Transcript of Episode 24: The Truth About Gluten and Casein
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and David Asarnow.
David: We are live. Everyone, welcome to episode 24 of Cellular Healing TV. This is David Asarnow. Today, I am joined with Dr. Pompa. Welcome, Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa: Thank you. Yeah, you're at the seminar that I will be joining you in probably a couple hours.
David: Yes, we've got over 100 health practitioners joining us this weekend here in Salt Lake City, don't we?
Dr. Pompa: We do. I'm excited to teach them. I'm excited to be there.
-Cross Talk- David: This week we're going to talk about another 180° difference. Something that you live, something we talked about, something that – I guess maybe we'll even talk about your future book that you're going to be launching, that you're working on right now. Most of our listeners have heard about gluten. In fact, when I was growing up, we never heard about gluten issues. Dr. Pompa, is this a fad, or is this for real?
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. It's amazing, because I had a conversation recently with somebody. They basically were stating that “This gluten thing, there's many people that don't believe in it.” My gosh. When I heard that, I was like, “Really? That's still on the street?” He's in dental school, so he's hearing this from a lot of his professors, that the gluten thing is a bunch of bunk. I said, “First of all, to deny gluten allergy is like denying the sun in the sky.” I think the better question is all of a sudden, why do we have this problem, right? Where did this come from? David, I think that there is a lot of myths and bunk and hype around the gluten problem. I think what we're finding out is it's like some of these things like bad fats and artificial sweeteners and low fat. It becomes a very slick marketing tool, but oftentimes, the product that they're marketing is more unhealthy. There's a lot of myths around gluten, and hopefully, we can clarify that today. The fact is, is just answer the question is yes. Are gluten allergies real? You better believe that they are. Do they happen in everybody? No, there's a reason. There is a lot of false stuff around this topic, and we need to clarify it.
David: What's changed between growing up in the 70's and what we're experiencing today is so prevalent.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, because David, at your age, do you remember anybody having a gluten problem?
David: I don't. I don't when I was a kid.
Dr. Pompa: You remember everyone having a peanut allergy.
David: I don't, actually.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. Today you can't – if you bring peanuts in a school, it's like having a bomb, right? Problems are going to happen. Gluten, what the heck is going on with gluten, right? It's gluten-free this and gluten-free that. This is in vogue, man. You're pretty cool today if you have gluten-free products, right? Five years ago, two years ago, you were definitely – you're gluten-free, what? You were a nerd in school if you had a gluten-free product. Now today you're cool, man. You're in the in-group.
David: Are these healthy, these gluten-free products? Are they healthy for you?
Dr. Pompa: Ah, yeah. The answer to that is probably 98% of them are not healthy for you. I know that we've got some of our listeners' attention at this point. Before we get there and answer the question why, so you can definitely ask me why is that, let's talk about why gluten all or a sudden is a problem. Look, we've talked about GMO, we've talked about genetically modified organisms, but even before that – that started happening in the 90's and the 2000's. In the 70's and even maybe as early as the late 60's, we started hybridizing grains. We started changing them by hitting them with gamma rays and different things, and altering the DNA that way. GMO is taking one gene, putting it in something, and giving it a specific function by putting it in one little gene. It gives it that new function. Hybridization is a little different than that. We're just crossbreeding different plants, and therefore changing things, right? We took something called – as a matter of fact, it was a brilliant guy who won a Nobel Prize called Norman Borlaug. He created a wheat, a different wheat, called dwarf wheat. Why would he do that? His goal was noble. His goal was very good. He said one of the problems with world hunger is wheat, if we could just make it more available and easier to harvest. It's so hard to harvest, it's very difficult, and it's very susceptible to drought and environmental conditions, even wind. The original wheat, which was called Einkorn and Emmer, they were 4-6 feet tall. These are wheats that have been around for a long time. They're hard to harvest, and they're definitely affected by the environment pretty easy. He created something called dwarf wheat, through this hybridization and crossbreeding process. Norman probably deserves his Nobel Prize. He's definitely made an impact in world hunger. However, Norman, good old Norman, created a new problem, and that would be world obesity. He definitely created a part of that problem as well – not all of it, can't blame it all on Norman. These new breeds of wheat – and now we have a problem with many different grains, right? They're higher in a sugar called amylopectin which is a super sugar. It raises blood glucose more than table sugar. Yes, eating your grains raises your glucose more than table sugar – direct, right into the mouth, white sugar. Yes, grains are super sugars. Wheat is a very, very super sugar which raises glucose. The other problem was, is Norman created at least 14 different strains of a protein, called gluten, that our bodies never saw before. Norman then created something very different to our immune systems. Why isn't