2017 Podcasts

Transcript of Episode 177: Eliminating Pain with Posture Therapy

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Antje Waxman

Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode 177. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, and today we welcome special guest, Antje Waxman. Before we dig in, let me tell you a little bit more about Antje. It’s a very fun show today and, oh, just a little forewarning too. If you can, definitely check out the video version of this show versus the audio version because Antje is going to be giving some very cool demonstrations on her expertise, which is posture.

All right, Antje Waxman is the owner and instructor of REALIGN in Charlottesville, Virginia through Egoscue University. No. She’s a Certified Postural Alignment Specialist through Egoscue University. Egoscue Method has a 95% success rate in reducing chronic pain without drugs and surgery. Antje is also a certified Smovey coach, Nordic Walking and Nia instructor, and that stands for neuromuscular integrative action. She’s developed specific programs for people who want to live pain-free, and improve their health, and return to functional fitness.

Antje has helped hundreds of clients restore their health and live pain-free. In personal and group sessions, she educates and motivates people to understand how alignment is connected to degeneration and pain. She believes that correct alignment is an essential foundation for good health and fitness. Antje works with people of all ages and fitness levels and also with people who have arthritis and Parkinson’s. She’s going to take her through her two-step program for pain-free living in a healthy body. Welcome, Antje, to Cellular Healing TV, so excited to meet you and learn about your technique.

Antje:
Hi, Dr. Pompa. Hi, Meredith, nice to see you. Thank you so much for inviting me today.

Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I know our viewers, and like she said, I usually say viewers and listeners, but hopefully, you’re viewing this show. Viewers are going to really be blessed. Dr. Mercola and myself, we were down visiting you and Dr. Bush. You really took Joe and I separately through the Egoscue. Am I saying that correctly? Egoscue, is that the right…

Antje:
Yes, Egoscue. It comes from a—Pete Egoscue is the founder.

Dr. Pompa:
I want you to explain what that is. We were blessed because I didn’t really—I didn’t know what it was, right? I think Joe knew a little bit. We both left there, and we said, wow, that was such a blessing. First thing Joe said to me was, hey, are you going to do all those things? Are you going to do all the exercises? He was, Joe’s Joe, right? I mean, he planned on it. He was testing me out. I said absolutely. I’m that guy, right, because my back pain.

One of the things, when you looked at my posture—and I’m not far away like you, but you could demonstrate because you saw my posture. I was leaning forward. I couldn’t even believe that was the way I was, right? I mean, I had this forward lean posture. One of my problems was this chronic low back tension, right, that won’t go away despite doing everything. I mean, the best chiropractic, the exercises, stretching, I did it all. When I saw that, I thought, oh, my gosh. That is putting so much posterior tension on my extensors that, yeah, that’s it.

You immediately developed a program for me, just like you did Joe, based on our posture. I could tell you, and I said this to you, it’s really the only thing that really helped. It seemed like it took pressure off, and it made me more stable. I’ve been doing it for the last two months. I don’t know. Gosh, was it two months now since I’ve been there? I don’t know.

Antje:
It’s been two months. Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
I’ve been faithful at it. So much I was impressed that you did a Skype session with my wife, and you lined up her exercises based on some of the postural things that she had going on. She just started, so I can’t give testimony there yet. Actually, she said it was helping, honestly, already, and she just started.

Antje:
That’s so great.

Dr. Pompa:
Anyway, that was my experience, and I got really excited and said you have to do a show. We have hundreds of thousands of viewers. Many of them need this, so hopefully, you offer your services to them too. What is this? What is this? Where was it developed? I mean, how come I never heard of this before?

Antje:
Right. Thank you so much, Dr. Pompa. It’s wonderful to be here. I’m very passionate about my work because I have been going through pain myself at some point in my life, so I do understand pain. Chronically, it can show—it can be very different. It can be severe pain or not so, let’s say, chronic pain that is nagging, but there’s a tension.

The Egoscue Method where I—if I may tell you my brief story. When I moved to the U.S. 17 years ago to marry my American husband, I developed rheumatoid arthritis and, really, so badly that I had inflamed joints everywhere. I knew that it was an autoimmune disorder, a system disorder, and I started healing myself naturally with supplements because I didn’t want to take the immune system suppressing medications. What happened to my body when I had, let’s say, a swollen knee that was—it was not arthritis, like osteoarthritis. It was inflammation. Then I immediately compensated on the other side, and that means I had pain there too. I got into a very viscous cycle. Very often, when there’s pain on one side, then the other side compensates, and there’s pain too.

The Egoscue Method, I learned from a friend about it. It’s a non-medical pain relief posture alignment therapy that I love. I love it because this therapy is, first of all, very popular and has helped thousands of people worldwide. I like the non-medical approach, so there’s no medicine. There’s no steroid involved. What we do is, as an Egoscue practitioner, we are looking at the entire body. We are not just looking at symptoms.

For example, when somebody comes to me with lower back problems, that doesn’t mean—I will not necessarily give him lower back exercises because I’m looking at the entire body, the upper back, the head position, the ankles, the knees. My goal is to find out not necessarily what the condition is. I’m trying to find out the position. I mean the position of the joints. Something else in the body might actually cause the lower back problems. As you said, you’re leaning forward, right, when I took the photos of your posture, so we are also looking at the body. Where is the body in terms of the gravity center? Some people lean forward. Some people lean backwards or side-to-side, and there is immediately a compensation in the body.

As an Egoscue practitioner, I also believe, we all believe, that the body has the innate ability to heal itself. Because I’ve helped myself and many other people, my goal is to help my clients to—or to teach my clients how they can help themselves, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. How does it work? Okay. I mean, you saw me in this forward lean position. My pelvis was anterior or forward from my center of gravity, basically, right? Okay. Then I think I had a little bit of rotation in my pelvis. It was all compensation.

Antje:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Then you went to your computer, and then you, basically, figured out through this method what exercises that go with that particularly postural misalignment. The order is very important too. I have certain stretches. I have certain exercises that I did. Some of things were—I would say, okay, I wouldn’t have thought that would be a part of this, I mean, but it is. How does it all come together? Describe that.

Antje:
First of all, what I do is I look at all four weight-bearing joints. That’s my first. They should line up horizontally, the shoulders in particularly, and create a 90 degree angle. If my shoulder is elevated or let’s say my hip is elevated, there is already stress. In your case, I say in the spine. In addition to it, in rotation, it’s a hip rotation. Very often, people have an elevation on one side and a rotation on the other side. There is immediately stress in the body. In addition to it, in your case, you were leaning forward. That means you were in extension all the time, in extension, too much in extension. You were moving and leaning forward.

Do you remember? I took some photos of your posture after the first session. You were much more in the gravity center. At least from the side view, means that the ankles, the knees, the hips, and the shoulders, and the ears should line up. If this is not the case, there is tension in the body. The body is desperately trying to avoid pain, but at some point, there is pain.

Dr. Pompa:
How was this developed? I mean, it is a very unique method. I know that people get it done, and it affects their energy, their sleep. Remember I was a chiropractor. When I was doing chiropractic, I was a structural correction guy, right? I explained to people how their structure affects the function of their body from their energy to their sympathetic, parasympathetic balance, how it can affect. I get that, but most people watching this don’t. That’s one part of the question. The other part is how was this developed?

Antje:
Habits can develop this. Yeah. Also, gait, faulty gait can develop that. Just an example, I don’t know what happened to you, but definitely, when you were standing there, you were leaning forward. Some people, sometimes there’s no reason for that, but for example, sometimes I work with musicians. Let’s say a violin player constantly has his arm lifted. At some point, there is a deviation. This arm is not in the right position anymore because he’s lifting it all the time. I don’t know. Maybe you’re rushing a lot. I don’t know.

Dr. Pompa:
No. In my case, I think—I’m a skier, and we’re trained to lean forward, constantly forward, forward, forward, forward, forward. Even in our boots, we’re leaning forward, forward. That was the only thing that I would think that put me in that forward position. What I actually meant was how was the system developed, Egoscue? How was this developed? I mean, who figured this out? How did it happen? It’s been around in Germany for a while.

Antje:
Not in Germany. Egoscue is from San Diego, California, so Pete Egoscue -inaudible-. This is not -inaudible-. That has to go to Pete Egoscue, the credit. He’s the developer. He developed that in 1971, and he was in the Vietnam War and was injured. Then the physicians told him that he probably will have to live in pain for the rest of his life, so he developed it and looked at different movement forms. It’s a combination of different movement forms.

We do have yoga exercises, as you know, right? I mean, we have—so we also work with the wall and the floor. If somebody is leaning against the wall and does not feel comfortable, like somebody like you leaning forward all the time, that is an indication that the body is out of alignment in terms of the gravity center. Some people with round shoulders, they have a problem with that as well, to lean against the wall. As I said, you might—skiing or you’re rushing all the time. Then another thing can be the pelvis. I know you have an anterior pelvic tilt, so your pelvis goes a little bit to the front, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Correct.

Antje:
Many, many people do this. They lean forward because of that, and then this creates even more tension. Other people who have a posterior pelvic tilt like this, they sometimes lean to the back. The pelvis, that is the heart of the—we call this the heart of the body, the unit. It’s very often also responsible for these misalignments.

Dr. Pompa:
Maybe you could show them some. I mean, this is different for everyone, folks. Don’t say, oh, okay, that’s my—she puts together a whole system, and there is a sequence. You told me the sequence is very important, but with that said, give us some examples. Show some of these exercises. For example, let’s say you have this and this. Just so people can see. Right now, everyone’s going, okay, I don’t get it. What is she doing?

Antje:
Yes. Yes. Would you like for me to show you an exercise, for example?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I want some examples, maybe two or three.

Antje:
For example, so what I do with my clients, I take photos, and then I upload them in a system so that I can really see where are the—where is the postural misalignment? Then I also do a functional testing. For example, when people bend forward and they never reach the floor, they might have an upper body problem that has an impact on their lower body. There’s so much to consider, joint position, also muscle imbalance that creates joint—created through the joint misalignment. Very often, the pelvis is the first thing that we look at and also the upper body and the lower body.

This one exercise, very simple exercise that has helped many, many people, it’s a corrective static exercise. What you have to find is a block or chair that brings your body in a 90 degree angle, and then you just lie in this position. This position called the static back, the lower back is flattening into the—it’s slowly flattening into the floor, so there’s already a relief for the body and the spine in this position. People who go into this position feel immediately very—yeah. They feel that the tension in their shoulders, in their upper body, in their lower back really was eliminated.

Dr. Pompa:
This was one of the first ones that I started with just to get me to—my back relaxed, and then it could rest from there.

Antje:
Yes, exactly. I call this always like neutralizing your pelvis. This is a nurturing—a wonderful exercise to start to neutralize your pelvis. Most of the people I see, they have a hip elevation and rotation. In this position, your body cannot be—your hip cannot be rotated or elevated, and this has also impact on your shoulders.

Yeah. Once I have looked at my client’s or your body, I design a specific program that works for each person. Let’s say one person comes with lower back pain might get a total different exercise program than another person. I look at the entire body as a unit, and find out what is not working. Then let’s say the upper body is rounded, and there’s a C curve. Then I work on the upper body so that the client or the person can find a relief in the lower body. Does that make sense?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Antje:
Yes. I am looking at the entire body, also the ankles. One client had a dysfunctional ankle. I also do a gait analysis, and this dysfunctional ankle had an impact on their lower back or upper shoulders that…

Dr. Pompa:
Let me tell you something. Two things that you had me do in my thing is you assessed that my ankles were part of the problem, right? I’m thinking, all right, I don’t know, maybe. I don’t know. You had me lay on the ground, and you’d twirl my feet. I was ready to show it here, but I can’t. You could show it better than I. Anyways, it was so hard. It was so on my right side worse than my left. My right side, I could barely go in rotations.

I would get to 20, and I would be in tears. You should see me do it now. I’m really good at it now, but it stabilized a lot of my balance point I didn’t realize was out of balance, especially on the right more than the left, which was causing imbalance. You had me do it. That made a dramatic difference. Also, my calves, my Achilles tendons were super tight, so a lot of the stretches were actually stretching that out, which had a dramatic release to my lower back too. Show what I was just talking about because I was in tears. I couldn’t believe how hard it was.

Antje:
Yes, exactly. As we know now, you were not in the gravity center because you’re leaning forward, but you also have a balance problem or had a balance problem in your body. There was maybe because of one hip elevation more weight on one leg than the other, and that means it also changed the ankle function and the flexibility. You mean the full circles here? Yeah. There are pretty tough, if I may show it?

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Antje:
You stretch out one leg. This is also a very good test. One leg is stretched out, and you flex the ankle. The other leg is—keep the knee still. You don’t want that. It is shaking. You roll your ankle 40 times in one direction, and then 40 the other direction, and then 40 forward and back. Most of the people I work with, they have dysfunctional ankles, and that has such a huge impact to the entire body.

Dr. Pompa:
I know people are laughing at me right now because I said how hard that was. I know people just watched you do, and they’re like what? Okay. I mean by the time I got up to the second exercise and by the time I got to 30, then when you did the forward-back one, I mean, I couldn’t even finish. I was in that much pain. Now I’ve gotten better, but it’s made a dramatic stabilization, just like you said, in my balance and everything. My right side was horrible. It’s harder than you think, folks.

Now, here’s the thing. Just by doing these now—now, Meredith can give testimony to this. We interviewed a gentleman on, and he was talking about the benefit of the squat, right? I’m like I can’t squat even for two minutes. I fall backwards, right? I was already working on the squat, and then when I started doing this, it was like—I mean, I’m telling you. It was like the—I can squat now. I can literally squat, and hold a squat without falling backwards or laying completely forward. What does that mean? It means that I’m opening up my hips, my knees, and I’m more flexible. Ultimately, for me, it took tension out of my lower back.

Meredith, you probably have questions. You’re on outside looking in. She’s done this for Merily and I. You probably have a lot of questions that somebody else watching this would.

Meredith:
Right, yeah. Thank you so much, Antje. It’s very, very interesting to learn this technique. I’d love a little bit more clarification too. How is this different than a lot of other postural therapies out there? For example, years ago I did Feldenkrais, which has to do with fixing your posture and alignment of your system to help it function better. How is it different than some other therapies, and also, do you use it in conjunction with some other postural alignment therapies like chiropractic, for example.

Antje:
Yes. I would say all postural alignment therapies have probably the same approach. That means you want to help people to feel better and to be without pain or live a pain-free life. The Egoscue Method is still very unique as it, first of all, as I said, looks at every body or each body as a unit. We observe each person in a different way, and make a decision what kind of exercises this person gets. For example, very often in other postural alignment techniques, like also Alexander Techniques and others, people get the same exercises for the same problem. Egoscue, people who want to learn about Egoscue will find out we are not doing that. They get a total different exercise menu than another person with the same problem. That is one thing.

There are also the—there are exercises that I have not seen before in my life such as when we do exercise standing against the wall. Pete Egoscue created a very unique exercise form with different combinations and techniques. Also, Pilates, there are some Pilates exercises that are similar, some yoga exercise. It’s a combination almost of everything.

Meredith:
I love the customization too. The plan for the athlete would look a lot different than a senior citizen and versus even a child, right? It’s all good for all ages?

Antje:
Yes. Yes. I have been working with children and especially teenagers. In our today’s time and all the cellphones and computers, say they’re all hunched over, and their head is forward. It’s really sad to see this, and they can succeed very quickly. They very often only need one exercise menu that exists of, let’s say, five to ten exercises that the kid has to do on a daily basis, and they change very, very quickly. It’s to recommend to do this when parents see their kids are already hunched over. Later, they will have the problems and will suffer at some point from pain.

Meredith:
Would those be some of the more common things you’re seeing with the hunched over, and I would imagine the neck, like the cellphone neck?

Antje:
Yeah. Yeah.

Meredith:
What are some other things that you see that are pretty common posture alignment issues?

Antje:
Peter Egoscue, he wrote different books, and we’ll show them a little bit later. He actually has been analyzing types of posture types. I see very often women have a—and I will bring it up here again. Have a rotation, let’s say a counter rotation here, a rotation here, and then let’s say a hip in this direction. Peter Egoscue wrote a book about it and analyzes people. These are skeptical people who have a lot of rotations.

It very often might—really, almost 60 or 70% of the people I see have rounded shoulders. Their hands are here. They aren’t supposed to be here. They are supposed to be here so that—if you go to airports, watch that. The backs of the hands are usually always in the front. No. They are supposed to be here casually without any military posture, but they have to be here. What happens when we have this correct posture, when we grab things and reach out, we do it very differently than if we do it in this posture, for example.

What I also see a lot is leg, and knee, and ankle, faulty ankle positions, for example, and then people, like valgus knees, or people have knock-knees, pronated ankles, and that has such an impact on the hips. Let’s say bowlegs. They are walking on the outside of their feet, and then they wonder why they have hip problems. Then, at some point, they have hip problems, and then they a hip surgery. The original root cause might have been the legs because they were faulty. I have a lot of clients with—they had already signed in for a hip surgery. Also, people who are 70-plus and they didn’t have any surgery. I have to say it’s work though. They have to work for it.

Dr. Pompa:
I remember -inaudible-. I hear my echo. She was maybe 70’s or 80’s, and she was thinking you couldn’t help her much, right? She was doing the old person posture, and now, she was like this but more vibrant, more energy. You tell me all the things that changed so for any age, obviously.

Antje:
Right, exactly. It’s not only head, upper—many people think of posture as only rounded shoulders. There’s posture, as I said, hip, the pelvic tilts, and all of the right chins, knee and ankle positions. Head, also, people with migraine, they have, let’s say, a tilted head, and they don’t know why. They have habits. For example, if some—very often, also, people who cross their legs, sit on a sofa, always the same leg, they have, at some point, dysfunction in their hip. Of course, if you are really sitting in a sofa and you don’t sit upright, that has an impact too. There are so many, many habits that can cause different rotations from side-to-side and front-to-back.

Dr. Pompa:
One of the things I think we’re seeing an epidemic of is anterior head position. I know when I was doing structural work, it was so prevalent. If you look around, especially the younger generation, their heads are here, the hours on the phone, hours at computers, and every inch your head moves to the center of gravity, it doubles its weight to your muscle, right? If you took a bowling ball and held it here, you could do it. Our head’s about eight to ten pounds, and we could hold it here. Every inch you move forward, it gets heavier and heavier, relative, right, because you aren’t moving to the center of gravity. Your head’s doing it.

Not to mention it stretches your spinal cord. It’s called tethering, which affects every aspect of your health, including your digestion. I know that that’s a big deal. We train -inaudible-.

Antje:
Right. Sorry. Yes. There’s another thing that I see because I work in the fitness center here as well as a freelancer in Charlottesville. I see people working out. Let’s say lifting weights, and then they have a deviation. Let’s say a shoulder is elevated or rotated. Can you imagine what it does to the muscles? They lift weights, and they are out of alignment.

Athletic people, they create such an imbalance in their body. When I see that, very often I look away because I see how people workout, and it’s not healthy. It’s dysfunctional workout.

Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible- when I see people jogging. It’s typically women, for whatever. Okay. They have their feet falling in. Their knees are valgus. It’s like their posture’s—and they’re running. I just want to go up and say stop, stop. It’s like I know you think this is healthy, but you’re destroying your knees, your ankles, your spine. It’s like I just want to say stop.

I don’t know why. Like I said, it’s more women than men. Again, you probably have the answer to that more than I do. It’s an odd thing, but it drives me nuts. I point it out to my wife every time.

Antje:
No. You’re totally right, and I see this all the time. It hurts me when I see that because I already know I can’t have—I have made my forecast. Oh, my gosh, this person will get some knee problems, or hip problems, or even upper back problems because it is just faulty how they run. This is why I love functional movement. When people do their specific exercise programs that, as you said, are in a specific order, so one exercise builds up or prepares the body for the next exercise, and that’s one point that I love about the Egoscue Method. Then I also do a functional training after that.

Then, finally, people can walk. Start walking correctly with a correct posture. I believe in walking so walking, running, as long as it is healthy. Most of the runners, as you said, or walkers even, they are walking forward or leaning to the back. They have valgus knees or bowlegs, and this has an impact.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. They’re heading for trouble. You mentioned in the beginning that this is incredible for people with Parkinson’s and neurodegenerative diseases. What kind of results are you seeing there, and why is it so good for that?

Antje:
The Egoscue Method?

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Antje:
Yeah. It is good. I also work with the Smovey’s. I have been working with people with Parkinson’s and the Smovey, the rings that are discovered in Austria. People with Parkinson’s very often have the tendency to lean forward because their nervous system doesn’t work right anymore. I have been working with one of my clients for years, so whenever I come to him, he’s really—he can’t get himself up anymore. Parkinson’s, as you know, it’s a neurological disorder, but it also has an impact on all muscles in the body.

After that, they find relief, and they can walk a little bit more upright. Unfortunately, after, let’s say, a few days, they go back down, but in general, I prevent the body from getting worse and not staying here all the time so the digestive system, also the breathing, very, very big factor that the breathing is getting better. We also have a lot of exercises where people just lean against the wall and go from side-to-side. Just doing this is, for many people, very, very difficult to handle because their bodies are so much out of alignment. I also work with people with Parkinson’s, also with the Smovey rings, because they also have an impact on the brain that has nothing to do Egoscue Method.

Dr. Pompa:
The moment you showed me those, I said I want those things. You two have exercises that all of us can benefit from regardless…

Antje:
The Egoscue exercises you mean?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Two exercises that you were going to show, that being one of them, the rings and stuff. Go ahead and show the rings, and show these things, these two exercises that we all can benefit from.

Antje:
Yes. I can show you two exercises. Egoscue exercises first if you want on the floor. Is that okay, without the rings?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Antje:
As I said, find a chair. Bring your legs up on this block. These are two of my favorite exercises. Now find a cushion, or let’s say a ball, like for children, something like that, something that has some resistance. Now, squeeze, squeeze the object slowly. This is a block, but you can also use a paper towel roll if you don’t have anything else, but it should not be too soft. You squeeze your knees, and let go. Squeeze. Let go.

This is very nurturing for your lower body and your back, so we are engaging the back muscles and the inner thigh muscles while the body and the pelvis is in alignment. That is a big difference. If I would do it in a standing position, it would be different. My pelvis is in alignment while I activate my abductor so my inner thigh muscles and my back muscles. Another very effective exercise for people who have a tendency to rounded shoulders is interlacing our hands.

Dr. Pompa:
My wife does this one because she has rounded shoulders.

Antje:
Yes. You keep your elbows straight. You don’t have to go—like in yoga, you don’t have to go the floor. You just move forward and back, and bring…

Dr. Pompa:
She’s doing your exercise.

Antje:
This is, yeah, one of my favorite exercise. It stretches the entire upper back while your pelvis is in alignment. That is the position. Your lower back cannot compensate or do something else, so this is a great exercise.

Dr. Pompa:
My wife just showed up. When she was doing this, I’m like, oh, my gosh, it’s—I did it. I was helping her. I’m like it’s so easy. She couldn’t even do it. She was in pain. She was like, oh, my gosh, it’s so hard. Again, it’s because it was specific for her. You knew -inaudible- her posture.

Merily:
Yeah. I just got back from doing my exercises, actually. Every day, I’m there five or six days a week. It takes a good hour.

Antje:
I know. I know.

Merily:
Every single day.

Antje:
Yes. I know. It is a lot of work. The good thing is, Merily, at some point, you will have a maintenance menu, exercise menu, and that will be shorter. It will just keep your body in alignment, so you don’t have to do this for the rest of your life to invest much time.

Merily:
Good.

Antje:
Yeah. We also want or my goal is also to help you to feel a difference, right? I mean, if you—people come to me and say I have ten minutes every day. Then I’ll say okay. We can do it, but I don’t know. It will take some time until your body changes. It is good to invest, at least, let’s say half an hour, 20 minutes to a half an hour. If you want to succeed or if people want to succeed more quickly, they should do a few more exercises.

Merily:
Yeah. I have to -inaudible- because of all that. I have that brachial neuralgia. Actually, today, I did this one for a minute.

Antje:
Great.

Merily:
After a minute here, a minute here, and a minute here, I’m blown out. Honestly, my shoulders are really bothering me today overall, so I just did this one. I just opted out of the other two, which I’d never done before, but again, my shoulders are just so sore that I’m trying to figure out ways to not exacerbate what I’m already dealing with.

Antje:
Right. Right. You can always adjust it. You mean the standing wall clock, or the kneeling wall clock.

Merily:
That’s right. That’s exactly that one. Yeah.

Antje:
Yeah. It’s a -inaudible- exercise. You can also adjust it timewise, and not do any -inaudible-.

Merily:
Sure. I’m so intense.

Dr. Pompa:
Hey, look at these. You got to show her the rings. She’s sending some.

Antje:
Yeah, like this, this, and this.

Merily:
Yeah. The ten and two and the three I opted out of. I have a question. On the shoulder rolls, right?

Antje:
Yes.

Merily:
Are the shoulders just slightly in front? I should probably take this off.

Antje:
Yeah. You roll your shoulders, and here’s the point, really up. Yeah, very good, Meredith. Up to the back and down. Most of the joints are really…

Merily:
Oh, so pretty exaggerated?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, up. Yeah.

Merily:
Daniel was trying to get me to stay in smaller…

Antje:
No. You really want to go a big, big circle, and the same thing when you go to the front. It’s not just up and down. It’s like a circle, up and also down.

Merily:
I hear so much clicking and clacking in there.

Antje:
I know.

Merily:
I don’t know what happened to me.

Dr. Pompa:
You know what? A lot of these things, they look so simple, but when they’re for you specifically, it’s working little muscles in the nerve supply to those little muscles that are very weak and out of balance. That, for Merily, is very difficult, right?

Merily:
It is.

Dr. Pompa:
She has so many little muscles that just aren’t firing and working, and they’re out of balance.

Merily:
Oh, yeah. Honestly, I mean, it’s—believe it or not…

Dr. Pompa:
She’s so strong. It’s these little stabilizers that are so weak, and that’s part of the problem. It’s part of the problem.

Merily:
That’s what happened, right. When I was working out with my son, I mean, he did so good by me until I actually had this muscle and didn’t have the stabilizers and the pressure and the strain of the ligaments to support it. Of course, being perimenopausal didn’t help matters either. Now I’m in a whole—it’s just interesting.

Dr. Pompa:
She’s rebelling.

Merily:
I have this evolution of learning that I’m doing even in my physical body. It’s always something, right?

Antje:
Yes. That’s true. As you mentioned, the Egoscue Method, we also work with primary muscle groups but also with we call lazy muscle groups. Lazy muscle groups are also between the shoulder blades, along the spine because of our posture that we are in many times or often. We are waking up these lazy muscle groups that don’t work anymore, and usually, -inaudible-.

Merily:
I’ve been doing it, what, three weeks now? I mean, honestly, I’ve been there…

Dr. Pompa:
Three weeks already?

Merily:
I would say. Yeah. I think you sent me my first one maybe May 24, I think. That’s the one I—oh, I actually have to talk to you soon, and figure out how to load that app because I have not yet done that.

Dr. Pompa:
She’s going to hijack the show. All right, listen, all right, here’s the deal though. I want you to show those rings. You should see these rings.

