says I have to.” I sort of say, “Don’t listen to your doctor,” but you know. Doctors need to get aware of what’s happening.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I send people papers all the time, and they bring them to their doctor. The doctor gets very mad. We’re in a hard time right now with the cholesterol problem. How is it linked to diabetes? To me, diabetes is leading to – diabetes and thyroid are almost the same condition these days. It’s like one gets one, then the other. How is it linked to these conditions?

Dr. Seneff:
Yeah. There’s complicated links, but one thing, of course, is that diabetes causes high blood sugar, right? You’re going to have too much sugar in your blood. Sugar is actually toxic because it can be converted, and it will actually react with things in uncontrollable ways if you just have it in your blood.

That’s what causes glycation damage. When you measure hemoglobin A1C, that’s a damaged hemoglobin product from sugar attack. When the proteins in your blood get damaged, and including the protein APOB in the LDL particle get damaged by the sugar, they don’t work anymore. The LDL particle gets damaged by the sugar such that it can’t be taken up. It can’t even be taken up by the cells to deliver its goods. It just becomes sort of a useless remnant.

You get these small, dense LDL particles that have nowhere to go because the liver won’t take them back. They’re all gummed up. Nobody wants them, in a sense, so the only cell that’s willing to take these things are these macrophage clean-up cells. These are the cells that go into the artery wall in the heart, and they take in these damaged, small, dense LDL particles, and carefully take them apart, and recycle them. They want to keep the cholesterol because cholesterol’s so important, but they’re storing it in the artery wall, waiting for an opportunity to unload it as cholesterol sulfate. The reason why they can’t unload it is because there’s no sulfate. Sulfate deficiency is the problem.

Dr. Pompa:
Your work has linked glyphosate, the overuse of GMOs to all these different things. What do we do? Can we avoid this?

Dr. Seneff:
I have to say, the US has no GMO labeling, very frustrating. You don’t know if it’s GMO or not, but we do have Certified Organic, and it’s a pretty respected label. I really, really appreciate Certified Organic. We are very careful when we go shopping. We’ve stopped eating things that we can’t find them as Certified Organic. We buy everything including our spices, our wine, and beer. Everything in our house is Certified Organic. I would encourage everybody to do that.

Luckily, you can in this country. I think Certified Organic is probably more available here than almost anywhere else in the world, except for places like Butan, where they’re organic. They’re just all organic. This is a good place to be able to get Certified Organic. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but certainly where I live, I have not had a problem with getting most of the things I eat organic.

Meredith:
I’m wondering, too, because I know, perhaps, not everyone is able to afford 100% organic. Are there certain crops that they should definitely avoid if they can’t buy everything organic, corn, soy, some of these other – sugar beets, but give that list.

Dr. Seneff:
Yes. Of course, there’s the GMO Roundup ready crops, which I said before, are the corn, the soy, the sugar beets, the canola oil, and then alfalfa, and cotton, and tobacco, of course, weren’t really foods, although cotton seed oil is used as a cheap oil, and that’s probably contaminated. Then there are all the crops that are sprayed with glyphosate right before the harvest, and that is, in my mind, a growing list. I’m still trying to figure out exactly which crops that is. I said I just figured out – I just found out today that peanuts can be sprayed with glyphosate right before the harvest, and legumes, and sugar cane.

All the sugars are bad. You have the high fructose corn syrup, which is derived from GMO Roundup ready corn. You have sugar beets, which are GMO Roundup ready, and you have sugar cane, which is sprayed with glyphosate right before the harvest. We’re hearing a lot these days about sugar being bad for you. I think it’s the glyphosate that’s in the sugar that’s causing the problem.

Meredith:
Wow!

Dr. Seneff:
We’re really getting mixed up in our studies because we’re really studying how much glyphosate would – people have different studies that get contradictory results on some particular food. I think it’s just because you have to look at how much glyphosate is in the particular form of that oil or that sugar that they’re studying to judge the toxic effects of it. They’re missing that entirely when they study these things. Yeah, the sugars, and then – Cheerios, for example, even if you got non-GMO Cheerios, which they now have, you could not guarantee that doesn’t have glyphosate because oats are sprayed with glyphosate right before the harvest. That won’t work. Natural’s not good enough. Non-GMO’s not good enough. I wouldn’t buy any cereal that wasn’t organic.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I wouldn’t eat any grain.

Dr. Seneff:
Yeah, period. That’s right.

Bread – right. It’s a big list. It’s most of the foods that you eat, unfortunately. Of course, if you’re taking butter, and cream, and that sort of thing, if you’re not eating organic, it’s coming from a cow that’s been fed huge amounts. It’s been shown to be – glyphosate has been found in human breast milk, so you can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be in cows’ milk, which may be a reason why we have a lot of milk allergies today. We have a lot of casein intolerance, which I’m suspecting may also be due to glyphosate in the milk.

Meredith:
So connected. Wow!

Dr. Seneff:
I have to say it goes into the animals, too. There were studies on cows and on chickens. They found glyphosate in all the tissues, including the muscles, which is going to be the meat. If you’re eating non-organic – not eating grass-fed beef, you’re probably eating glyphosate in your meat.

Dr. Pompa:
I was going to ask that because I refuse to eat corn-fed meat. My meat is grass-fed. The best part about it is when you go to restaurants now, it’s shocking to me. Average restaurants have grass-fed choices now.

Yeah, it is. It’s really become easier. I remember watching one of your lectures. I added it to one of mine, just about – look, we’re poisoning our infants from the get-go. When you look at the amount of – the highest glyphosate-containing foods, soy and corn, this is what formula is made of. Oh, and then if they make it to be a senior, look what we’re feeing our seniors, all these products made for seniors in the senior homes.

 Dr. Seneff:
Ensure has got to be really toxic.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh! It’s remarkable!

Dr. Seneff:
I know. It’s really crazy. We have to wake up. I can’t understand why people aren’t seeing this. I think more and more people are, but it seems so obvious to me. It’s so frustrating that people are just going about their lives as if everything’s fine because it’s not. We’re going to be really in a crisis. My projections of the curve – if you just look at the autism curve from the CDC since – for the past 20 years, two decades, and you look at the shape of that curve, you can tell very clearly its exponential growth.

It’s very easy to extend the curve to predict – if it continues along the same curve, where will we be when, and you’ll find out that in 2032, half the kids born, 80% of the boys, will be on the autism spectrum. That’s not going to be something we can tolerate. We’re going to have to do something. It’s going to become obvious to everybody soon enough, I think. We need to do something huge.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh! We just talked about the damages of this glyphosate that’s being sprayed on our food. The over-vaccinations, one vaccine after another, they still have all these heavy metals, which the glyphosate exemplifies the toxicity. Think about this. What are we headed for, Stephanie?

 I mean, honestly.

Dr. Seneff:
I know. It doesn’t make any sense. You can’t understand why the country wouldn’t be worried about the fact that it’s pretty much destroying the next generation as far as I can tell. It’s like we were just walking happily over the cliff.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I teach something called true cellular detox. I talk about how we have to – real detox. You have to get the cells functioning first. When you look at glyphosate, and how it disrupts cellular energy, and how it disrupts the cell membrane, and how it disrupts methylation and glutathione. I have something I teach, my 5 Rs of how to fix a cell, and it’s a roadmap. This is the issue. This is why my passion is teaching. True cellular detox is really what it is. You can’t just do a colon cleanse and walk away thinking you’re going to fix this problem today.

Dr. Seneff:
Yes.

greexDr. Seneff:
Anthony Samsel just told me recently that zeolite is actually used by the industry to clear any remaining glyphosate. In places where they manufacture glyphosate, they use zeolite to get rid of the glyphosate. They know about that. I understand that zeolite is being used, also, for autistic kids. I think that it’s amazing that they haven’t sort of connected those dots, that zeolite is being used to remove the glyphosate.

Dr. Pompa:
One of the big problems – and this is my criticism of zeolite – has been in the human body. Number one, most of it’s contaminated. It holds onto certain toxins that it will let go of in certain acids in the gut. Number two, we tested them, and really, even the solution ones, the ones that claim to be a solution, but they were really a suspension, they didn’t leave the gut, let alone get into the cell.

This one actually leaves the gut. I had to see the research myself to believe it because of my criticism of some of these products. The problem has been that zeolite didn’t leave the gut, really, so it bound well in the gut. This one actually gets into the cell. CytoDetox is the product. I’ll introduce you to it. You can ask Meredith. She’ll get you some information on it. It’s a product right now we’re just selling to physicians and doctors, but it works. We know it works for glyphosate.

We knew it worked for glyphosate outside the body. This one actually goes into the cell, into the membranes. This is a major defense against this glyphosate problem.

Dr. Seneff:
Wow. That sounds encouraging.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Seneff:
It’s a good question, and I don’t have a good answer as to how long would it take, if forever, to actually get rid of glyphosate if you simply stopped eating it, like if you went to a strict organic diet. Even then, of course, it’s not guaranteed to be glyphosate-free.

A theoretical question is if somehow, you could stop eating glyphosate, would it eventually work its way out of your body naturally, or do you have to do something special to actually coax it out? Is it impossible to get it out? Maybe it’s just settled in the bone marrow, and it’s impossible to get it out. I don’t know the answer to that.

Dr. Pompa:
The damage that it causes to the natural cellular detox pathways is the problem. It comes in.

 Dr. Seneff:
I know.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s what we’re doing. Part of true cellular detox is upregulating these cellular pathways because of the toxic damage that’s been there. The answer is most people probably wouldn’t get rid of it even if you got rid of it in your diet without upregulating the cellular.

Dr. Seneff:
Right, especially once your detox system is already shot to hell, right, because then you can’t fix it. Very frustrating.

Dr. Pompa:
We’re talking about almost – we have to do the best we can to avoid it, obviously, eating 100% organic and grass-fed. I agree. That’s the way we live our life, too, Stephanie. I feel, today, people cannot afford not to do that in really upregulating the cellular pathways. We have some new products that are coming out that are really trying to combat it from another side of detoxification. We are up against something so much bigger than you and I, and we’re just small voices in this. You’re a large voice, so we applaud you and thank you for that.

Dr. Seneff:
Thank you for what you’re doing because I am not involved in the issue of how to fix the problem. I’m just studying what is the problem. It’s very, very important, the kind of work you guys are doing.

Dr. Pompa:
We appreciate it. We’re on opposite ends.

Dr. Seneff:
You’re in the cold, and I’m in the hot.

Dr. Pompa:
We’re still on opposite ends. Any questions for Stephanie?

Meredith:
Wow. I think you guys have covered so much. I think the most important message is to avoid GMOs and glyphosate as much as possible. Education is so, so important, and so many people just don’t know. It’s really that simple. If you’re watching, please share this with your friends and family, anybody you care about. Get educated. Get informed.

Thank you, Dr. Seneff, so much for what you’re doing on the research end. Thank you, Dr. Pompa, for what you’re doing to help people once they do experience the health challenges from these toxins in our environment.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Meredith:
Thank you both so much for this amazing show, for this amazing information. Dr. Seneff, I’ll definitely send you that information. Once again, if you have questions, if you have responses, we want to hear from you. Send in feedback on the info form on Podcast.DrPompa.com. If you wanted to check out Dr. Pompa’s article on It’s Not Just Gluten, which references Dr. Seneff’s work, you can find that on DrPompa.com, as well. In the search engine, you can just type in gluten, and it’ll pop right up. Thank you so much again. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. We’ll see you next week.

94: Cancer as a Metabolic Disease with Dr. Thomas Seyfried

Transcript of Episode 94: Cancer as a Metabolic Disease with Dr. Thomas Seyfried

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and special guest Dr. Thomas Seyfried, Ph.D.

Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 94.  We have a very special guest joining Dr. Pompa and I on the call today.  We have Dr. Thomas Seyfried.  I’d like to start off by sharing a little bit about Dr. Seyfried, and then I will introduce him and then we’ll get started with the interview.

I’m so excited to have Professor and Dr. Seyfried on the call.  He’s an expert and pioneer in the field of cancer research.  He’s a professor of biology at Boston College and one of the leading academic researchers in promoting how to treat cancer nutritionally.  He's been teaching neurogenetics and neurochemistry as it relates to cancer treatment at Yale University and Boston College for the past 25 years.

He's written many, many peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, and has also published a book called, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer, which we’ll be discussing today.  The book provides extensive information showing that cancer can be best defined as a mitochondrial, metabolic disease rather than a genetic disease, which is an exciting concept and has implications for developing new, nontoxic cancer therapies, including a ketogenic diet, which we talk about a lot on this show.

Experts in the research field have praised this comprehensive study as one of science’s most cutting-edge topics.  I know your work has really impacted Dr.  Pompa and his approach in supporting his clientele, so we’re so excited to have you on the show.  Welcome Dr. Seyfried.

Dr. Seyfried:
Thank you very much.

Dr. Pompa:
I would love to say this up front.  Here’s the book if everyone can see it.  I tore this book apart, Professor, and loved every page of it.  I really did.  Some people might not appreciate the biochemistry, but I can say that I absolutely loved it.Cancer is a disease today that I believe many are taking a wrong approach to.  I want to say this at the top of the show; we’re not claiming to treat cancer.  We’re not claiming to treat any disease, but I believe the research in this book really shows that where the billions of dollars are being spent is absolutely being misdirected.  I believe science shows that if we put these dollars in a different direction that you talk about in this book we would see the statistics changing.

Doc, I don’t know where it was in your book, but you talked about the number of cancer cases per year and the number of deaths per year either not changing or, in fact, going up on a yearly basis.  Let’s start there, because your theory here runs contrary to what’s being done.  In cancer, we’re not winning the war.  We’re losing the war.  What about that?

Dr. Seyfried:
The death rate in the last 25 years is about a 37% increase in new cases and about a 3½ to 4% increase in deaths per year.  If you look at the trajectory of the two paths, you’d say we’re winning the war on cancer, because the number of deaths per year is not increasing at the same rate as the number of new cases.  However, the number of deaths per year continues in its relentless increase year after year after year.  If you have something that’s going to be effective, you should see a very sharp drop in the number of deaths per year, not a lower rate of increase because the lower rate of increase could be due to a lot of different kinds of things, but if you have something that really works, you’re going to see a significant drop in the number of deaths per year.

Dr. Pompa:
You and I would therefore agree then with the argument that the money, because billions are being given to cancer research, is being spent on an approach that is simply not working.  You and I agree that those statistics are showing that, so where the money is being spent is genomic research, right?  Most people out there, I think, in the public anyway would say they’re doctors and they’ve heard, “Hey, you get cancer it’s because you’re unlucky, right?  You’ve got the gene,” yet I know and I’ve read in other studies and yours that there are at least 700 gene-targeted therapies out there and yet none of them have been shown to reduce tumors.  What’s going on with that?

Dr. Seyfried:
I think the conception is that’s it’s a disease of unbridled cell proliferation.  Most of the therapies that are being used to treat the disease are focusing on the proliferation of the cells.  These toxic chemicals, various chemos, are designed to block the cell cycle in various respects, damage the DNA so that the cells can’t divide. Irradiate this.  This is all based on breaking DNA to try to stop the uncontrolled growth of the cells, so we subject ourselves to a whole range of different toxic drugs and different kinds of therapies.

The genomic approach is now into checkpoint inhibitors based on the mutations that exist in the various cells.  Not as many people are getting drugs based on the genomic research as are getting the standards of care which have been in the field for quite some time, mainly because a lot of those drugs, the new drugs based on so-called “immunotherapy” are extremely costly.  What’s more important is they don’t work for the majority of people, and they can also have very significant side effects and toxic effects.  They can be equally as troubling as these standard toxic drugs that work that we’re currently using.

We persist with radiation and chemo because the checkpoint inhibitor drugs have not led to the kinds of drop in disease that we would like to see.  If those checkpoint inhibitor drugs for the new fad that is currently in place, which are immunotherapies that many drug companies and institutions are actively investigating or implementing these kinds of things, if these really worked as well as they should then we should see an precipitous drop in the number of deaths per year and we’re not seeing that.  We have to rely on the tried and true toxic therapies that have been in existence for the last 50-75 years.  These are very horrifically toxic kinds of therapies, so we’re working on areas of research that will reduce some of the toxicities, things that are not quite relevant to the nature of the disease, but trying to take the edge off the toxicity from some of the drugs that are being currently used.

If people realize that cancer is a mitochondrial metabolic disease and therefore all of the cells are fermenting to one degree or another, they have to use those fuels that are available in sufficient quantities that allow the cell to grow by using fermentation, which is a primitive form of energy metabolism.  It’s very clear to those of us who work in the field that the two primary fuels that are driving these cells to grow are glucose and glutamine.  These are the fuels that are present in our body in sufficient quantities logistically to allow cells to proliferate and have the fuels available that can allow them to proliferate.   The simplistic way to manage the disease is to simply restrict the availability of those fuels that are driving the fermentation metabolism, because you have to realize that every cell genetically is a different entity, so no two cells in the tumor will have the same genetic mutations, but all of the cells in the tumor are fermenting to one degree or another.

Why are we focusing on the unique aspects of every different cell in the tumor when we can focus on the malady that’s common to every cell in the tumor?  This is the conundrum.  This is the puzzle.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, and let me back up for our watchers and listeners.  You threw out some good biochemistry there, but I’m going to back up and make it as simple as possible, and tell me where I go wrong if I do.

According to the Warburg Theory – I read his stuff some years ago from the early 1900s – he said, based on his theory, cancer cells have one thing in common.  Something gets damaged in the mitochondria.  There’s damage there.  For folks listening, that’s where we produce cellular energy.  If you remember back in biochemistry, I’m stretching some of you, there’s a process called oxidative phosphorylation where we make most of the ATP, which is the cell energy.  Something gets damaged, and now the cell can’t make that same amount of energy.  Am I good so far?

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
In that process, the cell then can turn on a gene, some adaptation occurs, and it up regulates a less effective form of cell energy production called glycolysis, which means without oxygen.  It’s a different, less efficient way of making cell energy, the use of glucose for energy.  That’s what Professor was saying.  Therefore, it up regulates that to make up that energy difference.  Now we have these cells that have adapted to damage, probably turning on a gene, so according to your research, the gene doesn’t come first, because that’s what research is saying; we have bad genes, and then that causes a cellular problem.  You’re saying no.  The damage happens first, and the adaptation then perhaps can trigger the gene, which is the secondary thing.  Then, we have this adaptation where the cancer cells are utilizing glucose as an energy source.

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes, but there’s a confusion that exists over the term aerobic glycolysis and aerobic fermentation.  You’re right.  All of our cells use the glycolytic pathway, glycolysis, converting glucose to pyruvate. Under normal, aerobic conditions, our bodies are well oxygenated, so all of our cells take in glucose.  We break food down.  Glucose is a prime fuel for the brain, and many other organ systems take in glucose.  The glucose is metabolized to pyruvate, and then in normal cells, the pyruvate enters into the mitochondria for full oxidation, with the waste products being CO2 and water.  This is the standard respiration in our body.  It’s called aerobic glycolysis.

Many people use the same term, aerobic glycolysis, to reflect the abnormal energy metabolism in a tumor.  The tumor cell is using aerobic fermentation because it produces lactic acid.  The pyruvate, rather than going into the mitochondria, which can be defective in many ways – there’s not just one way.  There’s many different ways in which tumor cell mitochondria can be abnormal.  If pyruvate can’t be fully oxidized, it’s rapidly reduced to lactic acid or lactate which is then dumped outside the cell, leading to an extracellular acidification of the micro environment leading to a wounded microenvironment leading to the inflammation and progression in a lot of the other things.

Now, the mutations – if the respiration is not affected yet some oxygen can still get into the cell, they form reactive oxygen species because the respiratory system of the cell is not completely efficient.  ROS, reactive oxygen species, are known to be carcinogenic and mutagenic.  These reactive species coming out of defective mitochondria then damage the nuclear genome and cause mutations as a downstream effect of the damage to the respiration.

Dr. Pompa
It’s turned on secondary to the–.  The damage happens first, the gene gets turned on, secondary to the metabolic shift.

Dr. Seyfried:
You have to be careful about the gene that gets turned on, because what’s happening is the ROS damaged the nuclear DNA.  If the mitochondria do not produce sufficient energy through respiration, the cell naturally detects this and begins to ferment.  The genes that control fermentation are often the oncogenes.  They are transcription factors that up regulate fermentation when respiration becomes insufficient.

Oncogene turn-on is a response to the damage to the respiration.  The oncogenes are needed to up regulate the primitive form of energy metabolism to a greater extent, because all of our cells are producing pyruvate through glycolysis because our energy through respiration is so efficient, so streamlined.  Now, if that doesn’t work, in order for the cell to remain alive and not have a massive energy failure, the cell has to gradually increase the capacity to produce ATP through an alternative system, which is this primitive form of energy called fermentation that existed on the planet before oxygen came into the atmosphere.

