The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - Dr. Daniel Pompa: How Heavy Metal Poisoning Destroys Your Health

Starting point is 00:00:00 Living my life the way I was was scarier to me than dying. Like most people, I was digging for answers. God led me to the answer and I started just putting the pieces together. When things don't make sense on the labs, modern medicine just gives up. If there's an epidemic or a pandemic, it is hormone resistance. We really need to be considering how do we get ourselves more sensitive to hormones. The body has an incredible ability to bounce back from absolute abuse.

Starting point is 00:00:27 If you remove the interference, the body heals. Everything's about survival. More is not better and potentially even devastating for you. The key is adaptation. And if you don't adapt, you end up causing more inflammation later. How do I embark on a cellular anti-inflammatory journey? All my cellular work that I teach comes down to...

Starting point is 00:00:49 Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today we have a really, really special guest on the podcast today, someone I'm actually proud to call a friend. His family is biohacking in my rooms in the background.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Sure. We've got somebody in a Hawkeye machine, somebody in a hydrogen bath, somebody in a red light bed. But Dr. Daniel Pampa is an incredible guest, probably best known for his books on cellular healing and beyond fasting. But what I really appreciate and like are the healers that didn't just start out on a journey to be a healer, they started out on a very personal journey.

Starting point is 00:01:50 When they start out on a journey to heal themselves and solve a personal problem, I think that you find a very, very special type of healer, someone who introspectively really understands the journey of the people that they're trying to help and the patients that they're working with. So Dr. Pampa, I'm excited to have you on the podcast, man. Thank you for coming today.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Yeah, absolutely. I really like to, I mean, we're gonna get into a lot of the specifics of just what Beyond Fasting is and your cellular healing diet and some of your supplementation that you teach physicians to use to really get to the root cause of disease. But what I want to talk about first

Starting point is 00:02:28 is your own personal journey. And ironically, we last connected at the Centner. Yeah, Layla's Clinic, yeah. Yeah, and what I love about Layla, I love the Centner family just in general for the entire mission that they stand for. Yeah, world changers, world changers. Yeah, world changers.

Starting point is 00:02:43 I mean, their school and the Centner for Healing, which is here in Miami. Amazing. And I went to the grand opening of that, but she had a very similar, you know, personal journey and is now out there to find people that are on a similar journey and help them heal. So tell us a little bit about your journey as, you know, as a physician.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Yeah, I was all the way back in 1999, 2000, where I just got sick. I mean, I'd say fatigue, just like most people. I was training at that time. I was doing a lot of miles, 250, 300 miles on a bike, racing at the expert level, lifting weights, very busy practice. Two young boys at the time.

Starting point is 00:03:23 So I thought I was just burning out, honestly, or at least over training. So like most people, I cut back on the training, didn't help. I took off two weeks, which is unheard of when you're doing things like that, right? Two weeks, oh, surely I'll come back and feel good. I didn't, and then it went into headaches.

Starting point is 00:03:40 Then it went into insomnia, where I would wake up middle of the night, couldn't get back to sleep, couldn't get to sleep. The fatigue kept getting worse, the anxiety kept getting worse, and then gut problems started which I never had. So you start chasing, running from different foods, is it this, is it that?

Starting point is 00:03:55 And then I just like, even like weird panic attacks, irritability, anger, sound sensitivity. Believe me, I'm brushing over it. It got very, very bizarre in the symptoms. And like most people, I chased it. My thyroid must be that because I had every symptom for thyroid issues, even my hair thinning. And adrenals were fried. I knew that.

Starting point is 00:04:15 So I was trying to address those. And some things would get better, but most things were actually getting worse. And so I started going to different doctors looking for answers. And you're running a practice yourself. I was. Barely. Most things were actually getting worse. And so I started going to different doctors looking for answers. And you're running a practice yourself. I was, barely.

Starting point is 00:04:29 I mean, honestly, you know it's bad when you look at your book and hope everyone's canceling. Like you just look at it and say, OK, there's not that many people coming in today, thank God. But like most people, I was digging for answers, going to different doctors. I remember running $5,000 worth of blood work, went to the top toxicologist,

Starting point is 00:04:48 Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, surely they're going to find something. I don't know, honestly, if they told me I had cancer, I'd be like, okay, at least I have something because no one's telling me anything and now I can fight something, right? He came back and he looked at me and his exact words were, you're healthier than me, son.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Of course, at that point, you look at you like you're crazy. So yeah, that was not the response I wanted. But I was looking, I was digging for stuff. I did a mercury test, blood test, because I found Mad Hatter's disease online and I had every symptom. Do you remember what that is? I remember what that is,

Starting point is 00:05:23 where the hat makers would actually get mercury. Yes, exactly. And that's right. Yeah. And it was part of the process that they use to attenuate different molds and that and the felt that they were using. But I had every symptom I was mad as a hatter. So when it got the blood work back, I was disappointed. It was negative. Fast forward now, I was working with a very bright endocrinology said, Dan, I think you have mercury toxicity.

Starting point is 00:05:46 And I said, I thought so too. And I did this test. He says, well, that's the wrong test. If you are a mad hat or you'd have poison, acute mercury poisoning, meaning getting exposed daily, like the people making hats, it would show up in the blood. But I don't think that's it. I think it's more chronic.

Starting point is 00:06:02 It won't show up in the blood or the urine. So he told me, challenge it out. It'll give you some reflection. But I think it think that's it. I think it's more chronic. It won't show up in the blood or the urine. So he told me, challenge it out. It'll give you some reflection. But I think it's more brain mercury. And I did that. And sure enough, there was an odd pattern of all metals. And so I said, we're just was that a few. So it was a urine challenge using a water-soluble chelator,

Starting point is 00:06:20 like DMSA or DMPS. And it's good because it goes through the urine. There's no perfect test for mercury. It's because the mercury that really affects us is deep in the tissue in the brain. And when it is that deep without biopsy, you're oftentimes not going to see it. As a matter of fact, some of your most sick people

Starting point is 00:06:39 from mercury or any heavy metal, oftentimes it looks like zero in the urine. So to answer your question, what test did I do? So doing a challenge with a water soluble chelator and then looking at the urine, it's a reflection possibly of what's in the brain. And so there was an answer because I had a lot of heavy metals that absolutely

Starting point is 00:07:03 shouldn't have been there. Wow. So you did this test, you find the you know, you find the mercury and other metals, which could have been like one of those Perry Mason to da moments like, okay, now I've got an enemy, at least. True. And then so talk about how you what did you do afterwards? How did you go down this journey? The thing about it is if you go look online, I mean, keep in mind, this was back in 1999, or early 2000s at this point, you know, because I started getting sick in 99. But so imagine this

Starting point is 00:07:34 being 2003. Not a lot online, right? Not a lot online now. Yeah, it's true. But even still, it was still chaos and confusion. You know, meaning I would look and find contradicting information everywhere. I mean, it's like very confusing. So literally I started reading studies, dyslexics as a child. So I'm good at that. And I started digging. And then I started calling the scientists. I started, you know, literally, you know, doing the homework to that level. And I started just putting the pieces together. I honestly say this, I went down a lot of false, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:11 bad roads, right? Roads that at least led to nowhere. And I learned things, but I'm telling you, God led me to the answer. And in my story, and I always have to give credit here, in my story, we had two young boys at the time, and people, you know, sick and challenged and not knowing what's wrong, I understand it's a huge stress on the other spouse

Starting point is 00:08:32 or loved one. And my wife crying out for answers for me and the family and the kids, because oftentimes she had to take the kids out of the house, because I couldn't even handle the noise. Really? Yeah, and I didn't want to live. I mean, it wasn't like I planned suicide,

Starting point is 00:08:47 but living my life the way I was was scarier to me than dying. Because that's how horrible the feeling was. And again, it's hard to even put words to. And sometimes I don't even remember until I bring things up and I'm like, yeah, it's like I get goosebumps and teary-eyed when I think about certain things, like how I was with my kids. I wasn't a good dad. I wasn't, I became someone I wasn't. And that's where, but my wife always reminded me, you know, because at one point I said, you think I'm just crazy? And she says, no, you know, you, there's, you were normal and

Starting point is 00:09:20 now you're not. But she was on her knees crying out to God for answers and God spoke to her heart, not an audible voice, spoke to her heart as she says, as clear as day, not only am I going to get him well, meaning me, but he's gonna take a message to the world. Wow. And I wouldn't be on this podcast if that wasn't true. Dude, I got goosebumps on that.

Starting point is 00:09:41 You see what I mean about a personal journey having an impact on somebody's passion and purpose. And by the way though, I have to say this. When she would say that to me, I didn't wanna hear it. I would get very angry at her because my response was, I can't even get myself well. Don't put that on me. But not seeing obviously what God saw.

Starting point is 00:10:00 I've been teaching doctors now what I learned in that battle for over 20 years. And now taking it directly to the person looking for answers, because that was me. And I want to talk about that battle and that journey. So is this what led to the cellular healing diet? Is this where you? Yeah, you start to put some things together

Starting point is 00:10:19 to down regulate inflammation, right? And all my cellular work that I teach comes down to what is driving cellular inflammation, which is driving hormone resistance. One of the things that I realized is my blood levels of hormones were normal, even though I knew they weren't functioning right. I knew my testosterone wasn't functioning right.

