Transcript of Episode 219: Top 7 Benefits of Fasting
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Warren Phillips
Dr. Pompa:
You're going to want to stay tuned. We have a very special guest. He didn't die; many of you asked what happened to him. As a matter of fact, he's fully functioning and making a difference on this planet in this mission. In this episode, I'm going to be with Warren Phillips; remember Warren? Look, we have an amazing topic for you because you all chose it. Many of you are fasting and had all these questions about fasting: what to do; how to do it; all the benefits. Like the old days when Meredith would interview me on a topic, we actually had many requests for that. I thought I'm going to have Warren do the interview because you all have been asking about Warren too, so double trouble today I'll tell you. You're going to get your questions answered. Stay tuned for this episode and you get to see Warren. Alright, I'll see you on the episode. Alright, I'm here with Warren Phillips as promised. I'll tell you, Warren—
Warren Phillips:
I’m not dead.
Dr. Pompa:
A lot of people thought you were dead, man; here you are.
Warren Phillips:
I'm on the mission still; still out there doing it. I love the first year with David and doing Cellular Healing TV. I actually miss everyone. Folks at our doctor seminars say, “Hey, I'm watching Cellular Healing TV.” I didn't even know who they were, and all of a sudden, they're talking to me about it. It's an honor and a privilege to be on Cellular Healing TV today with you, Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa:
It's awesome. Look, we had a lot of requests as you know because you actually get a lot of the feedback, more about fasting. We've got a lot of questions about fasting, but I decided to do it this way, an interview style because we also had a lot of requests for the old days when Meredith would interview me, and even older days, oftentimes you and David would interview me, right?
Warren Phillips:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
“Hey, get Dr. Pompa on a topic and we loved it when he was the one being interviewed.” I don't know. I don't know if any other podcasts do it that way.
Warren Phillips:
You're on the chopping block today, Dr. Pompa. I'll tell you that right now.
Dr. Pompa:
I am. We're going to flip it right here. Warren, I'm going to give control over to you. We're going to talk about fasting from every angle we can possibly think of. Man, the ball is yours.
Warren Phillips:
This is the perfect timing too because you just came off of your event we had. You taught for like four hours on fasting and the seven benefits of fasting. I think the best way to get the best for our audience today is to really go over those benefits, those achievements that can be created through fasting to incentivize them to get this done because it's one of the number one things you can do. It costs you nothing and gives you so much more back. The seven benefits of fasting, Dr. Pompa. Let's start off with the first benefit of fasting. I will question you on that the questions that these viewers are wanting to hear.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think it gives us the why fast. We have new viewers as well, many of you out there have fasted, are fasting, and that's why you had a lot of questions. I think this inspires all of us. My son, we just did a radio show together on Health Hunters. He's on day six right now of another fast. He said, “Gosh, just speaking about it, I get really excited. I forgot about all that stuff, the benefits and the achievements of fasting.” If it inspired him, I think it will inspire all of you, even if you're veteran fasters. Yeah, there are seven. Are there more? Of course, but these are the seven that at least give us an explanation for why these miracles happen during fasts. We've learned a lot. I've trained in fasting many years ago. A lot of the questions that people had about why fasting did certain things we didn't have answers for; now, we do. I think in these seven things, we'll discover some of that.
Look, number one, in 2016, the Nobel Prize was actually given to a man who discovered—I shouldn't say discovered, but really took a word called autophagy or autophagia to the next level. As a matter of face, another man was up for the Nobel Prize as well. His name is Valter Longo who I've talked about on past shows and is speaking at one of our future seminars. He didn't win; the older Asian gentleman actually won the Nobel Prize for this word, autophagy. What is it? Basically, during a fast, autophagy occurs. Meaning, that the body will actually eat away the bad cells in your body, the rubbish, the debris before it touches the good stuff. Why is that important? Because it's these bad cells that cause all the mischief in our body that drive inflammation, make us not feel well, lead to diseases like cancer, etc, autoimmune, allergies, food allergies. Gosh, if we can get rid of these bad cells, magic happens, Warren. Let's talk about each one because right there I've stimulated probably a lot of questions.