Antje:
Okay.

Dr. Pompa:
By the way, before I forget, make sure if people want you to help them, you can do it via Skype like you did Merily. I was with you in person, but how they can get your services, and I know they can get those rings. I want those rings.

Antje:
Yes. Thank you so much for pointing that out. Yes. My office is located in Dr. Zachary Bush Wave Clinic. I’m here in Virginia, and if people don’t live in Virginia, they can visit me and make an appointment of course.

Dr. Pompa:
I had dinner with Zach Bush last night, Dr. Bush.

Antje:
Oh, nice, wonderful, great. That’s great. Yeah. I love the clinic, and I love being part of it. I mean, I’m very grateful. Yeah. If people want to have a session with me, I also do online sessions like I did with you, Merily.

People send me photos. They will get some instructions, how they have to take the photos. I will review them, and then I will meet up with them via Skype, or Google Hangout, or other internet possibilities. Then I can see people. I can see and assess their posture via Skype very, very well, and then I will design a personalized exercise program for their body and their pain and tension in their body.

Dr. Pompa:
How do they get -inaudible-.

Antje:
If you want to reach me, the best way is to my website. It is www, and then realigncville.com, so it’s R-E-A-L-I-G-N-C-V-I-L-L-E.com. If you enter a—there’s another website now that we have created, postureandmotion.com, but you have to enter it in the browser. Then you will get the realigncville site as well. There is a specific discount for your viewers and listeners. We are offering 15% discount until July 15 for everyone who has contacted me within this time. That doesn’t mean that the session will happen within this time, but if you’re interested, we offer this for a 15% discount.

Dr. Pompa:
Meredith, make sure we put that email in some of the writings so that people can get that if they missed it.

Antje:
Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. That would be wonderful. Here’s my passion. I want to help you succeed. That is my personal approach. I really want to help you to succeed and to take responsibility for yourself. That is my passion.

It is so rewarding for me when I see people who are pain-free, and they can jump around. Even if you’re over 80, it’s something for every—or all ages. I have several examples where people succeeded beautifully with 85, 86, and they changed their entire posture, and feel much more healthy and more active than they felt maybe 15 or 20 years before. That is a wonderful thing.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Okay, the rings.

Antje:
We have the Smovey’s, right? The Smovey’s are rings, green rings, that are filled with four [Qigong] balls. When you swing, when I swing these rings, you can hear it. These balls are moving from side-to-side. In Austria, there was an athlete, a tennis player who engineered these rings. He was in a very progressed or advanced stage of Parkinson’s. He could not speak anymore. He could hardly walk, and he engineered these rings. Healed himself to a point that he still has some problems, but he can walk and workout, and he speaks again. This is his true story.

In Germany and Austria, these Smovey rings—I will spell it, S-M-O-V-E-Y rings, are very popular. They are not only working on the body, they are also working on your brain, on everybody’s brain and the lymphatic system. People with neurologic disorders, it’s very good for them to use it but, also, for everyone who wants to become fit and healthy and function again. First of all, as you can see, these rings when you swing them, they have only a pound. They weigh only a pound each. It’s a great range of motion for your upper body. When I see people walking, they don’t even swing their arms anymore from side-to-side.

We open up the chest. I love this movement. What happens while I swing the Smovey, the Smovey’s have a grip, and they create a vibration in my hands while I’m swinging them. They create a 60 hertz frequency in the body, and that is the same frequency that an embryo in a womb of a pregnant woman has. It creates a stimulus in our brain, and it also works on our meridians while we work out. We work on our lymphatic system, the meridians, and create chi flow while we work with these rings.

They’re not heavy on purpose because we can create more weight if you go higher, for example, if we have more emphasis in the movement. The wonderful thing is, in Germany, the fitness industry looks at them, and they found out, oh, wow. This is great. We can also do fitness with them, and do some lunges or some squats, and work on the entire body while we swing the rings. There are also floor exercises, and you can also walk with them. Another wonderful thing is I, personally, have increased my balance. I mean, I never had bad balance. For some people, you can also do some exercises to create more balance in the body, or here, let’s talk about squats. You swing your arms, so the arm motion is you’re moving your upper body while you move the lower body.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s the frequency that ultimately is why it works with the nerve system and the lymphatic flow, right, correct?

Antje:
Yeah. Correct. We have exercises for the lymphatic system. For example, underneath the arms there, they’re a lot cooler here. You can rotate them underneath your arm. It feels really good. For me, personally, I use them when I can’t sleep. I get up at night. Sometimes I have too much on my mind. I use them, and I can fall asleep immediately.

Merily:
Wow. How do you spell that?

Antje:
It’s not a smoothie. It’s a Smovey. It’s S-M-0-V-E-Y. If you want to go—I have on my site some information, but if you want to go and get more information, it’s smoveynorthamerica.com. They are located in Los Angeles and in California. It’s booming. Really, I mean, people buy them, and feel the benefits for their entire body. You’re working out and do something for your nervous system. People become very calm when they use them.

Merily:
-inaudible-.

Antje:
Yeah. They’re also great for people in a sitting position, so they can also do exercises while they’re sitting. It’s not a problem. Sorry. They can even use their legs. They can get a great workout too.

I, personally, have been starting to run with the Smovey’s. Really, my range of motion, my shoulders is so different now. This is my motion after I help people to get in alignment. They learn how to walk correctly again with their ankles, with their entire body, and they create motion in their body with the Smovey rings.

Dr. Pompa:
They can get them on your website too?

Antje:
Yes. They can get them on my website as well, and I also have a special offer for the viewers and listeners until July 30. It’s $168. They are not cheap, but you will not get them cheaper anywhere else. Amazon, it’s handled like a stock market. Now you can get them almost for $200. It’s really expensive because this is such a small company in Austria, and they work with handicapped people. It’s an Austrian good quality product and 168, and there is no shipping cost until July 30.

Merily:
Send them to me. Just send them to me.

Dr. Pompa:
We want them. Yeah. I want to use them. I mean, for the detox, it’s fantastic and also postural correction. Frequency and vibration, that’s actually how we use to correct posture. We use certain frequencies to make those postural corrections, so I get that, for sure.

Guys, the time went so fast. I have to turn it over. I have another appointment, so Meredith, I’m going to turn it back over to you. Antje, thank you so much. I mean, what great information. I know it’s going to be a great show, and I know you’re going to have a ton of response from people who want you to help them like you helped us. Thank you for both.

Antje:
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. It was really a pleasure. Yes. If people want to email me, that’s all on my website. They will see the information. They just have to fill out the form. Thank you for inviting me, and I will send you the rings. I promise.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, man, awesome.

Antje:
Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.

Meredith:
You too. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. I’m excited to try some of these exercises myself. Take care, everybody. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Transcript of Episode 176: Why Our Kids Are Fat

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Tom Naughton

Meredith:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I'm your host Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode Number 176. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, and today we welcome special guest Tom Naughton. Today, we have a really exciting topic. We haven't delved into this a lot on Cellular Healing TV, and we're going to talk about kids and obesity, and the epidemic, and some of the challenges going on with kids’ health today. Tom wrote an incredible new book geared towards kids and having them understand their health, and weight, and the importance of taking good care of themselves at their young age, so we’re really excited to dig into this topic. Before we get started, let me tell you a little bit more about Tom.

Tom Naughton began his professional life as a writer and editor for Family Safety and Health Magazine. In many years since, he's worked as a freelance writer, a touring stand-up comedian, and a software programmer. Fat Head, his humorous documentary about the lousy health advice handed down from official sources, has been on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, as well as on television networks in several countries. His speeches and other health related videos have been viewed by millions of people online. Tom now lives on a small hobby farm with one wife, two daughters, two dogs, one cat, and dozens of chickens. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Tom. We're so excited to have you.

Tom:
I'm excited to be here.

Dr. Pompa:
Well, Tom, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed your book, and I'm not sure if I should call you a brain, a nerd, a dork, or a dweeb. I don't know.

Tom:
I've gotten used to all of the above.

Dr. Pompa:
All of the above? Yeah, if you haven't read the book, I'm not just being mean to Tom, but Tom says he was the kid in school that was the brain and called all of those names, right? I identified with something that you said. You said you were not just the strong-looking fat kid. You were the skinny fat kid. Well, skinny fat is actually what I describe. You said look, I had the boobs. I had the skinny arms and legs and fat around the belly. Okay, that's how I get fat, by the way, so I got that. At a certain point when I started getting sick in my life, I became skinny fat, and Tom, I'd agree with you. It's far worse looking than people who just kind of get that nice, full, round blubber look, you know?

Tom:
I had a couple of friends in high school who were fat, but they were also really strong. A couple of them played on the football team, and I was thinking if I'm going to be fat, could I please at least be strong too? I wasn't.

Dr. Pompa:
I love that you made fun of yourself. You couldn't run. You were the last pick on all the teams, right? You know what? I'll tell you what. You figured it out. You figured out a lot of things that most people haven't figured out. When I read the book—first of all, I'll show the book. It's called Fat Head Kids, right? No doubt this communicates to children what they need to hear. I said, this is a book perfect for kids, but it's actually probably more perfect for adults and even doctors because you communicated things that we've been communicating on this show for years, but you did it in such an amazing way.

I'm telling you, the illustrations in here are fabulous, and the examples, and I'm telling you, if people understand something, they're more likely to actually do it and follow through. This book, I'll hold it up as the greatest book I've ever read as far as getting these principles across, as far as what's happening. The real reason why people are fat today, you've got it. It's not about eating less, no doubt about it. It is about hormones. Dude, you nailed it, man.

I talk about something called the 180 degree principle. If you do the exact opposite of what we're taught in the media, you somehow nail it right every time. That's the basis of this book. I mean, I'm telling you. Kind of give us just an overview of where this came from. You might want to fill them in on your story a little bit because that's what inspired this. Start there in kind of an overview of what the book talks about.

Tom:
Sure. Before I do that, I need to give a shout out to my wife, who also happens to be the illustrator because there's a saying in film that sound is half the picture. In this book, the pictures were really half of it. I think she just did an amazing job. I would discuss, here's what I'm trying to get across. This is what kind of visual we need, and she just kept banging them out. I think when I finally counted, she had done 200 and some illustrations for this book, and honestly I think I could have searched the world over for an artist to illustrate these concepts and not found anyone better than the one I happened to be married to, which was awesome. She's probably going to ask for a raise in pay if she hears me say that.

The reason the book came—I mean first off, just very briefly, my history as I explain in the book. I was the fat kid. I was the fat, slow, weak kid. I was the guy picked last for the sports teams. I did all kinds of various exercise and diet programs throughout my life. Because of the exercise, I actually did get stronger, but I was always gaining a little weight extra a year, and that just seemed to hang around. It didn't seem to respond to diet. It didn't seem to respond to exercise.

It was finally when I made Fat Head, I realized how much of the standard dietary advice is wrong, but things turned around for me and lost the weight, got even stronger, got way healthier, which to me is as important, more important really than just losing the weight and ended up making my documentary Fat Head based partly on that. What caused us to look into doing a book specifically for kids—Fat Head kind of flew under the radar for a couple of years. Its really big launch just kind of went to Netflix. That's when thousands and thousands of people finally saw it, and I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, but surprised by the number of parents who emailed me and said, “Thank you for making this. My kids love it. My sons watched it six times,” which just blew me away because I didn't make Fat Head for kids, but there are those kind of funny, animated scenes. I guess kids were responding to the animations and the humor.

That kind of got the idea going in my brain. There's a message out there for kids that they need to hear. The other thing, as a fat kid myself, and as I say in the introduction to the book, so many people, adults, have emailed me and told me they watched Fat Head. They changed their diet. They lost weight, and I can't tell you how many of them would say something like, “I wish I'd known this when I was a kid. My whole life would have been different.” That is absolutely true in my case because I'm 58 now, and I'm actually in pretty good shape, and I'm healthy, and I'm strong. I'm thinking, what if I'd figured this out when I was 10 or 12? How different would my life have been? My wife and I discussed it and said let's do something fun, and animated, and actually directed at a kid level. That's where the book came from.

Dr. Pompa:
That's awesome. I have to read this little part here. Here's the illustration, right? If you look, some of these little conversations go down. I mean, just nailed it. I was reading them to people, even my kids. I just thought this was funny, but yet such a really important point. This is basically saying back in the day, there was only one or two fat kids in class. It says, you know what? After I became one of them, I never once got together with the other fat kid in class and said, and then here's the illustration. “Isn't it great that we're the only ones? Yes, I'm happy our classmates are all skinny enough to make fun of us.” Then, here's the kids making fun of them. “Nice boobs, fat boy. Maybe you should skip a meal every now and then and get off your big butt and move a little.” Because that's insinuating something.

Then here's what they're saying over here. “It's all about calories in versus calories out.” See, this is what people think, right? It says, “Yeah, there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you decrease your intake to 500 calories per day, you'll automatically lose one pound every seven days, right?” This is what people think. It says, “Yeah, it's just that simple.” Yeah, man, if it were that simple. See? That takes the words out of everyone's mouth because this is what people think. They think if you just simply decrease the calories—you're so darn gluttonous. Stop eating so damn much, and get off your lazy butt. That is the sentiment of everybody including our government. What do you say about that, Tom?

Tom:
That's absolutely the sentiment, and of course, I picked that sentiment up as a kid. I mean, these cartoons didn't come out of my imagination. That's partly what I remember hearing, and I remember hearing it from guys who were eating french fries, and donuts, and cokes, and they weren't—they thought, well, Naughton's fat. He must be eating too much. I wasn't eating too much. I was eating the wrong food, and probably, I get a greater insulin response than they did, at least at that age.

Once you realize how this is all driven by hormones, you realize just how ridiculous that advice is. We are not doing the nation, and certainly not the nation's children any favors by telling them, if you're fat, you just need to eat less, especially with the diet that most people have nowadays. All they will do is take a diet that's already nutrient deficient, and eat less of it, and become even more nutrient deficient. The current advice, it's just horrible. It's just wrong. It's not going to help anyone.

Dr. Pompa:
I loved you analogy. Let's start with your piggy bank theory because—talk about the piggy bank theory, and then we'll kind of build upon that because I kind of want to take them through this evolution of thinking because the piggy bank theory is really the way people think. Describe it.

Tom:
Sure. I call it the piggy bank theory because people think eating is kind of like depositing dollars in the bank, only the dollars happen to be calories. You have your daily energy bill which gets paid out of your deposits. They think that remains kind of steady, and you can raise the energy bill a little bit by exercising, and other than that, any calories you consume, if you've paid the energy bill, and you've made your contributions to the building and repair fund, they think any extra calories just automatically get converted to fat.

The flip side of that, they think losing weight is as simple as making smaller deposits, so then your bank has to go to your savings account, withdraw those calories to pay your energy bill and bing, bang, boom, you automatically lose weight at exactly the rate of cut 500 calories out of your diet, you're going to lose one pound every seven days. The only problem is that has been tried many times. The math doesn't work out. Not surprisingly, human metabolism is slightly more complicated than a piggy bank.

Dr. Pompa:
I don't want to keep showing these amazing pictures that your wife did because people will think there's not science in this book, though trust me, there is. This is an illustration. You can see. I probably won't do it justice here behind it. You can see here's the food intake. Some of it goes for building and repair fund. Some of it goes for daily energy bill, or needs, and then, of course, from here, what you don't use up in energy ends up converting to fat. I thought that was a great illustration, but again, not so simple, so talk about the Nautilus in this example you gave. Marty, right? You're going to kind of have to walk them through this. I'll show them a little picture of Marty here. Okay. There's Marty, okay?

Tom:
There's Marty Metabolism, the chief engineer. We kicked around so many ideas on how do we explain this at a kid level, and when I wrote that chapter on metabolism, I wrote it about 13 different times before it finally occurred to me what if we—because I was trying to explain different ways. Your house has a heating system. It's kind of like your metabolism. Nothing I came up with quite seemed right to me until we came up with this idea. What if we compare the body to a starship, a starship that is run by software and has crew members who respond automatically because they're programmed, kind of like C3PO in Star Wars or whatever? They respond to messages and according to their program, they do what those messages tell them to do.

The chief character in all that is Marty Metabolism, the ship's chief engineer who controls the heating system, and the energy expenditure, and the building and repair projects. Marty responds to messages, and unfortunately, even though you're the captain of the ship, Marty doesn't actually take orders directly from you. You can't just say, Marty, crank up the systems, and burn off ten pounds. I want to lose a little weight. Marty's just going to respond to messages, and the point we keep bringing up over and over—the food you eat determines what messages Marty receives, and whether you like it or not, Marty's just going to act on those messages. That was the analogy we came up with where I finally felt like I think kids can wrap their heads around this now.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you said something in here that I talk about all the time. The body, all it really wants to do is survive. Marty's job is just to make the ship survive, right? Talk about the get hungry signal, these hormonal signals that our body gets, right? It could be, hey, put fat, let's start storing fat. It's not trying to just make you the nerd, or the skinny fat kid, or the fat kid. It's trying to get you to survive, and arguably, people who get fatter easily have a better survival mechanism. Talk about the message. I think you gave another analogy, if I recall, about the message could be get taller, right? Kind of give that message of get taller to get fatter, and why it could be the good thing or work against you.

Tom:
Sure. We started with your body—you grow taller because your body runs the get taller program. In order to make the get taller program work, Marty has to make sure that you take in more calories than you consume. If your body's going to get bigger, you have to take in more calories than you consume. The reason we started with the get taller program is I think even kids kind of understand, you don’t get taller because you ate more. You can't just change your height by how much you decide to eat.

Dr. Pompa:
I love that.

Tom:
So when Marty's running the get taller program, he's going to make sure he has those leftover calories, and if you just decide I don't want to be 6'5″, so I'm going to eat a little less, Marty's going to say, sorry. I'm under orders to make you 6'5″, so if you eat less, I'm going to burn just a little less energy, so I have the leftover calories for building materials. We started with that, so people understand when Marty gets a command that says store fat, he's going to find a way to store fat, and if you just eat a little less without dealing with that store fat signal first, Marty's going to say, well, he's eating less, but I'm supposed to store fat. I have orders. I will just slow the metabolism down, cancel a few building and repair projects, make sure I have those leftover calories to store fat. That was the way we wanted kids to understand this isn't a bank account. It's about Marty following orders.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so I mean ultimately, the questions is okay, how do we change the orders, right? How do we get our body to say, let's not keep storing fat? Hey, we're good here. You talked about hormones like insulin, leptin. Kind of build on that now that you've kind of built the argument through Marty's Nautilus ship.

Tom:
Sure. One thing we wanted kids to understand is, we wanted them to understand a little bit more about hunger. Most of us grow up thinking you're hungry because food goes into your fuel tank, and when your fuel tank gets a little low, you get hungry. You're supposed to add more fuel to the system. What we wanted kids to understand is there are other reasons you get hungry. We only have, as we explain in the book, a car has different hatches for oil, for radiator fluid, for wiper fluid, and you get a signal saying fill this one fluid, this one thing I need.

Our bodies, unfortunately, aren't coded that way. There's only one hatch. It's right here, and the only way Marty can tell you to fill that hatch is to make you hungry, so when your body needs things, he's going to make you hungry, and it's not just about fuel. Marty will make you hungry if he decides he needs more protein for building and repair projects. He'll make you hungry if he doesn’t think you've taken in enough nutrients. He'll make you hungry if you're not taking in the right fats because fat is your body's second most important building material after protein.

We kind of explain hunger in that way. It's Marty's way of saying I need something. One way you can end up eating less, naturally, without being hungry is to make sure you're giving Marty what he needs. Make sure you're giving him enough protein, enough actual nutrients, and enough quality fats. Then we move on to explaining how the fuel system works, and that's where we get into the insulin, and the blood sugar, and all the rest.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that's awesome. You know it's -inaudible-, I think adults as well as kids have been understanding. Of course, when you have high insulin, your body wants to store fat. Then there's the communication with the hormone called leptin. Kind of explain that a little bit because we have on past shows. You know, leptin is a signal from your fat cell to your brain that says, hey, we have plenty down here. Burn fat. We know that insulin and other things can interfere with that signal. Kind of explain that because I think that's a really good understanding of really why people get fat. It's not calories in versus calories out. [18:59] is the problem.

Tom:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we start by explaining the dangers of high blood sugar. High blood sugar will damage what we call the Nautilus, your body, your starship. -inaudible-

Dr. Pompa:
So all of the carbohydrates, all the sugars—and we'll talk specifically about fructose in a minute, really are the big part of the problem. Go ahead.

Tom:
Sure. All of those processed carbohydrates they jack your blood sugar up incredibly. Marty knows that high blood sugar will damage the ship, and he is programmed to bring it down as fast as possible, so he does that by releasing the hormone insulin. That's what he's programmed to do. Unfortunately, insulin, and we couldn't live without insulin, but when you have too much insulin, it sends this very powerful signal to your body to make and store fat. By putting Marty in a situation where he has to bring down this blood sugar that you've sent through the roof with bad food, at the same time, you're commanding him to store fat because he has to burn away that blood sugar first.

He doesn't want to burn fat when your blood sugar's high. He wants to burn away the blood sugar to prevent damage to the ship. That's one way high insulin makes us fat, but getting back to the leptin angle, as you explained, leptin is your body's—when leptin goes to your brain, it says the fat supplies are sufficient. You can burn fat. You don't have to store more fat. Unfortunately, among its other very negative effects, when insulin is too high, it actually blocks that signal from reaching the brain, so even though your fat cells are releasing leptin, which should signal your brain there's plenty of fat in this ship. You don't have to make more. The brain doesn't see the signal. It thinks the fat supplies are dangerously low, so it makes you hungry, and worse, it slows down your metabolism to try to avoid burning away what it now considers precious fat stores, and sets up exactly the wrong situation.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Well said. You know, we interviewed Jason Fung. I don't know when that one will air. It may or may not be before this one. I hope it does because Jason hits the science, right? Then we follow it with this example. I think it's just two perfect shows back-to-back because we talked about insulin in depth and its relation to diabetes. I thought Jason did a spectacular job. I mean talking about how insulin is forcing glucose in our cells and they get filled. He has a whole really unique concept. Anyway, watch that for sure, Tom. I think you'll really like it.

Tom:
I will.

Dr. Pompa:
I think you also talked about the importance of sleep. I think at least when we talk about kids, I look at my kids, and oftentimes they're not getting sleep. Then all of a sudden they sleep for 16 hours, and I wonder what the heck happened to them, and I think they died The body is like it's so important that it says okay, we're going to catch up now. Talk about sleep and its relationship to this whole thing.

Tom:
Sure, and I have a 12 year old and a 13 year old, so I know exactly what you're talking about. Sleep is very important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there are certain kinds of repairs to your body or to the ship, the Nautilus, as we explain in the book, that can only be done when the ship is powered down, in other words, when you're asleep. It really takes that good eight, maybe nine hours for kids, especially, to make those building and repair projects work, so when they're not sleeping enough, they are not allowing the body to do all the building and repair that it does, and if you're not doing those daily repairs, the ship eventually breaks down. You get sick.

The other thing is, boys especially, not saying that sleep is more important for boys, but one thing we bring up is those adolescent years, it's crucial that boys are producing the correct amount of testosterone that's going to make them grow their muscles, and keep lean, and have their energy high, and all the rest of that. Well, a good chunk of your body's testosterone is only made when you're sleeping, and there have been experiments that showed when they took healthy young men, and they cut their sleep from eight hours to four hours, guess what? They produced half as much testosterone.

I think kids today, maybe more than in previous generations, kind of have a problem with not getting enough sleep because they want to stay up all night and check their Facebook page, and mess around on their pads, and all the rest of that. While we were writing the book, I read a case about a girl who was diagnosed with ADD. She was put on drugs. Turned out, she just wasn't sleeping enough. She was obsessed with Facebook, and she would sneak to her pad in the middle of the night, and spend half the night checking Facebook. When her parents finally realized what was going on, they started locking the pad up at night, and suddenly she didn't have ADD anymore. Sleep's important for all of us, but I think for a growing child, when your body's being really kind of formed, especially important.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I agree. Let's talk about another thing. Sleep, no doubt affecting kids. I think you hit on another one that even Dr. Fung hit on as well. Fructose. We have kids today who are drinking energy drinks loaded with fructose, plain old juice, probably from the time they were babies. You know, fructose is in all the drinks that they're doing. I mean, it's in everything, in ketchup, high fructose corn syrup. Talk about fructose because it's not the average sugar, and you bring that out really well, some great illustrations again.

Tom:
Yeah, there are a lot of reasons it's not your average sugar, but I think maybe the one that's the most important—well, first let's talk about glucose. When you eat starch, it turns to glucose. Taking in too much glucose is a bad idea, but your body at least has a somewhat generous capacity to store glucose in your glycogen stores, and we explain that in the book. If you're not completely overdoing it, your body can store away that glucose, and then when you're not eating, it will release the glucose.

Fructose, unfortunately, cannot be stored in your glycogen stores, so when you take in a big old fructose drink, or eat too much sugar that has fructose in it, there's really no good place to store it, so your body does what it has to do, what it's programmed to do, sends it off to the liver and converts it into fat, and you can end up with fatty liver. We have kids nowadays who have fatty liver disease, which just blows my mind. That used to be something you saw, what, mostly in adult alcoholics.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, first time in history we have kids with non-alcoholic fatty liver.

Tom:
Yeah, just blows my mind, and every time I'm somewhere, and I see a kid running over to the soda machine and grabbing a 44 ounce sodait's not my business. I'm not going to go tell them don't do that, or have a talk with the parents, but I'm sitting there tearing out what little hair I have left thinking oh, my god.

Dr. Pompa:
Here's the other misnomer. We see this skinny kid drinking the fructose and think, well, he's getting away with it. What we don't realize is the skinny kid actually has the fattier liver than the fat kid because it's a matter of where they're storing it.

Tom:
Absolutely. In fact, I came across an article which we—in the film version of the book, which is coming out later, we do put various articles up onscreen to show what we're talking about, and one of the articles was how fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes are now becoming an increasing problem among young people who appear to be thin.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know. It's remarkable. Oftentimes we see the heart attacks and the diabetes more in the thin population because it's the fatty liver, and no doubt, fructose is the biggest player out of all of it, and kids today, they're just getting exposed to it. High fructose corn syrup is so cheap as a sweetener. That's why they put it in everything, so they're not out to kill you. They're just out to make a faster buck.

Tom:
Yeah, and it's partly because it's cheap, of course, largely because corn is subsidized by the government, so they subsidize the foods that make us fat, and then they try to come up with programs to make us thin, which don't work. This way, we get to waste tax payer dollars twice. It's also because high fructose corn syrup acts a little bit as a preservative, so by switching to high fructose corn syrup, they give these products a longer shelf life. They can sit there, some of them, for years.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and honestly, we could talk about a lot of the chemicals too, Tom. What about the artificial sweeteners? That's in all the drinks they're drinking too, the diet drinks and foods.

Tom:
Yeah, we didn't really get into that much in the book. As with any book, you start out with every topic under the sun you want to put in there, and then you start thinking what do we have to pare down, so this isn't a thousand page book. We can't all write Good Calories, Bad Calories, especially if we want kids to read it.

