Transcript of Episode 115: Dr. Joseph Mercola Discusses Enhancing Your Mitochondria
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and special guest Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Meredith:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 115. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and we have Dr. Pompa here on the line, of course, and today we have a very special guest, Dr. Joseph Mercola. We’re very, very excited to have him on Cellular Healing TV. Let me read you a little bit about Dr. Mercola before we get started.
Dr. Mercola is a board certified and family practice and has treated tens and thousands of patients before shifting full time to running his website, Mercola.com, which is the most visited site in the world.
Dr. Mercola:
No, most visited and natural health site. The most visited site in the world is Google!
Meredith:
Most visited natural health site in the world. All right; we’ve got that. His current passion is using diet to optimize mitochondrial dysfunction, which is actually the topic of today’s show. We are so happy to have you, Dr. Mercola and Dr. Pompa, of course. We’re going to talk about mitochondria today. Let’s jump in and get started.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I love this topic and Joe, we got on this topic, and you could barely pull us out during the last several shows where this mitochondria thing keeps coming up, and I even interviewed Bruce Lipton.
Dr. Mercola:
Oh, that’s great. I haven’t talked to Bruce in a long time.
Dr. Pompa:
We had a great conversation, and of course, the mitochondria comes up in every conversation that we do, even when Thomas Seyfried, who we both know. In that show, we were talking about damage to the mitochondria and how it’s leading to not just cancer in his opinion, but many other diseases – all the unexplainable ones – fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, people that can’t sleep, people that can’t lose weight – you name it, I believe the mitochondria is at the heart of most conditions.
You believe the same thing, so I love some of this new information you’re talking about; what’s going on with certain fats in the mitochondria. You’re going to talk about that today, and you better talk about the Dexcom that you’re wearing right now that measures glucose all day. Joe, we had a very fascinating conversation about the mitochondria cell energy in relation to all these diseases, and I want to just pull you right into it and launch it. Why is the mitochondria under such attack today, and how is it leading to so many conditions?
Dr. Mercola:
It’s primarily because of our lifestyle where we’re exposed to so many items, primarily in our diet, that increases inflammatory responses and increases reactive oxygen species, which secondarily cause free radical damage and disseminate mitochondrial cell membranes and mitochondrial DNA, which is the whole issue. The primary way is your diet.
Most everyone is consuming food, not your viewers because they are educated and understand this, but many elite athletes do. That’s the hidden trick, especially endurance athletes; they are understanding that up-regulating the enzymes burn fat as fuel is really the key to success in their endeavors athletically. That’s the key – really burn a fuel that’s clean and not going to generate these excessive reactive oxygen species, which is going to damage your mitochondria. You are right. Mitochondria is at the core, I believe, of most everything.
Interestingly, there’s probably a small segment of your readers who don’t understand or believe this. I would recommend – I don’t know if you’ve done this already, because we’ve talked about it, but let me know – watching a movie called The Faults in Our Stars. If you haven’t watched this movie, you’ve got to watch this movie.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to watch it. It’s on my list.
Dr. Mercola:
The only caution is that you have to watch it with a box of Kleenex. It was this movie and Travis Christofferson’s book, Tripping over the Truth, the Metabolic Theory of Cancer, which I think is far better for the average reader than Thomas Avery’s books. Thomas Avery’s books are almost for researchers, you know? It’s good, but it’s really too deep.
Having read his book and watching The Fault in Our Stars, which was the most emotionally impacting movie I’ve ever seen in my life – it is literally my favorite movie of all time – was what catalyzed my reawakening and passion in this area and knowing that I had colonels of the truth for a long time, thanks to Ron Rosedale, who is my personal mentor – he’s a physician, and many of your readers know who he is – but I hadn’t really fully embraced it, and I just had the epiphany; the lights went off and I just have been nothing but unbelievably passionate about this topic ever since, because I know it’s the core, the key, that’s going to rescue the vast majority of people from devastating health outcomes.
Dr. Pompa:
I have something called my 5R’s of cellular healing and how to fix the cell. It became a roadmap for what I’m teaching doctors. If you don’t fix the cell, you’re not going to get people well. R3 is restoring cellular energy, so my passion into the mitochondria – many of our viewers are doctors and most are just the general person looking to regain their health or get better health. They perhaps don’t’ understand what the mitochondria does, so as a reminder, this is where we produce every bit of energy, cellular energy, either in the form of glucose, sugar, or fat. Most people today in all of the conversations really are broken, Dr. Joe, as far as their mitochondria’s ability to use fat. Even when we’re putting people in ketotic states, which should force the cell to only burn fat, they still have difficulty.
What is the process? What’s going on? You’ve found a lot of things dietary that could be interfering with this. Share some of your findings with us in this area.
Dr. Mercola:
There are many environmental exposures and lifestyle choices that will cause mitochondrial damage, but the primary one, at least I believe, and I could be incorrect because I have only been delving into this for the last six months, but I’ve read a lot of studies on this, so I’ve developed a fair level of expertise. It’s my impression that the primary issue is the food that people are choosing to eat, which causes these inflammatory conditions, but when you have those food choices in conjunction with exposure to toxins in the environment, lack of sleep, improper exercise, EMF exposures, food allergies – there’s a whole variety of other variables that synergize to make that food choice much worse.
If you can get the food choice right, it’s going to make all the other problems better because it’s going to be easier to treat, because you’ve got the fuel that you’re burning efficiently and you’re not generating these excessive reactive oxygen species. It’s all about making sure that you minimize those net carbs, which is the total carbs minus the fiber and have the highest percentage of high-quality fat you can. Typically, 80-85% fat and then really minimizing your net carbs, under 30-40 grams, and your protein to 1 gram per kilogram of lean body mass, which for guys like you and me is under 70 grams, and maybe if you’re smaller, 60 grams; and if you’re a woman, it might be 40 grams or 30 grams. That’s not a lot of protein; it really isn’t, but it’s more than your body needs – it really is.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt – those are my protein recommendations as well. For people that don’t know kilograms, you’re safe at about half your body weight.
