This episode welcomes Ian Hart. Ian is here to talk about his own pain to purpose story – going from a peak condition top of the world athlete to his health spiraling out of control. When no healthcare professional could tell him what was wrong, Ian made a choice to heal himself and he’s here to share his story about how he ditched his expensive medications and began a natural-healing journey that finally gave him control over his health.
In his book Healing Hacks, Ian unveils his step-by-step system for sparking the healing mechanisms in your body. And he will outline those hacks here today.
More about Ian Hart:
Ian Hart is a fitness expert who has dedicated his life and his career to helping others heal naturally. He’s the owner of Back Pain Relief4Life—the simplest and most effective way to eliminate back pain naturally and fast—and the co-founder of My Back Pain Coach. He also owns and operates EarthFIT, a top-rated group training facility with three locations. Ian’s work has been featured in Men’s Health Magazine and he’s appeared as a health expert on New York 1 News. In addition to his work, Ian also hosts regular wellness retreats at his tree house in the Costa Rican rain forest.
- Ian Hart's BackPainRelief4Life program
- Check out Ian's Healing Hacks Book for more about the info heard in this episode
- CytoDetox: Total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
- Dr. Pompa's Beyond Fasting – now released!
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Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
On this episode of Cell TV, if you’re a health hunter or a health seeker, tune in. This gentleman made it very clear that this is who he is, and he brings his favorite healing hacks, as a matter of fact, the name of his book. We talk about Wim Hof. He knew Wim Hof personally.
If you don’t know Wim Hof, stay tuned because I think he’s the most fascinating man on earth. He teaches the Wim Hof method, which I believe you need to know. We talk about four biohacks that I think this is the real deal. Every one of you need to know these if you’re seeking your health.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today we welcome Ian Hart. Ian is here to talk about his own pain to purpose story, going from a peak condition, top of the world athlete to his health spiraling out of control. When no healthcare professional could tell him what was going wrong, Ian made a choice to heal himself.
He’s here to share his story about how he ditched his expensive medications and began a natural healing journey that finally gave him control over his health. In his book, Healing Hacks, Ian unveils his step-by-step system for sparking the healing mechanisms in your body. He will outline those hacks here today. Let’s get started. Welcome, Ian Hart and Dr. Pompa, to the show. Welcome, both of you.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s funny. We were having a conversation ahead of this. Being an exercise guy, I’m just reminding you that my audience is health seekers. When I have Ben Greenfield on, his audience is these biohack performance people. I have to remind him that my audience is this. When I go on his shows, I have to remind myself of his audience.
You made it very clear I’m a health seeker. This is what inspired me. I can’t even imagine looking at you now that you were even on medication. With that said, that’s what inspired you to write the book. I want to hear all about it. I want to hear in this episode these healing hacks that we all need to hear because we are health seekers. It’s what inspires me even to this day, as I fear going back ever.
Ian:
I have to say that you are one of the people that inspired me. I heard you on a podcast, and I heard your story. I was like man, this guy has had a very similar story to mine. It really sparked another level of healing just hearing your story. This is what it’s all about. That’s why I’m here for this.
Dr. Pompa:
Start with that. Again, as I inspired you, you’ll inspire others. Now you’re writing books. You’re doing summits. You’re changing the world, and that’s my thing, from pain to purpose. You’re obviously in your purpose. What was your start?
Ian:
To start off, I was already into health and fitness. I was a trainer. I was already teaching people how to get healthy and fit. I thought I knew what health and fitness was. Then I found out the hard way. I really found out the hard way.
I was so driven, so motivated, and I was just pushing through pain until something broke. That’s where I identified with your story. I was an athlete. I was training hard, pushing hard, working hard. Then I got sick, was put on medication. I ran a race on medication, and that made me more sick. Then I was given more medication. Then that was really what broke the camel’s back.
Dr. Pompa:
What medications? What did they have you on? How old were you when this happened?
Ian:
I was 27, and I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia. I was given a fluoroquinolone called Avalox, which wasn’t even approved for the market. It was like a low dose of chemotherapy, which I found out later on. I found out through extensive research what these drugs do. No one told me. There was no warning.