Starting point is 00:10:41 I knew my thyroid hormone. But when my blood work kept coming back normal, what I learned later is I had so much inflammation of the cell, because toxins make their way into the membranes, right? The outer membrane, inner membrane, I don't want to confuse people with too much science. But when that membrane becomes inflamed,

Starting point is 00:10:58 you can't get the good stuff in the cell, you can't get the toxins out. Yes. That cell becomes more and more toxic. Now genes start getting turned on and the receptors to all your hormones are on the outer membrane, lipid rafts, right? Hormones have to connect to those,

Starting point is 00:11:14 get themselves in the cell or their message. And if that doesn't happen because the cells are so toxically inflamed, then you don't feel well, despite what your blood levels look like. Because we're measuring hormones and other concentrations of nutrients in the serum of the blood,

Starting point is 00:11:28 but we're not actually measuring. It's interesting, I stumbled upon this myself. I was actually watching a Joe Rogan podcast one time and this guy was on, he was talking about high levels of B12, marginally high levels of B12 being linked to cancer. And I actually went and looked the study up and it was actually the deficiency in intracellular B12

Starting point is 00:11:49 that was leading to the cancer. And it was high outside of the cell because of the lack of utilization. So this is kind of what you're referring to. And I think this is maybe why it escapes, let's just call it modern medicine for lack of better words, not to attack physicians that are trained to look at blood work.

Starting point is 00:12:10 But you're looking at the serum concentration in the blood, and you're assuming that the cellular metabolism is functioning. In toxic people, like I was. And by the way, when I went through this, I was a rare commodity, right? It's like now my gosh I mean you know you're if you're in a room with 10 people seven out of ten you know have some form of

Starting point is 00:12:32 neurotoxic illness you know this you see it right and cellular inflammation driven by this problem creates hormone resistance we understand it with insulin resistance that means you have plenty of insulin in the blood oftentimes too much much, but to your point, but it can't get it in the cell. It's not, the receptor's blocked, that's resistance, insulin resistance. Thyroid resistance is happening too. So that's why when people go and say,

Starting point is 00:12:56 okay, finally my blood work is out of normal, right? Give it another 10 years, maybe five years, maybe mine would have been. They would have put me on a medication, made my blood work look normal. Right? People out there watching this are going, yeah, that happened to me. And you're saying I still don't feel well. You know, my hair is still thin. I still can't lose weight. I still have anxiety. I still, you know, it's like, it's because they improved your blood levels, but it's not getting,

Starting point is 00:13:20 it's in the cell. Thyroid hormone has to get in the cell, hit the DNA. And all this wonderful things happen. You lose weight normal, you feel good, you have lasting energy, no brain fog. Yeah, but the world today, honestly, if there's an epidemic or a pandemic, it is hormone resistance. Oh my God.

Starting point is 00:13:37 Yeah, so it's like, look, there's a time and a place. There's a time and a place to take a hormone, right? I mean, there's a time and a place to give those crutches. But we really need to be considering, how do we get ourselves more sensitive to hormones? That's a whole nother topic. That's what I teach. That's how I got my life back.

Starting point is 00:13:54 You know, and the other thing too is one of the things when I started reading studies about mercury, I started reading most of it accumulates in different parts of the brain, which will drive different symptoms. One of the big places which will drive different symptoms. One of the big places is the pituitary hypothalamus. You and I know that controls your hormones, right?

Starting point is 00:14:11 Your thyroid, your adrenals, that's the control tower. Your hypothalamus receives information from your body hormone levels, and then it tells the pituitary what it needs more or less of, right? There's this perfect balance going on, and that balance is determined by that control tower. Well, mercury accumulates there.

Starting point is 00:14:30 And by the way, people in moldy homes, biotoxic illness, people that have been in moldy homes even years ago, that hypothalamus, those receptors get blunted to different other hormones. Microtoxins. Exactly. So again, there's the control tower that gets poisoned our cells our cell membranes are Affected by these toxins and we're chasing the symptoms either with supplements natural things or medications or hormones

Starting point is 00:14:54 Time in a place but the point is is you don't get a lasting result You have to get to those causes, you know, and you know what we see in the clinical practice all the time is people with relatively statistically low levels of hormone with no signs of hormone disruption and no plenty of energy sleeping well, performing well, keeping lean body mass on, not bloating, no weight gain, no water retention, no brain fog. And then people with optimal levels of hormones

Starting point is 00:15:26 that are having hormone deficiency symptoms. And I think this is a hallmark example of how that could occur. And when things don't make sense on the labs, I think, you know, and a lot of times modern medicine just gives up. And they go, well, you know, you don't qualify for hormone therapy,

Starting point is 00:15:43 you're a male, your testosterone's at 750, your free testosterone's at 1415. This is all in your head. But no, I'm exhausted. I have no libido and I can't sleep and I have brain fog. And so if someone's watching this podcast and they're identifying, first of all, which I think a lot of my audience is gonna identify with,

Starting point is 00:16:04 you know, some of the challenges that you faced, maybe not to the level, but they identify with some of all, which I think a lot of my audience is gonna identify with, some of the challenges that you faced, maybe not to the level, but they identify with some of those symptoms. Where do they start? How do I embark on a cellular anti-inflammatory journey? I know it's gotta start with diet and lifestyle, but what are some of the practices I can put into? Exactly, my cellular healing diet

Starting point is 00:16:25 was coined that just because I'm like, OK, let's control what we can control, right? That drives cellular inflammation. You know, vegetable and can oils, get rid of those. I always tell when I go to restaurants, I'm allergic, right? It's like, you know, I'm allergic to these. No, if you hear us order, we do that.

Starting point is 00:16:43 I'll make exceptions and eat some gelato, a little bit, you know. It's like, but I don't make exceptions there. Those fats stay in your cell membranes for months, not hours, not days, but months driving cellular dysfunction, inflammation, there's hormone receptors, blunts them. So it's also the sinister villain behind cholesterol. Cholesterol gets blamed for a lot of crimes it doesn't commit, but you know, when you introduce- I'm a believer cholesterol is one of those important fats

Starting point is 00:17:10 in the human body. Yeah, yeah. I am too. But yeah, I mean, so the, you know, these voiding, you ask where they start, like let's stop, you know, the things that we know drive inflammation, right? And diet plays a role, but look, I think that we have to realize that toxins are the number one driver of cellular inflammation, cellular dysfunction. And you know, that's what I

Starting point is 00:17:32 started teaching. My five Rs is a roadmap that I started teaching. There's a story about this, right? So of how to fix the cell, because my point is, is that real detox is a cellular issue, right? Meaning that, you know, there's things we can can do saunas are great. You and I love them We're all biohacks. We do them, right? Yeah, but if you don't upregulate Self-function then you're never truly going to have a lasting detox effect The reason is because day in day out your cells are detoxing when you make energy just to live to think ATP is we know it. It's a dirty process.

Starting point is 00:18:06 It's right, it's a dirty process. Like burning wood in a fireplace, it makes smoke. If that damper's not open, that smoke's backing up in the house, you and your family die from the smoke, not the flames, right? Well, that's the cell. When that cell's inflamed, those toxins that your cell's making become endogenous,

Starting point is 00:18:22 meaning inside your cell, now you've got a toxic problem inside your cell. Real detox is fixing that. That cell has different pathways that need to be fixed if you're going to have a lasting result. There's a story behind the five Rs. I was lecturing to a group of doctors in California and I was so excited. I was explained to them that,

Starting point is 00:18:43 look, this is real detox. This is what's broken. This is why people don't feel well. This is why people's hormones aren't working. This is why, and I'm going through it. And you've lectured to enough audiences to know when you have them and when you don't. When they understand and when they don't.

Starting point is 00:18:57 I left there so discouraged. I literally sat on the airplane like they missed it. And I was the only excited one in the room, right? It's like, yeah, that was bad. I find that all the time. That was a bad experience. So literally, I literally started praying because I'm like, I just, there's got to be a way. And then the five are I'm telling you, I got it, an idea picked up my notebook. The five hours was born. What is it? I don't want to lose people in the science, but our number one is the obvious.

Starting point is 00:19:21 You have to remove the sources. And I think today we're missing a lot of sources of why people don't feel well. So let's circle back to that. Our number two is regenerating the cell membranes. I already explained that the hormone receptors are in the membranes. Your mitochondrial membranes is where we make energy. The nuclear membrane.

Starting point is 00:19:40 So you have these membranes that get inflamed, these membranes that determine, there's a saying, it's not my saying. Life and death begins on these membranes that get inflamed, these membranes that determine there's a saying, it's not my saying, life and death begins on the membranes. Wow. Yeah. And I would, I believe that. Yeah. And I would ultimately say, you know, Bruce Lipton, I'm sure you probably yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:54 Yeah. I mean, he showed the intelligence, the innate intelligence. That means the inborn intelligence in the human body literally is in the membrane. That's what he determined. It's in these inner membrane proteins, right? It's like he's spot on, right? We used to think it was in the nucleus. No, it's not in the nucleus.

