Transcript of Episode 200: We're Celebrating!
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Meredith Dykstra
Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I'm your host, Meredith Dykstra. Today we have a special guest, Dr. Dan Pompa, because he's always a special guest.
You've got a special shirt on for the season. It is Christmas time. I don't know when you're watching the show, but it is the holiday season here now. You put a special shirt on for this show because we're celebrating today Episode 200 for Cellular Healing TV. That is pretty amazing.
It has flown by. It's been such a blessing for us to be a part of this show, to share this information with all of you. Because it's Episode 200, we thought we'd bring you a little special segment where we're going to count down the top five most popular topics on Cellular Healing TV in the past 200 episodes.
Dr. Pompa:
These are the topics that we get the most questions about. It's really easy to pick them. I can't wait for this show. It was funny, Meredith, she saw this shirt right when we came on. She said, “Isn't that the shirt you wore at Cal Jam?” She was right. This was the party shirt.
They do a 60s party after Cal Jam. Cal Jam is California Jam. It's a big chiropractic seminar. I'm usually a speaker there. They have the big 60s party. This was the shirt. You actually recognized it. That's so funny.
Meredith:
It's kind of an unforgettable shirt. That is a bold pattern with some bright colors. That's not really a shirt that's easy to forget.
Dr. Pompa:
No doubt about it. It's my 60s Cal Jam shirt. I wore another one year. It's black and white and has these swirly things. I thought it might too psychedelic for the camera. I like color. There's hearts on here and everything.
Meredith:
I love the color, love the love, all the hearts. We've got nothing but love for all of you listening and watching. Today this show is for you guys because these are the most popular topics that you call in about and write questions about. This is it. We're going to break it down. We're going to share these top five subjects in celebration of 200 episodes.
Dr. Pompa:
I think because we get a lot of questions on it, just giving the most important parts, the highlights of each one of these subjects, I think people are going to gain a lot of benefit from this show. That's the things that people can remember. That's the benefit of this. I think this show's going to give you that, the main points, the main highlights. Let's do it.
Meredith:
We're going to start with number five, and we're going to do a countdown. Number five hot topic is emotional healing. We've done a number of episodes on this. We've talked about it a lot.
The past few episodes you can have for reference if you go to Podcast.DrPompa.com or Episode 102 where Phil Kaplan was the special guest. He's a fitness guru. He's awesome, and he talked about mindset for healing, which is so important. I know, Dr. Pompa, you talk a lot about chemical detox and we talk about physical detox, emotional detox. Those three types of detox are key for healing. Why is that?
Dr. Pompa:
This year was my search about the topic. I may have started a little bit before 2017, but knowing that we have to get rid of any stressor – the body doesn't the difference between stressors, physical, chemical, or emotional. I've taught that for years. I'm not an expert over there. I would still not put myself there.
I'm definitely in the chemical part of this, but I understand how relevant it is, so much so that I see people that aren't getting well. They're not achieving their health goal. Oftentimes it's a hidden emotional stress or hidden trauma. We've talked about these traumas. They can be stored in our DNA, in our cells.
Bruce Lipton, we've done some shows on him. Watch those shows too because he talked about how our thoughts, our emotions can cause cellular inflammation. We can also turn on bad genes with bad thoughts. Also, the opposite is true. We can also down regulate inflammation, change genetics for the better with our thoughts.
In the Phil Kaplan episode, I talked about chemical sensitivity in him as well and how we had to change our thoughts about chemicals, to literally change the pattern that was in our nervous system. The example that I always give is if a lion walks in the room, we have a neurological set up that we're going to see a lion and think this could be death.
Meredith:
Fight or flight.
Dr. Pompa:
It's going to release a lot of cortisol and adrenaline, and we get a certain feeling inside that lasts for hours. The same thing happens with people when they smell chemicals and different things. They get this reaction that's neurologically set up, and it becomes a physiological reaction. We talked about how to break that.
You said that was 102, correct? In Episode 102 we talked about how to break that pattern and once I got rid of my chemicals, especially the chemicals in my brain, now that allowed me the ability to re-pattern that nervous system. Even once I got rid of the chemicals, I still had these patterns that when I would smell a chemical I would get the same physiological reaction. It wasn't fun. It wasn't good even though I knew I was so much healthier.