everybody affected when they eat wheat or other grains? It's because people who have leaky gut, where things can go through the gut and leak directly into our bloodstream, these proteins are very small, and they leak across that gut. Not everybody has a leaky gut, and when they do, it starts to drive your immune system to create antibodies against this gluten. Then the next time you eat it, hours later, even a day later, you're driving inflammation in your body, and you wonder what's going on and why you have headaches and joint pain and autoimmune, where your body's attacking itself. Yes, it's even linked to thyroid. The conditions go on When you take gluten out of these people's diet, their condition gets 80% better. We have an epidemic of Celiac Disease, Crohn's Disease, inflammatory gut disease, a lot of it, which is being caused by gluten. In our past show, David, we talked about glyphosate. That's the chemical that so many people are ingesting from the foods that they're eating, right? We know glyphosate is one of the leading problems with causing leaky gut. Now they're ingesting this foreign protein, this new protein that we never grew up on. Our kids are growing up on it. If they have leaky gut because they eat conventional food, eating glyphosate, which most do have a leaky gut, then they developed antibodies to gluten. Are gluten-free products good? Potentially. Yeah, taking gluten out of your diet, for so many people today, especially younger people, this is a major, major help to them. They have massive allergy to this protein that we never grew up on, David. It's not the grains. It's what man has done to the grains that becomes really the bigger issue.
David: Even if it's gluten-free, and even if it's organic, it could potentially still spike sugar.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I guess that brings me right into that question that you had, “What about these gluten-free products? What about them?” They're using things like tapioca flowers, cornstarch – the list goes on, right? All these replacements are even more super sugars than the amylopectin that's in the grain. Yeah, these things become these worse-than-white-bread glucose risers. We know that that white bread raises glucose more than table sugar. Look, yeah, the sugar problem in America is more due to grains that it is table sugar, but the key is, is that these gluten-free products are loaded with things that drive up glucose. They're making us fat. Yes, they don't have gluten, but there's multiple other problems. It's driving inflammation. Most of these products are loaded with bad stuff. The gluten-free thing's in vogue. You want to sell a product, put gluten-free, still low fat or non-fat, that still sells produts, and no trans fats. All these things sell products, but that doesn't make the product healthy, David, natural, right? Remember the day when if you put on there “all natural,” you would sell a product. It still works. Just because a product says “all natural” doesn't make it healthy at all.
David: It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Dr. Pompa: Corn syrup, they say that's all natural.
David: We wonder why kids these days are having attention challenges in school, and we look at what do most people start their day with. It's grains.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, they raise glucose, right out of the gate. They raise glucose, and then it comes down. They raise glucose, and then it comes down. they raise glucose and then it comes down. Inflammation, inflammation, inflammation, triggering genes. We all sit here as an expression of our DNA, whether it's good or bad. Every time you raise glucose and drive inflammation, you're affecting that DNA, you're turning on bad genes, turning off good genes, taking years off your life. These gluten-free products, yeah they're gluten-free. Again, it opens up a whole other Pandora's Box of problems. The key is, eating grain-free, for most people, is a must. If you're really healthy, can you have grain in your diet? Yeah, I believe you can. Your genetics will determine how much you can get away with, before you start getting fat and lack that energy. Very healthy people can get away with certain grains, which I call ancient grains, grains that haven't been through this hybridization process. The grains that haven't been genetically modified, grains that haven't been bred to be super sugars. Listen, folks, the whole grain that you're eating, you're whole grain bagel, these are not the grains that I'm talking about. Remember, Uncle David said it best. Two pieces of whole grain bread in the morning, toast, or your whole grain bagel that you ate this morning, raises glucose more than a 12 oz. soda. Whole grain – not the key. When we talk about ancient grains, we're talking about things like quinoa, amaranth – most grains that people haven't heard of. I would even say wild rice. Rice is even being genetically modified, so we have to be careful there. Again, a lot of these more ancient type of grains are definitely better options. Again, most people today, they can handle very little grain in the diet. Once we get above 20% of our caloric intake being grain – by the way, that's most people listening, right? We start to see conditions and diseases. Humans just aren't meant to eat the amount of grain, period, that we eat. We're ignoring fats and quality proteins and quality fibers and even quality carbohydrates like vegetables because of our grain addiction. In this country, where 50%, 60% of our calories from grain, which is driving obesity, even all the whole grains everybody's eating. It's driving conditions like arthritis, it's driving autoimmune, it's driving allergies. Then of course now we're in the GMO world. Where does it end, David? If you want to get healthy, start taking grain out of your diet. That's where it starts.