Starting point is 00:20:11 If you take the nucleus out and he showed this out of a cell, the cell lives on and it even does its functions. It's a white blood cell. It will go after bad guys, right? But if you destroy with enzymes, these hormone receptors in the membrane, dead, instant death, right?

Starting point is 00:20:26 So life and death is in the membranes. And that's our two. If we don't regenerate them, we're never gonna get well. You're not even gonna get the good stuff in your cell and the bad stuff out. Doesn't matter what supplements you take, what diet you eat. So we have to fix the membranes.

Starting point is 00:20:41 Our three is restoring cellular energy. If you don't restore cellular energy, this is one parallel. There's something called the Gibbs free energy equation. That means that you need a certain amount of ATP, two molecules to make one molecule of glutathione. And glutathione is how your body deals with oxidation and inflammation and detoxification pathway, right? That's how it's getting things out of the cell

Starting point is 00:21:04 and renewing things, right? So's how it's getting things out of the cell and renewing things, right? So energy drops, glutathione drops, but here's what the equation says, inflammation goes up. So now we're in this perpetual cycle, you see? And then R4 is you have to reduce inflammation. And a lot of dietary things that we're talking about. These are sequential,

Starting point is 00:21:22 these are all the things that you need to do. No, you work them as you can. Right. And then lastly, R5, and this is a topic you love, methylation. Methylation, glutathione and methylation parallel each other. One's down, the other's down. One's up, the other's up.

Starting point is 00:21:36 They parallel each other. And the energy pathway is methylation. Obviously, DNA, genes getting triggered, turned on and off. We have to reestablish, and that's the R, reestablish methylation. And look, I know you do a lot of that. He said so far. That's the face.

Starting point is 00:21:53 That's your R right there. You know a lot about it. You do. And I appreciate that, because people need to hear the message. But when people are sick and challenged, they often say, because you do a lot of the genetic testing, I'm always like, look, I just assume you're methyl depleted.

Starting point is 00:22:09 Because people that are sick and toxic, I don't care what your SNP is, your genetic, your gene, you are depleted in methylation when you're neurotoxically challenged and not well. So no matter what, we have to reestablish it. And obviously it's a big deal. There's a principle. You should find this gentleman, and I always give reestablish it. And, you know, obviously, it's a big deal. There's a principle, you should find this gentleman, I always give him credit for it. His name is Vaninsky, Alan

Starting point is 00:22:31 Vaninsky, Dr. Alan Vaninsky, the methylation priority principle, methylation priority principle. Yes. And here's the principle. And people are going to get a good lesson. What it shows is, first of all, all stress, physical, chemical, or emotional, deplete methyl groups. Simple carbon and 3-hydrogen because, many reasons, you need that carbon and 3-hydrogen's methyl group

Starting point is 00:22:55 to activate a stress response. You need it to turn off the stress response. Cortisol, adrenaline, all of it, right? It's survival. The priority is it will use methyl groups for that survival mechanism first and foremost. Here's the problem. The stress mechanism.

Starting point is 00:23:10 That's right, the stress mechanism. So it's prioritizing methylation to that. Now, we also know that you need methylation to get rid of toxic hormones, four-hydroxyestrone that can drive cancer and all these. So when you do a 24 hour urine hormone, you oftentimes see people who have dangerous levels of four hydroxyestrogen or 16,

Starting point is 00:23:32 and then their methylation's depleted. Yes. And that's why even on the Dutch test, you see that the COMT, you see that catecholomethyltransferase gene mutation is actually on there right down by the E2 pathway. It says, is this working or is it not? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:48 And by the way, people that stress bucket, physical, chemical, emotional, and it's at the top or overflowing, meaning, you know, a lot of toxic stress, the body, I said this once I'll say it again, the body doesn't know the difference of stress, physical, chemical, emotional. Once it builds up and that bucket is full, your methylation is being tagged. So the methylation priority principle is we're shoveling it to there. And what problem is, is now we're not protecting our DNA. Now we're not making proteins. Now we're not getting rid of toxic estrogen or toxic hormones or antigens. So, you know, that that's a principle that I learned from him

Starting point is 00:24:25 many, many years ago. I'm actually gonna look that up. Yeah, yeah, methylation priority principle. Yeah, methylation priority principle. Yeah, you'll love it. And so, Alan Vaninsky. Alan? Credit.

Starting point is 00:24:34 Vaninsky. All right, Alan, I'm coming to give you some credit and I'm reading your book if you've got one. Interview. All right, and I'll interview you. You know, I've had a lot of guests on the podcast, and I get a lot of requests. I mean, recently, Dr. Gabrielle line was was on the podcast, and she actually did someone posted on

Starting point is 00:24:52 her social media that I have a tendency and we have a tendency as biohackers and she was actually absolutely right about this to, to be men to talk about men to service men to always talk about male hormones and the journey that a lot of men have been on. I wanna sort of transition this to the females for a moment and female hormone therapy and pre menopause, perimenopausal women, post menopausal women.

Starting point is 00:25:20 How much of this cellular inflammatory cycle and these five Rs are affecting women that are pre or postmenopausal? More. Yeah. Yeah. Perimenopausal. A lot of things happen, right?

Starting point is 00:25:37 And women are hormonally more complex than men in a good way. It can work for them, live longer. I've seen both sides of that equation in my house. Absolutely. Yeah, OK, now we've got to keep the ladies with us here. There's an answer. But more women are affected by autoimmune. More women have thyroid complications.

Starting point is 00:25:56 And I think, and let's talk about why. But after COVID, more women, I think 54%, ridiculous number of women ended up with thyroid strain, struggle, diagnoses. I was like, wow. Because again, what happened in COVID, very odd virus. If your stress bucket was already really full, many people became what we call long haulers post-COVID. I think it's like one out of six now, people are saying,

Starting point is 00:26:24 I still don't feel well since. Maybe of the therapies from it or who knows. But the complicating factor. The solution created a lot of the problem. Look, a few things happen. In perimenopause, your hormones are adjusting. It's actually very normal to remodel bone. Estrogen levels are naturally coming down

Starting point is 00:26:45 and you start to, women start to lose bone. A lot of lead is stored in the bone. Matter of fact, most of it. Many women dump lead. I'll tell you another time that happens during pregnancy. It's normal to lose bone during pregnancy, but out comes the lead. Four generations inherited lead in utero.

Starting point is 00:27:04 Four generations. Wow. utero, four generations. Yeah, so, and we also inherit the epigenetics, the genes being turned on, but meaning if your mom had lead, then you do in four generations. And this has happened to my wife. My wife during perimenopause started getting different weird hormone things going on.

Starting point is 00:27:23 And we weren't just gonna chase it with hormones, so we started digging, we did the Dutch test. during perimenopause started getting different weird hormone things going on, right? And we weren't just going to chase it with hormones. So we started digging. We did the Dutch test. And her methylation was tanked. And we started and she had a buildup of four hydroxyestrone. Her mother died, four hydroxyestrone is a toxic, potentially toxic estrogen metabolite. And it's very good at binding water too, which works women.

Starting point is 00:27:44 And we know it can drive cancer, particularly breast cancer. Her mother had breast cancer. Wow. Went about treating it standard way through medicine, chemo, et cetera, ended up, well, she was considered a cure. And then 10 years later, because I said, Joyce, you didn't really get to the cause of what's going on. At that time, I wasn't even sure.

Starting point is 00:28:04 But 10 years later, she ended up diagnosed with uterine cancer. Two years later, she died. My wife was heading down the same exact road hormonally. Wow. Well, we were trying to support her methylation in every way possible, and it just wasn't coming up. And long story short, we did a heavy metal test,

Starting point is 00:28:22 same test I did. Her lead was off the chart. I mean, off the chart, Gary, literally off the chart. And so I started reflecting my son who had these GI problems. And was she having the symptoms of just hormone toxicity? Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:28:37 And some hormone things and like, you know, lead has a little pattern different than mercury. She didn't have the same symptoms I had. But a lot of joint pain. Mercury has a lot more fear. Yeah, mercury's fear. I was bloated with fear, anger, irritability, anxiety, horrible feeling of dread.

Starting point is 00:28:51 In the middle of the night, I would wake up just with a feeling of dread, horrible depression. I had it all. So I became someone I wasn't. But my wife's symptoms were different. So my son had these GI issues. And we ate perfect diet, fed our kids amazing, tested his lead off the chart.

Starting point is 00:29:09 My ex one, which we called the Banshee and he had these skin things off the chart. They got their lead from the mother, she got her lead from the mother. I'm saying this to say like, look, it's normal to lose bone, out comes the lead. You know, mercury, same thing. There's a study called the Drash study. It's a German study that showed, sorry ladies, but the number of silver fillings that you have or your mom is proportional to how much they

Starting point is 00:29:34 found in the baby's brain on autopsy studies. Wow. And that's very, very accurate because these are autopsies from dead fetuses. And the amount of mercury correlated to the amount of fillings in the mouth. Wow, these malgamate fillings in the mouth. Yeah, so we're born into some of these toxins.