That's when I started having to learn that mindset and changing my thought patterns to change my neurological patterns. It's called neuroplasty. It really is a big deal to healing. We have stored emotions. We have stored traumas.
We have to rewire our neurology around these things. Getting rid of these and uprooting these things, we even talked about different methods through the year. We talked about tapping. We talked about EMDR therapies. A lot of these shows we really didn't narrow it down to one.
What we learned, Meredith, is it seemed like based on the response that we got back from people, certain ones were better for other people. The tapping didn't help me, but this one sure did. That didn't help me, but the tapping did.
My encouragement to everyone is this plays a factor in every one of is, emotional traumas, emotional healing. It's part of all of us. No doubt, watch all of the shows that you can. You'll figure out which one gravitates to you the most. That was our feedback throughout the year on that, I think.
Meredith:
Again, it goes along with the theme of variation as well. There's so many different types and styles and tools that work for different people. If you search on the podcast site, you can search for the tapping episode. You can search for the emotion code episode, search for the EMDR episode, Bruce Lipton's episode where he's proven scientifically that our thoughts create cellular inflammation.
Also, I was thinking the neuro feedback, the TCD Clear is a wonderful way to help re-pattern irregular brainwave patterns as well to help our brains function properly. That's a really cool tool as well. All of those episodes you can find on the podcast site. We understand the issue with wrong mindset for healing.
As you said, we're never going to get to where we want to be. We can do all these perfect things with diet and lifestyle and supplements, but if our thoughts aren't right, we're never going to reach that ultimate goal. There's some -inaudible- tools to help you.
Dr. Pompa:
We got so much feedback of how it really changed people's lives. Each one was a little different for everybody. That was really neat because you and I were searching for the right answer. I'm always going what's the best one? I interviewed these people, but as it turned out, it wasn't the best one. It was the best one for the person. They all had a place.
Know that up front, that the TCD glasses, I use mine all the time. I did this show with those on. Flashing lights and certain sounds is an input into the thalamus. It's a way of re-patterning.
It's called neuroplasty of the brain. It's new technology. Even the tapping, all these strategies, watch those shows. They're big ones. What's number four?
Meredith:
Number four, a topic near and dear to your heart, true cellular detox. This was Episode 76. It's a big one.
Dr. Pompa:
I think I talk so much about this. You want to hit the major thing. Cellular detox, I hope because of our show, is really catching the ground. One of the takeaways is every time I have the opportunity to have a conversation with a scientist, cellular biologist, chemist, biochemist, they get the fact that real detox is at the cell. I think we've made it popular.
I just said on one of my doctor trainings today, I remember having a conversation with Martin Pall, who's a brilliant biochemist who developed the NO/ONOO cycle. It's a chronic inflammation feedback that makes people very sick. He saw my five Rs. He said, “Dr. Pompa, you've captured something here. This is the core of what's going wrong, and you did it in such a simple way.”
The five Rs is really the core of cellular detox. It's become a roadmap that we teach on how to get the cell working to detox itself. Real detox is about up regulating that. We can do colon cleanses and saunas and all these things that we've talked about on the show that matter, coffee enemas and good stuff. Ultimately, if we don't get the cell detoxing, and the five Rs is a roadmap to do that, we're not really detoxing. That's the magic.
Of course, the system of true cellular detox is so relevant today. When we look at what's happening with all of the chemical exposures from glyphosate all the way through heavy metals, we are being exposed in utero. I was asked to speak this year from big stages like Bulletproof about generational toxicity. We are being affected by our parents' heavy metals like lead and mercury. We don't think of it that way, but our generation is getting slammed by what our parents were exposed to in utero. We inherit it.
The gene is turned on, and in utero we're getting the physical inheritance of mercury and lead. You saw, Meredith, because you sat through many of those lectures all the studies that showed this. Toxicity in utero is where it starts, and then it builds. The only real way to break this – and this is why people don't feel well. This is why we have a surge in neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, why people can't lose weight, diabetes, thyroid conditions, chronic fatigue, all the symptoms that people don't want. This is a toxic issue.