Dr. Pompa:
It's true.

Tom:
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the artificial sweeteners. We have actually started buying the Zevia sodas now and then where they're sweetened with stevia instead of aspartame. I didn't do a whole lot of research into what dangers there may be with the artificial sweeteners. My mission in this book was to get kids away from the sugars.

Dr. Pompa:
Our friend, Mercola, just put out an article. It might've been yesterday. Someone sent it to me this morning, talking about artificial sweeteners, how they're causing, leading to obesity and weight gain, in a different way, cancer, so it's just another problem that kids are getting inundated with bad information. I don't want to get political here, but basically what you're saying is Michelle Obama went in the wrong direction because basically it was eating less calories. Let's get calories more emphasized on the labels, definitely low fat. You're saying it's the opposite of what our protective government bodies are telling us. What's the real answer, Tom? I mean, we know the answer, but make it simple like you do.

Tom:
Yeah, I'm a fan of saying that there's a certain class of people who think they have the answers. They come up with these grand plans, and when the plan doesn't work, they always think the answer is to do the same thing again, only bigger. We tried cutting the fat, and telling people to eat their grains, and when that didn't work, and we ended up with a population that's fatter and more diabetic, a lot of the so-called experts told us to do the same thing again, only bigger, and even more fat, even more grains, only it's okay because they're whole grains, which is silly because those whole grains are really not good for you.

I actually would prefer to just see the government get out of the diet advice business completely. I don't think they're competent to handle it. I don't think it's really a legitimate function of government. People were much better off when they were getting their dietary advice basically based on wisdom of the generations. They were getting it from their great-grandmother. Your great-grandmother would have told you that too much bread and sugar's going to make you fat. Your great grandmother would have told you there's nothing wrong with bacon.

We had what I called the wisdom of crowds, which is based on many generations of experience. It got replaced by the quote, unquote wisdom of a handful of experts, who turned out to be wrong, and part of the problem whenever you put a decision in the hand of a small group of experts and allow them to make decisions for everyone as Nicholas Taleb likes to say, or Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the problem with centralizing decisions is you amplify the mistakes. I would really like to see—get us to the point where we don't have a central authority telling us how we should eat. I would like to see it return to a wisdom of crowds type situation that's based on actual experience, based on the experiences of countless people over the generations.

Dr. Pompa:
He's a man after my own heart, chipping away at government. I couldn't agree more. The more government gets involved, the more everything gets screwed up including our health. That is absolutely the case every time. Meredith, you hear how simple Tom makes it. I love this book, and I love this guy. What questions do you have?

Meredith:
Oh gosh, I love this book too, so Tom, thank you for writing it because this is just going to be such an incredible resource for so many families, young, old, everybody out there to really understand these concepts that seem kind of esoteric and confusing for a lot of us to just digest in a really simple form, so fabulous. Thank you for writing the book, number one. Number two, I'm just curious how writing this book and your own health journey has impacted how you've raised your girls.

Tom:
I would say if anything, it was a little more the other way around. The way I've raised my girls was an influence on how I wrote the book because we've seen the effects of a good diet, not a perfect diet, and we can talk about that later because that's the name of the last chapter, “It's Perfectly Good To Be Good Instead of Perfect.” We have our daughters on a good diet, and the diet that I came to understand was the correct diet based on my own experiences in the years since making Fat Head.

This information's always evolving. I never want to think I have all the answers; I can stop learning now, but I've learned a lot, and we put that into action for ourselves, for our kids. My daughters are lean. They're healthy. They're happy. They don't have the kind of senseless emotional breakdowns that you see in a lot of kids, which is the results of their blood sugar crashing after bad food. My daughters are 12 and 13. They have never had a single cavity. We based the facts of what a good diet can do for kids. By the same token, I see what some of their friends eat.

One daughter went and spent a weekend with a friend of hers. She came back. She told me breakfast was Pop-Tarts and orange juice, and I was pleased she didn't know the name of the cereal because we don't keep cereal in the house, but she said it looked like little woven things, and it was covered with sugar. To them, and these are intelligent people, but to them that's breakfast, and when I see what my kids friends eat compared to what they eat, that was part of what inspired this book. You know what?

People are free to ignore the information, but I know if someone had made me read this book when I was ten, I'm not saying I would have adopted a perfect diet. I'm not saying I never would have had a donut again, but I certainly would have eaten a lot less junk just because it would have been clear in my brain what I was about to do to myself. Really, it was seeing the effect of good diet on us and on our kids that made me want to write the book.

Meredith:
How have you taught your girls to interact socially with food because I know for a lot of parents it's such a challenge? You can have them eat really well in your household, but do you just kind of send them out and trust them to make the right decisions with food, or how do you handle that?

Tom:
Well, that's where we get into the last chapter called, “It's Perfectly Good to be Good Instead of Perfect.” You know, back in the day, back in the days when there were one or two fat kids in each class, kids weren't on perfect diets. They ate the cake and ice cream at a birthday party, but they didn't go home and have Pop-Tarts as an afternoon snack, and wash it down with a big glass of Gatorade or whatever. We go by the it's perfectly good to be good instead of perfect idea.

When our kids go to birthday parties, if they're serving pizza, and sloppy joes on white bread, and cake, and ice cream, we tell them if you want to eat that stuff at this party, go ahead. You know what it's going to do to you, and what's interesting is my older daughter, in particular, has become more self-limiting because I think she feels the effects more. If they're going out to a party, if it's a special occasion, if they want to indulge, okay. We know when they come back home, most meals are going to be good meals.

Dr. Pompa:
We follow the same thing, Tom. My kids, they explore, experimented. They know because we've developed the contrast the way we eat, and when they eat that, they don't feel good. For my kids, they'll all tell you the same thing. You know what, I just choose not to do it anymore because I just don't feel good. Every one of my kids, and Meredith, you know that. You've spoken to them all. They've all turned from—we raised them a certain way. They went out and explored, and they learned what you just said. It's just simply I don't feel good. My brain doesn't work, and therefore, I don't want it.

Unfortunately, kids today never have the opportunity to feel normal, Tom. If they did, they would choose otherwise because who's going to choose to feel that way? Once you get a kid on a certain diet for long enough, they go my gosh, it's like if I have a choice for my brain to work this way and to feel this way, to sleep this way, to have this amount of energy, or this way, they're going to make the right choice, but unfortunately, we don't create the change or educate them. That's where this book can come in, man, just educate them. Kids will make the right decision, no doubt.

Tom:
Yeah, I'm a big—this kind of gets back to the government and central authority thing. I'm much more of a proponent of persuasion over coercion. We don't want to give our kids a complex by being the food fascists in the house. I think all you're doing then is setting them up to go wild when they leave home. We'd much rather just make them aware. You know what this does to you.

Like I said, my older daughter in particular, is a little more self-limiting. She noticed, for example, when she eats wheat products, she gets little red, itchy bumps on her arms for a while, so she understands if I'm getting these little rashes on my arm, that means something bad is happening inside, so we don't really have to tell her don't eat wheat. She just kind of gets it like this isn't good for me. Like I said, if I had known what I know now when I was 13, I'm not saying I never would have eaten junk food, but I can promise you I would have eaten a whole lot less because I was feeling that shame of being the fat, weak kid, and if someone had told me, you can get over this by giving up the Cap'n Crunch and eating bacon and eggs instead, I can guarantee you I would have done it.

Dr. Pompa:
I couldn't agree more. We interviewed my daughter on here, and she said her big thing was she realized grains were causing her acne, making it worse. When she would give grains up, her acne would get better, so she convinced a whole lot more kids than I did to get grains out of their diet because they care about the way their skin looks, no doubt. Of course, they care about how fat they are or not. Well, Tom, I thank you just so much for writing this book. Matter of fact, where—is it on Amazon? How do people buy it? Do you have a website? Where can they see the movie?

Tom:
The movie version of this is not done yet. Fat Head is still out there. It's on—I think probably the easiest way to see it now is to go to either iTunes or Amazon Prime. It did have a run on Netflix, but that was a two-year deal that ended a while back. It's on Netflix. It's on Amazon Prime. There's actually a licensed version on YouTube. There may be some unlicensed ones out there as well, but there is a licensed version of Fat Head on YouTube.

The book is currently available on Amazon here, Europe, UK, and if people go to the website, we have a link to it. Our site is Fathead-movie.com. The film version of this book—we're taking all these characters that you liked so much, thank you very much. I'll pass that compliment on to my wife. We took them all and animated them, and made them move and talk, and we show Marty at his controls doing things, so we kind of hope to have that film released maybe September, somewhere around there.

Dr. Pompa:
That's awesome. Can't wait.

Meredith:
Awesome. Yeah, I will definitely be on the lookout for that movie, and this book's amazing, and I think just in closing, if you don’t mind, I love how you end the book with focus on being good and not perfect. I think so many of us often can get caught up in just always doing the right thing with our health, and especially on Cellular Healing TV, we teach so many amazing strategies for health and wellness, but there is a balance, of course, in life too, and the importance of not beating ourselves up when we get off track as we all do.

I'd love to kind of read this quote at the end. “When you discover your talents, they'll lead you to the most exciting and life-changing missions for the Nautilus, but you can only be the pilot of your own ship, so don't waste your time and mental energy comparing yourself to people who are born to look awesome. Don't waste your life wishing you had their version of the Nautilus instead of yours. Don't waste years thinking that if you exercise enough or starve yourself enough, you'll have a perfect body, and then you'll be happy. It's perfectly good to be good instead of perfect, so focus on being healthy, and then get on with what truly matters in life. That will make you happy.”

I love how you ended it, Tom, there, and just a fabulous book. Everybody, go check out that book, and thank you, Tom. Any closing words for our viewers?

Tom:
No, I really appreciate you having me on. I think this is a very, very important thing that we get the message out there to the younger generation. All of us who have been fat, weak, sick people, who have managed to overcome that understand it's way easier to prevent damage in the first place than it is to try to heal yourself later. I really, really want kids to get this.

Dr. Pompa:
Awesome, great.

Meredith:
So important. Alright. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Have a fabulous weekend, and we'll see you next week. Bye bye.

Transcript of Episode 175: How to Fix Diabetes Naturally

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Dr. Jason Fung

Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I'm your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is episode number 175. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line. Today, we welcome back, no stranger to Cellular Healing TV, Dr. Jason Fung. Jason has joined us on Cellular Healing TV a few times. We've really delved into fasting, a subject of which he's an expert in. Today, we're going to talk about something a little bit different, obviously it connects to fasting, but we're going to delve into diabetes and some natural solutions to treating it.

If you guys missed Dr. Fung's episodes prior to this one, he was on episode 112 and 160, you can check those out. Before we dive in, let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Fung, just in case you missed the others. Dr. Fung earned his medical degree at the University of Toronto where he also completed his internal medicine residency before heading to the University of California, Los Angeles, for his fellowship in nephrology. He currently practices as a kidney specialist in Toronto.

During the course of treating thousands of patients, it became clear to Dr. Fung that the epidemic of type 2 diabetes and obesity was getting worse. The prevailing dietary recommendations to reduce dietary fat and calories were clearly ineffective. He founded The Intensive Dietary Management Program to provide a unique treatment focus for type 2 diabetes and obesity. Rather than focusing on medications, this clinic focuses on dietary changes that are simple, yet effective. You can learn more at his blog, intensivedietarymanagement.com, of which I am a subscriber. It's an amazing blog. Thank you so much for coming back, Dr. Fung, and we're excited for the topic today.

Dr. Fung:
Thanks for having me. It's very exciting to be back.

Dr. Pompa:
Doc, listen, you are a hero in our world because you've done so many of the studies, and been a part of so many studies. We have a group of doctors who believe strongly in fasting, in intermittent fasting, in really, I would say, a very unique way of addressing insulin resistance, diabetes, hormone resistance. The topic today is diabetes. I want to jump right in. You have a unique view of type 2 diabetes. I want you to explain that to our viewers.

We have lay people watching this that need to understand this. We have doctors that are watching this that need to understand this. The old of just, hey, the receptors are affected and blunting out, you really have a unique way of looking at the liver as a big part of this whole thing. Forcing in glucose to the body may make glucose levels in the blood look better, but it sure is killing us slowly. Explain it from the top. Explain the standard view of how we look at type 2 diabetes, and explain your view better, which in your book you've addressed, and even in The Complete Guide of Fasting. I've read a lot of your blogs that address it as well. Start right there, Doc.

Dr. Fung:
This is actually very interesting because I'm actually finishing the manuscript on a type 2 diabetes specific book, which is going to be coming out very soon, in 2018. This is a whole different way of looking at type 2 diabetes. First of all, just to back up a little bit, there's two types of diabetes, type 1 and type 2 diabetes. When they first started, type 1 was the focus because a lot of children, predominantly, were getting this illness, and their blood glucose would rise very high. They would lose all kinds of weight, and then they would die.

What they found was that they were severely lacking insulin. Insulin is a hormone that allows the glucose to go into the cells to be used for energy. It's really the energy storage hormone. When you eat, insulin goes up. Your body stores energy. If you have virtually zero insulin, like these children are having, your body couldn't store any of the incoming food energy. You would basically waste away. Then you'd die. In 1921, at the University of Toronto, they discovered insulin. They purified it, gave it to these kids, these kids miraculously got better. Unfortunately, the story of diabetes didn't really end there.

There was another type of diabetes, which soon became very evident. By the '50s and '60s, they started monitoring insulin levels. It was clear that there was two groups. There were those children that had severe lack of insulin. You gave them insulin, they did fine. Then you had this group of older, overweight, obese people in their 50s and 60s, and you gave them insulin, and well, nothing really happened that was all that great. You'd give them a bit of insulin, then they'd need more and more and more. It was clear that there were two groups. These older people didn't actually have too little insulin. Their insulin levels were actually very high. What they had, in fact, was something called insulin resistance. The insulin is there, but it's not moving that glucose from the blood into the cell.

The question was why. Nobody really understood what the basic problem was, what caused all this insulin resistance. There's all kinds of theories. For a long time, people thought dietary fat was a problem, dietary cholesterol, all kinds of problems. This is what we see now. In fact, today, if you fast forward today, 90 to 95% of diabetes is in fact type 2 diabetes. For the rest, or most of the rest of the rest of the talk, when I refer to diabetes, it will refer to type 2 diabetes. That's predominantly what I deal with as an adult physician. That's just to be clear. If you're type 1, you have to take this – you have to understand that.

The question is, what causes this insulin resistance? People have this lock and key paradigm. What that means is that insulin is considered a key. The cell, it is walled off. It has a wall, so that glucose can't go in. Nothing can go in without the cell letting it go in. You have a gate. Insulin's like a key. It opens the gate and allows the glucose to go from the blood into the cell. What they said was that well, something has happened that this key and this gate no longer fit together very well. Therefore, the glucose is staying outside, and not getting into the cell, and that's why the blood glucose is high, which causes all the symptoms. When your blood glucose is high, that's what we call diabetes.

What they said was that because the glucose wasn't going into the cell, your cell was facing an internal starvation because all the glucose is outside, it's not inside. Certainly, in type 1 diabetes, that's the case. In type 2 diabetes, it's much harder to make the case that these are internally starving people. When you look at them, they're obviously overweight. Their livers are huge, and filled with fat. Their pancreases are filled with fat. Their bellies, they have these huge central adiposity, which is the weight that gathers around the mid-section. It didn't look anything like these children who are dropping weight at an alarming weight.

When they tried to understand it, they said, well, we don't understand it. The insulin molecule's clearly not changed. The receptor, you can clone the receptor, you can test the receptor, the receptor is fine. Both the key and the gate were completely normal, but it wasn't working. What they said was, well, there's something gumming up the mechanism, just like if you had some gum and stuck it into the lock. Your key is fine, your gate is fine, but it's not working because there's something in there that's blocking. If you think about it that way, then the natural solution is to pump up the insulin. That was the strategy for years and years, for decades really. If you have type 2 diabetes, you'd take medication. When the medication wasn't enough, they'd give insulin.

If you think about the lock and key model, you're producing a lot of keys. Each key doesn't really work, but there's so many of them that you could get the glucose into the cell. That's what we did. Up until about 2008, that was the prevailing view of almost everybody in the world, including myself, that the high blood glucose was what causes all the damage. You simply give enough insulin to get this glucose into the cell, and you'll be fine. When they actually tested that theory, so in 2008 and 2009 several large studies came out as the Accord Study, the Advanced Study, the BADT, and there's been several since then. What they studied was, does giving all this medication and insulin to lower the blood glucose really make you healthier? Does it prevent heart attacks? Does it prevent strokes? Does it prevent death? Obviously, type 2 Diabetics were very sick. We all though the answer was an obvious yes, but it turned out that the answer was not at all. Patients were not healthier at all.

Dr. Pompa:
Just right there, from a clinical perspective, my group of doctors, we get the patients in that are on the different medications. There's many that take the glucose from the blood and put it somewhere. The blood glucose is normal, so God forbid they come off the medication because then their blood glucose rises. I love your analogy in that you're basically saying, okay, great, you're taking the garbage from the kitchen and you're stuffing it places.

This is what the medication does. You're taking it and you're putting it under the sink. Maybe you're throwing it into the bathroom. The kitchen looks great. It looks clean. However, after a period of time, the rot starts. We could call that diabetic neuropathy. We could call that deterioration of cartilage, whatever it is. Diabetics die. We know this. I've known this for years. Just because your glucose is normal, and you're on diabetic medication, it seems to do nothing for the degenerative symptoms that go along with diabetes. You've answered this. That analogy, I think, and you can expand upon it, I think it really gets our average viewer to understand what's going on here.

Dr. Fung:
Yeah, absolutely, so this lock and key paradigm wasn't really correct. The way to really understand type 2 diabetes insulin resistance is really that this is an overflow paradigm. When you think about it, you have glucose that's not getting into the cell. Why is the insulin – why is that key not working anymore? Maybe that cell is so full, already, of glucose, that you can't shove any more in. That's the idea that what's happening is not that there's something wrong with the key, and the lock, and that mechanism, but the cell is just so full that it's actually shoving it out.

Just like if you had a suitcase, for example, and you're trying to put in your t-shirt, at first when you put in your t-shirts it's fine. Once it's completely full, you just can't put in those last two t-shirts. There's nothing wrong with the t-shirt, there's nothing wrong with your luggage, there's nothing wrong. It's full. It's the same thing with our body. What we've done is we've taken this sugar, and we shoved it into our shelves. Over the decades, we shove in more, and more, and more until the cell is finally full. Now, when you try and shove it in, it doesn't go in. The answer is not to keep shoving with more and more force.

That's the real problem. If you keep shoving it in, what happens is that it fills up. Then your body says, okay, no more. The blood glucose spills out again, and then what you do is you go to your doctor, your doctor gives you insulin. Insulin doesn't get rid of that glucose, it merely takes that blood glucose and just rams it into your body. Your body goes, whoa, and then it accepts a bit more for a little while. Then it fills up again. Then the glucose starts spilling out again. You go back to your doctor, and your doctor doubles up your dose of insulin. You're really cramming it in.

That's the whole problem, you keep cramming it in, cramming, cramming it in. What you've done is you've taken the blood from the glucose where you could see it, and you just basically shoved it somewhere where you couldn't see it because where does this all go? You shoved all this glucose back in the cell, it goes back into the liver, and the liver packages it up as fat and sends it all over the body. All this glucose goes into your eyes, and your kidneys, and your nerves, and your heart, and everything. Over the decades, everything just starts to rot.

That's why diabetes affects every single part of our body. You're shoving all this stuff everywhere, where it's not supposed to go, and then pretending it's fine because you're saying, well, look at my blood glucose. It's fine. Instead of throwing the garbage out, you hide it away under the bed. You're not any better. If you hide the glucose, which you should have got rid of, into your cell, well, you're not any healthier. What's interesting is that it's a very powerful paradigm because the problem, really, to understand type 2 diabetes is really just too much sugar in the body, not in the blood. If it's the blood, then you can still hide it away. It's in your whole body. You have too much. I give the analogy of a sugar bowl. Imagine your body is just like a sugar bowl. Over the years, it fills up. Then when you eat, the sugar comes in and spills out into the blood.

What you don't want to do is take that sugar and just shove it back in. you've got to get rid of it. Up until now, all the drugs simply shoved that glucose out of the blood, into the body. Therefore, they didn't see any benefits. There's actually a new class of medication called SGLT2s, which actually cause you to excrete the sugar in your urine. You actually pee out more glucose. What's very interesting about this is that the recent studies, which just came out a year and a half ago, is that despite the fact that these drugs don't really lower your blood glucose very much. They're about as half as affective.

Dr. Pompa:
It had a significant effect on heart disease, though. I read the study.

Dr. Fung:
Absolutely. It reduced heart disease by 25%, reduced death by 30%, reduced kidney disease by so much despite the fact that it didn't lower blood glucose because they're doing the right thing. What's very interesting about this is that that is actually the body's own protective mechanism. If you think about it, the problem is too much sugar. What we've done is we've taken sugar, sugar, sugar. We've filled up our bodies. Our body sends it out everywhere. Eventually, what it does is the blood glucose goes up and you pee out the sugar. Everybody thinks that's a bad thing, but that's actually your body's protective response by trying to dump out this toxic glucose load.

That's the reason everybody has this. That's why you have the renal threshold, which is a level of blood glucose above which your body doesn't absorb anymore. Your body says, whoa, I have enough. I am just dumping the rest of it out. It's actually a protective mechanism. Now, what we do is we take insulin, we shove all that glucose out of the blood, into the cells. We actually eliminate that protective mechanism we had before, and there we are. With these medications, what you see is that there's a protective effect. I call this a new paradigm of insulin resistance. That's really one of the exciting things because what it does is it opens up the entire field to reversal. If the problem is too much sugar, if you understand type 2 diabetes is simply a problem of too much sugar, there's only two things you need to do. Don't put it in, and burn it off.

Dr. Pompa:
Therein lies the answer.

Dr. Fung:
Both are completely natural and completely free. We don't need anything but knowledge to reverse this entire disease that affects 52 -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
We'll get to the answer in a minute. Something we see clinically, you're the scientist, I always draw back to clinically. We see that the skinnier diabetics have the fattiest liver. The fatter diabetics, typically, you don't see as fatty of a liver. You eat this sugar. You can only do two things with it, I guess, three. You can burn it, but there's so much that you can't burn, so you store some as stored sugar and glycogen, or you store it as fat somewhere. Explain that because our viewers have to understand this as far as where it's going, the whole fatty liver, and why that can make things even worse. Explain that a little bit.

Dr. Fung:
Yeah, so that's a good question because everybody always talks about the skinny diabetic. If you look at them, they have big, fatty livers. The problem is not actually the body fat. It's actually the so-called ectopic fat or abdominal fat, which is the fat in the liver, the fat in the pancreas, the fat around the organs that's not supposed to be there. Fat inside a fat cell is fine. That's what it's supposed to do. Fat inside the liver is not fine because the liver is not supposed to have it. What happens when you take excessive carbohydrates, but particularly fructose, and we'll get back to fructose in a second, is that your insulin goes up. Your body starts to store sugar.

Now, you can store sugar in two ways. Basically, you can store it as sugar, or you can store it as fat. you can store food energy in two ways, either sugar or fat. You can't store proteins for energy. When you eat, your body stores glycogen. That's chains of sugar. It goes into the liver. There's a limited capacity for it. The advantage of the glycogen system is that you can take that food energy in and out very, very easily. If you eat, it goes into liver, but when you don't eat, for example, when you're asleep, it comes back out of the liver. It's really, fast. It's really, easy. It's like the refrigerator. You can put food there. It's easy to put in. It's easy to take out.

Body fat is a different form of storage. It's much harder to get to. When you take excessive carbohydrates, it fills up with glycogen. If your glycogen's full, your body actually creates new fat. That's called de novo lipogenesis. You take the glucose, and you actually change it into fat. That gets sent out of the liver to the fat cells. Body fat is harder to get to. It's harder to get the stores of energy that are locked away in the body fat, but there's unlimited amount of storage. As everybody knows, you can store a lot of body fat. You have two complimentary systems. One has limited storage, but easy in and out. One has unlimited storage, but it's hard to get in and out.

Dr. Pompa:
Your freezer.

Dr. Fung:
Your freezer, yes. It's like in the basement, you put it in the freezer. It's there if you need it, but it's not so easy to get to. You can carry a lot of stuff in there. You actually have two complimentary systems. The problem is that if you store the fat, so as you eat excessive carbohydrates and insulin, insulin goes up and then it creates the fat. You're creating the fat, and you're shuttling it out to the fat cells. The problem is when you have excessive insulin, then you create fatty liver. The fat is backing up. You're putting glucose into the system. The glucose storage is full. Now we assume the glycogen is full.

As you pour in more glucose, the liver has to make fat and get it out of there. If you put in too much, if you overwhelm the export mechanism, all that fat just backs up. Then you get this big, giant, fatty liver. That's what causes insulin resistance. Now you're pouring glucose in, but you're not getting the fat out fast enough the other side, so the liver says, okay, no more. I can't take anymore, so stop it. That's when everything backs up, and the glucose goes into the blood. That's insulin resistance. Fructose, which is half of sugar.

Table sugar is sucrose, half fructose, half glucose. High fructose corn syrup is roughly the same, slightly more fructose. Fructose is actually very important. It's actually the most important input into the system. What happens is that fructose cannot be used by any cell in the body. Every cell in your body uses glucose. When you eat glucose, so starches like flour, white bread. Say you eat white bread. It's all glucose. There's some fructose in there, but that's added in. If you just eat rice, for example, it's all glucose, not fructose. That glucose can be used by your whole body.

If you're 170 pounds, for example, then all 170 pounds of your body is using that glucose. Fructose is not the same. Nobody uses fructose. The only place it can go is directly to the liver, and only the liver metabolizes fructose. What happens is that when it gets to the liver, the fructose, there's only one of three paths. You can burn it, but nobody's going to burn it because you're just changing into glucose, and you're eating at the time that you're taking in this fructose, so there's no need to burn it. The other thing is you can change it to glucose, but that's hard, or you change it into fat. Once again, fructose, essentially, goes directly into new liver fats, or de novo lipogenesis.

Dr. Pompa:
Let me say a word on that real fast. If you go to the Diabetes Association website, they still recommend fructose for diabetics. Why? Fructose, as you pointed out, doesn't raise blood glucose. It's only processed in the liver. On the surface, it looks like, hey, this is a really safe sugar for diabetics to consume. However, what you're saying is the fact that it goes right into the liver, and makes fatty liver, it is actually contributing to the larger portion of the problem.

Today, we have something very unique. No time in the history of man have we seen fatty liver in the children because of the amount of fructose they're consuming in all the energy drinks and sport drinks. They're loaded with fructose, of course, the drinks from the time they were babies. They're giving them orange juice, and this juice, and that juice. The amount of fructose we're consuming, we're seeing fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver in children. I've heard fructose is being called alcohol without the buzz, meaning it's the same thing. Alcohol can only be processed in the liver, and that's why it creates fatty liver. Is there the same correlation there with alcohol?