Even the doctors didn’t ask what did you take. It took me years and then it finally clicked. It’s a combination of things. I wouldn’t say it was just that solely, although just that solely has destroyed tens of thousands of people’s lives.
Dr. Pompa:
Did you end up with fluoroquinolone poisoning or toxicity, which many do? It’s just horrible to the nervous system.
Ian:
I believe so. I never got diagnosed with that. My nervous system was shot. My brain was swollen. I basically had almost autistic-type symptoms like dementia.
Dr. Pompa:
It sounds like you had fluoroquinolone poisoning, which those watching this, Google it. If you take certain antibiotics that have fluoroquinolone in them and other medications, then that could be why someone’s sick. Go ahead. Keep sharing.
Ian:
I couldn’t figure out what was going on with me. I had gut issues, brain issues, joint inflammation. I was supposed to be in the peak of my life. I was in the best shape of my life. I was physically and mentally fit, which I think is what got me through all that. Things just kept getting worse and worse until I ended up in the hospital, and I almost died.
That was the point where it was like first off, the pain I was going through was just beyond what most people probably deal with. Then when I ended up in the hospital, I was like I don’t know that I want to live anymore, to be honest. This is just so painful. My life has become so miserable.
I made a declaration there that I’m going to heal myself, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to share my experience with others. That was actually my motivation to dig myself up out of that hole. Here I am now. It’s taken some time and a lot of experimenting, a lot of doing crazy stuff.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to hear about some of the crazy stuff. My health seekers are going please tell me. What did you do? This kind of highlights your book because obviously you wrote in the book these things that you felt like are big things. I want my people to hear what these things are.
Some of your expertise is exercise. One of the things that is classic amongst us who are struggling with our health is back pain. You’ve dialed some of those. We’re going to hear about some of that as well. Let’s start with some of these things that you did get your life back that you feel every one of my viewers need to know.
Ian:
One of the things I was totally unaware of is I had my whole mouth had amalgam fillings in it. This is one of the things I’ve heard you talk about, and it’s connected with almost—you probably deal with this all the time. When I was in the hospital I was told you need Entocort. It’s a medication for Crohn’s disease, etc. It’s an immunemodulator.
Basically they said you’re going to be on it the rest of your life. I went home. It was $1,800 a month medication. I went home and researched it. I was like this isn’t even proven to work. They don’t even know if this works or not. It’s 50/50.
Then there’s a rebound effect if you come off of it because of more complications. They were pumping the fear into me. I have my buddy. You might know him, Dr. Peter Osborne.
Dr. Pompa:
I do know him.
Ian:
I called him on the phone, and he said you can do this on your own. After the conversation with him I was like that’s it. The confidence he gave me, I decided I’m not going with the medication. I’m going to heal myself on my own. I started that journey.
The first thing I did was work with a holistic guy. As soon as I told him my whole mouth was filled with amalgam fillings, he was like oh, my God! You have that many amalgam fillings? You’ve got to get them removed right away. It was a Klinghardt protocol for detoxing and killing the microbes in the gut. That started to help me a little bit.
I think I was so deep down the rabbit hole that in three months I had gotten better results than I had ever seen with any medical doctor. No one even questioned these things. No one even asked me these things previously. This guy was in Hong Kong. He just took my hair sample and did a paperwork fill out.
The next thing I know, he’s on point with my healing rather than any of the medical experts that I’ve spoken to. That really opened my eyes and awakened me to what the other potential is. From there I just continued. I tried everything from GcMAF, which is—
Dr. Pompa:
For cancer they use it, yeah.
Ian:
For protein. I did the sauna detox, niacin detox. My pathways weren’t opened up, my detox pathways, which I’m sure you talk about.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I did all these, tried all these detox things. I realized I was getting worse or nowhere. That’s why everything I teach today came out of figuring it out.
Ian:
Exactly. I got worse in a lot of different ways because I didn’t have the detox pathways opened up. Then I got into Qigong and breathing, which is one of the most powerful things you can do. When I came across the Wim Hof method, I knew that was something I wanted to get into.
Dr. Pompa:
He endorsed your book, if I know correctly, right?
