Transcript of Episode 12: The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Warren Phillips, David Asarnow and special guest Faith Hill.
Warren: Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 12, broadcasting from beautiful Salt Lake City area up in Utah. We are with our team out here in Ogden training some amazing physicians on protocols and healing strategies and some amazing ways to reach people like you through avenues like Cellular Healing TV. We're so excited to be here. We're going to continue the conversation about intermittent fasting. Got a lot of questions last week. People want to know more! What more can intermittent fasting do for me? Those are some of the questions we got. What are some of the health benefits? We didn't get to get into the growth hormone factor and how to make sure that that happens. Dr. Pompa, we're excited about the call today, again, broadcasting live from Ogden, Utah. We have Faith with us today. She's been in one other episode that we've had. She's a nutrition expert and coach of coaches. She just wants to join the conversation with us this morning.
David: Here's the cool thing. We're sitting here next to each other. They're two rooms over doing the exact same thing. Obviously, you deal with what emerges, and we had to improvise?
Warren: Improvise.
David: Improvise, because we're out of town. Welcome, Dr. Pompa. Welcome, Faith.
Dr. Pompa: You're breaking up a little bit. I hope our picture's clear. You guys are jerky. You guys are jerks, is what I'm saying. You're in and out. How are we right now? I'm hoping that it records.
David: You're good.
Warren: We'll move slowly and speak slowly. The internet connection isn't here great, but the information will still be communicated just fine.
Dr. Pompa: Alright, so it may—we move like this, it'll come out normal. How's that?
David: Perfect.
Dr. Pompa: No, but this topic, I'm actually glad to have Faith here. She teaches a lot of this in our seminars, intermittent fasting. Faith, one of the things that we always do is we start out most of our programs with an intermittent fast.
Faith: It's so essential.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, so I want her to say what she has seen and why she thinks it's essential, and then I'm going to add to it. Why do we do that? Why do we start most of our programs—we see very, very sick and challenged people, obviously, around the country, at Health Centers of the Future. We have doctors doing this. One of the things that we do is always start—I can't say always, but almost always start with some type of intermittent fast.
Faith: Absolutely. I think it's essential for quite a few reasons. A lot of the patients, like you said, we get a lot of severe cases. A lot of our patients are on the road, or they're getting built up to something more along the lines of a detoxification. There's an article out there that you've written that not all detox is the same, and detox can be dangerous. One of the ways that we really do true cellular detox is that we prepare the body. We prepare all the systems. The liver, the gut, the cells, the hydration. Fasting does that. The intermittent fasting does that. Another really huge key to the intermittent fast is that it prepares them for a new lifestyle. A lot of times, people come on the standard American diet, wondering why they're not feeling well. We can sit here all day long and say stay off of this food or that food, and they're constantly going to be missing that food. If we start them on an intermittent fast, then the beauty of that is, they're just excited to start incorporating food.
Dr. Pompa: It's so funny to watch, right?
Faith: Then they're excited about it. It's such a great kickoff to their new lifestyle. I think that we're getting better retention and lasting results because of it.
Dr. Pompa: Oh yeah, when people come off the fast, they're like, “I can eat broccoli?” Really?
Faith: They're excited.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, they're excited about eating that. “I can eat a fermented vegetable?” Yeah, try that day one without intermittent fast. What happens in the body is amazing. You have growth hormone that goes up. If you want to get somebody into healing mode, raise their growth hormone. Most of America's growth hormone is lower than it should be. Therefore, they're not healing the same. That affects your immune system how your body metabolizes food and glucose. Everything that makes you feel good, think clear, growth hormone has a play in that. Try to fix a gut with too low a growth hormone. Try to fix anything. Joint pain. Growth hormone's low, bad healing. When growth hormone's up, things like insulin go down. Insulin, when it's up, stores fat. When insulin's up, you're degenerating faster than normal, you're aging faster than normal, and you're getting fatter than normal. Growth hormone opposes insulin, so when growth hormone's up, all these great things happen. You become more sensitive to all of your hormones. Now all of a sudden, your cells are hearing estrogen, testosterone. It's not about your testosterone level, as much as how your cells heal it. We've talked about that on some of the past episodes. If you want to get yourselves more hormone sensitive, which is the key to fixing hormone problems, the key to thinking clear, feeling better, more energy, intermittent fasting's the fastest way to get there. It's something that we teach on all the time. What is the basic thing that it does? It down regulates inflammation, inflammation of every cell. That's why you see it work for so many different conditions.
Faith: It's amazing, because what you just described, that may not be something that we see. We see the effects of it. We can potentially feel the effects of that, but we don't see that happening. A lot of tangible things that we do see happening, though, with the intermittent fasting, is cravings, right?
