Dr. Daniel Pompa is a respected leader in the health and wellness space, educating practitioners and the public on the origins of inflammation-driven disease, the therapeutic application of the ketogenic diet, fasting, ancestral-based health approaches, cellular healing, and detoxification.
Although trained as a chiropractor, his authority is rooted in his own battle, having overcome neurotoxic illness and heavy metal poisoning using his own unique cellular detoxification strategies.
Dr. Pompa’s journey back to health continued to lead him to a voracious passion to research and learning beyond what is often readily understood.
A relentless self-experimenter, Dr. Pompa has a passion for healing others. He’s a true warrior of a ‘from pain to purpose’ mindset, and he speaks about removing the cause of toxicity and inflammation, going upstream, and following a multi-therapeutic approach to health and healing.
You can find Dr. Pompa at drpompa.com and on the weekly Cellular Healing TV podcast and Health Hunters radio show.
He and his wife, Merily, live in Park City, Utah with their 5 children, 2 dogs, and 2 cats.

LEARN MORE AT:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/drpompa

CHTV: www.cellularhealing.tv

Fasting Group: www.fastingforapurpose.com

Beyond Fasting Book: www.beyondfastingbook.com

SHOWNOTES

1:45 - Get Cytodetox (20% Off 1 Bottle or 30% Off 2 Bottles!)

2:05 - LISTEN ON HIMALAYA!: Download the free Himalaya App (www.himalaya.fm) to FINALLY keep all your podcasts in one place, follow your favorites, make playlists, leave comments, and more! Follow The Melanie Avalon Podcast in Himalaya For Early Access 24 Hours In Advance! You Can Also Join Melanie's Exclusive Community For Exclusive Monthly Content, Episode Discussion, And Guest Requests! Use The Code MELANIE To Get Your First Month Free!

02:40 - Paleo OMAD Biohackers: Intermittent Fasting + Real Foods + Life: Join Melanie's Facebook Group To Discuss And Learn About All Things Biohacking! All Conversations Welcome!

03:40 - Dr. Pompa's Background

4:20 - From Pain To Purpose

6:35 - Mercury And Mad Hatter Disease 

9:20 - How Does Fasting Support Detox?

11:20 - Daily IF Vs. Extended Fasts

13:35 - Senescent Cells 

14:20 -How To Maximize Autophagy 

15:45 - The Ketone / Glucose Ratio 

18:00 - Hacking An Extended Fast: Fasting Mimicking Diets And Keto 

The Intermittent Fasting Podcast: Episode 57: Dr. Valter Longo!: The Fasting Mimicking Diet, Eating For Longevity, High Vs. Low Protein Diets, Ancestry Diets, Meat Vs. Plant Diets, Rebuilding The Gut, Food Tolerances, Mindset And The Immune System, The Blue Zones, And More!

24:10 - How To Practice Daily IF? 

25:40 - How To Know If Your IF Window Is Working For You!

27:50 - How To Know If Coffee Is Working For You!

28:40 - Energy Substrates And Autophagy 

31:20 - MCT Oil During The Fast?

32:50 - Proteolytic Enzymes While Fasting

33:20- The Role of Binders While Fasting 

35:05 - JOOVV: Red Light And NIR Therapy For Fat Burning, Muscle Recovery, Mood, Sleep, And More! Use The Link Joovv.com/Melanieavalon With The Code MelanieAvalon For A Free Gift From Joovv, And Also Forward Your Proof Of Purchase To Contact@MelanieAvalon.com, To Receive A Signed Copy Of What When Wine: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine!

41:20 - Fasting Safety: Detox Reactions 

43:05 - Detoxing Without Fat Loss

46:00 - Get Cytodetox (20% Off 1 Bottle or 30% Off 2 Bottles!)

49:00 - The Role Of Bile In Detox

51:40 - Coffee Enemas

55:45 - The Role Of Fiber In Detox

56:55 - SIBO and Gut Issues

57:40 - Hidden Infections 

1:01:30 - "Perfect" Diets And Diet Variation

1:04:50 - Seasonal Variation Vs. Monthly Vs. Weekly

1:05:10 - Microbiome Changes

1:05:55 - The Importance Of Metabolic Flexibility 

1:08:50 -Insulin Resistance On A Low Carb Diet

1:11:20 - High Protein Vs. High Carb Diets

1:12:20 - The Role Of MTOR

​Inuit Genetics Show Us Why Evolution Does Not Want Us In Constant Ketosis

1:17:00 - The Science Behind Clean And Unclean Foods 

How Does Pork Prepared in Various Ways Affect the Blood

1:22:35- Can Anyone Heal?

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon:
Hi friends, so I am thrilled to be here today with Dr. Daniel Pompa. Guys, this is somebody, I've been following his work for so long. He is one of the go-to experts on fasting, on detoxification, on the ketogenic diet, on cyclical eating. There're so many topics that I'm really, really excited to get into here. I think everybody's going to learn a lot, but a little bit about Dr. Pompa. Like I said, he's a go-to expert on the topics that I just discussed. He's trained as a chiropractor, but has really become an authority on health and wellness, especially after having overcome his own illnesses, his own neurotoxic illness, so I'm sure we will get into that in detail.

Melanie Avalon:
You might be familiar with Dr. Pompa if you are a podcast listener because he also hosts the Cellular Healing TV podcast and also Health Hunters Radio Show. He also has a fantastic book on fasting, which I just learned you're having a new version coming out soon, so we can definitely put a link in the show notes to that for listeners, but thank you Dr. Pompa so much for being here.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I love these topics, I'm glad to be here.

Melanie Avalon:
I thought to start things off, would you like to tell listeners just aa little bit about your personal health history and what led you to where you are today? Why you're so interested in fasting and detox and all those things?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. From pain to purpose, all these topics, I didn't choose it, they chose me. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure so many people in our space have a story of why they get so passionate about things, but yeah, I was just going along life at such a high level. I mean, I had a very successful, thriving practice helping people, I was in the best shape of my life, honestly. I was racing bikes at the time at the expert level, had two young kids, great wife, all good until it started like that. I mean, just like so many people listening to this, it just kept escalating from fatigue to being allergic to everything I ate, couldn't figure it out, to anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, thyroid issues, my hair falling out, skinny fat, adrenal issues to the point where I couldn't even watch a movie with the kids. I literally remember going into a movie and having to keep leaving because the excitement of the kids' movie and the loudness of it was just too much for me.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
My wife would be moving hangers back and forth and the sound would drive me nuts. I spent so many nights just awake. If I fell asleep, I would just wake up between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning, not being able to get back to sleep or I couldn't get to sleep at all, one or the other. Then, I'd be left wiped out, but even when I did sleep, which was rare, I was still wiped out. I just had massive... I couldn't exercise. I also remember doing something simple as bicep curls one day and it just destroying me. I would have more anxiety and worse sleep. Like, most people I spent years trying to balance my thyroid and my adrenals and my hormones. It was just too far downstream. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I remember at one point saying, "Okay, it's something with my control tower of my hormones," which is your pituitary, hypothalamus, but I just couldn't figure out what it was. When I would try to address that, just like my thyroid and my adrenals, I mean, some things might have got better, but most things were getting worse. I just didn't know what was wrong and to make a long story short, online one day I found Mad Hatter's Disease, which was mercury poisoning. The people making felt hats were using mercury as a part of the process and I was a mad hatter, as simple as that. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I had all the symptoms, so I went and got a blood test, but unfortunately, it was negative and I was really disappointed. It was about a year or so later I made friends with a very bright endocrinologist, try to figure out my thyroid issues and adrenal issues. He said, "Dan, I think you have mercury poisoning," and I said, "I thought so, too, but I did a blood test." He said, "Well, that's the wrong test. That would be if you had acute mercury poisoning, meaning being poisoned every day, like the Mad Hatters, they were using mercury, but I think you would have chronic mercury toxicity, so do this test where you challenge it out of your tissue and then look at it." Sure enough, I did that and there it was amongst some other heavy metals that should have been not at that level in my body.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I said, "What do you think I got that from?" That's the logical question. He said, "Did you have any dental work done around the time this all happened?" Sure enough, I did. That's just shortly after that the fatigue started. I just never correlated it. Then, I really went on the rampage of trying to figure out how to get this out of my body and, in particular, my brain correctly. Going online, it was a disaster of contradicting information when it comes to heavy metal detox. I sought through it and everything I teach doctors around the world now really came from my own rescue of that, so there's the story.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I relate so much to so much that you said there. I, as well, experienced mercury toxicity. Mine was so bad that when I got the blood test, it was shockingly high, like the blood test, and I remember the functional practitioner, she was like, "Your blood test should really never be that high," and mine was. I think it was six times the reference range, so if you can imagine when I did the urine challenge [cubation 00:05:29] that you talked about, that was, as well, quite a shocker. It's so funny, though, you said that you were almost disappointed when you got the negative and I think people might not be like, "Why would you be disappointed?" It's because you want to find the answer so bad when you know something is wrong that you want that golden ticket saying, "This is it." 

