I want to address a very important topic in today’s world: the immune system. Our precious immune system is often overlooked, mistreated, or we can even be misguided by conflicting advice; doing more harm than good to our health, (unwillingly of course). I am my best strategies that I usually only share with my group of practitioners, because this is too important not to. This show is dedicated to our precious health, and a thriving immune system!
- CytoDetox: total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
- Dr. Pompa’s Beyond Fasting – now released!
- Cytodefend
- Fastonic
- Dr. Pompa’s favorite vitamin D
- Dr. Pompa’s favorite Zinc
- Megasporebiotic
- MetaOxy test – how inflamed are your cells?
- AHCC Mushrooms – use the code goodhealth for 10% off
- CHTV episode #310 with Dr. Al Danenberg
- CHTV episode #341 with Dr. Al Danenberg
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Transcript:
Ashley Smith:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to a special episode of Cellular Healing TV. I am here with the one and only Dr. Pompa. We don’t have any other guests because we thought it was important—Dr. Pompa and I were talking a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Pompa does such a great job of teaching all of his practitioners amazing tools to stay healthy, nurture the immune system, detox, fasting. He does share a lot of that here, but there is one hot topic that I think we get more messages about than anything else right now, especially in the year 2020. That is the immune system.
I asked Dr. Pompa, have we done a Cell TV about the immune system? If not, why not? We need to share this with the public because they need to know how to take care of themselves and build up immunity. There’s so many misconceptions. People are told so many different supplements to take and things to do. We are just confused.
I work with Dr. Pompa on a daily basis and I still get confused sometimes. There’s just so much information out there, so we wanted to just to an episode dedicated to the immune system. Welcome, Dr. Pompa. We are so excited to be sharing this information.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I have. I’ve been sharing this message with doctors around the country. You encouraged me to bring it here. Everyone needs to hear that message. Really, it stemmed out of my frustration from the beginning of this, just looking at social medial. It was always one product be hawked after another.
Look, in this episode, you can even ask me the question, what supplements, nutrients do I think would be good. I’ll answer the question because I’m not knocking that. What’s missing is where real immunity actually comes from. Nobody is talking about that. There laid my frustration to educate my doctors about it, get people really understanding this is the message that we have an opportunity.
COVID has brought us many opportunities. Hard to believe that, right? There’s been curses, too. I have a saying. I say, come with curses, come with opportunities. I think there’s a great opportunity to educate people on where real immunity comes from. Then get them to be educated to really make changes that are going to affect their life beyond this, beyond this pandemic, into something much bigger. That’s literally being a statistic of dying of an age-related disease.
Look, with that said, I made it as simple as I could. I think there’s two big ones that we’re not talking about and we need to be talking about, we need to address. I hope people share this. I hope people hear the message clearly.
Ashley Smith:
Absolutely, yeah. One of the gifts that I think that COVID has brought us is that we’re all very aware of our immune systems now. It’s a word you hear constantly nowadays from people who normally don’t talk about their immune system. That is I think a gift that we have been graced with this year. Dr. Pompa, where does your immune system lay? What are these parts of your immune system that you focus on the most?
Dr. Pompa:
Look, I think that if we asked many people today where their immune system lays, it’s almost a very confusing question. They’d look at you like, I don’t know. Okay, cells it is, but also, bacteria. We have more bacteria than cells. The two, their communication with one another is really where immunity lays.
In my lecture on real immunity—and I’ll even share some of my PowerPoints. I don’t want to bore people with a PowerPoint presentation by no means, but I do feel the need to oftentimes the cites and studies when I make a point. The point is, though, is I think some people would actually say, hey, your gut microbiome because of yogurt commercials on TV, 70% of our immune system starts in our gut because of the yogurt. I’m not saying their solution, their yogurt is an answer, quite the opposite because I think people, everybody is all probiotic this, probiotic that.
People are taking probiotics. One of the messages that I’m always teaching doctors is if it were so easy to take a probiotic and truly affect our immune system because it’s not just our microbiome or our gut bacteria. There’s something more specific than that when we really look at the science around immunity and how we build real immunity from our gut on out.
Okay, if we had to label this Number One, it’s not just gut microbiome, but it’s gut microbiome diversity. That’s where the real science is. What do we mean by that? I’m going to pull back because this lecture is typically for doctors. Diversity means the number of types of bacteria that you have. It’s called alpha diversity when you look at a microbiome test.