Dr. Pompa: Yeah.
Faith: Cravings start going away. Your taste buds literally can and will change. That's exciting, and that happens here in intermittent fasting.
Dr. Pompa: It does.
Faith: A lot of tangible results, as well as things that you can't see, but that are really having high impact to the body.
Dr. Pompa: Folks, if you're watching this and you think that her lighting is really bad —
Faith: I'm not sickly.
Dr. Pompa: — and why she's sitting next to a more colored person, my Italian heritage is—I just got back from Hawaii, so anyway.
-laughter- Dr. Pompa: The contrast that you're seeing.
Warren: David, obviously, he's more olive skinned, I'm definitely pink.
David: And I was just skiing. I got my ski tan.
Warren: David, we talked about that last week. You did some intermittent fasting, and then a lot of your friends, who are in their 40's, right?
David: Yeah.
Warren: Some in their 50's, or just late to mid 40's?
David: One 50, the others are in their mid 40's.
Warren: A lot of them are on Synthroid, and had L-challenge. We had that call today, and you shouldn't be on a medication that young. This is an epidemic. When we say that, what is it, 20 million Americans are diagnosed with a thyroid condition.
David: One of them's on, it's a pig, it was like a pig—you mentioned it's like a—
Warren: It's a more natural for, actually, it's pig thyroid. They were very intrigued with David. He had the most energy out of everybody. I remember driving, everyone else is passed out, I'm driving.
David: This is the funniest thing. We get up in the morning, we leave around 6:00. I'm on the phone with Warren, and I've got a carful of guys that are all sleeping, and I was driving back to Denver. The interesting thing was the questions. They're like, “Aren't you starving yourself?” I went throughout the day, and I literally took a bottle of water—I knew I needed something because of skiing, so I put chia seeds in the bottle of water, and I kept it with me during the day. I was fine up until dinner. We didn't eat dinner until 7, 8 o'clock at night. The big question that many people have is, “Are you starving yourself?”
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. My answer to that is no, because when I'm not eating, I'm not starving. My body's feasting on fat. You say, “My gosh, I don't see any fat on you?” Oh, believe me, I have at least 120,000 calories of stored fat, so there's plenty to feast on.” However, when the average American, their body can't hormonally burn fat for energy, they're starving. They're starving themselves. That's why they get massive cravings that they can't really deal with. They either have to eat sugar—oh, and if they fight off the craving, guess what they're eating? They're eating their muscle. Oh, that's a sign of starvation. When we're not eating, because fasting, obviously, your body is, when you're a fat burner, able to burn fat. That's key, man. Steady glucose levels. I've had so many patients where they come in with all kinds of—one of these people where they have to eat all the time.
Faith: Yep.
Dr. Pompa: “I've got to eat. I've got to eat.” They get symptoms. They get crabby, they get lightheaded, and they feel weak, and they have to eat. A lot of these people are skinny people. I don't want to just throw obese people under the bus here. This is skinny people, too. They have fatty livers. Their body's doing something with the extra glucose. They're storing it. What happens is these people have to eat that meal and they continue eating, and what's happening is is that they're literally getting a fatty liver. They're getting other metabolic disorders like heart disease, and they don't know it. Just because they're skinny doesn't mean they're healthy. They're developing more inflammation. Why? Their sugar level's up and it's down. On the down level, they're getting dizzy and crabby. Their brain needs oxygen. When it's up, guess what's happening? Glucose up means you're aging faster than you should, because glucose causes glycation. Glycation simply means the glucose is attacking proteins. Your skin has a protein called collagen and elastin. Ladies out there, you know about this, because you're probably putting a lot of things on there, trying to revitalize it. Guess what? You're never going to revitalize it unless you control your glucose level, because glucose destroys the collagen and elastin. David, that's why people saw you after intermittent fasting and a few of these things, and they said, “My gosh, what are you doing? You look so much younger.”
Faith: So true.
Dr. Pompa: It's your collagen/elastin isn't being attacked. That's the point.
Faith: Dr. Pompa, you used to say to me, “If you want to age quicker than anyone in your neighborhood, ladies, eat sugar.”
Dr. Pompa: Raise your glucose. Raise your glucose.
Faith: It's the truth, right?
Dr. Pompa: Don't say eat sugar because people go, “I don't eat sugar.”
Faith: Yeah, exactly. Raise your glucose
Dr. Pompa: Raise your glucose.
Faith: Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Pompa: Eat grains. Eat more and more carbohydrates in the form of grains, especially.