Ian:
He wrote the foreword to the book. I’m a Wim Hof instructor.
Dr. Pompa:
Tell people who Wim Hof is. The guy is extraordinary.
Ian:
If you haven’t heard of Wim Hof, now he’s almost mainstream. About one in three people at least hear about him. Wim Hof is a Dutch guy. For about 30 years he had been doing amazing feats of strength that nobody could actually figure out how he was doing it. He used to say he could influence the immune system, the autonomic nervous system. I think people just thought he was crazy.
He’s done things like climbed Everest in just his shorts. He’s done an ice bath for two hours long. He has run a marathon in the desert without drinking water. He’s ran a marathon in the Arctic Circle with no shoes on, just his shorts. He’s done just the craziest things. He has 26 world records.
Science has now proven he was right all along. The lowest hanging fruit I always speak to people about is doing something like the Wim Hof method. There’s other breathing techniques. I find his to be not only—it just gets right to it. It just gets right to the healing. He’s created the Wim Hof method that’s breathing and cold immersion.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah. It’s pretty powerful. Do you discuss that in your book?
Ian:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
Obviously, it’s one of your healing hacks. I think it’s extraordinary as well. That’s fantastic that it’s in your book.
Ian:
Yeah. It’s definitely one of the best lowest hanging fruits that anybody can do anywhere, anytime. For people that are listening and you haven’t heard of him, I would highly recommend checking out Wim Hof method.
Dr. Pompa:
It is extraordinary. What it taps into is something I’m a big fan of. It forces the body’s innate healing. It forces the body to adapt. To adapt you get this massive hormone optimization and down regulation of inflammation. It’s really powerful stuff.
The breathing is powerful. It floods your blood with oxygen, which your immune system just goes through the roof. Wim Hof, first of all, they disbelieved him. Then when they realized this is for real, this guy is doing this, they couldn’t disprove him. Then they just said this guy is just a freak of nature and he’s extraordinary.
He’s like no, I can teach anyone to do this. He did. He taught other people. He’s like it’s not me, it’s the principle. How many people did he teach?
Ian:
He took about 12 guys for a week into Poland. They brought them back and did the [13:13] study where they injected them with LPS, lipopolysaccharides, which is basically E. coli. They did it originally with Wim. Then they saw that Wim didn’t have a response like everybody else did. He controlled his immune system.
They said you’re just an anomaly. He said I can teach people. It took guys a week in Poland, came back. They had the same response. Then they were like okay, this guy has got something. One of the things that I would love to say to your listeners is oxygen efficiency or the way we utilize oxygen is probably the most important thing that your body can do.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, when you’re neurotoxic, Ian, like we were, your oxygen efficiency is terrible. You can’t get oxygen into our cells, which is your immune system, nutrients, energy. You can biohack this by this breathing. At this point you might just want to explain a little bit.
Ian:
Just last year three PhDs actually got awarded the Nobel Prize for hypoxia training. Hypoxia is exactly what you’re doing with the Wim Hof method. It just reaffirmed everything else we were doing through the Wim Hof method. Basically, you breathe to hyperoxygenate the body. Then you exhale all the oxygen out of your lungs. Then you hold the breath.
Basically what it does is you hyperoxygenate the body. You exhale and hold. Then when you exhale and hold, the CO2 and the O2 start to exchange. The oxygen is high at one point. Then you exhale, hold. You hold the exhale, and then the CO2 starts to go up and up.
Then finally it hits a point where it triggers you to take a breath in. Most people don’t realize this, but CO2 is so important. It gets a bad rap. It actually is a vasodilator, meaning that it opens up the arterials and the cells. What it does is it relaxes them and then you can get more oxygen stuff in.
These PhDs found out that you increase the amount of red blood cells. The red blood cells have the hemoglobin. Hemoglobin transports the oxygen. You transport more oxygen to the cells and specifically, like you were saying, where the injured areas are. If you have damage to certain spots, this is where you can really start to see amazing healing. I’m talking about 50% faster. This isn’t scientifically proven, but even things like broken bones or tears, etc. Even if you have MS, Lyme’s disease, etc., it helps all of those things.