Warren Phillips:
Yeah, autophagy would be one of the main benefits that I want to hone in on because I believe it's going to be something that our viewers, ourselves, can achieve that literally transforms our life. I think so many folks have so much fear when it comes to tumors, cancer, these abnormal cell growths. With fasting, there's such solid evidence. As you say, someone won a Nobel Prize over this. This autophagy, out of all the benefits, I think this is the sweet spot that our viewers can focus on and then get all the other things like weight loss, setting you up for ketosis, memory, inflammation reduction, all the other benefits of fasting. This autophagy thing is super sexy, it's super real, and it's super motivating for individuals to get into autophagy. Let's discuss because one of the things around autophagy and fasting, are you going to start chewing up your gut lining because the bugs in your gut are going to want to eat that. Now, it's eating your bug lining. We're so full of you know what, that ain't happening in seven days. This autophagy subject, why is it so powerful with fasting, that benefit? Why is it so life transforming? What does it do for healing, for cellular healing obviously? What is the research behind it as far as cancer? We're not making claims on this, but this is what the research shows. Why is it such a big benefit?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, it really is because the body's so intelligent that it does get rid of these bad cells. Years ago, there was some critics of fasting would say, well, fasting lowers your immune system. We know that because we would measure white blood cells, take blood tests during fast. We see a dramatic drop in white blood cells. How could that be good? Proponents of fasting would say, well, we don't know, but we know it's good. We know the immune system doesn't get lowered. Matter of fact, we see the opposite. We see an upregulation of immunity and a downregulation of autoimmunity, so what's happening? Some of the new studies have shown that what happens is that through this autophagy, the body literally starts to eat all of these older, overreactive white blood cells that are overreactive. That explains autoimmunity. That explains allergies and food sensitivities because they're creating inflammation. They're creating a hyper-immunity, which is not good. As these white blood cells drop, the body wasn't touching the new ones. It was only eating these bad overreactive ones. What happens is in that this is going to spur us into the next conversation. The body raises up some stem cells to recreate new cells, more naive if you will, not overreactive. We get this upregulation of healthy immunity and a downregulation of over-immunity if you will, autoimmunity. That’s why when people—so many people have autoimmune. It's just a reason for unexplainable illness.
Warren Phillips:
Almost everybody, right, we have low-grade autoimmune?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, 95% of America, but they're just not testing for it. It takes years to test for it. The problem is that they have these hyper-immunity cells. Through fasting, through this autophagy, we're able to eat through those cells. By the way, this is another reason why. Daniel talked a little bit about after each fast, a month later he gains all this new muscle. Bodybuilders are realizing this. This is a way because people say—this is one of the questions we got is what about me? I am 100 pounds. I can't do an extended water fast. The answer is yes, you can. Matter of fact, it's a strategy because the body will eat away all the bad proteins in the muscle. What happens is it raises up the stem cells, and it creates new proteins, new muscle that recover faster. It takes about a month for that to happen, but you gain muscle for a month or two. We find that clinically and my kids have found that. That's why fasting can be used for weight gain, through good weight gain, in weight loss. As a matter of fact, you remember the gentleman who was on day 120 in one of our past seminars in a fast? He had lost almost 100 pounds at that point via autophagy. The body's going to break down all those fat cells, all those bad cells. He was losing all those bad tissue. He came off all his medication with his doctor.
Warren Phillips:
He was really sick. That's why he did it, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly; yep. Anyways, the point is autophagy, now we know that is one of the reasons why we see so many miracles during a fast.
Warren Phillips:
This is brilliant because this is going to be another—this is what I would go to the next benefit. I don't even know if this is one of the seven. I didn't hear your wonderful—lots of great feedback from the doctors at the event. Our next event, by the way, is in Nevada in November.
Dr. Pompa:
Vegas.
Warren Phillips:
Vegas, yeah. You're welcome to join us there. We have some of the key fasting heroes coming up like Jason Fung. Then Ben Greenfield, fitness fasting, he does a lot of fasting. We've done a lot of work with him and some others that we're still lining up. On this, when you're talking about chewing up these bad cells, now potentially—potentially, not for real. We can't make that claim, but potentially carcinogenic cells, abnormal cells that are getting chewed up. These cells, what I was thinking in my mind, these are the old cells that have bad genetics before someone who really didn't change their diet to something like the Cellular Healing diet, eating 100% grass-fed, 4 to 1 ratio Omega-6 to Omega-3 oils, doing the right things to rebuild healthy cells. If you're killing off, essentially cannibalizing, your body's chewing up these old nasty cells, and you're rebuilding new ones. Then feeding those cells the right cell membrane, so you have a nice fluid anti-inflammatory cell. Our body's just cells, and bacteria, and virus, and water essentially, is this going to anti-age the heck out of you?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, again, studies are leading there because you get the autophagy. You're taking out all those bad mischief guys, all those bad cells creating trouble, and then you're replacing it with new ones via the stem cells, which is anti-aging at its heart honestly. Bad DNA leads to bad DNA, which leads to premature aging, which leads to disease, inflammation. It's obvious. Look, there's other ways to create autophagy; just water fasting is the best. It's the most power. Partial fasting, aka fasting mimicking diet that this Valter Longo scientist talks about is just caloric restriction for a period of time. We don't believe in caloric restriction long-term, but for five days a month, according to his studies, does stimulate autophagy, and therefore, stem cell rise. We still see results. In his rat studies, they actually regenerated the pancreas in type I diabetics; that's pretty powerful. That was again, that was doing a five-day caloric restriction for four months, and they saw those types of results. That's the power of this autophagy, so caloric restriction will do it, even lower protein is a strategy that myself and the Cellular Healing and set of detox docs that we train do. Maybe once or twice a week, we actually lower protein below 15, 20 grams depending on your size and that stimulates autophagy. Ketosis, low carbohydrate diets can stimulate autophagy to some degrees. High-intensity exercise can stimulate autophagy. The number one way is going without food. It forces the body's intelligence to eat the bad cells and bad proteins for repair, for energy. It's absolutely brilliant.