True cellular detox is the answer. Again, I always say we don't have all the answers, but it's the answer. Part of this process is grabbing toxins, that toxic biocomplex that's happening in the liver because the toxins make their way into the bile, and it's dumped into the gut. Ninety-five percent of the bile is reabsorbed back to the liver, and it brings the toxins around.
Part of true cellular is up regulating self-function, but also using true binders to grab this biocomplex. It's why our digestion is compromised. Most people out there that have bad digestion and can't fix it, it is this toxic biocomplex that's just running its cycle; heartburn, irritable bowel. I can go through the list. Understanding that we have to up regulate cell function, that's detox, but saying that we have to pull the toxins out of that biocomplex, all of that together is what makes up true cellular detox and using real binders.
Cellular detox caught wind this year with everybody. Using cellular detox to bring the toxins from the cell to pathways like the liver and grabbing these in the gut and making sure it goes all the way out, that process has saved so many lives. At the last seminar, Meredith, in Carlsbad, we had 300 doctors there. The testimonies that were given by some of the doctors, practitioners in the room of how true cellular detox saved their lives and why they were in the room – we have the gentleman that was there, he was addicted to prescription pain meds. Suboxone is the hardest one to come off of because of its half life in the body is so long.
True cellular detox was how he did it, and he gave that testimony. I thought it was amazing. There was another doctor there who gave her testimony of how her adrenal fatigue led to her being put on Cortef. Again, almost impossible for people to come off of, and how her life was changing because of true cellular detox.
This year has been a big groundbreaker or tipping point, if you will, for true cellular detox and the science around it. The biochemists now that support this, the doctors who are supporting it, I think that was a huge tipping point for true cellular detox this year. The generational toxicity has been a big part of why we need this so much. Definitely near and dear to my heart.
Meredith:
The generational toxicity component really puts everything into perspective as well. Is that better now?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I can hear you fine.
Meredith:
I think the challenge with it is that it's not a simple process. Many people want a colon cleanse, want something really simple, the chlorella, the foot bath to detox. I love that you say it's real detox because it is complicated. It's not so simple.
That's what makes it so powerful. It's so important. The generational toxicity perspective is key. I think it really helps people understand why they're suffering.
Dr. Pompa:
We have coaches. We have practitioners around the country. Most people that have these challenges, you need a coach, the dosing, the cycle lengths. Our goal is always to teach people that process of learning it themselves so they can do it long enough to actually matter.
I know we've already impact this country in some fashion. Hopefully, we'll have an even greater impact in the year to come. We'll pray for that. What's number three?
Meredith:
Number three, huge topic that you've been talking about since the beginning of Cellular Healing TV. It is fasting. If you go to Podcast.DrPompa.com and just type in fasting, a plethora of shows, many hours' worth of episodes you can sit and listen to and watch to learn more about fasting. Dr. Pompa, you've been talking about this for a long time. Fasting has become cool lately.
Dr. Pompa:
It's so true. I was trained in water fasting years ago. We did bone broth fasting, whey water fasting. All of those are still relevant and amazing. It's just now got leverage.
Jason Fung helped out with that with his book, The Complete Guide to Fasting. Longo, who we're going to get on the show in the new year to come, I know he is doing all these amazing studies. It's now in vogue. Years ago it was like I'm not sure why this works so well. We had different ideas, but the science now is showing that this is why fasting changes lives.
I would say, and I know our doctors watching this would agree, the conditions that we would see we would never be able to get well without cellular detox and fasting. It is such a tool. It's such an undervalued tool. I'm happy that we were part of making this the utmost ancient healing modality. It really is used by every culture and every religious group.
When we look at the science around it, the 2016 Nobel Prize winner won it for a word called autophagy, which simply means during a fast the body gets rid of the bad stuff first. That's something that we've known for years, but now scientifically we see why it's happening. Not only that, in that process of getting rid of all the bad stuff, it raises up stem cells to create new cells. Now we go that's why the immune system gets this bolster. That's why it can down regulate autoimmune. That's why the body all of a sudden can actually grow better muscle and tissues because you got rid of the bad.