Starting point is 00:29:51 My point is, is that bucket that I'm talking about starts filling in utero and then through life. What Monee Holmes did you live in? What other exposures? Contact lens fluid, if you look at my story, I wore contact lenses in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. So I wore them when they were new. But the saline solution had mercury in it.

Starting point is 00:30:13 Wow. So that's been banned in the 90s, but it went right into our brains. And of course, I had my own set of fillings. So mercury was going right. Those fillings contained 50% mercury. They vaporized mercury, despite what anyone says, they vaporized mercury for the life of that filling into the brain. Mercury vapor crosses the blood brain barrier, turns the inorganic mercury, and there it's locked for life. Oh, it's a forever chemical. Part of my process that I teach,

Starting point is 00:30:40 passion, that's how I got my life back, is how do we get this inorganic mercury that has a half life longer than we live out of the brain? That's a process I believe I have the only safe and effective way on the planet to do it. And of course now, Gary, now, okay, if you put mercury and aluminum together, opposing metals like that, they have a higher lethal dose value.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Simply put, if you put them in a study. They kill, yeah, they're right. They kill more rats, right? It's like in smaller amounts together than they do one higher than the other. Okay, so aluminum and mercury, you know where we're getting crushed with aluminum right now?

Starting point is 00:31:18 And I know there's a lot of conspiracy in our air. They've put aluminum as one of the additives in jet fuel to make it more efficient. Dollars and cents. They're saving my view. We can make jets fly longer on jet fuel. We're going to save billions of dollars. Problem is aluminum is one of the...

Starting point is 00:31:33 So it's coming down as acid rain in our water and our food. We're being crushed with aluminum. Aluminum, the mercury exposures. You wonder why we have a world full of brain fogged people heading for neurological disaster. I have a 0.1 micron air filter in every room in my house. There's one right there. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:52 0.1 micron. Yeah, because we are exposed. Whether you like it or not, when you go outside on certain days, you're going to be exposed to higher levels of aluminum. But regardless it's in the water, you're filtering all your water, so am I. But how many people aren't?

Starting point is 00:32:05 And then you wonder why. We have an explosion. I mean, even the last 20 years of thyroid conditions, I mean, just skyrocketing. It's insane. Yeah. Well, we know mercury and aluminum affects thyroid. The thyroid's the canary in the coal mine,

Starting point is 00:32:18 meaning it's the most sensitive to neurotoxins. And we date ourselves a bit, but the canary in the coal mine means that they literally, in the old days, they didn't have the sophisticated equipment to bring down the- I happen to know what that means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew you did.

Starting point is 00:32:32 I don't know if they do. Mike Harriman does. Yeah, exactly. You guys know what that means? No, see? They're saying, no, canary in a coal mine. They literally brought a canary down into the coal mine. If the canary died, they said, we only

Starting point is 00:32:44 have so much time to get out. Because the canary down into the coal mine. If the canary died, they said, we only have like so much time to get out because the canary was that sensitive. And they use canaries in the coal mine. Thyroid is the canary in the coal mine, meaning it's the first to go. So if people suffering from thyroid symptoms, and again, you have thyroid dysfunction years, years. Brody Barnes says 10 to 20 years

Starting point is 00:33:04 before you actually have a blood test that shows you're out. So that means you're having the dry skin, the brittle nails, the hair thinning, the low energy, the brain fog, constipation, all those are thyroid symptoms. You have that before your blood work goes out, right? Probably going back to your receptor sensitivity discussion where it's actually, you know, the receptor desensitization starts, which actually makes the hormone level less important. And now you're, and then eventually your hormone levels

Starting point is 00:33:30 get away. Yeah. Right, but then we go to our doctor and then he puts us on a medication, makes our blood work look normal. And we go, we go back in a couple of months and he says, well, you should be feeling better. And you're going, yeah, I'm not. Okay, I might have a little more energy. I might be, but yeah, you should be feeling better. And you're going, yeah, I'm not. Oh, okay, I might have a little more energy.

Starting point is 00:33:45 I might be, but yeah, I'm not feeling better. It's because they didn't deal with the cell, right? My saying is you have to fix the cell to get well. If you don't do that today, because that's why people don't feel well, despite diet change, despite taking hormones, despite, name the list, the supplements they take. That message was not even hitting 20 years ago.

Starting point is 00:34:06 Now it's like, yeah, that's me. I'm doing all that. I still don't feel well. It's a cellular issue. You have to up-regulate those pathways. And then now we can get ourselves functioning. Now all the stuff works. Now your supplements works, your diet works,

Starting point is 00:34:20 you start losing weight again. So anyway, that's- I love that. So we, so for females, you know, that are that are menopausal, and they're actually starting to they look at their hormone profile, and everything seems normal. But you know, they really just don't feel well emotionally, physically, not sleeping well, they've got the you know, the

Starting point is 00:34:43 classic water retention that we call the estrogen band, but they got the classic estrogen band, they've got brain fog. And, and once in a while, and I see this profile come through our clinics all the time. They'll say there are just days where I have crushing fatigue, and other days where I'm just tired. And then once in a while, I feel normal. But it's it's it's occasional. So where does that woman start?

Starting point is 00:35:07 Filtering her air, filtering her water, because she's not gonna get a standard hormone panel because that's gonna tell the same story that you were talking about. Exactly. What are some of the ways that they can test for some of these toxic levels of metals or micro toxins? Hi guys, Gary here.

Starting point is 00:35:21 I wanna take a few minutes of your time to invite you to my Ultimate Human VIP Community. This is a private community with front row seats to my most advanced health protocols, exclusive monthly Q&A calls, a private podcast where you can ask my guests and me your most pressing questions and my own personal wellness blueprints and everything you need to optimize your health. You'll connect with like-minded folks in this community. You'll get firsthand access to cutting edge insights and enjoy special discounts on products

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Starting point is 00:36:07 That's theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP right now to become one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is your fast pass to better health, so don't miss it. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Yeah, look, I always start with a simple test. I did a webinar that's free online. People can watch it. By the way, I'm going to put links to all of these

Starting point is 00:36:32 in the show notes. I'm going to put links to Beyond Fasting and the Cellular Healing Diet, because I'm a big fan of both of those. If they go to pompaprogram.com, there's a webinar there that's free. And it's what I taught doctors. Same information I taught doctors for 20 years.

Starting point is 00:36:44 And I explained this right, but I always say start with a simple cellular inflammation test you or you measure meta melinda high, it looks at basically membrane oxidation, which is a reflection. It's better than a CRP for specifically what we're looking for. Right? C react approach is just a general general information, right? And you know, as well as I do, unless you're in a really sick state, most people will come back pretty normal, right? Even though we have an optimal range, but the silent inflammation is way more sensitive. And yours would be under

Starting point is 00:37:15 three, it would be very good. Right. You know, but most people today, it's not. And that will be like, oh, yeah, well, that's why my hormone receptors, that's why my hormones are working. That's why we start people there. And then, you know, what we do from the test is okay, meet with someone then you, you know, help people look at their lives and identify what I call their perfect storm. So think about this. Everybody out there, when we see someone's bucket overflow, and say, now I'm fatigued, now all the symptoms we're talking about,

Starting point is 00:37:48 the anxiety, the depression, you name it, the hormone challenges, basically they get to the point where, like I said, the bucket overflows, but there was three stressors that came together. So I have people try to figure out where those stressors are, meaning we want it to be one thing. I did have mercury toxicity,

Starting point is 00:38:08 but I was also living in a low grade moldy home. I was also doing 300 miles on my bike. Physical stress, mold, biotoxic stress, and mercury is another stress. Boom, my bottom fell out. The perfect storm. You remember the movie, we're dating ourselves again. George Clooney, three weather fronts come together.

Starting point is 00:38:26 It was. That was the eight. Was that eighties or nineties? Hopefully it was the nineties, because it feels like it was yesterday. Yeah, right? I know. That's so true.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Yeah, George Clooney. Kind of looks the same. But anyway, three weather fronts come together. Catastrophic storm. Right. That's what we see. They were all rotating the same direction. So similar kind of what you're saying.

Starting point is 00:38:42 Boom. Intensity builds up. Yeah, so when we're evaluating people, we're looking for that perfect storm of three stressors. And then we say, okay, what can we do to get rid of those three stressors? And then we can really get to the solution. So let's talk cause.

Starting point is 00:38:57 I said, our number one, let's circle back to it. I think that functional medicine has taken a turn to the left. Maybe a not such a good turn, meaning we were really excited about a lot of expensive tests. But ultimately, it's moved further away from getting to the real causes. So if I didn't get to the mercury in my brain,

Starting point is 00:39:17 I wouldn't have got my life back. If I didn't remove the fillings that were pushing mercury into my brain, I wouldn't have got my life back here. Yeah, and if you're still living in a moldy home, unknowing, I know you don't smell it, you probably had an air test done, all came back normal, right?