Faith: Still do it. I used to actually work with a lady. She prided herself on the fact that she only ate one meal a day, okay? Very similar to this intermittent fasting, what we're talking about. She was very obese, very obese. She was drinking her sodas, and her one meal a day might be the largest slab of cake you've ever had or ever seen. Her mentality was, “I only eat one meal a day.” It's amazing how we think. She was truly starving herself, right?
Dr. Pompa: She was all day, muscle.
Faith: She was literally eating her own muscle all day. That is not what we're talking about. Breaking your fast with healthy, nutritious foods that do not raise glucose. That has to be a huge point that we make.
Dr. Pompa: It doesn't work without it. Every article written about intermittent fasting says, “Look, you can't just intermittent fast and not control carbohydrates. You know what I'm saying? If you're intermittent fasting and your carbohydrates are up, what you just described happens. Your body eats your muscle, your metabolism slows down even more, and then what happens is you gain weight. You gain fat, for sure.
Warren: Here's the plain and simple, and I know, obviously, we know other people that intermittent fast. When I'm intermittent fasting, I have energy like you couldn't believe. Even after I eat, I may need a little bit of down time, but then I get a second wind. When I eat throughout the day, you get that afternoon lull. It's crazy.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. I think a lot of people out there watching this are saying, “Gosh, would it benefit me?” Last time, we talked about two different types of intermittent fasting. We talked about daily intermittent fasting, which is something we all practice. They're sitting here. There's something called block intermittent fasting, or at a least I nicknamed it that, meaning that we take a few days—what's Warren doing over there? What's going on over there? Anyways, we take a few days in a row. This is really what we start most patients on. We start them on where we take four days, maybe ten days, maybe fifteen days, and we bring down their caloric intake to a certain amount. Obviously, we're controlling what foods they're doing during that time. We talked a little bit about whey water fast. We talked a little bit about beef stock fast. Just as a way of blocked fasting, we're literally doing a fast for several days. Off of that, then, we going into the Cellular Healing Diet, or even then, daily intermittent fasting. Again, we're utilizing fasting around a certain diet. We're taking away things and sugars and those things that raise glucose. Starting with intermittent fast is really just a faster way to change our appetite, get our cells more more sensitive, get our hormones going the right direction, and then we enter the diet, smooth and easy.
Faith: It's true, it's true.
Dr. Pompa: It's amazing. You should see the patient. When patients come on the fast, it's like they come alive. Look, just the doctors that, when we take on a group of doctors and we're training these doctors, we make them do what we preach, right? We put them on an intermittent fast. We see them a couple months later, we don't recognize them. We don't recognize—David, am I right?
David: We do not recognize them. Their bodies start reshaping, transforming.
Faith: They change so much!
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, people's eyes change. Their eyes, you look and you're like, “God, they look younger.” Their skin, their hair, and their eyes. Obviously, they get thinner. That's what you notice. It's a visible change —you don't recognize the person when you see. That's the power of intermittent fasting. By the way, when people, after they intermittent fast, they start making a practice of it, they have to go get their glasses checked, because their prescriptions change. They think they're getting worse. Meanwhile, their prescription's getting better, and they're overprescribed. As a matter of fact, it can even cause headaches. That's what happens when you do this type of intermittent fasting.
Faith: Powerful.
Dr. Pompa: It's a powerful tool, it is. It's a powerful tool that everyone should be using. Look, we don't need to look any more into the research to know that the only really thing that works with anti-aging is eating less. How the heck do you eat less, because it doesn't work to say, “I'm going to push the food away.” You know what I'm saying? How long is that going last? A week, maybe, if you're really disciplined? Then you're going to start eating more food again. You eat less by becoming an efficient fat burner. Intermittent fasting is the best way to get there.
Warren: Folks who eat this diet, they're the ones that are the centenarians. They live the longest, the most longevity. They have the least inflammation. They don't have joint pain. They live long, healthy, happy lives. It's a tribal type diet, if you will.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. With that said though, with the tribal diet, I think there's a diet that's very in vogue right now, and it's the Paleo movement. There's a few problems with the Paleo Diet. Number one, it's a high protein diet. High protein is not good. The Cellular Healing Diet is a moderate protein diet. Number one, protein converts to sugar. Number two, protein revs up the metabolism inside the cell, and it revs up the DNA. It affects the DNA. It creates a lot of different toxins, if you will, that your body has to deal with. I just read an article two weeks ago. It said that eating high protein is equivalent to smoking cigarettes, as far as what it does to your cell. It is true.
Faith: Interesting.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, so it's not a good diet. They also, they don't believe in dairy. I don't believe in conventional dairy, either. However, when we look at every healthy culture on the planet, back when, thousands of years, they all ate dairy. They did. What's the dairy? It's what man has done to the dairy. It's not just the average dairy. There's some issues there.