Dr. Fung:
Absolutely the same correlation, and it's scary. If you look at diabetic clinics, and children, pediatric clinics, it used to be all type 1s. Now, it's 50/50 type 1 and type 2. It's a scary thing. The problem with the fructose is that if you think about it, so sucrose, table sugar, is 50% glucose, 50% fructose. What happens is that say you eat – a pound of sugar is half a pound of glucose. All 170 pounds of body uses that glucose. That same amount of fructose goes to five pounds of liver. It all goes directly into liver fat. In terms of causing diabetes, the fructose is something like 20 or 30 times worse than the glucose. It's much worse. That's the real problem. You see it all over the place.

In China, for example, is a very interesting case study. In 1980, about 1% of the population had type 2 diabetes. Now, it's about 11%, so ten, 11-fold increase in 30 years. A single generation, it's gone up an incredible 11 times. That's ridiculous. If you look back at the diet in 1980, 1990, the amount of white rice they're eating is off the charts. It's way higher than anybody in the United States, or the United Kingdom, and yet they had no diabetes, practically zero diabetes, 1%. Practically no diabetes, and yet they're eating 300 grams a day of carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates because it's all white rice, no brown rice, there's none of that. How do they do that?

The point is, they don't eat any sugar at all. Their intake of sucrose was virtually zero. They had no diabetes. Now, they're eating sugar. They've become westernized. Now, they eat cakes, and bread, and all this stuff. Now, they're actually the highest proportion of diabetes in the world, beating even the United States, which is super-scary. Now they have this tradition of rice, white rice, high carbohydrates. Now they take that sugar, and they're toast. They're really in a lot of trouble. That's the thing. That sugar tracks much more closely to the incidents of type 2 diabetes than carbohydrates, than body weight, than anything else.

In fact, it's scary because the average body mass index of an Asian diabetic is I think 23.7. That's normal weight. Twenty to 25 is normal weight. Twenty-five to 30 is overweight, and over 30 is obese. They're actually in the normal weight category, and yet they're all developing – that's the average. This is really scary. They're all developing because they're all getting all this directly into that liver because of the very high refined carbohydrates because of the fructose. It's basically glucose, fructose, that's the root of the problem is sugar.

Dr. Pompa:
Where does fruit fit in? Fruit's high in fructose, right? How does that fit in? Obviously, our bodies are able to take in a certain amount of fructose, but obviously it's the overconsumption. Talk about that.

Dr. Fung:
One of the first principles of toxicology is really the dose makes the poison. If you looked at whole fruit, the amount of fructose, there's fructose there for sure, but if you look at the amount that they're eating in 1915, 1920, it's very little compared to what we eat today. What happened then, of course, was that they had the sugar plantations in the deep south. In the Caribbean, they had those sugar plantations.

Back in the early 1900s there's very little sugar. They didn't have much fructose at all. Then the sugar plantations came and gradually went up. Then high fructose corn syrup was a real changer because now you could process it not out of sugar beet, but out of corn. There is a lot of corn. The prices of this high fructose corn syrup basically went to almost zero, practically. Everybody put it everywhere they could because it was cheap as anything. All these processed foods just put it wherever they could. The amount went up. If you look at the sugar-sweetened beverages in amount, percentage of calories. People are eating at its peak, I think teens were eating almost 25% of their calories as sugar. It was ridiculously high.

Things have changed, though. If you look from 2000 onwards, with this real focus on sugar, you can see that there's been a tremendous drop. Obviously, we're not out of the woods, but there has been a drop. The message has gotten through, but the fructose is really much worse than the other one. That's why if you're talking about type 2 diabetes, or pre-diabetes, the very first thing you've got to get rid of is all the added sugars. What that realistically means is getting rid of almost all processed foods because almost all processed foods have that.

Dr. Pompa:
It's the hidden sugars. Corn syrup, I mean, ketchup, corn syrup, right, I mean every – can foods, corn syrup. Corn syrup's everywhere. Like you said, it's all about the money. Corn syrup is a cheap sweetener, and it markets well. People don't even recognize it as sugar. The average person looks at it and goes, oh. They know sucrose or dextrose, perhaps, but they don't understand corn syrup. Let's get into the solution. Here in lies the problem. You tapped in a little bit on the solution. We either have to burn it down, or not put it in. Let's talk about it. That kind of piggy backs. Here, we have the person with the fatty liver, obviously, type 2 diabetes. We have a unique answer. We do something, and we've talked a lot about fasting, intermittent fasting, and things. Talk about it.

Dr. Fung:
Really, if you think about it, it's a very simple solution. Let me back up. It's not just the fatty liver. Once that liver gets all fatty, it starts sending all this fat out. The other key place it goes is the pancreas. You've got this fatty pancreas. Here's the second part of what happens. The fat clogs up your pancreas so that it can't secrete the insulin. What you see is that as the insulin levels start to drop off, again, this is actually one of your body's –

Dr. Pompa:
This explains why we thought the beta cells would burn out, what we would call pre-diabetes. This is a unique thing that I've read from you.

Dr. Fung:
What happens is that everybody thought that it's because the pancreas has been secreting so much for so long that it's just all burnt out. It can't be true for a few reasons. One is that if you look at children, there's no way that their pancreases are burnt out by age seven. That would be ridiculous and really scary. Second of all, some people said well, the high glucose is what burned out the pancreas cells. You can't because the pancreas is producing so much insulin, glucose levels stay relatively good until after the pancreas starts to fail. That is to say the pancreas fails and then the glucose goes up. It's not the glucose goes up and then the pancreas fails.

Everybody says that oh, the glucose is what kills the pancreas; not at all. The glucose is fine. When the pancreas starts to fail, then the glucose goes up. You can't say that glucose is what killed the pancreas. The third thing is that you can actually make that pancreas work better. We know that from studies of, for instance, bariatric surgery. In bariatric surgery, where you have a severe, sudden caloric drop, that diabetes – you can take a 500-pound man on 400 units of insulin, you do bariatric surgery, and two weeks later they're actually completely non-diabetic. They're still massively overweight. They haven't lost a lot of weight yet. Diabetes is completely gone in two weeks. Everybody says, how does that happen?

What happens is that the body actually pulls out your fat preferentially. When you go to a very, very low-calorie diet, first of all, remember, your body stores glycogen and body fat. You can exhaust your glycogen in about 24-hours. Then when you start to burn body fat, the first place it goes is that stuff that's in your pancreas and in your liver, which is great because that's what causes all the problems. That's how you can reverse that type 2 diabetes in three weeks in these surgical cases, which everybody knows about, because those pancreas cells weren't burnt out. You can measure them, and you can see that they're starting to secrete more insulin again. That's great news because now, all of a sudden, you have light at the end of the tunnel. It's not like your pancreas is burnt out.

This is how doctors kept telling patients, oh, it's chronic, it's progressive, your pancreas is burnt out, there's nothing you can do about it. That pancreas was merely clogged up with fat. As soon as you unclog that fat, it's going to get better. Several doctors have actually done MRI studies of this fatty pancreas. What they've found is that you only have to remove 0.6 grams of fat from that pancreas to get it going again. It's a miniscule amount. That's crazy small. That's great news because if that's the strategy, then hey, again, burning it off, intermittent fasting, is a perfect strategy.

One, you're not putting it in. You're not putting anything in. There's no anything. It's not just carbohydrates, you got nothing going in, but because your body must have energy in order to function, you're going to start burning. In the first 24 to 36 hours, for example, you're going to burn that glycogen, and maybe a little bit of protein. Then you're going to get into fat burning. From then on, your body is immediately going to go to the intra-organic fat, the fat inside the liver, the fat inside the pancreas.

That's where you see your insulin requirements. If you're on insulin, the insulin requirements go down dramatically, the medications go down dramatically. If you start having people do longer fasts, you'll see it very quickly. It's a crazy situation because I see people – and after a month, they're off of everything. It's crazy how fast they get better. I actually knew that already from the studies on bariatric surgery, but it's still incredible to watch these people who've been on insulin for 15 years, and in a month, they're off. It's like, wow, that is great.

Here, their doctors had been telling them, oh, you're always going to be on for the rest of your life. I'm like, yeah, you've been taking insulin for 10 years for no reason just because people weren't treating the proper problem. It all stems back to that misunderstanding of this lock and key, oh, internal starvation. That's type 1, that's not type 2. Type 2 is an overflow. That's the real difference there.

Dr. Pompa:
We were talking off air, and I was talking about clinically with my group of doctors, what we're doing, what we're seeing. Step one, we've moved people into a lot of carbohydrate diet, even into ketosis. Then step two, we start intermittent fasting, where we push out maybe 15 hours. They're getting more fat-adapted. In the beginning, they're hungry all the time. Eventually, they start adapting. Then our conversation was then we start throwing in days of the week where they just eat one meal, giving more time for what you're saying.

During that time, as they became more fat adapted, their body's going to start burning out that fat out of the pancreas, and out of the liver. Then we throw in even a longer fast, maybe a 42-hour fast. We're just giving more and more time to empty that fat out of those organs. I'm telling you, it is remarkable. Then, once they get even more efficient, then we can do them on longer fasts. Therein lies a very unique answer.

I want you to speak to something because in February, this past February 2017, there was a study, I believe, in Cell, that looked at a partial fast, taking people between 500 and 1100 calories. They spoke about beta cell regeneration. What they noticed was a lot of the things we're talking about. Was it beta cell regeneration? Was it that they just became activated again? I know you know the study. What are your thoughts on it?

Dr. Fung:
I think you're basically just unclogging that pancreas. It's their regeneration, potentially, although I think that they're not a huge part of why people get better. It's really too fast. If you look at Dr. Roy Taylor's work, and he's been doing this for several years now. He doesn't do a full fast. He does this 500, 800 –

Dr. Pompa:
I call it a partial fast.

Dr. Fung:
You're getting into the range where you're going to see some benefits, but to me it doesn't make any sense to do 500, 800 calories. These are sick people. You might as well do the full thing. It's a powerful dietary strategy. What he showed was recovering pancreatic function. When you measure the insulin response, it was low before, and now it's going up. That idea of regeneration came from the idea that they were burnt out. I don't think they were ever burnt out.

Dr. Pompa:
I want to go back and actually read it. I didn't, to the depth, to see were they actually seeing regenerated beta cells? How were they measuring it? Was it because the function was up? I can't answer that. I didn't read it close enough.

Dr. Fung:
I think it was the recovery of the pancreatic function. Some people have interpreted that. You do this for the first insulin response, and what you see is that over time, over eight weeks, I think they do, so 800 calories a day for eight weeks. The fat comes out of the liver much faster because the insulin resistance – you can measure the insulin resistance, and he has as well. The insulin resistance drops very quickly. That gets better very quickly, but the pancreatic problem actually takes a lot longer. It takes many, many weeks before you see it. It's even still getting better over eight weeks.

It's harder to get it out of the pancreas. The liver fat seems to come out very quickly. What you do is you measure the pancreatic response. It should produce a certain amount of insulin, but it's very low. Over those eight weeks, you can actually show that it starts to get better and better. It's a fascinating study, and again completely disproves this idea that they were completely burnt out in the first place. That's really important work, I think, that's been done.

Dr. Pompa:
Where does even part of the epigenetic component come in, maybe two, that when the cell fills up that it's sending a signal to the receptors even to shut off. It makes sense. We know that the DNA can send a signal to the receptor and blunt the receptor, so to speak. Really, it's driven by the innate intelligence to do so at different times, in terms of starvation, whatever it is. As the cell fills, then we can experience a receptor that doesn't work as well, but it's because this body was so smart to even blunt it, if you will. Does that even make sense?

Dr. Fung:
Yeah, absolutely, and it comes back to the point about the fat cell. It's interesting because some people look at obesity as actually a protective response because what you're doing is you've got all this excessive sugar. Your liver, actually, is trying to protect itself by sending it out into the fat cells. There's a ton of studies looking at the adipocyte, which is the fat cell, size. The bigger your adipocyte, the more insulin resistance you will have. Of course, that's just like the suitcase. The more clothes you put in it, the harder it's going to be to stuff it full. The fat cell is the same, the more you stuff it full. The point of the fat cell is that it holds it in a safe space, so that it's not backing up into the liver. You have these rare humans that have zero fat. It's very interesting because they have no fat at all, and they have the worst insulin resistance you've ever seen.

Dr. Pompa:
I've seen it, yep.

Dr. Fung:
It's crazy because what happens, of course, is that their fat cells cannot store fat. All the fat stores in the liver. You get immediate insulin resistance with everything. They have the worst cases you've ever seen. Fat cells, again, everybody things it's so bad. It's actually trying to protect ourselves from this excessive sugar load. Everything comes back to this toxic sugar load, sugar being glucose and fructose. That's a protective response. You're becoming obese to hold it away from the really damaging fat, which is the fat in your liver, fat in your pancreas. That takes decades.

Finally, you overcome your body's resistance to that protection. The next step is that the liver says no more, don't give me any more. Then the blood glucose goes up. When the blood glucose goes up, you start spilling it out in your urine. Everybody's oh, that's bad. No, that's good. The problem was they have too much. The pancreas is the same. The pancreas clogs up and stops producing insulin so that your blood glucose shoots up and can start spilling out. Yes, you have to pay a price. You have the symptoms. You have the high urine output, you have the thirst, and weight loss. In fact, that was all protecting you from what was the real, underlying cause of the whole thing, which was just too much sugar.

Dr. Pompa:
The body's amazing. It just wants to survive. Obesity is a survival mechanism.

Dr. Fung:
What we thought was really a path of physiology, we thought it was a disease state, is actually a natural protective factor. That's why everybody in the world has this response. Everybody in the world's getting diabetes, getting fat. Why? Is it a maladaptive response? Obviously, not. The human body is incredibly smart. We think it's always stupid. The body's stupid, you have to give it insulin. No, we were really stupid to think that we were smarter than the body.

Dr. Pompa:
I couldn't echo that more. It's amazing. As time goes on, we realize that we're always the stupid ones. Our bodies are always – therein lies God's intelligence. Meredith, you probably have a question. I'll turn it over to you as we approach the top of the hour.

Meredith:
We're finishing up. I always learn so much from both of you. Just wondering from an implementation standpoint, how these fasting and dietary strategies may differ between type 1 and type 2 diabetes clients.

Dr. Fung:
type 1 is completely different. It's the severe lack of insulin. First, you have to give it insulin. What's really interesting about type 1 diabetes is that they develop all the same diseases as type 2 diabetes. If you think about it, it's very interesting because what happens is that when you follow type 1's – so you give them – first, they have no insulin. You give them insulin, everything's fine. Thirty years later, they're gaining weight, they're getting metabolic syndrome, and you can measure that they have insulin resistance. With the insulin resistance, which is actually, I say it's not useful to call it insulin resistance. I call it hyper insulinemia because it's a much more powerful way to look at it. If you see the problem is too much insulin, then the answer's super-obvious, lower it. They all have signs of hyper insulinemia, and then they get their heart attacks and strokes.

What's interesting is that if they're getting signs of too much insulin, it can only be because we gave it to them. Their body actually doesn't make any. They, in fact, have double diabetes. They have type 1 diabetes, which is that their pancreas doesn't make it, but they actually have type 2 because they have insulin resistance and hyper insulinemia. The solution, then, becomes very obvious again. The point is that there's two toxicities in type 1. You have the glucotoxicity, that is if your blood glucose goes very high for a very high for a very long time, it's a problem. You have insulin toxicity as well. If you take too much insulin for too long a time, you have a problem. They have both.

If you have both glucotoxicity and insulin toxicity, you have to lower both your glucose and your insulin. The way to do that is eating a very low carbohydrate diet, or add some intermittent fasting. Therefore, if you don't eat 24 hours, twice a week, for example, you reduce the need for insulin because you're not eating. Therefore, you don't have to inject so much. Therefore, you're going to lower the amount of insulin that you need in the long term. It's very interesting because type 1s, if you look at who lives the longest, they had several studies on this. They followed a golden years cohort of type 1s who had lived for 50 years and done very well. They said, okay, let's look at these people and see what is it that they did very well at.

Their average blood glucose, their A1C, was 7.6%, which is not that good. In fact, not a single one of those people, who had lived 50 years with type 1, had a normal blood glucose. What they all had was a low insulin dose. There's two toxicities, glucotoxicity and insulin toxicity. Our mistake in type 2 diabetes was thinking – and type 1 as well, was thinking that you can lower the blood glucose by raising the insulin. You're only trading glucotoxicity for more insulin toxicity. You actually have to lower both in order to do well. That's the answer. You go to low carbohydrate diets, just as you said, and then intermittent fasting, which is the ultimate strategy for that -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
It is the ultimate strategy. What people don't understand is every time you eat, you create a glucose and insulin spike. I don't care if it's a salad. The only way, really, to have perfect glucose and insulin is not eat. Of course, we know we need to eat. That's why my little saying has become don't eat less, eat less often. When you're not eating in spells, you have this perfect state of insulin and glucose, and you're making your body burn it. Either you're storing glucose or burning it. That's really the only state the body can be in. Am I right on that?

Dr. Fung:
Yeah, absolutely, and this is the thing I tell patients. I say, well look, think about it this way, if you don't eat, what you're doing is making your body eat that blood glucose. When that's done, it's going to eat your body fat. If you fast for three days, you're basically eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner of your own body fat. That's perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to do. Everybody always worries about nutrient density and so on. I'm like okay, but that's not the problem I'm treating here.

You can take a multivitamin, but obesity is not a nutrient-deficient disease. What am I treating, scurvy? Scurvy is a nutrient-deficient disease. Berry berry is a nutrient deficiency disease. That's not what I'm treating here. I'm treating obesity type 2 diabetes. Know what you're treating. If you're worried about certain nutrients, then you can replenish them. That's the easiest thing to do in the world.

Dr. Pompa:
You hit on one of my pet peeves. In the alternative world, everyone is so focused on the micronutrients when the diseases we're seeing are about the macronutrients, the over consumption of macronutrients, whether it be protein, carbohydrates, and the sugars. Everyone's thinking about it's this vitamin, it's that vitamin. Really, if you solve the macronutrient problem, the few micronutrient issues typically take care of themselves as well. I think the focus is in the wrong place.

Dr. Fung:
It's completely the wrong thing. Everybody's always saying, what am I not eating enough of that is making me obese and type 2 diabetic. The answer is nothing. You've got everything you need. That's not the question.

Dr. Pompa:
It's an overflow.

Dr. Fung:
It's an overflow. They've gone in the wrong direction right from the beginning. Why is that? There's a lot of money to be made in selling supplements and all these things. Really, from a scientific standpoint, it's really what do you have too much of, not too little of. When you approach it that way, you see that the answer is completely different. The solutions that present themselves are completely different. I mean, it's such an incredible idea.

We have all these diseases, heart disease, strokes, and cancer, the biggest killers of Americans, all related to metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes. Yet, we tell people that it's all chronic and progressive. The truth is that they can start themselves tomorrow, today, to start fixing the problem. They listen to this podcast, and you can start right now and start fixing the problem. It's that powerful.

Dr. Pompa:
Listen, when we look at all the studies on living longer, everyone things it's eating less. Really, these countries, they're not eating less. They're eating less often. I was in an African culture and they didn't eat. When you look at how many times Americans eat, whatever calories their doing, it's the kombucha, it's the nuts, whatever it is. They're constantly eating. Then they'll tell you that they only eat two meals a day, or three meals a day. Really, when you analyze it, they're eating a lot more than that. The solution is eat less often.

Dr. Fung:
Exactly, I think it's a huge part of the problem that really doesn't get talked about. If you look at the big -inaudible- surveys of Americans, 1977, the number of times people ate in a day was three, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I grew up in the '70s. That was it. There were no snacks, there's no after school snack, nothing, no bedtime snack, no eating in front of the TV. Then you go to 2004, and the number of times people ate in the day averaged closer to six. It's like, okay, so we're eating all the time. If you're eating all the time, you're stimulating insulin all the time, which is giving your body the instruction to store food energy. If you're always storing it in, then you're not going to burn it. Not that hard to imagine how you gain weight with that.

Dr. Pompa:
Kids can't go through a day of school, today, without snack time. We're literally starting obesity and insulin resistance with snack time. I don't care if it's a healthy snack. You're either burning your glucose or your storing it. We just keep storing it and not burning. Therein lies the problem; however, at least get rid of the darn fructose and the sugars, and start eating less. Take away your kids' snacks, for goodness sakes. There's a good starting point, three meals a day. Then you can go to two, especially if you already have an issue. Then you can start fasting. We gave them the answer, Doc. I mean, come on, -inaudible-.

Dr. Fung:
The answer's right here.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, -inaudible-.

Dr. Fung:
You and I, we grew up in an age where everybody ate three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everybody was fine. Now, we imagine that every child in America and Canada must eat snacks. That's the most ridiculous. We had whole generations of kids do fine.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, and we think that it has to be. Partly because they go yeah, but when they don't get their snack they can't focus. When we give them the sugar, then they focus. Yeah, because they don't even know how to use fat at the cellular level. They just eat sugar high to sugar high to sugar high. They're never burning their own fat, so they just need the next sugar hit.

Dr. Fung:
Yeah, and then we call them ADHD and start medicating them on the other side.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, I mean as insane as that sounds that you just said, that is what we're doing. We're snacking them. We're giving them sugar. Think about it. Oh, but they don't count the orange juice, the healthy juice that they drank, loaded with fructose, as even a snack. It's so much juice, it's snack, it's juice, it's snack. It's all day long, and then we'll eventually medicate them. I better stop because I'm going to come out of my skin. All right, Meredith, you better shut me down. Doc, thank you, we love you, we love your work. We appreciate you so much, my group of doctors does, and everyone who watches the show. Thank you very much.

Dr. Fung:
Thanks for having me. This is great.

Meredith:
Thank you both. Always, you both, such a wealth of knowledge. I can tell you, you're so passionate about this topic. It's going to take a culture change. All of you who are watching out there, too, I hope you spread this message, share the podcast with everyone out there. This is what we need to do to make a change.

Dr. Pompa:
People need to hear this message. Share it. You're right, Meredith, my gosh. Do you know how many lives will change if you share this? I'm telling you, people need to hear this. Anyone who has a kid, you better send them this. That's a good point, Meredith.

Meredith:
Thanks. No more snacks, all right. Thank you so much, Dr. Fung. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. Everybody have a great weekend. We'll catch you next time. Bye-bye.

Dr. Fung:
Thanks very much.

Meredith:
Bye-bye.

Transcript of Episode 174: Do Skin Probiotics Work?

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Dr. Shayne Morris

Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode 174. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, and today we welcome special guest, Dr. Shayne Morris. We have a very interesting topic for you all today, and it is the skin microbiome. Dr. Shayne is no stranger to Cellular Healing TV, but if you haven’t caught him on the show before, let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Shayne. Dr. Shayne is one of America’s leading molecular biologists and herbalomic experts, and his work centers on the body’s epigenetic response to herbal nutrition. His leadership and the clinical results of the supplementation products he has pioneered has earned Systemic Formulas a global reputation as the world leader in cellular healing. Welcome back to Cellular Healing TV, Dr. Shayne, great to see you.

Dr. Shayne:
Thanks. Yeah. That’s amazing.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. It’s been a while, and I mean, you’re no doubt our favorite biochemist. We had to bring you on because of a breakthrough product. Look, every show we do about the skin ends up to be some of our number one shows so no doubt this one. You guys are going to hear about an amazing product that Dr. Shayne actually developed.

I have to say we’ve heard a lot about the microbiome of the gut, even the oral microbiome. I mean, we hear a lot about how bacteria affect our immune system, how bacteria are responsible for even how our brain works, I mean, all these things, but now, lately, there’s more talk about the skin microbiome. You’ve developed a breakthrough product that we’re going to talk about, which, by the way, is like no other product on the market. We’ve tested them all. This was the only one with actual bacteria that we tested. Meredith, you were in some of that testing, giving Dr. Shayne products that you were using for your skin that didn’t test out. We couldn’t find bacteria in it.

Dr. Shayne, talk a little bit about the skin microbiome. Why is it important? What is it? Let’s start there, go from there.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. It is an amazing topic, and you’re right. We focus so much on the GI tract because its relationship to our overall health, right, the gut-brain connection, the gut related to all these inflammatory diseases, which, of course, then are related to autoimmune. Now, the amazing piece here is that, once we have the technologies to start looking at these microbiota, we then ask ourselves where else does a microbiota live? Of course, you mentioned there’s the mouth, and then there’s the urogenital for women. The last frontier became the skin. Why? The skin is the most diverse area we have.

The gut has the same temperature, same moisture. It’s always dark. There’s no oxygen, so we know the kind of environment it is. It’s pretty much the same from top to bottom for the most part. There’s little variations in the mouth and the anus, but it’s much more easily to replicate. The skin, on the other hand, you’ve got oily zones. You’ve got dry zones. You’ve got hot zones. You’ve got cold zones. You’ve got all these global, what do we call them, ecosystems, right?

Dr. Pompa:
It’s like the earth, right?

Dr. Shayne:
It’s just like the earth.

Dr. Pompa:
I mean, you got your cold zones. You got your really humid zones. You got your arid zones, right?

Dr. Shayne:
That’s right. It’s just like the earth, and because of that, there’s a lot of diversity, a huge amount of diversity. We said, okay, we know that, from a detox standpoint, the skin is one of our detox pathways. Wow! We need to consider the skin. The skin is the first barrier to entry for a lot of pathogens. Okay. There’s another reason to study the skin.

Finally, the skin is probably the second to third most abundant immunological site in our body, right? The gut is the first, being the GALT, but the skin is right up there second. It’s our largest organ of our body, so why do we ignore the skin? Not only to mention that, it’s what we look at every day. It’s what we see and feel. It’s all of our senses. Everything that contacts the world around us is through our skin, our eyes. Our skin is the way that we touch the world. It’s amazingly influenced by the microbiota.

We looked at that and said how can we study? -inaudible-, Dan, when you and I started studying microbiota what now, eight years ago, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Dr. Shayne:
The skin -inaudible- we didn’t have the tools. Now that we have the tools, we started down the road of what do we do about the skin microbiota? How do we address the health of skin microbiota? Up until recently, it was through the gut because there is a gut-skin connection. When you have a healthy gut, you have healthy skin, for the most part. There’s some healthy people—or healthy guts have healthier skin. Okay. We now know there’s a skin-gut connection. How do we address the skin inward to the gut and the gut outward to the skin? We’re getting better.

Dr. Pompa:
On some of my research on this, I was shocked, actually, to find that the skin microbiota affects the gut. I’m back and forth. Meaning that they learn through some studies that, oh, my goodness, this microbiota actually can affect the gut. Like I said, to my surprise, I never would’ve thought that would’ve been true, and I was shocked even. This really applies to people’s health. If you’ve had trouble fixing your gut, listen to this show. Obviously, if you’re concerned about your skin in any way, whether it’s eczema, colitis, and you should hear some of the testimonies that I’ve had with just this odd skin condition, listen to this show.

I mean, my point is it affects more than just the outward appearance. I know, some of you who’ve been watching this, that’s what you’re concerned with. It really does go deeper than that. This is more than just skin deep.