Dr. Pompa:
Basically, you’re doing 30 breaths. Some people say through the nose. Wim Hof was like just breathe. Nose, mouth, it doesn’t matter, but 30 deep breaths, just belly breaths, if you will. Then like you said, let it all the way out and hold. How many times do you do that, and how many times a day can you do that?
Ian:
It all depends. You can do it ten rounds if you wanted to. I recommend people who start out, that they start out breathing through their nose and they only do about three rounds. That’s just a suggestion. You don’t have to start out that way.
People who are not used to getting that much oxygen, they’ll get dizzy a little bit. They might feel a little weird. A lot of profound things can happen once you get oxygen to the body. There’s a saying that the issues are in the tissues, meaning it’s stored in our nervous system in the body. When we get more oxygen, it can literally push the emotions out of the body. People will feel emotional releases. They’ll feel traumatic releases on top of all the other healing that happens, the immune system stimulation, the autonomic nervous system activation.
The other thing I didn’t talk about is it skyrockets the adrenaline during the exhale and hold phase more than if you were going to go skydiving or bungee jumping for the first time. In my opinion—this hasn’t been studied—what it does is it regulates almost every single part of the body. If you’re dominant sympathetic nervous system or parasympathetic, you’ll balance out those systems. You’ll balance out your immune system if your immune system is too intense. It will bring it down. If it’s too low, it will bring it up. That’s another thing that I think is extremely beneficial about doing that program.
Dr. Pompa:
I have so many questions. One of my questions is where in nature do you think this is? The body always knows what to do to survive. Where was this? How is this a part of human nature?
Ian:
You mean the breathing?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I study nature. I study what happens. Not just nature, but what happens in ancient culture, what happens to our body in times of stress. Where does this come from? How did he discover it?
Ian:
I do know he went to India for awhile. Part of his story is his wife committed suicide. He had four kids, and he just couldn’t handle it. That’s a massive trauma at one time. He took off and went to India.
He discovered it at a young age the cold therapy, which I didn’t get into, at about 18. He went into the ice and said that’s where he met God. It was a spiritual experience for him. It was the first time he could focus his mind. Then he just utilized—he figured out that he could utilize the breath to heat himself up to stay in the ice more.
Dr. Pompa:
Which is true, by the way. When I do the breathing and I go in cold baths, I’m good. If I don’t, I’m out in a minute.
Ian:
Exactly. It’s profound. Most people don’t know this, but he’s a pretty amazing yogi. You see him every once in awhile. He’s done all that type of stuff. He’s done the breathing. I think he played with it.
He went out into nature and thought how can I stay in the cold? If I do this breathing technique, the cold doesn’t affect me as much. If I stay meditated and focused, then I can do this. For health seekers listening to this, this is very important. He walked up Mount Kilimanjaro in 31 hours—it typically takes five to seven days—in his shorts. My buddy, Bart, who I host retreats with, did it with him three times.
They did it with people who are sick, who had Lyme disease. Another person had Crohn’s disease. There were a few people who were ill. They did it with him, with their shirts off in their shorts. Just to give you what’s possible, they broke the record by a ridiculous amount just using the breathing.
Dr. Pompa:
Were they doing that most of the time going up?
Ian:
When they’d get altitude feeling of the sickness, they would just [20:58] and then squeeze oxygen to the head and keep going up. That’s how powerful it is. It can take somebody who is sick, who typically couldn’t even hike up a mountain at all within five to seven days, and they did it within 31 hours. This is part of what my book is about us inspiring people. That’s what Wim does. That’s why I joined Wim because people just believe that they can’t get out of this rut.
That’s the biggest thing that I want to convey is even in the sickest, unhealthiest condition, our body knows how to heal itself if we just give it the tools that it needs. Those tools are typically not poisons and toxins. Sometimes that can help in scenarios. We need more nature. We need more connection with ourselves, etc. That’s really what this is about.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s as simple as good quality food, oxygen, and getting the toxins out. Come on, that’s right. I have to say if anyone even questions this working, I would just say this; you do those 30 deep breaths, let the air out, and time yourself. Let’s say you go 45 seconds. Do it again, take 30 more breaths, exhale, hold.