Faith: I think you made a really good point, too. Fasting is such a powerful tool. About cravings and things like that, I think a lot of our cravings are lifestyle oriented. We do everything, socially, around food. It's a big thing with our country. We also create our cravings. We create our cravings for carbohydrates and for sugars. It's our way of life, because every condiment, everything, has sugar in it. We almost create that, as well. Yes, it is physiological. Yes, our bodies do create cravings that we can't shut down, but I think a lot of it is social, and addictions. You know what I'm saying? I think another really huge tool to the fast is, it tells your body to take a backseat. That your will is going to will this ship, and you're going to will to go through this, and to love your body and to love yourself and to change your physiological make-up. I think it's so spiritually powerful.
Dr. Pompa: I was just going to say that. You're talking biblical.
Faith: Fasting has been around forever, and it has been used in a lot of biblical terms and things like that. You can look at it no matter what you believe, biblically or not, it is a very spiritual tool, because we are spiritual beings. It is such an amazing tool to say, “You know what, I'm going to will this ship to go in this direction.” I think intermittent fasting is just another way to get to do that.
Dr. Pompa: She's the queen of getting people to change this lifestyle and live this lifestyle. It's a lifestyle, and here's how to do it. Give them that research.
Faith: I did. So many people were like, “I can't do it, I don't cook, I don't have enough time, it doesn't fit my lifestyle,” and I'm going, “What!?” If the food you eat today creates your hormones tomorrow, then look at the power you are giving the chef at every restaurant you go to. You're basically saying to him, “You're creating my mood tomorrow.” You don't know his first or last name. That blows my mind. We do it one, two, even three meals a day. I'm saying not only is this an essential tool, it's easy. You don't have to make it that difficult. When you notice what everybody orders at a restaurant, they're nuts, super crazy meals. They're not the most decadent sauces and things like that. Most people will get a protein and a couple veggies. It's not rocket science.
Dr. Pompa: Most people eat the same eight foods a day.
Faith: It's so true.
Dr. Pompa: When you put them on this diet, the first thing they say is, “What am I going to eat?”
Faith: “What am I going to eat?”
Dr. Pompa: Meanwhile, they have a bagel every stinking morning. “What am I going to eat for breakfast?”
Faith: They're creatures of habit.
Dr. Pompa: “There's nothing to eat.” What are you talking about? You eat a bagel every morning. I'm taking a bagel away. That's it, or your bowl of cereal.
Faith: It's so true. It's so true! We basically took the system of how to get menu planning integrated with a good budget, and we basically say it's plug and play with any diet, but of course, I say, “Use it with the Cellular Healing Diet for best results.”
Dr. Pompa: She hit on something that I feel a need, because I just got excited about it, but you talked about the hormones in your food makes your hormones. We've always talked about—okay, we just knocked the Paleo Diet. We said high protein's bad, so what is this diet? It's a high fat diet, moderate protein diet and moderate carbs. Sometimes we go low carb. The point is this, is that eating high fat and getting people to start eating fat is the majority of the caloric intake in their daily diet. Watch what happens to people's hormones. Look, I have a patient, and I love telling her story, because she came from the philosophy of, “Fat makes you fat, and fat's going to mess me up.” When she originally cut fat out of her diet, her calories dropped a little bit, and she lost some weight. That's the extent. Then her hormones started dysregulating, because what do you make hormones from? Fat.
Faith: All your fat.
Dr. Pompa: Absolutely. Particularly cholesterol. We need these fats, so as soon as we start raising up the fats in people's diet, their hormones start to change. Magically, all these things start to change; they feel better. Remember, how you feel is really dictated by your hormones. High fat is the key. It's not high protein, it's not high carbs. It's high fat. That's the magic. How much protein, honestly, and how much carbohydrates? One person can do more than another. That's genetics. Fat is our main fuel, man. It's a diesel. It's the super fuel, instead of the cheap gasoline, the '87 octane. We're talking about '96 octane, more than that. What's Jeff—I'm going to find that out. What's the super car fuel they put in the engine, right, the racecars? That's what fat is.
Faith: Dr. Pompa, you taught me every cell in our body, and we're made of trillions of them, have two walls of fat. Of course it's an essential nutrient. I came to you completely mainstream, didn't know a thing, and literally was of this whole—
Dr. Pompa: Hairdresser.