Dr. Shayne:
It really is more than skin deep. On that note, let’s make a new triad. We know of all the triads in the body, right? There’s the liver-adrenal-pituitary axis and stuff. Now let’s look at the new triad related to microbiota, and that triad is the skin-gut-brain axis, right? We now know the brain-gut axis and the gut-brain access, right? That is a reversible axes. You just mentioned the skin-gut, the gut-skin axes. On your show, I think we should propose there’s a skin-brain, brain-skin axes, so all three of those make a new triad for us to try to understand.

Anecdotally, it’s true. When you think about when you’re emotionally wrecked, your skin becomes wrecked. Your gut becomes wrecked. When your skin is wrecked, you’re emotionally wrecked. You’re mentally wrecked. You’re psychologically wrecked. Your dopamine’s changed. Although, I think we’re the first people proposing it today, I do believe it exists. I believe that the brain and the skin are intimately related, and we know using this product and using other research that we’re affecting things in people.

You talk to any teenager with acne, and tell me they’re not depressed, right? Tell me that they’re not psychologically impacted. Sometimes their neurotransmitters are of an all-time low, and it’s because of their skin, when you think about it, right? Then their gut’s a wreck. We know for many, many—again, many anecdotal, I think that’s a real pursuable—and it’s something we want to deal with. This product was one of those ways to do that.

We come at things, Dr. Pompa and I—I think you and I come at things from a really—people that are in a really bad place. This could also be people that are in an okay place, and they can benefit from it. You can be healthy and benefit from it, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Shayne:
You don’t have to be a wreck to benefit from this work we’re doing. You can be—I use it every day. I’m not a wreck per se, but I use it. I’ve used it on infants now. At your Atlanta show, we had—I had at least two dozen testimonials come up to me at your Atlanta show showing me pictures of how it’s changed people, how the skin microbiome product, Skin Colonizer, changed people. It was amazing to hear. It was an amazing experience. Before we talk about the products, I’ll let you chime in a little.

Dr. Pompa:
You know what? I just had a client yesterday that literally said—we were going through her products. I said, “Oh, how is the Skin Colonizer working for you?” “Oh my gosh, I love that product.” I’ve seen it work on stretch marks. I’ve seen it work on the psoriasis. I’ve seen it work on just the impossible area of skin, which they’re not sure what’s going on. I could go down the list, and I have some autoimmune skin issues that it’s made a dramatic difference on.

One of the things that I—when we first showed this product or debuted the product, whatever, it was at a seminar here in Utah. I did a lecture about how to apply it after a far infrared sauna. Literally, in the far infrared sauna, you’re opening up those skin pores. You’re making the soil, basically, ripe to put this on. Now, you can put it on anytime. I mean, after a hot shower is when I typically put it on because it’s easy, but after a far infrared sauna, some of these really hard skin cases is when I have them apply it. The results have been absolutely spectacular.

There’s something that happens when you go from hot to cold. This change in the microbiome starts to occur, so applying it right then, I think there’s some magic in that. I talked about that in my lecture, so no doubt we’re going to get the question of when to apply it. I think after you’re cleaning your skin is a great time, and especially if you want even more of a reaction, do it after you do a far infrared sauna. Hit the cold shower. Make that temperature change. Challenge the microbiota, and then add the Skin Colonizer after.

You don’t’ even have to do the cold shower if you’re not one of those. That’s me. I do that. I try to create that adaptation and get that microbiota to change. Anyways, so we’re going to get that question. That’s answered.

Let’s talk about the product a little bit. We tested. You tested. We sent you some products that—and I don’t want to name names, but they were the leading products out there as far as boasting about—and believe me. They are the leading products because Meredith found them. They were boasting about their bacteria in their product and how it was amazing for the skin. We brought it to the lab. We tested all of these products, and I think you found some other ones. You couldn’t find any living bacteria in the product. Is that correct?

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. I think, in the end, I tested somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 different products.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow.

Dr. Shayne:
At the end, it was. You’re right. We looked at it, and said, okay, what’s going on with these products? Why can they claim that? I started to really dissect the labels as well. In many cases, you can see the title of the product is probiotic cream, but when you start dissecting the label or looking at what they do, go to their website—I went to every website. You see that what they did in many cases was they take a probiotic like something you buy over the counter, a Lactobacillus or a Bifidobacterium. They grew it in a—let’s say a liter. They killed it, and they used that ferment as an ingredient.

It’s not the worst case scenario. Some of these products were using dead bacterial components as part of their product. However, that’s not the ideal scenario either, is it? There are some attributes to the metabolites of bacteria. No doubt. We’ve studied those for years, but it’s somewhat deceiving when it reads probiotic. It took me months to figure all this out, and you’re right. None of them was alive.

Now, I also found something about regulatory that tipped the scales. In the cosmetic industry, you can’t have live organisms, so this is a dietary supplement that you can apply topically. The cosmetic world can’t legally have live organisms. There’s some exceptions in Europe, and so I bought the European products. The European products that I had shipped over here were on their last leg. About a week of shipping killed them.

Then I asked myself—okay. I’ve been spending years on this project, and I can tell you from that experience it’s really hard to keep probiotics alive out of their element. When they’re not happy, they’re not alive. It took me years. I studied these creams. We tested. We tried all sorts of iterations ourselves, and these guys would die.

Then I said, well, what is it that the body—how does the body keep these guys alive? They’re on the skin, and the skin’s a horribly harsh environment. It’s exposed to everything. How is it that they’re living? Your body produces these hydrolipid or sebaceous fluids. Those fluids become the key here. The bacteria love and can live in these oily, water-oil sebaceous hydrolipid layers, right?

What we did is I looked at all the oils or all the breakdown of a sebaceous fluid or a hydrolipid fluid, all the fatty acid content. Amazingly, Dr. Pompa, it’s an omega-6, a little bit omega-3, and [waxen], right? There’s this beautiful ratio again of mostly omega-6s. There’s some fatty acids. There’s some waxen. We rebuilt that same profile using -inaudible- in vegetable or plant-based oils. It’s in the formula. They survived. The bugs survived in the oil, and that was the key.

Dr. Pompa:
How long have you been testing these products? I mean, we’ve had them now for a while. You’ve been testing some of the ones just sitting out. How are those tests coming up? Meaning how are the bugs living now?

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. The bugs, what, they’re over six months old, still doing fine. Some are more sensitive than others, and so what you’ll find if you were to test my products is you’ll find that my label claim is below what’s actually there because I’m accounting for some death, some die off. When you first buy the product, it’s going to be way higher than the actual label claim of a billion because I need to allow for some dying as well. Some are more sensitive. Some of the Bifidobacterium, I have to add more of them.

Now, the fun thing about is formulation, so we have the hydrolipid-based formula. Let’s look at the probiotics. There’s two categorical ways to think of the probiotics. There’s the Lactobacillus, [Bifidobactus]—Bifidobacterium, excuse me, the Lactococcus, and the Bacillus species. Those are all species that are known to positively benefit. A lot of them are soil bacteria.

They benefit your skin, but they don’t live on your skin. They’re transient. They do what your sauna does. They shake things up. They produce the antimicrobials. They help get rid of pathogens. They’re transient, but they produce a lot of really fun things while they’re on your skin.

The second category is the staph xylosus and staph epidermidis. Those are commensals. Those get on your skin at any age, and they start to train your immune system to behave. They’re the ones that stay there, and they outcompete staph aureus. They outcompete Streptococcus. They outcompete Pseudomonas, and they outcompete Propionibacterium acnes. They become these really amazing guys to stick around because they get rid of the guys that are dangerous.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. How we’re seeing an improvement in these autoimmune skin conditions, which, by the way, are so numerous, it’s probably those guys that are having the greatest impact, right? If your body’s own immune system is attacking certain bacteria, other bad guys then can start to overtake, and these guys cause that balance in between.

Dr. Shayne:
That’s right. That’s exactly right. These guys will stick around, and they’re the tougher ones too. When they’re in this formula, they don’t die because they’re used to that sebaceous oil, and then when they go on your skin, they can take up residency because they want to be on your skin. All the studies point down this path, even the ones that I haven’t done, buy all the university studies show that the healthy staph epi and the healthy staph xylosus—for T reg maturation, right, to help your T cells, your T-lymphocytes to mature and behave properly so they don’t create an immune response. They also help outcompete those other guys. Then your skin isn’t losing the tight junctions.

We talked about that triad. When you think about the skin, I want everybody listening to think. Okay. We have brain-gut-skin. I want you to think of the skin tissue as so incredibly similar to the GI tract or the blood-brain barrier. There are tight junctions. There’s the immune system present. There’s the neurological system present. All these systems have to be happy.

One of the ways to do that is maintain a healthy tight junction. If you do not maintain a healthy tight junction, the immune system goes awry. We start inflammation. We even start autoimmune. Guess what? These commensals like staph aureus and staph xylosus help keep that tight junction happy.

Dr. Pompa:
Let me bring that into perspective for people what we’re talking about. Not everyone. Most of our listeners have heard about leaky gut, and that’s basically a compromise of your tight junction. These barriers in your gut that keep the stuff your digesting in the gut not going into your bloodstream and your immune system, creating inflammation. Ultimately, making you feel bad. Nobody wants leaky gut. It leads to autoimmune and other problems. Then we have the blood-brain barrier, which is a protective barrier, so stuff doesn’t get into your brain, toxins, etc., bad guys, bacteria pathogens, very, very important. Then we have a tight junction that you’re saying in the skin that protects, obviously, our immune system, etc.

Some of the stuff that I had read talked about this important communication between bacteria from your skin, to your gut, to your blood-brain barrier, and I’m sure other tight junctions, right? The point is is these bacteria are communicating, and that’s why, when you affect the skin microbiota, you’re affecting the gut. You’re affecting the brain or vice versa, right? This is an important communication network that we don’t even really understand. We just know it exists. Am I correct on this?

Dr. Shayne:
That’s exactly right. We’re just barely scratching the surface on this. We understand the gut a little bit better than anything else, but we’re now seeing the connection between the gut and the skin. There is communication. Some of the organisms that we eat affect the skin immediately, right, immediately. There’s a communication that happens just like a pinprick, right? There’s this amazing intense way that our body is communicating with not only the microbiota but with itself into the brain.

Again, we’ve got this new triad, the gut-brain-skin axis. I think this is an amazing triad that we—that helps us understand what’s happening during detox. The skin is one element of that. We know it gets affected. Meredith mentioned something earlier before we got on about her skin responding to a detox. People on the packages, all of the Prep, brain, body, these detoxing reactions some people are having are related to both the gut, the brain, and the skin, and now, we have an additional tool.

One of Dr. Pompa’s responsibilities at the next Sunshine is to take us to the next level, right? There’s so many people getting involved in the first level of detox, but there’s more levels. There’s going to be more layers of this. As toxic as our world is, this isn’t going to end. This is not a story that’s going to go away. This story is going to continue to become a book, become a movie, whatever you think of in analogies, and the skin is now an integral part of this. We have a sleeping giant here. Nobody else, like you mentioned, has the ability to address the skin microbiota like we do now. There’s nothing else on the market that can address skin microbiota in this fashion.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No doubt about it. Meredith, if you could show the product, actually, it would be great. You could see that. Yeah. There it is.

Meredith:
Yeah, an oil. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Pompa:
By the way, when we say bugs, we’re talking bacteria. Shayne and I say bugs, and people are like, what? I don’t want bugs on my skin. Yeah. I mean, it is remarkable.

One of the studies that I actually showed was they took mice. These were mice who were not able to lose weight, weight loss resistant. Obviously, a gene was triggered, etc. They took the mice from a hot environment to a cold environment, like infrared sauna to the hot-cold shower. After doing that a few times, they realized the mice were then able. It kicked in weight loss. In the study, it talked about they believe it was the change in the microbiota, the microbiome that actually triggered the change.

Now, one of the theories was is that it actually was the microbiome here on the skin that actually responded to the cold temperature, sent, obviously, signals to the gut microbiome, had an effect on the hormones, which had an effect on the weight loss. There’s just an example of they didn’t know exactly what was going on, but they measured the microbiome. They saw the change, and it was due to the temperature, the regulation. We know that this communication exists.

Dr. Shayne:
I think that group might’ve taken it a step further. Yesterday, a publication came out from a group where they’ve now linked that change to insulin resistance. When they change the microbiota, the insulin resistance went away. When they gave it bad microbiota, the insulin resistance kicked back up, so now you have skin microbiota relating some way, shape, or form to insulin resistance. They’re going to be…

Dr. Pompa:
It will cause weight gain, which will cause weight gain loss, exactly. Send me that study, man. Come on. Send me that. We got to share that. I need that.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. I get so busy I forget to perpetuate the crazy stuff that’s going on.

Dr. Pompa:
You got to spread the knowledge. I put that on top of my knowledge base, and you put stuff on your knowledge base. Okay. People want to hear, okay, what do I use this for? I talked about how we use it, but you don’t need much either. I guess I didn’t answer that. Just coat the skin. I mean, that’s pretty much it.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It goes a long way.

Dr. Shayne:
On skin, it has obvious issues where it’s obviously inflamed, whether it be a rash, or a dermatitis, or anything you—any obvious association, put it there. You got to do it two or three times a day. Once a day, doesn’t work. I notice that sometimes that causes it to—it soaks in. It’s an oil, but it doesn’t stay oily because, the waxes, the waxes help trap in the oil and keep the moisture in there too. You do have to apply it multiply times for—the worse the case, the more you apply, I’ve noticed.

Furthermore, we are going to be in the future coming out with the equivalent pill so that we can work inside out, outside in. The similar organisms will be dosing orally, and then you simultaneously work that with the pill. I did a recent study on five people here at work. Their skin conditions improved more rapidly when they were doing inside out, outside in, so to speak. That led me to the concept that we need to go down that path soon, but right now, we’re getting amazing results outside in, which is topically.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. People are going to ask. Can you take this orally?

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. You can. It’s a little bit off-putting because it’s oily, but it’s perfectly safe for oral consumption. It’s just different. Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Is it good for the oral microbiome? If someone has something gum related, teeth related, is it good for that, or is it -inaudible-?

Dr. Shayne:
That’s a great question. It wouldn’t certainly be harmful, but in terms of the benefit, I don’t know the answer to that.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s interesting. You would know better than I how similar this—these gum, I mean, this is tissue very similar to this tissue. Obviously, differences but, still, there might be a very similar microbiota here versus around the gums than it is on the skin. Who knows? Talk about some of the other things. People are going to ask, well, what about wrinkles? I mean, the microbiota affects the collagen, elastin, which is a big part of your aging of the skin, talk about that. We talked about the autoimmune skin, but what about acne too so wrinkles, acne?

Dr. Shayne:
So far, with older a person acting, we tried it on some people that are in their 20’s and 30’s, and it did improve the acne response for sure. What we haven’t still yet tried it on are teenagers that are extremely oily. They’re going through puberty and their skin is changing dramatically. It’s one of the few times in your life where the microbiota changes from a previous to an adult—or excuse me, adult microbiota. I don’t have an answer to that yet. People that have already gone through puberty, it is beneficial for acne as well.

The wrinkles and things, the only thing I’ve gotten feedback there because I haven’t done anything in a more analytical clinical setting is that the hydration went up. As long as they were drinking good water, the new formula allowed the skin to stay more hydrated, which clearly keeps wrinkles at a minimum. They’re still there, but the hydrated skin is a much better looking skin.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s like I said. We can’t make claims because we don’t have that study. Ultimately, knowing how the microbiome of the skin affects collagen, elastin, I mean, the tissues, etc., I mean, obviously, there’s an effect. Before you make the claim, you have to prove it. Scientifically, we can identify it, but there’s more to it than that.

Dr. Shayne:
I do agree with you. I think we’re on to something. I think this is the beginning of what’s going to become a very large body of evidence. I think that we’re just approaching the beginning of what’s going to be good for our skin. I think that, the past, where we thought about skin as being slathering on things and killing, either killing or slathering, was now an outdated concept or will become an outdated concept. I think this new approach to the skin, I think you’re right. I think the tissues that will be exposed to a healthy microbiome are going to produce more collagen. I think they’re going to be more hormonally regulated. I think they’re going to be so many benefits as we move forward. I think it’s just the beginning of this. Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. I think you’re right. I think we’re way ahead right now in this area. I mean, I know we’re ahead just in the microbiota, the microbiome. Now we’re pulling in the skin and just learning. I mean, our feedback with skin conditions, autoimmune has been spectacular. We know that there’s something bigger here. Like you said, even for detoxification, what is it doing? We don’t have all the answers yet, but we are definitely on to something here.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. We are, and we’re not alone. You guys have all heard about the Human Microbiome Project. There’s a subset of that project that was focused on the skin, and it was being done at UCSD, San Diego. Just recently, that group spun off a company that is looking hard at doing what we’re doing. They are fervently trying to create products that affect the microbiota of the skin. We’re not alone, and there are amazing people in this work. Not only are we not alone, those people that are even -inaudible- what we’re talking about today can be self-assured that the rest of the world is going to come to the same conclusions that we’re talking about today. It’s just going to take more time for them, but we’re definitely on the forefront of what’s some amazing stuff.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No doubt. Meredith, I know you have some questions, and you’ve been using the product.

Meredith:
Yeah. I have, and I’ve been really enjoying it. It’s really helped me. I know I shared with you, Dr. Pompa and Dr. Shayne, before the broadcast. I had had a crazy skin reaction last week. I don’t know. I think it might’ve been synergistic with some of the detox I’ve been doing and things.

Not to scare anybody, but these things come out of our bodies. Our skin is a major detox pathway. I have been using the Skin Colonizer, and that’s been really helpful with after—I woke up last Monday to all of these welts all over my face. It was crazy. Then the bumps are pretty much healed, but now it’s become dry. This has been really helpful for the dryness.

I was thinking too of our concept of variation and how important that is with diet and exercise. I’m wondering too if it would be good to vary this product with some other ways of topically getting bacteria on our skin as well. I know, for example, in the past, I used to do a yogurt face mask, or even dirt or clay, or things like that topically on the skin. What do you think of the variation?

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. Diversity is key. Not to sound politically correct, but diversity is a great thing. Not only that, we’re looking at a bunch of other products for that reason. Not just this, but we’re looking at some other things to help create the diversity. The two types of probiotics in this product are there for that reason. There is the commensals, and there is the ones that are transient to help create the diversity.

One other study that’s shown recently is that when you add organisms to a tissue, whether it be the gut or the skin, that don’t reside there, they still cause enough change in microbiota that they can actually reverse dysbiosis. Just by the mere fact of their presence being there, shaking things up, they themselves can reverse dysbiosis by being transient. You don’t have to live there to help benefit the skin, so diversity is an amazing thing in my opinion.

Meredith:
Awesome. What are some other ways that we can build a healthy skin microbiome other than just the topicals? I know that obviously has to do a lot with our gut and the inside as well.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah, diet for sure. I mean, we know that the future products are going to include some botanicals, but the mantra that we’re now telling people when it comes to the skin is inside out, outside in nutrition. We’re trying to partner or push out the concept that you work topically from outside in, but you have to work inside out, which is dietary. The botanicals, the detox packages that we’re talking about, the brain prep, the TCD work that you guys are doing, that in itself I guarantee you changes the skin microbiota as much as it does the GI microbiota. These are all beneficial for long-term health, right? It takes a while, but for long-term health of the entire ecosystem, that’s all good. Inside out, outside in is our new mantra.

Meredith:
Obviously, rotating the fermented foods and being in the dirt. Maybe we want to mention too just all of the antibacterial cleansers on the market and just the culture of fear around bacteria on our skin, but just a reminder that we need it in the right doses. Then even just putting it on our skin might be a new idea to some. I know not a lot of our listeners. It’s so important to remove the idea that we need to get rid of this bacteria and that it’s bad, but we need that healthy balance to have healthy skin and healthy gut and healthy body.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. I’ve got a small group of people that are on the Prep, the Body, the Brain. I’m sure you guys know who they are too, but what they called in and told us is they also took BIND. They opened up a bunch of capsules of BIND, and they made BIND facemasks every night.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, wow.

Dr. Shayne:
Then they would do the skin microbiome following the facemask.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s smart.

Dr. Shayne:
They’re reporting amazing results with that idea, right? I thought, how brilliant. I’d never even thought of that.

Dr. Pompa:
I didn’t think about it.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. It was really fun to hear. People are expanding our knowledge just through their own experimentation, and it’s really fun to see this take off. Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It’s like a clay mask. I mean, you’re pulling—look, we know that, again, one of the benefits of doing it after a far infrared sauna, yeah, it’s the adaptation. However, it also empties those pores, right, of toxins that would actually have a negative effect against those bacteria.

Dr. Shayne:
That’s right.

Dr. Pompa:
Basically, colonizing, if you will, right, so you’re opening up the pore, getting rid of toxins that would kill the bacteria. That’s one of the reasons why far infrared sauna works too, but the mask would do the same thing. The BIND would pull out toxins, open up those pores, get rid of the chemicals, and leave a better—it’s like getting rid of bad weeds, right, or clearing your soil of glyphosate that kills things, right? It’s like now you’ve got this great soil. It’s good. I like that.

Dr. Shayne:
The skin microbiota has the potential to convert toxins into worse toxins, just like our gut does, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. We’re talking about this connection, the brain, the skin, the gut. Of course, we know that the detox affects the gut microbiome, right? Utilizing, now thinking of the Skin Colonizer as opening up this other pathway. We know these bacteria are feeding these bacteria. Okay. As we’re thinking about this triad, what are some of the things that you would say would be good for the brain? I always loved the pituitary because it’s so poisoned, right, and NeuroSyn. What are some other things perhaps that affect the blood-brain barrier with those?

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. That’s a great question. Clearly, I think, when we’re looking at the barriers, it’s a wonderful thing to add to your protocol, the LGUT, right, which is the leaking gut product. LGUT is amazing for the tight junctions.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. We add it. Yeah.

Dr. Shayne:
The other piece would be, as you mentioned, the CALM and the NeuroSyn, amazing results with CALM and NeuroSyn. I’ll tell you. Some people in your group have added NeuroSyn to the Brain Phase, and they’re reporting back to Systemic great results there too. I guarantee that is related to this whole gut-brain-skin connection.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No, exactly. We added a lot, NeuroSyn, for that reason. It helps that blood-brain barrier and, obviously, even just the brain in general, which is really what’s poisoned. Gb is another one, the pituitary. It’s such a big game player as far as regenerating the brain so CALM, NeuroSyn, Gb, LGUT, the Skin Colonizer, all really important. Often times we even need to support the thyroid and the adrenals more, so there’s a couple other considerations that I teach on but, yeah, good stuff.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah, excellent. There is one other secret that we have. That’s the number 1, which is the…

Dr. Pompa:
Hypothalamus.

Dr. Shayne:
Hypothalamus, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can do a lot with just what we’ve talked about. There’s a lot of tools that can go a long way, right? I mean, we love simplicity, which is what those packages create, but going to the next level, it’s nice to have those additional tools to…

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Those are some of the things that we do, for sure. Yeah. No. As we think about using this product, I’m thinking vaginally. What other possible uses?

Dr. Shayne:
So far, I haven’t heard the vaginal part. That’s totally reasonable. It works. It can be used in every orifice, in every part of your body. I’ve used it in my ear. I’ve used it all over my body. Since its launch introduction, we focused on inflamed tissues, right, tissues that we’ve had trouble with, but there have been a group of people, healthy people, that are putting it—using it as a daily moisturizer. The only complaint I’ve had about that is they go through it more quickly than the people using it as a more specific colonizer.

People using it as a daily, they just go through the bottle much more quickly. That’s not a bad thing. I mean, it’s a little more expensive, but it’s an amazing testament that it’s good for all skin types. There’s been very little backlash. There’s been a few people that put it on their skin and had a very, very temporary—less than a 24 hour response to it. Then by the next day they were using it they were thrilled again. That was even very isolated. Out of the thousand people using it, it was maybe two people that have reported any adverse response to it.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s awesome.

Dr. Shayne:
You can use it pretty much anywhere. I use it on my scalp. Microbiota, -inaudible- microbiota, they’ll actually outcompete things like fungi. Warren mentioned that it’s helping—on a project he’s working on, it’s helping, and that’s a fungal related issue.

Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible-.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. It’s all fungal, and it can help out.

Dr. Pompa:
[Tinea versicolor], right, exactly, I mean, it’s a fungus that basically lives on you forever. I know. It’s like nothing works for that. People use Selsun Blue and different things, but evidently, it’s working on it so, yeah, just another idea.

Dr. Shayne:
Yeah. I’m -inaudible-. I really do hope it works for him. That would be amazing, another amazing piece of information.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. Listen, we appreciate you coming on, and I think we’re going to have you back soon. In the past shows, we’ve talked about different bacteriophage, and we’ve got something new coming up. We’re talking about affecting the microbiome in the gut, but we’ve got something new coming up. We’re going to have you on shortly again because I think we keep breaking through with some of those areas too, so I’m not going to tip our hat too much.

Dr. Shayne:
Always a pleasure, it’s always fun being on.

Dr. Pompa:
Go ahead, Meredith. I’ll turn it back to you.

Meredith:
All right, thanks, Dr. Pompa. Thank you so much, Dr. Shayne. This is an amazing product. So many people are loving it, and it’s just another amazing tool in our toolbox for cellular healing. Thank you so much. We’ll look for the new product, and we’ll see you soon out in Utah next week, really excited about the seminar. Thanks, everybody for tuning in, and have a great weekend. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Transcript of Episode 173: Using Plant Medicine for Anxiety

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Cameron George

Dr. Pompa:
Cellular Healing TV without Meredith. You will notice that, well, Meredith had a China Syndrome. Well, actually, I think it—I don't remember the movie, but I think it was known as the Pepsi Syndrome. They were making fun of the China Syndrome where the core of the nuclear reactor melts directly through the earth. They call that a China Syndrome, but that a guy would spill his Pepsi on his computer and then of course it started the whole meltdown. Then it was known as the Pepsi Syndrome. Well, we know Meredith doesn't drink Pepsi, so she had a tea syndrome. She spilled tea on her computer. This is a real story. This just happened, so poor Meredith was in a frenzy, saying, “You have to do the show. I don't have my computer,” so it is me and my guest, Cameron George, who has been a guest on the show because of his absolute amazing story and recovery.

Really, today's show is about some of the brilliance that Cameron has really come up with. He's even worked with some of my clients with using things like kava, some of these unique herbs that we can use to lower sensitivity, change the brain, change the cells. You're going to hear all about that today. Cameron, welcome to the show.

Cameron:
Thanks for having me. You know how much I love being here.

Dr. Pompa:
Cameron, I have to say, you watch every show, right? I mean you do. You watch every Cellular Healing show, so it's funny you being on this end. Well, I'll tell you what, we had—I don't know when it was. How long ago was it that I had you on the show?

Cameron:
That was back in probably May of 2015 I think. I think it was somewhere around episode 70, something like that.

Dr. Pompa:
Now, if Meredith were here, she would be telling them exactly what Cellular Healing TV episode it was, and they can go watch it. If it's back in May 2015, y'all can find it.

Cameron:
I think it's actually episode 70. I'm positive about that, actually. I remember now. It was 70, so if you just scroll back down to episode 70 it should be there, and that was where I just basically focused on preframing and the whole story of even childhood—how I became sick and the whole situation there.