Starting point is 00:39:31 But that doesn't mean you're not living in a moldy home, right, mold is very difficult to test for. It's so cyclical I'm finding out too now, like you can spore and then sort of become dormant and then it can sporulate again. So if you actually happen to be during, it's like hair, it has a growth phase and a shedding phase.

Starting point is 00:39:48 And mold has a similar phase. I don't profess to be an expert on mold by any means, but I did as I've had more mold toxicity clients. And I've been working with Dr. Minkoff in Tampa. And one of the things I've come to understand is that, yeah, mold actually cycles too. So people will test their home and they're like, Hey, I tested negative for mold and we'll look at all the mold toxicity.

Starting point is 00:40:12 98% of all air tests come back negative, right? And it's like the molds behind the walls or it's somewhere in some molds don't even spoil off like stacky botchers. Yeah, we're the capital of the world right here. Miami, Miami and Malibu, California. Oh yeah. Listen up, if you live in Malibu, definitely you should travel.

Starting point is 00:40:28 You know what it is too, it's a lot of the HVACs. So when I walk into a building, because I have a nose for it and I'm sensitive to it now, I walk in and I go mold. I turn around and walk out because the HVACs, they build up mold in the coil, long story. But so it doesn't have to be behind the walls. Oftentimes it is in a HVAC, especially in humid areas.

Starting point is 00:40:47 The point is, is that many, many people are sick because they're in a moldy home. You know what one of the symptoms are? Nasty weight loss resistance, or all of a sudden they gain weight. Hormone dysfunction like crazy because biotoxins, we're not talking about a mold allergy here. There's mold allergies.

Starting point is 00:41:03 You're allergic to the mold spore. But we're talking about the biotoxin. The actual mycotoxin. Right, the actual mycotoxin, which is a nasty, nasty neurotoxin, meaning it gets into the nerve tissue like mercury, and it makes people really sick. You get a certain set of symptoms,

Starting point is 00:41:22 frequent urination at night frequent urination period you get the insomnia's the anxieties the inability to lose weight because it affects the Lileptin receptors in the hypothalamus But the bottom line is you might be in a moldy home if we don't get to that cause And today to your point the way we're building homes is we have a problem. You go to Europe, thousand year old buildings, they don't have mold. Why? It's the way they built the buildings compared to we are. Their circulation. Yeah. Yeah. Circulation. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:41:53 We have drywall, which has mold food on it. I mean, you know, drywall has paper. All you have to do is add water and you will have mold because the mold's here. Right. Yeah. So it's just makes no sense, but we're still building homes this way. I remember the big issue we had in Southeast and Southwest Florida with Chinese drywall. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:13 It's called the Chinese drywall. Toxic. And it was absolutely, I mean, people were getting violently ill. I was actually in one of those homes where we actually had to, our builder had to, was a community in Naples called the Sari. And our builder had to come a community in Naples called the sorry, and our builder had to come in and

Starting point is 00:42:26 remediate all beautiful home in and they had to literally come in and rip it down the studs and then ozone it and and put the drywall back but the the exposure to some of these so air filtration things like you know ozone filtration systems things like that you know, ozone filtration systems, things like that, that we can actually put into our homes to really filter our air and try to, you know, I always tell people they should, they should build an imaginary fence around themselves and begin to filter things before it gets to their

Starting point is 00:42:58 body. Because where else your temple is going to be the filter. So we can, we can filter our water before it gets to the temple, or we can let our temple filter out the fluoride, the chlorine, the microplastics. When we walk outside, we get aluminum exposures and other exposures, right? Multiple exposures. Glyphosate, another chemical that's spraying on our food,

Starting point is 00:43:16 it's in 60% of the rain. So we better control our environment we can control, right? Where we're spending 14 hours a day, 20 hours a day, who knows, but you know, that's what we have to control. So your point, you have to filter your water, you have to filter your air. Look, I know these things, you know, there's a price to it, but what's the price to your health, right?

Starting point is 00:43:37 You know, and people out there, don't just run and get your fillings out. There's a proper way to do that. And then remember, it's bio accumulated in the brain. That's my process. We have to get it out of the deep tissue, let out of the bone mercury and aluminum out of the brain. You know, there's a process but you ask the question, what can you do, you have to control the input of

Starting point is 00:43:57 these things. Here's a great analogy. If we had a bathtub upstairs, all of a sudden overflowing. That's the symptoms we don't like, right? Here's all the things, the damage being caused, right? That's the autoimmune condition, the thyroid condition, the diabetes, whatever condition it is you're diagnosed with or symptoms you don't like. And we can open up the drain, but if the water's flowing in more than the drain can drain because it's only this big, then we're not going to get well. We're going to still have damage happening until we slow down.

Starting point is 00:44:25 We probably don't, we don't have to turn it all the way up, but if we slow down what's going in, that's your responsibility. The toxic load. And then we can now open up the pathways. And I argue we have to do that at the cellular level. You have to open up these pathways. We have to get ourselves, if your cells are healthy,

Starting point is 00:44:40 if your cells are able to do what God designed them to do, we're able to combat it, right? I'm not saying it's perfect. You know, we're overexposed today, but you have to get your cells doing what they were designed to do day in, day out. And that's get rid of toxins. So let's pay more attention to that. Yeah, because you know, very often I disagree with people that say, and I know it's a sort of a scientific law, the dosage determines the poison, but the truth is that sometimes the dosage doesn't determine the poison, it's the cumulative dosage that determines the poison.

Starting point is 00:45:09 It bioaccumulates in our tissues. I mean, nobody ever got mercury poisoning from one piece of tuna fish, right? I mean, they got mercury poisoning from micro dosing, for lack of better words, so you can have a safe level of mercury or a safe level of arsenic or a safe level of lead. And there are levels that are considered safe

Starting point is 00:45:24 for all of these things. But if you're not eliminating these things from the body, then small accumulations eventually, which is why in Europe, very often for toxicity levels, they'll use cumulative dose toxicity and say, hey, well, we can't allow this compound glyphosate, for example, because in cumulative doses, this is very toxic. Yeah, somebody can eat some lettuce that has glyphosate for example, because incumulative doses, this is very toxic. Yeah, somebody can eat some lettuce

Starting point is 00:45:48 that has glyphosate on it and they'll be fine. But if they eat that lettuce every day, and it's also on their apples and their oranges and their pears and their peppers and their vegetables and their produce, well now all of a sudden the body can eliminate that. Yeah, and so you take in the toxic fish, the toxic lettuce, your body does what it does, right?

Starting point is 00:46:10 And it gets rid of it because it's survival, right? It's processing it to the point you made, but then it's overwhelmed and then it's more. Then it's more like where we're at today, different even than 20 years ago. And now the pathways are breaking. And would it be right to say it would take less to overwhelm it once it's in that state? So as soon as you hit the

Starting point is 00:46:28 state of inflammation, small assaults are it's like sunburned skin. Absolutely. You see the people who like when I was sick, Gary, I would sit next to someone with clone on it would ruin not just that day would ruin several days. Yeah, I mean, one sniff of mold would put me down. That's how sensitive I got. That's how filled my bucket was. I mean, I couldn't handle it. You know what?

Starting point is 00:46:49 I get two glasses of water, fill one to the top, right at the edge. And then I fill one just a quarter of the way up. I can stress this one a lot. No problem. That's where you're at, right? And me now. You know how many people are right at the edge?

Starting point is 00:47:05 Little bit of stress and then all the damage, all the water overflow. We have to empty our buckets. And then you can tolerate more. Then you can hit the fish. Then you can live a normal life because I hear it. I heard it from a guy just two days ago. He said, well, come on, aren't we just,

Starting point is 00:47:20 no matter what, there's toxin around. I'm like, you're right. That's why you have to build up your capacity to deal with it. Otherwise, you're going to trigger a gene. You're going to end up with a thyroid condition. You're going to end up with brain fog, fatigue. It starts there. And then the cancer diagnosis could come.

Starting point is 00:47:35 I mean, once the cell gets more and more toxic, the DNA is going to get affected. So in your protocol, one of the things that you talk about in your book that I find really fascinating is creating new stem cells. And how does how do we create new stem cells or stem cells are as old as we are you talking about releasing a new stem cells because I, you know, I, I'm fascinated by I think the

Starting point is 00:48:01 whole field of biologic stem cells, exosomes, natural killer cells, natural killer blood draws. I mean, this sort of whole area of biologic medicine, I believe, is the future. I'm fascinated, too. So how does one go about increasing the number of their own stem cells without putting stem cells into their body?