Faith: I was, and that fat made you fat. “Don't take fish oil, it might even make you fat.” What a lie that we've been duped, as a nation, into believing. It just changed my life. Now, in my hotel room, I've got coconut oil, melted, that I'm literally drinking out of the jar. It's the most amazing thing.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, fat people have been running from butter and these saturated fats. Meanwhile, now we know that these are the fats that we need the most to stabilize our cell, stabilize our hormones, to think more clearly, and to digest better. And to have more energy. When you eat coconut oil, it transitions right into some instant fuel for your cells. Instantly, it makes something called ketones, which is like super fuel for your brain. Immediately, you get an Alzheimer's patient and you have them do the clock test, where they draw out a clock. These patients, you can't believe that they can't draw it. You give them a few tablespoons of coconut oil, and watch what happens, even an hour later. They draw the clock 50% better. Fat is the key for the brain. Fat's the key for the hormones. Fat's the key for sustained energy. Fat's the key. We got off on it, but here's the point. Intermittent fasting, when you come out of an intermittent fast, you're going to be able to increase your fat intake. It's not rocket science. You're going to live longer. You're going to feel better.
Warren: I just answered some—and then we've got to wrap up, running out of time. I just answered some, I did a bone broth fast video. I did two of them. one's with my daughter. I think the first one, you can hear my daughter crying, and then she was bigger, and she ran up into my arms or something. I get all kinds of comments on that video. I was answering it. “Maybe this is a question you can answer,” and I said yes. It ties into the two things you said. The bone broth fast has a lot of fats. Type 2 collagen, so it's a great fast. You're fasting and you're getting tons of fats. It starves down bad bacteria in your gut, all bad bacteria. I think we might have talked about it last week. When you bone broth fast, you're not feeding anything. You're starving off all the bad bacteria and then SueroGold, you introduce SueroGold, Amasai, and fermented foods after that. He was asking me and I answered it. I told him, “Don't tell anyone that you're doing it,” and I would say the same thing, “but can you do a bone broth fast on your kids, to help with health challenges, gut challenges, brain problems. Would that be something—are you able to do something like that, if the kid would allow you to do it?”
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, absolutely. Every one of us are set up to fast. Humans are instinctively made to fast. We're made to go with food and no food. Our body goes into these modes of healing during those times that we're not breaking down food. Like you said, Warren, there's a lot of benefits to bone broth. Number one, it does starve down all your bacteria, and then reinoculating afterwards, putting this good bacteria back in, it's magic. It fixes the gut. Again, it fixes a lot of other things.
Warren: Some of those bad bacteria, just so people can relate, is like the candida, or an overgrowth of certain type of other bacteria in your gut that's causing inflammation. There's both good and bad candida. There's a good, healthy amount of candida, but what the bone broth fast does it help kill everybody off and rebalance it.
David: It kills that down to everything, and then you get reinoculate, with the good stuff.
Dr. Pompa: Here.
Faith: Yeah, Warren. My two-and-a-half year old niece has candida issues like crazy. She had a lot of flare-ups. We did the bone broth fast and the SIBO diet on her. She let us do it.
Warren: Oh, wow.
Faith: She called it her special drink. She was an amazing trooper. Bone broth only, for two full days. Then we were able to do more just fats and meats the next two days. That was all she needed. She has not has a flare-up since. It's been phenomenal.
David: That's crazy. Special drink, man, that's the way it is.
Warren: Well, guys…
Dr. Pompa: And we're telling people eat all these higher fats. “Well, I can't digest fat when I eat it.” First of all, there's ways to do it. There are digestive enzymes, because a lot of people can't digest a lot of fat at once, because their liver/gallbladder is so sludged up. They have fatty liver and they have a toxic gallbladder dumping toxic bile. Those people are going to need some enzymes when they eat more fat. Also, eating certain fats. Medium chain triglycerides, is a shorter chain fat that your body can break down much easier, for these people who have challenges. You don't need bile to break down medium chain triglycerides. Obviously, there's some nuances. Hopefully, those watching, we have doctors trained in this around the country. That's why we do it. Work with a doctor that knows these things, and you'll be able to successfully increase the fat, you'll be able to successfully intermittent fast, and figure out which is perfect for you. We have five different intermittent fasts that we do with certain clients. We choose those fasts based on some of these nuances that people have. If you're out there saying, “I tried that, and it didn't work,” you may have just did the wrong fast, or you may have done it the wrong way. We've seen it all. We've worked with all types of different things. There's an intermittent fast for everybody. If you go to one of our practitioners around the country, you're going to get lined up with the right fast for you.
David: Awesome.
Warren: Awesome, guys. We're excited. We had a great Friday morning. Blessings to everyone. Just keep sharing this message. CellularHealing.tv. We love you. Thanks, Faith. Thanks, Dr. Pompa. See you next Friday.
David: Good-night.