Melanie Avalon:
So happy that you did find the cause of all these issues that you were experiencing and it sounds like in the end, hopefully you came out all the stronger and have learned so much about fasting and detox and all of that. We can definitely get into detox. I did want to start off a little bit with fasting because you are such an expert in that field, and I have to remember so, like I was talking to you before, I am the co-host of the Intermittent Fasting podcast. I kind of assumed that everybody knows all the fasting things or has been listening, but this could be a whole new, brand-new audience, so what has been your experience with fasting? How did that come into place with your own detoxification? Just in general, what do you believe are the health benefits of fasting?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
So much here. In 1990's, I was intrigued with fasting. Now, keep in mind this was before I was sick and I think my love for it came just because it's really the hardest thing to get any intelligence, which just resonated with my whole philosophy. Remove the interference and the body can heal. Fasting was just that complete reliance on allowing the body to heal in an order that it wants to heal, just in the method it wants to do it in. It just absolutely taking the energy that it would normally utilize to process food, assimilate food, and I call it energy diversion. It diverts the energy towards healing. It's kind of like when you have a vacation, all of a sudden, your honey-do list, all these things you want to do, you start doing because now you have the time and the energy to start getting things done. That's what the innate intelligence does, but yeah, that was all the way back then.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Back then, no one cared about fasting. There was like a group of outcasts known as the Natural Hygiene Society and Dr. Shelton and I read all his books. It was just an odd group of people that I was like, "Gosh, I love this," but I couldn't really get anyone interested. Back then it was like, that's called starving and how possibly could that be good? Now, I think there's a greater understanding for it even with some new science and breakthrough, but there's a difference. We kind of have to break this down into two categories. The daily intermittent fasting where we're fasting for a window of 15-24 hours, who knows? That has certain benefits, but then there's block fast or extended fast where you're fasting for a few days at a time and there's really long fasts. There's five-day fasts, which is probably what I train docs the most on, which have different benefits than fasting every day.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When you look at the benefits of fasting, I think there's a crossover in fasting for 15 hours, 24 hours, and fasting for five days, meaning that you get this autophagy, that I'm sure you've talked so much about it's a boring subject for your listeners, but the body eats the bad stuff and it's so smart that it knows exactly what cells to take out that are living too long, called senescent cells. Then, it's so smart that it replaces it, by up regulating the stem cell and replaces it with a cell that's more naïve and not hyperactive. If it's an immune cell, driving autoimmune, it's one of the reasons why fasting, in particular a longer fast, works so well for food sensitivities, allergies, hyper-immunity, autoimmune, because it really gets rid of these hyperactive cells, immune cells, and replaces them with more naïve cells.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
More recent science shows that, but I've utilized this fasting for years with really the only understanding I had from a scientific standpoint was just, hey, you rely on the innate intelligence, it knows what to do. People back then would say, "Oh, but it lowers your immune system," because they would see this big drop in white blood cells on blood tests. I would say, "Yeah, but I don't know. It seems like it down regulates autoimmune and up regulates good immunity, especially over a few months after a fast." Now we know that that drop in white blood cells is the autophagy, getting rid of those bad cells.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Anyway, so I think we have to break it down into long-fast, short-fast, and then realizing that there is a crossover, but regardless, I believe that we need as humans to fast. It's missing in our society because we have only an opportunity to feast and without the opportunity to fast, we don't reset our bad genes that get turned on, we don't reset our microbiome, which is more benefits of fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
There's so much there. I'm glad you brought up the senescent cells. I've been doing a lot of research on those recently and for listeners, they're kind of scary. They're basically, in a way, they're like zombie cells, so they're cells that have stopped functioning correctly, but at the same time, they refuse to die. They're just there and then they send out inflammatory cytokines that can affect other cells. They're really, really fascinating. It's so interesting that we can use fasting with this process of autophagy, and to clarify again for new listeners, that is basically where we are breaking down these old proteins that we can make such radical changes. 

Melanie Avalon:
Follow-up question on that. With autophagy and breaking down these old cells or these old immune cells, you were speaking about the difference between short-term, like daily, intermittent fast, versus a long fast. Do you think somebody practicing what may be more approachable and lifestyle suited, do you think somebody practicing a daily intermittent fast could, by doing enough of that, reach that point of autophagy to clear out things like senescent cells and old immune cells or do you think a longer fast is necessary for those type of changes?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Well, there hasn't been a study done on that, but I can tell you from the studies that I've read, that there is some autophagy even in a 15-hour fast. However, I can tell you clinically, when we deal with very sick people, challenging cases, that there are no doubt clinically is a much greater benefit from longer fasting. Now, with that said, my book, Beyond Fasting, is really about how you bring someone up to a successful fast. Meaning, many just sick people just can't fast. We want to get them fat adapted first, we want to really prepare them for the fast to make it easier, of course, but also to get the results of maximum autophagy. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
In my book, I talk about how to test to see when you're getting maximum autophagy, which is really critical. I can tell you this, too, just by that test, and we look at basically ketone and glucose levels. When you hit a certain ratio, then we're able to say, "Okay, wow, you're at this max autophagy when your glucose and ketones, meaning your glucose should be dropping and your ketones rising, when they hit a one to one ratio we know you're starting to enter into this max autophagy." When you say one to one ratio, if you take the number 80 as a glucose, divide it by 18, you end up with the European standard. Then you compare that to your normal, how we measure ketones, right, in millimolars. You would say, "Okay, if my glucose after dividing it by 18 is 3.4, my ketones are 3.4, that's a one to one ratio." 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Who made that ratio popular is Thomas Seyfried, and I was in a Mastermind with him and Joe Mercola and some others. He was talking about watching tumors shrink as an indicator of autophagy and when it would stop as an indicator that you're moving out of autophagy and max autophagy. I thought, well, why can't we use this for the average person? Sure enough, it works. In his study, they realized that when you hit this one-to-one ratio, we see tumors shrinking and we're keeping them in that autophagy enough to get rid of cancerous tumors. Of course, the average person getting rid of bad cells and senescent cells, this applies.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
During a longer fast, we're able to hit that one to one ratio. Typically, it takes people about three days to hit. Now, if you really prepare yourself, and again, that's what I talk about in my book, you could literally hit that day-one of a fast and start seeing max autophagy day one. Even when I daily intermittent fast, I can get much greater results, but still, I go far beyond that one to one ratio when I fast because I'm very prepared for that fast.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
To answer your question, I believe the longer fasts have greater autophagy and therefore, greater stem cell, and therefore, greater benefits, more energy diversion and all these benefits we see in fasting, but with that said, I intermittent fast. I do it every day, but I definitely, at least four times a year, I do longer fasts.