All of the new tests, and you know my criticism of all the different tests out there, we got one thing from the microbiome testing because we thought we could take microbiome testing and adjust people’s diet, and look at your microbiome, and do this, or what medications. It wasn’t so simple. What we got from all the new testing was diversity is king. We can look at someone who’s healthy and see great diversity in the types of bacteria they have; we can look at someone who’s not healthy and say, this person definitely is not healthy. We can really rate their immune system. When I get a test of someone’s microbiome, really, the main thing that I look at and almost the only thing I care about is the alpha diversity because that’s really the thing that echoes what matters more.
Ashley Smith:
It might just show that they’re eating the same foods over and over again. If you do the food sensitivity tests, it might pull up the Top Five foods that you eat every week. You go, why are these—these are my favorite foods. Yeah, because you eat them every single day.
Dr. Pompa:
You tapped into unknowingly I think to part of the answer because you’re right. What you’re saying is when most people, especially here in America, they eat the same eight foods.
Ashley Smith:
I’ve been guilty of that.
Dr. Pompa:
I think we’re all guilty of that. That is absolutely the kiss of death for diversity. Hang on to that thought. Let me share my screen.
I said I would share a couple of PowerPoints, but again, I don’t want to bore our audience with too many PowerPoints. Let me here, hold on, I am in the wrong place. Let’s see, screen share. You know me with technology.
Ashley Smith:
I know; I’m proud of you.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, host disabled attendee’s screen share. Was that you, host?
Ashley Smith:
I think so. The Zoom security now is— all right, we’ll get this in a second.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, go ahead while you’re doing that. When we look at—I guess the question I would ask, your question is, okay, if this diversity is the king, we can’t increase diversity with probiotics. By the way, I’m not against probiotics okay or taking bacteria; a matter of fact, I’ll share with you a strategy I shared with the doctors. I’ll pull that PowerPoint up because there is a strategy I think is better.
You’ve got to—but it’s not how we increase diversity. If you spoke to the doctors that I train, we would all agree that, man, if it were only so easy just giving people bacteria and doing it. It’s not, or yogurt or whatever it is. There inlays the answer.
Ashley Smith:
Yogurt companies, they were smart about acknowledging that the immune system is in the gut, but their advice about how to handle that was the wrong part.
Dr. Pompa:
So wrong. We tend to oversimplify messages when we’re marketing products, which is smart, I guess. Okay, so they are stating a fact that a lot of the immune system, 70% starts in the gut estimated, take yogurt. People can make that connection. It’s in their ad. They talked about, well, it’s diversity. I’m not even listening; I’m not buying your product anymore. It is more complicated than that.
Ashley Smith:
Greek yogurt is usually filled with so much sugar, it’s probably doing more harm than good, to your point.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, oh my gosh, totally. All right, I’m just looking at this. Can you see my screen?
Ashley Smith:
Yep.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, I just wanted to show this just to show you the importance of diversity. A decrease in diversity is associated with all these diseases. You can see the studies there that show that, of course, when you look at the amount of autoimmune that’s on that page. You have Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, Celiac, so many things. Then you have hormone conditions, PCOS.
Then you have the obvious I think: obesity, just inflammation in general, high cholesterol, insulin resistance. There’s more, but I pulled up those studies easily obtainable. That just shows you the connection of diversity to your immune system and also a lot of other diseases. I already said this. Is the answer just more probiotic? I wish it were so simple.
Let’s talk about probiotic while I have this PowerPoint up. Let me give you what I—how I think you should deal with a probiotic. I teach bacterial rotation, meaning that when I get a client, and my doctors would say the same thing, typically, they’re taking a probiotic; many people are.
Ashley Smith:
Most people.
Dr. Pompa:
When we ask the question, how long have you been on it, it’s typically months if not years the same one. That can create a problem. If you look at that first bullet there, I’ll put my cursor on it, it can cause mono culturing. Bacterial rotation, which I’m going to show you how to do in a second, prevents this mono culturing; meaning, you’re just putting in the same seven bacteria from your probiotic.
Oh, but these bacteria are so good. You read the thing on it and it’s amazing. The problem is now you’re mono culturing. You’re overpopulating. You’re actually doing the opposite of diversity. You’re actually pulling in and creating too much of these seven, or eleven, whatever your product, maybe three, has in it. We don’t want that.
Different bacteria have different purposes. When we take probiotic, we want to rotate between different types. When I say there are different types, there’s four types. There’s soil organisms and then there’s other types of more popular types of probiotic. All have different purposes and benefits. We want to have a variety of those. Okay, so—
Ashley Smith:
Do you want to rotate daily, like every day you take something different, or do you like to just finish a bottle for a month and then move to a new bottle the next?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, if you look at my how-tos, Step One is I like to start with a spore type of bacteria. I gave you a product that I love called Megaspore. There’s another one called Proflora. There’s many of these types now.
