Dave: So Dr. Dan poa, you said that a lot of disease, a lot of aging is damaged at the cellular level and. I think we have some agreement on that. Mm-hmm. Is healthy
Dr Pompa: the new sick is healthy, the new sick? Well, I, when you look at the statistics in this country, you might say that actually, yeah. I, I, I've never heard it put that way, but it's actually a brilliant statement because I.
Healthy could be the new sick and, and here especially because it becomes so normal to them.
Mm-hmm. A
lower level of living.
Yeah.
It's kinda like someone dimming the lights in the outside the room. Yeah. After a while you don't even know it's dim until they actually turn it up. They're like, I'm, I'm healthy.
Yeah. And you're like, no, you're not. No you're not. No. Okay. It's true. I was in a conversation just recently, I, I was in a friend of mine's waiting room and it was three women were having a conversation and it was about. It was about their health issues, but they kept saying, but that's normal, right? It's like, well, you know, my thyroid, I, you know, I have thyroid, you know, issues, dah, dah, dah, my hair's thing, but that's all normal.
And I was like thinking, and I, I actually didn't go into the conversation because I knew it would just be too much.
Dave: And, and if you look at what normal actually means, it means average and just go to the airport and look around, and that's normal. Mm. So if what you are is normal. You're probably not in very good shape because most people are sick today, so you should be so far from normal just to be healthy.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. Even blood work. Uh, you look at blood work and, you know, these normals that we call them are really not normal, are they not? They're based on abnormal humans in a abnormal uh, society. What is
Dave: the
Dr Pompa: normal
Dave: level of testosterone for a 30 5-year-old guy?
Dr Pompa: You know, my answer's going to be a little different mm-hmm.
Than probably what you're looking for, because we look at blood levels of hormones. Mm-hmm. And I always say, you know, if it were only that simple, meaning that how your hormones interact with yourself, get into yourself so you feel well is really different than people think. Meaning hormone sensitivity.
It rules. Okay? So therefore you could have someone with a lower blood level and be absolutely healthy as we're putting quotes around it and feel amazing and be lean and have all kinds of energy, uh, because they're very, their cells are very sensitive to their hormones. Or people could be forcing the hormones very high and their cells not be.
Very sensitive to the hormones. Wow. Because of something called cellular inflammation that's blocking the hormones and cellular, uh, damage to the receptor itself. So it's hard to look at blood levels and put healthy on 'em.
Dave: Mm-hmm. Uh, that's profound. Uh, you're a hundred percent right. And, and the first thing is people say, how much testosterone?
I'm like, well, how much is free? Or how much is available? Ah, see, it's, it's not easy. Yeah. And we can measure how much is free. Mm-hmm. And, you know, Randy Galpin was on, he said, you know, above 20, and I would generally agree. And some people do not feel good at 20 because as you're saying, their cells can't use it.
Absolutely. So then you say, well, what's the right level for longevity? Mm-hmm. And then how are you feeling? And maybe we need to crank it up to 24 so you can feel
Dr Pompa: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, look, look at thyroid, right? Oh God, yeah. We, we have. This explosion of thyroid cases in the last even 10 years. If you look at 20, it's even worse, right?
Yeah. Well, look, you know, people, I let, let me reference myself. There was a time where I said, I know I have a thyroid. This is when I was sick. This is back in 1999, 2000, so a long time ago, but my hair was thinning. Right. I didn't know what was wrong with myself. I had mysterious illness. Couldn't figure it out.
But one thing I did know is I had a thyroid issue. I had all the symptoms. Right. And you knew. Knew. That's 'cause you were a doctor back then. Yeah. Uhhuh and I, I, you know, I knew what was going, but I went and got a blood test this particular day I. I ran $5,000 worth of tests trying to figure out what was wrong.
Okay. And I, I know the number right. It was right around that number 'cause I didn't have insurance to pay for it. So, um, you remember, you tend to remember things like that.
Dave: I, I spent similar amounts in a similar year because yeah, it was
Dr Pompa: really expensive. Still is, but not, yeah, no, no doubt. It was back then.
But I ran a lot of things, but. It was a depressing day because he came back and his exact words were, oh, you're healthier than me. Right. I didn't wanna hear that. I mean, if he told me, uh, you know, you have cancer, I'd be like, okay. At least I know what I'm up against now because I've just spent. You know, two years looking and finding nothing.
But anyways, my thyroid numbers came back normal. Okay? I had every thyroid symptom, right? So what I didn't know is again, you know, my thyroid hormone wasn't getting its message or itself in the cell. I. So therefore, 'cause I had so much cellular inflammation. Yeah. Thyroid resistance. Yeah, absolutely. Just like insulin resistance.