For the cells, this is a relic of the past.  That pathway of glycolysis is one of the most ancient pathways that we know of in metabolism, and that pathway is the first step in normal energy metabolism, but becomes the dominant form of energy when the respiration becomes defective.

Dr. Pompa:
We have something very odd going on.  We have the production of energy via oxidative phosphorylation and that’s that very efficient aerobic pathway, the use of oxygen, and this fermented glycolysis process going on, or utilization of glucose.  I’m trying to make it simple for our people to understand, which is less efficient.  Both of them are going on at the same time, which I think Warburg refers to as respiratory fermentation, which is almost contrary in itself where you have these two things going on at the same time that typically aren’t because these certain genes get triggered through this.

Dr. Seyfried:
I think the idea of the fermentation – fermentation happens in muscle.  You get lactic acid fermentation when oxygen becomes insufficient to generate the energy so the muscles begin to ferment.  They produce lactic acid.  If we go into a room with very low oxygen levels, we get lactic acid increase in our body because our cells begin to transition naturally to the primitive pathway.  We end up with lactic acidosis as the result of going into hypoxic environments.  During epileptic seizures, the body will stop breathing and you get a tremendous increase in lactic acid as the result of this.

Fermentation is the production of lactic acid.  Pyruvate is at the fork of this.  Under aerobic conditions, pyruvate is normally fully oxidized in the mitochondria, but under hypoxic conditions, pyruvate then generates lactic acid very highly.  The strange thing about the tumor cell is that it continues to produce lactic acid even when oxygen levels are sufficient for respiration.  That’s happening because the mitochondria are deficient.  Those cells behave as if they’re in a hypoxic environment, despite the fact that they look like they have respiration, but they don’t.

Dr. Pompa:
Warburg’s theory years ago and yours today is okay, great, so we have this cell that has adapted to this damage and now functioning with this very uncommon, odd energy pathway combination here.  We know that this is common in all cancer cells, unlike the gene theory that’s trying to find specific genes common to each cancer, which they have not been successful, but yet we know that this is common to the majority of tumor formation cancer cell formation.

Your theory then is, if we can stop this fuel, the glucose – we’ll get to the use of amino acid in this process of energy as well, but let’s focus on the glucose for now.  If we can get the cell to not use glucose, then we can either kill these cells through apoptosis, where the cell kills itself, and fix and even diminish tumors.

Dr. Seyfried:
This is has been tried many times and it’s been unsuccessful throughout a number of different drugs they’ve used to stop glycolysis.  The problem, of course, is when you do that you stop that glycolytic pathway in every cell of the body.  This now becomes a real problem because every normal cell is using the same pathway; it’s just that the tumor cell happens to be using it to a much greater extent than the normal cells.

By using an indiscriminate inhibitor of glycolysis, yes, you will kill some of the tumor cells, but you’ll also damage the functionality of the normal cells.  This is why when we do therapeutic fasting or ketogenic diets you lower the glucose in the body for the tumor and you transition all of the cells of the body over to ketones, which we evolve to use when we didn’t have access to food.

The tumor cells, because they have defective respiration in mitochondria, cannot use the ketone bodies.  This is an elegant, nontoxic way to metabolically marginalize the tumor cells while enhancing the health and vitality of the normal cells.  It’s not just targeting the glucose availability to the tumor cell, you have to offer the rest of the cells in the body an alternative fuel that can be metabolized to the glucose that you’re taking away from them.  The tumor cells, because they have defective respiration and mitochondria in a number of different ways, are less able to use the alternative fuel than the normal cells so they become marginalized.  They become more vulnerable to die as the result of these energetic transitions.  It’s a very simple and nontoxic way.

People say, “Will it cure cancer?” but we never use the term cure, but say “Can it be used to manage cancer?”  Yes, it can be used to manage cancer and slow the degree of growth down then offering the opportunity to mix and match a number of diets and drugs in a nontoxic series of approaches to finish off the surviving tumor cells.

Many of the surviving tumor cells, whatever they happen to be, will likely have some characteristic in common if they can still survive the metabolic transitions.  These cells now become potentially targets for immunotherapies and these other kinds of therapies because now you’re dealing with a population of cells that have something all in common.  Rather than at the beginning when they are all genetically different from each other, the survivors from metabolic therapies could be very vulnerable to the kinds of approaches that the industry is now using to target the tumor at the very beginning of its existence.  We’re doing a lot of things right, but we’re just doing them in the wrong way.

Dr. Pompa:
I remember listening to something or perhaps I read about it.  You said if you take the nucleus of a cancer cell and put it into the cytoplasm of a normal metabolism cell, what happens is all of the phenotypes, all of the genetic problems go away, but this isn’t a genetic issue.  This is a cell metabolism issue, and if we can change the cell metabolism then we can surely change it in the body.

Dr. Seyfried:
Those experiments were done primarily to test the hypothesis as to whether cancer was a nuclear genetic disease or a mitochondrial metabolic disease.  This is very important, because as long as the cancer industry and the academic cancer industry consider that cancer is a nuclear genetic disease, we will not shift the paradigm and approach the disease in an altogether different way.

Those experiments were designed and done by a variety of exceptionally talented developmental biologists over many, many years.  What I did simply was to bundle those experiments into one group and present them for the first time as a bundled group.  When you look at all these different experiments done by a number of different people using a number of different types of tumors in different systems, the conclusion was very much the same.  The nucleus of the tumor cell is not capable of driving the disease period.  It’s the mitochondria that are driving the disease.  Once this becomes more widely recognized, it becomes very difficult to support the idea that cancer is a genetic disease therefore warranting the billions of dollars we’re spending on approaches that are based on that theory.

Once the theory is undermined, shown by hard, scientific facts that it cannot be the true explanation for the disease, only then will the field begin to recognize that we should look in a different direction.  As long as people are considering that, we’re still going to persist with the situation that we have today.

Dr. Pompa:
That was my argument at the top of the show.  We’re spending billions in the wrong direction.  If we get people to understand that it’s not a genetic disorder, that’s secondary, then we can actually make some headway.

I believe in my work that this mitochondrial damage, this mitochondrial issue is leading to not just cancer but a multitude of other things that we’re seeing from chronic fatigue to fibromyalgia, and many unexplainable illnesses, even hormone conditions such as diabetes and thyroid.  I believe it’s there.  I have something Doc that I call my five R’s of cellular healing, and R number three is restoring normal cellular energy.  It’s absolutely vital.

In this, look, you mentioned, to go back here a second, something that’s near and dear to my heart, utilizing a state of restriction, if you will, via either fasting or ketosis in using them together.  Meredith, how many shows have we done on the benefits of fasting?  We even move people in and out of these states, which I call diet variation.

Let’s talk about that, because that is a solution to – we’re discussing cancer here, but we’re talking about people who benefit with multiple conditions.  I’m putting them in these restricted states of ketosis where, by the way folks listening for the first time, I have many articles and past shows on ketosis.  That just means that your cells can use sugar or fat for energy.  We’re forcing the cell to use fat and make ketones.  He brought that up.  We even use these ketones in healthy people to make healthier, because they turn off bad genes.

Amazing things happen when ketones are produced, obviously, and cancer cells can’t use them.  That was Doc’s point here.  We utilize this state of making the cell make these ketones to actually make people healthier.  You’re saying, “Hey, this can also cause these cancer cells to become weaker and now our immune system actually has a chance to get rid of them.

Talk a little bit about restriction, because one thing that we’ve found with ketosis, Doc, is some people don’t lose weight in ketosis.  Some people even have even getting into ketosis, and typically these are the people who need it the most, but you say ketosis without some form of restriction in your studies doesn’t work.  Explain that.

Dr. Seyfried:
Keto-adaptation that my colleague, Dominic D’Agostino from the University of South Florida –

Dr. Pompa:
We’re interviewing him in some coming up shows.

Dr. Seyfried:
He’s big into keto-adaptation, which is a form of therapeutic ketosis as opposed to ketoacidosis, which is the pathological state that is experienced by some type II diabetics  When one stops eating, blood sugar goes down and eventually glycogen reserves in the liver and muscles are used up, and then the body has to turn to fat.  The fat is mobilized out of fat stores.  The liver is the organ that primarily makes ketones from fat, so the fat is then metabolized in the liver and the liver makes water soluble byproducts, little energy ketone bodies, which then can be used by the brain, heart, and other organs, to become energy efficient.  They contribute to mitochondrial biogenesis.

Dr. Pompa:
They help you make more mitochondria.

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes, they can help you make more mitochondria and healthier mitochondria, producing very few reactive oxygen species or wasteful energy.  You want to consider reactive oxygen species as kind of a spark that can be damaging, like a wire that has poor insulation and it starts to spark and it damages the area.  That goes down substantially when you’re burning ketones.  The energy is primarily used for the energy resources within the cell without making any wasteful or harmful products.

Dr. Pompa:
I always say it’s like burning natural gas with wood in the fireplace.

Dr. Seyfried:
Right, you produce very little products that would be considered wasteful or potentially harmful to the body.

Dr. Pompa:
You’ve got to regulate cellular inflammation just by burning leaner fuels.

Dr. Seyfried:
We clearly showed that calorie restriction down regulates the inflammatory cyto cascades contributing to tumor cell inflammation and a variety of other things.  The tumor cells can’t use the ketones, but the normal cells can.  The normal cells get very healthy under these keto-adapted states, but you raise a very important question that has been perplexing the field for a long period of time.  How do people know if they do fasting, they do ketogenic diets, or they do this or they do that, how do they know whether or not they’re really in the zone of keto-adaptation?  We published a paper earlier this year on the glucose ketone index calculator that was designed primarily for cancer patients but could be used for any person who would like to know whether or not they’re in a therapeutically ketotic state.

Dr. Pompa:
We use it for all of our patients.

Dr. Seyfried:
You have a little meter that can measure both blood glucose and blood ketones.  That’s the key.  You have to measure both of them.  You get the ratio in millimolar for glucose to ketone and you get a number, which is a singular number which is the index.   If you can get numbers close to 1.0 or below, then you’re using ketones maximally efficiently.  Healthy people who don’t have cancer are able to get into these metabolic zones much easier than cancer patients are.

One of the things we’re realizing with respect to cancer is that cancer produces a lot of anxiety among the sufferers.  Anxiety can lead to elevated blood sugar levels, because the patient understands that they may have a life-threatening disease, which brings a lot of stress and anxiety.  We find that those cancer patients that are able to handle stress can get into these therapeutic zones easier than the cancer patients who can’t handle the stress.  It’s a global, physiological treatment of the body to allow the cancer patient to get into these very healthy states.  They can get in, but it’s more difficult for the cancer patient than it is for the healthy patient.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, and by the way, it’s more difficult for my very unhealthy patients than it is for somebody healthy to get into this target zone.  The ratio you talked about is glucose divided by ketones.  We use a precision extra meter.  If you have a target zone of glucose between 55 and 65 and ketones between 3 and 7, then that’s going to put you in that 1 range somewhere.

Dr. Seyfried:
It’ll put you below.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and that’s where I like to get people in that range as well, because magic happens there, right?  You have autophagy going on and autolytic where the body is eating stuff, and you’re producing enough ketones to make more healthy mitochondria and turn off the bad genes; all that happens in that zone.

Dr. Seyfried:
The issue is you can hit those zones by just water only fasting for four to seven days.  That’s very hard to do for a lot of people, so water only therapeutic fasting, believe me, it’s not easy.  You’re tried it; I’ve tried it, and it’s not easy.  For a lot of people who keto-adapt, but ketogenic diets restrict it, allow the blood sugar to go down and the ketones to go higher than if you did pure therapeutic fasting.  However, many people think that if I eat all this fat this now becomes an Atkins’ diet.

The Atkins’ diet is very different from a ketogenic diet.  Atkins’ diet has no restriction on proteins and fat, and also the types of fat are very different.  If you eat a lot of protein, that’s going to be converted to glucose.  It’s going to be harder to get into the metabolic zone on an Atkins’ diet than it will on a ketogenic diet.  All of these things have to be understood by people who want to engage in these kinds of activities.

For cancer management, a ketogenic diet is part of what we call metabolic therapy.  This is an alternative to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but we think that the outcomes can be the same.  In other words, we think that we can get every bit as good of effective therapy without the toxicity.  This is the key thing.  We’re trying to manage cancer without toxicity.

People have this mindset that you can’t do this unless the patient is subjected to these horrifically toxic approaches.  We’re under the impression that if we understand the metabolism of the body and you’re able to tweak the pathways in different directions, we can achieve management of these very difficult diseases without using toxic drugs or drugs that can be used in such low quantities that they’re no longer toxic but now very therapeutic effective.

All of this becomes a reality once people realize that cancer is not a genetic disease, but you raise another very important point.  Many other diseases that predispose people to cancer are also metabolic problems.   Diabetes, for example, puts you at risk for cancer, because you have dis-regulated blood glucose control.  If you can manage type II diabetes, you can effectively reduce the risk significantly for a number of different cancers.

Type II diabetes leads to systemic inflammation because of elevated blood glucose.  Ketogenic diets are effective at lowering all of this, reducing the body, and as a matter of fact, ketogenic diets can cure type II diabetes in many patients, so in that respect, you can do this.

The food industry is now becoming very interested in these kinds of approaches, because there’s a void here.  We have the pharmaceutical companies on the one hand that are pushing these various different kinds of expensive drugs to manage these diseases and we have this void in the middle, and some of the food companies are now moving into this void realizing that they can produce foods that could potentially put people in keto-adaptation, ketotic states, that would reduce their risk for type II diabetes and cancer.  I see a major shift coming in how we deal with a lot of these diseases.  It’s not necessary to use expensive drugs that could be potentially toxic to manage things that we can do by knowing how to manage the metabolic systems of the body and the cells.

Dr. Pompa:
Listen, all the crazy things that we see with unexplainable illnesses, none of them would get well if we didn’t utilize these diet variations, shifting people in and out of ketosis, or utilizing fasts of some sort.  You know, Doc, a lot of times just with beef stock alone we can hit certain people in these target ranges, but I want to go back to this point.  The word restriction – we’re talking about some type of restriction in food, whether it’s via a fast that we do for a period of time, whether it’s four days to a week, or something that I do, I combine ketosis with daily intermittent fasting where I fast from 18-24 hours before eating the next meal and doing it daily.

Look, I remember reading in your work and others, and even in my own experiences, some people go into ketosis and they’re just simply consuming, even if it’s not a lot of protein, a lot of fat and a lot of food.  They’re still consuming a lot of food, and if they don’t fall into that target range, we don’t see the results.  We don’t even see weight loss, and some of them struggle to get into ketosis, because they’re still consuming a lot, so we utilize restriction with fasting with ketosis, or daily, intermittent fasting where at the end of the day, they simply take in less calories.  Talk a little bit about that, because you found that mice and people didn’t lose weight unless there was some form of restriction.

Dr. Seyfried:
That’s a very important point.  A lot of people use ketone sticks, the urine sticks, to measure ketosis, and that’s inaccurate because if you do take a lot of fat in your body, yes, you will produce more ketones and you’ll see it on the urine stick; however, the blood will not have the elevated levels because you’re peeing out the ketones as fast as you’re making them.  Friction allows the ketones to replace the lost glucose, so the ketones then, if you restrict a little bit, then you’re getting the full benefit of the ketones.  The body will retain them and use them for energy metabolism, so you’re absolutely right.

We showed, and others have shown, that if we allow the animals to eat all the fat they want, in other words, an unrestricted ketogenic diet, this can lead to insulin insensitivity and dyslipidemia, which is very pathological.  This is not healthy.  People say, “Oh, I’m going to go on a ketogenic diet and eat all the fat I want.”  You could put yourself into harm doing that, because your blood sugar doesn’t go down.  Your insulin goes up, and the next thing you know you have very high triglycerides.

A ketogenic diet is a medical therapy.  It must be administered usually under the supervision of a trained person, or people who do this have to be aware of all of the potential risks using this.  It’s a medical therapy like any medical therapy.  It’s like a drug.  Drugs can be good in one concentration and toxic in another concentration.  Metabolic therapy using ketogenic diets is a powerful tool to enhance physiological health, but it can also be very hazardous if it’s not done right.  You can’t overemphasize this point.

Dr. Pompa:
Some people that we know say, “I’m not getting into ketosis.”  I have them looking at their glucose and invariably their glucose is still too high.  That means they have to be restricted more somehow some way, or their carbohydrate intake is too much.

Dr. Seyfried:
You have to also be careful of some people who have these rare, inherited diseases like carnitine deficiency and certain inborn errors in metabolism where they can’t make fat, they can’t make ketones, or they can’t use the fat, this and that.  There’s a variety of things where a rare person may come out and say, “Oh my god!”  This person could potentially be harmed by this type of therapy.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s why measuring glucose and ketones is important.  In review, someone may be taking in too much protein, an Atkins’ type of diet.  Someone could just be taking in too much caloric intake totally via fat even, and someone also could just simply be having too many carbohydrates.

Genetically, some people have to reduce carbohydrates more than others.  That could be stopping you from getting into ketosis.  That could also be stopping you from hitting this target range that we’re talking about.  It can even stop you from losing weight.  Some people say, “I’m in ketosis, but I’m not losing weight.”  You could still be consuming and not restricting enough.

One way I make sure that people – I’m not a believer in just pushing food away and saying I’m not going to eat any more.  I’m a believer in restricting because you are less hungry.  You’re just simply not hungry so you don’t eat.  Daily intermittent fasting people where we skip breakfast in ketosis is a way to get them to restrict, and eventually, they’re like, “Yeah, I’m not even hungry anymore.”  Sometimes it takes a little while to get there until their ketones rise up, of course.

Dr. Seyfried:
It does.  You’re absolutely right, and also the kinds of fats are different.  Atkins’ diet fats is where you take in much fat, but ketogenic diets are heavier in to the medium-chain triglyceride oils like coconut oils, avocados, and things like this.  You don’t want to use too many long-chain fatty acids.  Some of this is good.  A little bit of fish oil is fine, this kind of polyunsaturated fatty acids, but the bulk of the ketogenic diet is shorter-chain, saturated fatty acids.  This plays a very important role in how high you can get your ketones as well.  There are certain foods that are more prone to producing a better state of ketosis than other foods, and it could differ from one person to the next, so everybody is their own experimental system.

Dr. Pompa:
I find that to be true.  You brought up an interesting point with the fats that people are eating.  I find that today people are taking in too much fish oil, too much rancid fish oil, but even when it’s not rancid, because it’s a very fragile oil, there is simply a lot of healthy people who are taking in too much and are ending up in an omega-3 dominance.  I remember years ago showing that omega-3, when taken too much, can displace cardiolipin out of the mitochondrial membrane, and it creates actually a metabolic problem.  I think everybody right now overloading on fish oil can actually be a dangerous thing.  I’m obviously in agreement with that.   This is great.

Meredith, I don’t know if we’ve got any other questions.  I know some of our doctors had questions.  I think we answered most of those, but you always have some great questions, so let me fire at you.

Meredith:
Thank you.  This is just such empowering information too, I think, for anyone watching who has been touched by cancer, which we all have or been diagnosed with cancer.  This gives you the power back, not just relying on a lot of the conventional treatments, but taking charge and experimenting with the ketogenic diet, and these other nontoxic, nutritional therapies.  I’m wondering, Dr. Seyfried, what do you think of the use of exogenous ketones?

Dr. Seyfried:
I think that’s important.  The body makes d-beta-hydroxybutyrate.  There are different forms.  There’s a D and an L form, and the L form is metabolized as if it were a fatty acid whereas the D form goes through the full ketotic mechanism within the liver.  However, my colleague, Dom D’Agostino, gets some pretty good results with exogenous ketones.  I think we need to recognize that.  We haven’t fully explored all of this.  This is an avenue of great interest and future research.  Is it possible that we can even further exploit keto-adaptation using exogenous ketones?  Right now, they’re not easy to make.  The natural ones are not easy to make.

Dr. Richard Veech at the NIH has been working on this area for many, many years.  He is probably one of the world’s authorities on the knowledge of making natural kinds of ketones and how they influence the mitochondrial function, enhancing the redox potential of the mitochondria and the coenzyme Q couple.  He is the ultimate knowledge base for really understanding this, but I think the world of exogenous ketones is an emerging field that’s going to receive tremendous attention from the food industry and the academic community as we move forward in understanding how we can manage cancer using metabolic approaches.

Dr. Pompa:
I have to ask this question, and I’m going to ask Dominic as well.  If we know that ketones are a byproduct of breaking fat down, fat metabolism, so by taking exogenous ketones, by taking ketones, are we going to slow down the fat metabolism somehow?  Are we not going to get the benefits of actually getting our body to burn fat to actually make ketones?

Dr. Seyfried:
I don’t know.  I think that’s a good question.  We need to do a lot more basic research on that fact.  These are things that we will need to vet in the future.  I can’t really say, because most of the stuff that we work with has been with naturally produced ketones through ketogenic diets or therapeutic fasting where the body is making the ketones naturally in tune.  How can we supplement this?  Is it possible to supplement this? Will we get the same level of therapeutic benefit without any toxic issues?  This all has to be explained.