Here’s the problem. The public, I have yet to run into just the general person on the street that’s taking spore types of bacteria. I like to start with those because I typically know that it’s the type that most people don’t have. Spore bacteria make it through the gut all the way to the colon, which is an argument for they have a greater impact. They work very differently than taking say acidophilous in that they actually create a stress in the bacteria in the gut. They work a little different.
I’ll keep people on those for a couple of months. Then, I’ll rotate in some other ones. Then to your question, I like to rotate them every month. Maybe two or three months on these because I know that people haven’t had them and then I go through.
I just gave some examples: MBC, Proflora, back to Megaspore. Maybe you have another favorite that’s done well. Great, bring that one in, too. Every month, you can actually rotate.
Now, I’m saying this because there’s benefit to bacteria, but I’m not saying that this is the answer to creating diversity. At least it’s an answer to not wrecking your diversity okay and it brings some other things. Then what is the big diversity creator? The answer may surprise you. It’s fasting.
Fasting is a stress. In simplicity here, the answer to your question, well, Dr. Pompa, how do I create this diversity, you stress your microbiome, which sounds odd, but it’s no different than exercise if we stress a muscle and we adapt. We force adaptation and the muscle gets stronger. Guess what? It’s the same with our microbiome; it’s the same with just about anything.
Fasting is a stress on the microbiome. I just cited some things here why it’s a stress and what it does. Studies show fasting resets our microbiome, meaning that literally, your microbiome changes dramatically after a fast. Now, again, fasting could be 24 hours, it could be 20 hours, it could be 15 hours. That’s called an intermittent fast. Or it could be three days or five days, which stresses it even more. I really want to emphasize the extended fast really changes and resets our microbiome.
One of the things that happens during a fast is good and bad bacteria are starved down. Then when we start eating again, we see a rise of good bacteria. That’s a really good way to change this dysbiosis; meaning, too many bad and not enough good. Good bacteria have the ability to adapt and become stronger, whereas bad bacteria seem not to.
All this is from studies, but fasting flips a genetic switch via the microbiome to turn off inflammation. We see this massive decrease in inflammation during and after fasting. A lot of that has to do with this diversity that’s created. Then my major point here is fasting can increase diversity which affects our immunity.
I cited just a couple of studies there that showing proving my point. The second study, because I was asked this question, I actually added it. That second study there because you see one and two, it made the point that in their study, juice fasting actually didn’t. It actually created oftentimes a worse microbiome. The best stress out of all the fasts that they looked at was water fasting.
Now, you know I’m a fan of partial fasting. I think there’s a lot of good stuff that happens in partial fasting, but in this particular study, water fasting stressed the microbiome so much that we saw this diversity change afterwards. Then I just cited that study, too. Fasting fixes the gut bacteria and it turns off autoimmunity. We saw this decrease in inflammation and resetting of the microbiome, which again, if you spoke to my doctors that I train, they would say look, we could never help autoimmune cases without fasting. A lot of that comes from the change of the diversity of the microbiome.
Of course, autophagy really says it all. During a fast, your body gets rid of bad cells. Guess what? It gets rid of pathogens as well. This gentleman showed that. If you look at him, he won the Nobel Prize for showing how fasting, states of fasting, creates this autophagy where it gets rid of not just bad cells in your body, but it gets rid of the cellular rubbish, including pathogenic bacteria if you look at the very last line there. We know that it gets rid of bad bacteria in the gut and it creates more diversity, so autophagy plays a role in this.
Ashley Smith:
When you’re done with the fasting, when you break a fast, is it important to get good bacteria right back into your gut? Do you usually want to break your fast with some sauerkraut or something?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I do. I like to with foods that feed the good guys, and fermented foods, and just even fibrous foods. Yes, we want to feed the good guys because we have the opportunity when good and bad are down. We have the opportunity to feed the good and give them the things that make them become stronger.
This guy here, Dr. Valter Longo, one of the—he took autophagy and fasting to another level. You can see the last line there that I highlighted, “Fasting purges and rebuilds immune cell populations with more naïve T-cells.” What does he mean by that? Meaning that, during a state of fasting, you get rid of bad bacteria, but you’re starving down immune cells. We call them senescence or immunosenescence cells, meaning that these are immune cells that live too long.
Now, why is that significant? It’s significant because these are the ones that really, I call them government workers. I always back off because I might offend somebody. There’s a joke in that because they sit around doing a lot of nothing, senescence cells, but worse than that, they cause trouble with their other workers. They recruit people, other cells to do nothing; they drive inflammation.