Dr. Pompa:
I want you to give a little bit of your story for viewers, and then you can go watch that episode. It's an unbelievable episode with the details and how he got where he is now because, literally—and I'll start here and turn it over to you with your story, but look, I mean, you went 12 days without food or water, not because of choice, because you reacted even to every drop of water you were putting in your mouth. At that point, people were thinking you were basically checking out. Tell your story. You were the most sensitive guy that I knew. Of course, I have a lot of other clients and so do my doctors, somewhere along that sensitivity scale, but you were really that.

Cameron:
Yeah, I know. It's like we always talk about the spectrum—the chronic disease spectrum or in this case, the sensitivity spectrum. You always say that there's thousands, maybe even millions of Americans, people in this country, who are on the spectrum that have sensitivities, that just think that they have headaches, that they're chronically fatigued and have all these unexplainable symptoms. Really, their nervous system, their immune system has become overwhelmed. We always use the bucket metaphor that there's been a lot of trauma, a lot of stress just from exposure to environmental factors, pollutants in food, emotional stress, trapped emotions. You talked about that. Eventually, the bucket overflows.

You start turning on all these bad genes, and your nervous system starts to wire a fight or flight response. It starts to form some new neuropathways that think it's helping you out, but they're really not. It's a trauma syndrome, not unlike PTSD. Actually, chemical sensitivity is definitely a form of PTSD. Actually, if you've ever heard of Gulf War Syndrome, that's essentially environmental illness, multiple chemical sensitivity. It was veterans that were not only exposed to a lot of chemicals but a lot of trauma at the same time and had this slew of unexplainable symptoms.

In the last story, we spent the whole show talking about my story, and I'll just run through a few details of it right now. If I got any criticism last time, I actually got bombarded with messages and calls after the last one, and some people were like what did you do about it because we really didn't have time to talk much about what I had been doing since. We were just talking about this horrific nightmare of a story.

Essentially, I was always kind of a sickly kid, not what most people would consider a sickly kid, meaning that I didn't have cancer, or I wasn't in a wheelchair, or I wasn't in a specialized education class in school or anything like that, so not on the severe end but just had a lot of really, really deep functional issues that played out—that ended up carrying out in my nervous system, in my brain, and then ended up carrying out in my behavioral patterns too. That manifested—and this is a relatively common thing, but I was just on the more significant spectrum, of impulses, compensatory strategies, unconscious compensatory strategies, meaning constantly trying to cope with deficits that were within my system. We talked about some of those last time that could have been, obviously.

I was fully vaccinated as a kid. I was born by Cesarean Section, a lot of stuff. It's that perfect storm. A lot of my childhood behaviors—those compensatory strategies—ended up being toxic because when you're a kid, you don't know. You just know that there's a hole inside you. You get anxious in certain situations. You get incredibly depressed. You don't have energy, so you end up migrating unconsciously towards things like sugar, things like caffeine and stimulants. The more you use, the more it creates a deeper need.

Dr. Pompa:
You even went from that to long-distance running. That's a compensatory strategy. It really is.

Cameron:
That particular strategy is one—it came out of me trying to do the right thing because I understood that drugs and alcohol and everything like that—those forms of stimulation and self-medication were very damaging. I got into those for periods of time in my younger years and then always went back to running because, ultimately, I needed something.

If I had a lack of anything in my life, really, it was just a lack of good advice. It wasn't that I didn't have great, phenomenal people in my life. My parents are two of the most phenomenal people I'll ever know. They love me. They supported me in everything, but there just wasn't that understanding, especially where I live. I live in the southern part of the country, in Arkansas, and there's not a lot of alternative medicine. It's just very, very mainstream, treat the symptoms, medications. If you're not dying, then you're not sick kind of thing—no understanding of functional issues. Those things snowballed over years' time.

I went full force into distance running and developed an incredibly abusive relationship with it—I mean, incredibly abusive. I studied distance running so much because I became so obsessed with it during that time, and I knew how to train correctly and everything, but I couldn't control myself. Over-training was my life. At one point, I was running somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 miles a week, whenever I got to college. Those were hard miles, and that's one thing some people can transition themselves to that, but I was doing that with virtually no recovery.

I was eating Taco Bell four times a day kind of thing. We even discussed last time some of the things—I got into diet soda because being a distance runner, it's that belief system of calories in, calories out, less calories. A person like me, you give diet soda, and I'm going to drink a lot of it, like a 12-pack a day.

All of those toxic coping strategies eventually led me to basically crash, somewhere around when I was 20 years old. My nerve system crashed, and I became incredibly chronically fatigued and really couldn't get off the couch, basically had to drop out of school. At the time, what I though was the most debilitating fatigue that was possible. Turns out, I was wrong, but that was what I thought. My nervous system was just on the edge. I was incredibly depressed, anxious, obviously the fatigue and everything that goes along with it—all neurotoxic symptoms, obviously.

I ended up going to the conventional medical route and ended up seeing a psychiatrist where I was prescribed Adderall. That was really the thing that knocked the whole thing out. I was on the edge and Adderall, being on that, that was a whole story. That's on the last episode, but to a vulnerable nervous system, to mine, it was like the nail in the coffin kind of thing.

Dr. Pompa:
Do you know what's scary? I have to add this in right now, a scary fact. My son and my daughter said—and again in this area there's a California influence here, but 40 percent of the students in their high school using Adderall, literally, as a study drug because they can't focus without it. They go on to college, and they're using it as this study drug. Of course, then it becomes recreational. That, of course, leads to other things. Imagine this, Cameron. Where are we going to be in ten years? Look what Adderall did to your life. There are many, many kids and parents that need to hear that. Go ahead. Finish the story, and we'll move on.

Cameron:
Just to say real quick, it's well-known, even in psychiatry, even when they're doing all the wrong things and everything, that one of the most dangerous substances on the planet are amphetamines. When we think about amphetamines, the damaging ones in the conventional medical circuit, they see it as meth, obviously. Really, as far as a chemical structure, Adderall is dextroamphetamine, or a mixture of amphetamine salts, depending on if it's generic or if it's name brand. It has the exact same mechanism of action. You're just not getting quite as much at once, so it will destroy your life much more slowly, but it's at epidemic levels.

It's essentially a brain steroid that people use for performance enhancing in order to cram for tests and things. It's that ultimate brain stimulant. We could do a whole show on that just alone, but it's horrendous. You can see more of the details on that in the last show, but that just totally cut my legs out from under me, and my nerve system completely crashed. After the whole Adderall escapade and all of the other factors that made me most susceptible, it was very, very clear that that last thing, the two years of being on Adderall every single day, it destroyed my gut.

All of a sudden, I had a slew of unexplainable symptoms. I eventually took myself off Adderall because my life deteriorated in so many horrendous ways, so I took myself off, and I essentially was left with all this damage whenever I stopped Adderall. I couldn't think. I couldn't function on any level. If I'd leave my house, I would get lost and not know where I was. I had severe cognitive deficits.

Actually, whenever I got some functional brain imaging, I got a SPECT scan down at another clinic down in New Orleans. The physician who did—the radiologist was amazed, said that my brain was comparable to an 80 year old with dementia because that's a neurotoxic pattern, and especially drug abuse pattern, stuff like that. That was the most maddening part about it. I was totally—I thought I had fatigue before, but it totally crashed me. It wasn't like brain fog. It was like brain dead. It was like couldn't even get off the couch, and my system was so weak for the next year or so that I continued to get sicker, and sicker, and sicker, and sicker, and sicker, mainly because I kept eating toxic things and stuff like that too, and my detox pathways were most likely shut down by that point.

Anyway, in 2013, about a year and a half after I went off Adderall, all of a sudden this explosion of hypersensitivities seemed to come out of nowhere at the time. It was the most terrifying and just absolutely in the dark situation where it was like what the heck is going on? I started with the food, right? We talked about last time. I'd put a food in my mouth —I'd never had any allergies that I knew of in my life—and sensitivities are different than allergies in the sense that sensitivities are usually nervous system driven, but I didn't know. I put a food in my mouth one day while I was still very sick, and a massive reaction—started going into convulsions. My trachea closed up to the point where I was gasping for air.

It was essentially like an anaphylactic attack, and was shaking and continued to have these reactions over the next few months and was frantically—once you start reacting, it starts this pattern that you start reacting, start reacting, and the more things you're reacting to, it develops this snowballing, reinforcing thing where the more you react, the more you're going to react, and the more things you're going to react to.

Dr. Pompa:
You became allergic to everything on the planet, including water.

Cameron:
Essentially, and that's so hard. I really want to speak to—because I know that so many of your listeners, too, understand this whole environmental illness, multiple chemical sensitivity, kind of PTSD paradigm, but it's almost impossible to explain it to somebody outside of that world who's never experienced it before. It really is. It's almost like trying to explain a kaleidoscope to a blind person.

If you haven't lived it or been on the inside or known someone who has, then it's just horrendous. Basically, in short, after I developed this, I became so reactive where I went a bunch of places to try to get help, obviously. We had talked about last time, I went down to Environmental Health Center where a lot of clients who you get end up. It's this community, this sub-community of very sick people. Man, it's crazy. You'll see some of the sickest people imaginable at this place.

I, myself, was quarantined in a room for long periods of time, for weeks, or whatever—basically months, in and out. It was totally stripped down, all tile walls and everything, one air purifier in the center of the room because I was so reactive that my reactions could have been lethal because they were so bad.

Eventually, right before we met, I had gotten so bad that everything that touched my skin, everything that I put in my mouth—it had gotten to the point, like you said, that water, I was reacting to water. I couldn't find any water, different types of water. I bought up every water that I could find including tap water, anything, and I got to the point where I put a drop of water on my tongue, and I started going into convulsions. I mean convulsions that were just—and the throat closed up. I'm gasping for air and just hoping that I can go on.

We had talked about last time, too, I think, how the only way that I was able to get myself out of those emergencies was through pharmaceutical means. This is one of those scenarios where I would say and so would you, that there is absolutely a time and place for pharmaceuticals. In this case, since most of these reactions are coming from the limbic system that's just firing at an unnatural, insane rate, what normally helps mitigate these nerve system reactions is like a benzodiazepine type of drug or some sort of an excitatory blocking agent, either a blocker or benzodiazepine, like Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, and those. I was even so reactive to those that I couldn't even tolerate those.

We ended up getting me to a spot, by the grace of God, where I was near death, hadn't had water for several days, that we were able to get the reaction low enough through some provocation, antigen strategy, I was able to get some of that drug into my system, which then calmed my system down enough to where it could at least stabilize me, which was good at the time, which was around the time we started working together too.

Dr. Pompa:
Then you became addicted to the Klonopin. I mean, you couldn't live without the Klonopin, which, fast forward, is some of the discovery that we're going to talk about today

Cameron:
Exactly. I just wanted to tell that part because —

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah, and I'll let you do that, but I also want you to just frame for them—I mean, we were able to start detox with you very slowly with literally drops, folks. Then from drops to more, to more. I mean, Cameron now is able to take full dose pretty much for short periods of time. He went full dose for a while. Then he had to back off, admittedly, but the bottom line is, we went from drops to normal doses, backing in and out of that. Obviously, emptying the bucket is how Cameron ultimately got from where he was to where he is right now. Go ahead and describe that.

Cameron:
Right, and that was what led me to you in the first place too was your philosophy. I resonated with it so much, and then you brought so much more to it and everything too. Just the process which nobody could tell me.

I understood at that time that detox was necessary, that there was this neurotoxic component, but no one had any real protocols of how to really—it was all the stuff that would be your pet peeves, all that stuff.

When we got started, it was the kind of dilemma—at first, we were meeting a couple of times a week or something where we were trying to strategize, just to kind of—I had just come through that horrific experience, and I knew that the only thing that could allow me to—I was still reacting to almost everything. I was stabilized, but I was trying to find some way of getting myself moving forward, and that was the deal.

We knew that the Klonopin would do it, but, obviously knew that that wasn't a long-term option because I had been there with drugs. I understand the pharmacology, and the more you take, the more you need to. It will cripple the systems that are already crippled. For the next few months, or the next, probably almost a year, whenever we were working together, it was just the process of a drop of acai, a drop of Cyto once every few days. I would react, and I just took the reaction, and it was not as bad as it was before that I was forced to fast during that whole crisis period, but it was bad enough to where it still like oh my gosh, and it was like one, and I couldn't even go anywhere near higher than that.

We were kind of stagnant for a long period of time. I was probably making some minor progress, but I was probably at that point on the 30 year plan because it was just moving so slow. It came down to the point where every time I'd meet with you it was just frustration. I could tell you were frustrated. I was frustrated. I just knew that the Klonopin was a thing that could allow me to take some things. If you remember, for a while, I actually was doing cycles by taking the Klonopin. The Klonopin is a long-acting benzo. It has a half-life of about 48 hours, so I started just to empty a little bit of the bucket, once a week, to allow my system to recover and not get any dependency or withdrawal or anything like that. Once a week, I'd have a two day window of time. I'd take the Klonopin, where I could take more Cyto, more acai, everything, and then back off, give it several days, and then do it again. I did that for probably a good nine months, but it came down to the point where it's like, well, I need to find an alternative to this.

From a pharmacological standpoint, I'm looking for a natural alternative that pharmacologically acts similar to a benzodiazepine. The particular pathway, the particular area of interest is compounds that work on this specific signal called GABA, gamma-Aminobutyric acid, sorry. People may have heard of that because that's a supplement that you can buy—just taking a dose of GABA, but a lot of it doesn't get into the brain, and it's not extremely powerful.

Some of the obvious ones—I knew about kava. I'd read about kava, but this is definitely one of the things that I really want to touch on, is that when it comes to botanicals, and it ultimately took me experimenting and things to really understand the magnitude of this. When it comes to botanicals, most of what you see in the health food stores, most of what's out there even buying on the internet, with these very large companies that are just, they're companies. They're trying to just sell a bunch of herbs. They may hype up certain things. They say what they can do. You read about them, and there's all this great stuff out there about what they can do, but that's not what we're seeing therapeutically and clinically with a lot of these Whole Foods grade types of herbs.

Kava is actually one of those that you can actually get at a lot of places, but it's not true kava. It's not real kava. What I mean by that is that the traditional preparations of kava, and this is also the case for so many other botanicals, especially the psychoactive ones—these big companies cut every corner in the book when it comes to sourcing, how they're grown, how long they're grown, if they're harvested at the right time, how they're stored, how they're transported, how they're extracted. All of these things, any one of these things are not done correctly, and it can drastically reduce the efficacy of that particular compound. You know what that means for something like kava is that it really takes going to the experts.

Who are the experts? Well, the indigenous people of whatever compound that you're looking at. You know, botanical. Which, kava is out of the south Pacific Islands. It grows in all the south Pacific Islands, and it's been used for hundreds of thousands of years—hundreds or thousands of years. The indigenous people are really the stewards of this knowledge, of really not only how to grow it, how to harvest it, but actually how to integrate it into your particular program and how to use it because that makes all the difference in the world, too.

Kava, traditionally, is not used in extract form. It's actually made as a drink, and it's not brewed or anything, but it's normally cold, traditionally. Kava, first of all, is a shrub-like plant. It's like a small tree that grows about eight feet tall at most. It matures between two and five years, and you want the older plants. That's one of the first pitfalls. A lot of the kava that you're seeing at Whole Foods and places, they're harvesting these things at one year. Right off the top, the kavalactones aren't mature, and they don't have the robustness that makes it a potent medicine, a really therapeutic medicine. Not only that, is they're extracting an alcohol. Alcohol does not extract all of the constituents, especially all the kavalactones, which are the active constituents, so it ends up being a really watered down version of what you're actually getting.

The drink itself, whenever the indigenous people prepare it, and they drink it, they'll harvest it, and then they'll immediately—they drink it fresh. They'll macerate it or grind it down in some sort of a water and knead it into a water to rupture the cell walls and release these active compounds, the kavalactones as they're called, and then they'll just drink it straight. It's a cup. Kava is very intertwined into the religious, economic, and political cultures of these islands and has been for a long time. It's a sacred thing to them, too, because it's so therapeutic for conditions of stress. It has these phenomenal effects.

What's most important too—and just to speak about the effects of kava, when taken, good kava, and taking it correctly, is that it really is more relevant today than they really have ever been because so much of the onslaught and the overburdening of stress that we have in our lives and especially the new stressors—chemical stressors, electric stress, all that stuff—is creating epidemics of trauma-based illness. This wiring of the nervous system, and especially neurotoxic conditions, what are the two main symptoms? Anxiety and insomnia are the most common, probably, symptoms of any chronic illness that seems to come up at some point. A lot of people are prescribed benzodiazepines for those. Kava acts very similarly, but instead of a benzodiazepine where the more you take it, the more your body gets dependent on it, and the more that you have to have it, and the less it works. Kava actually is just the opposite.

There's a lot of study that's taken place on kava that actually shows, and anecdotally what we see, is what we call a reverse tolerance. We believe that it actually has an up regulatory effect on those calming chemicals on the GABA receptors, which means if your GABA receptors—if that side of your nervous system has been beat down by too much stress, too much trauma, then it can actually kick it back into gear and bring a consistent state of calm. It can actually have a healing effect the more that it's used, which is totally the opposite of a pharmaceutical. It also works in the acute.

If you take the right kavas, and if you find the right strain for you, because it's very strain-specific, just like cannabis. You hear about cannabis and people having to get medical cannabis and try all these different strains. It's a very similar process because it's a very complex plant. There's a lot of different strains with a lot of different ratios of these different phytochemicals. It can have very powerful acute effects.

In some ways, it can even be more efficient than benzodiazepines for people too, if you find it correctly. Speaking about the chemically sensitive people, the people that are very hypersensitive to all sorts of stimuli, which would include PTSD and things like that, it has the ability to down regulate the excitability of your limbic system, your amygdala—

Dr. Pompa:
Which allowed us to be able to go at the detox more aggressively because ultimately, unless you remove the interference, you're not going to get well. Taking kava's not going to make you well; however, just like the clonazepam, you were using that to be able to dose things higher. We would have never got where we were if it wasn't for that; however, we both realized you can't go on with that drug. There was a down regulating effect; however, we said we have to find a natural thing.

We had some ideas. I think the brilliance that I credit you for is, obviously, experimenting with the kavas, learning these different strains, where to get them, how to dose them. You learned a lot in several months about this, and sharing it with these people—believe me, how many people we have watching this and listening to this—anxiety, sleep, mood disorders, sensitive to this and that. Being able to down regulate that nerve system reaction, I'm telling you, it's been magic not just for you but for many of my clients and my doctors' clients too.

People are going to want to know where you get it because there's special websites you can offer, and even how to use it. One of the things is people try it and go, “I tried it.” They got a negative reaction. You've even tailored that end to where you have to use it correctly. Kind of move into the user-friendly thing here.

Cameron:
Right, absolutely. What you said about it being essentially a safe crutch, that’s so key. That’s huge because for people—and I’ve talked to people—we’ve talked to people who are either already totally dependent on benzodiazepines or have these unbearable symptoms. As we both know, the big answer is the fully integrated multi-therapeutic process of healing, but that takes time. We need these safe crutches that aren’t going to knock us back. That’s what we used it for, and it’s been brilliant for that.

Dr. Pompa:
I want to add to that, too. We don’t want to make it sound easier than it—nobody is on the diet more direct than you. Fasting, intermittent fasting, ketosis, in and out of different diets. Multi-therapeutic approach, true cellular detox, all of these things you have done, so folks, please hear that. All of this we’re saying with this, using this cup as a tool to gain leverage so we’re able to do the detox. Good point.

Cameron:
That’s how all medicinal botanical really need to be used because these are essentially tools that are essentially—the alkaloids that we’ve kind of been separated from. All indigenous cultures had some form of plant alkaloids at their disposal, and today we have synthetic alkaloids that we call pharmaceutical drugs, and they actually do damage. It’s like a Band-Aid.

I always say that pharmaceutical drugs are like Band-Aids lined with sandpaper. They cover up the problem, but they make the wound deeper the longer that you’re on it, too, if that makes any sense. That’s a huge problem. It’s not the big answer, but it’s crucial because so many of the people that I see and talk to, they’re just frozen. Their symptoms are so bad, they’re constantly either reacting, or they have severe anxiety that they can’t even move. They can’t even start to integrate anything. Once you can down-regulate some of the stress burden, then you can work upstream more efficiently. It props up the weak system.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Cameron:
Right. As far as actually using the kava, I have a couple sources first of all that I can give you guys. I’ll actually make a note whenever this video airs and list a lot of the stuff that I talk about if you guys don’t already. I’ll have a comment on it or something. The main company that I like to use—there’s a company called Gourmet Hawaiian Kava, and that’s one of my favorites, sources that I’ve found so far. It’s GourmetHawaiianKava.com. This is essentially a one-man operation of, really, a kava aficionado that lives in Hawaii that’s lived very closely with the indigenous people.

Dr. Pompa:
When I was in Hawaii, I got to speak to Chris, I believe it is, right?

Cameron:
Yeah, Chris. Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
A wealth of knowledge on it.

Cameron:
Yeah, I know. He’s brilliant on it because he lives it, and he’s not interested in it as a business to make money and stuff. He just loves kava as a part of Hawaiian culture and wants to protect its reputation. It’s gotten a lot of bad raps for a lot of bad reasons, or people don’t understand it because of business cutting it down and things like that. That particular website—a lot of people will come back to me and say, “Okay, I went to the website. There’s 15 different strains. I’m confused. They all have long names I can’t pronounce. What’s going on?”

I can give you a couple strains. Of course, you’re not going to be able to spell them. I’ll write these as a comment in the notes whenever this video airs, too. I’ll write most of these hard things down in a comment if you guys see the video on YouTube. There’s one particular strain that I like probably the best as far—because it has a particularly long half-life. It was grown and bred to have a specific long half-life, and it’s called Hanakapi Ai, so Hanakapi, and then A-I is a separate word. You’ll see that on the website. It’s the only one that even looks or sounds like that.

That’s not one that comes in one of the easily ingestible micronized kavas. First of all, we can talk about that because I need to explain that. There’s a few different types of kava that you’ll see. You’ll see the traditional like I’ve been speaking of. The indigenous people use traditional kavas. Of course, they drink it fresh which is even the most potent, gold standard way of taking kava. If you don’t live in a place where kava grows indigenously, you’re not going to get fresh kava unless you have it shipped to you frozen overnight. It’s really expensive.

Even this company is dried kava, but it’s dried correctly, and it’s almost as good as it gets in that form. It just comes in the ground root form. It’s dried, and you’ll see chunks of root in it. You’ll be like, “Wow. It just looks like someone just ground a tree and put it in this bag,” which is what happened.

How you would use this type of kava is a few-step, very, very simple method. Actually, on GourmetHawaiian.com, there’s two videos of two different preparation methods under the Videos tab that you can look at. There’s one that he calls the regular method, and there’s one that he calls the stronger method. I’ve had people report different things about which one they think is stronger. At the end of the day, you just have to separate a lot of the fibers and ruptures in the cell walls and release the kavalactones.

You can do that by putting it in a Nutribullet. I like to add some fat because these are lipid-like—these kavalactones are like fats. I like to add some coconut oil, or some coconut milk, or whatever. You can put it in a Nutribullet, and you can blend it up, and release them that way. You can use the traditional method that they have where they use a stocking or a strainer bag. You put the kava inside, and you get a bowl full of water. You can knead it and kind of wring it out. This is kind of more of a traditional way of doing it for about 10 minutes, or the heating method.

You can put one to two cups of water—I have it written down here exactly what I do—one to two cups of water with two tablespoons. You can start with much less for very sensitive people. That’s what I would say, too. I would start with a very small amount if you’re very sensitive. If you’re just a regular person with average sleeplessness and anxiety, start with two tablespoons of this stuff, of any one of these strains, in one to two cups of water in a pan on the stove on medium heat for three to four minutes until it starts to get thicker, almost the consistency like gravy. It starts to have this kind of film on the top, this gloss. You’re stirring it the whole time, this—

Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible-.

Cameron:
Yeah, but not to boiling, no. You really don’t want to boil it because then you can potentially destroy some of the kavalactones. Then once you’ve done three to four minutes, you see that gloss, you’re stirring the whole—you don’t want it to stick to the bottom of the pan. Then you turn it off. You add probably another cup of water or so, and the strain it out just through a regular strainer, or a cheesecloth, or whatever, and then you’ve got your drink.

It’s actually really simple once you start doing it, but a lot of people that are really sick and overwhelmed, they like to start with the other forms I’m about to tell you about. There’s another form. It’s call micronized. This is essentially the second most powerful way to take these kavas. Basically, what they’ve done is they’ve already ground down and separated a lot of the tannins, and the fibers, and things into just a fine powder form. You can just put a couple tablespoons of this in a glass of water and drink it down.

There are a couple advantages to that, just ease. If you’re taking kava on the road, and you don’t want to prepare it, and all this kind of stuff, then it’s also a way of getting good kava just straight into your system and taking it therapeutically that way. Also, it doesn’t taste nearly as bad. Be forewarned. Kava is absolutely an acquired taste. I’ve had people tell me this, too, especially very sensitive people, just some caution—they’re not really cautions, just things to know going into it.

At first, it’s not going to taste good, but you will adapt to it. You’ll actually acquire a taste for it. I actually like it. Two, the first time you take it, it will numb your mouth completely. It will. That’s a way that you know you’ve got good kava, too. That’s a good kind of test in a similar way that if you go to Peru and chew on some coca leaves, it’ll do the same thing. They actually compare it to those, even though it’s not the same at all, not the same plant or anything.

The micronized actually doesn’t do either of those things as much, but the micronized is a little—because it goes straight into your system, it’s a little bit harder on the gut sometimes, not damaging, but just some people don’t tolerate it as well in the gut. Most people seem to tolerate it just fine.

Another thing is that for very sensitive people, start with small amounts. I’ve also had people tell me, “Oh, my gosh! I drank down four cups of this stuff, and I feel high as a kite,” or, “I got this euphoria,” or whatever. At the end of the day, it’s not—you’re never going to get high-high off of it. What it does is it has—it is a psychoactive plant and can induce an uplift in your mood. They use it kind of like we use alcohol, as like a nontoxic version of alcohol as kind of their tribal drink they drink around the campfire, but it also has all these medicinal components to it.

The thing is is that what differentiates it from, say, like cannabis or alcohol is that the headspace that it brings you to, the—it’s not an altered state, meaning that you retain your higher brain function. You don’t ever go to a different place. You don’t ever become a different person, exhibit characteristics that you never would before. You may get a good uplift in your mood and some great relaxation that’s nontoxic, which is a great thing, actually. This is actually very prized.

We tend to back away from things that have any sort of recreational potential to them. That’s because we’re used to very toxic forms of those things. That’s something to keep in mind, but if it’s overwhelming, do small amounts. You can even start by applying it to the skin to kind of get your body used to—if it’s overwhelming, it will subside, and it will balance out. That’s just how kava works. I’ve seen it work almost in every case like that. It eventually balances out even if you have some GI symptoms at first.