I do want to mention one more point about how we can better implement these kinds of approaches, and I think it has to do – it can have a lot to do with how we pay or how we finance these kinds of things.  One thing I put in a recent paper is the issue of global budgeting.  There are certain hospitals in the country that receive a certain amount of money to handle the various health issues that they have in their population.  If they can use therapies that keep people healthy and out of the hospital and manage disease as outpatient, the finances can be better distributed within the hospital.

This is an opposite view to fee-for-service.  Fee-for-service is where each aspect of the treatment is paid for as a fee-for-service.  If global budgeting becomes a way to reduce the incidents of cancer, the hospital staff and physicians could better justify why they’re more interested in keeping people healthy using these kinds of things, then it becomes financially feasible to do something like this as opposed to fee-for-service, which is going to be – the hospitals need to balance their budgets.

It’s very hard to balance a budget on a therapy that doesn’t generate revenue.  Medical therapy does not generate the revenue as toxic drugs and these other things do.  The pharmaceutical companies and the hospitals make a lot of money on these kinds of therapies.  Radiation therapy generates tremendous revenue.  These cancer drugs generate tremendous revenue.  If you come in with an alternative therapy that contributes to health and wellbeing, where is the revenue generation going to come from if you’re going to transition away?  It has to come from a different form of payment.  Global budgeting becomes a potential way to achieve both goals – the health of the patient and the health of the hospital.

Dr. Pompa:
I’ll tell you what, without that right there, we’re dead in the water, because you’re right.  It always comes down to finances.  If we’re going to change this paradigm, that absolutely has to be at the forefront; otherwise, you’re never ever going to change what people are doing.  That’s great.  I love that approach.

We talk about fasting, and we talk about ketosis.  I believe the magic happens with that combination of utilizing fasting, whether it’s daily or whether it’s what I call block fasting for four days, ten days, or whatever it is of restriction – water, beef stock, whatever gets you into that target glucose and ketone range.  Magic happens there.  We’re about doing shorter, because we see major benefits.  When we do shorter, four-day fasts, multiple, every other month or things like that.  We think there’s hope in that.

Dr. Seyfried:
Absolutely; some people who may not be able to do a seven-day fast, which is the majority of people, could certainly benefit from a three- to a four-day fast done a few times a year.  The benefits to your body are enormous just from these shorter periods of inanition, which is the cessation of eating, and just drinking water or green tea.  You can have these kinds of things.

Also, a lot of people should feel that if you’re going to do a ketogenic diet say for a couple or three weeks or a month, or whatever, we’re learning from a lot of the cancer patients and people who are doing this about the kinds of foods or drink that you can take without spiking glucose or altering the glucose ketone index.  We found that some dark red wine can be taken.  People who have done three-day fasts – a cup of wine – you can look at your GKI and not see it spike, but if you take white wine or beer it spikes, so everybody can then develop diets and therapies that can meet at least keep them as part of the society that we’re in so you don’t have to feel so alone when you go and embark on these kinds of things.  This is a new area of health.

Dr. Pompa:
I find that exactly.  That’s why we measure the glucose and the ketones to see where people are, because it’s a little different for everybody.  Some people can have their morning coffee with fat and not go out of that target glucose range and still be in that fasting mode.  For some people, the beef stock fasting keeps them in the range, and other people do better with other things.  It is varied, but that’s why you have to measure that glucose and the ketones to see if you’re in that target range.  I guess there’s three factors there – too much protein, too many carbs perhaps, or simply not enough restriction, where you’re literally eating too much food.  The fasting is a remarkable thing.

Years ago I was inspired by Warburg’s work, and my wife was diagnosed with some cervical pre-cancer and cancer, and we put her on a fast, she says 12 days or whatever it was, but I thought it was 13, but she water fasted for 12 days.  She went back some months later and there was no more cancer, to their surprise, but they said that that basically would never happen.  That started me years ago into fasting, and just looking at the benefits of it, we’ve been utilizing it ever since.

I talk about diet variation.  I learned this by accident.  People that were having trouble getting into ketosis and having some difficulty, after three or four months I would move them back into what I call my cellular healing diet.  It’s still a low-carb diet, but it’s not ketosis.  Something would happen.  They would all of a sudden lose some weight when they shifted back into that diet.  Then I would say, “Okay, let’s keep them there for three months.”  I would move them back into ketosis, and I would see this remarkable thing happen where this time it was easier to get in it.  Shifting people in and out of these restricted phases – ketosis, diversion – you can see there’s benefit somehow to that adaptation.

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes, absolutely, and this is what we think to manage cancer, because we think the shifting back and forth from these different diets is going to be exactly what you need to eliminate the tumor cells.  You have to realize that the tumor cells have a lot of mutations.  Nobody denies that they are loaded with mutations for the reasons as secondary consequences of respiration – a defect to respiration, but the issue is those cells have all these kinds of mutations that make them less adaptable to the shifts in these dietary therapies.

The normal cells of our body evolved over millions of years to make these adaptations under these dramatic shifts that you just mentioned.  If you have a cell that has all kinds of broken chromosomes and deletions and duplications, those cells cannot make those kinds of shift.  They end up getting eliminated.  They are eventually gone because they can’t make those shifts, so we can then exploit the genetic defects in the tumor cells by forcing the body to make these dramatic shifts in one direction or the other.  This is part of the metabolic therapy.  What you just mentioned is the strategy that we think can work.

Dr. Pompa:
I learned it by accident just this metabolic stress is caused by these dietary shifts.  When you look at the Hunza people who live disease free and these cultures that are really successful in their health and live very long but live long healthy, they’re forced into diet shifts, which today with refrigeration and being able to eat whatever we want any time we’re not, but the Hunza people, we thought they were vegetarians because the British would go there in the summer and they were eating mostly vegetables, fruits, and things, very light foods.  In the wintertime, what they didn’t see was they were surviving on fatty foods.  They were in complete ketosis.  Then spring came, and they call it in their culture starvation spring when they literally went weeks or months without food.

Dr. Seyfried:
A lot of animals are the same way.  They eat different kinds of foods at different periods of the year that was available at that time.  Again, these are the kinds of shifts you’re speaking about.  These are all very important points that are now just being realized for the first time.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s that adaptation from that stress in the shift that we can recreate in our laboratories and clinics these metabolic shifts utilizing the body’s innate intelligent through adaptation to shift the hormones and to create this metabolic thing.  I have to read this quote from you.  This was out of your book and I love it.

If all cancers arise from metabolic dysfunction then replacement of damaged mitochondria with normal mitochondria should prevent cancer.  In other words, mitochondria producing sufficient respiration, meaning energy, should suppress tumor growth regardless of the numbers and types of mutations.

That was from your book.  What you talk about, I love it.  You utilize the term mitochondrial – I forget the term –

Dr. Seyfried:
Mitochondrial enhancement therapy.

Dr. Pompa:
Yes, mitochondrial – MET, mitochondrial enhancement therapy.  These shifts that we’re talking about – utilizing diet, utilizing fasts, varying the diet, and putting people in and out of these restricted times, is what you’re talking about with MET, correct?

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes, and that’s the way to prevent cancer.  If cancer is a mitochondrial metabolic disease and you protect your mitochondria from damage, you don’t get cancer.  A lot of these preventive – what you talked about – you’re not going to get cancer as long as mitochondrial cells are healthy.

Even if you inherit a gene like a BRCA1 mutation or a P53 for many, those genes damage the mitochondria.  There are ways to enhance mitochondrial function to reduce the risk of having cancer, even if you inherit a gene, so this idea of going out and getting prophylactic mastectomies or oophorectomies or this kind of stuff is a naïve way to deal with this issue.  If you know that if you protect your mitochondria from damage with these metabolic therapies, the risk of developing these diseases is significantly reduced.

Dr. Pompa:
What do you think if you just did maybe two fasts a year?  Just two fasts a year, right?  What do you think it would reduce your risk of cancer?

Dr. Seyfried:
I mean, this would only be speculative, because we don’t have any data to support that, but I think you have to look at those guys in the calorie restriction society of America.  I’ve spoken to those folks.  They’re in ketosis all the time essentially.  They’re always on a restricted diet.  Paul McGlothin and his wife are in this group, so I asked them, “How many people in your organization have cancer?” and they said, “Almost nobody.”  They remembered one guy from 1980 that got cancer, but cancer is extremely rare in those guys who practice calorie restriction.

It’s supportive evidence to say that if you were to do fasts once, twice, or three times a year, the risk of cancer would be probably reduced.  We see that.  That’s why when they want to manage type II diabetes with ketogenic diets to reduce glucose and weight, the risk of cancer in all likelihood will go down.  It’s just that we don’t have enough data yet to support that.

Dr. Pompa:
You brought up diabetes and diabetes rolls into thyroid and all the weight loss resistance and I have really found those conditions impossible to completely resolve without these types of therapies that we’re talking about.  People think, “I’m diabetic; I can’t fast.”  Oh no, quite the contrary.

Dr. Seyfried:
It’s hard.  You have to realize it is not easy.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and that’s why, again, to those folks listening, we have doctors we’re training and practitioners we’re training around the country in coaching people in these types of therapies, so I want to emphasize that as well.  I think you made that point too.  People really need supervision with people who know what they’re doing with this.  It’s important to note that.

I think when we put these things together, ketosis, fasting, or intermittent daily fasting, we really have something that is needed today to fix this metabolic problem.  It is leading to not just cancer but leading to diabetes, thyroid, or why people can’t lose weight, this is an answer.

I want to be clear about one thing.  We’re talking about caloric restriction, and all studies show that really the only way to live longer healthy, to extend your life – life extension if you will – is to eat less, caloric restriction, but I don’t want people to think that we’re just talking about saying, “I’m going to eat half of my meal and put it away,” because that, in America, is what caloric restriction is.  You and I aren’t talking about that.  We’re talking about, at the end of the day, I don’t eat clearly as many calories as most people.  It’s not because I’m pushing food away, but because I’m very efficient in my cells at utilizing fat and, I’m simply not as hungry.

I’ve watched my clients and others get very proficient at fat burning at the cellular level, and they simply just don’t need as much food.  They eat less.  When we’re putting people in these forced times like a fast, eventually the mitochondria gets more efficient, you develop better mitochondria, and guess what folks?  You automatically eat less.  Would you agree with that?

Dr. Seyfried:
Yes, I agree with that.  I also feel that moderate exercise is also an important contribution, together with what you just mentioned.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Dr. Seyfried:
Moderate, I like to say the word moderate, because if you exercise at marathon running or extreme sports, that damages the immune system and creates inflammatory conditions that can actually provoke the onset of cancer in some people, not all people.

Dr. Pompa:
We like short, high-intensity.

Dr. Seyfried:
I don’t think you have to do this prolonged damage to your body in any sense, so I think moderate – it also depends on your age and physiological state.  Some people put themselves – they’re being tortured from all this exercise.  Moderate exercise is an important component for enhancing mitochondrial function under the right kind of diet conditions, so you put all that together, and the probability of having chronic disease is significantly reduced.  Unfortunately in our society, we don’t.  It’s hard.  It’s hard.

Dr. Pompa:
Hey, Meredith, he said something really cool there.  He said, “Putting it all together,” right?  I teach something I call a multi-therapeutic approach where we put all this together.  I have my five R’s of how we fix a cell, and we do this cellular detox and removing these things that create the damage in the first place of the mitochondria, and then we utilize these ancient healing strategies, fasting and putting people in and out of ketosis.  These, we put all together and the right form of moderate exercise that you’re talking about.  We put it all together and we call that a multi-therapeutic approach.

You know, Professor, we have more and more practitioners around the country that I’ve been teaching this multi-therapeutic approach to and this is the future in essence and your work really – I said this off air here that your work really just proved text exactly what we’ve been doing for so long.

We are so appreciative of the work and studies you have done.  I can’t be more appreciative of your work.   Is there somewhere that people can go and donate to your work?  Where do you want to lead people more about your work?  Here’s the book.  You can buy it on Amazon, but where else would you like us to lead people?

Dr. Seyfried:
We have a cancer fund here at Boston College.  There’s a Facebook page for my book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, and there is a site there for people who want to make contributions.  I can guarantee you that 100% of the money that we get goes right into the research.  It doesn’t go anywhere else.  As I said, a lot of the work that we do –

Dr. Pompa:
Research in the right area; it’s not going to the genomic research folks.

Dr. Seyfried:
Yeah, I think it’s used to enhance the concepts of the book and eventually to come with a reasonable therapy for managing cancer without toxicity that can give people empowerment and have them be participatory in their own healthcare.  Our goal is to have people finish the cancer therapy healthier than when they started the cancer therapy, not looking like they’ve been half starved and beat up by the system.

This can happen more as people become more understanding of what the nature of the disease is, and believe me; I don’t have a cure for cancer.  What I have is a strategy for long-term, nontoxic management of the disease.  There’s a big difference here.  I tell people that we don’t know if you’re cured from cancer unless you die in old age from something other than cancer, and only then would you know you were cured from cancer.  Other than that, we try to manage the disease, and we try to keep people in a very high state of health, and we know we need diet, metabolic therapy, and certain drugs that work synergistically with the diet.  That can really play a very powerful role in managing the disease.  People do donate to our research and it’s very appreciative for anything.  Every penny – no contribution is too small or too large.

Dr. Pompa:
Where do they go?

Dr. Seyfried:
It’s on my book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease Facebook page.  There’s a Facebook page associated with that and it tells people how they can donate.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay, great.  Get a picture of that.  There it is, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease and there’s your name, Thomas N. Seyfried.  I love your work Doc and I’ll tell you it’s really an answer to a growing epidemic, even beyond cancer I want to say.  This is why so many people don’t feel well.  It is a mitochondrial problem.  It is a cellular energy problem, and again, our number three is restoring cellular energy.  We just appreciate you, and we’d love to have you on in the future and promote, again, more of these concepts.  Thank you so much for being on the call.  Meredith, is there anything else in finishing?

Meredith:
I’d just like to thank you as well.  This has been such an information-packed interview.  I’m definitely going to have to re-watch this episode myself and I’m sure many viewers will as well.  There’s so much incredible information.  We would love to have you back in the future.  I’m sure we’re going to generate a lot of questions from this show.

Dr. Pompa:
Meredith, with that said, I do want to say this.  There are articles written on diet variation.  There are shows here at Cellular Healing TV about diet variation, ketosis, and different types of fasting.  We have shows and articles on all that if you’re new to watching it.  We have all that information because we may have lost you in some of those conversations, so watch the past shows.  Thanks, Doc.  Thank you very much.

Dr. Seyfried:
Thank you very much.

Meredith:
Thank you to everyone, and we’ll see you next time.  Tune in next week.  In Episode 95, we’re going to have Dr. Stephanie Senna from MIT and we’re going to be discussing GMOs, so thanks for watching everyone.  We’ll see you next time.

93: Mold Remediation with Environmental Testing Expert Dan Howard

Transcript of Episode 93: Mold Remediation with Environmental Testing Expert Dan Howard

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and special guest Dan Howard.

Meredith:
This is Episode 93 of Cellular Healing TV. We have a really special guest for you today. First of all, of course, we have Dr. Daniel Pompa, cellular healing expert, and we are also welcoming Dan Howard, who is an environmental expert. We’re going to really specifically be sharing a lot on mold, and mold remediation, and some of those issues surrounding that, and just that whole topic. We’re really excited to have Dan Howard on the show today. First of all, though, how you doing, Dr. Pompa?

Dr. Pompa:
I’m going great.

Meredith:
Awesome. Before I introduce Dan Howard, I just wanted to read a little bit about him and share some of his background with you because he’s just such an expert in this mold – or in this field, specifically on mold and just has a lot to share with us, just is a wealth of knowledge on this topic.

Dan Howard is the founder of Howard Testing and Inspections, LLC, which is Pittsburgh’s premier mold and environmental firm. Right here in our area, he’s serving a lot of people. He was raised in and managed the family custom remodeling and construction business. Very few, if any, inspectors can match Dan’s experience and education. He’s certified in Pennsylvania as a radon, pest, and mold assessor, and a allergen assessor, as well.

Dan is nationally recognized as an instructor and lecturer. He’s taught lectures for members for each of the three largest home inspection associations and has taught classes nationally and internationally. So much experience in this field. Thank you so much, Dan, for joining the call. I would just like to welcome you here.

Dan:
It’s my pleasure to be with you.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I have to say this, Dan: When I practiced in Pittsburgh, you were our go-to guy. If we thought that somebody was having mold issues in their home, man, we called Dan Howard. Matter of fact, I think most of my patients from the past are still using Dan Howard. How do I know that? I get emails. You really have become the expert, not just in that area, but now nationally. We thank you for some of the articles that we have shared of yours on these topics of environmental sickness, which so many people have today. Dan, I have to say most people don’t even realize that their home is making them sick.

One of the first questions I have is what’s going on? Why is mold become an epidemic or even multiple chemical sensitivity? What’s happening with homes today?

Dan:
We really did this to ourselves in the way we’ve changed how construction is. We evolved to not live in things like terrariums. We now build our houses and changed them so they’re very similar. If you remember whenever you were a kid -inaudible-. Throw in a couple teaspoons or tablespoons of water into the little glass clearing, and then in the spring, it’s still green and moldy. When we do what we do in sealing our houses up, particularly on the new -inaudible- with Energy Star ratings, we make it so that there’s no fresh air.

In a normal days of what we do, we breathe, we sweat, perspire, wash, people cook, and all of those things bring moisture into a building, into the area. Just like a terrarium, you need to get that moisture out. When we decided that we were going to make it we didn’t lose any energy, we made it that we weren’t going to let water vapor to escape.

Then the other thing we did is we’re in the world of plastics. We’ve added so many chemicals that just weren’t even invented five, ten, fifteen years ago, and they’re off-gassing into our homes. As I learned from you because we’ve worked -inaudible-. He tried to clean up the mess; I tried to stop the mess from happening in the first place when I worked. Without fresh air, toxins build up, and all of those things are adding up. It isn’t just the mold. It’s the chemicals. It’s all of the other things that we do, and unfortunately – and again, this is in your back yard, but the unhealthy things we eat, that’s even worse.

We’ve tightened our houses. We could consider, we put windows in that don’t leak air, and that’s an improvement. Are we overinsulating? Quick example: Whenever we put our high efficiency furnaces – the old furnaces, whenever you turned them on, the warm air from the house went through the burners out the chimney. Now we get the combustion air from outside, so we’re not even moving air through the house using our furnace. It’s just the laws of the universe. Hot air goes up; it gets cold; it comes down as rain. Isn’t that a beautiful thing? We need to disperse toxins. That’s really important. The old-timers used to say the solution to pollution is dilution. We don’t have any dilution in our house. It’s created all these ways to make people sick. Thank goodness you’re there to fix it.

Dr. Pompa:
You go to Europe and you see these building that are not just hundreds of years old, but oftentimes, thousands. Dan, how could they not have mold, and yet they don’t have mold, right?

Dan:
Oh, yeah. It’s funny. I’ve gone into million-dollar houses, three quarter of a million-dollar houses not even built, and they’re now moldy because of what we’re doing. Pendulum swung, and it swung too far.

Dr. Pompa:
I know Erin Brockovich built a brand new house, literally brand new, and she got sick. She got sick in the home. It was ironic that it was Erin Brockovich.

Dan:
-inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
Watch the movie. She exposed the whole chemical company, saved a lot of lives, no doubt. Here, she ends up sick because of a new home she built. I’ll tell you, there’s been many of those cases, brand new home. Dan, I think what happens is that they seal it, and a lot of the wood is still carrying all the moisture because whether it rained or what happened, they seal in the moisture, and what happens? Mold forms. I always say that mold’s all around us. All we have to do is add water and give it a little food.

Dan:
Again, there’s laws of the universe. Any place there’s food and water, ice, mountain, deepest sea, North Pole, and South Pole, and all in betwixt, if there’s food and water, it’ll grow. Finished basements, one of those things that we added, it’s the same deal, moisture behind the wall.

Dr. Pompa:
I always say if you have water in your basement, there’s mold. Is that a pretty safe assumption?

Dan:
Either that or else you put so many toxic chemicals in that you’ve killed it, but yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s look at that. I know Meredith has some pressing questions, as well. I think that people watching this show – of why we did a past show on mold. Meredith, you could figure out what some of those episodes were to tell the folks. We talked about some testing that we do, a visual contrast sensitivity test and some other tests to look at if someone is biotoxically ill, which mold produces a biotoxin. We’re not talking about mold allergies here. We’re talking about literally a biotoxin that makes people very, very sick.

People watching this are going to say, “Well, gosh, how do I know if my home’s moldy or not?” That’s the thing. We understand we’re creating homes that are sealed in, locked in, locking in moisture, locking in chemicals. Oh, and by the way, we put drywall up, which has cellulose, which is paper on the drywall, which is the perfect food – am I right? – for mold. Just add water? Yeah. Perfect scenario to create mold. However, most people, Dan, rarely ever see mold. If you’ve been in the house long enough, you rarely smell it. I walk in those homes, I go, “This is a mold trap!” I smell it, but yet, you can’t see it, typically. You can’t smell it, typically. How do we know?