Dr. Mercola:
You’ve got to convert to lean body mass, and a lot of your readers are lean. We’re probably 10% fat, or less, but if you’re 20% fat, then it’s a different number.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely yeah; obviously for someone who is 300 pounds and obese would not want to eat half their body – yeah, that’s for a lean person for sure. The increase in protein, we know can damage that mitochondrial membrane. I think that’s a big misnomer that people have.
Dr. Mercola:
Remind me to send – my mentor, as I mentioned earlier, is Ron Rosedale, and he recently presented at the Low-Carb Conference in Veil, I think in February, and his video of that presentation, which is spectacular and probably the best video presentation ever seen or given, is a magnificent understanding of this where he really expounds on mTOR, because hardly anyone understands mTOR, and the reason we’re making these protein recommendations is because of its effect on mTOR, and mTOR is probably even more important than insulin and leptin, which hardly anyone understands. It is the most profoundly, important signaling pathway when it comes to health.
Dr. Pompa:
I have two major questions. First of all, what is the life in Joe’s life look like, meaning that – I know – I’ve been on the phone with you, and you’re walking the beach and you’re doing steps every day, so I know you’re exercising. You can tell them, but diet wise, what’s it look like, Joe? You gave those recommendations, very similar to what Meredith and I do exactly, but tell us what it looks like.
Dr. Mercola:
I moved to Florida, but I’m a Chicago native, and that is not a healthy place to live in no way, shape, or form. When you live there, you don’t realize it, so fortunately I met a woman in my life who really was magnificent and we had been going out together for seven years, and she convinced me to move down to Florida, although I convinced her to move to Illinois, which was a mistake. She wisely moved back and I then I followed her and have been down here for four years.
I live really close to the beach, literally two to three minutes away, and I ride my bike every day there – most every day – 95% of the time, and walk for an hour to two hours a day. In that time, I’m able to read and have phone calls, so I multitask, because not many people would have the luxury of taking two hours a day and just walking, at least not a busy professional. I’m able to justify it from that perspective. It’s just been the most magnificent transformation, just doing that activity.
With respect to your other question about the diet – I’m writing a book on this – I’m not sure what the title of the book will be, but I hope to sell at least 10 million copies and maybe 100 million at some point. I really believe that the information we’re talking about today is going to literally transform the entire healthcare system, because once people understand this and apply it – the devil is in the details – correctly, their whole life is going to change. It’s going to be transformational.
What I think an important part of that process that I’ll describe in the book and briefly mention here is intermittent fasting. We are going to re-call it “Peak Fasting,” because there’s a lot of different ways you can intermittent fast – five days on, two days off, every other day, water fast, and a whole variety of things – but our fast – this is one of the reasons I’ve got the Dexcom, which is a 24-hour, continuous glucose monitoring system where you inset a sensor underneath your skin for a week and change the sensor every week. That’s why I got it. I’m going to convince you to get one too, because it’s just magnificent. You can get so much data information.
Dr. Pompa:
Our fingers are sore from all the pricking.
Dr. Mercola:
I’ll cut down your finger pricks dramatically. I’m only having to prick my fingers two to four times a day. A lot of times you have to do double sticks because you have to. When you have the Dexcom sensor, it will measure 24/7, but you have to calibrate it twice a day, so you’re still doing at least two sticks a day, and sometimes that calibration stick is off – it’s so far away from what your sensor is showing that you have to do it again, and you say, “Oh yeah, it was wrong.” You know those glucose sticks give you false readings sometimes.
Dr. Pompa:
What Dr. Joe is saying is he has a device that is implanted that measures his glucose at least 120 times a day, correct?
Dr. Mercola:
Well, that’s the most that it could. When you change your sensor, it goes off line for two hours and then if you’re receiving device – this is my receiving device – you can press this number here and it will show you what your glucose, and in my case – I don’t know if that shows on the screen – oops, that’s upside down, so that’s why it won’t show.
Dr. Pompa:
There it is; it’s 87.
Dr. Mercola:
That’s a little high. I’m not sure exactly why, but typically it’s in the low 80s, and at night, I’ve seen it go as low as 40 at night, which is usually 2 o’clock in the morning. Who’s going to get up at 2 o’clock in the morning to measure their glucose? You shouldn’t do that. You should be shot, but you know exactly where it is. I’ve noticed that my lowest point is typically about 1 to 2 o’clock in the morning then it gradually rises as you get close to waking up because your cortisol is rising.
Dr. Pompa:
That is really cool.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s just so great to tap into your biology at this level.
Dr. Pompa:
It is; it is, right? It’s fun. One of the things I love to do – you get that morning glucose and ketones and I get so much information about my clientele, because as they’re intermittent fasting through the day without eating, we should see the glucose drop and the ketones rise. You’re able to see everything you do.
A lot of people get very confused. They see their glucose rising after exercise, but that’s normal. You are able to see –
Dr. Mercola:
A little bit, but it shouldn’t rise that much. In my experience, it’s maybe 10 at the most, 10 milligram’s. Then it comes right down. The intermittent fasting I was referring to, we renamed it peak fasting because we have redefined intermittent fasting. It’s fasting for at least 12 hours, ideally 3 hours before you go to bed, because the last thing you want to do is eat a lot of fuel and put it onboard your body when you don’t need it, because you’re going to generate excessive reactive species. You do not want to fuel your body when you don’t need it. The time you need it least is when you’re sleeping. That’s when you’re metabolically most inert or least active.
You wait at least 12 or 13 hours and then extend it to about 18 hours, but how do you know if you’re going to stop your fast at 13 hours, 14, 15, 16, or 17 hours? How do you know? When do you start eating is the question, right? I think I figured it out, and I figured this out myself, and maybe other people did too, but I certainly hadn’t read it or no one told me, so I spontaneously identified this process, and basically, it’s serially measuring your glucose. You’re glucose tends to rise about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning and comes up a little bit, maybe 10 or 15 points, but then it will stabilize. In my case, it typically stabilizes in the high 70's or low 80's. Then, all of a sudden, within about half an hour, it will start to rise dramatically. It’ll go up 10 or 15 points.
Dr. Pompa:
After you’re awake, you’re saying?
Dr. Mercola:
Oh, yeah, and typically it’s about 14 to 15 hours after is my personal frame right now. Now that I’ve got my meter, I just check it. I look and see, “Okay, as soon as it starts going up, I’m checking – there it is – okay, it’s time to eat.” Interestingly, when you start to eat – you would think when you’re eating food that your blood sugar should rise, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right.