David: The challenge most people have is, it's almost like there's an addiction there.
Dr. Pompa: There is, because things that raise glucose create addictions. Matter of fact, gluten is an addictive thing. We talked the damages of gluten driving inflammation. We know gluten actually affects the same part of the brain called opiate receptors. They create every addiction that we know of. Gluten becomes addictive, especially when it's leaking across your gut, directly into your bloodstream. This is a massive addiction. Grains are addictive for multiple reasons. I know, when people are eating things like rice and oatmeal and non-gluten grains, alright. It's better. You definitely don't want someone who's sensitive to gluten even touching it. Once your immune system reacts to it, even something cooked in the same oven – so you get a gluten-free pizza that was cooked in the same oven as a product with gluten on it. Guess what? Most kids that are gluten-sensitive react to that. They're gluten-free, and all of a sudden they're having episodes of inflammation and ADD and they're wondering why. Their gluten-free pizza got gluten on it from the pizza that was cooked there before. That's how crazy these allergies are to this protein. That's how crazy the immune system can drive the inflammation and all the symptoms. This is a huge problem, David, listen. Eating a lot of grains today, and this is one of the problems why I hate grain, right, is we have other problems besides gluten. There's other proteins that we're identifying that are just as problematic, arguably more, and we'll talk about one in another product. There's things like lectins and phytates and all these anti-nutrients that become very inflammatory for people who have leaky gut. That's why taking grains out of someone's diet, period, is very important to someone who's already challenged. We can't have any exposure, because it could drive inflammation.
David: You just mentioned something else, and I've heard you say that casein and beta A1 casein – is it that one that can be more toxic than gluten?
Dr. Pompa: Yeah. Yes, and you've heard of casein, gluten-free diets. Casein is a protein that's in dairy. I guess another great question would be, what happened to dairy, right?
David: Yeah, seriously. What happened from the time – what's the difference in why over in some developing countries, they don't have problems – let's look at India, and here in the United States. What's the difference between the cows? Isn't a cow a cow?
Dr. Pompa: No. When we say why is dairy, it causes all these mucus problems, “I can't eat dairy,” why all these people can't eat dairy all of a sudden. What happened? For thousands of years, people consumed dairy successfully, as a mainstay. Considered the strongest, healthiest group in the world, this group called the Masai Tribe in Africa, they live off of it, right? What's going on? Is it the dairy or what man has done to it? Is it the grain, or is it what man has done to it, right? It's what man has done to it that's made it so bad. We genetically alter a cow to get it to produce more milk. In that process, we were successful, just like Norman was in feeding more of the population. His dwarf wheat was very successful. In that process, we created a damaged or de-natured protein in milk. Ancient cow, the one that's in India and South Africa still, not in this country, produces something called A2 casein, or beta A2 casein. 99% of the dairy in the United States has a protein called A1 beta casein, which is an altered protein that comes from what we did to the cow to get it to produce more milk. In that process, we've de-natured another protein. It's a seven-chain amino acid called BCM7 that people that have leaky gut, once again, goes across the gut and drives immune reactions. It can be ten times worse than gluten. Yeah, it's what man has created these proteins. Again, it's not dairy. Dairy is really caught the bad rap. It's what man has done to it. When you get dairy that's – we've talked, in the past, about Beyond Organic. Jordan has 9,000 acres, and they've genetically bred back the cow not to have this protein. Now we can get something that – I believe cheese, for example, is one of the healthiest foods on the planet, period. Why? I would say it's even more of an important food today than ever, because cheese really has, and makes up a lot of the deficiencies, that most Americans have. We talked last week about the five vitamin deficiencies, right? Cheese literally has most of those things. Oh my gosh, my battery power's going. I have nine percent. I think we can make it. I might have to run downstairs and get my plug. Cheese, thin about this. Cheese takes in the sun – cheese takes in the sun. The grass the cows eat take in the sun, and it has all these nutrients in it because of the sun, and all the good bacteria's in the soil. The cows eat the grass, and then it comes out into the milk. Cheese is literally this little ecosystem of nutrients that occur at that time, with the sun and the weather, etcetera, loaded with fat soluble vitamins like Vitamin D, like Vitamin K2, which we said are the two greatest deficiencies. Loaded with fats like saturated fats and cholesterol, which we say are the number one fats people need today The perfect ratio, because the cows eat the grass, of Omega 6 and Omega 3. That's what we need to fix the cells well. It has all these amazing nutrients in it, but if you're eating a cow that has beta 1 casein, genetically altered, screws up the whole thing. If we have a cow that eats grain instead of grass, now we've made a product that causes disease. Instead of being the healthiest food you can consume, now it becomes one of the most poisonous. 