Starting point is 00:48:21 Without putting stem cells in the body. So the cheapest way, fasting. Yeah, look, I got. Oh, yes. I want to go down this road. I'm excited to go down this road. Yeah, I got into fasting in the 1990s. I had literally visited these fasting clinics

Starting point is 00:48:35 who extend, do extended fasts with people, like 30 days, 50 days. Who we saw this week, I just did a podcast. When did we do that? Three or four days ago with Dr. Volter Longo. Oh, I love Volter. Yeah, Volter's amazing. And I mean, he's like beyond intelligent,

Starting point is 00:48:56 but what he let me know about, and he talks about it on the podcast, is that he is about to release a series of three clinical studies. They're finished with the trial and they're publishing it. One on Alzheimer's and dementia and neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. One on type two diabetes and another one on dementia

Starting point is 00:49:16 and the simplicity for lack of better words of using fasting to turn the power of the human body on these egregious neuroinflammatory conditions and things like diabetes. And he used the term, these are his words, not mine, these diseases are reversible. His words, not mine. And he said in this study, they're going to prove that.

Starting point is 00:49:40 So, I just took 55,000 people I think I had for a three day water fast last month. And I took another 73,000 people through a three day breath work challenge. But I want to go down this road of fasting. Look, fasting- You wrote a book on it. Yeah, fasting's fascinating, you know, what happens.

Starting point is 00:49:58 And to go back to answer your question, by the way, Valter is, you know, he really brought to the forefront partial fasting, where you don't even have to just do pure water. Now I'm a fan of both. Yeah. I learned fast mimicking. Yeah. Fasting mimicking diet, which basically is a partial fast. That means reducing protein and calories down below to a certain point. Protein typically under 20 grams calories, somewhere under a thousand depending on body size. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:26 Yeah, and it works. I learned that type of fasting from a French gentleman and he read his books and his articles and because I noted that some people just, fasting is a stress. And if you violate the premise of hormesis, meaning if you don't adapt to a stress, it becomes negative.

Starting point is 00:50:43 So we can talk about that with the biohacks. But what it is, what happens during this stress is the body goes into a survival mode and it starts crush. It's smart enough to get rid of the bad senescent cells. These are cells that live too long, drive inflammation, age prematurely, cause all kinds of trouble, zombie cells they're called, right? Senes kinds of trouble, zombie cells, they're called, right?

Starting point is 00:51:05 Senescent cells, the body's smart enough to go after those and it goes after those to get the nutrition that it needs for survival. It's fascinating. Amino acids. But it's so smart that it not only gets rid of, if it gets rid of a bad one, it stimulates a stem cell. That was your original question. And it stimulates a stem cell. And that was your original question.

Starting point is 00:51:25 And it remakes a new cell. So, Valter, in one of his studies, he showed that when you're in a fasted state, your body's getting rid of these immunosinness cells. So, these are cells that live too long in your immune system. Those are really bad because it gives you low immunity. It causes you to have hyperimm immunity, autoimmune, right?

Starting point is 00:51:46 So we know that in a fasted state, it's getting rid of those and it's creating a new cell, which he calls a naive cell, meaning we're chill. We're not going after the bad guys and we're young. So we have great immunity. We're creating more of those guys. But one thing that I loved about Valter, that you'd mentioned the diabetes study

Starting point is 00:52:05 that was first done in rats. He showed that it wasn't just one study. What they did in that study is once a month, they did a five day partial fast. Next month, five day partial fast. Next month, four months, I believe it was in that particular study. And they saw the beta cells

Starting point is 00:52:20 in the pancreas regenerate themselves. And they actually did, now they've done it, repeated it in humans. Yes, and that's what he's working on right now. And they actually did, now they've done it, repeated it in humans. Yes, and that's what he's working on right now. And I don't want to misquote it, but it's in the podcast. But I want to say he used large samples of patients and it was randomized and it was placebo controlled. And one of the groups was over 500 patients.

Starting point is 00:52:41 And the results were so profound, that I think at one point, they actually considered stopping the study, it seemed almost inhumane. But we're going to have randomized human clinical trials now from a world renowned, you know, researcher, and I think he's he runs the Longevity Center at USC, USC Davis, and, and real, you know, instead of people having to make the extrapolation from rats into humans, um, humans, which is amazing. Yeah, which they've

Starting point is 00:53:11 been working on that. Valter has been a gift, um, you know, to this area. Yeah. When I was into fasting in the nineties, it was like me and some natural hygiene society people. I mean, you know, you were tracing it way back then. Let me tell you something. This is a, now I go to these seminars, right? Even the low carb events, right?

Starting point is 00:53:30 Keto events, et cetera. And now I see people fasting too much. And they look gone. I mean, it's like, and because fasting is a stress, right? Too much is not good. Too much autophagy. Remember autophagy, meaning your body's getting rid of the bad cells.

Starting point is 00:53:45 We just talked about the benefit of that, but that can go too much. We're in, you're now into that catabolic state. It's a breakdown state. There's a pathway that anti-agers hate. It's called mTOR. Now I disagree. I think mTOR short-term is an incredible pathway

Starting point is 00:54:04 where we build muscle, we build we rebuild ligaments, tendons. It's a building pathway. To their point, if you stay in mTOR too long, they can prove in studies that you age prematurely. So everything that stimulates mTOR, elevated protein, this, that, they hate, they hate, they hate. Right. But look, autophagy is at one end, mTOR is at the other.

Starting point is 00:54:25 Too much autophagy, no good. People are fasting too much, it's not good. It's too much stress. And then you have the mTOR pathway. Too much of that, no good. You know, I teach in my premise, diet variation, meaning moving in and out of different diets. Every culture, healthy culture on the planet did this.

Starting point is 00:54:44 They did it because they had to. Yeah, and his longevity diet, he talks about this too. Yeah. And it's like, so I've taught it for years, go into ketosis, but go in and out of it. Do carnivore. Don't stay in it. I've taught it for years. And by the way, you can look at the people that say keto causes cancer because of something called 4-hydroxynenolone builds up this nasty free radical. Wait, that's why it works in the beginning. That stimulates all these positive changes.

Starting point is 00:55:11 But if you stay in it too long, it bioaccumulates, it builds up, and then it becomes a negative the same diet you're on. I could plant-based diets. Too much plant-based diets, eating plants, you have too many little toxic stressors that can start inflaming the gut. Any diet too long causes problems. When you change a diet, you actually create a stress on the microbiome

Starting point is 00:55:33 and actually create diversity. It's magic. Yeah, this is metabolic flexibility. Absolutely. So one of the things I train my doctors and coaches is switch diets, make people switch their diets, switch their diet, more variation, more variation. It works. It works.

Starting point is 00:55:45 I love that. And talk a little bit about, for the people that are not super familiar with fasting, I mean, how does somebody harness the benefits of fasting without taking too much of a risk? Are you a fan? Because I was surprised by Dr. Longo said that he actually wasn't a huge fan of intermittent fasting, especially the very narrow.

Starting point is 00:56:02 Yeah, I know that. I've actually seen in our own clinical practice, you know, some of the worst endocrine disasters in menstruating females have been ones with really, really narrow feeding windows. It's an endocrine disaster for them. I agree. So like narrow the feeding window down to they're highly disciplined. I mean, we had a female CrossFit athlete have

Starting point is 00:56:20 four hours a day was all she would eat. So she spent 20 hours a day fasting. It was a disaster for her. She actually ended up with something called red ass. Which was very, very bad condition. And this is the people I'm talking about, fasting too much. Yeah, it's anything too much. Anything too much.

Starting point is 00:56:34 37 degree, you know, we were talking about this earlier. Yeah, we were. You know, I get in a cold plunge three minutes, minimum six minutes maximum. And I'm at 48 degrees. I'm not like, you know, 34 degrees. and I don't stay in there for 12 minutes. But I see folks on, on, you know, Instagram taking a snorkel going underwater or underwater for 12 minutes, 37 degree water.

Starting point is 00:56:54 And it's it's kind of like, oh, you go in 37 degree water, go in 34 degree water, you know, I go in 33.1. You know, it's after we finish the fasting conversation I want to get back into that conversation yeah but um uh so my my question essentially is that you know for somebody that's watching watching this hasn't participated in my fast hasn't hasn't read your book on fasting isn't familiar with dr vulture longo um what's this sort of a safe path for somebody to go down to experience some of the benefits of fasting? Well, first of all, to your point, right, you know, everyone's different, right? Like we

Starting point is 00:57:30 were talking about, not everyone can jump in a callback for three minutes. And if they do, not only is more not better, it's could be a lot worse. Yeah, they're not adapting. Everything is adaptation. If you don't adapt, you make a positive negative, right? Same with fasting. So a lot of people were just, oh yeah, they get a result so they think by eating one meal a day, or maybe they're eating in a four hour window to your point, right? And they lose some weight, but the problem is,

Starting point is 00:57:58 they might be losing a lot of muscle weight because their body's not efficiently burning fat because they're not efficient at it. They've got cellular problems, right? And so what happens is, is then they're continuing doing this. Now they're straining their adrenals, their thyroid, their hormones, and they end up in this hormone down spiral as you described to answer your question, what your fasting window works for you. Here's a good way you could do it. Okay, so people listening. So let's say you get up and you say, okay, I'm going to skip breakfast and I'm going to just push it out till 10 o'clock. Wake up in the morning. Let's say you wake up at six or seven. Check your, and they sell meters,

Starting point is 00:58:35 very cheap and expensive meters for this. Check your glucose and ketones. Ketones are what, when your body burns fat, it makes ketones. Most of your viewers probably know what that is, right? And okay, so test both levels before you do anything, before you have your coffee, before whatever you do, do it first. Now, at 10 o'clock before you're ready to eat, test the levels again. What you should see is,

Starting point is 00:58:58 and you could do three to five days so you get a good average, you should see glucose trending down from your weight glucose and ketones trending up. If you don't see that, despite how you feel, you're not adapting to that level of stress. So let's see your first meal is until 2 o'clock. You would test in the morning, then before 2 o'clock.