Dr. Mercola:
No, it goes down. It literally goes down, because what happens is, is your stopping the catabolic process, I believe. I’ve got to talk to Steven Finney, who I think is –
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we know him.
Dr. Mercola:
Give me his contact information, please, because he seems to be the brightest guy – he’s certainly been doing this for decades – the guy is really bright. I know he works with Vogle, but I think he understands the biochemistry and the physiology a little better. I’ve talked to Jeff before, but I need to talk to Steven. This whole issue of gluconeogenesis, and when you have gluconeogenesis versus – you can get the sub-straight either from glycerol, which is a breakdown product of triglycerides or you can get it from protein and amino acids. I think, my guess, is that it’s coming from amino acids, which would be deleterious and counterproductive to fast that long. I don’t believe in these long-term fasts.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me ask you this question. If you get in to 14 or 15 – it’s going to be a little bit different for everybody, because I can even tell, but how do we figure that out? That’s the thing.
Dr. Mercola:
You can stick yourself every 10 minutes if you want, which is a little cumbersome, and actually for those – I think a high percentage of your viewers are doing this – I found – I made the assumption that the Accu-Screen, One Precision, One Step – what is it? The one that people – Accu-Chek – is that it?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Accu-Chek is the one.
Dr. Mercola:
Precision – it’s Precision that checks the ketones, so that’s the one I have, because everyone is suggesting it, but then I went on Amazon and got these great reviews and found – hey, you can get the Bayer Contour – not the Contour Next, although it’s the same price – but the Bayer Contour, which I found to be a bit more accurate, for $7.00. That’s what the meter costs. The strips are $0.25, so that’s about half the price of the other version, so you feel a little less financially restricted to measure your glucose a little more when it only costs $0.25.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s glucose – does it do ketones?
Dr. Mercola:
No, it doesn’t do ketones, but you can do the Ketonix, right? The Ketonix, which is a great device – I started using this and then I stopped. I didn’t realize you can quantitate the color level, so it’s pretty darn accurate. Once you calibrate, there’s very little benefit of sticking yourself for ketones, and this thing costs $125.00, but after you pay that, that’s it. You’ve can test your ketones the rest of your life for no charge, and it’s so easy. Here’s the other thing I did to quantify it, because it measures the acetone in your breath, which is one of the ketones, but if you blow longer, you’ll give it more acetone, so you have to calibrate it. I’ve found for myself that 20 seconds of a slow, easy outbreath is what is required. I have this timer, and I always stop at 20 seconds, so it’s consistent. I’m not doing 15 seconds one time and 25 seconds the next, which is going to mess the results up.
Dr. Pompa:
I go to exhaustion every time.
Dr. Mercola:
No, I think you’re going to be a falsely high reading. That’s not what they recommend. I need to probably talk to the guy who invented it, but they say just do it comfortably. You can play with it. Just measure it. Measure 20 seconds; measure 30 seconds, but I think going to exhaustion – it probably gives you consistent, but I think you’re going to get a falsely elevated level; that would be my guess.
Dr. Pompa:
You’d have more acetone.
Dr. Mercola:
More acetone, right.
Dr. Pompa:
Yours is around 14 or 15 hours, so you started to start eating again. Now, here’s one of the things: People become more efficient, Joe, so in other words, after a period of time, oftentimes people can’t go a little bit, so we look at their glucose, because I was doing the same thing. If I start seeing things change where their ketones are dropping and the glucose is rising, that’s typically the time to eat; however, as they get more efficient, what they weren’t able to do now they are able to do. Now they are able to go 18 hours and everything is good. Do you see that change in you – that you’re getting – ?
Dr. Mercola:
I haven’t seen it, but that is an issue. Ron Rosedale is really concerned. Dominic D’Agostino is probably the leading researcher in this area. I have enormous respect for him, but his focus is largely on ketones as result of the way he has transitioned to this field. The ketones are important. They definitely provide some magic, but it’s not the ketones themselves, it’s your body’s ability to up-regulate the fat-burning enzymes that create the ketones that’s really the pure magic. Ideally, you can take exogenous ketones, but you want to make the ketones yourself.
Dr. Pompa:
I actually asked Dominic that.
Dr. Mercola:
I want a dialogue with him too, because I’m not sure – I think – I just want to download his brain, because he’s got so much information. The guy is a literal encyclopedia in this area. I don’t know anyone who has a more broad-based, comprehensive biological and biochemical understanding of what’s going on in mitochondrial health. He’s it from my perspective.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, one of the things I was concerned about was taking exogenous ketones. We can literally take the orally as opposed to breaking your own fat down and making them. My concern was to him was if we’re taking them, are we going to shut down fat metabolism – our body’s ability to burn fat and make its own. He did say, Meredith, yes, to a point that could happen by taking too many exogenous ketones. He wasn’t sure at what point it would shut it down though.
Dr. Mercola:
You can make it through coconut oil; that will help somewhat, but then you can do MCT oil, which is a lot simpler, easier, and less expensive than using the ketone esters or the ketone mineral salts. MCT has two versions. One is a regular MCT and the other is the MCT that is primarily Caprylic acid or C8. Regular MCT is a mixture of C8 and C10, and the short of change the fast the more rapidly they’ll convert to ketones. It’s interesting, not only MCT but even coconut oil, because medium change triglycerides, the shorter chains of the fats don’t require L-carnitine as a transfer molecule to get those fats to be burned in the mitochondria.
Dr. Pompa:
One of your findings – you were finding because you experiment so much of this stuff, but taking these short-chain fatty acids such as coconut oil or MCT oil with certain omega-6 fats, or polyunsaturates, was an issue. Talk about that, because that would damage the mitochondrial membrane.
Dr. Mercola:
Ron Rosedale came up with this, and this is just a simple understanding of basic physiology, in that when you are burning fuel, your body is going to preferentially burn the shorter chains first when you eat fat, so if you’re taking MCT and a long-chain polyunsaturate like seeds, flax seed, or even fish oil, you’re going to burn those fats first and then you will tend to integrate those other fats into your cell membranes because you’re not burning them for fuel; they’re hanging around longer in the body and the cells are going to integrate them.