Mm-hmm. Great. Great example. So eventually, I, I, maybe five years it would've went off maybe 10 years. I would've went and finally they would've said, oh, you know, your number, your TSH is off your T three know is low. Uh, and then, great. Here, take this. I would've taken the hormone, uh, maybe I would've felt better for mm-hmm.
A period of time. Mm-hmm. I would've definitely went back in two, three months, and they would say, oh, look, your levels are better, but what do people say? Yeah, but I don't feel better.
Mm-hmm.
Right. Meaning, my hair's still th my skin's dry. I'm constipated, so I still have no energy. I can't lose this belly fat, or whatever it is.
Right. The point is, is that, you know, that's the example that we're talking about is blood levels can be made normal and yet not feel well in so many people. Are having that exact experience because it's not so simple as looking at blood levels and I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. I, I mean, you know, if someone comes back and they have a testosterone level of a hundred, I too would say, probably an indication.
Your body's struggling a bit,
Dave: but if they walked in just with plates of muscle and complaining of excess libido and their testo stone's a hundred, you'd probably say. Good, good on you, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's not gonna happen, but probably not. It's funny. Around that same year, um, probably a, a couple years before it, I got my results back from a longevity doctor, uh, in the Bay Area, and I don't think he's still practicing Dr.
Miller, and he said, Dave, your thyroid's almost undetectable. Yeah. And your testosterone's lower than your mom. How do you know my mother? Well, I said my parents because he is a longevity doctor. And I'm like, maybe you can fix me 'cause I'm fat. I'm tired all the time. My eyebrows are falling out. All this stuff.
Right. And I remember the first time I took thyroid hormone, it was, it was like, oh my God, my whole body. I like now when I, when I apply effort, results happen before I could apply effort and nothing would
Dr Pompa: happen. Hmm. Right. See, that's the difference. Mm-hmm. Your cellular health is better now. You know, look receptors to every hormone reside on our cells.
Right. It's people are listening. So I'm, I literally have my fist with a hand up my fingers. Mm-hmm. Going through it. Um, you know, hormones have to dock to those receptors. No different than your cell phone. Needs a tower to communicate, otherwise, your cell phone's useless. Right. And what you just said when you were going through your health challenges mm-hmm.
You know, we both went through stuff, right? Yeah. Uh, nothing worked because your cells were inflamed, blocking your hormone receptors. Oh. You can't even get the good things in. Mm-hmm. Oh, and also toxins are building up in your cell. Yeah. Right. Which is not. Triggering your bad genes. Right. It's like, and, and this is most of America by the way.
Mm-hmm. Toxic cells, right? It's like hormones can't get in, nutrition can't get in, toxins can't get out, you know, this is the problem. Right, right. There I 20 years of teaching this to doctors with, you know, great frustration sometimes. Well, I, I think you're
Dave: making a difference
Dr Pompa: though. Yeah. I appreciate that you, and likewise by, I, I am honored to be here.
And by the way, I, I, I really. Not as many people give you credit as credit is due, meaning you are the father of biohacking. You really are. And I, and I say that because I've been doing this a long time, I've been ripped off, copied and not given credit. So number one, I know what it feels like, but I, I learned to give credit where credit's due.
You are? Yeah. I remember years ago, I could tell you where I was when someone either said, said, watch this, you'll resonate with it. And I watched. Video. I texted the person back, said, this guy's smart. Wow. And he knows what he's talking about. And anyways, but that was, my gosh, I don't even know when that was, but I was in Tahoe.
I was staying at this cool hotel, um, in Tahoe, actually. It was, um, Carson, right outside of Tahoe. But that You deserve credit man, you know? Wow. Well, uh,
Dave: thank you. Yeah, no, absolutely. I really, I really did start the biohacking movement. You did. Uh, consciously to make longevity medicine, functional medicine, and some of this other neuroscience and yeah.
Things just to make it, uh, accessible. Yeah. So people would want to do it if, yeah. If someone had told me about biohacking when I was 19, I would've suffered a lot less than save $2 million. Like, it would, it would've been worth it. Yeah.
Dr Pompa: Right. I mean, isn't it true? Yeah. Uh, because I, I spent it, man, we remortgaged our home.
Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, just to get well, right. Yeah. Just to get it. Well, that's why I don't have, I don't have a lot of patience for people when they say, uh, well. How much is it? Or I can't afford it, or can you gimme a guarantee? Because I'm like, huh, you know, I wish I had all those things. Right. I didn't.
Mm.
And I spent it. And if I thought you had the answer, you know, I, I'm not, I, I'm doing it. I'll find it.