Dan:
Again, it’s what you said. Some people can smell it; some people cannot. The good news for me is I’m like the mold dog. I walk in, and because I’ve been doing this so long, I do smell it. The absolute important part is the test part. There’s a whole bunch of different ways to test. The easiest, least expensive test is air testing. What we’re testing for is spores floating in the air. That’s a good indicator.

It’s very similar to if I wanted to know how many tomato plants I had in a field, and I, let’s say, got 100 bushels. Each plant typically makes a bushel of tomatoes, we figure out that we have so much mold. Whenever we do air testing, we get both the amount that’s there and the type. The type tells someone that’s skilled where it’s coming from, where the source is, and gives you information on where to look for what’s going on there.

If we have a situation – you mentioned biotoxins, the endotoxins, mycotoxins, biotoxins that make people sick. We even have testing that can tell that, and it can tell the other chemicals that are in a place, and that’s an expensive form of testing. If we have somebody that’s really ill, it can tell us that. If we have someone with a particular disease, we can very often do viable testing, which means that we put it in a petri dish, and then you can -inaudible- what species a mold is, and you can relate that to the illness.

One of the amazing things that just has me shaking my head is, of course, in Pittsburgh, they shut down one of the country’s best transplant programs because of mold that’s sitting in the intensive care unit, post surgery, and people were dying from it.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow!

Dan:
At one point, they said they have 1,300 people on the waiting list, and they just cancelled the program. The funny thing is is they got it, they knew it, they understood it, but you know, whenever they send people home, they don’t test the houses for mold when they send those patients home. I scratch my head. I’ve had a couple of their patients that actually had mold issues, and it can kill them. The mold, Aspergillus, whenever you’re on immunosuppressant drugs, it grows in your lungs like a petri dish. Testing’s really important, and more critical is having the testing done by somebody who knows the relationship between -inaudible- and the exposure, and what type of mold it is.

Dr. Pompa:
Right. Go ahead, Meredith.

Meredith:
I was just saying are you referring to black mold? That’s the one that we hear a lot about as being fatal. Could you kind of explain the differences?

Dan:
Black mold is the common name attached to Stachybotrys, and that can cross your lungs, and then infect your blood, and of course, cause serious health issues in some people. The mold I was just mentioning that grows like weeds in the lungs of someone who’s had a transplant is Aspergillus. You get the Aspergillus.

There are molds that will, if you’re susceptible to it, the eye tissue -inaudible-. People who have had skin issue for years and it’s a particular type of mold that’s -inaudible-. It goes so far beyond being the black mold that we usually hear about, and there are so many different things that could be triggered, and again, as you folk absolutely know, whenever your immune system has been weakened, you’re subject to all of these. I’ve seen respiratory issues, skin issue, eye issues all related to mold.

I had one client – I’ve had more than one – but one in particular that MS had set in, and they were just amazed at her age, at how fast it was progressing. It turns out that mold Chaetomium can aggravate and trigger that disease. That’s what she had in her home. It wasn’t Stachybotrys; it was the mold Chaetomium. Whenever I got the lab results back, I’m looking, and I’m saying, “Now I know why your doctor’s saying you’re progressing so quickly. Let’s get you out of this. Let’s get this fixed.” It’s a lot more complex that what we know from the news, but what isn’t?

Meredith:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. We call mold is one of the – I call it one of the three amigos, the big boys, that can knock you down so fast that it can lead to major, major diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, and unexplainable illnesses. Heavy metals, mold, and hidden infections, these are the three that really are not your average toxin. Hearing you, seeing these clients of yours with these illnesses, well, it sure doesn’t surprise me because when I see somebody that has unexplainable set of symptoms or conditions, these three things, we look at first, heavy metals, biotoxins from mold or Lyme, and other hidden infections that can occur even in the mouth. Yeah, we get that.

The testing then, there’s one called an ERMI test that people use. It’s looking at the dust and things in the house. You mentioned a different type of air test and even a test that looks at biotoxins. Can we give some names on some of those tests so people at home can write them down?

Dan:
The ERMI test that you mentioned is one that shows a great history of what’s going on in the home, and because you’re collecting the dust, it’s not just what’s in the air today. It’s what you’ve been exposed to over the last couple years -inaudible- top allergen-creating molds, and they -inaudible-. If you have someone that’s been highly allergenic and that’s lived in the home a long time, it’s a great test to use. There’s only four labs in the country that process it. The one that I use is very good at that, EMSL, great test. Air test four traps. What it does is it captures what’s floating in the air.

The best analogy I can give is if I had red balls, blue balls, and green balls, and I throw them into your living room. That’s pretty much a random event. If I count how many are in half the room and multiply it times two, I know how much is in the room. If I take a quarter of the room and multiply it times four, I know how much is in the room. What it does is they have a slide, and it collects a representative sample of so many liters of air on the slide, and from that, they can extrapolate what’s floating in the air today in real time. That’s a great test.

If we have something that is one of the wet molds, and you mentioned Stachybotrys, the mold I mentioned -inaudible-. They hide. They hide behind walls. You almost never see them. They produce very few spores that if I see that type of mold in a place, what I do is I swab that. The problem is that it’s like pond plants are to the plant world. The allergenic ones are more like grass, trees -inaudible- amount of moisture. Those need a tremendous amount of moisture, and they just don’t produce a lot of spores. It’d be like the tomato plant that only made one tomato a year.

We swab that or tape lift it, and then they can look, and they -inaudible- what it is there. That’s what a lot of people think of whenever they think mold testing, but it’s only representative of…

Dr. Pompa:
Right. A lot of the molds you pointed out are behind the walls. How do you know to get there? In other words, great. How do we know that wall? Look at all these walls in my house. How do I figure out what wall to go behind? That means cutting a hole in the drywall, as well. Then you’re visibly looking for it, therefore to test it.

Dan:
Normally, what you would do is if we find some of those hidden molds, first of all, one of the tools we can use is a camera that can sometimes tell us where there’s an accumulation of moisture or high humidity.

Dr. Pompa:
Infrared camera? You look at the wall with an infrared camera?

Dan:
It’s helpful, but it’s not the end story. A good solution is cutting the floor the height of the baseboard, and then you pull that behind, and that’s usually a pretty good indicator of which wall. Then you can expose those and clean those areas. It’s a good starting tool. That’s a physical thing.

If I have an area that I kind of want to know, and I’m suspecting that – for instance, one last week, they had an area for a bathtub. They just closed it off with drywall. We got little tubes. With a 3/8-inch hole, I can shove the tube in and actually get a sample what’s behind the wall. That test works real well.

Again, there’s a whole set of tools that if you have somebody who’s experienced, and knows what to do, and -inaudible- just like any other set of tools. It’s kind of like when someone comes to you. You sort through what’s going on and apply what techniques you do, but you have to start with figuring out what it is they’re reacting to, and then kind of going from there.

Dr. Pompa:
Look, I’m no home inspector. You used to do that for years. I can look at a home and go, “Okay, that wall right there’s in question.” I can see that from the outside, there’s a hill running down. It’s putting water into that wall. It’s only a matter of time before that water’s going to get through. I don’t care what they have on the other side of it because it’s under positive pressure from water. Water wins all the time.

Dan:
-inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I look at a house from – I look at the assessment from the outside first. Then I give it my nose test. Then I can bring, from there, an expert in that would look at it and say, “Okay, these walls are problems. Maybe we should test behind these walls.”

You know, Dan, I think people asking are being like, “Okay, great. You’re in the Pittsburgh area.” How do they find someone that has your expertise in their area? What do they look for?

Dan:
That’s a real good question. I’ve been searching, just like I know that you’ve worked and trained people cross-country. I’ve come across a company -inaudible-, and people can go to my website and get information.

Dr. Pompa:
Your website? Meredith, you can write it down and show it.

Dan:
What it is is they’ve done an excellent job of training people on first, going through the outsides, sorting through what those issues are, going through the inside. Real often, when you just call someone or untrained -inaudible- home inspectors, they come in, they take the air sample. They don’t do the investigation. When I’m in a house, it’s typically two hours or more. They just come in and test. That’s the question you really asked. You said, “You know enough to look around. Why don’t most of the inspectors?”

I’ve actually -inaudible- through their training programs and have given them a set of issues that I look at that they’ve put into a set of software so the people who aren’t experienced at this because there’s no replacement for experience to look for outside water, downspouts, if there’s separation where the driveway goes, and work through the whole thing through the inside. I’m pretty happy with their training program.

Again, I sat and took their class they’re giving to new people just to make sure that what I’m seeing is what I’m seeing. They’re for real. They’re partnered with the National Association of Home Inspectors, and they’re developing a relationship with people that are  training. It’s kind of a good system. They’ve got a source of 10,000 inspectors to pick from that go to a good training program. If you weren’t in the Pittsburgh area, that would probably be the best source…

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. Meredith, write down his website, and then maybe we can get that website to write that down.

Dan:
In fact, I think I’ll put on my website all the links that your people can go to to -inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
All right. Give your website so Meredith can display it.

Dan:
The easy one is PittsburghMoldTesting.com.

Meredith:
Okay, PittsburghMoldTesting.com. We will type that up and have that displayed on the screen, PittsburghMoldTesting.com. Then you’ll have links there to anyone that you would recommend for more information and for someone to find a proper inspector in their area.

Dan:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
Good.

Dan:
We’ll just do a page.

Dr. Pompa:
I have to say, folks, go to the website. He has great articles there, and there’re some great sources. That’s a really good source for people to educate themselves on these topics, no doubt. Meredith, I know you had a couple other questions, too.

Meredith:
I do. I have a number of questions, actually, if we can backtrack and -inaudible- in the proper order. I do. I just kind of wanted to backtrack, too, when you were talking about the process. I’m wondering, when you’re remediating mold, once you find the mold, discover that it is in the home, how do you clean it? What happens?

Dan:
Again, this is where it gets real tricky, and I really get frustrated, and I know that working with Dr. Pompa, he’s been frustrated with – every morning, when my wife and I go to breakfast, we wipe down the countertop, and wipe down the kitchen table, and all those things. If your approach is to just take the mold and wipe it away, you’ve got the problem that we have tomorrow morning. The activity stays living. You get germs, bacteria, and all types of things on the countertop.

The treatment has to match the need, what the circumstances are, where the mold is there, plus, more importantly, you have – again, -inaudible- experiment, and you have mold growing behind a wall, you’ve got to change the conditions or -inaudible- treatment just like after we wipe down the kitchen counter, the mold will come back. The trick here is to find a remediator who will end up treating it and also addressing the issues that are underlying, which is why it’s important to have an inspector who understands the underlying conditions. This all goes hand in hand.

There are very inexpensive people who will come do -inaudible- called spray and pray. They just put a coat of whatever it is that they are using, one of the chemicals. Some are peroxide-based. One is just TSP -inaudible- trisodium phosphate. You need to have somebody address the underlying issues or you’ll get the same results and someone who will actually treat every area that does. It all starts with the initial assessment, which is, again, what I do. You don’t want somebody coming in and doing a 15-minute, take the test, see you later thing.

Meredith:
You don’t actually do the cleaning of the mold. You just assess it initially, and then someone else comes in and does the cleaning.

Dan:
That’s right. You really don’t want your tester being the remediator. That’s like sending the fox into the henhouse. “Hey, how many hens you got in there?” You just don’t do that.

Dr. Pompa:
No. No, but you’re right. It’s very frustrating, these people, they do. They just come in and wipe the counters, so to speak. “Hey, all the mold’s gone.” It’s like they’ve done nothing to change the cause of why the mold’s there. They’ve done nothing to really even get it deep enough. These mold, the roots go into the cement block, into the wood. You hit it with Clorox on the outside, and arguably, you’ve made your problem worse. The water that’s naturally in Clorox or whatever it is goes down and feeds the roots. You killed the mold on the outside, only to come up with more vengeance later.

I’ve watched that take place, or they come in with their toxic concoctions and start spraying things. People then end up with a new problem. They end up with chemical sensitivity based on the poison they used to kill it. Multiple problems there, Dan. Again, how does somebody find someone who remediates safely? Does that organization have some contacts there?

Dan:
As a -inaudible- organization, I like what they do. Green Home Solutions, they have a pretty good approach to following protocols, and they have – it’s a franchise system, and their training seems darn good. I’ve spoken to their chief science officer, who actually develops for them the protocol. They take the approach of, “Yeah, we need to clean it. We need to change the environment.” I’ll put that up on the links -inaudible- GreenHomeSolutions.com.

Dr. Pompa:
Green what?

Dan:
GreenHomeSolutions.com. I’ve had some good success working with them, and I like what they do. Again, the problem is can you find a name across the country that you know is fairly conscientious, and that’s a tough thing. I’m looking for someone who has good training and cleans up the mess, if they have a franchise.

Dr. Pompa:
One of the things that I look for is do they create a containment? If a company comes in to clean up mold, and you don’t see them putting up plastic walls and tubes coming out that are sucking air out creating a negative pressure so the biotoxins don’t end up in the HVAC and throughout your entire home – if you don’t see this containment setup – in one of the past episodes on mold, we showed Warren’s containment and how it was pulling the – creating this negative air pressure that pulled the stuff out. You can make problems worse.

Dan:
-inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
I have -inaudible- of people who get more sick after cleaning up mold because they never did it correctly from the beginning. That’s one thing that I look for, whether it’s being done correctly. Are there other things?

Dan:
-inaudible-, and let me give you the analogy so people can picture what’s going on. Do you remember as a kid, the dandelion went from yellow to white?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dan:
You blow on it; it went everywhere. That’s what happens when you treat mold, and you need to do a couple things. One of them is containment. That means you put the plastic up, and you keep it from going places. I’ve caught remediators not sealing off the furnace, too. That’s circulating air through the place. That’s step one, containment. Then you need negative air. That’s the exhaust. That’s the exhaust that is the pipe like in the E.T. movie, and you have the plastic, and it pushed the air out the window.

Then you do what’s called air scrubbing. Air scrubbing is you bring in a filter that constantly circulates the air. Think of it like whenever you blew on that white-colored dandelion, and it’s floating down. It hits the floor. Then you walk on it, it goes back up in the air. The air scrubber grabs what’s in the air. That’s the process. You want containment, you want negative air, and you want the air scrubbed.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s good. That gives people at least an idea of are they doing it right? Again, I would add one more to that. You kind of said this earlier. Are they assessing the situation to say, “Wait a minute. You’ve got positive water pressure on the outside of this wall. If we do all this and not fix that, then really, you’re going to end up in the same problem months down the road.”

That means possibly excavating the yard so it slopes down on the outside. It may need a new French drain. I don’t know. Were your gutters right? Do you need new gutters? Water and what it’s doing on the outside typically creates the problem. Maybe you have to, every once in a while – how many years, Dan? You’re an inspector. – do you have to have your houses re-caulked? I can’t tell you how many people’s homes leak because it’s just old, cracked caulking. Give them some advice on that.

Dan:
I’m going to hit on one that you mentioned. Most people think that if they put in an interior French drain, that stops the water, stops the mold. No. What you’ve done is stop the symptom of seeing the water going through the block wall. If the water’s going and soaking the soil underneath the floor, that’s where the wet molds, the ones are that toxic like -inaudible-, live. I go into many places where they’ve spent thousands of dollars to supposedly dry the basement, and the basement’s moldier and smellier than ever.

Now, there are some of the interior French drain people now who have caught onto that, and they do what’s called a sealed system. They seal the top, and they put an exhaust system into this so that the moisture, instead of going into the house, and the mold spores, instead of going into the house, go outside. That’s one solution.

You really did touch on one of the most common things that people do wrong like putting in a French drain. If you have soil, you want to make sure that you cover it. Wet dirt, if you’ve ever stuck your head in a crawlspace, mildew mold. They make barriers systems that you can put on. Again, put an exhaust system underneath. It works very similar to a radon system, and you can get the moisture and the mold out from that area.

There are a lot of tricks that can be done, but sadly, in a lot of places, if you’re not getting advice from the right people, they’re going to do what they do everyday and not what solves your moisture problem. Sometimes you need to find a way to get fresh air into the place.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get to solutions because that’s one thing I always do. I make sure there’s fresh air being able to be brought into the home and toxic air out. Is there a –

Dan:
-inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. Is there a test you can do to test the toxins in the home, that you do?

Dan:
When I have people sick – and I truly have clients that moved into their house, and one week, two weeks, three weeks, a month later, they’re sick and having to move out. The TL15 is a chemist that goes in. They put an absolute vacuum into it. You open it up. It pulls the air into it, then we send it back to the lab, cryogenically freeze it. They put it in a mass spectograph, and they can actually identify which toxins are in the air. It’s wonderful!

What’s funny is whenever I’m talking over the lab results with the lab, they can tell me, “Well, you know it looks like that was a high traffic area because there are a lot of products from gasoline in this house, or there’s a lot emit from this that was typically found in paint.” One of the most innocuous ones is a -inaudible-, and nobody expects to find that chemical in the house. The funny part is whenever you do hardwood floors, if they don’t cure it right, that’ll go in, and that can make -inaudible-. There are so many different illnesses.

Oh! Formaldehyde -inaudible- outside the lumber liquidator story. That wasn’t a made-up story. I’ve had clients that would test -inaudible- really sick in the house because of the formaldehyde that’s in some of that flooring. For that type of testing, we use what’s called dragger tube. The problem with formaldehyde is the chemical is one of the smallest, simplest chains of DNA other than hydrogen, and it doesn’t  identify on a TL15, but I can do a little glass tube type of test that has a polyester fabric in it, and they can tell me whether they have so much formaldehyde in the place.

You have Chinese drywall. There’s a test that I can do for that that again, it’ll tell me whether they have the sulfur products. You would be shocked. You would be amazed if you saw what that drywall does in that house. I’ve opened up outlets and seen that the caulk has turned green from all of the sulfur products in the air. Nuts! People are getting sick on this!

Dr. Pompa:
Wow! Those are some major pitfalls. Can someone get one of those TL15 tests? Can you send them to somebody and tell them where to put them, then send them back to you and look –

Dan:
It really should be handled by somebody who knows what they’re doing.

Dr. Pompa:
All right.

Dan:
It really needs to be – the conditions need to be – when you’re talking expensive tests -inaudible-. It’s just not a good one for self-administering. You don’t do that kind of test. It’d be like asking somebody, “Well, could you go in and use the MRI equipment?” Yeah, you probably could, but it’s not a good idea.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, not a good idea. Yeah, your sound kind of got a little bit –

Meredith:
Yeah. Can’t quite hear everything. Speak a little more loudly and clearly.

Dan:
Okay.

Meredith:
Thank you. Awesome. I’m thinking, too, across the country, there are probably some areas that are much more susceptible to mold damage than others. I lived in New Orleans for years, post-Katrina, in a home that has six feet of water during the storm. I know I had some mold exposure there. If you can kind of talk a little bit about some areas in the country where people are a lot more susceptible so they could kind of be aware –

Dan:
It’s a lot event-driven and weather-driven in addition to being construction-driven. You mentioned one that was absolutely perfect. The Katrina problem, of course, was complicated, not just by the fact that places got flooded, but they got flooded with water that had been contaminated by sewage, which is a perfect food for mold, and more importantly, it sent viruses and all types of other illnesses, whether it be MRSA-like living in people’s homes -inaudible-. You would have a different set of molds than you would in just a normal wet place.

Some of the worst areas for mold are Texas, Florida, and those kinds of wet environments. Housing has a lot to do with it, too, just the way something’s built. Being new or being old, either way could be a problem. Older homes, it’s often with sandstone foundations. The water wicks through -inaudible-. New houses, of course, because they’re too tight – there are things that you can do to make a house be a mold problem that you’d never think of.

Let me give you one example. If you change out the air conditioner, then go up to an air conditioner that is oversized for the house, then it runs a short time. Water in the ductwork in the basement will condense just like the ice water on the 4th of July, and leaks through, and gets your drywall, and walls, and your ceilings in your basement. Even doing something like putting too large an air conditioning system into a house could be an issue.

Other conditions around them, which just popped into the mind is that if you put a new furnace in, and they don’t take care of venting a gas hot water tank correctly, you have what’s called an orphan hot water tank, which means the combusting gases, the first one of which is water vapor don’t leave, and you can have mold growing on the ceiling above where a hot water tank that had been there for 30 years and never been a problem, simply because you put the new furnace in and didn’t put a smaller vent in to accommodate the lower heat of the hot water tank alone.

It’s a complicated issue. The funny part is probably 20% to 25% of the new furnaces installed that I see in this area, they don’t deal with the hot water tank venting properly, and so they’re setting it up. All you need is a house on the verge of growing mold. When we go up over 45% relative humidity, it grows, and you have one factor like that or a factor like stuffing too much insulation in the attic so that the water vapor doesn’t leave, and now, all of a sudden, you’ve got a house that is moldy because of that.