You end up with low immunity when you have a lot of these immunosenescence cells. You end up with hyper immunity. They lead to food allergies. They lead to allergies period; they lead to food intolerances. Early on, I don’t even remember if you’d remember me doing this video on Facebook. This is when you could actually do videos about COVID.
Ashley Smith:
Oh, that’s right, [00:18:54], yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I cited a study. I spoke the interview with the gentleman who actually talked about the study and was part of it. He said the people who were really getting sick from this virus has one thing in common. Of course, we know there’s comorbidities with other conditions, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. We’ll talk about that coming in a moment, too.
He said that they all have one thing in common, whether they’re 45 and whether they’re 80, but they all have one thing in common. They have a lot of immunosenescence cells. I parked right up to this study because I was like, he’s right on the money. He basically said that these are the people that we know are getting hit the hardest.
Again, older people that are more vulnerable to this particular virus, they have more immunosenescence cells. Now, not all old people; you could be 80 years old and have a low number because you’re very healthy. You could get this virus and you go right through it, no problem. You could be 35 and have a lot of immunosenescence cells for different comorbidity reasons and you could get very sick.
Okay, immunosenescence cells, how do we get rid of them? According to studies, fasting is the best way. Yes, we’re changing our bacteria for the better here. Then, we’re also getting rid of the immune cells that are government workers. They’re lying around doing a lot of nothing. We’re getting rid of those and creating new immune cells.
According to Longo’s work that you see in front of you there, what happens is you get rid of that bad one, immune cell, but you’re stimulating stem cell, creating a vibrant immune cell. You literally rebuild your immune cell population. That’s his point in that study.
Ashley Smith:
Dr. Pompa, are you saying grandmas were wrong about us feeding fevers, eating lots of chicken noodle soup, and if you feel like you’re getting sick, just eat and nourish yourself?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, listen, I say this, grandma may have been right. Listen to your innate intelligence. I would say even with COVID, if you’re hungry, eat; if you’re not, don’t. That’s your innate intelligence. You know what I found with this particular virus is there’s—some people are hungry, some people aren’t. Your body knows. I would say listen to that.
Really, I’m talking about prevention here even mostly. I’m talking about this is what we need to do to change the narrative from take this, take that. Wait a minute. Where’s the real science around who’s getting sick, why, and what we can do because this isn’t going away? There’s going to be new strains.
If it were only so simple just taking vitamin D. It’s not so simple. We have to diminish these immunosenescence cells. We have to create diversity. Fasting does both.
Listen, get my book. There it is in front. Here, there it is on that slide. You can see it, Beyond Fasting. I teach you how to do it, how to do it right. This slide here says, well, what fast should I do? I already said I’m not a fan of juice fasting, but water fasting, bone broth fasting, partial fasting, Valter Longo, who I just had a picture of, a fasting-mimicking diet. My books talk about all of these different strategies.
Ashley Smith:
It’s more about getting ahead of getting sick. We want to work on our immune systems now so when a virus comes around or some sort of a bacteria or a cold, we are prepared; our bodies are prepared to fight that off.
Dr. Pompa:
I believe that we’re all genetically set up to fast. Today, we’re constantly in a feast mode. That’s a problem. It does lead to low immunity.
Look, the good news is you can anti-age. You can change your immune system. I believe we have to do this just by adding fasting, something our bodies are genetically programmed to do in any aspect. It could be a partial fast. This doesn’t have to be hard, but you need to add it. I believe that in all my heart.
Do you remember the interview with Thomas Seyfried? Thomas, he said that one fast a year, an extended fast, now he was talking extended fast, he believes decreases your cancer rates by at least 95%. Do one fast a year, do four, do two, whatever, just do it.
This is the strategy that you alluded to because you said people were eating—when we were talking about microbiome diversity, you were saying people are eating the same foods. Yeah, and it’s the kiss of death, and for multiple reasons, by the way. Diet variation strategies, which I teach in my book in Chapters Four and Five, it really—again, fasting is the king of diversity; this is the queen. We can’t change microbiome diversity in our immune system without dietary change. That can look very differently because there’s weekly strategies that I teach, there’s monthly strategies, and there’s season strategies. All I think are important.
First of all, let’s look at this. This forces just like fasting. It forces the body to adapt. When we change our diet, we have to adapt to the change. How does it do it? It does it by changing the microbiome. Every time you change your diet, whether you go from a healthy higher carbohydrate diet to ketosis, massive change has to happen in the microbiome.