Dave: I was, um, briefly married in my twenties and I just realized I need to set aside 20% of my income. Just to function to, to figure out what's wrong with my body. Mm-hmm. Keep my energy where it is. Right. And that was one of the relationship stresses, like, why do you spend so much money on, you know, medical tests?
Like, because I'm fat and because I'm tired, because I can't think and because I keep getting sick and all these things. 'cause my body hurts all the time. You know,
Dr Pompa: I had that, I think in that. Piece that I saw. You told a bit of your story. I, I'm not gonna do this, but I'd love to reverse this and be like, tell your story to me again.
I would love, like, when did all that start? But just quickly, when did that, when did your problem, when did your illnesses start? They started as a, as a child. Oh, did they? I grew
Dave: up in a basement with toxic mold. Oh dude. I hate my man mold's evil. My family owns a gold mine. I might had a little bit of mercury exposure from that.
Oh yeah. To play an old mines as a kid. Absolutely. You did. And, and then a vampire bat bit me when I was 10, I woke up with it feeding on my neck. Oh, that's interesting. And now I understand I almost certainly got Bartonella from it. And I also had, uh, you know, chronic strep throat from the mold, which gives you, uh, the, uh, pandas and mm-hmm.
So. I also was, had Asperger's and A DHD and
Dr Pompa: ODD. Well, that makes you brilliant. Okay. So take that off the table. But you know, I have to say, what you just said is part of what I've been teaching for 20 years is always look for the perfect storm. Yeah. Meaning it's never one thing.
Dave: Never.
Dr Pompa: Your body will. Your body will adapt.
Adapt, adapt. Right? Mm-hmm. You know, but it's when that other storm, you know, three storms come together and we have a perfect storm and boom, then the genes start getting triggered and the bottom starts falling out and the immune system turns on itself. So if you can figure out what someone's perfect storm is.
That's how they're gonna get. Well,
Dave: I I love the way you teach this 'cause you're teaching doctors systems biology and you're undoing the damage from medical school and, and there's great value in medical school. I'm, I'm not saying that it's not there. 'cause if, if I get hit by a truck, I want to go to no visit people.
The Yeah. It, it's just that belief. There must be one cause is built into the pharmaceutical industry and their funding medical schools. Right. And what if. In order to test for bread, you could have Pfizer. I'm like, well, we baked the water. We bake the yeast, we bake the salt, we bake the flour. There is no bread.
Now you have to have a recipe. Right? And there's a recipe for getting sick and a recipe for getting well. How does someone know the recipe that made them sick? Because if you know that, maybe you can undo it. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Pompa: I mean, exactly. Right. But it's funny what you said though. Uh, doctors believe that there's one cause today they believe there's probably one drug mm-hmm.
To cover up one symptom. Right. Right. I mean, it's gotten even worse than that. Right. You know, one of the things I, I love to teach from just as an analogy is mm-hmm. If you to, to the point of what you said, right? If you can figure out the, these, the cause, then surely the solution lies there, right? And we're always looking for cause, but think of a three-legged stool.
All three things have to be there for the stool to stand up, is the analogy, right? Okay. We know that genes play a role, right? But again, our DNA's not our destiny, right? Mm-hmm. Genes can get turned on most genes and they can also be turned off. Yes. So think of that as one leg of the stool, right? But then think of another leg as the stressors.
That perfect storm we discussed that triggers that gene, right? Mm-hmm. So, okay, so if we deal with the stressors. Do you think that there's science to show that we can actually turn off the genes? The answer is yes. So people listening that have autoimmune, right? They have thyroid conditions, diabetes, all these things.
Yes, those genes were turned on, but it's definitely not your destiny. But you won't turn them off until you deal with the stressors that turn them on. There is one more leg and that's. The microbiome as we've learned. Mm. Right. Meaning that if you think about autoimmune, there's certain bacteria, if they get in too low a number, we don't make enough T regulatory cells that tell your immune system to back down.
It's okay. Right. Don't attack. Its, you know, don't attack yourself. So of course that's playing a role too. So today, even in functional medicine, uh, I find doctors are either just trying to chase the gut without understanding these other legs of the stool. So if all three of these things had to be there for you to get sick, then it makes logical sense that we better deal with all three.
Yes. Thank God. But, and yes, do things that can actually turn down a downregulate gene expression, but also you better get to the cause of how it got triggered. Oh, in these stressors are also why the gut went bad too, right? So there's one leg that actually causes the other legs, you know, to fall, if you will.
So,
mm,
Dave: I really like that. And you've been a leading voice in talking about the role of toxins, and I recognize in my history. Both toxins developed by my microbiome that was off as well as environmental toxins have had a profound impact. And even toxins from things that people think are healthy food, but probably aren't.