You talk to different geographies, the area of the country where that is – the different things you do in those areas, whether it be heating or cooling. The South would have the tendency more to have oversized air conditioners because the salesman for the air conditioning company says, “Well, you -inaudible- the next size up, then you’ll always be cool real quick.” Yeah, but then you have condensation in the ductwork.

Dr. Pompa:
On your website, do you have a list of these things that people can look for? You mentioned putting too much insulation in your ceiling. Now water vapor doesn’t get through, increases moisture. You mentioned not venting the hot water tank properly, even too big or too small of vents. Okay, I’m leaving this conversation going I just want to run around checking my own home. I want a list of these pitfalls. I want a list of, “These are the things you have to look at.”

Dan:
The set of articles I have deal with these in a semblance of a little bit at a time because each one needs an explanation. One just popped in my head because right now, as we’re recording, we’re near Christmas. I’ve had people get sick because they thought, they absolutely thought and believed that by not bringing a live tree in, they’re not going to get their allergies flared whenever the tree comes in, and -inaudible- they’re allergic to. Right?

If you take that tree and those decorations and you store them in the attic, and your attic has pollen, your attic has mold, and you bring the stuff out, then you’re right where you were with the real tree. I have an article just talking about how to store your Christmas things, and what to do, and what to be careful when you’re bringing them out. Again, you can solve it. All you do is you take all the different greenery things that you have that are plastic, take them into the garage, and hose them down. I’ve had people call me and say they’re sick at Christmastime and wondering why. That’s its own article.

Again, it’s a library of things, and bless the person that wants to read all of them. It’s there. It’s there for the taking, and it’s free. Even so, there’s nothing that can replace having someone who actually understands how a house works, somebody who understands building signs and the environmental signs come to your place.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Who would think too big of an air conditioner, that creates a whole other problem. I’ll tell you, in Florida, 90% of the building that I walk in, I go, “Mold!” It’s mostly from the air conditioning, right? It’s from the coil, I’m sure, and the mold’s building up in these units.

Dan:
Plus, if it turns on in short cycles, the ductwork closes to the plenum, closest to the place that does the work, is coldest, and that’s usually the lower level of the building. Sometimes it sits up on the rooftop. If it’s on the rooftop, it could be that it’s just a humid day, and that’s where it collects. Then you have a little bit of dirt because there’s always dirt in ductwork, and bingo-bango, you have the perfect food and the water. Yeah, in any place on earth, there’s food and water, something will grow. It’s often done with the installers thinking they’re doing you a favor by putting something in so you’re never going to be hot. They just don’t know.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. It sounds like you should keep your – I always like to keep my fans on constantly, the air circulating.

Dan:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s like running water. Running water doesn’t form mold. It’s when it’s hit and miss, that’s what…

Dan:
If you have a forced air furnace, that’s the best idea no matter the time of year because that humidity from your lower level dissipates it, and it keeps it even. In summer, when you’re running the air conditioner, it avoids that problem of cold ductwork and a cold plenum that’s going to land up being moldy. You are absolutely, 100% on with that.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about some solutions that people can do right away to make their homes safer. One of the things that I do is put an ERV system in, an energy return ventilator, which just brings fresh air in and bad air out. Any other suggestions?

Dan:
That’s probably the best one that gets ignored, and it’s easy to do. Bottom line is the solution to pollution is dilution, like we said earlier. If I take a cup of oil, put it in a gallon of water, it’s pretty bad. I put it in a drum of water, not so bad. If you could take the toxins and air them out, particularly in a new house, and you’re ahead of the game. That’s a super thing to do.

If you have a house that’s too damp, instead of putting little dehumidifiers in, you could put one that’s central. Aprilaire, which makes the one that used – they used to make – for adding humidity to a furnace, also makes a whole-house humidity control, which will keep the air drier for the entire house. If you can’t do that – it’s usually about $2000 installed for that equipment. If you even take a regular, standard dehumidifier, hook it up, take the drain out the back instead of emptying it because most people – I know I’m not going to think about, first thing in the morning, go empty it -inaudible-. Just hook up the hose, put it to a floor drain. Set it for 45% relative humidity, and run it all the time. The only time it turns on is whenever it needs to. You don’t waste energy.

Dr. Pompa:
When I lived in Pittsburgh or anywhere there was humidity, I always had the dehumidifiers constantly going, like you said, making sure that my humidity was hopefully around 45.

Dan:
Absolutely. There’s a lot of things you can do like that. The other thing is plan your improvements and changes in the property with all of this in mind. Think about what you’re doing whenever you make the changes. Particularly if you’re fighting illness to begin with, it might not be bad to have somebody that actually understands environmental issues and building issues first come in. How many days sick do you want to be? If you pay the fee for someone who actually knows what they’re doing to come in, it’s a whole lot better than feeling ill for weeks, months, or a year.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. R number 1 of my five Rs of how to fix a cell – look, you have to remove the source, the sources that have bioaccumulated from the body, yes, but I’ll tell you, if you don’t remove the sources from your life, you’re never going to get well. It is impossible to get well if you’re living in a moldy home. I always say it’s impossible to get well if you have silver fillings still leaching mercury in your brain every day.

The big challenge with many people who are not progressing is that they’re in an environment that either has too many toxins, like you said, or too much mold. Both are toxins, mold and maybe just toxic sources. Like you said, if the floor’s not cured properly, it can be putting off too much formaldehyde. So much formaldehyde they use in the insulations today, these things can permeate for years until they off-gas. I don’t know. This floor that’s not cured properly, how many years would that take to off-gas, Dan?

Dan:
Again, the whole process is – the reason we smell it, the reason it leaves is it leaves maybe at 10% a year or whatever the particular rate for that product is, and you don’t know. It depends on how much was there to begin with and how well it holds. If it’s off-gassing, let’s say this year that 10% of it leaves. Okay, so next year, 10% of the 90% leaves, which leaves 81%. Then the next year, 10% of the 81% is going to land up leaving, so on, and so forth.

Over a time, stuff will off-gas, and hopefully, you don’t bring more of the same thing in by buying new furniture and the like. It really depends on the product. One of the things that tricks people the most, and I know that you struggle with, people don’t understand that they get sick – they’re used to thinking real time. I put my hand on the burner; I get burned. I hit my thumb with a hammer; I feel that. That’s not how environmental toxins work.

You’re stuck with the problem of it doesn’t clean up real quick. I’m stuck with the problem whenever I explain to someone, “Well, yeah, you lived -inaudible-years, but you didn’t have pneumonia at that point. You didn’t have this other disease. Now, all of a sudden, you can’t handle what’s in the house.” We need to do that. People go into denial that it’s the house.

Let me give you the best test I have of building – it might be work. It might be a church. It might be something else that’s making you sick, too, by the way. If you keep track of where you are, when you are, and how you feel, you understand that it happens at a time delay. If I walk into a building that makes me sick, I’m not going to get sick now; I’m going to get sick four hours from now. Until we get past that, thinking only if I hit my hammer now, that’s the hammer.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Dan:
Again, I know that’s a struggle that you have, and I’ve heard you work with people who just never thought of it that way.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. I always tell people, “Look, when you go into an environment, how do you start to feel?” It’s typically not an immediate reaction for most people. “How do you feel? How are you sleeping? How’s your brain fog? How’s your aches and pains?” It’s not random. Notice how you feel when you are in an environment, when you leave that environment for an extended period of time.

Maybe you go on vacation to the beach, and that place is even worse. People say, “Well, I felt worse when I went” – so, of course, you have to assess every environment. You should leave the environment enough times that you realize that something happens. Certain symptoms occur when you get back into that environment. That is the best test, Dan. I couldn’t agree more. I think getting some of those other tests, the TL15 and other tests. People should be doing these things, for sure. Meredith?

Meredith:
Yeah. I just had a question, too. Obviously, these chronic, chronic mold issues are much more of a problem, but what if someone’s had an acute exposure? Maybe this is for Dr. Pompa. What would you suggest?

Dan:
Chronic exposure, that’s a question.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. In an acute exposure, some people that aren’t sensitized yet, just getting out of the exposure’s good enough, and their body deals with it. Other people are left with some symptoms. The GCell and the Bind are great because GCell raises intracellular glutathione, which is how your body naturally tries to get rid of things, downregulate inflammation. These biotoxins make their way into the liver, bind up to bile, and the bile’s reabsorbed, and you’re bringing them around and around. Bind actually pulls the biotoxin out of the biocomplex. I would do some heavier doses of GCell and Bind. Even the new one, Cellular Detox, binds up biotoxins. Adding in some Cellular Detox is also going to be critical, but for goodness sakes, stay out of the environment.

Meredith:
Mm-hmm. I’ve also thought, too, as you’ve kind of mentioned, some people live in moldy homes and don’t get sick. Can you explain that?

Dan:
Yeah. There are – I’m sorry.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Go ahead, Dan. I was just going to say – and I’ll set you up for that. I know that Shoemaker talks about – and he’s an expert in biotoxins. Certain genes make your more susceptible. I’m going to tell you, I think genes are always certain things that can get triggered. I don’t think genes ever make us sick, or very rarely, I should say. I know that it’s really – I believe it’s more people who have other neurotoxic exposures going on. Those people are sensitized, just waiting for the next hit or the perfect storm. Those are the people that seem to get triggered from mold, I think, even before the gene. Anyways, Dan, what’s your feelings?

Dan:
My feelings are 100% with you. Let me give you – one of the worst problems I get is the husband and wife, or parents and the child, and only one person is sick. They scratch their head and say, “It must be the imagination.” The example I use, we all know about, there are young folks who could eat one peanut and go into anaphylactic shock. There are other people, and most kids, could live on P, B, and J all of their life. The problem is each one of us is individual with the sum of all the exposures. Whenever we’re working with other people who don’t believe or don’t understand that one person in a household can be a problem with the health reactions, and another one can be perfectly healthy, they need to think of it in that way.

The other problem is real often, we have one person working inside the home, the other outside the home, I’ll often go in, and their discussion is, “Well, I’m not sick. They’re sick.” The total time of exposure counts, too, which is something that -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Dan:
The amount of exposure you have to that particular toxin, plus all of the other toxins.

Dr. Pompa:
I agree. I think it’s mostly that. I think it’s how full was your bucket full of neurotoxins? Stressors, how full is your bucket filled with stressors, physical, chemical, or emotional? It just takes that one more to throw it over the edge, which I call the perfect storm. We have a few stressors going on, and boom, bring in that one more, and then now we have a perfect storm scenario. Does that perfect storm turn on certain genes? Absolutely. I believe that genes are triggered and turned on.

I know, in Shoemaker’s early work, he looked at the HLA genes. I have doctors running the HLA test, and we just found that, really, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t correlate it, statistically, with any one gene in accordance to his work, honestly. It just seemed like the person who already had too many exposures through a lifetime and bioaccumulated, those are the ones whose bucket overflowed. They ended up with a bunch of symptoms. That could be you. It could be the next thing.

It took me a lot of mercury vapor from my amalgam fillings and having some mold exposures, all these things happening at the same time, that was it. I got sick. Look out.

Dan:
Absolutely.

Meredith:
Very real issues. Wow. It’s been some amazing information. Is there anything else, Dan, you’d like to add?

Dan:
I think, really, it’s important to find somebody who understands buildings, understands look around at things. Don’t be satisfied with a 15-minute, come in, take a test. You want to know the underlying conditions. If you have to do things to make yourself well, you need to look at the process. You need to work with someone like Dr. Pompa to get yourself well because it typically doesn’t happen real quickly on your own. In finding people in your geographic area, I’ll put something up on my website that you’ll be able to find them.

If you have a particular problem, there are a lot of articles there that relate to this that I would be tickled that you come take a look at, and use, and benefit from here. I wish nobody needed my services. I’m glad I’m there to do it. That’s very similar to Dr. Pompa. I’m sure if you had a magic wand, you’d make everybody well.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dan:
It’s a good thing you’re there. Hopefully, we can help enough people live a better life after we’re done.

Dr. Pompa:
You know, it’s funny, Dan. I’m sitting here, looking at you and I, and we are the answer to modern day illness. I don’t say it bragging or boasting, meaning that we just – we’re looking at dealing with the sources. I always say you’ll never get well unless you get your environment safe. You are R number 1 on the environmental side. I’m R number 2 of helping people get it out of their body, these toxins that bioaccumulate. Both of those represent R number 1. If you don’t remove the source, folks, you are just not going to get well. Remove the interference, the body has an ability to heal itself. That’s how I got my life back. That’s how thousands of others got their life back.

Dan, you’re dealing with a source in homes, which is such a hidden source today. Thank you for the wealth of knowledge you’ve given. This is an important show. It really is. Folks, if you’re watching it, and you’re just not progressing, look to these things in your home. Get your homes tested. Evaluate every nuance, every chemical, every possible mold exposure in your life, your home, work, school, whatever it is because I’ve seen it time and time again that our environment is making us ill. Dan, thank you for the wealth of knowledge. We’ll read those articles.

Dan:
It was my pleasure. Let me throw one last -inaudible-. So often when people have mold problems, they plug the Plug-Ins, the odorizers in their own wall, right? The vehicle in them is formaldehyde.

Dr. Pompa:
Terrible.

Dan:
The thing that makes them smell is synthetic. I’ll go in, someone’s sick in their home from their mold, and they’ve made themselves sicker by throwing in all these smelly things so they can’t smell the mold.

Dr. Pompa:
Always. I walk into these homes with these air fresheners. Folks, they have, on average, up to six neurotoxins in these things. Unplug, folks, literally. Get rid of that stuff. Don’t hang them in your cars. Don’t put them in your homes. It’s chemicals. Don’t cover up smells. Get to the source. That was great, Dan, to show on that because that is one of my pet peeves, for goodness sakes! I hate air fresheners!

Dan:
I go in, and I get sick from them. It’s like they’re saying, “Why are you sick? I know.” Whatever.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How about people wearing the darn air freshener on their clothes? It’s the Bounce and the fabric softeners. You can smell them a mile away. I would tell these people – I wouldn’t even allow patients to come in my office in the day. I would be like, “Okay, you’re going to go home now.” I have too many sensitive people that can’t do that. Oh, gosh. We could talk about toxic sources all day long, right?

Dan:
Absolutely, and we would never get to all of them.

Dr. Pompa:
It doesn’t. This is why America’s so sick. Toxins drive cellular inflammation. R number 1, we need safe environments, and we got to get the toxins out of our tissue. True cellular detox, that’s the answer on our end. Dan, thank you again. Gosh, we hope we can have you on in the future, where we could blow up just even one of these topics.

Dan:
Absolutely, we could.

Dr. Pompa:
Yep.

Meredith:
Thank you, Dan, so much. Could you share your website one more time?

Dan:
It is WWW.PittsburghMoldTesting.com. Pittsburgh is one of those burghs that’s spelled with an H. P-I-T-T-S-B-U-R-G-HMoldTesting.com. Feel free to use it. Lots of people do. We get about 50,000 hits every 90 days. Make yourself available. If I can be of help to one person with that site, I’m tickled.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m sure you will. Thank you for that. PittsburghMoldTesting.com. We got it, Dan. Thank you.

Dan:
Thank you.

Meredith:
Thank you. Thank you for all you do. Send us that Christmas article, as well. We’ll be happy to share that with our viewers, as this time of year, very, very important to know.

Dr. Pompa:
Great idea. Great idea. Thank you, Meredith, for that. Get that article out, no doubt. Thanks.

Meredith:
Yeah. All right. Thanks so much, everyone. Really important message today. Share and like this show. Share with your friends and family, and we will see you next week, where we will be featuring Professor Thomas Seyfried. We will be discussing cancer, and the ketogenic diet, and its role in treating cancer.

Dr. Pompa:
Great show. Great show. Dan, you got to turn in for that. This is a big show. This is a big topic. We’ll see you next week, folks.

Dan:
We’ll see you.

Meredith:
Yep. All right. See you next week. Thanks, everyone.

92: The Root of Cancer and Disease

Transcript of Episode 92: The Root of Cancer and Disease

With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Meredith Dykstra.

 

Meredith:
Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday and were filled with lots of wonderful cellular healing food, hopefully and are enjoying Black Friday today. I guess if you're watching this show, then you're not out shopping. You're concerned about your health and how to heal yourselves, and get well. We're glad to have you on the show, welcome. I have Dr. Pompa on the line here today, and we have a wonderful topic for you. Before we get started, how are you, Dr. Pompa?

Dr. Pompa:
Great, absolutely, and hey, remember our episode day after Thanksgiving. I feel great. I'm definitely not out shopping. I'm here to share some amazing information. We should have, maybe, saved this for another day, but of course people can watch the recording because today's information is absolutely life-changing. This is an episode you're going to want to share with friends, family, loved ones that are dealing with cancer, have friends with cancer; not just cancer but unexplainable illnesses of any type. Today's show really deals with the heart of those issues.

Meredith:
It's very, very exciting information we have for you today, and we're going to be talking about the root of cancer and pretty much most all disease out there. We're just going to dive in, and what we've been researching. I know, Dr. Pompa, you've been doing a lot of research that's been showing that there's a metabolic cause to cancer and a lot of other diseases out there. I'm wondering if you can start by explaining what that means and then how that applies to us.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. A metabolic cause may mean that there's a cellular energy issue of what is causing disease. If you look at my five Rs, many of you watching know my five Rs. It's a road map on how you fix a cell. R number one is you have to remove the source from the body and also from our lives. We talk a lot about that, right? Otherwise, nothing happens from there. R number two is regenerating the cell membrane. Very, very important even in today's topic but important for everything. It's even how the cell detoxes. There's also an inner mitochondrial membrane that we need to actually make energy, which is R three, which is restoring cellular energy. You can see that R two and R three, you'll see today more, that they have a really close relationship, and R four is reducing inflammation.

I'll tell you this right now: when R three gets affected, when we have drop in cellular energy and an increase in inflammation, which leads us to R five which is methylation, which has a lot to do with how genes get turned on, our susceptibility, the things that we got from mom and dad we don't like. Those things get turned on, but methylation can also turn those things off. That's R number five, re-establishing methylation. All the fives work interchangeably together.

They all are very important, so when we talk about metabolism, disease being started from cellular metabolism, R number three – and I often say that this is the very first place we have to start with very challenged people, and really chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, hormone conditions, weight-loss resistance, brain conditions. We have to start by restoring that cellular energy.

When we look at the growing number of studies showing diseases that we're talking about and even cancer is started by this cell energy problem. I want to discuss that because we're going to have a guest on in a few weeks. December 11th, right? Friday, December 11th, mark your calenders. I think this show is a great prelude to that show. We're interviewing the gentleman who wrote this book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease. His name is Dr. Thomas Seyfried. He's been researching his cancer most of his professional life, if not all. He's studied and practiced at the greatest universities under some of the great oncologists, and he is absolutely brilliant.

However; Dr. Seyfried, his method, his knowledge in this book that he has gathered over many years goes contrary to where most of the billions of dollars in cancer research is going today. Matter of fact, it's going in all disease today, and that is in genetics. I think he starts this book with so much great information that I've been looking at for many years, and that's all this money going into the genome, since the genome cancer project if you will, where they looked and tried to figure out what genes apply to these specific cancers. He makes a great point in his book. He says almost 700,000 targeted gene therapies have been introduced, and we've had zero effect on tumors, zero cures.

When we look at these results, and he points out just modern therapy and cancer in general where it's failing, the fact that we have spent all this money on cancer, and there's just really no impact. I just opened up the book here and it says this: “The number of new cancer cases, deaths per year is increasing, while the number of deaths per day has remained fairly consistent from 1996 to 2010.” We're not winning the war.

Matter of fact, when you look at these statistics, and I think there's a great graph in there; you can't see it very well, but we look at the number of new cases and the number of deaths, and it really is shocking when you consider the billions being spent. We're really no better off. I think the media spins it differently. I think people are under the assumption that thank God we have all these great cures, but his point is this, and I'll make it short and brief. The billions on genome therapy, that's not the cause.

The gene is secondary to something that's happening in the cell, to the cell energy first. That turns on the gene. I think that's the message. I think when we look at all of this research that's showing that no, it's not the gene first that gets turned on. That gets triggered, and I would say it's the same. We talk about a cell energy issue happening first, a gene getting turned on, and if it's a gene like an onco gene, it can lead to tumor formation or cancer. That is really what's happening, and yet we have very little money going into that. I hope that's going to change with his book and now others really banding behind him in the realization that cancer is, in fact, a metabolic disease.

Now that wasn't just started with Seyfried. He looked back, and I think really proof text, a lot of work that was done by a gentleman in the early 1900s named Otto Warburg who is known for the Warburg effect. He actually won a Nobel prize; I think it was 1931. He was actually up for another Nobel prize but because he was German, Hitler refused to allow Germans to actually accept the Nobel prize, so good old Warburg missed his second one.