Typically omega-6 – if you read the new science on this, there’s a lot of concern about taking – there’s been a lot of concern about excessive omega-6 for a long time because of the refined vegetables, but even healthy omega-6 from organic fresh seeds and nuts and taken that way; if you have too much of that, it has this omega-3 called – I said omega-6, but there are omega-3s in there too, which is ALA – but no, actually it’s the alpha – there’s alpha-linolenic acid in it and alpha-linoleic acid – but both of them could be problematic. They get integrated and when you have too much in the mitochondrial cell membranes, it makes it more oxidized and more susceptible to damage. That causes lots of problems, so if you take the omega-6 by themselves without these short-chain fats, then your body is more likely to burn them as fuel than to integrate them into the mitochondrial cell membranes.
Dr. Pompa:
Basically what you’re saying is if you’re eating a bunch of nuts and seeds with coconut oil, that’s a bad idea.
Dr. Mercola:
Well, not necessarily; if could be a bad idea. You have to look at the whole picture. Nuts are less problematic than – the nuts I recommend are macadamias and pecans because they don’t have a lot of omega-6; they are higher in monounsaturate – typically oleic acid. I think oleic acid is a shorter chain, so that will tend to burn before the omega-6. I think it’s a C-12, but I could be wrong on that. It might be C-12.
You have to be careful, but as an artifact of that, maybe now is the appropriate time to go on what I’ve just discovered literally two days ago. This is fresh off the mind because it’s not even written down yet.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great man. First here on Cell TV.
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, it’s great stuff. We all know that you’re going to really sabotage your ability to burn fat and keep low glucose, which is an indirect reflection of low insulin, low IGF-1, and low lepton. The reason I love the Dexcom is because it gives you the blood sugar level. Ideally it would be nice to have blood insulin, but that technology does not exist.
What I noticed – my carbs, my net carb intake is typically under 50 and many times it’s under 30 grams a day. That’s not a lot of carbs. The last time I measured my insulin level it was 0.2, so I have incredible insulin sensitivity. What I notice when I take a piece of fruit – you should be able to have some healthy fruit. I think Dominic agrees, and everything I’ve seen and read on this, believes that some fruit in moderation is reasonable, so I said, “Okay, let’s have some fruit,” I take a fruit, which I did about half a dozen times, either before or after exercise, my blood sugar jumps from 80 to over 100 and stays there for 6 hours. I was just so frustrated. I just did a test. I took 35 grams of mulberries – I’ve got a magnificent place where I live and I have a regenerative agriculture experiment; I put in 500,000 pounds of woodchips and am creating magnificent soil with just literally tons of earthworms and creating an environment where I have 60 fruit trees that generate thousands of pounds of fruit a year. I’d like to access some of them, because they really taste good and it’s all organic.
I had some mulberries; it’s the first fruit coming out this season, and I had 30 grams, an ounce of mulberries, which is like blueberries; it’s relatively low in net carbs. I have them and I usually go for that walk I mentioned – 1 or 2 hours – I think this was Sunday when I went for a 2-hour walk – maybe it was 2-½ hours – and I started half an hour after the walk, so my metabolism was revved up. I took it and rather than my blood sugar rising 20-25 points and staying there for 6 hours, it rose 10 or maybe 7, stayed there for an hour, and then dropped below when I had the fruit. It was unbelievable.
I said, “I’ve got to test this again,” so this morning I did 70 grams of mulberries, and it went down even lower. It didn’t budge it. It didn’t budge it.
Dr. Pompa:
Why don’t you test it with different types of exercise? Higher intensity, because clearly it’s gluconeogenesis.
Dr. Mercola:
I don’t think so, but I’ve tested it when I work out at the gym. I do my strength training and things. I tested fruit before or after and every time it ruins my blood sugar. It just ruins it. It decimates it. I don’t know how or why. I talked to Ron Rosedale about it, and he’s convinced it’s true. From his understand of physiology, if you want to eat fruit – I just told my father this this morning. I called him. He’s 89 years old and a type 1 diabetic, but he’s really well controlled. He keeps his blood sugars around 80. To eat the fruit during exercise, that is the time to eat your fruit – not before and not after, but during and preferentially towards the beginning of the exercise – ¼ of the way through.
Dr. Pompa:
You might be answering one of my big questions that I have. With all these studies that show that exercise fasting is key; it raises glucose. The question that nobody can answer and that I get all types of conflicting information from studies is, when do you eat? When do you eat? During or after, and like you, I measure my glucose trying to figure that out. Afterwards, I ate right away; measured my glucose, and got a response. Not one time have I tried to eat during, and of course, something like fruit wouldn’t be the only thing you could eat.
Dr. Mercola:
Fruit is a really high glycemic load. That’s the issue. I think normally when you and I eat, we’re eating 85% fat or 80% fat. That’s great because your body is revved up and knows how to use those and burn those as fuel. In my experience, it doesn’t really matter when you’re eating that much fat. You can eat before, after, or during; it doesn’t really raise my blood sugar much. We’re talking only a few points.
My average blood sugar throughout the entire day is 78. That’s what it averages. I want to see what yours is.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why you want me to get a Dexcom.
Dr. Mercola:
Do you know Ben Greenfield? I’m sure you know, Ben, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we’ve interviewed Ben.
Dr. Mercola:
I’ve convinced him. He’s picking one up next week, so you guys are going to be in a race. I convinced him to do it too. He’s a really good, lead athlete, so it generates some interesting data. I think he’s going to find the same thing. I want him to try the fruit thing and you can try it and then we’ll see. We’ll have a trial of three people, because I’m right now with an N of 1; we need an N of 3 with people who are clearly fed adapted. I don’t know, but I suspect that this would work in people who aren’t fed adapted, because it’s the same physiology, but it may not work as well or it may not work at all. We don’t know. There are not many people using this Dexcom who aren’t type 1 diabetic. There are very few of us who are pushing the envelope, but I heard Tim Ferris is and maybe Peter Atia is too. I don’t know that for sure.
Dr. Pompa:
For folks watching, the Dexcom is used for diabetics.
Dr. Mercola:
Type 1 – it’s not cheap. The cheapest you can get it is $3,000 for one year. A better version is about $4,500 because it has a less dangerous form of wireless communication between the sensor embedded in your body and the receiver.