Starting point is 00:59:17 And you should see that trend. Because what it's showing is, at least I'm adapting enough that I'm burning fat using that for energy. Now, if you exercise or do something or get stressed out, you're gonna throw your numbers off. As opposed to seeing the higher glucose levels,

Starting point is 00:59:30 you're saying. Yes, exactly. So then you see glucose trending down, ketones trending up. It's a good sense that you're adapting to that. So that gives people a better sense of what fast works for them. But here, let me answer it even better for people.

Starting point is 00:59:43 I'm okay, Most people can do one or two days where they fast, where they eat one meal a day, maybe in a four hour window. But the magic is in the feast. People are forgetting about that mTOR pathway. The feast is the magic. So I go around saying, you need to feast. Don't forget about the feast. I interviewed Karen Verde. You should interview her. but she was the first one to show, it was a mouse study, I believe, but they compared like low fat diets, low carb, all these different diets.

Starting point is 01:00:12 The diet that worked the best to break through weight loss resistance was actually feast, famine, feast, famine, feast, famine. And I said, Karen, why was it? I think they were doing like low calorie one day, regular diet, low calorie, feast, famine, okay? I said, Karen, why was it? I think they were doing like low calorie one day, regular diet, low calorie feast family. I said, why is that?

Starting point is 01:00:28 She said, because it forces adaptation. And there's a hormone optimization that takes place when the body is in that state. The point is we're just famine with intermittent fasting. And you can't just do that much famine. You need feast days. Even from the simplest standpoint, your body, everything's about survival. Would you agree with that? Everything, right? That's why biohacks work. Right. Everything's about survival. Probably like these famine works. So, okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:55 It's very ancestrally in tune with your body. But here's the thing. Look, it, your body, when you famine too much, it'll eventually go, I'm gonna save Gary's life and I'm gonna slow my metabolism down. I'm gonna hold on to fat. And if I have to, I'll even use muscle. It's easy. It's cheap. I've heard you say it, right?

Starting point is 01:01:15 It's easy. 30-second burn up the muscle, right? Gluconeogenesis, boom. Okay, so it'll do that if it has to. And so you're getting lower and lower metabolism as that happens. Now, if you just take one or two days a week, people with hormone challenges oftentimes need three,

Starting point is 01:01:30 feast, famine, feast, famine. And if you feast, your body, it reminds your body it's not starving. Simple as that. So imagine you're in the middle of the wood in Alaska, or you have a cabin in Alaska, and I do too. And I come over to your place in the middle of the wood in Alaska, right? Or you have a cabin in Alaska. And I do too. And I come over to your place in the heart of winter. This winter's colder than normal, harder than normal.

Starting point is 01:01:50 You have a normal pow of wood that makes you, gets you through the winter typically. This winter's bad. So you're dwindling your pow very quickly. Matter of fact, so quickly you get nervous to survive. So you burn less wood. You turn the metabolism down. You're saying, you know what? I'm going to keep my house at 55 because I got to

Starting point is 01:02:09 make it through this winter. I only have so much wood. I come by your house and go, Gary, holy cow, man. This place is freezing. Yeah, I'm running out of wood. I got plenty. I come over and dump a feast day. I give you more wood. Guess what you do? You turn it back up to 70. Right? You know what I'm saying? So that's what the metabolism does. You know, I'm saying? So that's what the metabolism does. So the point is is people are putting themselves too much intermittent fasting daily, and their body starts backing into it.

Starting point is 01:02:33 It may take months, but it backs into a survival mode, screws your metabolism up hormonally, because that's what it is. That's what we've seen. And then add feast days and watch the metabolism fire up. So they just remind your body it's not starving. It's not rocket science here. Right.

Starting point is 01:02:48 You know, it's so funny because I just experienced that of my own accord. I don't know that I necessarily do feast famine, feast famine days. I don't think we have to do it so structured. But I take once in a while, I'll just take a Sunday, and I just fast on a Sunday, and I'll just drink mineral water throughout the day.

Starting point is 01:03:09 And I wake up Monday morning, and I feel so clear and so energetic. And then I eat normally on Monday. I actually wake up just as clear and energetic on Tuesday. And I've done this so many times that I know it's not just the fast, it's also the feast afterwards. I don't think anybody can not fast for-

Starting point is 01:03:29 The hormone optimization that occurs because of the feast. Because I feel amazing. And when we did the three day water fast, I actually had people use bone broth day one and then eased into it days two and days three. And one of the most interesting thing that people reported was that they didn't realize

Starting point is 01:03:48 how much time they actually spent eating. They said, I wasn't hungry, but just behaviorally, I got up and went through the refrigerator. I got up and went to the, you know, into the kitchen, you know, the office in the kitchen. And I usually walk in there four or five, six times a day because I'm constantly nibbling on snacks. They say the average American eats 17 meals a day

Starting point is 01:04:07 and people go, no, I don't. But it's the bite of nuts. It's the olive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just constantly grazing. But it still causes your body to have to process that. It's still a lot of energy to eat. And Walter talks about this, right?

Starting point is 01:04:25 His predecessor was in the Human Genome Project. You know what that was? It was that where they put themselves in a biosphere, literally for like two years, ran every test on themselves. They diminished calories. I think it was at 35%, I think it was, because studies show that genes turned on

Starting point is 01:04:43 that make you live longer. It was a complete fail. And it was because studies show that genes turned on that make you live longer. Right. It was a complete fail And then it was a fail because caloric restriction never works number one. They came out catabolic Okay, and oh their gene their cert one gene was triggered to live while however all their other parameters They were an inflamed state their immune systems were horrible And their their organs literally shrunk, complete fail. And that's when Walter said, wait a minute, we know caloric restriction is good,

Starting point is 01:05:10 but short periods of time. It's exactly what he said on the podcast. Yeah, it was a fascinating podcast because he talked about yeast and then talked about mice and then talked about human trials. And now I think this next series of clinical studies is gonna publish within the next week or 10 days or so, right around the time the podcast comes out,

Starting point is 01:05:30 is gonna really rock the world of fasting because it's going to give real science and real data in randomized trials to the support behind caloric restriction for short periods of time. That's the key. And repeating that, I think. That's the key. The study was exactly what you said, was five days,

Starting point is 01:05:52 and he has a fasting program called Prolon. Yeah, it's box, it's easy, I love it. I mean, it's easy because people go, well, what do I eat? Here, here's the box. Yes, that's kind of my list. And I think it's easier to go to 800 and 1,100 calories a day than it is to go to zero calories for five days.

Starting point is 01:06:10 Yeah, totally. Yeah. And by the way, here's where I disagree with Walter, in all respect to Walter. You know, he's far smarter man than I am. But I do have clinical experience. He's against water fasting. But I see why.

Starting point is 01:06:24 Because fasting is a stress. The average person, a pure water fast is too stressful for them. And you may not, you'll tap into muscle. A normal person will go, you'll lose a little muscle day one, and then growth hormone rises, and then the body protects its muscle.

Starting point is 01:06:41 Because it's in survival mode, right? And it does all the right things. Very sick and toxic people, they don't go through that normal phase. growth hormone rises and then the body protects its muscle because it's in survival mode, right? And it does all the right things. Very sick and toxic people, they don't go through that normal phase. So oftentimes, the right things don't happen, and you don't see as good of autophagy. So he's gravitated to partial fasting.

Starting point is 01:06:56 But I like starting with partial fasting in the reason for the reason most people are metabolically challenged. What do you say? What's the percentage of people that are metabolically challenged. Right. What do you say? What's the percentage of people that are metabolically challenged in the US? I would say over 70. Yeah, okay.

Starting point is 01:07:10 I've heard you say it. I'm like, I think I agree with that. Oh yeah, yeah. No, it's a vast number of people. So talking about the adaptation, you know, let's ease into that discussion about biohacking because first of all, I'm a big believer in red light therapy beds.

Starting point is 01:07:25 I'm a big believer in the cold plunge. I'm a big believer in saunas. I just showed you my steam room. I filter my steam before I go in there. I follow sort of Valter's path, i.e. for 12 hours and fast for 12 hours, which he says is a very safe zone to be in. And then once in a while, I'll do a 24 hour or three day fast.

Starting point is 01:07:45 I'm actually going to start doing his five day fast mimicking diet after this podcast. I am absolutely convinced that that's the way to go a couple of times a year. But talk about some of the big biohacks that are out there. Cold plunging, red light therapy, some of these other big bio hacks that are out there and the pros and potentially the cons of some of those.