My son Daniel actually did almost a four-day dry fast, which means no water or food. We did this experiment with our doctor group as well, so many of them dry fasted. It's remarkable because the body will use autophagy and it will eat up fat cells much faster. You get actually a 3 to 1 autophagy. Your body will eat more cells. Getting water, it will actually do that just to get water. The old thing of: hey, you die in three days without water, not true. Remember the testimony at our last seminar. 4He went 12 days without food and water. He didn't choose it, but it was forced because he was that sensitive.
Warren Phillips:
That's not Egypt in the desert where you're getting dehydrated by the sun and whatever; you're in your home.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you're going to die.
Warren Phillips:
You're not going to die.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, I think dry fasting you need supervision. I wouldn't recommend anyone doing that. By the way, these longer extended fasts, you need supervision. That's why we have doctors trained around the country doing this fasting and this cellular detox together. It's been magic. Alright, let's go to—oh, one more thing about autophagy before you bring me to number two. This is a question we've got a lot. It's do you get some of this autophagy with shorter fasts? The answer's yes. I think I showed a study at the seminar. It was about 13 hours they started to see some autophagy occurring, more at say 18 and 20 hours, and even more at 30 hours. Yes, you do get some autophagy. That's why intermittent fasting daily is a bonus and you do get some autophagy. You can do a longer fast and get a lot of autophagy or you can do a lot of shorter fasts and get some autophagy. Multiple ways to get this autophagy. Again, the extended fasts, which we got a lot of questions about, is still the number one way.
Warren Phillips:
I've heard testimonies. We did the Fasting for a Purpose Facebook page. That thing is blowing up and there's a lot of questions answered there. You can go there and join when you're going to do your fast, Fasting for a Purpose Facebook closed group page. We have to approve you. Some of the testimonies I saw on there blew my mind. People that were going to go in for surgery on their shoulder, all that pain went away, skin tags being removed, tumor reduction, just crazy stuff. A dog will fast and tumors will go away let alone—
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that's the autophagy. There’s a book sitting over here to my right called, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, Thomas Seyfried. He showed this autophagy eats tumors. That's why they get this massive tumor shrinkage. We have a way of utilizing glucose and ketones, measuring them to see if you're in this autophagy fast. By the way, in June we are—join us because we are doing another group fast. It's going to be thousands of people again fasting. Every day, we're going to do a video. We're going to be interviewing guys like Fung and some of our doctors out there. It's going to be a lot of fun and it's going to be a lot of information as well. By the way, the powers in the group. People have said, “Man, I would have quit if it wasn't for the group.” Join us. That is my fan page, Warren, at dr.danielpompa to get to those. If you go under videos, you'll see a bunch of videos from that.
Warren Phillips:
Number two.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, number two. This is a big one and I tipped my hand to that already because stem cell activity is remarkable. You go through the autophagy eating all the bad stuff. Your body upregulates these stem cells.
Warren Phillips:
That's the shoulder fix.
Dr. Pompa:
Yep, and we get stem cells occurring, obviously, even day one you get some stem cells occurring, but it increases to what we found day four and day five is where we get these big stem cell rises. That's why we try to do at least a five-day water fast on these extended fasts. Again, you do benefit on the shorter fasts. You get this stem cell rise and then by day six, we feed. The feeding actually gets these stem cells that are all ready to go, but they're not basically directed yet. During the feeding process—and that's why breaking a fast is very important. Many of you asked about that, so put that down in your little note; there's a question. The refeed is important because now it starts to tell these stem cells what to do. We call it differentiation. They start making their way to the hurting places. There they start to activate, and grow new tissue, and heal. It's pretty remarkable.
As a matter of fact, Daniel was talking about day five and his elbow that he had recently injured started hurting again. All that meant is more healing had to be done. On my last fast in January, the five-day group fast, my right knee started hurting. That was showing me that more healing had to occur. That's the autophagy and the stem cells. Then my kidneys started hurting. That's something I haven't felt for years ago when I was sick, but all of a sudden, my kidneys started hurting. Autophagy and stem cells, that's healing. It's pretty interesting because when people get stem cells infused, the same thing happens. All of a sudden you get these random aches and pains that you may have had 20 years ago come back, showing that healing now is occurring. These stem cells are so intelligent that they know exactly where to go. They go to the places of inflammation. They go to the places of hypoxia, meaning that low oxygen. They go to places that need healed. It's interesting because I'm doing a show on this, but I had stem cells injected into my spine. On video, you see the stem cells go in and then you see them run right to the areas of injury where we knew they were. They literally went there, and you can see it happen on a video. That's what's happening when you're fasting. Hey, you don't have to pay. Getting stem cells injected is expensive, but fasting is cheap. It actually saves you money because you're not buying food.