Dr. Pompa:
You have to be willing to embed the sensor. That’s where Pompa backed off.
Dr. Mercola:
I can walk you through it. It doesn’t hurt.
Meredith:
Do have any concerns with EMF with the sensor?
Dr. Mercola:
Yes, that’s why I said the less expensive one is called the G4. The G4 uses radiofrequency to communicate and that’s the older generation; the new one is a G5 and it uses low-power Blue Tooth, which probably 95% less power and the concern about EMF is directly related to the power in there. It’s virtually a nonissue from my perspective, but it is a concern. I wouldn’t do this the rest of my life. There is a small window. When you have a very healthy lifestyle, you can take these minor hits and survive easily; in fact, it might be even something that improves your health because there is this process called hormesis, where you have small doses of the challenge that actually make you healthier, and exercise is a great example of that, as are many of the supplements we take.
Dr. Pompa:
I think the data is really helpful, because like you, I have all of my clients and doctors testing glucose testing glucose and ketones and to be able to look at what’s happening – because we know that – we know that people do get more efficient at the mitochondria and burning fat for energy and being able to see those numbers is how we know, how long and intermittent fast should be, how long we can push them; otherwise, you are right. We’re not getting the benefit that we’re looking at. I think the information you’re getting from that is going to be valuable for all of us, and even the exercise conundrum that I’ve had. When do you eat? We know that exercise while fasting is great, but when do you eat?
Dr. Mercola:
I’m not concerned about that. I think my view is I’m a friend of peak fasting, and that’s what we’re renaming it because it really refers to a very precise form of fasting that I just described. When you’re peak fasting, I think that’s going to provide all the benefit you need with respect to increasing mitochondrial autophagy or mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis. I don’t know that there are massive additional benefits to do that exercise when you’re in a fasting state or it may even be counterproductive if you exceeded the ideal threshold for the time of fast that you need to be engaged in.
Dr. Pompa:I’ve been reading the studies on the growth hormone spike and the testosterone spike that you get from that exercise fasting, so it’s an adaptation.
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, but those spikes may not be healthy. They may be good for a catabolic response in building muscles, but is that – there are two approaches. One is to improve the way your exercise and athletic performance and the other is to improve longevity. They tend to be mutually exclusive. They aren’t always the same.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. A lot of the body builders now are doing intermittent fasting.
Dr. Mercola:
They know it works.
Dr. Pompa:
They realize that the old days of eating five or six meals a day are gone.
Dr. Mercola:
That’s another interesting component. Let me share this with you too, because I do think you need to eat five or six meals a day. Let me tell you why. Dominic only eats two and I disagree with that. I can’t wait to engage him in dialogue with him about that. I think ideally – I’ve .shown it in myself – you want to have six small meals a day rather than two big ones. Why, especially if you have renal dysfunction? It’s too much of a protein load. You want to give your body a gradual sip of fuel throughout the day rather than just assault it with these large things. It’s definitely going to be more toxic to your kidneys. There’s no question about it. If you throw that much nitrogen at it – I don’t think you should have more than 10 or 12 grams of protein or maybe 15 grams of protein at one meal. Anything more than that – you are potentially damaging your kidney.
Dr. Pompa:
You are talking about once you start eating, because a lot of people develop ulcers. When I went to Africa, for example, they ate meat all day. They would go out and hunt and do different things. Now, once they start eating, then they eat. You’re saying eat those meals, once you start eating, eat many times during that time.
Dr. Mercola:
Right, still do the peak fasting for 13-18 hours where you’re not eating, but have those six meals spread out in that eating window. That doesn’t mean making more meals necessarily; make you meal but split it in half and have one now and have one later. I’ve misgauged the time of this. I was going to have my lunch – this is my lunch – you can see it’s got peppers in there, anchovies, and some bacon and eggs, and it’s really delicious. I was going to have that 30 minutes ago, but it’s no big deal. I’ll have it a little later when we finish the interview. I made it. I’ll have half now and half later. I make my breakfast smoothie, which I never really ask for what I eat, so I have the breakfast smoothie, which I’ll tell you in a moment, and I call it the fat bomb, which I got from Dominic. When I make one section and I have a half – I’ll have half of it and then an hour and a half later, I’ll have the other half. I just split it up, so it’s not any more difficult to make. It’s not a time consuming thing; you’re just consuming less food over a longer period of time.
Dr. Pompa:
The athletes find that they have to do that because if they’re eating in a five-hour window or whatever window you’re eating in, six or whatever it is, to get in what they need, they have to cut it even in that time. You can only eat so much at one meal.
Dr. Mercola:
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that, because when you have an 85% fat, you can eat a lot of calories real quickly.
Dr. Pompa:
I get full. That’s me. I try to eat and I wish I could eat more. That’s interesting, but I recently read a study – I’ll have to find it, because my concern was, when we look at some of these tribes, they tend to eat a lot at one time, so what about that? We used to always say, “Hey, you can only consume at least 25 grams.” Rosedale has said it for year. Per meal, don’t exceed maybe 15 grams of protein at a time.
Dr. Mercola:
I think 15 is a lot more reasonable than 25. Twenty-five is really a significant level of protein. I did not know this, and I have kidney challenges due to mercury extractions I had, or amalgam extractions. I have to be careful, but doing this, I’ve had the best kidney function tests I’ve had in 20 years. It’s basically a normal test at this point, which is phenomenal. I never thought I would see this.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s the fillings – that’s what got me. In the study it was interesting. They said because of the growth hormone rise, you are able to more safely take in more protein in one meal, and that’s what they were finding. That’s an interesting thing. Once again, though, the intermittent fast actually protects you because you get the higher growth hormone, and now you’re able to actually take in more protein in one meal. It’s interesting, but I think that no matter what, if you do the fast, whatever it is, you’re able to go – if you’re going 18 hours on a fast – eating the rest of that time, I think that’s very easy for people. I tell people, go ahead. Eat as much as you want during that time. That’s typically what they do.
Dr. Mercola:
The caution and revision of that would be to eat as much as you want. I was losing weight. I wasn’t that heavy. I started this whole process somewhere between 180 and 185, and I’ve promptly dropped 20 pounds. My waist size went from 34-35 to under 32, which is crazy.