What we know, people that make these changes the most actually have more diversity. Again, there’s weekly strategies and monthly strategies here. What we know happens is the microbiome makes the adaptation. The other point that I highlighted for this conversation is our DNA is programmed for these changes just like fasting. When we don’t do it, we end up with a very stagnant microbiome. Ultimately, we have to change our diet if we’re going to have diversity in our gut.
I just want to flip; this is a good slide just to give you an idea of how this works. We know that when we take humans or animals from cold to hot to cold, we force the body to adapt. How it adapts is hormonally. You get these growth hormone spikes and their epinephrine spikes, which will downregulate inflammation.
This study showed that the adaptation when they took mice that were unable to lose weight, they put them in cold environments and out of cold environments, into a cold environment, out of a cold environment. This is Prestigious Journal that it came out of. A particular bacteria, akkermansia, actually associated with obesity and diabetes, virtually disappeared. Then the animals became thin the more they caused this to happen.
Why did it happen? The mouse had to adapt to the cold/hot. It did it by adjusting the microbiome. It created a more diverse—got rid of some bad and upregulated some others, so really cool.
Ashley Smith:
More stress.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, more stress. I think then the other example is exercise. I made that point already. Your body adapts to the stress and gets stronger. That’s exactly what was happening with dietary changes.
This is a weekly variation example, how you can add variation into your weekly cycle. Five-one-one, I talk about it in Chapter Four in my book, but it’s five days of keto. The reason I like keto in this situation is because it’s low carb. Then randomly, you eat one—you have one day a week where you eat either just one meal, so you’re fasting 23 hours, or maybe no meal. That’s a great stress on your mitochondria, your gut bacteria. Then take one day and add a feast.
You see what I’m doing? I’m forcing the adaptation; I’m creating diversity in my microbiome. Then you can take it another step further and add two days where you’re fasting and just one feast day. What we’re creating is what I call feast/famine, which forces adaptation in the gut.
Ashley Smith:
Now, somebody who already has an autoimmune condition, thyroid, anything like that, would you still say that they could do a 4-2-1 with two fasting days?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I believe so. Some people may need two feasting days, which I would call 3-2-2. I talk about that in the book. Certain conditions like even thyroid conditions, people with adrenal issues, they can do famine days, but what they forget is they need feast days. The feast days are as important as the fast days. It’s hard for people to understand that oftentimes because—but believe me, when people say, well, I can’t fast, no, you can fast, but you need feast more so. Some people do better with more feast and less famine; some people the opposite. My book helps you figure that out.
This is an example of monthly variation where we take five days a month and do either high carbs or high protein. For the women listening, the week before your cycle is actually magic because you have a lot of hormone conversations that are happening. When we do a higher carb or protein, we help the hormone conversations. Then hormonally, the rest of the month, you’re transformed.
Again, I’m just giving you examples of how we can vary our diet weekly, monthly, and then, of course, seasonally. I put that study in here because it says the perfect thing, modern times are characterized by being constantly in a feast environment. The cellular consequences may increase the risk of several diseases, including cancer. It’s showing that it has an effect on our immune system by staying on the same diet all the time.
Here’s the problem, Ash. I’ll stop sharing because I’m done showing those slides. The problem is people, they feel better on a certain diet and then they’re hooked there, whether it’s vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo. The point is that any diet, good or bad, whatever you think of it, too long creates mono culturing. You lose diversity in your gut.
It’s not good. We have to change our diet. Even if you’re sold on that diet, please change. That’s a key to changing the microbiome.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. You can’t be on perfect whole foods, organic, vegan diet, or keto diet forever. You do have to rotate some different days. Now, what are your—some people get a little scared of the feast day because they think maybe they are going to get digestive issues, or maybe they’re going gain weight, or maybe they might even harm their microbiome, or even their glucose might go up too high. What are your favorite foods that people can maybe get some ideas because I know people who do like to fast eat low carb, but they’re scared of those feast days?
Dr. Pompa:
Look, first of all, the good news is, and I don’t want to get into the science, but a feast day stimulates a pathway called mTOR; fasting stimulates a pathway called autophagy, which I went over. mTOR can be stimulated by three things. You pick which one works best for you.
High carbs, maybe that doesn’t work for you. High protein, okay, so now that changes the game because you can do multiple different protein sources, but it works as a feast day. Maybe your feast day is going to 100, 150 grams of protein a day works like magic or more calories. A feast day could just be eating more meals. Maybe you eat four or five meals and take in 500 to 1,000 more calories. That also is a feast day. You pick it, whatever works for you.