Melanie Avalon:
That is fascinating. I actually was not aware of that ratio, so I just learned a lot there. Do you think for those who a longer fast either is not feasible from a willpower perspective, from an underweight perspective, from some other factor, what are your thoughts on, could you hack it in a way with things like the fasting mimicking diet, for example, or a ketogenic low-protein diet in an intermittent fasting pattern? Do you think that would be a way to get the benefits of an extended fast?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Absolutely, and for years I've used partial fasting. I learned it from a French gentleman, Albert Mosseri and from other work he realized that coming out of a pure water fast, putting people on a partial fast, you would get this autophagy going again and some really sick people actually did better with partial fasting, so I used that as a tool years ago. Now, with Valter Longo's work, and I've worked closely with his group there, partial fast, if you will, to use my language, is called the ProLon and it's basically a certain amount of food for five days.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Ironically, I love the number five for a longer fast. Some people definitely benefit from longer fasts, but a five day fast multiple times for most people seems to work better. Why five? Because it takes about day four to where they break through and they're not hungry anymore and you know, from a clinical standpoint, you know you're getting this max autophagy. Then, day five, we want to just ride it out one more day. Why not get those benefits one more day? That's how I arrived at a five-day fast. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Now, clinically, Longo's work showed that you do get, in fact, max autophagy day four for the average person. Again, if you do this prep before fast, like I have in my book, you can get that much earlier than day four, but the average person day four. Then, day five, we see the maximum stem cells occurring, so we want to ride that out for five days. Yeah, I think that partial fasting, and in their case, the fasting mimicking diet, the ProLon diet is a good way to do it. Look, as long as you do this, the key is getting your calories under a thousand, and if you're smaller, that could be 500 calories. The average person getting around 800 calories a day, for someone bigger, maybe a thousand, so restricting your calories and then, here's the other big important one, keeping your protein under 20 grams because if you go above that, then you can knock yourself out of autophagy.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Clinically, we've seen the same for many years. [Elbert 00:17:11], his percentages were very similar, and he and others have fasted thousands of people before there were studies done, if you will, and just knew too much protein knocks you out of autophagy. Too many calories knocks you out of autophagy. Your body size definitely determines what your caloric amount would be that would keep you in or out of autophagy. Yes, partial fasting oftentimes is where we start. Now, arguably, I believe if you can get to water fasting, you're going to see really big numbers of autophagy. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
For example, if I do a ProLon fast or a partial fast, I'll see glucose and ketone number above the max autophagy, which some of my clients don't get to max autophagy with this fast, but when they do a water fast, they get into these max autophagy numbers. I far exceed the numbers water fasting, but I'll hit the number in a partial fast. Again, with that said, you're still getting autophagy, I think it's easier to do those fasts, oftentimes, although for me I think that not eating, I lose my hunger very quickly and not eating is easier for me. When I start fussing around in a kitchen with certain foods, it's hard for me and when I eat a little, it's hard for me to stop, so that's one of the things I love about Longo's product, the ProLon is because here's what I eat, and then my next box is the next day. You don't have to prepare anything and you know this is what you have. I do love that about that product. Yeah, that's another option.

Melanie Avalon:
I am the exact same way with the eating. It's much easier for me, I'm an all or none extremist with the caveat of I think I could be an extremist if it were laid out like you said, with that ProLon. Also, for listeners, we did have Valter Longo on the Intermittent Fasting podcast, so I'll put a link there to that episode if you'd like to learn more about his work because he has a lot of really, really fascinating work.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I love him and his work, but you have the Intermittent Fasting thing. He believes you should eat every 12 hours. I don't agree with him, respectfully. I believe that that is true perhaps for the average person who's not fat adapted. Right? I mean, there's a lot of factors around that and he talks poorly, water fasting is dangerous and this stuff. For year, now again, with that said, certain medications you should do a supervised fast, you have to be careful with medications on any fast, for that matter, so there's always cautions, but clinically I speak and I can tell you that thank God we have all the types of fasting because depending on where you are at certain times, certain fasts are better for other people and water fasting, partial fasting that myself and the doctors I trained would tell you we need all of those tools and there's great benefits to all of them, but there's not one. I'm not promoting just water fasting. I don't think you should be promoting just this fasting; I think we need all these tools.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, thank you so much for saying that. I agree completely, because actually, when we had him on the podcast, I mean, I am so grateful for his work because I think there is so much to learn from it as far as, like you said, autophagy and just he's done so much work and there really is a lot there. We've learned a lot. When we brought him on the intermittent fasting podcast, though, it definitely sparked a lot of controversy because of what you're saying with his thoughts on fasting, but the way I see it, I'm on the same page as you, I think that we can always be learning and there's so many different approaches that work for different people. I'm just always looking to learn and finding what best benefits me and I think benefits the individual.

Melanie Avalon:
Speaking of, I did want to clarify a little bit for listeners because we kind of jumped in really quickly into the extended fasting. A lot of people do practice the daily intermittent fasting and I just wanted to clarify that in that situation, you're not going to be limiting your protein intake and things like that, so coming to the daily intermittent fasting, Dr. Pompa, how do you practice it, what does that look like in your life?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, look, when we look at healthy people, they get up in the morning and because of the dawn effect, meaning your body pushes out glucose, your glucose is highest first thing in the morning. Cortisol goes up, glucose goes up. I mean, doesn't go up to abnormal readings, but it will be typically your highest-level fasting, meaning when you eat, of course, it goes up much higher, but it's normal for glucose to go up because what is it doing? It's providing you with energy that you need. Therefore, you don't have hunger. Your glucose goes up and your body has all the energy it needs.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When you look at most very healthy countries, they typically wake up and they don't eat, so I always tell people to pick an eating window when you're intermittent fasting that works for you, your schedule. I mean, arguably, eating too late at night is not good, especially for those looking to lose weight or diabetics, so maybe your eating window can be a little earlier. I don't complicate that, I say pick a window that works for you, and then, I have a way of testing to see even if you're fasting window, if you will, the amount of hours you're fasting even works for you, I have a way to test to see if your coffee works in your fasting window. We can talk about that. The point is, though, is I think that most healthy people wake up, they're not hungry, they're surviving on the glucose their body just pushed out and, if you look at that, hunger will eventually come and you come respond to that.

Melanie Avalon:
You said you have a way to test for that. What is that way? Dying to know.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Again, you have to understand, I work with clients virtually now for me all over the world. I coach them, but I'm typically dealing with someone who's more health-challenged, obviously, and oftentimes, we don't want to just stick them into a fasting window that is metabolically not possible for them. How do we determine that? I would say, "Okay, let's just push out breakfast until 10:00," they're used to eating maybe at 8:00. "Then, I want you to test your morning glucose and ketones first thing in the morning. You get those numbers. Let's just make up numbers, let's say your glucose is 90 and your ketones are .5. Then, I want to retest them right before your first meal at, say, 10:00." 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
If you're eating at 10:00 and let's say dinner is stopped at 7:00, you can figure out the eating window there. What is that? A 15-hour fast, something like that. Okay. Your intermittent fasting 15 hours, so we're going to test first thing in the morning glucose and ketones and then right before that first meal to see if this 15-hour fasting window works for you. If your glucose drops down and your ketones trends up, then it's working. Then, we can keep pushing that window, but if we start to see a rise in glucose, and glucose not trending down, this is now, there's factors. If you exercise, you're going to throw this off, so you have to do it on a day you don't exercise. If you eat, obviously, you're going to throw it off, so we have to not do that. Let's say we push it out to 1:00 in the afternoon. You would take your morning glucose and ketones and then, test it again at 1:00 in the afternoon. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Watching the glucose trend down and the ketones trend up, we're watching the body basically sacrifice glucose for fat and make more ketones. That means, okay, great, we're heading in the correct autophagy direction. Then again, it's not perfect, but it sure does work on average. I tell people to get three or four days of doing that and we can kind of get an average. By the way, we do the same for does your coffee work in that fasting window. Again, Thomas Seyfried, I have to give him credit for this because when they were working with cancer patients and watching tumors shrink or not, they realized when some people drank coffee or black tea, caffeine, whatever it was, they would notice that it would stop the autophagy, so they would either switch what they were drinking or take it away completely and it would kick back in. How did they know? Test their glucose. It was like, oh, my gosh, this is the perfect test for the average person for their coffee.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
What we do is we take our morning glucose and then 30-minutes after the coffee, the way you drink it, whether it's fat, no fat, black, who knows, then 30 minutes after your coffee, you test your glucose again. If it rises up every time after, more than five, then you've got to switch either the way you're drinking your coffee or what you're drinking, period, because if glucose rises, we know that it breaks you out of that autophagy.