He showed the Warburg effect, as we know it, I'll keep it very simple, is basically cancer cells can only use glucose for energy and oxygen. That is really a big deal because if they can only use glucose, and they cannot use fat or ketones, then that would change the way we treat cancer, and it is.

We'll talk a little bit today of how ketones, fasting, intermittent fasting, these subjects that we talk a lot about, how that really is one of the things that Seyfried and others are doing these strategies to actually really make a bigger impact in cancer than all of this genome therapy and all of these other therapies that are being done. Really big news here, and I think that most people don't understand this or knows this, but Warburg was right. Cancer can only use glucose, and we'll talk a little bit about how this happens. Therefore, if we change the energy the cell uses to where it can only use fat and ketones, if cancer cells can only use glucose, then you can imagine what's happening to cancer.

It gives the immune system a chance to actually get rid of this, and look, Seyfried talks about this. This isn't a treatment for cancer. I want to say that right now at the top of this show and his show. This is really more of a strategy. This is amazing when you look at some of these topics that we're going to be discussing in both of these shows. This is a strategy to prevent cancer. It could be a strategy used with other strategies to really give the body a chance to beat cancer, so we'll say that right at the top of the show.

Meredith:
Wow, such exciting information that is not widespread enough. All of you out there, definitely share this information with your friends and family because this is really cutting edge information that cancer is a metabolic disorder, and that cancer cells feed on glucose for fuel. It's pretty incredible, and it really plays into the ketogenic diet that you talk a lot about. Maybe we can go into that and its role, the ketogenic diet's role, as a cancer treatment and how we can think about what's going on at the cellular level during ketosis that can impact cancer.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I think you have the few of those of you watching don’t understand what a ketogenic diet is. We’ve written two articles on that on our website. You just put that right into DrPompa.com, and right up in the article search, and it’ll take you to those articles, how to get into ketosis, the value of it.

It basically is this: by getting carbohydrates under a certain amount, we can force the body to use only fat for energy. What happens in that state, glucose goes down, and it starts to metabolize fat, so the cells start to use fat, and it gives off something called ketones as a byproduct of fat metabolism breaking fat down for energy. Those ketones are actually needed for your brain because your brain can’t use fat for energy. It needs ketones, and other cells in the body use these ketones.

As the glucose drops, ketones rise to make up that energy difference, especially what the brain needs. Ketones have a lot of major benefits. We know it turns on the CERT 1 longevity gene, so people live longer. It also has a major decrease in inflammation. It burns extremely clean in the cells, so it lowers that oxidated stress in the cell. All these wonderful, amazing things happen when we elevate ketones.

We know that years ago, they did it to fix brain conditions, and epilepsy, and other brain conditions because ketones heal the cell and the brain. When we look at our ancestors, we know that they went in and out of ketosis many times just because of the lack of food. They just weren’t eating as much, and they would go into this ketotic state, and healing would occur. At one of the seminars for my doctors, I talked about the Hunzu [sic.] tribe. They thought all these reasons why the Hunzu live longer, and it really came down to the diet variation.

An article that I wrote – there’s another article for you to read, “Diet Variation.” What happens in the summertime, many people thought they were just vegetarians because the British would go there in the summer, and they would see them only eat vegetables. Then what would happen is they weren’t there in the winter when all they ate was meat, fat, dairy, dairy fat, and all this stuff because that’s what they ate in the winter. What they also didn’t see is what happened in the spring, where they actually starved. It was called starving spring. In the old days, they had to do it, and then it became part of their culture where they would just fast for these periods of time because they didn’t have that transition for where they could grow their vegetables in the summer.

It was cited that this is why they live longer. It’s because the diet variation and this fasting period. Glucose goes down; ketones go up. Amazing stuff happens. Many of the Hunzu people, a hundred and twenty-some years old, barely sick a day in their life. That was actually the title that I showed at the seminar.

Amazing things happen at the cellular level. Yes, when you go into ketosis, ketones go up, but also what happens is the body goes into an autolytic or an autophage where it eats up the bad stuff, as well. The body starts to clear out cancer cells, especially when you utilize ketosis, this specific diet, with a lack of food. In our world, we call that – we’ve talked about block intermittent fasts, where we go four days on just beef stock, water, or even whey water. We talked a lot about that. We’ve done past episodes on that. I don’t remember what the episode numbers are. Maybe you do, Meredith.

We also can do it with daily intermittent fasting like I do, where I don’t eat until – I go 18, 20 hours without food from dinner all the way through don’t eat breakfast. I’m putting my body in a state without food, and again, the body starts to eat up bad stuff. Amazing stuff happens. When we combine ketosis with this restriction, as you’ll hear Dr. Seyfried talk about, whether it be a block fast or this daily intermittent fasting, we starve out bad cells, aka cancer cells. Also, studies show that it fixes this problem in the cell.

I want to talk more about what problem I’m talking about for people that aren’t understanding what’s happening and why disease is occurring because of this bad energy in the cells. Maybe I should go to my board and give this better explanation.

Meredith:
I have a quick question, too. With the KGR, the keto diet in kind of a restriction phase, what type of caloric intake are you looking at on a day-to-day basis? For someone that’s watching that’s maybe interested in trying this out, what would you suggest keeping the calories around to fall within the KDR recommendations?

Dr. Pompa:
I think that for me, I don’t even count calories. I just don’t eat until later in the afternoon. At the end of the day, I’m just getting less calories. One thing with most people watching this show and I have, I’m not for caloric restriction diets. You can’t just say, “I’m going to eat less.” I eat less at the end of my day because I’m not hungry, but I had to get myself efficiently burning fat to do that.

Meredith:
It doesn’t happen overnight.

Dr. Pompa:
Right. Caloric restriction diets never work long-term because it’s like, “Okay, I’m just not going to eat. I’m not going to eat.” Eventually, you go, “Oh, my god, I have to eat!” You see the bread, and you go for it because most of those people are not efficient fat burners, and therefore, pushing food away doesn’t work. When we look at studies, all studies show if you want to live longer, you have to eat less, but it’s not about pushing food away.

If you interview the Okinawan people, or the Tibetans, or the Hunzu people, they eat very little. They don’t eat a lot of caloric intake. However, none of them are pushing food away. They eat to full just like I do. Matter of fact, one of the principles I always say when you’re doing intermittent fasting daily, where you don’t eat until later in the day, you have to eat a big dinner, otherwise your body may think it’s starving. We eat a big dinner so it has plenty of refuel, so to speak.

I don’t know that there’s a number of calories that I want to force people into. I think that when we use strategies of periodically fasting every once in a while – Seyfriend talks in his book about a fast, a 10-day fast once a year. It decreases your cancer – talk about cancer prevention massively just doing one fast a year.

Meredith:
That’s a water fast, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. In his work and others, we know that if you get your glucose down to a certain point where we call the target zone, glucose down to 55 to 65, and your ketones go above 2, even if you’re doing a beef stock fast, we know that it will work. We know that it will work even on a beef stock fast. Getting the glucose down and the ketones up, that’s the key. Whether it’s water or whether it’s beef stock, if that occurs, you are starving down bad cells, cancer cells. Your body’s going through this autophage or autolytic, where it’s eating bad cells, starving them down because they don’t have enough glucose. Then the immune system gets rid of them.

Meredith:
You’re in ketosis, too.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Matter of fact, when you do a block fast, where you’re fasting for four days, you’re literally going into ketosis in three days, meaning that if you measured your glucose, you’re going to be somewhere around 55 to 65, and your ketones are going to be above 2. What would normally take two or three weeks to adapt into that phase of ketosis, meaning your ketones are between .5 and 5, you’re pushing them up above 2 in three days. That’s the benefit of a block fast. That’s called restriction. We’re restricting calories for a short period of time, but see, magic happens.

We’re eating up bad cells. We’re starving down cancer cells. All of us have cancer cells. We’re preventing it. We’re starving down the bad cells and the cancer cells before they even occur. Hey, we’re talking about prevention here. I don’t have to talk about treatment. You can put your own imagination to it and go, “Wait a minute. This makes more sense.” According to those studies, it sure does. This is where the billions of dollars should be going into.

When you put people in a ketotic state, forcing their cells to burn fat, cancer cells can’t use fat. There’s brilliance right away. Now, when we add the restriction of putting it with fast, either four-day fast, ten-day fast, water fasting, beef stock fasting, or daily fasting, we know that we know that we’re extending life. Studies show it; it’s not my opinion. Okay, let’s look at what’s happening. I draw a lot of cells, and I want to give myself room here on this board. Can you see that?

Meredith:
Cool! Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Good. All right. That’s a cell. In the cell, we have these things called mitochondria. That’s where we make energy. Simply put, these are factories. Most cells have hundreds. Some of cells have thousands of these little energy factories, believe it or not. Heart cells have the most. This is where we make – I’m going to put ATP in here. I don’t think you can see that. Can you see that little ATP?

Meredith:
Yes, I can. I didn’t know that different cells had different number of mitochondria. That’s something I -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Heart cells have a – your muscle cells have more. Cells that need more energy – the heart is massive energy. They have more cells. Makes sense, right? I’ll say this, too: Sick people have less ATP. I’m sorry. Yes, they do have less ATP, but they have less mitochondria. Athletes have more mitochondria per cell because why? It’s an adaptation. Their cells need so much energy and fuel that they make – they have more mitochondria. They literally synthesize more mitochondria in their cells. Sick people less; athletes more. All right.

The mitochondria is where we make this ATP. It’s the gasoline in the cell. It’s what everything happens. Matter of fact, how you move things in and out of the cells, it’s all energy-dependent, most of it. Everything happens with energy, how you detox the cell, every pathway. All energy, right here. You can’t think without that ATP. You can’t live without ATP.

Here’s the thing: Again, if you look at this, R number 1 is remove the source. I’m just going to put toxins. R number 2 is we have to regenerate the cell membrane. This is important. Regenerate the cell membrane. R 3 is we have to restore, what, cell energy.

Meredith:
You need those mitochondria.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. I’m going to leave it at that for right now. Now, what these studies are showing is this: We’ve known this even in our work. Certain toxins, R number 1, is coming in in this membrane. In this mitochondria, there’s a very neat membrane inside there called the inner membrane. This is where we make a process – that’s where we make 90% of our ATP. It’s through a process called oxidative phosphorylization [sic.]. I just lost some of you. Please hang with me.

That’s just a process called respiration. It’s a process that we need oxygen, and we make from that oxygen with glucose and other things, we make most of our ATP though that very efficient process. Now, if you have no oxygen, there’s another process called glycolysis that uses no oxygen. It uses only stored sugar called glycogen. Sprint down the road, you don’t have time to take your oxygen, aerobic energy. That’s called aerobics where you use oxygen for energy, and that’s that 90% of the energy. If you start sprinting, you need – you don’t have time, so you take stored glucose, and you make a few ATP just to make it, but that doesn’t last. Your thighs burn, and you have to quit. It’s not as efficient. Does that help, people? Okay.

Most of the energies made in this very efficient process called oxidative phosphorylization – this is what I want you to know. In this inner membrane, your body transports electrons across here, and it makes this ATP very efficiently. Now, when toxins damage that – I’ll put toxins as an X. They come in and damage that inner membrane. Now you don’t make as much ATP from that source because the membrane’s damaged that makes that ATP.

R number 1, toxins, affect the membrane, R number 2, this inner membrane where most of the cellular energy is made. You need that inner membrane to make the energy. If the toxins damage the membrane, which they do because the membrane’s very fragile, and toxins cause inflammation. Gosh, R 4. R 4 is reducing inflammation. The toxins drive inflammation that damages the membrane. Now we don’t make enough energy, so the energy drops.

Now, here’s what Seyfriend and other explain, and Warburg effect explained this a long time ago, Dr. Warburg. What happens is now we don’t make enough energy, so the body, the cell, starts to adapt. It wants to live. Now, a good cells goes, “Okay, we’re not making energy efficiently enough.” A good cell dies. A naughty cell goes, “We’re going to upregulate that glycolysis that only uses glucose, and we’re going to make up that energy loss from the damaged membrane, R number 2, from the toxins, R number 1, and we’re going to make up that energy loss. We’re going to utilize more glucose, aka cancer cell.” Got it?

Now, how does it do that? When the energy loss goes down because of the damaged membrane, what happens is this: It turns on a gene, one which is called and oncogene. See, the gene comes second. We have this disrupt in the membrane from a toxic source of some type of stressor. It could be another thing, but typically toxin. Stressor damages membrane. Membrane drops energy. When the energy drops, the cell triggers a gene, and it adapts. Now, it’s surviving on glucose, abnormal cell.

Through this process that we’re talking about of putting someone in ketosis, where we force the cell to use fat and ketones for energy only, we can redirect this energy source. Now, what happens, is these naughty, bad cells start to die off, and we don’t produce more of them. It’s brilliant. Also, through this process, we’re fixing these mitochondria because guess what. Ketones and fat fix the membranes in the other cells. We’re fixing the membranes. We’re restoring the energy in the other cells, so that’s the key. It down-regulates inflammation. R number 5, by the way, is – we’ll just put the DNA that’s reestablishing methylation, and methylation plays into DNA. We want to turn off the gene.

The gene doesn’t happen first. The gene gets turned on because of the damage to the mitochondria, a drop in cellular energy ultimately caused by the toxin. I just went through the whole 5 Rs and how that leads to cancer. Here’s the thing: If it turns on another gene, instead of cancer, maybe it’s chronic fatigue. Instead of chronic fatigue, maybe it’s a thyroid condition. You see, we turn on the genes of our genetic weakness.

The point is this: It starts with a toxin that damages the membrane in the mitochondria that makes energy, and the drop in energy causes a trigger of the gene. That triggers the problem. That’s what’s happening. Seyfried and Warburg realized that it’s not the gene first. It is, in fact, a disrupt in cellular metabolism or energy that’s starting the process.

Meredith:
It makes perfect sense why this targeted gene therapy isn’t working.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not working. It’s not about a gene. I feel that in some respects, we’re making the same mistake today, even in the alternative world, where we’re chasing all these snips in the genes, the MTHFR, and this snip, and that snip. Really, what is that doing for our treatments? Really, not much because the body finds pathways around these different snips. It’s more complicated than that. This is the issue. This is why people are sick today. The 5 Rs is just simply a roadmap to fixing the problem.

Look, let’s put it all into context. I’m going to flip this. This is the back of a little piece of paper that I’m using. Okay. Ignore the little thing there. All right. I have drawn this, the stool. Right? Remember the stool?

Meredith:
The good, old, three-legged stool. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I use this as analogy of autoimmune, but really, it’s analogy for all disease. It puts it into context. The analogy of a three-legged stool is if one leg’s missing, it doesn’t hold up. We know that it’s an analogy for the cause and also for the solution of these diseases, autoimmune and others. Here’s the point: We have a gene that gets turned on, epigenetics. Toxins turn on a gene. I just explained that, how the lack of energy can trigger a gene in the cell. A gene gets turned on, and that’s how things start to be expressed, whether it’s thyroid, diabetes, or cancer.

Now, we know that there’s certain stressors, so if I write stressors here – that can turn on that gene. Those stressors could be toxins. Those stressors could be emotional. They could be physical stressors. We know that stressors, physical, chemical, or emotional, can turn on genes. Women say, “Well, gosh, all this started after I was pregnant.” There’s a toxic component from lead coming out of their bones, perhaps, and an emotional component, and a physical component. No wonder a lot of disease and autoimmune starts after pregnancy. Auto accidents, anything, it doesn’t matter, toxic exposures triggers a gene. That gene starts expressing a new thyroid condition, and a new, weird skin condition, or just fatigue. Who know? It triggers a disease we don’t like.

Now, we know that the gut or what we call the microbiome, our special set of good bacteria, bad bacteria that make up who we are – we’ve talked a lot about that. Gut issues today, leaky gut – I could put gut, leaky gut – are part of this why disease is occurring. Certain bacteria, we know, can turn good genes on and bad genes off or bad genes on if it’s bad bacteria. We know the gut, leaky gut, is a stressor that also can turn those genes on. Also, a leaky gut can add to the stressors that turn on the genes that way.

This three-legged stool is an understanding for how diseases are arising today. The gut gets disrupted. Stressors turning on certain gene, but it also gives us the solution. If we can turn off the gene – we can’t do that until we get rid of the stressors. By the way, I’m going to label things here. I’m going to do this: I’m trying to do it all. I’m going to be doing too many areas. I should have drew this smaller. Okay.

Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to put true cellular detox. I’m going to draw a line from stressors – I’ll draw that one up just to give myself room. True cellular detox, please read the article or watch the video I’ve done on that. If we’re going to remove stressors, really, all detox has to happen at the cellular level. That’s what I call true cellular detox. The 5 Rs plays into that. Watch the video. Read the article. The 5 Rs also plays into turning off the genes. You can’t turn off bad genes without fixing the membrane. You can’t turn off bad genes, as I just explained, without increasing cellular energy. You can’t turn off bad genes without changing methylation. That’s R number 5.

Really, the 5 Rs is how we turn off genes. We do a lot of supplementation, and things, and even diet that plays into the 5 Rs to turn off the genes. Remove stressors, true cellular detox. Turning off genes, the 5 Rs. The 5 Rs also plays into detox. Can’t separate any of it. The gut, we use things called ancient healing strategies. Ancient healing strategies are strategies like intermittent fasting, block fasting, diet variation. We just talked about that. That’s one of the ways that we heal the gut, down-regulate inflammation.

When we put the 5 Rs with true cellular detox and ancient healing strategies like these fasting strategies, and ketosis, and changing the diet, we hit every leg of the stool of why people are getting sick today. The fasting, the dietary changes, the true cellular detox, the 5 R strategy, that puts everything that we do into context. I’ll sit back down. If I have to jump back up to that, I will. I want people to understand there’s a context to these things.

We talk a lot about the 5 Rs. Where does that play in? It plays into fixing the cell so it detoxes correctly. It also turns off the bad genes. That’s where the 5 Rs plays in. It’s just a roadmap of how we fix the cell. That’s key. You can’t detox unless the cell pathways are fixed, so the 5 Rs plays into everything. The 5 Rs plays into even fixing the gut. It really plays into all of them, but you have to fix the cell to get well. We have to turn those genes off to get well. We have to detox upstream at the cell to get well.

Then we have the true cellular detox, which is a whole system that we teach of how real detox is. These strategies that we’re talking about of fasting, changing the diet, restricting food for periods of times, putting it all together, Meredith, I opened up a can of worms. That’s what we do. In context of the stool, and the stool is context of how we’re getting sick, and where we’re putting these strategies in place. When people hear all these testimonies of people getting their lives back, that’s it. That’s it right there.

Meredith:
It is -inaudible-. I know you said it takes all three to get sick, but it does take all three to get better, too, which is amazing how it comes into context, and it makes so much sense. Perhaps someone is listening to us, perhaps, for the first time, and they’re sick. They have cancer, or serious autoimmune disease, some major health challenge, and possibly just a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of work it’s going to take to get well. What would you say to someone that is not well, that is overwhelmed with just what you suggested doing? Where would someone begin?

Dr. Pompa:
Look, I would begin by watching the past shows that we had, honestly.

Meredith:
-inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
We wrote articles, the 5 Strategy articles, which is soon to be a book. In those articles, we talk about intermittent fasting, daily intermittent fasting like I do. I don’t go until later to eat. We talk about block fasting. We’ve done shows on whey water fasts, beef stock fasts. We’ve done shows on all of these things. It’s in those articles and even videos connected to that. Diet variation, how we go from ketosis to a cellular healing diet, it’s all there. Start by getting that education. Come back to this show and re-watch it. That, what I just did, puts it in context, that three-legged stool.

I’ve written articles on every 5 R, of how we fix the cell. Those 5 Rs are just a roadmap that do it. Ultimately, it is about turning off genes, but 5 Rs is part of how you detox a cell. Read the article, True Cellular Detox because that is what detox really is. Today we know that toxins are the issue. I explained how the toxin damages that mitochondrial membrane, which knocks down the cellular energy. Then the cellular energy being lower, the body recruits a different energy source, and that’s a cancer cell. That’s what cancer cells are doing, all from the drop of energy, all really from toxic input.

True cellular detox, you can’t do anything without going upstream and removing those toxic sources. Otherwise, you’re going to keep making bad cells. We know that utilizing these ancient healing strategies of fasting and ketosis, we can really heal that cell. I guess the point is this: The 5 R strategies have to be a part of the whole solution. The detox done at the cellular level, true cellular detox, has to be a part. That’s the center leg. Then, of course, these ancient healing strategies, utilizing ketosis, utilizing fasting, utilizing the cellular healing diet, that has to be a part of the strategy.