It’s intense to your nervous system. It can be a little bit when you first try it, but the more you take it—first of all, its properties—the properties of kava have a stabilizing effect in and of itself. It is an adaptive agent on your nervous system. It has a cumulative affect, too. Unlike a benzodiazepine, like I talked about before where you get the most prominent affects the first time you take it, and then it goes down from there, this actually is just the opposite over about—usually on average from three to six weeks if you consistently take it.

You’ll notice it more if you have deficits in your calming agents. If you’re normal, you won’t notice it as much, but you’ll have a cumulative effect until it reaches peak therapeutic potential. Then it actually is very resistant to tolerance, which is another thing that separates it from almost anything else. So many other, even good, psychoactive plants, you have to cycle more because they lose their effectiveness.

Kava, it can dull a little bit if you use it all the time, which I wouldn’t use it all the time unless you’re in a state where you have to, but it’s very resistant. It continues to work. That’s why it’s been kind of the base of what I’ve been using for myself and other people that I’ve been talking to with these erratic, over-firing nervous systems and stuff, to. You’ve got the traditional, the micronized, and then they’ll also have an option that says, “Instant,” which is basically the same as the micronized.

Dr. Pompa:
Where can you get the micronized?

Cameron:
The micronized is also on that same website at GourmetHawaiianKava. I’ll also give you two other websites to look at just because if you want to try different strains, it’s good to have a wide variation. There’s another website called Kalm with Kava. Kalm is spelled with a K. KalmWithKava.com. They have a slew of different strains, too, in both traditional and micronized just like Gourmet Hawaiian Kava. Then there’s the third website that seems to be pretty good. It’s actually one that’s here in the States, but this guy, he sources all of his kava from these indigenous places. It’s called Bula Kava House, Bula spelled B-U-L-A and then KavaHouse.com. They have some really high-quality kavas, too.

If you’re searching outside of that realm of kava, a few things that I do want to touch on here as far as kava safety just to maintain the reputation of kava. It needs to shift anyways. You want to make sure that these are certified noble kavas. If they’re not certified, you definitely want to do some background checking to make sure that they are noble kavas. I’m saying that not because they necessarily have to be, but if you want to be safe-safe—and if I’m going to get on here and talk about kava, we know that noble kavas have an exceptional safety record.

One of the two pitfalls of kava usage and why it’s not used more, it’s become one of these things where people don’t—it’s for two reasons. One, if you google kava on the internet anywhere, you’re going to get a lot of information about its potential calming effects. Then there’s going to be a disclaimer that talks about liver damage. That’s kind of a long discussion, but essentially, that’s whole belief system came out of a very small series of studies, really one study, but a few that came out of Germany and Switzerland back about 15 years ago.

All the studies ended up being flawed. They were actually using leaves and stems in these kava batches, which you know that you don’t do. You can only use the roots. Also, the people involved in the study were also on the slew of other different drugs, too, at the same time, and the data was even flawed to where the outcome of the data actually was later admitted that they totally screwed up the study, too. Actually, those two studies caused a 12-year ban of kava in those two countries. Every other country kind of followed and wrote about liver problems. They've since overturned that ban, said they were wrong. Those bans have been lifted in those countries, but yet if you research it, you still get that on everything.

If you talk about field testing, thousands of years of indigenous people drinking noble kavas every day—I mean, not every person drinks every day but drink it every day, and we don't have any epidemics of liver problems in any of those areas.

Dr. Pompa:
That's the danger of the internet, right? Once something's out there, whether it's real or not, it's out there, and it's happened with many things like that.

Cameron:
It's almost like with government, too. Government gets ahold of something, it just rolls—and all the sudden, people are not actually going to the source. They're just reciting what somebody else has said. They just read an article, and then they just take that on. Most even—I mean, obviously conventional doctors aren't working with kavas, but even alternative doctors stay away from it because of that. A lot of them won't go near it because of that, and it's this amazing tool. It's one of many amazing tools but one that really deserves press at this point because it's becoming more and more relevant.

The other thing is the quality issue. People don't even know what real kava is or that it's a thing. They just try the tincture from the Whole Foods or whatever, and it's—and they're like eh, that's not much or whatever. That doesn't do anything. The other thing is they don't integrate it correctly. Like I'm telling you right now, the building effect, the cumulative effect that kava has is something—a lot of people will try something once. They may get some negative side effects, or you may not get much of anything at all, and they'll give up on it because botanicals aren't the same as pharmaceuticals.

Like I said, a lot of times there is a cumulative effect to these things. These things are very—they're complex compounds. They're communicating with your nervous system, or your immune system, or whatever the compound. They have an intelligence to them, and good things—solutions happen slowly over time. Usually things that end up being bad are things that just bam, in the face, and then it goes away kind of thing. Even though kava can have both of these, what's so fascinating about it with basically no negative return whatsoever.

A lot of people aren't using it correctly or not using it long enough and not understanding that those therapeutic effects are there. Herbalism is really an art form. It's a craft, essentially. That's why we have—we really don't have herbalists that are on the wisdom level, I guess you'd say, of some of these indigenous people. We've been separated from plant medicines for so long that we kind of just take things like their drugs. Take them once, ah, it's not like a drug, or ah, that wasn't too—so they don't take it anymore. Yeah, obviously getting all those things right is so incredibly important.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, it's—let me tell you, we hear a lot about cannabis, CBD, legal marijuana. There's a big drive, but you and I have found that—man, kava's just not getting the press it deserves For what people are really suffering with today, kava could be and perhaps is more powerful than cannabis as far as what it's bringing. The problem is getting the right stuff, doing it correctly, all the things you just spoke about. My gosh, I mean, at least cannabis is getting good press. It's en vogue right now. Kava sits back there, and it's the bastardized step-sister. I don't know what to call it.

Cameron:
Yeah, it's there, and there's the cult following down in the islands of people who know about it. Then there's some people who've been experimenting and stuff and utilizing it, but because of those two or three things, because of bad kava, because of the whole liver toxicity thing, that whole belief system, it's no different than some of the horrible belief systems that have surrounded cannabis, too, about all these kind of things.

The think about kava versus even another medicine like cannabis is cannabis, you have to be a lot more careful with. There is a dark side to cannabis. There's a negative side. Don't get me wrong; let's not blame the plant. Really, it's because like I was saying earlier, our divorcement from herbalism and how to integrate these things and actually keep and maintain a balance and when to use them, when to back off—because we've got these stigmas surrounding things like cannabis because it's been illegal. Most of the people that have been using them have been abusing, so of course we're going to have negative side effects, not to mention the hybridization process of breeding up THC and imbalancing the plant, the levels of THC are totally unnatural these days in the recreational sector. There's a huge problem with that, too.

Cannabis has way more drawbacks over long-term use, and the drawbacks of cannabis are relatively trivial. Kava is so amazing to me because of it's power-to-drawback ratio, what it can do versus its—if you screw up and use it too much, trivial consequences, if any, which makes it so—and because it affects the stress system, it's so relevant today.

Dr. Pompa:
Yep.

Cameron:
Absolutely. Like I was saying, I mean, just on that note, too, as far as the realm of different botanicals, if we think about what is possibly out there, first of all, there's a whole host of known ethnobotanicals that are out there that have all—that hit on all different nerve—just on the psychoactive sector but many others, too, that just haven't gotten the press. It's like cannabis, all the effects that you're hearing, all the press it's getting, those effects have always been there. It's been available. It's just been not in the public eye, right? It's been prohibited and all this kind of ignorance and misperception and things.

The same thing applies to—there's so many different other plants. There are exogenous chemicals present in nature, in different plants and fungi, for every endogenous chemical that we have in our own nervous systems, too. There are analogs to those chemicals. That's why drugs work is because they mimic the chemicals that we already have. When you try to do that synthetically and isolate compounds and mess with things, you have no clue. You're hacking the intelligence of the body in a way that's going to give you an incredible amount of negative return, and that's drug addiction. That was what happened to me. It's one of the darkest worlds you can imagine is the world of severe drug addiction.

Dr. Pompa:
I know you're doing some research right now in magnolia, affects a lot of the same receptors, obviously, in a different way. I know you've experimented with a little bit of that, as well.

Cameron:
There's good combinations that you can have. I've been focusing—because it's like I've been talking to a lot of the other clients, and I've gotten a lot of, too, friends within this very hypersensitive, traumatized spectrum that really, really benefit from this inhibition that we get from some of these botanicals and need very badly. I've really been focusing a lot on anxiolytic plants. Kava's been the one that's been the base that I would start everybody on, but then there are a whole host of other different ones just that we know about that also are GABAergic in nature, meaning that the affect, modify, these GABA receptors that are essentially the ultimate brakes of the nervous system. That's really what we need a lot of.

There's also some that affect the serotonergic system, serotonin, which is like when people take 5-HTP. That's an amino acid precursor, but it's very subtle. For some people, that's great. That's enough or whatever. That's also inhibitory because that's a precursor to melatonin, which helps us sleep. Sometimes combining some of these, too, is totally safe and good, and I've had people combine—because if you have two compounds like kava that affects those receptors or chemicals in a certain way, and then another compound that comes at it from a different angle that can be very synergistic. You can even cycle them. If one starts to get a little bit—and you can cycle them so you have something else.

Magnolia officinalis, or any of these barks in the magnolia genus, contain a lot of these GABA analogs, these GABA-ergic compounds. The one you were speaking about that I had told a few people about, there's a product called HonoPure, so H-O-N-OPure, and it's on a website called Econugenics.com, and essentially it's just a really good concentrated extract of the main calming lye gland in that. It's called honokiol. That's where the name HonoPure—it's pure honokiol. That actually—there's tons of studies on honokiol on not only its neuro-protective effects, decreasing seizure threshold or increasing seizure threshold, and also anti-inflammatory effects, etc. There's a lot of stuff on that. It's one that's really, really good, too.

Just to name a couple others, ziziphus or ziziphus, that's a long name, and it's one that's out of Chinese herbal medicine, actually, and this is another one that's actually proposed to have an effect on a particular enzyme that helps your body convert excess glutamate into GABA, which just explain that real quick is—glutamate is actually what drives seizures. That's what drives most sporadic excitatory conditions and uses calcium and things. Glutamate is the most excitatory chemical in your body. Think about—

Dr. Pompa:
GABA's the most inhibitory, so just to get people to understand you're driving opposite ends.

Cameron:
We hear about excitotoxicity from things like diet soda or implicated in part of the mechanism for how vaccines could damage and mercury and things like that, activating the immune system and everything Excitotoxicity is driven by that chemical glutamate. GABA counteracts. They're almost like opposite brother and sister. This is why this works and why I think, too. We talk about CBD in seizures, and I think and a lot of the different kava experts I've talked to have actually seen kava to be more effective in people who are resistant to CBD therapy just to control the symptoms, again, while you're working upstream with that, too.

The one that I was talking about, ziziphus, real quick. I can give you a website for that, too, in case people—there's a concentrated powder from Lost Empire Herbs was a company that has it, which is a pretty good extract of it. Ziziphus seems to go really well with HonoPure. For some people, if they want to cycle off kava, you could take a couple of these other ones and things. Again, I know this is a lot, and when this video airs, I'll put a comment, and I want to list all these things so that you guys can know and experiment.

Dr. Pompa:
I can communicate with you on that, too, that same—there's comment sections?

Cameron:
Yeah, absolutely. I can—I'll be on there if you want to leave a comment or something. Then I'll check it or whatever, so yeah. This is a lot, and it does take—it takes experimentation, guys. The good thing about this ethnobotanicals is that you can do safe experimentation. They're not like pharmaceuticals. I mean, some you have to be somewhat cautious with, but always start in small amounts and just see what your body is doing. There are plants—nature is full of medicine in all forms. It's full of nourishing, good food-like medicine, essential nutrients, but it's also full of these molecules that help up-regulate and prop up our weak system in all sorts of disease processes and times and things. There's a lot of undiscovered medicines out there, too. There's a lot available underground that we know about already. I can sit here and name, and name, and name.

Dr. Pompa:
We're at the top of the hour. I have to—I'm telling you, it'll be one of our most download shows because you gave some gems. I'm telling you, people are suffering from this. You're a wealth of knowledge, Cameron. I've watched you come from here to where you are. It's been an unbelievable journey. You were so coachable. It's digging this deep. Now you're transforming lives. We call that from pain to purpose, man. Look at the purpose God is doing through you, man. You'll be speaking from my stage about this topic. I've already told you that.

Cameron:
Before we go, I just had to say this, too. It's been—me, my family, we are so—we thank God every day that we found you, that we met you, because honestly, it was exactly what I needed, just to find someone who was truly authentic, and truly like-minded, and someone who's not trying to sell me something or anything like that. You were pain to purpose, too, and honestly, I mean, I can't think of many people who I respect more than I respect you, Dan, obviously. I mean, obviously my ultimate hero's my parents and everything, but wow, I mean, we just—we love holding—

Dr. Pompa:
I told you at the very beginning when you were struggling. I said look, Cameron, God has a purpose in this. You watch what comes out of this. I saw your brilliance when you were sick, when you didn't see it. Watching this and a lot of this research you're doing just I see it happening. I see a lot of it. I see this passion, and it came out of your pain. You just encouraged many people watching this because believe me, if you're watching this, you're struggling, there is purpose in your pain.

I tell the doctors I coach, you want to figure out what your purpose is? Look in your pain. Dude, you're going to be—you're part of the solution, man, no doubt about it. Thank you so much.

Cameron:
Yeah. I just want to say right quick, those of you with really complicated conditions that are very, very sick out there, in a process like this, I know it sounds like a lot of information. The answer always is a multi-therapeutic approach. It always is turning the tide in your body's favor of adding in the good things, removing the interference, and it does take a lot of time. The devil's in the details. Fine-tuning some of these details can make all the difference in the world. I've just found that out with just working with some people and myself on trying to get down these safe crutches and control the nervous. That's just one small part of it. Hiring a coach, if you can, is a phenomenal thing.

Dr. Pompa:
No doubt about it. Thanks, Cam. Awesome show, and man, I'm sure you'll be on future shows. You'll definitely be in a seminar. Thanks, bud. Appreciate it, man.

Cameron:
Thanks so much for having me, man.

Dr. Pompa:
Yep.

Transcript of Episode 172: Aging Gracefully With Resilience

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Kathy Smith

Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode 172. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line, and today we welcome very special guest, fitness expert, Kathy Smith. Super excited to have you on the show, Kathy. Before we dig in, let me tell you a little bit more about Kathy.

Kathy Smith, New York Times best-selling author, has stood at the forefront of the fitness and health industry for over 30 years. They call Kathy “A Fitness Revolutionary” for a reason. From her iconic library of exercise videos to her current breakthrough healthy living app and highly ranked podcast, On Health: The Art of Living, she’s always on the cutting edge of fitness trends. Kathy developed a 90-day weight loss app, Re-Shape. This wellness program offers downloadable workouts, food plans, shopping lists, hundreds of recipes, and is topped off with BrainTap, a brain-based approach to enhancing focus and relaxation. She sold more than 20 million exercise DVDs and has been featured on countless media outlets including The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, and Good Morning America.

As a sought out educational and motivational speaker, Smith has been a keynote speaker for organizations that include the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Edward Jones’ annual Managing Partners Conference, and American College of Sports Medicine. “Ageless Energy,” Smith’s latest TV special, aired nationally on PBS. With her “Four Pillars of Fitness Success at Any Age,” she inspired viewers to shift their perspectives on fitness with a series of tools for boosting energy, stamina, strength, and vitality. She’s the mother of two daughters, Kate and Perrie, and when she’s not on the road, Kathy can be found usually hiking or skiing in the mountains of Park City, Utah. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Kathy. I’m so excited -inaudible-.

Kathy:
It’s so good to be here. Thanks for the intro.

Dr. Pompa:
Nice intro.

Kathy:
Thank you so much.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. This could be my most favorite guest ever because I love Kathy. We’ve been on many hikes together, done many dinners, right, with Jeff Hayes, all of us, right? We hang out.

Kathy:
I have to go hike after we drink that wine, so we have to burn off those drink calories.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. No. I absolutely love and I have so much respect for Kathy. I want to start by embarrassing myself, which I do on this show all the time. Meredith will tell you that. One time, Kathy and I were on stage together.

Kathy, can you hear me? You’re frozen right now. Did we lose her? Darn, lost her. Her connection was a little in and out, but Mark can edit this part away. Here she is. She came back.

Meredith:
All right, she’s back on.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, you’re back. We lost you for a second.

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I don’t know where. Anyways, I’m going to start by embarrassing myself. Okay? I said Meredith will tell you I do that on the show a lot. Anyways, I was on stage with—I don’t remember. I think it was at a chiropractic seminar, Kathy.

Anyways, Kathy does this leg kick. She stands up. When I’m telling you her legs go straight up to her face, they do. I mean, she can kick her legs better than any teenager, 20-year-old, anyone. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t get any better. Okay.

After she did that, everyone was like, “Wow!” Then the next words out of my mouth were, “Oh, and if you just knew how old she was, you would be even more amazed,” right? The crowd just gasps, but I meant it. I meant it. I’m like what do you mean? She should be proud. You should see this woman.

I just can’t believe. I’m telling you. When you said 30 years in the fitness industry, you said, actually, your first fitness product was 40 years ago, so I will make you tell them your age. I don’t care what those people said. You need to be proud. I’m telling you. This woman not only looks amazing for any age, by the way, but she is fit. More fit than any 20, 30-year-old that I know, so Kathy, there you go.

I want to ask you this because you’ve been in it so long. How did you get started in this? You have revolutionized this industry. You have. I mean, something at your core is driving it.

Kathy:
Yeah. I remember that evening, by the way, and I remember about four guys just kicking you. Patrick Gentempo or somebody else kicking you and going you never—those are two things you never ask a lady, right? How much do you weigh, and what is your age or something?

Dr. Pompa:
I’ll ask you both.

Kathy:
Especially when there’s hundreds of people out there and you’re—which I don’t mind, by the way. It was funny because everybody around you—and of course, you then go beat red, like oh. Anyway, we’ll get to the age. I don’t mind talking about it. I honestly think it’s quite remarkable, actually. I’ve had such a fun journey.

How did I get started? I was raised in the military, and we traveled around the world, moved every three years. At the age of 17, we were in Belleville, Illinois. I get a call. My dad, who’s had a massive heart attack, he was 42, and I was 17 at the time. I was daddy’s little girl, so I was the one that we did everything together. I was so bonded to my dad so, literally, raced to the hospital. He was dead on arrival, and it was one of these things that just rocked my world, as you can imagine.

I stayed home with my mom, graduated high school. Stayed home with my mom for a year before—and I went to college nearby before I went off to University of Hawaii. During that year, she then—my mom met somebody. Then a year later, she got remarried, and then my stepdad and my mother were killed in a plane crash. Within about the time I’m 19 years old, I had lost my dad. I’d lost my mom and my stepdad. There I was.

Again, timing here, I graduated high school in ’69. It’s now ’70, ’71. It was the Vietnam War. It was Civil Rights. It was Women’s Rights. It was everything that you could imagine that was going on in the country in the ‘70s. It was sex, drugs, rock and roll. It was Woodstock, all this. I’m just giving you that whole landscape because here I am orphaned, and typically, your parents are around to help you, direct you through. Like, oh, what is all this stuff?

I found myself in a going—spirally down into a bit of what am going to do with my life? What is the meaning of life? Getting depressed, anxious, I’m taking college classes, but the same time, I can’t focus. I’m feeling really dejected, and what happens is life has a way of doing this. I had a boyfriend at the time, and he was a football player. He would go to the track with the team, and then after practice, he would go for a run.

I would go to the track with him. Not because I was thinking of training but just because I didn’t want to be alone. I would start to run, and I would do a lap. I would do the next lap, and then I would rest. Then I started linking these laps together. After a few weeks, I would be leaving the track, and I’m going, my god, I feel so much better. I mean, my mental attitude, I feel like I’m going to be able to make it through this, and I started running further.

There was a doctor at the time. I started running, and then in 1973, let’s say, there was a doctor. His name was Dr. Scaff. He was taking heart patients and training them to run marathons. Now, back in 1973, if you had heart disease, you were told don’t climb a flight of stairs. Don’t have sex. Don’t do anything that’s going to stimulate your heart.

There was a guy named Kenneth Cooper, Dr. Ken Cooper, and he was doing all the research on cardiovascular disease and exercise. They said, “No. Your heart’s a muscle. You need to work it. You need to get out there.” To prove it, they took these heart patients, and they trained them for a marathon. I actually trained with these guys, and I ran my first marathon in 1975. That was like a turning point, and I used that marathon as just almost like a metaphor for life. Everything you learn in training for a marathon, including how do you—when you hit the wall, when you can’t go any further, the 18th mile, when you don’t think you’re going to make it, how do you use that mind over matter? That was what got me into exercise.

I mean, I’m going to continue the story, but—I mean, which then what got me into the professional side of it, but that’s honestly how I got turned on to this idea of exercise. It wasn’t about body. It wasn’t about the body—how great your body can look. That was the side benefit. It’s how great your mind—at the mental side of this of how it just took me out of the depths of depression and lifted me and gave me the confidence to finish college, and go after my dreams.

Dr. Pompa:
Actually, I want to talk about that because we barely talk about that on this show. I mean, we bring fitness people on, and we’re talking about the physical benefits. I mean, not just how you look but the cellular, physical benefits, but we rarely bring it into the mind. That’s something you do. It really did take you out of depression. It really did ultimately change your mind.

Before we get there, before I let you go there, I should say, I mean, how did you—you were the first to my knowledge release DVDs on exercise. Like you said, you were actually—at one point, you had them on records, listening to records and doing the things on the wall. I mean, where did you come up with it? I mean, how did you fall into that?

Kathy:
Okay. Now, we ran the marathon. To give you some timing, that’s ’75. I moved to L.A., and I graduated college. I did a little bit of graduate work in Hawaii, and then I moved to L.A. In L.A., you have smog. You had cars. There was all these environmental things. Running wasn’t as much fun, but then I heard about—there’s this one class.

I really do have to put into perspective for your viewers. People say, well, did you always know you wanted to be a personal trainer? There weren’t personal trainers. There weren’t clubs that had that, but there was a woman who, in her garage, was teaching what was called—it wasn’t called—well, it was called Body Design by Gilda. It was just a class, and she was teaching. Then she had moved to Century City.

It was a class that you would go to, and you would do calisthenics, which means you would do leg lifts. You’d do a back—we would do these arm circles things forever and ever. In the class was Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, all of these. Everybody was taking this class. It was to music, but it had no aerobic component. It was just all of these doggie leg lifts and things. When I say doggie, you might not know what that is. You get on all fours, and you lift your leg up and down. It was like what women used to do 40 years ago.

I took that love, that love of music, that love of aerobics, and that love of this class format, and I created a class. I started teaching in L.A. I got a really big following, and there would be people coming in. It’d be guys and girls. In the class, I have combinations, including jumping jacks and twists, and those high kicks that you mentioned. There was all these things.

Now, we’re starting to get into late ‘70s, and what’s happening is that people are getting excited about something called health clubs. It became a very social scene. Your health club is where young people, guys and girls, would get together. They would come to these classes. They would come workout, and they would come and meet each other. It became explosively popular. It was the first time where we had these things that we worked out in called leotards, and we had headbands, and we had legwarmers.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, I can see you now.

Kathy:
I know.

Dr. Pompa:
I can see you were just evolving into the ‘80s. I see it.

Kathy:
Yeah, all the way to the ‘80s, exactly. We had things like disco and Donna Summer, and all that music was playing in the background. It was energizing, and it was sexy. This was where people went to get their workouts. Guys would go over the weights. The girls would go into the exercise classes.

Oh, so then what happened was there was woman in my class who was an independent record promoter. She was promoting all the big acts, including the Michael Jackson’s and things like that. She came to me, and said, “We should do an exercise album.” We put our money together. We created the music. That’s what’s fun about my career, which people don’t really understand. I did the exercise, but the first thing you usually have to say, okay, you need music. How are you going to get your music? Why do you get music rights? You got to get your musicians. You have to create the music.

We would do sound-alikes, which they would sound like a Michael Jackson song, and so we would be in the sound studio. Have musicians. Then my voice saying—and imagine. If you just close your eyes right now, you’re not hearing me. You’re not seeing me, but you’re hearing me say, “Okay. It’s time to warm up the body. Let’s reach to the ceiling. Now touch your toes, and round all the way back up.” Then you would have a poster that you would look at, and there’d be pictures of me doing that.

I did four albums. That was the beginning of what’s called the self-help. In the beginning of the ‘80s, late ‘70s, early ‘80s, it was called the Self-Help Movement. By the way, there’s a book called The Century, and I’m in that book. Peter Jennings, they came from ABC to do a big—in the millennium, which was in 2000, they did a big special about the different decades, and they came and interviewed me. What was interesting is that we went from the We Generation of what I talked about early, which was Vietnam, Civil Rights, Women’s Right. It was all about what are we going to do to change the world? It went to the Me Generation, which was—and that Me Generation was more about how do I look? How do I feel? How can I help myself? How do I mentally?

There’s a term called collective consciousness, and when the collective consciousness of the United States and the world starts to shift, then not one, not two, but everybody starts to think about it. People that had never thought, women who had never thought about this, now you don’t have onsies or twosies. You had millions of women that are walking into Target, that are walking into Walmart, that are walking—because you couldn’t get the stuff. There wasn’t this technology. You’re walking in, and you’re going through. You go I want my Fat Burning video.

They’d put it in, and you would sell. The numbers were staggering. By the way, you would sell millions of these videos. Then that got me into books. I mean, I have—we mentioned the one book. I’ve written somewhere between eight and ten books and have had a few New York Times bestsellers in there.

One more thing I’ll say before I end this tirade. It’s fun to talk about, but I think the main thing to think about, another thing to think about and it’s important to bear this in mind, men always had football. When you look at my high school yearbook—and I think this is the really important fact for me. I show it to my daughters, and you know that one of my daughters went to the Olympics this year.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, the 800 meter in the Olympics. Yeah.

Kathy:
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal did an article on the two of us. Just the position of, if you look at my school, my high school yearbook, there were no girl sports, so there was no track. There’s only boys. When you go to the sport section of your yearbook, there’s 25 pages boys football, baseball, track, golf, tennis, whatever. There was not one girl sport because girl—and this was in Illinois. This was not uncommon until we had something called Title IX. Title IX is what helped—Title IX helped equal opportunity for girls in sports. I was part of—one of the founding members with Billie Jean King of a woman’s sports foundation, which…

Dr. Pompa:
I told you she was old.

Kathy:
Which was one of—I don’t know. We got to watch his language in here. Hey, by the way, I am going to call you on this. I’m going to call you on this. You need to come up with other terms. For your audience, those are terms that are not—if I didn’t have a strong sense of self, that is where—and that’s my next big movement, by the way. I know you’re laughing about this, but I would like you to take it seriously.

I’m involved with a lot of movements that those terms—saying somebody’s fat or something, it’s really derogatory. If you told your child or you told someone you’re fat and you told them about ten times, you know the mental side of this. I only say this—this is what people do, and it’s really destructive. I hear every single day I’m too old for that.

Dr. Pompa:
No, -inaudible-.