Warren Phillips:
It's just testimony to what the body can do for healing when you allow it to do what it's meant to do. If you just remove the interference, the body does the healing. That's a care packet policy. That's the real healing principle. Stem cells are amazing. We just got so far away from nature. We got away from how our bodies were designed by God to heal, and some of the tradition, the traditional ancient healing strategies. Stem cell, again, that's probably why a lot of these people do get pain afterwards, but that's the healing that's taking place. Then all of a sudden, my shoulder surgery is not going. I heard testimonies like, “I couldn't walk upstairs and now my knee's 50% better.”
One of the things that I was going to promote here and talk about is that you do one fast and you chewed off this many bad cells, cells that had bad mitochondria, or low mitochondria, not enough in there to produce cellular energy for your body. You do one and then you create new cells that are healthier, and you refeed them on day six with the good fats and creating the good structure, and good genetics, good replication. Then you do it again, you do it again. You keep replacing all these nasty cells. All of a sudden, in some respects, you're becoming a superhero. You're putting on muscle. You look like the guy that's all muscular that you watched on National Geographic that's running around in the woods who barely eats, yet his muscle and his chest are out to here. The woman are lean, and running around, and doing all this work and activity because we all want to be productive. We all want to make a difference in this world. We want to be able to take care of our children. If we just did what our bodies were meant to do, all the benefits just besides just the fasting, and looking better, and getting younger, but the benefits of living a life. It's worth it. I'm trying to inspire people. It's so worth it to do it.
Dr. Pompa:
Look, every fast, you get a new level of healing. You also get something called metabolic flexibility. What that simply means is you start to utilize fat in these bad tissues much more efficiently. The first fast, people struggle, even to use their fat as energy. It takes a lot to break through. I always tell people, “You don't heal completely on one fast.” Multiple fasts is something we teach. That's what ancient cultures were forced to do. That's what we teach people to do. Before we get off the subject of autophagy and stem cells, we talked about nothing but good. I'm going to tell you right now after fasting over 3,000 people, you learn a lot. One of the things I learned is toxic people have trouble fasting. They get a lot of symptoms. I always tell you, “If you want to test how healthy you are, it's not a blood test or any test; go without food.” That's the ultimate test of how healthy you are, honestly. At least at the cellular level and your metabolic ability to use fat as an energy comes through. A lot of you are going to get symptoms. Now, many of these symptoms are because of the autophagy and the stem cells; it's a good thing. The problem is you create a lot of these free radicals that your body is creating more oxidative stress. It's the thing that can cause the headache, the toxin release, and this over oxidative stress. It's the thing that can make you just want to lay in bed all day and just not move and you feel like garbage. Then you watch the other videos and people are going, I feel amazing.
Warren Phillips:
What's wrong with me?
Dr. Pompa:
I broke through. Yeah, what's wrong with me. One of the things that we had tested just reading the literature about hydrogen. Hydrogen is a molecule, smallest molecule on the planet. It's remarkable because in the last couple years, we've been able to stabilize it where you can put these pills in water and it creates the oxygen. By utilizing oxygen in a fast, it doesn't push the body left or right; otherwise, you break your fast. The hydrogen is really a redox molecule that brings balance to your oxidation, meaning too many free radicals, and the need of reduction. It brings balance of oxidation and reduction, so it doesn't push the body left or right. It makes it the perfect fasting molecule if you will. I think Warren's going to a give—do you have—
Warren Phillips:
I'm not sure how the Zoom Meeting works. I'm doing this one on Zoom. I did notice that the internet's a little bit slow on my end, so if Dr. Pompa's a little bit shaky, stay tuned. I’ve texted some people. I don't know if you saw me doing that to make sure that people are off the internet in my home. If Dan's words a little off, just listen, and close your eyes. Listen to his voice if it's annoying, if his lips are a little off. Yeah, I've been intermittent fasting, Dr. Pompa. Sometimes I do get a little tired or I get a little brain fog. In that intermittent fasting, I start to get hunger. They hydrogen, which I'm going to show them right now, it's a product called Fast Tonic.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, let me tell the story there because we started utilizing this hydrogen after reading some of the studies. It duplicates a 20% even caloric restriction, which is a partial fast just taking the hydrogen without even fasting, so pretty amazing. It regulates this response that makes people feel so bad during fasting. We decided to test it with our doctor group. It was remarkable actually. The people that were feeling bad, they started taking hydrogen. Immediately, it was like, oh my God, this is the best fast. This was the key for me. These things called hydroxy free radicals are produced in assess from toxic people. It downregulates these hydroxy free radicals like crazy. That's really the reason why it works so well with fasting. There was a gentleman who spoke at our last seminar and he talked about how hydrogen through this imitation of fasting, caloric restriction, basically burns fat. He showed a picture of a fat mouse and a skinny mouse. The only difference was the skinny one they were giving hydrogen to. Otherwise, they ate exactly the same. Pretty amazing molecule. During a fast, it actually not only helps you with the symptoms potentially of fasting, but it also helps you get more out of your fast. We started using it as a group. We loved it so much, we ended up creating a product around it with one of the brightest minds in this area of hydrogen, and we called it Fast Tonic. He just held it up. Just show how easy it is there.