Melanie Avalon:
Can I ask you a quick question about that? What would be the mechanism of glucose raising, stopping autophagy, which is related to protein intake?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. Well, no, but see, it will... the body, it's energy. Right? The body, from an energy standpoint, will stop looking for its other energy. Think about, why does a body go into autophagy during a fast? Because it needs energy. It needs some protein, yes, of course. It needs amino acids, but what does it also need? It also needs energy. It's going to reach into autophagy for energy, so therefore, if you're giving it glucose, too much glucose, it will back off at autophagy. That's why Seyfried would see the tumors stop shrinking with the glucose rise, is because it's backing off the energy it's reaching for and arguably, the body will reach for energy first and then it will reach for proteins for repair.

Melanie Avalon:
That glucose that rises during the fasting, I mean, presumably is that coming from gluconeogenesis in the liver?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yes, could be. Right. It could that, it could be gluconeogenesis for some muscle breakdown, protein breakdown, who knows? I mean, but yes, most likely I would say your body's going, "Okay, look, I'm not yet efficient enough to break your fat down. I'm going to keep pushing out glucose and a form of gluconeogenesis from the liver.

Melanie Avalon:
Gotcha. In general, with your patients and coffee, because I know people have so many... We get probably, on the Intermittent Fasting podcast, the biggest question we get is coffee. We get so many questions about coffee. In general, have you seen a trend with people responding negatively or positively to coffee while fasting?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
In my seminars, I have Health Centers of the Future as my seminars, and we get probably 300-400 doctors at each seminar. My next one's in Newport Beach, by the way, I don't know when this is airing, but November 14 through the 17th. Anyway, so for fun, we've done this probably the last four years, maybe longer, we have everybody test their morning glucose and ketones and then, we have some people doing the coffee test where they do their glucose 30 minutes later. Then, we have a show of hands how many people... It was like every year I've done it, it's like 50/50. It just seems like so many people, it's like it's half and half where coffee actually doesn't affect it. Some people it helps and some people it doesn't. Then we did fat and no fat and it was across the board there, too. Sometimes if you're doing fat, it could be raising glucose. You go black, some people black that helps, so it's so different for everyone that ultimately, the message is test.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so funny. I'm actually glad you brought up the fat, so things that we're having during the fast. What are your thoughts on supplementing, for example, like MCT oil during the fast for ketones or... yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I think if you can get away with just simply fasting, I think there's nothing more natural than just allowing and teaching your body to feed from its own fat. Right? I mean, arguably, MCT oil helps you burn fat, but it's still an energy source. Scientists that I've spoken to about this feel that no matter what, it will take away from somebody autophagy. I think that some people struggle with appetite and different things and I think it could be an adjunct for some people for different reasons. I'm not against it, but again, I would test. What does that MTC oil do to your blood sugar 30 minutes later? I don't know, test it, but as a whole, I would say try to just fast if you can. I mean, again, I like that warm thing in the morning, whether it be coffee or tea, so I think that's a very natural thing, but test just to see if it's... as long as your glucose isn't rising consistently.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I'm definitely a big proponent of... we like to call it clean fasting, so water, black coffee if that floats your boat and works for you, otherwise... like you said, I love what you said about the body will naturally instigate these healing processes if we just take away all of the things stopping that. One more quick supplement question, then we can move on to some other topics. How do you feel, though, there is one supplement I found pretty beneficial during fasting and that is taking proteolytic enzymes and, specifically, [Serrapeptase 00:29:44]? Do you think those would catalyze the fast or have you experimented with those?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Well, I think that it wouldn't interfere. They're enzymes, so I would have no problem with somebody doing it and I think that it would help some people, some people it may be a wash, but I would say there's no harm in trying. Some of them are really toxic to people, they struggle, I mean, even intermittent fasting they definitely struggle. Long-fasting, we use some binders, there's one CytoDetox, there's another one called BIND, and they're able to fast as long as you're binding up the toxins because a lot of people, due to autophagy oftentimes, they're releasing, they're digging into visceral fat, so much of the toxins is held in the fat and they have problems because of the toxin release. By taking these binders, they're able to get much greater results from the fasting and frankly feel better.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Recently, I was at a hospital. My son broke his back, long story, but we were there for a re-X-ray and this woman was literally talking about Jason Fung. My wife was like, "Oh, this I my husband, Dr. Pompa," and the conversation went crazy from there. Very knowledgeable ladies that I spoke to, very knowledgeable, and the one said, "Well, I have lost probably 40 pounds fasting and that's why I love fasting, however, it stopped and I'm now not able to lose weight and I'm actually gaining weight back. Why is that?" I said, "The answer's simple. I see this all the time. It's because now you're digging into your visceral fat and you're releasing so many toxins and that's creating basically hormone resistance because the receptors to the hormones, that really, that's the key to staying lean and using fat as energy, it's blunting those receptors, so you're not hearing your hormones. Now, you have a hormone problem, that's why you're gaining weight again."

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
She's like, "Oh, my God. That's exactly what's happening." I mean, when you do fasting, the detox, my cellular detox really plays into the second part of this bio-hack that's so important. It's like, because we live in such a neurotoxic society today and we're exposed to so many types of different neurotoxins, you have to address that.

Melanie Avalon:
I am so glad you brought that up and we're on the same page because that's exactly where I was heading. For me, when I started intermittent fasting, it was actually... I know a lot of people do struggle at the beginning with becoming "fat adapted" or struggle with hunger at the beginning. For me, I came from a low-carb type approach and it was actually pretty effortless from day one and I did it for, I mean, years and never had a problem with hunger. I can say that honestly. It was never an issue, I never struggled with fasting until I did get that mercury toxicity, which, I mean, it seems hard that... because I got it from fish. It seemed to hit me really, really fast and I... I mean, I think it was some personal choices where I'd only been eating basically low-mercury fish for a while, and then I moved back to LA and I discovered swordfish.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, so basically everything kind of crumbled, but what was really interesting was that fasting became very, very difficult all of a sudden. I was like, wow, this is so interesting because up until then, I'd been thinking it was all about fat adaption or something. Then, I realized there was definitely another layer there when it comes to toxins and detox and, for a lot of people, when they enter that fasted state, it does lead to rapid excretion of these toxins and then, the potential for recirculation of them, especially if they're not bound to an excreted and you mentioned your BIND and CytoDetox. I'd love to get into details about that. In general, if somebody is experiencing these detox type reactions while fasting, is it safe for them to be fasting or are they potentially causing more harm than good by potentially redistributing those metals or toxins? Yeah, so what's going on there and how should listeners proceed if they are struggling?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. No, I mean, I think that, yeah, there's a potential for you redistributing toxins and crossing more toxins into your brain and nervous system, so supervised fasting is the way to go because there're certain signs that we can look for. I mean, one of which is like I said, why we test glucose and ketones when we start seeing someone not fat adapting, going into gluconeogenesis, not hitting the numbers, then we have to change something, we have to slow something down. They're getting too much autophagy and they're not able to get rid of the toxins fast enough, we better add some binders, chelators, to help the cell function at a greater degree of detox. Again, I discuss these things in my book, of course, but it is so different for everybody. That's why I think, oh my gosh, I put out a little bit of knowledge and everyone starts running and doing things that... but, there's a lot of learning. 20 years of doing this.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so question about detoxing. You talked about people digging deeper and deeper, kind of like a fossil dig in a way, and pulling out these toxins that are stored in the visceral fat and such, so is it possible to pull toxins out of fat stores without losing fat or do you have to lose the fat in order to pull out the toxins? Does that make sense?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, no you can do it. My cellular detox, my method is about... I know when people think today of detox, they think of the colon cleanse, a sauna, liver cleanse, chlorella, I mean all these things, they're part of possibly detox, but they're too far downstream to truly matter. You have to get to the cell to really have real detox. Meaning, that the cell has a process that it does day in, day out, to get rid of the toxins even it makes when it makes energy. It's called endogenous toxins. Then, of course, there's the exogenous toxins that come into the cell and affect the cell function.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
We have to up regulate that cell function, so it can get rid of these toxins' day in, day out. The problem is, is that over the years of accumulating, bioaccumulating toxins, we lose that function, so I don't care how many colon cleanses you do, saunas, you have to up regulate and fix these processes. My five R's is become a roadmap to teaching doctors on how to do this, and it's caught onto the public because it was simple enough that the five R's are, okay, these are the cell functions that have been down regulated with the amount of toxins that we're exposing ourselves to and these are the things that we need to up regulate, so the cell can do what it was meant to do. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When you do that process, to answer your question, yes, you can remove toxins from the fat cells without burning the fat. A matter of fact, arguably, before you dig too deep you might need some detox. The body's so intelligent, again, I coach people from around the world with this process and you'll see people who, their innate intelligence will not lose weight until you get to a further point down the road with cellular detox, and then, all of a sudden the weight loss starts. Why? Most likely it was protecting itself. It knew that it just couldn't release all these toxins at once. It's about survival.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
All of a sudden, we get down the road with the detox, then the weight starts coming off. I think there's... you're getting toxins off the cell membranes, where the hormone receptors are and the reason people can't lose weight, fat adapt, it's hormone issues driven by cellular problems, but arguably, the innate intelligence knows what it wants to do and what it can do. As you unload the toxins, it will also then say, okay, now we can start using this fat and burning it.