Starting point is 01:08:09 Look, the easiest way to understand a principle called hormesis means if we stress a biological system, us, if we adapt, we get better, faster, stronger, healthier. If we don't adapt, bad things happen. Okay, yeah. Understand that's a principle. If you exercise and adapt, you get stronger, faster, etc. So therefore we hire trainers, at least good athletes do, to make sure that we're adapting to the stresses that they put on. Studies show that if you don't create a stress, meaning if you're doing the same exercise all the time, you actually stop getting benefit, and you even get a diminishing result.

Starting point is 01:08:48 So we need to over-training. Exactly, right. So anyways, most people, when they first start, they start reasonably or not. They go into the gym and do too much. It's a negative, right? So we understand we can over-train, but this applies to cold baths.

Starting point is 01:09:04 The only reason a cold bath or heat cold, anything you just mentioned, this premise of hormesis applies. If you go into cold bath, the body thinks it's going to die. What does it do? Raises up neuropernephrine, which raises up growth hormone, which makes your cells more sensitive to hormones. All these major wonderful things happen. Brown fat activation. Oh yeah. Brown fat activation, all of it. If you adapt. So no matter what you feel good after, because you have this neuropernephrine rise and all

Starting point is 01:09:32 your good hormones come up. But how do you feel later that day or the next day? Because if you are tired, more tired, didn't sleep well, maybe you looked at your heart rate variability and it's dropping, you didn't adapt to the three minute cold bath. Maybe you need less than Gary or me. Take it down. That's not what's being taught. So people are just going, oh, I heard three minutes, I'm going to make three minutes, I'm going to make three minutes. Many people out there, just like the fasting, can't adapt to that. And if you don't adapt, you end up causing more inflammation later. The key is adaptation.

Starting point is 01:10:05 Saunas are the same way. And I said this to you earlier, right? I said, when I was sick, I couldn't even take hot showers. Yeah, you said that. I would be just wiped out later that day. So I learned to take very lukewarm showers. I wasn't adapting to the heat. So people go into saunas because they hear an hour, whatever it is,

Starting point is 01:10:24 and they force themselves to do it. More is not better and potentially even devastating for you. So we have people that have thyroid, adrenal challenges, hormone challenges. I promise you, they need less. And you saw this one study that recently came out, a 10-minute shower, or 10 minutes, 10 seconds of cold before your shower every day worked out better than the big cold. Right. I believe they were just looking because they were looking at average people, put the average

Starting point is 01:10:51 person in a three minute cold plunge. When they looked at the results, it was not good as good as the less stress consistently less long. All they did is lower the stress level and more people did better with that. Right. And I believe that's the stress level, and more people did better with that. And I believe that's the case for many of these biohacks. And I can absolutely see that too. So sort of bringing everything full circle

Starting point is 01:11:15 from all of your experience, your personal journey, your cellular healing diet, what are the big takeaways that you want people to remember from this podcast? Because they've heard a lot, I gotta filter my environment, I gotta take care of my cells, I should intermittent fast with too short of a window.

Starting point is 01:11:34 What are the big three or five takeaways that you want them to walk away from? I would say that one of them for me is that you can heal from whatever you're being challenged with right now. So that is the first like message is that the body has an incredible ability to bounce back from absolute abuse. I mean, you were just horribly abused

Starting point is 01:11:58 in the state that you were in. So, I mean, I wanna give people hope that have, you know, chronic conditions that they just are, they just reached the end of the rope and they're exhausted on. But what are the big takeaways that you want them to? Well, you know, one of the things I always say is the only reason I'm qualified to help you and those people is number one, I was called to it, right? I didn't choose it. But the only reason I'm qualified is because I was you, right?

Starting point is 01:12:22 If you are going to help drug addicts and alcoholics, you better darn be, you better have suffered and overcame it, right? And that gives you the authority because one day they're going to say, you don't know what it's like. You don't know what I feel, right? I know what you feel. I know what it's like. And that's why I'm qualified. So, but that, that gives you hope. There is an answer, but what I want you to hear to answer your question is, there's a cause. And I think that alternative medicine has moved further

Starting point is 01:12:50 from getting to the cause. Even when I first started lecturing on stages, you know, it was, it seemed like people got it. NDs, DCs, MDs, at least that were there in that room. You know, yeah, cause, let's remove it. Today, it's almost like we got too fancy. We're forgetting about these major causes. Neurotoxicity is rampant because of what we're under today.

Starting point is 01:13:14 I think most people agree with that. But again, it's not as simple as just sitting in the sauna that we love. I mean, there's benefits to saunas, don't get me wrong, and you should do them. But you do have to get to the cell, right? And I've spent 20 some years teaching doctors, the principle, and my kids,

Starting point is 01:13:34 I think we had this conversation because your kids work with you, right? Yeah, they do. They saw me on this treadmill of teaching doctors and even one-on-one helping people. And they said, dad, if you were called to take this to the world, it's not happening. It's not gonna happen the way you're doing it.

Starting point is 01:13:51 That's an honest conversation. That actually sounds like something my daughter would say to me. Yeah, exactly. And I said, yeah, but detox isn't here's a box of pills. It has to be specific for everyone. The doses, you know, with chelators, with binders. I mean, it's different for everyone, son. So, you know, da da da da.

Starting point is 01:14:09 Anyways, you know, he had a different vision of how we can take this to the world directly to the person looking for answers. And I say that to give, you know, to give people hope. So that's what we did. I mean, POMPA program, as you know, it's direct to the person hurting, direct to the person looking for an answer, as opposed to me trying to change, train the doctors. But there is hope you have to get to the cause. If you remove the interference, the body heals. It does.

Starting point is 01:14:36 It's a dang principle that works. I didn't get well because of specific vitamin. I got well because I got the mercury safely and effectively out of my brain. I got well for taking the biotoxins that were accumulated in my cells, down regulating every bit of cellular function that should be there to protect me. I got better by getting rid of that. So, you know, we are so, as society, we are so about what we can add, but most people

Starting point is 01:15:00 today aren't sick because of a lack of a vitamin. And I'll name five vitamins that I think are very important people lack. But most people are sick because it's too much of something these neurotoxins we're being inundated with. And I'm telling you, it's wearing people out. We never had a society with as much brain fog and anxiety as we do now. These are neurotoxic signs, Gary.

Starting point is 01:15:22 And people, if you don't get to the cause of that, I don't care how much kava, CBD you take, I don't care what you do, how many biohacks you do, you gotta get through the cause. And that's the message I really want people to hear. That's excellent. How do people find you? I mean, how do they find you on Instagram?

Starting point is 01:15:38 Obviously, yeah, you can find me on Instagram. Dr. Pompa, I have a following there. I put out videos all the time. We're talking about that, because my kids make me do that too. You got to educate dad. My kids built my whole social media channel. Exactly, me too. Anyways, but you know, pompaprogram.com, you can watch.

Starting point is 01:15:55 I said that there's the free webinar there you can watch. But yeah, no, I mean, you can get, I'm out there. Okay. I am. And every podcast the same way by asking every guest the same question. And there's no right or wrong answer to this,

Starting point is 01:16:07 but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? A human? The ultimate human. The ultimate human in your purpose, functioning in your purpose. Well, I guess. And I'll tell you, and I want people to hear this because I get this question. well, how do you know,

Starting point is 01:16:26 or how do you find your purpose? Okay, if we look at our skill set, kind of tips to what we should be doing. Look what you love, that kind of leans to it. But most importantly, look in your pain. Your pain leads to your purpose. So my wife and I have a saying, because we've been through a lot of pain stuff in our life,

Starting point is 01:16:43 from pain to purpose, and I'll broaden it even further. I do believe God has a promise for everybody, and the promise, you know, when we crying out for an answer, He gives us a promise, but here's the problem, as humans, we're always afraid to step into the promise. And something happens biblically. If you go through with the Bible, there's something that's when it says be strong and courageous, the Hebrew words are Rakhazakamatz. And, you know, I'm no Jewish scholar and I'm not Jewish, but those words mean a whole lot more than the English words. The English words, be strong, courageous, don't do it justice. Rakhazakamatz means that God has already went into the promise for you and whatever fears that you have, whatever kept you from stepping in

Starting point is 01:17:26 or keeping you from stepping in, He deals with it. It's His strength, not yours. So as Israel was about to cross the Jordan, all they saw was 31 armies and all they saw was disaster. God spoke through Joshua, rock his Akamats Israel, meaning I've taken that that walk into the promise. If you look everywhere in the Bible, there's every time someone's about to step into a promise God has for them, God will send someone rock Kazachamots. So the greatest hope is

Starting point is 01:17:54 rock Kazachamots. God's done it because people, we have fears, even we hold on to even our sick identities. But you know, but so true. Yeah. But walk in, don't have this because I know I didn't have any faith in myself or my strength or my abilities or my anything. But if you know God does it and he'll just step in to the promise, he'll do it as amazing. That was an amazing podcast, man. Thank you so much for coming on this. I thought it was going to be great so much better than I thought. I'll put all of the links to what we discussed

Starting point is 01:18:25 in the show notes below. And as always guys, that's just science.

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