I promise you you’ll go longer the second and third time. Why? You’re hyperoxygenating your cells. The moment you realize it was so much easier the second time, you realize this works. Oxygen heals.
Ian:
Absolutely. To add to that, make sure you’re doing it in a safe place, you’re seated or lying down.
Dr. Pompa:
You can get woozy.
Ian:
Some people get dizzy and pass out.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. Put some cushions down in case you pass out. Have you met him? Have you spent time with Wim?
Ian:
Yeah, I’ve been with him a few times. The first time I just did a retreat because I was in my healing journey. I came across his stuff. I tried it, and I was like whoa, this is next level. It turns out I wasn’t even doing it to its maximum capacity. I booked a retreat.
Everything I’ve always done is I try to learn from the best. If you watch Wim, if you listen to Wim, you can tell he’s got the it factor. I was like I want to work with this guy. I spent the week in the Pyrenees with him, got to film a video at the top of the mountains in the Pyrenees. That’s when I started my journey to do the certification.
Dr. Pompa:
He’s done some documentaries and stuff. I’ve watched one. Isn’t there another one on YouTube or Netflix? What’s the one you told me to watch?
Ian:
There’s a Vice Documentary that tends to get people fired up when they watch it. It’s kind of debunking the guru. We’re going to find out if this guy’s the real deal. They go out there, and this guy does a story. He’s like this works. This is something that really works, and it’s profound.
Trying to find out if he’s fake almost in the Vice Documentary, and in the end you get to see the personality of Wim, which is a great thing as well. You get see how they do the training. They do it in Poland where you do the master certification.
Dr. Pompa:
How do you find that documentary?
Ian:
If you type in vice documentary Wim Hof in YouTube, it should pop up.
Dr. Pompa:
You train people on this? How can people connect with you?
Ian:
We host retreats. We did the first ever—me and Bart. Bart is the guy who created the online ten-week course for Wim. That’s what took Wim to the world. We do retreats in Costa Rica, which is not what people typically think of for a Wim Hof gold retreat.
We did the first one in the tropics. We host them here, but I have training facilities in the US. We do it in the training facilities and we do it on retreats as well.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. We’ll make sure we put your contact information there. I’m sure people are going I want to do it.
Ian:
We’ve got one retreat coming up in March.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great. That’s in Costa Rica?
Ian:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
We can find that information on your website?
Ian:
That one isn’t completely booked out yet, so it’s not up and running, but it should be soon in the next week or two.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. That’s one of the huge biohacks that you would say health seekers need to know. I agree. What’s another one? We briefed on the detox as well, which we resonate with. Give us another one.
Ian:
In my book on the topic of oxygen I talk about the lowest hanging fruit. Then I talk about if you have the money and the opportunity, hypobaric or hyperbaric oxygen chambers is something I also recommend if you can get access to it. That’s another thing in that realm.
I talk a lot about intuitive eating. You spoke about diet is essential. People are always looking for what’s the next diet? What do I do? How do I eat? For the most part if we pay attention and we’re conscious of how we eat and what we eat, we’ll usually get to understand afterwards do I feel good? Am I feeling better? Am I bloated? Am I feeling worse, doing an elimination diet and find out what the triggers are.
I know that there’s a lot of tests, etc. that people can do, and those are the things I recommend in my book too like the Dutch test. There’s the organic acids test. Some people don’t have access to it, and they can’t. The next thing I talk about is eating intuitively, sitting down consciously, and being connected with your food.
One of the things I always like to explain to people, which kind of puts things in perspective, is 150 years ago to get food a lot of people would go hunting. It was a whole process. They would spend days or weeks hunting. They’d kiss the wife goodbye. Then they would go get the food.
They would have to kill it, cut it up, skin it, bring it back, etc. By the time it hits the plate, there’s an immense sense of gratitude. There’s an immense sense of spirit connected with it. The actual act of going out in nature is healing as well.
Nowadays we lost that connection. We just sit down and shove food down our throat, which is part of my problem. That’s why I share this. I used to eat fast, and I never used to think about it. I would just shove it down my throat, go back to work, and that was it.