Now you raise up stem cells and go I feel like I have new joints; you do. My immune system is much better; it is. My hair is better. Yeah, you got rid of bad proteins, and now you've actually created new ones. Remember, your hormones are proteins. Your hair is protein, skin is protein. When you're getting rid of bad ones with new via the rise in stem cells, magic happens. I'll tell you, wait until 2018 because we're going to be bringing on some of these scientists who are doing some of this research that we've been teaching about. You will always be kept up to speed with the newest research about fasting.
I think, Meredith, intermittent fasting really caught wind. I think all of our viewers, most of them intermittent fast in some form or another. I made this term popular; don't eat less, eat less often. That's really the key about intermittent fasting. I think the block fasting is going to be the surge. If intermittent fasting was the surge in 2017, I think block fasting will the surge in 2018. We're going to focus on that for sure.
Meredith:
2018 predictions, I like it. Block fasting is so magical. You were the one who taught me all about that, Dr. Pompa. Intermittent fasting to me is a lifestyle. I don't even think about it, it's so natural. When I see people eat many times a day, I'm just like that's crazy. I used to do that as well.
Now once we've retrained our body to shift over to a fat burning mode, we don't need to rely on those exogenous forms of glucose and carbohydrates for fuel. It's such amazing freedom, but the block fasting for me personally is where the magic has happened as well. It goes back to number two because spiritually and emotionally what can happen during a fast can be really incredible and life changing as well. You get so many different benefits, physical and emotional, from fasting.
Dr. Pompa:
I think we made it popular doing these shorter block fasts, four or five days, multiple times. We as a group of doctors have watched the magic of that. Being able to work with Fung and Seyfried and others about this, we have the largest clinical group of practitioners doing these fasts and getting clinical data back going this is working. Even partial fasting, what we've done with that.
I think going back, if you put in the search fasting, you're going to see all these shows. If you haven't done this, if you have challenges, supervised fast. I want to make it clear that I believe a supervised fast is the way to go, especially when you put it in conjunction with our multi-therapeutic approach, the cellular detox, the cellular healing with some of these ancient healing strategies like ketosis, the fasting, diet variation, all these things we've made popular.
I think when you look at block fasting, let me hit some of the main things that happen. When we look at what happens in a short fast, even something like a 24-hour fast, 30-hour fast, we have some autophagy happening where your body is getting rid of the bad cells. That's even been shown in 15-hour fasts. Just fasting overnight, missing breakfast, you're getting some autophagy where your body gets rid of bad stuff. You're getting hormone optimization.
Your cells become more hormone sensitive. You get a growth hormone rise. You get that in a shorter fast, but when you fast longer, you get the stem cell reaction that starts taking place. I believe it starts happening mostly around day three. I always say that's where the magic starts to happen. You completely shift over.
You get this massive rise in ketones that you're not going to get on a shorter intermittent fast. You get this massive rise in ketones, which get high enough to where we know it's healing for the brain. It turns off bad genes, down regulates inflammation, changes your microbiome. Also, not eating for at least three days, your body starts to use fat as a primary energy source, which burns cleaner. It rests your digestion. It changes and resets your microbiome.
Once you get into day four and ride that out even one more day to day five, you get this massive stem cell rise where your body is getting new white blood cells. It's getting rid of those hyper cells that are causing food allergies and autoimmune and over reactivity, which drives inflammation, which is why most people don't feel well. When you fast, your body is getting rid of those cells. It raises up the stem cell and creates new ones that aren't as reactive.
Longo in his work calls those more naive. They're not just running around creating inflammation. All of those things kind of differentiate why doing a block fast versus just intermittent fasting daily, you get more benefits of these things.
Seyfried said just one fast a year, one block fast a year decreases your cancer rates up by 95% because you're getting rid of all those bad mitochondria. That's where the cancer forms. Block fasting is transformative for people. It really is. We're going to focus more on it this year.
Meredith:
Stay tuned, everybody. Number two is the ketogenic diet. Boy, do we get a lot of calls and questions on this. Episode 32, we delved into it way back when. I think that was my first ever episode.
Then 104 and 105, we dug into it. It comes up on so many shows. We get so many questions about it. Ketogenic diet has become quite popular. It really became mainstream this year as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, totally mainstream. It's amazing. I just did a summit with a gentleman who's doing a ketosis summit. He said, “Dr. Pompa, you were my mentor for years. I think back about ketosis and these topics, and you're the first person who I think was making this stuff popular back then.” I appreciated that.