180°, David. It's 180°! Once again, man takes the most precious food – oh, why is cheese oh, I forgot the number one thing, David. What else does cheese have? This is a massive holding tank for unique bacteria you could never get in a pill or powder, so that's the other epidemic, right, is humans are losing this bacteria that we need for our cells to work, our hormones to work, our immune systems to work. We talked about that on past shows. Cheese represents all these things, so we messed it up. It's 180° opposite. Isn't that the way the enemy works? One of the most healthiest foods that humans can it – and it travels well! You can take cheese with you anywhere! I take it everywhere I go. It's perfect protein.
David: Where do you get the perfect protein that has the beta A2 casein? Where do you get the good cheese? Where do you get this? Can you go to Whole Foods and just get it?
Dr. Pompa: Some. Here's the thing. Goat milk and sheep has not been changed. It's still A2 beta casein, which is the good one, right? It hasn't been changed to the A1, so you're always good there. Raw is always better. Raw has all the enzymes still there. They're not killed by the heat, all the good bacterias. Yes, you can get it in your grocery store. Cow is where the challenge is. I said 99% of dairy. Cow dairy, I should've been more clear, is A1 casein. That's where Beyond Organic comes in. You look at my freezer out there, I have all this Beyond Organic cheese and products, because all of Beyond Organic's cow products are A2 casein. They're from ancient cows that have been genetically bred back to not have A1 casein. That's the issue.
David: Here's a question for you. We've got a lot of these digestive issues going on. We talked about grains. We talked about casein. Are probiotics the answer?
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, that's a great question. Probiotics have really become in vogue, like gluten, right? Again, ten years ago, no one knew what the word probiotic was, just like five years ago, no one knew what the word gluten was. It's been in vogue. Listen, we have thousands of bacteria in our gut. We're discovering more monthly, probably. Even more important discoveries is we're discovering how these bacteria in our gut are interacting with our hormones, our cells, our immune system. When we lack certain bacteria, we can't control our immune system, and we end up in autoimmune. When we lack certain bacteria, we can't even make certain immune cells. When we lack certain bacteria, we become very sensitive to different things in foods, and we can't even control our hormones, right? We know that the relationship between these bacteria is how we get so much function. They literally communicate with our cells and our DNA, and they give that cell function it would never have had. In the Human Microbiome Project, we started realizing this connection, so amazing stuff. The pill that people take – there's maybe 5-10 bacteria strains, the most common ones. What about the other 1,000? What about so many of those? It's not there. I'm a believer in fermented foods. I talk about my three F's of how to fix the gut, fermentation, fasting intermittently like we do fixes guts, and oftentimes, we need even fetal microbial transplant, where you take bacteria from another human and oftentimes, need to transplant it. That's become very popular, even in mainstream hospitals today. Getting unique bacteria back in the gut is critical today. It will not happen from a pill, a probiotic. Again, am I against probiotics? No, I'm not. It can benefit many people, but it's very limited on its scope. We need to get these unique bacteria. That's why ingesting these products like the cheese I was talking about, or a product like Amasai or some of these products that Beyond Organic‘s created, it's very important. Even fermented vegetables, David, carry different bacteria. Fermentation has gone out of vogue when refrigeration became popular. We used to have to ferment products to keep them from spoiling, right? We don't do that anymore. We're really missing a lot of bacteria. People are eating products that have been sprayed, killing bacteria that we used to eat on, get from fruits and vegetables, eating these things. We don't get that today. Even when we do, we wash it all off, typically, and so we become void in bacteria, not to mention the hygiene thing. Everyone's slathering themselves in antibacterial soaps, antibacterial everything. What we've done is we've altered what is called the microbiome. We have