Melanie Avalon:
That is fascinating. I love your understanding and clarification about detoxing on the cellular level. CytoDetox and BIND, those products that you formulated for detox, so how do they work specifically, what type of ingredients do they contain, and how do they address this issue of actually detoxing from the cell compared to just, I guess from in general?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I want to be clear, I'm not here to sell product and nor do I think it's as simple as buying a product. I mean, I teach a process to doctors. When I take a client on, I teach them what I teach my doctors, this is a process so you can learn to do cellular detox, so you have this art the rest of your life and arguably it's different for everybody. The chelators they use, the amount of time on them, off, real detox you have to cycle on/off, but that's different for everybody. The binders and the chelator, the amounts, the doses, we kind of discover that as we go, but to answer your question, CytoDetox was an evolution of creating this tool with very bright scientists. You see so many of these Zeolite products on the market. Most of them, actually, every one we've tested have been contaminated because they're such good binders, these particles that come from volcanic soil, but the problem is, is that people take them and they actually introduce more toxins into their system. We developed a patented process of cleaning it, so we're left with a real binder. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
The other problem is, they're so big, the particles, we couldn't really get them across the gut and the products that were doing this like hydrolyzed formulas where they make them small, we were testing the particles and they were too destroyed or bastardized to actually bind. The challenge was keeping them with the integrity to bind and cleaning them and bringing them across the gut to the cell.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Over the years, we've done that. As a matter of fact, the CytoDetox that's on the market now has very small particles that have the ability to cross into those cell membranes, which is critical, and into the cell. Then, it has bigger particles that stay outside the cell and prevent the redistribution of toxins from going across to the brain, etcetera. It's a liposome technology that was able to get it past the gut, but breaking them into the size particles, that was some brilliant people that helped with that process and I'm the practitioner going, "This is what we need. We need different sized particles because we need some that go in the cell," but when we experimented with a product that just had these small particles enter the cell, people would get too many symptoms. We knew we needed a particle that was bigger to stay outside to prevent this redistribution.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Then, years ago, I took a process of up regulating cell function and then we realized that many of the toxins would make their way first to the liver where it binds to bile and then bile is dumped in the gut to digest fat, but here's the problem. The toxins bind to the bile, the bile's designed to be reabsorbed back to the liver and the lower small intestine. Well, guess what it brings with it? The toxins and that's called autointoxication. Developed BIND over the years to just sit in the gut as a catcher's mitt and there's four different types of binders there because there's so many different types of toxins, that's why. It sits there, doesn't leave the gut, and it grabs the toxins and pulls it out, so you don't autointoxicate. We use CytoDetox as a vehicle to make sure the toxins come from the cell out of the body and we use BIND to make sure they don't get reabsorbed into the bile, into the liver, and back into the body.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
There's two products I would say are at the heart of what we do, but we support the cell membrane, we support the mitochondria, we support methylation and those are a lot of those cell functions that are critical to up regulate. Otherwise, you're not going to get well.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, so for listeners, in the show notes I will put links to both CytoDetox and BIND. I believe we're going to be offering a discount to listeners, so I will find out what that is with your team and I will provide that information as well. Okay, I have a few follow-up questions that I'm really glad you brought these topics up. Speaking about just detoxing in general and the role of bile, I have had so many questions about bile and I have done so much research and nobody has been able to answer, so I've been actually dying to ask you these questions because we do know that bile is really important. White cells have like an antimicrobial effect, I believe. Correct me on anything that I'm wrong about, and then it does play a really important part in breaking down fats and in the detoxification process, but then like you were saying, it can also, from what I've been seeing, lead to further toxicity issues if it's not properly excreted. Questions about bile. I've heard or read that... so, is it recycled? Do we only have a certain amount of it and then, it's recycled or do we create new bile?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Well, you heard both because both are true. Yeah, I mean, your body it wants to survive, it wants to basically conserve energy, so of course it can recreate bile. However, it doesn't want to use the energy to do it, so it will recycle it to not utilize that energy. It tries to recycle as much of the bile as you can. It's always going to lose some bile in excretion, but most of it is recycled, so it doesn't have to recreate it. Oftentimes, part of the healing is we want the body to recreate it because there's something called hepatic, meaning [whether 00:42:59] biliary, meaning bile, sludge, meaning toxics, bile sludge, so hepatic biliary sludge tends to build up in very sick people. All they do is keep rotating it around. It's sticking point. If you don't clear it, then you, really, you're just blocking the drainage.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
That's why people benefit from coffee enemas. Coffee enema works because the caffeine goes up the portal vein and pushes out the bile. Here's the problem, they're only benefiting partly because you need a catcher's mitt in there to grab that toxic bile and pull it out. Then you force the body to make newer, cleaner, if you will. Then, the problem is, the body will start mobilizing toxins, so you have to look upstream and make sure the cells are functioning and you have a binder upstream working, too. That's why, again, if the system is over many years, 20 years I've been teaching it, so you really have to work within a system understanding is the process.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so some more... I just got to get all these bile questions out because they've been haunting me for so long. I started supplementing with supplemental bile ever since I started getting digestive issues because I read it helps with breaking down fat and that it would also help... could also help with motility, so if you are supplementing with bile, I know a lot of people supplement with it when they don't have a gallbladder, for example, but if you are supplementing with it, with a gallbladder, what would that effect be? Would that be leading to, I mean, is that encouraging a buildup of, like you said, this toxic sludge bile or would some people maybe be fine with it or should we ever supplement with bile you think if we have a gallbladder?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I think there's a time and a place because if you have a hepatic biliary sludge, arguably, you don't have a lot of usable bile and it becomes harder to break down fats, which you need to fix your cell membranes, etcetera. Giving bile helps you breakdown the fats better and utilize them better and because a lot of your bile is basically being tied up in the hepatic biliary sludge. Bile would be a good thing for you. I think that as your body gets healthier, then the need for the taking bile would become less and less. I remember when I was sick, I benefited from it. I even did something called a PC push where I would take maybe two tablespoons of pure [phosphotetocolene 00:45:17], but I had to take bile with it. I would put a binder ahead of it, like BIND, and maybe 30 minutes before, and I'd take the BIND, 30 minutes later I would eat the thick fat with some bile and it would still create a dump of my own toxic bile and then it's dumping it into the catcher's mitt, the BIND ahead of it. At that point, I didn't have BIND. I was putting things in BIND together.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Anyways, there's a certain carbon from Holland that has a... really, in studies, it's the only carbon that actually can bind this bio complex. It's a [Norday 00:45:52] type of carbon, super clean, but really super activated type of carbon. Where most people are buying carbon off the store shelves, it's contaminated, it doesn't have the binding capacity to really do the job, people use bentonite clays that are toxic and contaminated. Listen, binders are toxic. They bind things. You just have to be really cautious the binders you use, so people use chlorella, but chlorella binds things great in Petri dishes. When you put it with the microbiome, it really doesn't. There's a lot of bad information out there about binders, but getting that bio complex moving, even now I will have people do a coffee enema. If you don't take the BIND 30 minutes before it, you're going to redistribute a lot of the toxins you push out from the coffee enema.