Dr. Pompa:
I am there myself.
Dr. Mercola:
It was too much weight loss for me, so to maintain it, I had to actually get back to 170 or 180, which is where I’d like to be. I’m up to 4,500 calories a day now. That’s a lot of calories, but it’s easy to get down.
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t take in that much. The days I exercise, I do long bike rides. I definitely eat a lot more, so on those days I may only go –
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, but how do you know? We should talk about that. It’s chronometer.com, the single best nutrient tracker on the web. It’s free. To me, it’s almost impossible to do this type of program without some type of nutrient tracker to figure it out. I know to the tenth of a gram how much protein and net carbs I have every day.
Today I’m a little bit high. I’m at 49.8, because of those mulberry experiments; 48.8 net grams of carbs, and 70 grams of protein, which is a little high. I like to keep it under 60. The beautiful thing about that is that you enter the stuff before you eat it, so it gives you a little flexibility. If you say, “Oh, I’m a little bit high on protein at 80,” you can knock something out and you can take it back, more or less.
Dr. Pompa:
It is – chronometer is great. My clients love using it and it’s so easy to use. You can see the graphs and everything. It’s wonderful.
Dr. Mercola:
We’re working with Aaron, who is the guy who founded the site. He’s been developing a sub-program for us that’s even more specific for this type of thing.
Dr. Pompa:
I was just going to say that the only warning is that some of my clients – it’s almost for people who are trying to lower their calorie intake.
Dr. Mercola:
He’s actually offered a revision to the whole program now. You have to go into the sub-menus. I’m going to put that on my list of things to do today. I’m going to make some videos today on how to use chronometer. You can actually go in there and customize it for ketogenic, so you can get 1 gram per carb of kilogram or 0.8 if you have cancer or 0.6. You can actually get net carbs and give yourself a bonus if you’re exercising, so there’s a lot of flexibility now. He’s really improved it in the last three months.
Dr. Pompa:
One more thing on the ketones – what are you ketones running? I know you use the breath.
Dr. Mercola:
I don’t measure them that frequently, and here’s the position that Ron has, Ron Rosedale. He doesn’t think that the elevation of ketones is that efficient, because ideally – think about this – if you up-regulate your fat-burning systems, then ideally in a perfect world, you would burn those ketones as soon as you manufacture them, meaning that your ketone level in your blood would not have that high to rise. If it’s rising high, that means you have a relatively inefficient system to burn those ketones.
As you get more proficient at up-regulating these fat-burning systems, your ketone levels are not going to be that high. They are going to be lower actually, and that’s actually a good thing. That means you are really burning fat.
The only way to answer that is to go into the lab and do some real sophisticated metabolic experiments to find out what your EQ, which is the rate at which you are burning calories. I think perfect fat burning is 70.7 and burning carbs is 1.0. That’s subtle details. I think that’s the answer. My highest ketones, I think, were maybe in the 2s. I’ve never gotten in the 3s or 4s. I don’t take exogenous ketones. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. I think as long as you – you could radically lower – I haven’t played with lowering my net carbs to under 20 grams – usually it’s about the lowest I go is 30, so maybe it will go higher if I go to 10 grams. I don’t know.
Dr. Pompa:
It won’t, because I’ve done it. It really doesn’t, so when I first started this years ago putting myself into ketosis and ketotic states, my numbers were really high. I even saw numbers in the fives.
Dr. Mercola:
Then, they dropped.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, and then now –
Dr. Mercola:
That’s exactly what I told you.
Dr. Pompa:
Like you?
Dr. Mercola:
That’s what I said. You didn’t tell me that before. That’s the first time I heard it.
Dr. Pompa:
When I’m in ketosis, I’m always over point unless I have more.
Dr. Mercola:
I never drop out of 0.5.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m typically around 1, honestly.
Dr. Mercola:
Between 0.5 and 1.0 is typically where it fluctuates, but it’s unusual to go above that. I’m sure you’ve seen this too. Post-exercise it will tend to rise quite dramatically. That’s when you’ll see the highest levels – post exercise.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, of course, especially when you’re in a ketotic state or you’re fasting. I see it and I will see it rise as I intermittent fast towards the afternoon. I watch my glucose go down. My glucose will drop to oftentimes in the 50's and low 60's and my ketones are up, especially if I don’t eat for 20 or 24 hours.
Dr. Mercola:
That’s a long time. I want to see what happens to your glucose when you’re fasting for 24 hours.
Dr. Pompa:
My glucose, I’m not as accurate as with the Dexcom, but I’m sticking, and my glucose will continue to drop, but like you, there are times when I see my glucose starting to rise, but I can typically associate that because on those days I know it. I just kind of feel it, but it’s right. As soon as I feel that going on, I typically will eat sooner. There are some days I go sooner, and some days I go later.
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, I really think this Dexcom is the bomb for those of us who are obsessive/compulsive body hackers is to figure it out, because you really want the lowest glucose level possible.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Mercola:
You really do; ideally you do not want to ever see 100 or higher glucose reading. Ideally, it’s under 80 or 85.
Dr. Pompa:
I think one of the things we owe to Seyfried too is that he showed that it’s not just about the ketones. Your ketones and your brain and cells won’t even use the ketones if your glucose isn’t well. The idea is that as long as we keep the glucose doing down – if the glucose is up, your ketones could be up, but then you’re wasting them. They’re going out your urine and you’re not utilizing them. I presented that at the seminar I was doing.
Dr. Mercola:
Let’s not make the mistake that traditional medicine uses and use glucose as the only monitor. We’re only using it because we don’t have an easy way to measure insulin. That’s what they don’t understand. They want to lower the type two diabetic’s glucose level, and they give them all this crap, including insulin, when they’re just treating the symptoms.
When the glucose goes down without these exogenous agents, it means that your insulin level is good and your IGF levels are good. That’s what you really want to get low – the signals. Glucose is a marker for that, that’s all. It’s a good one, but it’s not as good as measuring the signals themselves, like insulin or IGF-1.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. Absolutely – that’s all we have. Like you said, it’s all we have. We can look at that and guess and typically understand a little bit of what insulin is doing. This stuff works. I think that we agree that –
Dr. Mercola:
It will change your life. When the culture adopts this, it will change the entire face of medicine. There’s no doubt in my mind.