Warren Phillips:
Yeah, and the nice thing about this one versus other ones, you don't have to cover your glass. You can put it in a bottle and cover it if you want to.
Dr. Pompa:
That was the older version. The technologies gotten better.
Warren Phillips:
Yeah, the technologies changed. I'll show you what it looks like and I'll talk until you see me. It's plop, plop, fizz, fizz. I'm doing two and I've been doing this for my intermittent fasting just to—
Dr. Pompa:
I do two, too. Matter of fact, I fasted yesterday. I'm still fasting actually. I'm about 45 hours into a dry fast. I didn't drink water actually. Another story, I just do single days and 42-hour fasts pretty frequently. The hydrogen, again, it's amazing. Not during a dry fast because you can't drink water, but during any type of fast, even an 18 hour fast, dramatic difference of people who struggle to fast; really is. Even helps with hunger, by the way, appetite.
Warren Phillips:
I noticed that. I'll be drinking this and sipping on this while we go to number three because we have 27 minutes left.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, go ahead and sip on that. That's a big help. By the way, that was one of the big questions we got. We get a lot of questions around certain symptoms. To answer that fully, yes, a lot of your symptoms are healing, but a lot of your symptoms are toxin related. By the way, that's a big deal. One of the things that we do as a group of doctors, yes, we're fasting people: weekly, extended, daily. We're also detoxing them upstream to the cellular level which is key. When you put these two things together, it is magic. It's a lot of what myself and the doctors that we have with the Cellular group do.
Alright, ketosis, ketones. Look, a lot of people go into ketosis and they don't even produces a lot of ketones. Even when they do, they don't get the advantage of the ketones because their glucose is still too high. Ketosis doesn't work for everyone. Let me tell you, when you do an extended fast, your body will use the ketones because it has to, to live. After about three days, the body adapts to using these ketones. Now, your brain is going [Non-verbal]. Why is this important? Because ketones fix things. Ketones turn off bad genes. Ketones downregulate cell inflammation. Ketones fix the brain. That's why they're linked to so many things from Parkinson's to all the neurodegenerative conditions. Ketones are known to even change your microbiome. There's a lot of magic to these ketones. When you're fasting, you drive ketones up dramatically. Not only do you drive them up, but your body's forced to use them and get the benefits from them. That's the third benefit: ketones.
Warren Phillips:
There's a lot of buildup around ketosis. People are staying in it for a year. They're taking exogenous ketones. What I know that what you teach, Dr. Pompa, is diet variation, which is much different than staying in ketosis. I was talking to someone the other day, a health influencer. She says, “Oh, Dr. Pompa, he's just into ketosis.” I'm like, “It's quite the opposite. Dr. Pompa is into diet variation, and he would recommend not staying in ketosis, or even most times taking exogenous ketones unless it's specific for some reason that you need to take them. We're not the ketosis guys. He's the diet variation guy doing what the body would naturally do to produce ketones, what the body would naturally do to create autophagy and stem cell multiplication in your body for healing. Let's address that ketosis issue because we're talking about ketosis and getting into it. Then yes, it can be the launching pad into ketosis if you want to stay in for a couple weeks or a month possibly. I'm not the expert in it. How long would you want to stay in ketosis? I guess it depends on what your outcome, what you need.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. The key is sometimes people can benefit for months on end, but eventually, it will start to work against you. Look, when you're in ketosis, you have low insulin, which is very good; however, low insulin chronic for a long time, you start to get very low insulin and it creates gluconeogenesis. Your body will actually start to use its muscle for energy. We can start to see a catabolic effect happening in the musculature. Your body will actually start to store its fat. It will find clever ways hormonally to hold onto fat. Why? Because it knows it's its only source of fuel, so it becomes more efficient at it, so the fat burning slows down. When you see people who have been in ketosis for a long time, they typically start to look catabolic, and they start to get fat around their belly. Again, the key is varying the diet, throwing you in and out of ketosis. By the way, every ancient culture on the planet, nobody stayed in ketosis. Even the Eskimos, the moment they had carbs they came out of ketosis. We can look at that, and emulate that, and move in and out of the state, and benefit from ketones periodically. By the way, the same with fasting. Part of my diet variation concept is what I call feast/famine cycling where we feast, we famine. Maybe it's a day, like me, I haven't eaten yet. I'm going 40 some hours without food. Then I'm going to feast. Then I'm going to famine. Then I'm going to feast. We do it weekly, monthly, seasonally. The key is this: it forces adaptation which creates a hormone optimization, which is the natural way to anti-age and anti-inflame.
Anyways, ketones are great, but we don't want to stay in the state. We want to benefit from ketones. When we take these five-day fasts, water fasts, or even a day water fast, we are now not only producing higher ketones that create healing, but we're utilizing them more. A lot of people go, my ketones are up but I don't feel better. It's because your brain and cells aren't used to using them yet. During a fast, you're forcing your body to use them, so it's even more powerful than being in ketosis.