Ashley Smith:
If someone is fasting every night 18 hours, let’s say, that’s—the feast day is that maybe you’ll ask them to eat breakfast, break their fast a little earlier, not be so—in such a fasted state. How do you feel about supplementing with food probiotics, like someone who drinks kombucha every day or—
Dr. Pompa:
Again, I would argue you can run into the same problem as mono culturing. If you’re drinking the same kombucha every day, you could monoculture that, so mix up kombuchas types, whatever companies I think is a good strategy. If you like a particular fermented food, mix up the fermented foods right. If randomly you’re eating a fermented food, I don’t think you’re going to monoculture; it’s what you do every day. Now, what I’ve learned is I never thought this might be a problem until I realized my own wife was drinking Trilogy every day, two times a day. That can lead to more of a problem.
I know we’re going to get this question before I move onto the next big thing for real immunity. People out there are going to say, wait a minute, though, but your good bacteria needs fiber, this and that. This diet or that diet, paleo diet, how does that increase your diversity? We had a guest on. His name is Allen. He’s an amazing guy. I believe we had two shows with him.
He was supposed to be long gone. He has cancer and he was supposed to be dead by now. We did Show Two, and it was like, hey, you’re not dead. That was really his joke. Hey, I’m still here; I shouldn’t be.
Guess what diet he did? He did a carnivore diet. That means all meat and fat. That’s it, zero fiber, all meat and fat. Okay, that’s opposite of what people would think you would do for cancer, but he’s a very well-researched man. He really cited all his research.
Again, it’s part of this diet variation concept. I recently looked at his microbiome test. His alpha diversity was ridiculous. Now, remember, since he did carnivore for a period of time, so many months—
Ashley Smith:
Because he [00:33:47] first. He’s not doing carnivore every day for the rest of his life.
Dr. Pompa:
He adds diversity now. He was 98% in alpha diversity, meaning that he has better diversity than 98% of healthy people, okay, not just America, but healthy people. It’s not what you think.
Ashley Smith:
I didn’t hear that part. That’s amazing, wow. He should come back on and share that, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I told him that because I do want to keep following up with him because he really is—the thing I love about the story and why I like following it is because he’s done everything opposite than everyone would think. That’s always—
Ashley Smith:
I bet he made his doctors’ head spin. They were probably like, I don’t want you to do this. It’s not good.
Dr. Pompa:
Ashley will put in the show notes what episodes they are. Actually, I think I can—you just did that for one of our groups.
Ashley Smith:
Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it’s such a good story. I love following it. He’s such a vibrant guy. He’s truly an example of someone aging in reverse.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah. He’s amazing. It’s Episodes “310” and “341,” Al Danenberg, awesome. I guess the next big thing that people miss, and I’ve talked a lot about this, but we can just touch on it, is the cellular detox component.
Ashley Smith:
I knew you were going to say that.
Dr. Pompa:
Look, this is a big deal. When we look at the comorbidities that go along with these people who are getting very sick, these—we could say okay, great, diabetes, obesity, heart disease. We could go through this list, but let’s go upstream further than that. We would go, these are people with cellular toxicity issues.
I’ve made this connection to 80% of diabetes is really a toxic issue. My doctors would agree. It’s like these Type II diabetics and the surge has more to do with literally toxins than it does the foods that they’re eating. Again, we could talk about obesity, weight loss resistance. This is more of a toxic issue driving a hormone problem. I can go on and on.
What people don’t realize, and you all of watched me do this so many times, but I’m going to do it and make a different point. On every cell is receptors to hormones. I talk a lot about that. These are the cellphone towers that our hormones have to attach to get their message in the cell and you feel good, whether it’s thyroid hormone, insulin. Hormone resistance is the problem, meaning that these receptors, something’s blocking them and we can’t hear our hormones.
What’s become in vogue even in the alternative world is taking hormones, bioidentical hormones, this hormone. The problem is you can make your blood levels of these hormones look normal, but the fact is—I hope you can see that. Let me turn this way a little bit. The fact is that if your cells can’t hear them, it doesn’t matter. Taking hormones seems to have this initial help because we’re shouting at the cell a little louder, but then, we didn’t fix the problem.
Our cell really can’t hear. It becomes even more deaf to the hormones. Guess what? Now, we’re not feeling well. Our blood levels look better, maybe, but we don’t feel better.
Okay, guess what? On every cell, vitamin D, zinc, every vitamin also has to attach to receptors. Then it can actually do what it needs to do in the cell. Arguably, real immunity comes from your cell, in particular, the cell membrane. It was who we’ve interviewed here a couple of times, Bruce Lipton. His point is everything happens on the membrane. Immunity, life begins on the membrane and ends on the membrane, how well your hormones function, all of it’s here. Immunity is no different.