Melanie Avalon:
That's so interesting. You take the binder before the coffee enema. That's fascinating.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
30 minutes. You want it sitting in there ahead of it, so it dumps it into it.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, that is so good to know. Then, so funny you brought up chlorella. I can't even tell you how many scientific journal articles I've read about it because I was so on the fence about whether it would help or hurt. For me, I think it really exacerbated my symptoms, so I stopped with it.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
It's a weak binder at best and when you're really toxic, you're taking a weak binder, I mean, it can bind other chemicals, but heavy metals, and biotoxins from mold and these nasty types of really neurotoxins, it's not strong enough to bind them and you just redistribute it. It's like poking a bee's nest and then you're just creating more problems.

Melanie Avalon:
What are your thoughts on the role of fiber, especially from fruits and vegetables in binding to toxins? I know, like would that be limited to the... Well, I guess it would be limited to the gut, but is that really necessary for proper toxin excretion? I know there are a lot of people on the carnivore diet these days, which I've been really fascinated by, but my hesitancy in it, because I'm a big self-experimenter... but my hesitancy in experimenting with it more has been my thoughts that I probably need dietary fiber to bind to any toxins I might be excreting.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. No, I mean, fiber does. I mean, it does get rid of a certain level of toxins, even from toxins you might pick up in food. It's not like a super-strong bind that you're going to pull out necessarily things like heavy metals, but I think that fiber is a protective binder that when we're eating good fiber, you're protecting yourself from the food and arguably, even some of the toxins you dump from the bile into the gut. People will benefit from fiber, but there's other problems with fiber. You get people who are sick and challenged, they have SIBO, so many of them have gut issues and they think it's just food intolerances. 90% of irritable bowels is SIBO, that small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. I had it, struggled with it, and these guys feed from fiber, even healthy fiber's in the small intestine, so people listening will go, "Gosh, I wish I could eat all those fibers. They kill me." You may have SIBO. You have to be careful with certain fibers with certain people, but I like fiber for those who can do fiber. 

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, yes, SIBO. I'm actually having Dr. Pimentel on the podcast soon because I personally had SIBO as well, so I've so many SIBO questions. I definitely understand that.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, so many people have it and they think it's just food intolerances and it's SIBO and the bloating. Oh, it's so hard. So much of it's linked to hidden infections in the mouth, whether it be cavitations, where you've got wisdom teeth extracted, they healed over, root canals.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. I just realized, I just started learning about that and I got my wisdom teeth out in 2012 and I've actually had residual jaw pain and TMJ since then. I recently... so interesting that you brought that up... have been hearing about people who have... basically, they could get a chronic infection from that TMJ, which lives in their jaw and then is feeding into their mouth. I think it's really not appreciated how much that can affect things, like our mouth.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, it's estimated that 85% of chronic, unexplainable diseases, illnesses, are created from the mouth. I can tell you this, dealing with really sick and challenged people, get a cone beam, that's C-O-N-E B-E-A-M. It's a 3-D X-ray and it's not a panoramic X-ray. You cannot see these hidden infections on a plain film X-ray. You need a cone beam and then, you need someone who's trained in reading them for cavitation. Two-fold there. I can tell you, my doctor group that I train, we would all agree that this is probably one of the biggest issues that we see. Here's the fun part, when you find these things and you deal with them, people oftentimes, they leave the dentist and life changes immediately. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I had a guy, 21 year of chronic pain, liver pain 21 years. This guy had the money to go to the best in the world on the allopathic side, gave up on that, went to the best in the world on the functional medicine side, gave up on that. Somehow, he came to me and I was stunned that no one really addressed the heavy metals in his brain, which was driving so much of his hormone imbalance, but no one ever did a cone beam on him. We did a cone beam, three big cavitations. He texted me on the way out of the dentist's office saying, "Is it possible that my pain could be gone and how long could it last or is it going to last?" I said, "I don't know. We'll see." It's never come back. He left the office, out of the dental chair, I've had this happen so many times, and he never had pain again.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
These infections drive so much autoimmune, so many gut problems that will never heal, so many chronic pain, autoimmune, I can go down a list, and if you don't remove the cause and the source, you will never get well despite a perfect diet, despite the best supplements. I can't believe how many doctors are not looking upstream to some of these sources, like cavitations, like root canals, like living in moldy homes, like heavy metals in the brain. I mean, come on, these are the big drivers and then, you have to say how are they addressing it because then they're putting people on chlorella and then they're putting people on, okay, just do this cleanse and that, and they do it for three months and they think you're okay. Are you kidding? It was years of bioaccumulation this stuff in the tissues. Anyway, these are pet peeves, but I've been doing this long enough to get irritated.

Melanie Avalon:
No. Completely warranted and I am so excited about this cone beam. That is just fascinating. Okay, despite any potential negatives from X-ray, radiation exposure, I'm going to look into this ASAP.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. I mean, no doubt you'll get radiation. I mean, take a ton of iodine ahead of it, just... yeah, but is it worth it.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, my goodness, so excited. Glad you brought up though, the people thinking they're following the "perfect diet." Do you believe there is... I know the answer, but do you believe there is one right diet for everyone or what are your thoughts? Are there basic food rules people can follow when it comes to diet, what are your thoughts on diet?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, there's two chapters in my book on diet variation, which I call feast, famine cycling because arguably, it's one of the greatest bio hacks we can do is change our diet, believe it or not. You have people in the camps, keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, it's going to keep switching around and round. People end up in those camps because arguably, hey, I went vegetarian or vegan and it changed my life. I felt so much better, but if they stay on that diet, they'll end up sick from other problems. Likewise, paleo, high protein for too long is damaging, right, Longo talks about it. However, short-term, I believe it's actually healing. The point is, is when we look at the science, it doesn't hold up on holding, staying on one diet always. Today, we have the ability to stay on the same eight foods, 10 foods, same diet all the time. However, back in the day, ancient cultures, they were always forced to change their diet. I don't care what climate you were from, but it was environmental changes. Foods, animals moving in and out, climate changes, I mean, you name it forced people to change their diet, which we know now is it forces an adaptation. When the body adapts or wants to survive, basically, it will adapt and through that adaptation, you get stronger if you adapt. Right?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When you change your diet, it's like exercise. You get stronger and stronger, and that's why, by the way, if you go into the gym and you did the same exercise every time you went to the gym, you would no longer have results. Maybe in a month, maybe two, it would start to actually get worse. No different with diet, so you change your diet, just like you do an exercise routine, all of a sudden you start getting results again. We know now that your microbiome resets when you change your diet. We know that you get a hormone optimization when you change your diet, so all of these things, your cells get more sensitive, you reset your DNA. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Every ancient culture was forced to do it, so what we do with our very sick and challenged people is we constantly rotate diets seasonally, we even do it monthly where we'll mimic feast, famine. We'll do five days of higher healthy carbs. Then we'll do five days of partial fasting, so monthly is a strategy and ladies, if you want to break through weight loss resistance, hormone problems, eating healthy carbs five days before your cycle is magic because you need higher glucose and insulin levels during that time to make certain hormone conversions, that's why you get cravings during that time. Your body knows what it's doing. Then, we even bring it down to weekly variations where one or two days a week we throw in either high protein or high carbs. Matter of fact, that variation of high protein days, high carb days, again, it's another bio hack to fire the fat burning machine back up and get somebody utilizing fat. I talk all about it in my book.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, I love that so much. That was something that I really wanted to really pick your brain on. What's this idea of diet, variation, and forced adaptation, like you call it? Okay, so you've got, you said, like the seasonal variation, a monthly variation, and like the weekly variation. Seasonally, I guess, in a broader picture, would that look like eating with the seasons, so like more carbs, probably lower fat during the summer and then more ketogenic or higher fat, lower carb during the winter? Is that, in general?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I think that's a very intelligent way of doing it. Our microbiome changes per season based on where the sun is literally and I mean, that's amazing. I mean, even the earth's microbiome changes. Leaves change, colors, etcetera, fall off, start again. When we're doing these seasonal changes, there's an argument for that. However, I can tell you just clinically, that any change seems to work. Whether you change your diet every month, every two months, once you become really fat adapted, I oftentimes with my travel, change my diet every couple weeks. I mean, moving in and out of different diets. The change, no matter what, like exercise seems to be the magic because it drives a hormone optimization. Why? Because the body's trying to adapt.