a microbiome on our skin. Healthy people have all these very unique variety of bacteria on our skin, which protects us. When we kill that by using these soaps constantly, now it allows the bad guys to accumulate there, you see. Antibacterial soaps, they're actually a culprit in causing more disease, ultimately. Oh, and the antibiotics we take have become very popular. We're wiping out our good bacteria, and now these bad guys are able to come in following the antibiotics and take over. We live in a world, right now, that is afraid of microbes. The media has caused it. Still causing it. Yet the microbes – healthy people are just slathered in microorganisms, bacteria. Matter of fact, what we know now is when we swab healthy people in here or out here, they have a host of varieties of bacteria. Unhealthy people have less variety and less microbes. Here's one, David. Obese people, or let's talk even just mice, for a fun thing. Their gut, if we analyze their bacteria in their gut, they have less of a variety of microbes in their gut. The skinny mice have a great variety. When we put these two mice together in the same cage, it's interesting, because mice, they eat their own poo, right? They eat their own waste. That's what they do. The fat ones are eating the skinny ones, the skinny ones are eating the fat ones. The question was, how will it affect the mice? What happened was the fat mice, when you put them in with skinny mice, they become skinny. Separated, they were eating the same diet, so you think well, it's the same diet. No, no, no, we're talking about the same diet. Genes are turned on in these mice and they're fat. We put them together. What happens is that fat ones are eating the poo of the skinny ones, they become skinny. Why didn't the skinny one become fat? Their variety of microbiome had the positive effect on the non-variety of organisms of the fat mice. The point is, is the greater variety of microbes you have, the healthier you are, the skinnier you are. Killing off microbes, whether it's antibiotics or antibacterial soaps, 180° philosophy is that they're causing disease. We need more bugs. We need to be playing in the dirt. Our kids need to be dirtier. Our kids need to play in the dirt like we did as a kid. Our kids need to eat dirty things with soil. Again, you can't eat soil sprayed with glyphosate. Organic soils, gardens, eating the bacteria and being exposed to the bacteria. We know that kids that live on farms around animals and exposed to different parasites and more bacteria, they're healthier, with less autoimmune and less challenges. We know this, yet it's not making it into the media.
David: Most people think it's just the low fat, low carb diets all by themselves are going to lose weight, and the true answer of how to get well, how to heal yourself, how to get your life back, how to lose weight, is 180 ° from what most people are talking about.
Dr. Pompa: Expose yourself to more microbes. What you put in here and what you are exposed to even outside.
David: Play in the dirt.
Dr. Pompa: Play in the dirt. Hug and play with animals. I don't know. We could go on with that. Don't shower! That's where I was going with that. I'm kidding.
David: I sure hope you are. We'll see you in a little bit.
Dr. Pompa: There's a truth to washing your hands. Washing your hands is a good thing, but with antibacterial products? Bad. Regular soap and water is a different animal. It doesn't kill those good bacteria, right? It's a completely different thing. It's the antibacterial products that wipe out all bacteria, good and bad, and that's bad.
David: Oh, we got you back. We lost you for a second. This was a fun-filled, informative episode. Is there anything that you would like to leave our viewers and listeners with today?
Dr. Pompa: I always say this, David. If everyone's making a left, you might consider making a right. If everyone's making a right, you might want to consider making a left, meaning that if everybody's starting to go buy all these gluten-free products, right, you might want to make a left. It seems like if the masses go this way, then uh-oh, something might be wrong. The masses seem like they're just buying all these gluten-free products, you might want to make a left. Typically, if the masses are going in that direction, there's probably suspicion and there's a problem. Yeah, so be cautious that gluten-free products can be oftentimes more dangerous, more inflammatory, and glucose-risers. Yes, is gluten potentially bad? Yeah, it is, but be cautious of the accepted media products.
David: Dr. Pompa, thank you, as always. Next week, we'll be back with our co-host Warren Philips. Dr. Pompa, thank you for everything. I'll see you in about an hour or so. Everyone, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Cellular Healing TV. If you want more information, go to www.DrPompa.com, www.DrPompa.com. Check out Dr. Pompa's brand new website. His new categorization, how he puts his articles out there, much easier to find and search. Dr. Pompa, thank you. Everyone, create yourself and have an awesome weekend. Thank you.
Dr. Pompa: Thank you, David.