I have been talking about this a long time, so much so that it became boring because I didn't think anyone cared or was listening. Fat adaption, I loved the subject years and years ago. I always talked about the fat and how important it was.
Dominic D'Agostino, I take my hat off to him. I mentioned Thomas Seyfried. He wrote the book, Cancer is a Metabolic Disease. D'Agostino we've interviewed on the show a few times. I think some episodes in the 70s with Dominic. He's doing some of the research with the defense department. I think he's a big reason ketosis really caught popularity again.
I said this at the seminar. I said caution; my crystal ball prediction about ketosis is it'll be around for five years in popularity, and then it's going to be the next thing. That doesn't make it bad. It's just the way the things cycle. It will be the next thing.
It was vegan diets, it was vegetarian, it was Paleo. These things kind of cycle around. I will say this; I'm not a believer in keeping people in ketosis all the time, which we'll talk a little bit more about. I am a believer in it. It's a very amazing tool.
Ketones do down regulate inflammation. Ketones can reset the microbiome. Ketones do burn very clean. The brain loves ketones. We know it does magic in the brain that we haven't even figured out yet. It can remake neuro connections.
It bypasses the brain's inability to use glucose because we burned out a lot of the glucose with insulin receptors because we eat too much sugar in our diet as Americans. Ketones have the ability to go around that and fix the pathways. We've learned a lot about why ketosis is healing. Our ancestors didn't stay in ketosis.
Even the Eskimos who you would think did; actually, they didn't. They would break out of ketosis the moment they had other carbohydrates. They went for it. They're human. Throw Snickers bars on the ground, and they're going to find them and go dang, these are good. It might ruin their health.
The point is this, humans will seasonally shift out of ketosis. They'll be forced back into ketosis. We know that it resets the DNA. It resets the microbiome. We know that being forced into times of ketosis, there's magic that happens just like in a fast.
They used to call it the fasting mimicking diet because you get a lot of the benefits in ketosis that you do in a fast. When you do fasting and ketosis together, look out. Now we have something again, ancient healing strategy here.
Meredith:
A lot of magic there. Just one critique I have of the ketogenic diet, which I know you do as well. If you look online and check out a lot of the websites, I've had friends I've seen on social media who are very into the ketogenic diet because it's mainstream and it's a great way to lose weight, which is the number one reason why most people are doing it. Some of the websites out there do not specify the importance of organic and grass-fed animal foods when you're eating them. A lot of the keto recipes out there just say full-fat cream cheese. Some of them say to use more toxic sweeteners like NutraSweet or some of those chemical sweeteners out there that we know are toxic to our cells.
There's definitely some caution there that we need to take with the keto diet as well when you're searching for recipes and experimenting with it. You really want to be very careful with any kind of animal products, proteins, dairy, and meats that you're eating, that they're organic and grass fed whenever possible and using healthy sweeteners as well. Stevia, non GMO Xylitol can be helpful, a little bit of raw honey, maple syrup once in a while. You can use those as well on a healthy ketogenic diet, especially after you've been keto adapted and you're in that fat burning.
Dr. Pompa:
That's great advice because eating toxic dairy products, conventional dairy products, which people will gravitate to that, conventional grain-fed meat, those are very toxic things. You could make something potentially good really toxic really fast. By the way, we did a little study with Joe Mercola throughout the year. We took some of our doctors, one of which was on a vegan diet and successfully went into ketosis. We can think about that. It can still be a very plant-based diet. Ketosis can be done many different ways.
Let just hit some of the pitfalls. I've got emails, I can't get into ketosis. Those are typically toxic people. Toxicity plays a major role. I know a lot of people struggle not just to get into ketosis, but they don't lose weight on ketosis. Again, in very toxic people that can be the case. They get into ketosis and yet they seem not to be able to lose weight.
We always put out restriction is a big part of it. Doing ketosis with intermittent fasting is very important because when people go into ketosis, when you start using fat as energy, you release something called cholecystokinin, which diminished appetite normally. You end up eating less not because you're pushing food away, but you're full. Therefore, that ends up in weight loss.