Warren Phillips:
We've got to move onto number four. The benefits of ketosis changing genetic expression, turning off bad genes, turning good ones on, it does that, brain function because it's brain food, healing? Does ketones heal with muscles and joints?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely because it reduces inflammation and it even upregulates stem cells. That's why people who have trouble burning fat as an energy source, they're not making ketones because ketones are byproduct of breaking fat down. They lose this healing ability of these ketones. That's the benefit.
Alright, number four. Let's jump into number four, which is probably going to be your favorite; it's definitely one of mine. This is really needed. Hormone optimization occurs during fasting.
Warren Phillips:
I thought it was going to be looking sexy. I thought number four—
Dr. Pompa:
That is one of the benefits.
Warren Phillips:
That one really resonated with me because—
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, we can put that one in parenthesis: hormone optimization (looking sexy). Yeah, because this is how you stay lean in your 50's, and 60's, and 70's honestly, hormone optimization. Alright, I won't hit you with too much heavy science, but know this: day one of a fast, growth hormones start to rise up. Why? Because your body wants to maintain its good tissue, maintain its muscle. It doesn't want to burn that. We talked about that in autophagy. By day four and five, now we have this massive surge, 12 times higher growth hormone levels. Here's the key, too: your cells become very sensitive to your hormones; very important. You get perfect insulin levels. Again, you want to age slower than anybody? Keep your insulin and glucose steady. That's hormone optimization. Your cells become more sensitive to your estrogen, your testosterone, your thyroid hormone. That means you don't need as much and you get better benefit from your hormones. You optimize your hormones, which optimizes your weight loss, which optimizes your brain function, which optimizes your sex life, which optimizes your healing because it puts you in anabolic state, which actually helps you heal.
A lot of bodybuilders now because they want to gain muscle, they're fasting for 18 hours or 20 hours, and they're eating in a window. Now, granted, they eat a lot of calories in that window to stimulate a growth factor. The fact is, they take advantage of the fast to raise their growth hormone up, get their cells hearing testosterone better. They improve their recovery and their hormone optimization; therefore, they actually gain muscle and stay lean. I'm just using that as an example. This is for someone who wants to lose weight. This is for someone who wants to just live longer healthy, feel better, but it's also for the person who wants to maintain their muscle. Hormone optimization is why fasting actually works for all of those things that I just mentioned.
Warren Phillips:
That's pretty amazing. Some many folks focus on I have a thyroid issue, I have an adrenal issue, I have a kidney issue, I have a pancreas issue. You have a hormone sensitivity issue more than these things. We say adrenal fatigue, but they're finding in science now it isn't adrenal fatigue; your adrenals are strong and robust. It's just your body's ability when it's producing cortisol or however that works, it's not being utilized. It's almost like glucose is not being utilized, and insulin, and all these hormones. Hormone optimization, it's not typically your organ that's broken; it's typically the cells and the sensitivity to those hormones. Fasting benefits from that. I know toxins are a big part of that as well, but fasting I hear would be the way to beat it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I showed study after study on this, even with insulin and other hormones, thyroid hormone. They key isn't giving more hormones. They key is getting your cells to hear the hormones better. Fasting does that. Even beyond the fast, hormone sensitivity remains. That's why each fast, your cells get a little more sensitive, a little more sensitive. Again, it's in vogue right now giving hormones, but everybody should really be paying attention to how to optimize their hormones; therefore, getting your cells to hear your hormones. Hormone optimization's huge.
Number five, this one's a really cool one as well. I come up with these terms, but it's called energy deviation. I should maybe call it energy optimization.
Warren Phillips:
I like both.
Dr. Pompa:
I like both, too.
Warren Phillips:
You know though.
Dr. Pompa:
Energy deviation is really the description of what happens during our fast. You have no idea, folks, how much energy it takes to metabolize food. You think, okay, I'm eating it. Okay, obviously, there's some energy output eating it. Then it's digesting it; massive energy. Then it's assimilating it, which is actually the greatest amount of energy. Then what happens at the cell. Now, you're taking that energy and you're driving all of these processes from glycolysis to the Krebs cycle; massive ATP use, massive energy. The more energy you burn or use, the more pollution you create. Therefore, we're demanding the body to downregulate that inflammation and oxidative stress. We're demanding the body's massive energy output to digest and assimilate food; it's part of life. Here's the point: when we stop eating, the body goes what a minute. What am I going to do with all this energy? It's like when you're on vacation, you have all this time. It's like, what am I going to do with all this time and energy. Guess what it does? It doesn't sit back on the beach and drink a margarita. Not your innate intelligence, nope; it says I'm going to put that energy to healing. It's energy deviation, so it deviates the energy from all of that to this healing. It's really cool. Honestly, it's another reason the miracles happen. When you take that innate intelligent, the energy it was requiring to do all this, and it diverts it over here, it's brilliant; absolutely brilliant.