Dr. Pompa:
As you were saying it, I’m guilty of this. If I have an afternoon meal, I eat it just standing up because I’m in between things. I’m moving. I’m here. I’m there. There I am in the kitchen just kind of doing it standing up.
Ian:
I still have to check myself.
Dr. Pompa:
Guilty.
Ian:
Because I had gut damage, I had to. I was forced to sit down, chew my food, and slowly eat. When I started to do that, it also started to shift things in not only the healing of the gut—it was necessary because my gut wasn’t digesting food. I just became more conscious of what I was doing and how I was feeling and how I was connected with the food and what I was eating.
Then I’ve started to find out that food doesn’t work well with me. Then I started to figure it out. That’s one way that people can do it. It’s something that anybody can do, like I mentioned, anywhere, anytime. It’s a low hanging fruit. All you have to do is just be a little bit more conscious, a little bit more aware when you sit down and eat.
People can put a reminder in their phone just to get them mentally connected with it kind of like drinking water. People put in their alarm clocks drink water at a certain time so you’re getting enough hydration. That’s one of the other things that I recommend in the book. Another low hanging fruit, which I love to recommend to anybody and everybody, is castor packs.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, they pull. That’s been around for nursing. Their baby would get blocked. Castor oil packs, that was the solution every time.
Ian:
Detoxification, glutathione increasing, healing the gut; it’s also a biofilm breaker, which I know you’re talking about. I interviewed Dr. Marisol, and she was saying it has all the snake oil—it sounds like a snake oil, but it actually delivers. That’s why I recommend it because as soon as I did a castor pack, I felt this relaxation that I hadn’t felt in a long time, similar to what the breathing does as well. You can just feel it killing the parasite or whatever it was in my body. I just felt a deep sense of healing and relaxation.
Dr. Pompa:
Describe what you did. You put it either over your liver or your gut. Talk about it.
Ian:
You get these wool packs. They sell them on Amazon. You just type in castor packs and get pure, cold-pressed, hexane-free if you can, organic preferably because the other stuff can be toxic. If you’re trying to toxic, you don’t want to put more on yourself. You pour a couple tablespoons on the pack.
I would wrap it around—I put it on my liver, and then wrap saran wrap around my gut so it stays on. Some people have specific castor pack wraps that make it easier. I found wrapping it with saran wrap, and then I’d go to bed with it. Other ways you can do it is putting heat on it as well to help the process. Then I go to bed and wake up with it.
It’s pretty nasty stuff. It kind of stains. You want to make sure you put on a dirty shirt or you cover your sheets and stuff like that if it leaks out. You do that ideally for seven days repetitively.
Dr. Pompa:
Why does it work? What does castor oil do? What’s the mechanism behind this?
Ian:
That’s a good question. I don’t even really understand—to be honest, I can’t even answer that. I don’t know how it works exactly. I’ve researched it.
Dr. Pompa:
In simplest form it acts as a drawing agent by setting up a concentration gradient. I don’t know why castor oil versus other ones.
Ian:
They used to use it to anoint the kings and queens to their throne as they went up to the throne. There’s a deep understanding. You like to research old past ancient healing techniques, etc. This is something they knew about that they’ve used. I don’t really know exactly how it works.
Just like any other essential oil—I’ve used a lot of essential oils—it can trigger some type of activation in the cell. It can bust biofilm. If you’re having a tough time getting healthy and you’re not seeing any advancement, a lot of times it can be the biofilm. Would you agree with that statement?
Dr. Pompa:
Pathogens hide there.
Ian:
Over time it will wear down the biofilm. If your immune system is ready for it, it releases the toxins. It can actually help kill off the parasites because it’s boosting the immune system. It helps increase glutathione levels. Most people who are sick have low glutathione. I had tremendously low glutathione levels.
It helps stimulate it naturally. Then the relaxation activates the parasympathetic nervous system. You go into the parasympathetic nervous system and there’s rest and digest. You actually get to recover and sleep better. The deeper the sleep is, the more you’re going to recover. There’s a whole combination of things. It’s just one of those things that just hits a lot like the breathing.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. Give us your exercise for the back pain. This is a big one.