Dr. Pompa:
You can’t burn fat at the cellular level. They can’t burn fat, and that’s the problem.
Dr. Mercola:
Wait, let me refine that. I think that’s an incorrect statement. They can burn fat; they just can’t burn it as their primary fuel. Almost everyone can burn fat, but they don’t burn much. They might burn 99% less than they can, but you want to primarily burn fat. You want to burn that as 90% of your fuel or 95% of your fuel as fat.
Dr. Pompa:
Fat burn cleans; glucose burns dirty because they are using glucose as their primary energy source, they’re driving inflammation in the mitochondria, which is leading to them not being able to think; they have brain fog; they have lack of energy; they don’t feel well, and God forbid, if they do skip a meal, they feel like crap and they are irritable. I would say if you want to know how healthy you are, skip a meal and see what how you feel, because ultimately it’s telling what your mitochondria is able to do or not able to do actually.
This is great. Listen, we are going to have to have you on again, because we –
Dr. Mercola:
After you get your Dexcom so we can compare notes, man.
Dr. Pompa:
You haven’t had enough time yet. We want this information. I’ve got to have it. This is really revealing. Real fast though, what are some of the things you’ve seen that has surprised you with it? You’re looking at your glucose all day. The berries were one of them, and the exercise was.
Dr. Mercola:
I initially got the Dexcom to confirm my theory of the optimal time for peak fasting, and I believe it’s true. I can measure my blood sugar every five minutes and I can see when I rises, so I know exactly when to eat. I ultimately have to figure it out, because I don’t want to wear this monitor or sensor the rest of my life. It is pretty beautiful. The biggest epiphany I’ve had, which I just shared with you and have learned in the past two days, was eating fruit during exercise. I don’t think anyone has objectively documented that observation to the best of my knowledge. It’s not been documented. I think I discovered it.
Dr. Pompa:
After didn’t work; it was only that during.
Dr. Mercola:
How many people are checking their blood sugar that frequently to find that out? It’s very inconvenient to do a finger prick that many times.
Dr. Pompa:
Try it something other than fruit. Try it with other forms of exercise too. I’m just curious. I just want to kind of get something –
Dr. Mercola:
I don’t know if I did discuss with you, but I picked up an EWOT machine, exercise with oxygen therapy. It’s interesting. You work out for 20 minutes at 80% of maximum heart rate, in my case it’s 118, which is basically reflected as your age, which is a real easy pace for someone who has been an athlete, and you’re breathing 100% oxygen or 99% or 98% because you have these oxygen contours; you’re breathing in a mask from a bag.
I do it on an elliptical, but you can do any activity as long as you’re heart rate gets to that level, and then for 4 minutes – you do that for 20 minutes, and then for 4 minutes you do high-altitude training where you virtually have very low concentrations. You de-saturate your blood and then for another 4 minutes you go to 100% oxygen. It can get levels of oxygen into your blood that is 10 to 20 times higher than the levels that you would see in a hyperbaric chamber exposure. I’ve just started that. I’m really intrigued with that. I think it’s going to be really useful. I’m very excited. It’s a very good form of oxidative therapy. It’s improving mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy too.
Dr. Pompa:
Are there any other foods that you ate and saw, “Whoa,”
Dr. Mercola:
No, like I was saying, 85% of my food is fat, so I don’t see any influence upon fat when I eat it during, before, or after exercising.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going to have to step outside your diet a little bit while you have that thing connected to you, because –
Dr. Mercola:
No, I’m not stepping outside. I want to be healthy. I love the way my brain works. I love not having an appetite. I love the way my body looks on this stuff.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s for information. I want to see it on other food.
Dr. Mercola:
I will experiment with higher doses of fruit. I might go into 90, 100, or 200 grams of not net carbs, but fruit, total fruit such as mangoes. I literally have 6 mango trees, because I live in Florida, and I’ve got 100's of mangoes that will be in full bloom in about 6 weeks. I’ll have a mango experiment.
Dr. Pompa:
I would entice you to eat some grain.
Dr. Mercola:
I don’t eat grain. No. You can’t force me into poisons and toxins. I am not going to do it.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m not going to force you. I’m teasing.
Dr. Mercola:
No way am I doing that! I feel too good without it. It’s crazy.
Dr. Pompa:
I want him to eat some GMO glyphosate laden corn.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s not going to happen. My first book that I ever wrote, which is also a New York Times best seller, was the No Grain Diet. I did not like the title, and for 10 years I hated the title, because I didn’t think it was right. Now, I’m so glad because now I think it’s right. I don’t anyone should be eating grains, from the perspective of metabolic biological optimization of your mitochondria. I’ve got enough of the science studied now that I think I could argue effectively with anyone who refutes that.
There is no way they can deny what we finding happening in the mitochondria. It’s all about having a clean fuel, because if you’re eating dirty fuel, glucose derived from any of the grains, you’re clearly going to get higher concentrations and you are going to be creating more reactive toxicities causing more damage. There is no question about it.
Dan, I know we’re getting close to time, but I forgot to mention one thing that everyone needs to know. This is going to be a chapter in my new book that I’m going to start promoting massively. Everyone watching this needs to know their iron level. Do you teach them about that, the serum ferritin?
Dr. Pompa:
I teach my doctors that, but fire away.
Dr. Mercola:
There’s no question. Why? Let’s go into the molecular biology of it. When you have high free iron in the mitochondrial inner membrane, you are going to catalyze the reaction of hydrogen peroxide to hydroxyl free radicals, which in hydroxyl free radicals will damage in a nanosecond mitochondrial DNA and mitochondrial membranes. That is the worst, most highly reactive biological reactive oxygen species.
Dr. Pompa:
How about this Joe? This will interest you. The site of detox that you have and that I have are hemochromatosis patients. It’s lowering.