That’s not my opinion. When you look at these experts saying, “Hey, cancer is a metabolic disease. This is what’s happening at the cellular level.” Study after study discussing this, showing that if we can fix that mitochondrial membrane, we can fix the cellular energy. How are they doing it? These intermittent fasts, the ketosis, ancient healing strategies. Put that with the 5 Rs, put that with true cellular detox, that’s the three legs. There’s the cause. The solutions line up, 5 Rs, true cellular detox, ancient healing strategies. Again, what are the ancient healing strategies? It lists about block fasts, at least four days of a water fast, a beef stock fast, or daily intermittent fasting. That’s another strategy.

Meredith:
-inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
Varying the diet, ketosis with those things, moving them out of ketosis, cellular healing diet – again, it’s in the article, Diet Variation. If you think about ancient healing strategies, those fasts with diet variation. True cellular detox, that’s from the cell all the way down. If you read the article and watch the video, you’ll understand more of that. Then the 5 Rs is the roadmap to fixing the cell. Again, putting everything in context, I think, is giving people a good understanding of what we’re doing and how we’re getting people well.

Meredith:
Mm-hmm. Do you tend to do all of these strategies at the same time, or do you think it’s wise to start someone with the intermittent fasting, and then move onto maybe a block fast, and then incorporating detox? How does the time line go?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. I think it’s different for everybody, but yeah, you kind of layer it in. The 5 Rs, we’ve established many different strategies with each R, and we keep developing even new products around each R. There’s not one product for this, and one product for that. We really have many, many strategies we’re building in. We have them on many different products that affect each different R, and sometimes just maybe two of the five Rs. There’s no order there, but we’re always affecting the cell function. That’s what the Rs are really about is a roadmap to what we fix in the cell.

That’s going on, and then oftentimes, like you said, detox, there’s three phases to true cellular detox. The first phase is a preparatory phase. We don’t even start detox sometimes until months later because we’re preparing for that. Sometimes the ancient healing, we’re starting people with just, “Hey, stop snacking through the day. Stop eating five times a day because that’s stressing your cell. Let’s just go to three meals, then maybe two meals.” Then we do a block fast maybe a month later, where we do four days of just whey water or beef stock, something like that.

It’s step by step, but these things are going on – all three legs of the stool are going on, parts of them, simultaneously or individually. I know that’s a mixed answer, but we utilize all these strategies. Really, what I call it is a multi-therapeutic approach. There’s not one fix for anything, is there? What studies are showing is when you have a multi-therapeutic approach, when you’re utilizing these fasts, when you’re utilizing a lot of the nutrients that we utilize in the 5 Rs, and when you really utilize true detox, that’s a multi-therapeutic approach. That’s what works.

Most people who are watching this are challenged. You need a coach. We’ve trained at least 60 doctors around the country in this multi-therapeutic approach, in these things like the 5 Rs, ancient healing. We’re training more. I work virtually. I have clients all over the world, and I coach them. It’s not about treating people; it’s coaching them so they can learn this process.

You know, Meredith, I’d have to say this: Back in the day, where I had a brick and mortar practice, if people came in, there was treatments there, and they would come in, treatment. When I started teaching seminars and I really wasn’t able to run a practice like that anymore, I started coaching people online. I was really worried. What about that treatment? The magic happened in the fact that I was forced to actually teach people this, what I’m showing you. We were forced to teach people the process of what true cellular detox is, forced to teach people what ancient healing is, and how to do these things. When they learn, then they can do it continually.

See, no one gets their life back in months? Why? It took you years to get where you are. You learn these things. If you were going to improve your golf game, for goodness sakes, you would hire a coach, right? You need to be taught this process of true cellular detox, what these phases look like. You need to be taught ancient healing and the 5 Rs, how to fix the cell, how to detox a cell. When you get empowered with that information, now you can continue to do it. That’s how I got my life back and thousands of others got their lives back. The trick, the key, was in the teaching, the coaching, the empowering the person.

Treatments are not your answer, folks. If you are already chronically challenged, treatments are not your answer. I’ll say it again. You have to be willing to be educated. When I take someone on, Meredith, I interview them just to see if they are, in fact, willing, what they’ve done. “Are you willing to learn? Do you want to learn? Do you want to participate in your own rescue?” Those are the people who, I believe, will get well. That is empowering. You need the power. You need the knowledge.

Anyways, yeah. We need to be educated in this process, but the fact is when you see these testimonies, those people learned this process. It’s not like you can just, “Oh, there’s one thing.” It doesn’t work like that.

Meredith:
No one thing, and teaching people to fish is so empowering. That’s really where the success and the results lie is people taking this knowledge and really implementing it for the rest of their lives. It’s not overnight. It’s not short-term. It does take a massive commitment on your part to change your life when you are that sick.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Everyone’s looking for the single bullet, the miracle product. They’ll spend thousands –

Meredith:
For gene therapy.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Everyone just wants it to be a gene. Everyone wants the drug that changes the gene, which is completely failing. Everybody wants the supplement that’s going to fix their gut. No. It’s going to take ancient healing strategies to fix your gut. Everyone wants that, “Oh, I did that 10-day cleanse.” It took you about 30 years to get as toxic as you are. You’re going to have to learn the process of true cellular detox. It took years for your cells to get the way they are. You’re going to have to learn the process of the 5 Rs and how to fix the cell. If you do, you’ll get your life back. Meredith, we saw how many doctors this weekend? They got their lives back. Many of them were clients of mine, the doctors that we teach.

Meredith:
Amazing transformations.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, amazing transformations, and they did it because they taught themselves the process. People watch testimonies here, and you hear these stories. Every one of those people, they learned these processes. They got what that three-legged stool is about. They got the 5 Rs. They understood how to rotate products there. They learned true cellular detox better than their doctors of what detox is, and they learned to utilize ancient healing strategies. The way out, maybe not easy because you’re going to have to participate. If it’s easy, it’s probably not real, and it’s probably not true.

Meredith:
Yeah. It’s so true. I hear often, too, “Oh, I’ve gone gluten free,” or, “Oh, I’m exercising all the time. Why am I not seeing results?” They’re just not getting to the cellular level. That is the beauty of all of these strategies, implementing the 5 Rs, true cellular detox, ancient healing. These strategies and these tools that Dr. Pompa is teaching work. They are amazing, but it takes commitment, and it takes changing your life. A lot of people just don’t want to do that, unfortunately. That’s the reality, and they don’t get the results, either.

Dr. Pompa:
Again, it is putting it all together. I think, Meredith, maybe you and I do a better job of always putting things into that context of the three-legged stool and always saying, “Yeah, it’s 5 Rs, fixing the cell, true cellular detox, and these ancient healing strategies.” If we just keep pointing people at that context of those legs, people are going to start to get it. We’ll change more lives. There’s no doubt about it.

I think the work of Seyfried, who really dug through Otto Warburg’s work – I kind of have to tell that little story there. I think I started the doctors’ seminar a few weeks ago with that story. My wife was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous uterine cancer. We stepped back because they wanted to do the typical thing. They wanted to go in and remove tissue and the whole works. Her and I stepped back and just said, “That’s just not the way we think.” This is before I knew she had high lead. This is before I knew that she had all these hormone problems.

Hello! She was already forming cervical cancer. I said uterine. I’m sorry. Her mother was uterine. My wife was cervical cancer. I started digging in, and I found Warburg’s work, Otto Warburg talking about fasting. It led me to a guy named Herbert Shelton that really educated me about water fasting. I read all their work, and that’s where I got my early education and training in water fasting and fasting, period. That was some years ago. My wife did a 13-day fast. Now, I can tell you that –

Meredith:
Water fast, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, a water fast. Right. That was just water. Right. Just doing one fast a year and how that diminishes ninety-some percent of all cancer, talk about prevention. We know even these shorter block fasts, whether it’s four-days fasts, a few of those a year dramatically decrease your cancer rates, the prevention of cancer. I watched her change during that fast. Whatever time later, she went in, and they re-looked at it. What they said would be impossible, they said, “Don’t know how that” – they couldn’t explain that it was completely gone. Every bad cell was gone. They couldn’t find a bad cell.

During the fast, her body ate up the bad stuff. Starve down, went into ketosis, low glucose, elevated ketones, turned off the genes. Everything I just showed you, that’s what happened. Of course, that’s what happened. That got me interested years ago in the power of fasting and how it works. These restricted times of food, like the Hunzu people. Every spring, they would fast. No wonder they live so long. You know what, folks watching this? You can do the same thing. If you’re perfectly healthy, still do a fast. I’m doing one in December. I’m going to do a beef stock fast for at least four days. Every fast, you get healthier. Every fast, you get healthier.

Many of my clients, I have them doing four-day fasts once a month. Why? We’re eating out the bad cells. We’re raising ketones, lowering glucose, downregulating inflammation, turning on the good genes like the CERT 1 longevity gene. We’re also fixing that mitochondrial membrane. We’re fixing that inner membrane. We’re increasing how the energy’s made. We’re autolytic, eating up the bad cells. Every fast, healing occurs. That’s key.

Some of my clients, I have them do a four-day fast every other month. Many of them, I get them to do what I do. We daily intermittent fast, where we don’t eat for 18, 20 hours. In that time, autolytic occurrence, growth hormones rising, ketones are rising. Again, those things heal the cell, down-regulate inflammation, upregulate all the good hormones. Those strategies, I’m healthy now, and I do them, and Meredith, so do you.

Meredith:
I do. I did a bone broth fast last month, and I’ll be doing one next month. I was thinking, the whole winter months, too, I’ll do that four-day bone broth fast because it’s cold here in Pittsburgh, and it’s such a soothing thing to do. I feel so good after I do it. It is so, so worth it. I encourage any of you out there to open your mind because fasting – I know a lot of people just are turned off or are fearful about fasting, but it is an incredible, simple, but such a profound strategy to massively transform your health. Very, very important to just stay open and give it a try.

Dr. Pompa:
Most people who are already challenged, hire a coach. Remember, it’s a three-legged stool. It’s not just about the fasting. It is about the true cellular detox. If you don’t remove what’s upstream, you’re never doing to turn off the DNA, which is the first leg of the stool. We need the 5 Rs in those strategies. You need a coach to teach you them to turn off the gene. If you don’t true cellular detox, you’re never going to turn off the gene. These ancient healing strategies, if you’re very healthy, you’re healthy already, great. Put them into play. If you’re challenged, get a coach so you can put it all into play.

My wife did a beef stock fast, maybe it’s two months now, ago. She had this back thing. It was the only thing that really helped, it was getting so bad, this back pain from her sacrum. In each fast, healing occurs. When you put it in context of going upstream and really getting rid of these toxic sources, changing the gene expression, it works. It works.

Let’s give one more promotion. December 11th, folks, please watch the episode. Again, I almost wish – because people go back and watch these shows, do in your head right now, figure out which show number that would be. Can you do that?

Meredith:
I think it’ll be 94, Episode 94.

Dr. Pompa:
This is 92. Watch Episode 94. I think this is a great prelude to that because explaining that, hey, this is how, even more than just cancer, disease is occurring. You’re going to hear from Dr. Seyfried about this in context of cancer, how cancer is a metabolic disease. You’ll hear more strategies about fasting. You’ll hear more strategies about utilizing that with ketosis. We’re going to talk about all of that, and maybe in the mean time, you all can send some questions in to Meredith. Meredith, how can they do that between this show and that – that they might have for Dr. Seyfried? How can they send some questions along the way that we could say, “Hey, some of our audience asked these questions?” They can get to you how?

Meredith:
You can send them right to me. It’s Meredith@DrPompa.com. M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H at D-R-P-O-M-P-A dot-com. Feel free to send me any questions. Happy to ask Professor Seyfried on the show. I’m really, really excited about the show. Also, this information that you shared with us today, Dr. Pompa, on the true roots of cancer and pretty much all disease, it makes so much sense, and it is such powerful information. I’m sure a lot of you will have to just re-listen to this episode many, many times because it’s just so jam-packed with such cutting edge information that we need to know to make a difference in our own lives, and in our health conditions, and to help others, as well.

Thank you, Dr. Pompa. Please share this episode, and send it to friends and family who you know are suffering, that need to know this information.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Meredith:
Yeah. Anything else you’d like to add, Dr. Pompa?

Dr. Pompa:
No. That’s it. I can’t wait for that show, myself. I’m excited. What’s the next show?

Meredith:
Yes, that is next week. It’ll be Episode 93, we have your friend, Dan Howard, on the show. He’s local. He’s in Pittsburgh, and he is a mold expert. He’s going to be talking about mold remediation, so how to clean up your home if you’ve had mold issues, how to know if you have mold issues. He’s an expert. I know he is a wealth of information on the whole topic of mold, so it is going to be a really, really interesting show.

Dr. Pompa:
Another major toxin that triggers major genes that cause major disease. We get a lot of questions how to remediate homes safely and on mold. We’ll see on that show. It’ll be great. Thank you, Meredith.

Meredith:
All right. Thank you, Dr. Pompa, and we’ll see you guys next time. Have a wonderful weekend.

91: Strategies to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

Transcript of Episode 91: Strategies to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Meredith Dykstra.

Meredith:
Fun! Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. This is Episode 91, and I have Dr. Pompa here on the call. We have a really fun topic for you guys today. First of all, let’s see how you’re doing, Dr. Pompa. It looks like you have a different background there.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah. Hey! I’m doing wonderful. Here we are, I’m in a beautiful place preparing for lectures in the future. I have to sometimes get away to actually get ‘er done. You know that, Meredith. Here I am in a really nice location to do that. With Thanksgiving coming up, I cannot wait to take a little break. Guess where I’m going for Thanksgiving. I’m going to Jackson Hole for Thanksgiving. Remember the video I shot there?

Meredith:
Last year, I do remember.

Dr. Pompa:
I went there, and I was looking at these primitive diets because they have a few museums there, a lot about that, and just looking at what these people ate. I love Jackson Hole, and I’m spending Thanksgiving there with the family, so cannot wait! We have a great message as these seasons come up, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Meredith, do you gain weight? Do you gain weight during the holidays?

Meredith:
Over the holidays? It’s funny you ask. I used to before I met you. I joined with our team here and our mission and learned this incredible information. I definitely used to binge and eat very, very indulgent foods that I still can enjoy, but with some different strategies where I don’t gain the weight anymore over the holidays. It’s a really nice thing to experience, I have to say. Do you gain weight over the holidays?

Dr. Pompa:
I do not. I do not. As you said that, maybe I did, too, at one point. As today’s show is how to go through the holidays without gaining weight – no. I’m always asked this question. We don’t gain weight, but I’m always asked, “Well, yeah, but you don’t eat the things. You’re not going to partake in this great meal.” Ah, not true! I will eat like a king. I will feast. I will have great things.

Granted, I’m not going to eat a lot of the crap. I like to make healthier pies. We do definitely healthier things, but I promise you, I will have pie. I will have some ice cream. I will have some things that most people would say, “Oh, my gosh, Dr. Pompa doesn’t eat.” I promise you, I will not gain weight because of these 10 strategies that Meredith, you actually put most of these together. I think that these are the strategies that you and I do. We went over them. We’re like, “Yeah, this is what I do. This is what I do.” That’s how I can even enjoy some of these foods that I normally don’t even eat and still not gain weight. Let’s get into them. Guide us through.

Meredith:
Awesome. All right, guys. Ten strategies to help you avoid weight gain during the holidays, so listen up. We’re going to dive right in. All right. The first one here, you’ve heard us talk about this on the show before, but there are kind of some specific strategies you can use over the holidays, as well, for this one. Strategy number one is intermittent fasting. Now Dr. Pompa, how can this help us to not gain weight over the holidays?

Dr. Pompa:
Intermittent fasting is a strategy to get your body to really be a more efficient fat burner. The old adage of eating six meals a day, spreading out your meals, we know on the short term, that works, but we never give our body a chance to actually burn fat. Something that you and I both do is we intermittent fast daily. That means that we give ourselves 16, 18 hours in between dinner and breakfast or our next meal, which wouldn’t be breakfast. It’s typically lunch. We give ourselves that amount of time to burn our fat.

Amazing stuff happens when we don’t eat. Growth hormone goes up. Anabolic hormones that we need to be lean, and lose fat, and use fat for energy rise, and we go into this stage where our bodies literally clean up our cells. Matter of fact, it’s something called autolytic behavior takes place, where our bodies automatically start eating bad stuff. That even happens when we’re not eating, or it’s called autophage, where the body starts eating bad cancer cells and bad cells that need to go away or potentially could be cancer cells.

That happens when we do these intermittent fasts. Hormones go in the right direction. Our body starts to eat the bad stuff, and it utilizes its fat for energy. Then something else miraculous happens. What happens is our glucose levels go down, and our body compensates for that by raising something called ketones, which we know heal the brain, downregulate inflammation, the cause of all disease, turns on our longevities, our genes that are involved in living longer, the certain one gene. People in studies that do this type of fasting, intermittent fasting, we know that they live longer.

I’ll tell you, I just found a great thing if I can find it here. I have to read this. I’m not going to slow you down too much, but I promise you, this will be worth it. In my studies, I found this – well, almost found this. Hold on. I’m going to get there. Don’t you worry. We’re all familiar with the Hunzu [sic.] people, right? I’m going to read a title for you. They Live for 120 Years, They Look Twice as Young, and Haven’t Been Sick for One Day, All Secrets of the People. This is the Hunzu tribes. I just lost my page. There it is. Okay.

This is the secret of the Hunzu tribes. It says, “During the summer, they eat fresh vegetables and fruit, and when winter comes, they consume a diet of apricots, sheep milk, cheese.” It’s a very different diet than they consume in the summer, which is obviously a higher fruits and vegetable diet. “This is the time when the Hunzu eat – then there is a time when the Hunzu eat nothing, a period known as starving spring.”

What happens is is these people fast even spring. They take their bodies through this amazing thing. Also, we’re going to get to this, that’s also diet variation, isn’t it? Their diet shifts, and they say they’re finding out that these times where they literally don’t eat, times where they change and eat much less, and then times where they feast on fats is why they live so long.

Meredith, when I read that article, I’m saying, “Oh my gosh! This is what we do.” You’re going to hear that principle in -inaudible-. From that, we can refer back to it just to – but these fasts like that and fasting daily really is a strategy to live longer, be healthier -inaudible-.

Meredith:
Just out of curiosity, how long were the Hunzu people fasting in the spring?

Dr. Pompa:
I have to find out more, but it looks like they went with very little food for months, a couple months, very little. It looked like they’d go a week, and then have a little bit, and a week, and then have a little bit. It looked like a very varied fast for a long period of time. It’s kind of neat when you look at that.

Meredith:
Awesome. I love it. With the intermittent fasting, too, just around the holidays to kind of bring it back to our specific topic, I know for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, I will not really be eating much throughout the day. I’ll probably wake up, maybe have some organic coffee or tea with some coconut oil in the morning, and maybe snack a little bit throughout the day, but I will be saving my calories for that big meal in the evening. I will be enjoying every bite of it. That is a way to intermittent fast before a big holiday meal.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Meredith:
Yeah. Another just trick, I think, is good to implement is after you have that holiday meal that evening, wait at least 12 hours before you eat the next day to give your body that rest and that fasting time.

Dr. Pompa:
You know that I’ve been preparing for a seminar and doing a lot of my own research, which I love to do, and measuring my own glucose levels, measuring my own ketones, and just looking what the body does. I do practice something that we call diet variation where in the summer, I go into ketosis, and my body’s very efficient. My carbohydrates are below 50 and a very efficient fat burner at that time. When I go into that state, I always feel absolutely amazing. Anyways, in that state – closing the door there. We got somebody –

Meredith:
Somebody tried to walk in. All right.

Dr. Pompa:
My body functions very well with an athletic point. Fall comes, and I purposely raise my carbohydrates to – would still consider a low-carb diet, but maybe 100, 150, which is defined, still, as a low-carb diet. To me, it’s high, and sometimes I even have trouble getting those carbohydrate numbers because I do not eat breakfast, and I’m only eat a small meal in the day, and big meal at dinner.

Here’s what I found: Oftentimes, I’ll purposely, once a week, I do diet variation, where I’ll eat a big carbohydrate meal. We get this emmer wheat pasta, which is the ancient wheat. Anyways, I’ll have a big dish of pasta, and I don’t feast carbohydrates, but then I don’t eat the next morning. Lo and behold, I test my glucose, and through the day, it’s getting lower and lower, and my ketones are rising. Literally, even after the big meal, my body shifts into this fat-burning mode because I’ve got it used to doing that, where I start actually going back into ketosis, even though I had that big carb meal. It’s an interesting finding.

If you ate the big Thanksgiving meal, and you did what you just said, you just simply waited after and didn’t eat for those hours after the meal, your body is going to normalize that glucose rise -inaudible-.

Meredith:
-inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
It keeps you from storing fat, and you’ll actually burn all of the stuff out that you stored because your body will take all those carbohydrates and store them into glucose. When it doesn’t have room to store it as glucose, it moves it into fat. If you don’t let your body do that by not eating for the next day, you’re not going to get the fat. It’s brilliant.