Seyfried and many others pointed out that if you don't get that food restriction, caloric restriction, it happens naturally, not because you're trying to eat less. You don't get the results of the ketones, you also don't lose weight, and tumors don't shrink. By doing intermittent fasting with it, you're automatically eating less by eating less often. You get the restriction with the ketosis, and that can be a real help for weight loss.
Another pitfall is electrolytes. A lot of people the first month or two, you lose a lot of electrolytes because you're losing glycogen. The electrolyte depletion, potassium, magnesium, calcium can cause some muscle loss and even energy loss, not feeling well. Always pay attention to that. Those are some pitfalls about ketosis. Again, watch the shows. There's many.
Meredith:
A lot of key pitfalls. Don't just give up. If you've been trying the ketogenic diet, think about some of the suggestions and tools that we've just offered and play around with it. Adding in that restriction is such a game changer.
We had number five, emotional healing. I was going to go back and do a little review before we do the drum roll for number one, which number two leads beautifully into number one. I was looking at all of them as well, just a beautiful part of your multi-therapeutic approach, Dr. Pompa.
We started the episode with number five, emotional healing, and the importance of getting our minds right for healing and having that healing miracle mindset. I think number five is so key. It's a hugely popular topic. Number four, true cellular detox, what we talk about a lot on this show. It's a key component to getting results with any program.
Number three, fasting. There's so many different episodes and tons of research and resources on fasting. If you want to incorporate fasting into your life, definitely check out all of our resources. Number two, we just talked about the ketogenic diet.
Without any further adieu, number one is diet variation. We get a lot of questions on this. It was Episode 157 where we really dug into the concept of it, explaining it, and its implementation. In case people haven't watched that episode, which definitely I recommend checking out, what is it and why should we care?
Dr. Pompa:
It was hard for me not to talk about fasting and ketosis and not talk about diet variation. I pulled back because I didn't want to tip my hand. It is an ancient healing strategy. When we think about eat different foods, that's kind of it, but it's so much deeper than that. It really is feast/famine cycles and utilizing this.
Let's talk about ketosis. One of the pitfalls is people go low carb or ketosis for a long time. The body eventually goes if I'm only using fat as an energy source because remember, cells can use sugar and fat, so in ketosis we're forcing the cells to use fat as its major energy. Eventually it goes I feel like I could potentially be starving. I'm going to hold onto this fat fuel.
It starts to burn less of it where it becomes more efficient at utilizing it. Now it says I'm going to hold on, and it does it by blunting insulin receptors so you hold onto more fat. It can plug fat cells up with water. It does a lot of clever strategies.
What I noted years ago is the body builders know if you do carb days every once in awhile, you kicked in fat burning again. Why? It reminded the body you're not starving. You have plenty. We'll start burning fat again.
That's a principle of throwing in one or two carb days or even feast days, higher calories, higher protein. It just reminds the body it's not in a starvation mode. It breaks that pattern that it's set up to hold onto its fat, and you start to become a fat burner again.
It goes far beyond that. We know that people with hormone conditions, adrenal issues, thyroid conditions, they don't do well in ketosis. They can't intermittent fast or fast. The truth is they can, but they have to understand diet variation. Throwing in carb days just does hormonal magic.
We know that elevating glucose and insulin, you need insulin to make certain hormone conversions. You need insulin to actually help estrogen work, take thyroid hormone from T4 to T3. You need insulin for those. If you're chronically low carbohydrates, you're chronically low insulin, you can actually affect those hormones. These days where we throw in the feast, it just works magic with the hormones, hormone optimization. Then we even take it a step further to do diet variation monthly.
Monthly is where we realize that – ladies, you're a great example. You can get cravings the week before your period or maybe the week of your period. We said why don't we listen to those cravings? Let's give the body the chocolate that it wants. Let's give it the carbs that it's desiring.
Low and behold, we took one week before the period or the week of the period and did high carbs. Boom, magic happened. Now all of a sudden ketosis or whatever you're doing the rest of the month, total magic.
Meredith:
Why do we have those cravings during our cycle or before our cycle?
Dr. Pompa:
I think because the body is so intelligent that it knows it needs them to make these hormone conversions. It needs to use estrogen more wisely. Guess what? Insulin helps that process of estrogen. It helps the utilization of estrogen. Insulin does that.