Kathy:
Yeah, but just watch it. No. I’m just saying just bear it in mind. It is the languaging, and it is a type of reshaping that—I’m part of this movement right now, and a lot of people are doing it, I mean, are part of this movement of how do we show people how to age? This isn’t old. That’s a term that’s just relative. An 18-year-old thinks a 30-year-old is old, so it’s all relative.

Dr. Pompa:
On this show, we talk about cellular age versus actual age -inaudible-. You can actually claim your cellular age, and that’s what matters.

Kathy:
That’s what matters. I don’t know how you are. I’m really excited about all the work you’re doing. I think it’s so amazing. It’s just off the charts, so cutting edge and so—whenever I go to these seminars around the country, this is—what you talk about is state-of-the-art, the cutting-edge side of the whole field. What’s interesting along with that and I find it fascinating is what do—and I think that how we perceive ourself is—and I only say this because I’ve had to do this. Not at this age.

When you were a woman and you weren’t allowed—and this is where it’s not joking. It’s like Kathrine Switzer, who’s a friend of mine, wasn’t allowed to run in the Boston Marathon, and that was 50 years ago. She was dragged out because women weren’t allowed. I think younger people need to understand. It’s not that many years ago women weren’t allowed to do that. This is why we didn’t have—and even going to the Olympics this year with my daughter, if the women of our country—if the women of the United States were a separate country, we would of—the women would have been third in the world as far as winning the most medals. Finally, women have had this way to express themself.

I bring it back to the fitness side. That’s the thing that I found when I was teaching classes. Women would come in and to your point—and it’s not talked about. They would come and say—and they would be crying, and they’d say, “Kathy, it’s not because I feel toned or tight. It’s because I feel empowered. I didn’t think I could go to work. I didn’t think I could hold a job, and all this empowerment stuff that came from moving your body.”

I think it’s the thing that’s really underestimated in some of the stuff where it’s like, oh, you want to look good in a bikini. No. You want to feel good about your life and about your sexuality and about your job and feeling empowered. I know I digressed a bit, but that was my whole—throughout my entire career, I think it’s one of the reasons why, when there’s—people say, well, how do you differ from other people out there? My thing was really about empowering women, and it still is. I mean, this whole thing is when you see the empowerment that certain women are showing that, if you’re 50, you can do it, certain things, if you’re 55.

What did we have last night? We had the Billboard Awards, music awards. You had Cher at the age of 71. When she got up on stage and got her acceptance award and the hip hop guys and everybody were just like this, she goes, “I really didn’t have that much talent, but I had mentors. I had people that believed in me, and I just kept hanging in there.” It’s not listening to people to say you can’t do it. My thing is shift your—a shift. I keep coming back because I’ve had to do this. You have to shift your inner dialogue about this process. Otherwise, you give up.

Dr. Pompa:
No doubt. You should be an inspiration to those watching. You know what I’m saying? I know, even me, I keep up with my teenagers, right? At my age, I keep up with them, and in some aspects, I exceed them, right? They’re always telling their friends, right?

It’s like you’re an inspiration. You have been through the years. I mean, you were an inspiration when you were in your 30’s looking back and the 40’s, 50’s. You’re still that inspiration. I don’t call just anyone old on this show. You’re the only one, except myself.

Kathy:
I take it as an honor.

Dr. Pompa:
I call myself that. You know what? I’m proud of it, though, what I can do, right? We are absolute in, no doubt, exceptions. However, we don’t need to be. I think that we inspire.

Kathy:
That’s the point. We don’t need to be, and I think that’s the really good point. That’s a really good point. The modeling of what is possible? The things that you say you talk about all the time on the show, which I know we have discussions about. It’s that fitness side and the different aspects of fitness. It’s the strength training. It’s the cardiovascular training. It’s the balance training. It’s the stretching.

Dr. Pompa:
That brings me to my question. I really have. You know what I mean? It’s like what’s changed when we look back? I mean, you’ve been in it from the beginning, right? I mean, you must see—I want to know what you’re doing today. I know my viewers and listeners want to know what you’re doing today.

I mean, you’ve been through it all. You’ve done it all. You’ve tried it all. What’s stuck? You do. You’re amazing. You look amazing. You have full function. What are you doing now? What’s changed?

Kathy:
I think in my very first—I think I was fortunate enough early on to understand that it’s strength. It’s cardiovascular. It’s cardio, and it…

Dr. Pompa:
Froze. Darn. I’m sure she’ll come back on here. She has a shaky internet. This is what happens when you live in Park City, by the way. You got bad internet connection. Yeah. Meredith, I mean, right? I mean, she is an absolute amazing—I can’t wait to actually hear what she’s doing now, right?

When I say what stuff, meaning that you go through this evolution, and she automatically gravitates to what works. What’s she’s saying too is she does a lot of different things. I mean, it’s like she’ll do the yoga. She’s out hiking. I mean, honestly, I see her mix it up. When we talk about diet variation, I’m telling you. I see Kathy. I’m like, oh, my gosh. You do so many different things, right?

I know that’s part of her plan. I know that over the years she’s tried so many things that I bet you—and you can even ask the question, but I bet you she found the beauty in the variation, honestly. Just like as we study diets and so many people over the years, no doubt; I see Kathy doing a massive amount of variation in her exercise. It’ll be interesting. She’s coming back up. I’ll let you ask that, Meredith.

Meredith:
All right, yeah. The variation, there is so much magic in it. That is such a powerful concept that I think—it’s easier, I think, when we think of that with exercise, but the diet piece of it is sometimes even more powerful. Then when you bring it all together, it’s even better.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. I mean, it really—because why? We’re forcing more adaptation the more we change things, right? If you do endurance every day, every day, every day and then boom, I mean, it’s like now, all of a sudden, you’re doing this sport, that sport, this resistive. The body has to keep adapting, and through the adaptation, your body’s becoming more hormone sensitive. It pumps up growth hormone.

It does all of these hormonal changes, really, just in the attempt to adapt. No different with exercise. I mean, even when I go to a different gym and change what machines I use, it’s like—let alone a completely different exercise. It’s massive. I mean, the next day I’m sore, I mean, forcing adaptation. I thought she was jumping back on there, but I see she wasn’t able to get on again.

Meredith:
Yeah. I’m just curious how your routines for exercise have changed too? I know, back in your bodybuilding days, that’s been a major -inaudible-. Maybe more recently since learning more about the variation technique.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Again, I think I find even more beauty in doing things outside. Just being in the mountains and nature, I always have a totally different component, a different feel. I want Kathy to talk about the mental component of exercise. I think, when we talk about anti-aging, it’s often times the thing that’s really overlooked, as far as the benefits of exercising. I say that when you do stuff outside with groups of people, that effect even goes through the roof even more. I’d be anxious to take—get her view on that.

Yeah. I try to add in more components of just that type of thing. Skiing for me is huge, and you could ski just to ski around, or when I ski, it’s exercise. I mean, it is. I’m telling you. I’m huffy. I can’t breathe at the end. You know what I’m saying? You can make anything exercise. Of course, mountain biking, hiking, cross-country skiing, I mean, I literally mix it up, so many different movements.

I like that type of thing. However, I still go in the gym and move weights. I still love resistive training. I think we’ve had enough guests on our shows that talk about you don’t even need weights. Your own body when done correctly, these functional type movements, I mean, Kevin Rail talked about that. We had one of our last guests talk about it, I mean, just so many benefits from it.

Kathy, we brought you back in. Your internet, that’s the benefit of living in Park city. Our internet sucks!

Kathy:
That was a complete crash, though. It’s like what is going on?

Dr. Pompa:
We kept the conversation going very easily.

Kathy:
I thought you were punishing me.

Dr. Pompa:
We’re talking about just what’s changed and what you’re doing now. What stuck? Meaning what are you doing now? I mean, the experience you’ve gained of doing it all for so many years. We want to know. What are you doing now? Meredith asked me the question.

Kathy:
It’s interesting. The three components of fitness that I talked about in my very first video, the cardio, the strengthening, and the stretching, I think my saving grace or whatever is I got into all three of them when I was in my early 20’s. I was running. I mentioned I had a boyfriend that was a football player, and I would go the gym with him. We’d work on a Nautilus equipment, and then I would go to a yoga class. Believe it or not, I got exposed to all three of those disciplines very early on. I would rotate them, and maybe emphasize one more than the other during different times.

In general, all of them have been a part of my life for this entire time. All my videos, whenever I would do a video, I always had a great warmup, a really good cool down and stretch. I always had strength, and I always had cardio. Those things have changed through the years. I’ve been involved with so many different approaches to strength training, kettle bells. There’s heavy weights, high-rep overload. I think the main thing is— especially for women but for both men and women is that over the age of 30—and you should start before that, but over the age of 30, you really got to strength train. You really have to add that to—have that component as part of your ritual.

The bias towards strength training, the bias to needing strength training goes up every decade. Because you’re losing muscle mass and you lose it, it starts to—it accelerates. It accelerates when you get into your 60’s. You really got to make sure that you’re maintaining that strength training. For women that would ask me, in the early days, they would go, well, I got my three pound dumbbells. I would tell them your baby, when it comes out of you, weighs somewhere between six and ten pounds. I mean, it gains weight pretty quickly. You’re carrying around a 22 pound toddler, and yet, you go to the gym, and you’re lifting 3, and 4, and 5 pound weights.

It’s that idea not to be afraid of the weights. I went this morning, and I might be doing my deadlifts with 90 and 100 pounds, and I’m doing bicep curls with 20 pound dumbbells. It’s making sure that you’re giving enough overload. Now, everybody’s different. I’m not suggesting people do that, but everybody’s different but to be progressive and to not be afraid of weight training. That’s really, I believe, the fountain of youth is maintain your muscle.

As a matter of fact, I wrote a book on it I called Feed Muscle, Shrink Fat, and it’s all about how do you maintain—everything in your body has to do with muscle and maintaining that muscle is just so important so, number one, muscle. Then, of course, heart and not just heart but brain function, all the stuff that we’re thinking about for cardiovascular. Any organ in your body and you know this and talk about it better than anybody needs blood flow. If you don’t have the blood flow going to your brain and to your liver—I was just at a convention in Denver for DaVita, which is kidney dialysis. One of the things, the reason why people have kidney problems is because of lack of circulation in your kidneys. Then the build-up on how you cannot then eliminate toxins in your body.

It’s cardiovascular. How do you change that up? Through the years, I’ve gotten much more involved with hip training and, really, this high-intensity for short bursts of time, but I still alternate that. As much as we talk about that science-based stuff, I’m really into what nurtures your heart and soul, and what do you enjoy doing? I enjoy getting outside. I enjoy what I call green workouts.

You’re in the mountains. You’re on the lakes. You’re in the parks. You’re outdoors. Those green workouts can be long. They can be slow. They can be whatever, but it’s the idea of get out and all the wonderful things that happen when you’re outdoors.

Then the last component of this, which I think is, honestly—if I had to rank them, I don’t even know which is most important but the yoga, the stretching—slash, stretching, slash, mindfulness and on a daily basis being able to practice some kind of breathing technique. It can come when it’s attached to movement. It could be a yoga inhale and exhale, inhale and—or it can just be breath in a prayer, in a meditation, in a mindfulness. It’s the idea of how do you calm yourself down? Not once in a while, but how do you train that part of your body so that you calm your mind down and so that you can focus? That’s what happens as another part of aging that we don’t really talk about that much is that—and except all the people that are over 50 and then especially over 60, it’s like, oh, I can’t remember things. Oh, I can’t go do that. I can’t do that job anymore. I can’t sit down and read a book anymore because I can’t keep my mind focused.

Those are the signs of aging that are really huge. You sit down to read a book. It’s like your mind’s—or the other thing, there’s comics about—comic little strips about this. You go to make your cup of bulletproof coffee in the morning or, for me, green tea. On the way to do that, you see something over here, and you get distracted. By the time you go to check the mail, you’ve forgotten what you even got up to do. That’s a type of stuff that really shows aging. By the way, the yoga, the mindfulness, those type of things, that’s where I think, when you talk about sharpness, to stay sharp, it’s that how do we deal with stress?

I told my story earlier about losing my parents. In my life, I’ve gone through so many highs. I mean, I’ve had so much positive, and I’m so grateful for everything. Like everybody on this podcast, we all have things that we’ve had to deal with, whether it’s divorce, or illnesses, or problems in business, and whatever. Part of the knack of aging is how do you stay resilient? That’s the word I love to use. I mean, resiliency is what keeps you in the game.

Staying resilient with whatever happens on a daily basis has to do with what is your morning ritual, which I’d love to talk about? It’s how do you get up in the morning? What do you do when you first get up? What keeps those brain synapses going like this? What keeps the body and the posture and the balance? I mean, when I used to take martial arts, I mean, the whole thing is when something comes and pushes you, I mean, if you’re stiff like this, then you’re going to get knocked over. What happens is that the whole idea of fluidity is about resilience. Something comes your way, and you go, oh, okay. I’m back to normal. When you start practicing it on a daily basis with the type of techniques we just talked about, it’s amazing how you build this muscle.

Now, last thing I’m going to say. You have this bank account. For whatever age you’re at, you start to put in this bank account, and it pays off. It’s one of the things—and that’s why I say 30 years of yoga, 40 years of cardiovascular, strength training forever, yes, and does it change? Are we going in some days and somebody’s come up with a new way of doing cardio? Yes. Don’t forget that it still falls in a basic category.

Then the last thing I would—even though I said the last thing a few times now, don’t get injured. Don’t injure yourself along the way. The best way to do that is don’t do stupid things. Don’t jump into classes or fitness techniques just because they’re popular if they’re not right for your body. Because once you blow out that shoulder in a class because you’re lifting too heavy a weight, or you’re going too rapidly or something, you’ll be dealing with that one—or you blow out the back. You’ll be dealing with that one as you -inaudible-.

Dr. Pompa:
I ask you that. The question is what do you think of CrossFit? I’ve had so many friends injured from it, and it’s a lot of what you’re saying.

Kathy:
Yeah. I have a rule of thumb with talking about different brands. I can say, generally, I’m stating the obvious that when you go into class formats—I’m a class format teacher. I love the class, but we both know that you don’t—it’s not like having a one-on-one instructor. It’s not like having a one-on-one trainer. You’re one of 10, 20, 30. Nobody’s got their eye on you at every moment.

Even though you might be learning proper technique, any time—not a whole lot can go wrong if I’m teaching you a Salsa step, and we’re doing a Zumba class. If you do the step wrong, you might look a little awkward, but that’s the worst thing that’s going to happen. You go into classes that deal with heavy weights, and you’re throwing heaving weights around. There’s risks involved. If you let your ego get involved—and people say, well, check your ego at the door. As we all know, easier said than done. If you’re a guy and there’s a woman next to you lifting or another guy lifting something, you probably go up a little further.

What I’ve noticed, just for those—but I don’t even want to even say CrossFit. Listen. When Tae Bo started, tons of injuries. When yoga, tons of injuries for yoga. You go how can yoga give you injuries; it’s so slow? It’s like no. When you’re pushing people into these extreme back arches and you’re saying things like you can go a little further, and you have a picture of somebody doing a backbend like this and that’s your ideal, somebody tries to do that, and their back’s not meant for it. I’m sure you’ve seen this, but I have seen through the years—I mean, chiropractors have said to me, oh, my god. Business has just gone up with Tae Bo. Tae Bo, you’re doing all these really quick movements.

Here’s the other thing. Anytime you do repetitive movements and you start to get excited, and you’re doing them three to four days a week, and you haven’t don’t them before, what do you think’s going to happen? I think that’s why I encourage people to start slowly. Even with my videos, one of the first things I would always say—if it was a weight video, I would say, before you do this with weights, go through an entire video without weights. Make sure you know the moves. Make sure you know how you do a lunge before you do a lunge with weight. Make sure you know how to do a proper squat before you do a squat with weights.

Dr. Pompa:
Do you have videos now that people can purchase? Do you have beginner videos? Where can they purchase some of your stuff? We have a lot of beginners and a lot of advanced, I’m sure, watching.

Kathy:
Yeah. Yeah. If they go to kathysmith.com and it’s Kathy with a K, I have all the DVDs and everything there. I have them categorized, and I have them depending if they want just everything we talked about: strength, mindfulness, stretching, cardio. Then they’re different categories. I mean, some people like to get their cardio with boxing. Some people like to get it with jump roping, and some people like to get it with dancing. That’s what’s fun about it. I encourage people also to mix it up.

The other thing I want to say; that through the years, one of the reasons for my agility and everything is I think different disciplines bring something new to the equation. When you have to learn something new, it’s great for the body, but it’s also great for the brain.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No doubt. Meredith, I’ve hogged Kathy. I’m sure Meredith has some great questions.

Meredith:
I think one thing that came to mind, Kathy, when you were speaking before about the importance of mindset, I think a lot of us know that. How do we breakthrough? What are some tools you use to get over—maybe for some of our viewers who are older, that they’re too old for something, or even it’s someone’s too young for something, or that they’ve had other issues where they can’t do something. What are some of your mindset tools you use?

Kathy:
I think a couple different things. One of them is just—as far as getting into a positive mindset, it’s just—it’s practicing gratitude. I mean, I have a gratitude exercise I do in the morning, which is basically just picking three things I’m thankful for. It’s so funny. Am I’m looking down here or over here? It doesn’t matter where I’m looking. I’m looking at Dan.

Shifting mindset has to do with writing things down and changing—for instance, let’s just say you’re going through a negative speak in your brain. For me, I have something called a stop sign method. It’s, really, I just visualize—so if hear myself going, oh, I can’t do that. Oh, I’m not going to be good at that. I’m not going to—I’ll get up on stage, and I’m going to flub up. I’m not going to be good and dah, dah. I just visualize a stop sign.

I go, stop. If nobody’s around, I will say it out loud. I’ll just go, stop, and then I’ll go into three breaths. I do something called the breathing-listening technique. The technique is just like this. You inhale for a count of three to six. If I was going to do it now, I’d inhale. I’d get to the top of the inhale, and I’d listen for a sound. I just heard a bird and exhale.

Then I would do that four more times, so I would inhale. Listen for a sound. I just heard an outdoors worker and exhale. Then you name the sound. That thing, by doing it four times, what happens, it brings you into the present. Most of us get in trouble because we’re thinking about the past, what happened that didn’t go right, or we’re thinking about the future, what’s not going to right. If we can just get very present, very here and now, it allows our brains enough time. It slows them down so that you can start to make more positive decisions.

It’s the BLT, breathing-listening technique, along with the stop technique, if I have negative thought process going on. Along with something just that is a power move. I learned this one—Tony Robbins from one—Anthony Robbins from one of his workshop but having that power movement. Tony’s was always like just have something—I would go on—when I was going on stage, I’d have a power move. You practice your power move throughout the day so that you know—and it can be very subtle. It can be rubbing two fingers together like this. I can be sitting here, and if I practiced that little—and set an intention with that move, then I know that throughout the day, if I’m feeling a bit insecure or something like that, I—this repetition, as silly as it sounds, after a week, two weeks, after three years, you go and do this, and all of a sudden, you feel the power come up.

I also have to tell you fitness and exercise brings you confidence. One of the things I’ve learned through the years is that, if you want to feel strong when you go to the gym—I was so insecure when I started my first TV show. I had a TV show on USA Network for three years. It was a morning show every morning. I would have to start hair and makeup at about, ooh, 6:30 a.m. I had an hour drive to get there. It means I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. I would actually get up earlier than that because I knew that I would have to go for a run because I had to get at least a 30 to 45 minute run in before I got there because that gave me my confidence.

Without that, without those endorphins, without those chemicals, I thought I can’t do it, and I would be driving. The days I didn’t do it, I would be driving. I don’t know how to do this. Nobody’s taught me how to do this. I would have all that negative speak so that training myself to get up. Put one foot in front of the other.

Again, a game changer for me was when I was running that marathon. I hit the Diamond Head in Hawaii on the 18th mile. In my book, when I wrote about this, I was 24-something at the time. I had what I call an old codger who was like a 40-year-old at the time run by me, and say, “Don’t think about the finish line. Just put one foot in front of the other.” For the next six miles, that’s all I thought about it. It’s just one foot and one foot. If I thought about six miles, I would’ve given up. That one foot in front of the other was what I needed to just say stay present. Stay in the moment.

I use that for all of—everything. When I writing a book, I mean, how do you write a book? It seems overwhelming. Not when you break it down into chapters and pages, and you don’t think about the finished book. It’s just like I need to get this four pages down and that next four pages, and pretty soon, you have the book. If you think about the book, that’s what stops us all. I can’t write a book. I can’t run a marathon. How could I run a marathon? You can if you just start breaking it down into doable parts.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely.

Kathy:
I don’t know. Did that give you some thoughts? I don’t know if that’s exactly what you were asking.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s the answer. That’s absolutely the answer. I mean, people think that they just have to do this or be this. You start with little movements every day, and then it becomes more and more and more. I think that it transforms this. I mean, it does. No doubt. Exercise transforms the brain, the chemicals, your hormones. We talk a lot about that on the show. However, that’s how your brain works. No doubt that’s how your cells work, but these are cells too.

I’ll tell you. You said something. Meredith asked me the question while you were off. I said, Meredith, I just find so much value now just getting outside and doing my exercise in any aspect, and I try to do so many different things. Being outside, it is such a mental component to it. Being out in the sun, there’s another physical component. Doing the exercise and then doing it with people. It’s remarkable. When you put that all together, you add the physiological effects. You add the unseen.

The effects you’re getting from the sun, negative ions from the trees, the mountains, the fresh air, you put all that together. I’m telling you. It’s transformative for your cells, your brain, your emotions. Yeah. We all struggle with negative emotions. We talk about trapped emotions. Exercise, I’m telling you it’s a huge, huge component to lifting depression and just how you think, how you perform.

When I’m not exercising, it affects every aspect of my life from relationships to my business, podcast, whatever I’m doing. It affects. You’re right. You show up with the best you you can be so if that’s not a reason to start exercising, even if it’s ten minutes a day. Go get Kathy’s stuff. I know you do a great job of bringing people to that, just walking them through and getting them moving. You do it correctly. Something transformed after 40 years. You want the right instruction? This gal has it. Give them your website, Kathy.

Kathy:
Okay. Do we want to—okay. Getting back to your beginning of the podcast, I am 65 years old. Do you want the high kick? I don’t know if…

Dr. Pompa:
Pull it back. Come on. Get it going. That’s it.

Kathy:
Hold on. Can you see me?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Look at her. She’s like a little teenager.

Kathy:
One of the things that I’ve learned is that—let’s just see. I didn’t know I was going to be standing up. I glad that I have my little thing. Okay. Anyway, I don’t know which way to go here, which way you can see so you don’t get a complete crouch shot.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s fine. You’re dressed appropriately. You’re fine. You’re fine.

Kathy:
Come on. Hold on, so it’s—I don’t -inaudible-. Think of it as…

Dr. Pompa:
You’re so fit. Of course, now our viewers are going, okay, she looks amazing. I mean, it is. It’s like that’s it.

Kathy:
I think the main thing is have fun with it. Get up. Dance. Do your squats. Then do your planks. Do your five-minute plank. I mean, just mix it up. Have fun.

Dr. Pompa:
Hey, look, you sold 20 million copies of things for a reason, girl. I mean, just look at her. I’m telling you. You inspire me. I mean, you do. It’s like I know that I know that I know that I’m going to be able to do what I do, and I’m going to keep doing it at 80 years old. I am because I’ve chosen it. No doubt, like you, just a little bit every day.

Kathy:
Before we went on, before we were on to air—that I just got back from Los Angeles. I was at the USC School of Gerontology for advisory board meeting. A good friend of mine, Art Ulene, was there. Art was the doctor on the Today Show. He’s 81. He’s climbing Kilimanjaro in two weeks and invited me to go. I’ve climbed Kili. I mean, that’s the type of thing. There’s so many fun people doing so many fun things.

This is why I got a little stuck on this thing, and I just want to encourage everybody out there rethink—I did an article for The Washington Post. They titled it “Age is Just a Number.” It really is time for anybody in their 40’s—30’s, you could still do whatever you want, but anybody in their 40’s to really start thinking about it. Once your hormones start shifting, once you get into this age mindset, it’s really important to start—I’m a big one—Tony Robbins is big on this. Languaging is really important of what we tell our brains. We tell our brains—if there’s terms used that—I’m just around a lot of people that are using really great terms about aging. As we start to see in the United States that happen, it’s just remarkable. I mean, honestly, what I have people doing and what I’m seeing in New York, in L.A., across the country, and people in their mid-60’s and their 70’s and in their 80’s, it is phenomenal. It’s a bright future.

By the way, you hear this, but I’m telling you. I wrote a book. It was a book. I was on The Oprah Show with it. It was called Moving Through Menopause. Aging, there’s some great things about aging.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, absolutely.

Kathy:
What’s fun about it—what’s so much fun about is—I don’t want to use a bad word or anything, but it’s like you don’t give a—you can be more yourself. You can be more authentic than you’ve ever been because you really don’t care what people think about you as much anymore. Your life isn’t based on what everybody is thinking about you. You’re based on what you want to do in your life. At the same time, you have the knowledge, the intelligence, and if you make sure that you keep your body—and this is what I’m telling people in their 40’s. Think of it now. If you get to 65 and you have diabetes, if you’re overweight, if you have aches and pains, then life gets pretty miserable. If you have the opposite, life is…

Dr. Pompa:
Amazing.

Kathy:
Unbelievable.

Dr. Pompa:
You know what, Kathy? It’s so funny you said that. I’m proud of my age. It’s like the wisdom that I have now, right? It’s like, man, if I had that wisdom with my physical health and my mind, come on. I mean, these are the world changers. We look at these kids with the computers. I look at my children. I go, oh, my god. They have no wisdom yet. The fact is, like you said, wisdom, I mean, there’s so many benefits, right?

Look, we can’t do anything about our actual age, right? That goes on, but we can change our cellular age. Just because 65, 52, that doesn’t mean anything because our cellular age is so much less, so choose a different cellular age. We can’t change our actual age. Who cares about that? Hey, the actual age says we have more wisdom.

Kathy:
Exactly. Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Imagine when you get your cellular age, right? Yeah. I mean, imagine when you get your cellular. The goal should be let’s have a nice number. Let’s live to a big actual age, but let’s keep our cellular age down here. That way we have wisdom, and we then can change the world and make a difference. That’s an awesome takeaway. I love that.

All right, Meredith, I’ll turn it over to you. I have to get on another show. Man, Kathy, thank you so much. I just love you so much. Hey, it’s our time of year, right? We’re going to be up in the mountains.

Kathy:
I know. I’ll be seeing you on the bike or on the hike, on the bike or on the hike.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I’m going to get you on the bike more. I’m going to get you on that darn bike. All right, Meredith, I’m going to turn it over to you, or otherwise, Kathy and I will just keep on talking.

Kathy:
Thank you very much. Bye. It was so great.

Dr. Pompa:
Go to her website. Give them her website again, Meredith, her website again.

Meredith:
Yes. Thanks again, Dr. Pompa. Kathysmith.com if you want to check out all of Kathy’s awesome materials. Thank you both so much for sharing your wisdom today. I know I’m inspired, and I know you’ve inspired all of our listeners and viewers out there to move more and to really focus on our mindset too. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Dr. Pompa:
Bye.