Ian:
I always like to touch on back pain because a lot of people have a belief system that’s part of the medical system. The medical system is designed for specific things. What my program is designed for is people naturally healing and teaching them so they know how to heal it on their own. There’s something called degenerative disk disease. Degenerative disk disease is not actually a disease.
I want to throw that out there. It means aging. This is something that I learned from one of the best spine specialists in the world. The doctor wouldn’t say to you if you have a wrinkle on your face you have degenerative face disease. Degenerative disk disease is just aging.
Dr. Pompa:
Premature abnormal aging.
Ian:
Right, speeding up the aging process. Really we just have to figure out what’s causing it. It’s really what we just talked about. It’s going to be nutrition, lack of recovery, lack of rest, lack of hydration, lack of oxygen. Those are the main things—and movement.
Part of the issue now is that people aren’t moving as much. They’re sedentary. When they’re sedentary, there’s a stagnation of energy in the lower back and the hips. When we have that stagnation of energy, it doesn’t get the oxygen, nutrients, etc. that it needs. Then we start to see the disks wear down.
As the disks wear down and the muscles fatigue, it opens the back up for a lot of pressure and a lot of micro trauma, which is small little tears or damage, until one day they say I threw my back out. That’s typically what happens. Usually people throw their back out picking up a paperclip.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. That’s where that came from. It wasn’t the paperclip. It was the micro traumas happening ahead of that.
Ian:
We designed a program specifically just to decompress the spine and get more nutrients, oxygen, and blood flow. I’ve been doing this for over 15 years now. We just enhance it and combine it with Wim Hof method because it just takes it to the next level. Basically, it’s simple. People can do it anytime, anywhere.
All they need is a little pillow. They lie down on the floor and do some simple movements with their legs and core activation. After about ten years of doing it, I realized this is not just a simple movement exercise. It’s kind of like a chi. It’s bringing energy into the body.
Dr. Pompa:
I almost want you to get on the floor and show me, but I just don’t know if you have the ability to do it.
Ian:
I potentially can.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s do it.
Ian:
Let’s see if we can do it.
Dr. Pompa:
I want to see.
Ian:
Let me see. Let me bring this down here.
Dr. Pompa:
Look, he’s dressed for it and everything.
Ian:
Oh, yeah. I’m always in fitness gear. Someone’s going to lie down, put a pillow under their head so their head is propped up. This is biomechanically the correct position to be in. The first movement is going to be what we call a knee pull. The first thing is going to be you put pressure down with your hands, tilt the pelvis slightly so that it activates the abs, and it starts to just move the pelvis so that we start to get mobility throughout the muscles and the tendons that connect in the lower back. Then we extend all the way out, extending the leg fully out.
Dr. Pompa:
I see that.
Ian:
Then repeating. We do eight reps on each side for three sets. The next exercise is a knee drop where we push the knee down to the ground and back up. This activates and stretches the abductors. It also activates the glutes, which is directly connected with almost all back pain.
We do that for three sets of eight. Then we connect the two movements together, and we do a single frog lift. We pull the knee in, and now we’re getting everything involved, the hip rotators, the glutes, the abs, and intimately starting to get energy and blood flow back into [39:23].
Dr. Pompa:
I would argue that the very position you’re also working the multifidus muscles, which in the low back those are huge.
Ian:
Exactly. Then from there we do double frog leg, which I’ll show you. This one depending on the person when they do the program, we may recommend it. It’s both legs. It depends on core integrity. It depends on the pain. That one dramatically increases or enhances.
Then from there we do a basic stretch designed to decompress the spine. It’s kind of like the butterfly. Hold on a second. I have my other mic here. Then we pull from the lower back, pushing the forehead down, focusing on stretching the inner thigh and the lower back. There’s other ones after this, but these are the main ones; sitting up nice and straight and doing a calf-hamstring stretch and pushing the forehead forward and down to decompress the spine. There’s two more beyond that, but those are the basics.
Dr. Pompa:
They’re going to have to get your book for that. That’s where it is is in the book or is it on your website somewhere?