I think thyroid hormone gets more pressure around that time. If your thyroid is already struggling, then the low insulin can be a factor. You need insulin to convert your stored thyroid hormone, T4, to the active T3. There's a greater need for that hormone during that time.
Guess what? The body's intelligent enough to say please eat some carbs. I need this conversion. It's following the body's innate intelligence. That's it.
Then there's seasonal diet variation where we talked about fasting once or twice a year or maybe even monthly for people who have greater challenges. Those are ancient healing strategies. We have times where we move into ketosis. Maybe it's in the heart of winter when people were forced into ketosis.
Then summer, spring comes, we have different foods now. You have all your greens that start to grow. I think our microbiome adjusts to that, and now we start making more enzymes that need the greens outside. Eating the greens and moving out of ketosis, now we have a focus on some of the fruits coming in, which would tend to move people out of ketosis.
What happens at the end of summer, we start getting the grains that start coming, storing up for winter. We can move out of ketosis again and get ready for winter where we can move back in. The point is, seasonally it is very important to change your diet and not just stay in ketosis or low carb. Stay healthy, but healthy higher carb, healthy higher plant-based, fruit-based diets in the summer or spring, moving that around.
Diet variation weekly, monthly, and seasonally, I believe there's magic to it. Science keeps showing that we're right on this. There's not one diet. I think there's room for all of them.
Meredith:
It makes such sense from more of a primal perspective as well why this works so well. It's not new science, it's understanding and applying it in a new way once we've untrained ourselves from all these cultural believes that haven't been serving us for a long time.
Dr. Pompa:
Even the debate over grain and gluten, we've said it's not just gluten. That's always been our argument. It's bad digestion, toxins that really are causing the leaky gut, some of the problems with gluten. When you look at cultures, we have a culture where we're eating grain all year round. That's bad. That's going to lead to obesity and other things all the time.
If we look at ancient cultures, they ate it when it got harvested in the fall. Now we develop wheat where we can harvest it twice a year, but it was just once a year in the fall heading into winter. Ironically enough, that seasonal change that I talked about, the sun position, changed the microbiome. We start producing an enzyme called amylase in a much greater amount, and it gives us more of an ability to break down these hard proteins that can be hard for people with poor digestion to break down like gluten. There's a time to eat that. All of those arguments are diet variation.
Meredith:
Just the variation principle in general applies to so many things. It's not just food, but we have fasting variation, we have detox variation. It's being able to apply it in a strategic way where it's most effective is really where the magic starts to happen.
Dr. Pompa:
Exercise is a great point, Meredith. We know if you go into the gym and do the same exercise every time, the same routine every time, after awhile you see no results. In the beginning you saw results, but then it's the same thing. You're not getting results. The moment you switch something, all of a sudden you get results again.
It's because the new stressor, the new exercise forces adaptation. Adaptation makes the body better. The same with diet. The moment you shift your diet again, all of a sudden it goes I feel better on this diet.
It's not the diet. Now you're making your body adapt again and all these amazing hormone changes occur. That adaptation process, your microbiome gets stronger and better. There's no doubt humans are meant to shift their diet. The problem today is we don't have to shift our diet. We can stay on the same diet year round, but I believe it's creating health problems.
Using the strategies of weekly variation, feast/famine cycles – some examples there, instead of just a feast day a week, add a couple fast days in a week where you don't eat a day. Go 36 hours or maybe 24 hours, feast/famine cycles. Our ancestors were forced to do it. Once or twice a week we don't have as much food. Watch what happens with that as well.
Meredith:
Just mimicking nature, brilliant. Those five topics, I'm sure a lot of you are going to be excited to hear about because we get so much conversation and dialogue around these. Please share this episode with your friends and family because these are such key concepts for all of us to understand to really optimize our cellular health and to live our best lives. Thank you, Dr. Pompa, for helping to bring these topics to the world.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to thank our viewers and our fans and listeners. We've been able to impact many. It's because you all do share the shows and tell your friends about us. Thank you.
I know that we have a message that's real and it's different. It's part of an answer to a world that needs this, that has a lot of health problems. If we're going to change the world, health has got to be a part of it. Thank you all.
Meredith:
Amen. Thanks so much for watching. We will see you next time. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye.