Warren Phillips:
It's basic science, and chemistry, and physics because when you stop moving energy to one thing that you really don't need, you become efficient in energy equalization. The energy has to go somewhere and your body is so smart. This is why dogs fast. When people are sick, your body's telling you don't eat because it wants to go into healing. I hope this is starting—it's making more—I'm skipping dinner tonight now. You got me all excited.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that happens. That's one of the reasons why I found it upon some studies on just intermittent fasting. I have a saying. It's: “Don't eat less; eat less often.” When we look at the studies and we thought, oh, eating less is the key to living longer; it is, but you less by eating less often. Not eating throughout the day, your body just uses that energy for better processes of healing. It's diverting the energy really. Maybe it's energy diversion instead of deviation, but either way I guess; I don't know.
Warren Phillips:
I like energy diversion. We'll nail this out. We'll talk about this off camera.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, I'm writing a book. Matter of fact, you should see, this morning from 6 AM, I started sending myself—I probably sent myself 12 studies on how stem cells via fasting creates all this healing in your body. I sent myself three on just cancer alone and how they're learning this. I'm telling you, man, we're onto something miraculous. Number six, it restarts the gut microbiome.
Warren Phillips:
Wow, that's a big one.
Dr. Pompa:
It is a big one because we know that studies are showing—look, the microbiome today is why we have all this increase in a lot of different disease. Even how your brain works is controlled by these bacteria. How do we fix it? Most of you watching this have been on a probiotic at one point or on a probiotic now. Is that the answer? At my seminar, I asked the doctors, “How successful is probiotics been for your patients?” “Not very.” Matter of fact, when people stay on a probiotic for a long time, you create monocultures. How do we fix this microbiome? Look, there's more research around fasting and resetting the microbiome even than giving people probiotics. Fasting is a way to reset your microbiome. I'm telling you, magic happens. You're resting the digestion, too. Now, the inflammation that's creating a lot of your gut problems is downregulated because you're not using it.
It's simple science here, folks. You're also resetting those bacteria. Then when we come out of the fast, we start to create new bacteria just like cells. The body starts raising up the good ones. Oh, and when you fast, think about it this way. Look, you have bad guys and you have good guys. When you have more bad guys then good guys, we call that dysbiosis; it's not good. Everyone's trying to give more good guys to try to deal with the bad guys. That doesn't work to well. If we starve down all bacteria, and that's basically what happens in a fast, all your bacteria drop. Then after the fast, we reinoculate. You see what just happened there? That's how you fix the microbiome. Anyways, it resets it. You can fix the dysbiosis. All kinds of pluses there, Warren.
Warren Phillips:
This is huge. This is an area that I love, and we've been doing for four or five years even before it became, again, sexy to do the reinoculation of the gut. We were doing people transplants back in the day. We were doing the fasting. We were doing killers and killing down the bad bacteria. It was neat that when I did—a lot of our doctors have done this. They will do the Viome Test. Where you can get that: getviome, V-I, G-E-T, get, V-I-O-M-E, viome.com. I did the test and a lot of these doctors are doing the test. Then they're fasting, reinoculating, and they're completely changing their whole gut culture when they're missing the Bacteroides, which you need for weight loss, or they're overrun with viruses, or parasites, or whatever it is. It completely resets their microbiome, and they become massive healthy. We used to do this without having the testing, but we would see the benefits. I remember when I did my first fast, I fasted and then I reinoculated. I did that one actually—now again, we can't recommend you do any of this. This isn't approved for anyone to do, but I did it for myself back in the day. I won't say where I got it, but I did microbiome transplant. You can't even do that with a doctor. That has to be—you don't want crazy bacteria or someone else—you literally can change who you are in some respects. The first time I did it, I didn't get any benefit because I messed it up or I killed the bacteria in the process. When I actually encapsulated it, and then took it after the fast, and I had this huge shift in my health. I had this huge shift in my—I actually got sick for a day, just down and fatigued as my microbiome reset. Some of those things are going to happen after you do a fast and then you add all these good bacteria from—I know Systemic Formulas has a product, NBC, Microbiome Colonizer, where you get die off and fatigue when you do that reset after a fast and then reinoculation.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, typically you have so much die off during the fast that you don't get a lot when you reinoculated because—
Warren Phillips:
Which is way better than what I did.
Dr. Pompa:
Exactly right. You tend to just—a lot of the bad guys are so low, they've already been dying off. You actually just seem to get the benefit. We actually notice less symptoms. I have to tell you that this is after I was sitting in the scientists who spoke at our seminar about the hydrogen. He was talking about the hydrogen's effect on the microbiome. Probably another reason why the Fast Tonic actually works so well during a fast too because it's going to have a massive positive effect in your microbiome as well. Just thought about that as I was sitting in the seminar then. Just here, we're revisiting it.