Ian:
In the book I go into that in one chapter. I spend a whole chapter just on that specifically. If people are adverse to reading it, they can watch a video. We have an online program. It’s in over 100 countries worldwide. We’ve been doing this for 15 years now. That’s another option for them.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome.
Ian:
That’s at backpainrelief4life.com.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to write it down myself. I’m going to make my wife do this. I’ll do it with her. Backpainrelief4life.com, got it, the number 4.
Ian:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s awesome. I’m so glad I actually made you do it. Seeing it, I can see how effective it actually would be for that.
Ian:
Some people who are physiotherapists or physical therapists, they’ll look at it and start analyzing it and saying maybe you shouldn’t do this. I tell people just do it. When you do it—
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like the Wim Hof stuff. Just do it. If you did it three days a week, you’re going to change your life. Imagine if you did it five. Come on. There’s a lot of breathing, meditating.
I’m telling you, that to me has been the one that I felt instantly the most. I’m with you. I have to ask you this, what’s his personality? I know he likes to drink beer. I know he’s fun-loving. Is that the real Wim?
Ian:
He’s an awesome guy to a point where his family has to kind of protect him. He’ll just say yes to everything. They have to be like no, you’re not going to do that. Wim, can you do this? Oh, yeah, I’ll do that.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s his diet like? Wim’s a little chunky. I’m not going to lie. Obviously he may get away with more just because you give the guy Lyme disease and he beats it just with his mindset. What’s that like?
Ian:
I do know that he eats about one meal a day. It’s in the evening. That’s one of the things that he does do. I know his diet is that. I’ve heard two different stories. I’ve heard him talk about it.
He has been a vegetarian, but I’ve also heard him say in person that he does eat meat every once in awhile. I don’t think he’s dead set in one way. He is about intermittent fasting, and I know that’s something real big for you. I believe he does fasting as well.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve had people put themselves in a fast and do his breathing technique and transform their life. I think the two of them is a powerful punch, fasting and this breathing. I recommend it to everyone. Where do they buy your book?
Ian:
My book is on Amazon.com. If you just type in Healing Hacks by Ian Hart, it will pop up. It’s on Amazon solely right now.
Dr. Pompa:
Last question; with one of the things that drives me is literally the fear of every going back to being sick. It just always drives me researching, etc. What is your greatest driver?
Ian:
I would say it’s the same exact thing. I talk about these healing hacks, but I live health. I live to eat and breathe it. I don’t have an option, to be honest.
Dr. Pompa:
Me neither.
Ian:
When people see my diet, I’m no joke. I don’t mess around. If I do mess around at times, I’ll pay for it. Rarely I do. What keeps me motivated is feeling good and also being able to transfer that to other people. I didn’t know what it felt like until I felt really good. You know what I mean?
When I first stopped drinking—I stopped drinking a long time ago because I didn’t realize how bad I felt when I would drink. Then I stopped drinking, I felt amazing. What else in my life was making me feel bad? That’s not for everybody. That was just me.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to moderate my drinking. I can have some really clean wine. Toxins, I’ve got to keep them away.
Ian:
You can’t turn the pickle back into a cucumber type of thing. I recognize that. My whole life is about health. I wake up. I do the breathing. I do Qigong. I do meditation. Then I try to share that with the world.
Dr. Pompa:
The good news for those watching is you can still turn a cucumber into a pickle. You can get healthy. You can’t go back. I’m not going back.
Ian:
It’s very hard to go back. Once you become healthy, it’s hard to go back.
Dr. Pompa:
You could go back, but the point is we’re like no way. I can’t go back. I just can’t. There’s no way. I’d rather be dead and gone than to have to live that life again.
Ian:
It’s like taking the red pill.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. It was The Matrix. Can’t go back once you take the red pill. Ian, thank you so much. I think those are phenomenal tips. I absolutely love it. Ian’s book, Healing Hacks, definitely do these things, including the exercise. Back pain, one time in your life it will happen to you.
Ian:
It will, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you for being on Cell TV.
Ian:
Thank you, Dr. Pompa. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Ian:
All right.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.
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