Melanie Avalon:
Would it be important, given that idea that any change can create a beneficial effect, is it important though that somebody is, before doing that, "metabolically flexible" so that they are able to switch between burning... functioning and creating energy from the different lower carb versus higher carb or could anybody switch it up?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah. I mean, I think seasonal changes everyone benefits from, but to your point, though, in my book we fatted out people first and then we started varying the diet. I think there is a greater adaptation, hormone optimization that occurs with that, but again, I think some of these seasonal changes, changing what we eat, there's still a benefit.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you know, as far as ourselves generating energy from, for example, fats and ketones versus glucose, do you have a timeline of how easily that can switch back and forth once somebody is metabolically flexible? Where I'm coming from with this question is, sometimes I will get into a groove that is feeling really good for me, maybe it's lower carb, and then, oh, in case you're wondering, I follow a paleo-type approach, so I eat all whole foods. It's very much in line with what you discuss in your book, which for listeners, will be linked to that in the show notes. Sometimes I will get into a groove that I'm feeling really good with, lower carb, and then I'll want to switch things up, bring higher carb, but I have this... I always wonder if in doing so, is it making my cells lose some of their metabolic potential when it comes to burning fats and ketones and then I need to relearn or reset or do you think the cells maintain this inherent flexibility in switching back and forth between burning the different things?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, totally. Actually, it's the opposite, meaning the more you do this, the faster your body can shift back and forth. Mark [Sisson 00:59:30] and I, in our space it's called metabolic flexibility to put a name on it. Basically, means the healthier you are, the faster you can switch gears, sugar burner, fat burner. Your body needs sugar, it will burn sugar, if you have carbs, it will burn the carbs, if you're not eating at all, it will immediately start burning fat. It has the ability in healthy people to shift back and forth, like a kid. Kids can just burn up the sugar, and if they're not eating, they'll burn up all their fat. I mean, that's a healthy human. Part of this variation strategy is to get people to break through and become more metabolically flexible. The more we start doing feast, famine, feast, famine, the better they get at it. The cells get used to doing it. 

Melanie Avalon:
Follow-up question on that. You were speaking like on a weekly basis of having these higher protein, lower carb days and then these-

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, higher carb or higher protein days.

Melanie Avalon:
Higher carb or higher protein, so is that a consistent in that or are you lower fat on the higher carb days?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, so I lean more towards low carb for me genetically, however, I know that when I was low carb all the time, I started getting skinny fat where I was literally dropping my carbs down to 10 grams a day or less and I was going, what the heck is going on? I was getting weaker in the gym, so I was losing muscle and my belly fat was getting more. I was very frustrated. Then, I just started doing research, finding low carb diets can cause insulin resistance, which I found out was actually true, but it's not insulin resistance, like the disease state. It's insulin resistance because the body goes into a survival mode, meaning it says, okay, I've been doing this fat burning for so long, this I my only survival fuel, so I'm going to go start storing more of it in case because all the body wants to do is survive. In case we run out, I want to have this fuel that I'm only using now.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
The example is this, if you're in a cabin in the middle of Alaska, and you have a wood stack that will last you the winter and this winter is super hard and long. You realize, okay, I'm going through my wood too fast, are you going to burn more or less? To survive, you're going to burn less and less wood to the point where you're okay with it being 55 degrees in your cabin burning less wood. Why? Just to survive. Well, that's what your body does with its fat stores. That's the same as looking at it like the wood pile, so your body wants to burn less just in case it needs it. You start storing the fat. How does it do that? Well, it will blunt insulin receptors magically, from the DNA. What happens when you do that? Well, it starts storing fat, you'll start holding onto your fat. Then, if your body needs that emergency fuel, yeah, it will start gluconeogenesis up at night and start burning muscle, so you start losing muscle, gaining fat in the wrong places, and it's not good.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
I realized bodybuilders had this figured out years ago. They would throw in these carb days to stop the gluconeogenesis of their muscle, fire up the fat burning machine. Right before a competition, they'd do carb days and becoming leaner. What? How is that possible? Because you remind the body it's not surviving and then it will start burning fat again. Two days after a carb day, all of sudden you look at your ketones and they're soaring off the chart as an indicator that your body said, okay, I can start burning fat again, we're not starving to death. That's really why it works. Now, again, I would argue there're certain conditions where doing carbs aren't a good thing and we use high protein and it seems to work the same way, so we utilize that high protein just to remind the body it's not starving.

Melanie Avalon:
They're using the high protein, I know you just said this, but how is that telling the body it's not starving? Is it purely from... I'm guessing it's on a caloric standpoint, but it's just from the macronutrient of protein or is it from gluconeogenesis from the protein?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I think that arguably anything could be used that stimulates mTOR. Okay, I don't want to get too far here, but we have two pathways that are like opposite of each other. We have autophagy, which we spoke about, that's the fasting state where your body will use its own cells, bad cells. Then, we have mTOR, which is an anabolic state, a building state that bodybuilders love they want to put on muscle. Now, is that long-term healthy? No, but they don't care, they want to put on muscle. What do they do to do that? They eat extra protein, they eat extra calories, and they eat extra carbs. All of those things work to push them into this mTOR state. You had Valter Longo on. He, no doubt, hates mTOR, and I argue, with that group that mTOR's actually good in the short term. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Bodybuilders take steroids, they go crazy mTOR and when they first get on steroids, they go, my joints feel better. Well, then in the long run it doesn't work for them. It ages them in the long run, but a short-term burst of high protein or even high calories or high carbs can be very beneficial because the short terms anabolic state can be very healing. If you stay there, you will die sooner. Your cells will multiply faster, so I'm in agreement with what Longo in long-term mTOR stimulation, bad, however I like short-term stimulation and you can do that by following what the bodybuilders did. A day of high protein, high carbs, high calories, any of that that stimulates mTOR for a day can remind the body it's not starting. It's an anabolic state.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, not to go too far on the mTOR train, but it gets to me, too, because people will say, they'll always talk about how these high protein or high meat diets are really stimulating of mTOR, so they're not in favor of longevity, but a hack in a way that I see it as potentially beneficial is somebody practicing an intermittent fasting pattern where they're not stimulating mTOR at all during the fast and then still having adequate or even higher amounts of protein in a shortened eating window at night. I mean, I potentially see that as a way to both benefit from mTOR and still have the anti-aging, longevity effects of fasting. I think just so many of the studies are looking at chronically high mTOR release from eating constantly or like eating meat. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Well, look, I mean, to your point, if you're eating three, four meals a day and you're eating a little bit of protein each meal, let's say it's not hard to eat 40 grams of protein or 50 grams protein in a meal. Even 70 for that matter. Okay, if you ate one meal, 70 grams of protein for someone who weighs 150 pounds, that a very low amount actually. I mean, that's a very normal amount that I think is very healthy. Okay, now, if you did that three times a day, okay, now you're talking about a lot of mTOR stimulation that would arguably be bad. When you look at these studies, you could make a study say what you want. It's like because you're not looking at it in real life. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When I was in Africa, I spent some time with an amazing hunting, gathering tribe. They would go times where they didn't have meat and they were vegetarians. Then, they would go through times where all they ate was meat because the kill was great. Look at that stimulation. These people didn't have disease they were so healthy. Again, what were they emulating? Feast, famine. Oh, by the way, they had one meal in the afternoon that lasted probably three hours, so they feasted for three hours. That was their cultural way. Really, you look at most of Europe, that's really the way it is, but the point is, is that it's not as simple as just looking at an amount of protein. It's a little bit more complicated than that.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it reminds me of, for example, like the Hunza Tribe, when they were initially documented, I think they were seen during a seasonal eating approach, so it was assumed they were always eating this one-

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, they thought they were vegetarians. Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, but it turns out that was not the case. Yeah, I feel like context is so key.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, when they would visit them in the winter, all they ate was like fat, dairy and meat. It's like, what? Then, in the spring, it's known as fasting spring in that culture. They would go for a week of not eating while they were transitioning, which arguably could be why they live so long and healthy. Yeah, there you go.