Alright, last one; let's get to number seven. This is another big reset. It resets your DNA. There's multiple reasons why fasting resets your DNA. Part of it's just the adaptation. Look, I talk a lot about the reason you don't feel well, the reason you may have a condition that you've done all these amazing things for and it's still not right. You have certain genes that are turned on. There's a gap in the science world, in the treatment world. Scientists know we can reset, turn off bad genes and turn on good ones. Again, there's a gap here because treating doctors don't focus on this. Fasting is one of the most researched things to understand, researched therapies if you will, to understand how this happens is called epigenetics. During fasts, especially extended fasts, we get a downregulation of these bad genes that have been turned on. I think the science has to catch up. I believe that autophagy and the stem cells most likely have a lot to do with that. Ketone production, the high ketones as I said also has a lot to do with why we get this offset. The microbiome changing has a lot to do with why we get a downregulation of bad genes. The bottom line, I just named four things. When you look at this—the hormone optimization is probably one of them. When we look at all the benefits of fasting, the achievements, well guess what? We could look at it and say no wonder bad genes get turned off and good ones actually get turned on. There’s one called the SIRT1 gene. It's the longevity gene. With each fast, you're extending your life literally. It's a lot to do with turning on that gene. Again, there's genes that are turned on because of toxic, stressful living that shorten your life and cause inflammation and disease. Fasting actually turns it off.
I was just reading a study last night actually because I'm writing this book, so I'm all about reading studies right now. It talked about the neuroprotective effects of fasting. Here's a pretty cool thing. They took two groups of mice. They gave the mice five times the amount of chemotherapy that would kill mice. They made it equivalent to what they would give a human to kill a human. Okay, so you can see the purpose was to kill the mice. The two groups of mice fed the same, everything the same, except one group was fasting. The other group was eating its normal diet. After a period of time, the call was made to the scientist because he wasn't there to hear. His colleagues were making fun of him that this might work. Guess what? They said, “All of the rats are dead?” “In both groups?” “Nope, just one group.” “Which group?” The fasting group, 100% of the mice lived despite five times the amount of chemo. The group that was just eating normally, 100% of them died. That's the neuroprotective effects of fasting. Yes, your body is releasing toxins, but in a fasting state, if the mouse can deal with five times the amount of something as toxic as chemo that should have killed them, and 100% of the fasting group lived, that says something; really cool.
Warren Phillips:
If that doesn't convince us that we all need to fast, then I don't know what. Anti-aging, anti-everything that we mentioned on this show today, and then you don't have to spend money on stem cell injections, which some people do, not a problem go and do that. We do the anti-aging, we're doing the Meyer's cocktails, we're getting all these injections. We do these things as well. Dr. Pompa, we've been Facebook lives. I've been to those clinics; they're great. All of those benefits, they're nothing like when you put the work in.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, no doubt.
Warren Phillips:
Do it with team; do it with people. I do it here with my community. I do it with the Fasting for a Purpose closed group. We're going to do it with our Million Person Fast coming up. We're going to do that later in the year, but we have the other one coming up in June. Man, I'm inspired.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, listen, fast for spiritual reasons. My wife and I fasted, our children, one of our sons, and transformed; I'm telling you. You want to hear from God, you want to get a prayer answered, fasting. It's not my opinion; look, every religious group on the planet fasts. There's something here. The focus that you gain, that energy that I talked about that really gets shifted over towards healing, well it shifts over to your brain too because you gain incredible focus and insight. There's a lot here. Look, if this doesn't motivate you to fast, then we'll end here; nothing will. Thomas Seyfried said, look, a five to seven day fast one time a year, he believes looking at all his cancer research that he's been doing, decreases your risk of cancer 95% he believes, just one fast. Imagine if you fasted twice. That's the incredible part. Look, every ancient culture was forced in times of fasting. I believe in doing it weekly, daily, monthly, yearly, whatever it is, but fast. I'm telling you, whether it's a partial fast, even restricted calories just for so many days, whatever it is, a broth fast, but I believe water fasting is the most powerful. You fast and watch what happens to your life. You put that will cellular detox, look out. Your life's going to change; hold on. Remember, each fast you heal.
Warren Phillips:
The cool thing about fasting is that the experts saying it, it's the science saying it. This isn’t something you can't touch, taste, or feel, or wrap your head around. It's super clear what happens in your life; it's so transformative. Looking forward to fasting with all of you. Look, I've been fasting even though my beard got a little more grayer since the last time. It's kept me alive. I would have been dead without it. I wouldn't have been able to do this show today like we started the show away. Full circle, fasting has transformed my life and I'm so thankful for Cellular Healing TV and the lives that are transformed. Thank you, Dr. Pompa. Honor and privilege to interview you today. Cellular Healing TV, and because I love this mission and you do as well, go to iTunes. The way we're going to get this—we're not a top iTunes show yet and the reason why we’ve never ask our viewers of anything really. We just do—
Dr. Pompa:
An improve.
Warren Phillips:
We get this interview set up. Go to iTunes. Give us a high rating, a five-star rating. I'm not even sure; we don't even focus on that stuff from the internet marketing standpoint.
Dr. Pompa:
I don't even know what that means.
Warren Phillips:
Yeah, we've never talked about it on the show before. Go to iTunes, give us the highest rating, whatever that is. Share it with your friends. Give us great feedback and comments. That will increase or ratings, increase our impact. Share this show with your friends. We love you. We appreciate you on this mission with us. You are a tribe of world changers. I know that about you from being on this journey with you along the way. Thank you so much.
Dr. Pompa:
World needs it.