Meredith:
You never gave your body the chance to burn the fat. Maybe someone’s listening to us for the first time, would you recommend jumping into daily intermittent fasting? Would there be a benefit even if you just did it once or twice a week?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I think that there’s definitely a bigger benefit when you actually do this as an activity for longer. I think the longer you do it, the more efficient your body becomes. That’s no doubt. However, I think that someone can just do that and still get a benefit and offset that big meal in some aspect by just not eating for at least, like you said, at least 12 hours, maybe even 16, 18 hours after that meal.

Meredith:
Awesome. All right. Strategy number one, intermittent fasting. All right. Number two, another strategy we’ve talked a lot about here, but we can incorporate it into the holiday calendar. Let’s talk about burst training, Dr. Pompa, and how that can help us avoid weight gain during the holidays.

Dr. Pompa:
You know, I did a video and an article on this, so if you go to DrPompa.com – you can go and put in the word Skinning. Wasn’t it in the title, right? You showed me doing this – I did this skinning where we put these skins like an animal skin – they’re not made of animal skin anymore – on the bottom of our skis, and we’d trek up the mountains. In the video, I talk about why doing it on a fasting state – basically it’s burst training to put it simple.

Burst training on an empty stomach in the morning without eating, you get this major growth hormone rise. It kicks you into this fat burning phase like crazy. I know that when I do my morning mountain bike rides without eating, I am literally so lean the next day. There is a difference of burst training on a full stomach versus on an empty stomach in the morning. It is a strategy. It does work. I always say that you don’t lose weight by exercise; it’s the cherry on the top. You can sure make that cherry a lot bigger by doing what you just said.

Meredith:
Awesome. That would be a great strategy after Thanksgiving night, and you’ve just eaten a ton, to wake up and work out on a fasted stomach. Same with Christmas. Same with any of the other holidays coming up. Just wake up and work out. That’s going to help you get back into fat burning mode.

Dr. Pompa:
Great strategy.

Meredith:
Awesome. All right. Number three, you and I are big proponents of this. Eat fat first. Let’s talk about good fat over the holidays.

Dr. Pompa:
There’s actually science behind that. You said, “Dr. Pompa, this is a strategy that just came into my mind. Eat fat first.” It didn’t just come into your mind. You noticed that when you do that, you seem to get full faster. Am I right on that?

Meredith:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I said, “Meredith, there’s actually science behind that.” When you eat fat, there’s actually something released called – I have to pronounce it correctly – cholecystokinin that is released when you eat large amounts of fat in a response to the fat. However, cholecystokinin actually stimulates your vagal nerve. The vagus nerve is one that’s responsible for eating or not eating. It connects to your brain and your digestion. There’s this nerve.

It stimulates that neurological response, and it tells us basically to eat less. It makes us not eat as much. It just makes us want to not – wants us to stop eating. That’s really important. When you eat fat, you start to release that hormone, and all of a sudden, you’re partway through the meal going, “I’m really not hungry anymore.” Great strategy. Eat fat first. Give them some suggestions.

Meredith:
Yeah. It’s so key, even just some snacks in between meals with -inaudible- fat, or some raw cheese, nuts, olives. I always have some coconut oil on hand with a little sea salt and cinnamon to regulate my blood sugar and keep me really full. At meals, cover your salad in olive oil. Eat the fatty parts of your meat as long as it’s from grass-fed, healthy animals. Don’t shy away from fat because it does make such a huge difference in feeling good, your brain functioning well, and keeping your satiated, to really decrease cravings for other things that aren’t so good for you.

Dr. Pompa:
I saw my father do that. He really mastered eating less and living longer. He would even have butter, so don’t be afraid of having a tablespoon of butter before a meal, ghee. These really saturated fats will stimulate that cholecystokinin and really just – you’ll find that you just simply eat less naturally.

Remember, we can never caloric restrict by saying, “I’m done eating. I’m going to lose weight. I’m just going to not eat less. I’m not done eating,” and walk away hungry. No. That lasts for a week at best, maybe a day, maybe two, whatever. The point is is no. You have to eat less. We know that people live longer who eat less, but it’s eating less because you’re not hungry. That’s what happens when we intermittent fast.

I haven’t eaten today. It’s 1:30 my time, and I have not one bite of food. I have no sign of hunger, zero. My body’s functioning on its fat supplies and all the bad stuff. It’s eating it. I can easily go to dinner without eating, no problem at all. Again, that is lower calories. Do I caloric restrict? I don’t even try. I’ll eat like a king tonight. If I did eat lunch, I could eat a nice, big lunch, but at the end of the day, I’m eating less, not because I’m pushing food away, because my hormonal system is so efficient at the cellular level burning fat that you simply don’t get hungry.

Meredith:
To remind viewers, too, that didn’t happen to you overnight either, where you were able to not eat up until dinnertime. It is a process called keto-adaptation, fat adaptation, that does take a period of time.

Dr. Pompa:
If you look at the strategies, we did the five strategies. The five strategies that – we have articles for each strategy, one, two, three, four, five. If you do those strategies long enough – if you don’t understand a word we’re talking about, ketosis or intermittent fasting, diet variation, read the strategies. It’s all there. We have articles on ketosis. Put it into the Search bar where the articles are. You’ll find videos. You’ll find articles, diet variation videos, articles. All these strategies are there. If we say something you’re not familiar with, we have an article on it. We have videos on it.

Meredith:
Yes. That’s at DrPompa.com. D-R-P-O-M-P-A dot com. Check those out for sure for more information if you’re curious and are hearing some things for the first time. All right. Strategy number three was eat fat first. Next, strategy number four, take a walk or do some form of movement after a meal to increase your metabolism and avoid the postprandial blood sugar spike. Why is it important to exercise and get some movement after we eat a big meal?

Dr. Pompa:
The postprandial blood sugar spike, meaning that if you take – even a healthy meal. If you take your blood sugar before a meal, it’s going to be, for most of you, probably in the 90s. For Meredith and I, 60s or 70s. Then you eat, and then you’re going to see 120s. That’s if you’re healthy. If you’re pre-diabetic, you’re going to see something higher than that, and that’s very dangerous. After I eat, I’ll see, maybe, 104, 105, whatever. The point is it goes up. Obviously, some people go up so high, then they slam down, and then you’re dead.

Meredith:
Just sit on the couch watching football. Yep.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. Exactly. If you exercise or do anything afterwards, like you said, just some type of movement, you’re going to utilize that glucose so you don’t get that massive drop. Also, you’re going to utilize some of that glucose so your body’s not looking for places to store it. Your body just goes into this blah phase. Burn the glucose is the point.

Meredith:
Yep. Go out. Go for a walk. Go play some football. Go have some fun with your family after that meal, and you’ll reap not only the benefits of great time with your family, but you will also avoid that blood sugar spike and keep yourself – get yourself in a fat-burning mode.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m not one to watch people play things. I don’t understand that. Gentlemen out there, I’m sorry. I don’t get it. I don’t get sitting in front of the television all day watching people play. I could do that for a period of time, then I do, “I want to play. I want to do something.” It’s like, “I want to go out and do something. I don’t want to watch people do things,” but that’s me. You’re going to do what you do, but if you’re going to watch football all day, for goodness sakes, go out and do something before you do right after the meals.

Meredith:
Right. Exactly. Do a little something. All right. Next, strategy number five, this is something I do. I eat a pretty similar breakfast and lunch every day, which kind of just helps me keep on track with my whole meal plan. Now, to back up, I don’t often eat breakfast. Typically, I maybe just have some green tea in the morning with coconut oil, so I just have that good fat, which keeps me going right until lunch, and I’m fine.

A lot of people like to have a little breakfast. Perhaps you would like to have a smoothie for breakfast, and then maybe have a salad with some healthy fat and protein for lunch, which is what I typically have for lunch. By having those same breakfast and lunches every day, you kind of keep yourself in the same mode, and you can kind of gauge your calories a little bit better, too. When you’re having different meals in the evenings, just kind of have a better gauge of where you’re at and when you splurge because you are being more consistent throughout the day.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. It really does help. Even at the end, if you’re looking at your carbohydrates, it’s so much easier to know what your carbohydrates are if you’re doing the same things for breakfast and for lunch. It’s always easy for me. People say, “Oh, you’re – ” If I’m in ketosis and I’m tracking my carbs, it’s easy because I know what I had for lunch. I know the carbohydrate total, and it makes me go, “Yeah, I can pretty much have this for dinner now with no problem because I had the same thing.” Yeah, it’s darn easy. That’s good, good stuff.

Meredith:
Thanks. Yep. That was number five. If you need some smoothie ideas, by the way, we do have a free smoothie e-book for download. Just go to FreeSmoothieEBook.com, and you can get 25 of our favorite smoothie recipes, and that’s a free download. Go check that out, little side note.

Dr. Pompa:
I think the other benefit to that, too, is that if you keep those two meals healthy, you don’t have to overthink it. You’re not going to get into trouble if you have your smoothie for breakfast, smoothie for lunch. Maybe it’s eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch. Then at dinner, then you have some leeway. At dinner, you have some leeway if you keep those meals consistent and healthy, it’s easy for dinner then.

Meredith:
Yep. It’s a great strategy. That’s number five. All right. Number six, next is save your carbs for the evening meal, eating protein and fat during the day and carbs at the evening meal. Can you explain why that is effective for fat burning and avoiding weight gain?

Dr. Pompa:
What I said before is when I was eat those – I ate a big carbohydrate dinner, and I noticed my glucose, especially if I didn’t eat breakfast and I intermittent fasted daily, I would notice that my glucose levels would be a little higher first thing in the morning than if I didn’t have that carbohydrate meal. I’d start the day higher. Surely, it would start to drop, drop, drop, drop the glucose, and then the ketones would rise as long as I didn’t eat. The bigger meal was easy. As long as I didn’t eat in the day, I could get away with the big meal.

Now, opposite would be true. If I ate a little bit of carbs here, even if it wasn’t that much, a little bit of carbs at lunch, even if it wasn’t that much, then I eat the big carbohydrate meal, different outcome. I’m not going to get the low glucose and the high ketones, and I’m not going to burn fat. I’m going to store it all. By doing it at one meal is a strategy to utilize those carbohydrates and not store them as fat.

Meredith:
I know you’ve said that as humans, we’re nocturnal eaters, too. So many people still believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Can you just talk about that a little bit more, and the importance of those carbohydrates at night, and -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It’s been shown that humans are nocturnal eaters. Of course, there’s some science that people talk about there. I think when you just look at history, you look at the Roman culture, the Greek culture, and most European cultures, it’s the big dinner. It is the big dinner, hence the word continental breakfast, very small. Americans go there, and we’re like, “Really? This is breakfast? Where’s the waffles? Where’s the eggs? It’s like this?” They barely eat. It’s tea, a little thing. I don’t even know what it is.

Meredith:
Crumpet.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. The point is that we’re really the only culture that east this huge breakfast. My gosh, they don’t even eat lunch over there. They nap. They eat these little things even for lunch, so it’s very small, and then the big dinner that lasts two hours. The Romans did it. The Greeks did it, and like I said, even the European cultures. That really just fits with how humans are.

Here’s the science behind it, real fast. When you eat the big meal, it stimulates the parasympathetic nerve system. That’s the nerve system that relaxes us and puts us into a nice sleep mode. It drops our cortisol levels so we can go to sleep. The opposite is true. When we’re not eating, our sympathetic nerve system gets stimulated. That means we have more energy. We’re burning our fat. We feel more energetic, and our cortisols go up. That’s the difference is that that big meal stimulates that parasympathetic nerve system and makes us want to rest.

Meredith:
Another component of it, too, is if you’re practicing intermittent fasting, if you don’t eat that large meal in the evening, your body will believe it’s starving and hang onto fat, which is the problem that, of course, nobody wants.

Dr. Pompa:
Yes. Exactly, exactly right. You need the big meal to remind your body, “We’re not starving. Don’t store fat. Let’s use it.”

Meredith:
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Great. All right. Next strategy, we are on number seven, I believe. This one is just kind of a good reminder. We know that this is important, but we need to choose the highest quality ingredients possible for these holiday dishes that we’re making. That means, ideally, local and sustainable, but organic and grass-fed animal products, raw, organic, ideally, fermented dairy products because we need to avoid GMOs, number one. Number two, when we eat these really high quality foods, we’re more satiated.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I think that’s the key. You need good ingredients. Yeah, you’re going to spend more, but look. Oftentimes, it’s not so much the food that makes us fat; it’s the chemicals, isn’t it? Easy to avoid. Don’t get the chemicals. You can easily use Stevia sweetener. You should be doing that anyway. Our pies taste better to me than any of the pies. We get all the good ingredients every time.

Matter of fact, my son made a pie, and it was an apple pie. It was absolutely delicious. I’m telling you, you’d be like, “This is the best pie.” It was all great ingredients. It’s easier than you think, folks, but remember, it’s the chemicals and the toxins that are in the food that are making people more fat and more sick even than the food.

Meredith:
Mm-hmm, so true. Last year, we put up a big Thanksgiving menu on DrPompa.com, on your website. I know there’s a pumpkin pie recipe on there that’s really fabulous. If you need some idea and some recipe inspiration for Thanksgiving next week, definitely check out the Thanksgiving menu on DrPompa.com. Just type in pumpkin pie. It’ll pop right up.

Dr. Pompa:
There you go.

Meredith:
Awesome. Next, this is strategy number eight. We’ve talked a lot about this, but diet variation and specifically shifting into the ketogenic diet after the holidays for rapid weight loss. We’ve eaten on Thanksgiving, Christmas, all of the holidays we’ve gone through, and some people who are still out there, they will have gained maybe five, ten pounds over the holidays. It happens.

This strategy, to put yourself in a ketosis after the holidays can just bring about rapid weight loss. Can you talk a little bit about how that mechanism works, Dr. Pompa. I know -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
I said I like to vary my diet. I go from in ketosis in the summer, then shift over. I talked about the Hunzu people. At different times of the year, they do different diets. You can utilize this where you’re eating higher carbohydrates during the holiday. Then all of a sudden, now you shift into ketosis. It’s unbelievable. When you do that, your body is shifting gears. You get this hormone rise. Your body starts to utilize its fat for energy. Your appetite goes just way down automatically because you’re eating higher fats. You’re releasing more of the enzyme that I said actually causes your body to not be as hungry.

Your body’s not as hungry because it’s burning fat for energy, so it just doesn’t need to eat. There’s multiple reasons why to shift your diet into ketosis. We’ve written articles on diet variation in the five strategies. We have two articles on ketosis on our website, as well.

Meredith:
We do. Yeah. It is incredible just from personal experience how not hungry you are on the ketogenic diet. It’s funny because sometimes, after a while, you just want to eat something, but you’re just not hungry. It’s very interesting.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt.

Meredith:
It’s fun to experiment with. Great strategy after the holiday to drop weight really fast. All right. Second to the last one here, number nine. This is also kind of a post-holiday strategy. Maybe you want to wait until early January to start this. Giving a longer – a block fast a try to jumpstart cellular healing and weight loss. Talk about how a longer fast versus the intermittent fast can help you lose weight.

Dr. Pompa:
The Hunzu people did it right in the spring. Whether it was a week, a few weeks within a month, they would just simply not eat. Listen, there’s nothing healthier. Thomas Seyfried is a scientist who is one of the leading researchers on cancer. As a matter of fact, he wrote a book called Cancer as a Metabolic Disease showing that it is elevated glucose that really is a problem with cancer.

There’s a toxic reason for that. The mitochondria gets damaged, and now the cells can only use glucose. Anyways, long story there, but his point is even one fast a year, seven to ten days, decreases your cancer chances up to 99%. Why? During these fasts, your body starts eating – that autolytic process starts eating all the bad stuff, and the -inaudible- that goes on that starts eating the bad, toxic cells that haven’t died and should. That what happens during fast.

When you start a different diet shift with a fast, it immediately throws you into ketosis. It immediately throws you into fat burning, and your body eating through this process, and a rise in growth hormone. It’s the best way to start a diet shift is with a block fast at least four days, whether it’s whey water – we’ve done shows on whey water fasting – or broth fasting, or stock fasting. We’ve done shows on that, as well. Go back, and you can look in the archive of podcast 2015 shows, and you’ll see both of those fasts. We’ve discussed them.

Meredith:
Now, to clarify, for the book on cancer as a metabolic disease, Dr. Seyfried was referring to water fasting, correct?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, but in his book, he talks also about the fact that – the research being it looks like you can even do stock fasting, and you’ll get these results.

Meredith:
Really.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s really all about the glucose levels. They target about 55 to 65 when people are fasting of the target zone and the ketones rising at least above two to seven. That’s their, what he calls, the target zone. To his point is as long as you’re in that zone, it doesn’t matter if you’re stock fasting or water fasting, you’re going to get a positive effect.

Meredith:
Awesome.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m a big believer in water fasting, too; however, he talks a lot about that. He talks about even utilizing ketosis with fasting. His point is that it’s not just ketosis, but it’s ketose with restriction, which he calls KD-R, keto diet restriction, meaning utilizing ketosis with fasting either daily or block, which we described, or just simple eating less in ketosis. I’m talking about that at my next seminar to our doctors.

By the way, that’s why some people, Meredith, ask the question sometimes why people don’t lose weight in ketosis and others do. I have several theories that I have offered. According to these studies, not just by Seyfried, but others, they’re not restricting their caloric intake enough. When you and I go into ketosis, we get a release in the cholecystokinins, and we eat less. That doesn’t happen with everybody. Some people don’t. They don’t get that release of the cholecystokinins, and therefore, they’re not eating less. According to Seyfriend’s work and, like I said, other studies that I’m looking at and acquiring, that’s a problem. Not that it’s unhealthy, but they don’t get the benefit of ketosis like you and I.

In mouse studies, none of the mice lost weight unless they did ketosis with the restriction. Interesting, Meredith. I’m going to teach more about that at my seminar, and you’ll hear all those studies.

Meredith:
Awesome. I’m excited to learn more, and I’m sure we’ll be sharing a lot more with all of you in the future, as well.

Dr. Pompa:
Intermittent fasting with ketosis, whether it’s block or daily, that’s the key according to the studies.

Meredith:
Wow. Big take-home point there after the holidays for rapid weight loss, guys. Taking notes there. That was number nine. Awesome. This last one, we couldn’t have this list without focusing, of course, on the mental and spiritual component of the holidays and the importance of focusing on people, and on relaxing, and destressing, and possibly doing some yoga, meditation, prayers, taking the time for yourself and to really remember the reason for the season, and why we love to gather together and celebrate this time of the year, and just really, the importance of just enjoying that time with family, and friends, and the spiritual component of the season.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s so true because people, unfortunately, in the holidays, they allow themselves – I use the word allow – to get more stressed out, which raises cortisol, and that can be a reason why you gain weight, going, “I’m eating less during the holidays.” Yeah, your stress, your cortisol levels throws you into whatever you eat, you start storing as fat.

My suggestion is get into your prayer closet more during the holidays. Hey, I’m going to motivate you. Here it is. You ready? Watch the movie War Room.

Meredith:
I saw it. I did.

Dr. Pompa:
I watched it the other night. I’ll tell you what. If that doesn’t inspire you to get into your prayer closet, a.k.a. war room, nothing will. I’ll make a challenge. If, during the holidays, you say, “Okay, I’m going to spend time, whether it’s even 10, 15 minutes in my little room,” whatever that room is, “and put it to prayer,” I promise you, you will have a different holiday, not from a weight loss standpoint, although it’ll help because of the stress. I’m telling you, you will have a joyful holiday because it will just bring you into, really, what the whole season is about. Thanksgiving, thanks to our Lord and Savior. I’ll tell you, that is a challenge. As a matter of fact, that’s – I started my morning out like that today. There you go.

Meredith:
It makes a huge difference in your day when you start it in the right way. That is for sure. I can agree. I think with these 10 strategies, guys, I’ll just do a quick, little review. If you implement these, then I think you’re really going to be on the right track to have an amazing holiday season and to not gain weight.

Okay. The first one, as we recall, intermittent fasting. Number two, burst training. Number three, eat fat first. Number four, we said take a walk or do some movement after a big meal to avoid that postprandial blood sugar spike. Number five, we said eat a similar breakfast and lunch each day to help yourself gauge calories. Number six, we talked about saving carbohydrates for your evening meal. Next, number seven, using the highest quality ingredients you can afford for you meals, including organic, grass-fed, local produce and animal products. Next, we had – let me see here.

I’ve got these a little bit out of order. To jumpstart cellular healing with a longer fast, so this would be after the new year, probably after the holidays, but take a longer block fast to jumpstart cellular healing. Next, try the ketogenic diet, incorporating diet variation for rapid weight loss, and the last one, of course, if to focus on the people and the reason for the season.

Everyone, we hope you have an amazing holiday season and Thanksgiving next week. If you need to recipe inspiration, check out some of our ideas on DrPompa.com. Anything else you’d like to add, Dr. Pompa?

Dr. Pompa:
No. Have a happy Thanksgiving, absolutely.

Meredith:
All right. Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Take care, and we will see you next week.

Dr. Pompa:
Bye.