Dr. Mercola:
I will be checking it, because I check my ferritin every month, so will object to the document there for you. It’s mitigated against the need of still doing regular donations. I know a lot of people can’t, but then you do a therapeutic phlebotomy. I think men need to donate at least two pints a year, collectively throughout the year or maybe two or three if you want to stay healthy. I’m going to refine that recommendation based on the side of detox. I don’t know. I’d love it. I’m currently in the evaluation process of it. I’ve only been using it for a month or so; somewhere in that range. I don’t know. I don’t notice anything with it, but I sure the heck hope. We all need what it does, at least in theory. I’m going to confirm objectively with labs and other chemistries that’s doing that personally.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s great. That’s what we want too. It will be interesting to see, because what we’ve found with the hemochromatosis patients was a shock actually. We had no idea, but you’re right. Those levels get higher with oxidation.
Dr. Mercola:
I have a minor type of hemochromatosis, which is beta thalassemia, which has a high red cell turnover that produces a similar syndrome as hemochromatosis, so it’s a big issue. It almost killed my dad. I inherited the thalassemia from my dad. It’s a big issue for me. It’s really big, so I was just delighted to know that the CytoDetox™ is going to facilitate that. I still think it’s going to help if you actually physically remove the iron with the blood, because you can get quite a few milligrams of iron out by doing that.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great. It’s good information. It affects the mitochondria oxidation levels.
Dr. Mercola:
How do you tell? The simple blood test is called serum ferritin and it should be the same level as your vitamin D, which is about 40 to 60 nanograms/milliliters; it may be a little higher for me and a little lower for women – 40 to 60 – somewhere in there.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, 40 to 60, about the same as your vitamin D.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s easy to remember. It’s the same units too. Most men have a ferritin of about 130 or 140. That’s literally twice as much as they should have. They really need to get aggressive. If I had a ferritin of 140, I would be donating 3 units of blood a year until I got it down to 60.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to pull some of my old blood, because when I was taking CytoDetox™ –
Dr. Mercola:
Could you send me that data? I would love to see it. I would love to see it. Send me the pre and post ferritin levels.
Dr. Pompa:
The data from the hemochromatosis coming in from my doctors, because –
Dr. Mercola:
You have hemochromatosis?
Dr. Pompa:
No, I don’t. I was saying, I’m going to have to look at my old blood and where my ferritin levels were, because my last one was in the normal range.
Dr. Mercola:
Wait, first of all, the normal ranges in the lab are wrong. They are absolutely wrong. It’s just like the old cholesterol. When I graduated med school in ’85, the normal range for cholesterol was anything under 300. Now you know what they are. I don’t necessarily disagree with them, but that just shows you how they change. The normal range for the ideal health range is 40 to 60 nanograms. They say anything below 200 is normal. That is such a bunch of horse crap, because they do not understand that pathology that occurs with elevated ferritin levels. They have no concept of it.
Dr. Pompa:
We use different ranges. We use the optimal mind that we spoke of, but I’m wondering if it affected it. I want to see where it was before I started this. I’ll let you know. I’m going to check it as soon as we get off the line here.
Dr. Mercola:
Yeah, send me the results. I’d love to see them.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to know. It’s great stuff Dr. Joe. We appreciate you. We appreciate what you do for natural health honestly, because we know that there is people – the bigger you get in natural health, the more that we have to watch our back.
Dr. Mercola:
When you get aggressive and you take strong, active actions like I do in fighting major issues like fluoride and GMO labeling and then calling out the drug companies when they’re killing people. I was the first investigative journalist to warn people publicly about Vioxx; literally a year before it reached the market and killed 60,000 people. I warned people about it. That was a $25 billion lawsuit from Merck, so they don’t like that I get on their tail. That’s just one example. There are literally dozens and dozens of others. I’ve cut out billions of dollars from their revenues and they are targeting me for sure.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I know that. We appreciate you. We appreciate the information you bring. You have changed healthcare. You have, Joe.
Dr. Mercola:
I’m telling you, it’s only a fraction of what’s going to happen in the future. I’ve never been more excited about mitochondrial therapy than anything else in my previous practice.
Dr. Pompa:
The public is aware. People bring you on and ask for you to talk about something like that. They want you to talk about some of the other things, right? This is something that we are very passionate on this show about. I’ve talked about the mitochondria and cell energy, and this is topic that we talk a lot about, so my viewers and listeners absolutely can handle this higher-end conversation, and the whole thing with the intermittent fasting and when to eat. This is great stuff, Joe, and like you said, I love it. Keep fasting, and I can’t wait to learn more. I think we’re going to learn more.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s amazing, because of my position in the health world, I’m able to connect with a lot of the experts very easily and communicate with them and dialogue and learn from all their years in the lab and clinical research, so it’s really exciting to bring it all together. Guys like Ben Greenfield; I really have enormous respect for what he’s doing. It’s good.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll be together in Dallas. We’ll have a mind think there as well.
Dr. Mercola:
Remind me about Dallas.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a September conference you and I are at.
Dr. Mercola:
No, that’s Orlando.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it is Orlando.
Dr. Mercola:
I’m going to be in Dallas in October, but I didn’t think we were going to be in that one. That’s the truth about cancer conference.
Dr. Pompa:
It is Orlando. I’m excited. We will get together on another one and we’re going to keep – Meredith make you stay on Dr. Joe and get him on – in another few months, we’re using the Dexcom and I think we’re going to get some more energy. There it is. Maybe by then I’ll have it. You’re going to have to help me though.
Dr. Mercola:
I sure hope so. I would be very disappointed. I’ve heard some nasty, dirty rumors about Dan Pompa being such a wimp that he can’t put the darn sensor into this belly.
Dr. Pompa:
I can’t even think about it.
Dr. Mercola:
It’s so easy. I’ll tell you the amount of pain is very similar to what you do for your finger pricks. There’s not much difference.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s not that. It’s just having it in there all the time.
Dr. Mercola:
Oh, jeez, you never even know it’s there. It’s a nonissue.
Dr. Pompa:
I love this, Meredith. He’s the only one who has the guts to come on the show and rise me like that!
Dr. Mercola:
Meredith, don’t the other guests do this?
Meredith:
You kind of stepped it up and challenged him a lot, and I like it.
Dr. Mercola:
Someone has got to do it.
Meredith:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
I have a lot of respect for you Joe. I’ll take it from you. We’ll talk again Joe. Thank you and we’ll have some offline conversations about this. You’re not off the hook! Thanks for being with us.