Melanie Avalon:
Even like the Inuit, for example, which we often use as the prime example of ketogenic diets, I could be incorrect in this, but I believe I read something about them having actually a genetic... some sort of genetic tendency where they actually don't enter ketosis. Have you heard this? Have you read about this?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
No, no. I haven't, but you know, those people, when they had carbs, they went after them, boy. I'll tell you that. 

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, and something about how they burn fat. I think Chris Masterjohn had a really fascinating video on it, which I'll find it and put it in the link. I'll link to it in the show notes, but it's just really interesting because we use the... I mean, they do follow, in general, a very low carb, super, super low carb diet, but we use them as an example for the ketogenic diet when if they do have the genetic tendency where they're actually not easily entering ketosis, that's fascinating. There's just so many factors. 

Melanie Avalon:
One really super-random question, and I don't want to monopolize all of your time here, but I love that you brought up in your fasting book that you're talking about eating according to, for example, Leviticus and how they define foods as clean and unclean. I'm actually really fascinated by that. Do you know if there's a reason for why certain foods are considered in the Bible as clean or unclean from a health perspective? Like, now? Do we know more now scientifically why that might be?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, there's been some studies, like one was at John Hopkins and they looked at the foods that were considered unclean and they tested them and realized that they were foods that held toxins. I mean, just look at it logically. We know that eating carnivores, we just don't do that. Why? Because they have such a short digestive tract and the meat is very toxic, so we don't do that. Well, that's an unclean meat. It said, don't eat road kill basically. It doesn't say that. Basically, don't eat an animal that was already dead. Why? Because we know that toxins are already in the meat. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
When we look at that time, God gave the Israelites very strict rules around it, and again, then it was more for spiritual reasons, so they thought, but really it was also for health reasons. The rules apply even to this day. Even the commands about hand washing, etcetera. When we look at those meats, pork was on the unclean list. Pigs eat their own waste. I mean, it's like they're very uncleanly animals, so back then, pigs actually were a lot, they transmitted a lot of disease in their flesh. Today, we raise pigs safer, so arguably it's not as bad, but I mean, again, when we look at bottom dwellers in the ocean, like lobsters, crabs, all on the unclean list. They're literally filters of the sea. I mean, you put a lobster in a bucket of battery acid and most of it's absorbed. I mean, they literally clean our oceans.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
There's truth to the fact that there's unclean and clean meats to this day. For the most part, a little bit of the unclean meat, your body will deal with it, but eating a lot of it is unclean. You won't be hurt from a spiritual perspective, from a physical one, it may affect you, though.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you know if it's true, I've read that pigs don't sweat, so they also maintain more toxins in their flesh? Is that-

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it is... yes, it's true and I think no matter what, pig is going to have a higher toxic flesh than say, a cow.

Melanie Avalon:
I actually read a study recently where they're looking at the inflammatory potential of pork and how different preparation methods affected it. Have you seen that?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it was really interesting because they were trying to see how it would basically lead to inflammation in the blood and they found that traditionally prepared pork, so preparing it in an acidic medium, certain types of curing actually almost completely mitigated the inflammatory response, but just eating fresh pork, had a very inflammatory potential. It's so interesting from a historical perspective, human kind and cultures have been having all these preparation methods and these religious texts and all these things, which we're doing things that now "scientifically" we realize what they were doing. It's kind of, to bring things full circle, like you were saying with fasting, how there is just this innate sense of intuition within our bodies, I think there is just an intuition to everything and it's so inspiring to now understand more and more the why behind things.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, even just to leave it on this note. Animals instinctively fast when they're sick, when they're injured. Humans, we literally have to be taught, to some degree. You think about when you get the flu, you're not running to the dinner table. Your body's saying don't do it, but yet, when you break your arm, you're still shoveling away. My son, I said, he broke his back, he fasted for five days and at the hospital, they were trying to make him eat and he wasn't. He wasn't hungry. He was listening to his body, frankly. He was like, it's the last thing I want to do, but he also knew because he's been educated around fasting. He's 21 years old. He jumped off a cliff to go to the water, but he didn't see an out cliff about 50 feet down and he hit. He should have died and he should have been paralyzed, but he was neither, thank God.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
He did have a fracture that he should have been paralyzed, praise God, and moved in the right direction, not into his cord. However, they said he'd be in bed 12 to 15 weeks. Two weeks later he was walking and he was off Oxycontin, which they wanted him to do this anterior surgery that was nasty and he'd have hardware in his spine his whole life. He opted out. I said, "Give me 24 hours to do some homework here." Needless to say, we sided on the side of not doing it, which the doctors were like, "Well, two and a half weeks we'll take and X-ray just to see if it's holding and I doubt it." Daniel is his name and he said, "You know, Daniel, I wouldn't get your hopes up." When they did the X-ray and he was stunned that it not only held, this nasty kink that was in there was already coming out.

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Here we are eight weeks out and he's walking around, working out in the gym, but the point is that he fasted for five days and then we went mTOR, we feasted. He ate high protein and all these... stimulated mTOR, so feast, famine was part of his recovery.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. That is really powerful. Brings me to two final questions. The second, the runner-up question is, on that note, do you think anybody can heal given the right circumstances and environment and everything that we've discussed?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Now, look, you remove the interference, innate intelligence knows what to do. Right? Now, that interference may be physical, emotional, chemical, but remove them all and typically, it's a combination of all of those that fill up our stress bucket that one day overflows and the symptoms began. That's what happened to me. You empty it out, the magic happens. Right? The body can heal, I believe everyone can.

Melanie Avalon:
So wonderful, and then, last question, this is actually what I ask every single guest, this is the final question and it's just because I've, realizing more and more how important mindset is, not just in our minds, but on a physical level as well, so what is something that you're grateful for?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Right now, my son walking and being alive. I keep getting emotional about it. We were in the gym the other day and I just looked over and thought, we wouldn't be here. First, I pictured him a wheelchair, and he's not, and then I pictured him alive, he is. I got emotional about it and I'm grateful that I'm well. Through my illness, I didn't see the purpose God had in it for me and my wife would remind me, God is not only going to heal you, but he's going to take a message through you to the world. I never saw that, but here I am on this podcast and others. I'm grateful for that. I am.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, thank you so much Dr. Pompa. I'm so grateful for our conversation, I'm so grateful for all the work that you're doing. I think it's helping so many people more than you ever, ever can know. I've learned so much from it and it's just been a true honor to have you here on the podcast today, so thank you. Thank you so much. Oh, I'll put links to everything that we discussed, but how can listeners best follow your work, what all would you like to put out there for them?

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, if you just go to my website, D-R, and then P-O-M-P-A dot com, my podcast there, coaching services. Everything you'd look for is there. My Facebook, which I do... matter of fact, Fasting for a Purpose, that's my Facebook group you could go to, you could put that in the links. I'm leading a group through a fast next month, the end of October. They'll be 20-some thousand of us. Anyways, Fasting for a Purpose, join us there, too.

Melanie Avalon:
Fantastic. Okay, so for listeners, again the show notes for today's episode will be at IfPodcast.com/fastingdetox and I will put links to everything that we discussed, but again, thank you Dr. Pompa so much for being here and I look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Maybe, hopefully, meeting you in person someday. This has been a true honor. 

Dr. Daniel Pompa:
Thanks for having me, Melanie.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you.