My point is you can take all the vitamin D you want, or all the zinc you want, all the elderberry you want. If your cells are inflamed, you’ve got a deeper problem. You’re the person going, I do all that, but I still got sick. The point is you have to ask yourself this question. I had said earlier, you have to ask the question, how do we create diversity.
You should be asking the question now, well, what’s driving that? What’s the Number One problem because I feel I might have that problem: toxicity. Toxins make their way into that membrane. They drive inflammation.
What I’m known for teaching in the doctor spaces is my cellular detox work. I do talk about that at the end in my book. I’m writing the book on that right now. Cellular detox is at the core of real immunity. I’m not against taking hormones sometimes; I’m not against taking vitamin D, zinc. I think those things can be helpful, but I want you to hear the point of if your cells are inflamed because of toxicity, you’ve got a deeper upstream issue. That’s where my cellular work comes in hand.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, you can’t just focus on one thing. You have to work on your gut diversity, you have to implement fasting, and detox is always huge. Where does somebody start? How do they know if their cells are inflamed? What’s the first thing someone—
Dr. Pompa:
There’s a simple test. I believe you can get it off of our website. It’s a Meta Oxy Test. It’s cheap.
Ashley Smith:
I’ll put a link to it. Yeah, it’s a great test.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. It shows that if there’s oxidation of the cell membrane, which indicates inflammation of the cell membrane. It’s a very simple test you can do.
Of course, you can just obviously look at even just how you feel. The typical things that neurotoxic people get, low energy, of course, because when your hormones, vitamins, minerals can’t get their message in the cell, your mitochondria, that’s your powerhouse where you make ATP, that’s what gives you energy, well, guess what? When these things can’t get their message into that mitochondria, your energy drops. Now, it doesn’t matter. You’re drinking coffee, you’re doing things, okay, so energy.
Brain frog is another. You need a certain amount of cellular energy and ATP to get this. Your brain is one of the—your brain and heart are the major producers of—or users of ATP. The first place we notice it, brain fog. In the heart, lack of certain circulation, capillary circulation, decreases energy.
Fatigue, brain fog, and then anxiety. Why anxiety? Because your body starts using hormones, cortisol, adrenaline to make up the energy. Now, you don’t sleep. That’s another one, so anxiety, no sleep, brain fog. Again, if it looks like a duck, it waddles like one, it’s probably a duck.
Ashley Smith:
What about unexplained weight gain? Is that’s something that’s a—
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, because see, when this cell can’t hear these hormones, thyroid hormone, insulin, leptin, I can go through estrogen, testosterone, those are hormones that help your cell burn fat for energy. When it can’t hear those hormones, your cell can’t hear the hormones, it can’t burn fat for energy. It doesn’t matter what you eat. To stay lean, you have to use your fat for energy, especially at night when you’re not eating. When your body loses that ability, now you’re in trouble. Now, it doesn’t matter what you do.
Ashley Smith:
What if someone is very—they’re sitting there saying, but I’m really lean. I have low body fat. I can’t afford to lose any weight. Can I still fast? Can I still do it?
Dr. Pompa:
I would argue that you might need it more. A lot of what I call skinny fat, you have fat in specific places, your belly, your thighs, and yet, you’re skinny because your body is using your own muscle to break it down into sugar because your cell can only use two things for energy: sugar or fat. When it hormonally loses the ability to use fat, now, it will use sugar. It will get it even when you’re eating the perfect diet because it takes it from your muscle, which lowers your metabolism more. You have a new problem. Oftentimes, you build up visceral fat, which leads to disease. Skinny, fat, it doesn’t mean you don’t have this problem. By the way, fasting is still the solution, whether you’re skinny or fat to really fix the cell.
Cellular detox, fasting, diet variation, it’s really part of what I call multitherapeutic approach that I’ve taught for years. Look, people want the simple pill. It’s not so easy. The people just go, oh, I just change my diet. It’s not so easy. I always say today, the perfect diet won’t get you well. You may not get well without the perfect diet, whatever that is, I believe it’s variation, but it’s really a cellular toxicity issue of why most people today don’t feel well.
Ashley Smith:
If anyone wants to learn more about the multitherapeutic approach, Dr. Pompa has written countless articles and done so many podcasts. You can just Google that really on dr.pompa.com and pull up a lot of information as well. Now, would you say if someone who’s just—they want to get started.
There’s two parts to this question. The first part is, what would you say the three biggest things someone should remove from their diet? If there’s, I don’t know where to begin, what are the things that maybe I’m eating or ingesting that are harming my microbiome and my immune system? What would those be?
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a great question. Look, I think there’s some obvious-es and not obvious-es. Let’s start with the not obvious. The king of that cell membrane that I said is the king of the immune system is Omega 6. You heard a lot about Omega 3, but you don’t hear a lot about Omega 6, except you might think it’s bad, but it’s not. It is really the king of that, the function of that membrane.
Look, when we go into even Whole Foods health food stores and start reading the labels, you’ll realize there is an adulterated Omega 6 in so many products. That means a damaged Omega 6 that makes its way into those membranes and creates dysfunction for months. Vegetable oil, canola oil, and a lot of the rancid seed oils, they’re in so many things, even in health foods. You have to get those out of your diet. That means you have to read labels.
If it’s sunflower, safflowers, make sure it’s organic. Those seed oils should be organic. Make sure no ever vegetable oil or canola oil; get it out, period. Then you want to take in good sources of Omega 6. There’s a product that we love called Pure Form. [Vist] does another one. Andreas Seed Oils is a seed oil that he has a process that doesn’t destroy it. Grass-fed meats, raw nuts, and seeds.
Look, I’m not a fan of fish oil. We’ve done episodes on that. I’m a fan of fish oil when the oil’s in the fish. I’m a fan of vegetable oil, by the way, when it’s in vegetables. It’s that they’re so fragile that they literally can go rancid, fish oils, even in your own mouth. Even if you managed to get a good one, the eating of the fish oil itself can drive oxidation and use your own antioxidants to quench that.
Anyways, another topic; I don’t want to go there. The point is to answer your question, replace those bad omega 6s, huge. Many of you might be taking fish oil, watch the episodes on the dangers of fish oil. If you put that in Cell TV, you’ll have that answer of why I said stay away from it.
Then I think that a lot of people know sugar is bad. Yes, too much sugar every day is bad. Every once in a while, having something sugar, not an issue. It’s what you do every day. Here’s one, I think that grains today because of the glyphosate on them and the denaturing of the grains. I think taking grains out of your diet diminishes inflammation even more than sugar.
My original cellular healing diet, it was so simple. Get rid of grains and sugar and watch your brain fog go away. Just be careful with the grains you do choose to eat. Make sure they’re organic and ancient. I talk about that in the book, Cellular Healing Diet. Also, you can just eliminate them and reduce inflammation as well. That might be a surprise. I’m trying to give people not the obvious here.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, that’s great. Then the other part is now what should people—I know you said supplements are not going to fix anything. They’re not going to fix the body that’s toxic or that you’re not fasting and your gut is a mess. If you just want to have just an everyday arsenal of supplements just to have on hand, take when you feel like you’re getting sick, or just an everyday supplement that you can absorb easily, what would those be? What would be your favorite?
Dr. Pompa:
Again, I said from the beginning, ask me that question. You did because I’m not against it; I think it’s good. CytoDefend, we created it for this time. There is the elderberries; there is the zincs; there’s all of the herbal components that some people may miss even that helps immunity.
I think everybody is taking vitamin C. It only does so much; it’s loose limits. Vitamin D I think is great but be careful. It has to have vitamin A, vitamin K, and all the fat solubles; otherwise, you create a functional deficiency. I think another strategy there, you could take more once a week and especially for some people that seems to work better.
If you feel like you’re getting sick, taking 30, 50,000 units that day can be really transformative. Then keep that going for maybe five to seven days. High dose can be really an immune stimulation. If you do have that problem of inflammation, it can bypass that. I think that high dose for a few days is a strategy. Yeah, I think that just looking at some of those additions can be good. The interview that we did, remember, it’s the fermented mushroom, the AHCC product? What’s the name of her product that we interviewed?
Ashley Smith:
It’s AHCC. I’m blanking on the name of her company.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll put the link to the episode. It really does work.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, that’s good.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think it hits immunity a little bit different. Yeah, I think that people should be doing those things right now?
Ashley Smith:
Do you think people are overstimulating their immune systems, though? Every day they’re taking elderberry and they’re doing all these things every single day most of the year. Do you think that there’s a reason for them to maybe put it on pause?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think so. You know I’m a fan of even rotating products, doing different things, so you don’t do what you just said. I think there is—there’s good reason for pause. Then starting again, you get that stimulation again.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, that’s great. This was so helpful, Dr. Pompa. I think our audience is going to be so grateful. This is something we want all of you to share because it’s not just a timely thing these days. This is just an important thing for the rest of your life, honestly. You have to take care of your immune system. It’s all you have to—
Dr. Pompa:
Right, glad you had me do this show.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah, thank you. All right, good-bye.
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