Yeah, it's true. Um, those have have been why my mitochondria were screwed up. Why I have the inflammation and all. So I want you to rank the toxins people are commonly exposed to from the worst and most common going down the list.
Dr Pompa: The most common and the worst. I don't know if it lines up, but let, let's go, go for this.
Um. Uh, you know, because if you look at probably the most common, like, look at plastic exposure today, right? Yeah. I mean, huge. Mm-hmm. You, I, I mean, they're finding it in every tissue of the human body. Every brain now on autopsies has it, right? Mm-hmm. Every testicle. I mean, come on. Uh, these are hormone disruptors, right?
It's like in, you know, obviously linked to cancer in many other conditions, and we know they're driving autoimmune and other problems, and yet. Even you and I are being exposed and I bring water, glass bottles. I don't drink outta plastic. Right. Did you notice glass bottle? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny how many podcasts they give me a bottle and I'm, I'm preaching against it and there's the bottle and I'm like, okay, great.
Now I can at least use this one liter. A bottle has 140,000 micrograms of, or plastic. But anyway, yeah. So plastic's probably one of the most common. Um, if we're going common first, then of course chemicals from our food like glyphosate.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, my gosh, I, I mean, and I, I would argue. That's making this perfect storm even worse.
Mm-hmm. Right. So I'm gonna talk about some deadly toxins that people unknowingly have been exposed to from birth on. Yeah. Like you and I, and yet glyphosate allows those to cross deeper into our brain. Number one, this is a 2012 study. Mm-hmm. Stephanie Seneff. You know, with one of the first it's been duplicated.
She's great show. I think she has
Dave: more credit
Dr Pompa: than
Dave: she gets.
Dr Pompa: Yeah, right. Yeah, it's true. You know? Yes. It allows these toxins like heavy metals, which are deadly. They affected me, part of my story to cross even deeper into the brain. She believes that it's. You know, creating this massive increase in autism and a lot of other neurodegenerative conditions, it's opening up the gut barrier.
So, um, I would put that in the, one of the most deadly categories, privacy, because in and itself it's deadly. And then it's also making other toxins more deadly by allowing it to cross deeper into us. So, mm-hmm. Um, yeah, that, that would be deadly, you know, I think deadly that people miss mm-hmm. In, I would say alternative medicine.
Misses, uh, for many reasons because of bad testing and they don't know what to do with it. Really. Mold, biotoxins, uhhuh. Right. Okay. So the urine test. Yeah, I listen in my doctor group, we tested this urine test where you look at biotoxins, most of it's food born. We fasted people for a day. Got a little better.
Two days got even better, but showing that it's mostly foodborne and you know a lot about foodborne moan. Mm-hmm. Now that's why you developed coffee, but it's not Right. Right. So it very inaccurate. So mold is either mist because of poor testing. Right. People go, oh yeah, I don't have mold in my house. No one thinks they have mold in their house.
Right? It's like, uh, you know, or they do an air test because they brought in the experts and of course there's no mold in the house, but it is because it's behind the wall and they didn't test for it. Heavy metals. I would say a lot of people think they might have heavy metals. Mm-hmm. But then the problem here is the way that they go online and find what they think gets rid of heavy metals, it's the, the drops.
It's the mm-hmm. The, the, the carella, the cilantro, the, you know, none of it is, if it were only that easy. Mm-hmm. Right. I wouldn't have spent. Most of my career teaching how to get rid of this stuff outta deep tissue like your brain. Mm-hmm. You know, that made me sick. So heavy metals deadly, and doctors don't know quite what to do with it.
Biotoxins deadly because it's missed and oftentimes dealt with incorrectly. Uh, so yeah. Pesticides. Big problem. Plastics, big problem forever. Chemicals is a new problem, right? Yeah. Because these things, yeah, forever, they last forever in our environment. But look what they're doing in our body, right? Mm-hmm.
I mean, it's remarkable that how much, you know, how much damage it's caused, how many dollars are awarded to the damages of, and yet we, we are still. You know, basically getting it in all these products from dental floss to eye care, toilet paper, I mean, just go down the list. Eye drops. Mm-hmm. Obviously clothing, waterproof resistant, of course, pans, Teflon, I mean, you know.
Over 10,000 products we're being exposed to. Mm-hmm. Europe is putting bans on this stuff one after another. Denmark, uh, the EU is, you know, next to put bans on this stuff here in the United States. We're not, we haven't even banned glyphosate yet. And how many billions have it been awarded to cancer? Non oxygens, lymphoma, and, you know, other problems.
And yet. I, you still walk in Home Depot and you see what round up. Right. And you know,
Dave: those bastards are now trying to go to states and make it illegal for them to have liability for spraying chemicals that poison people. And I'm, I. I don't understand that because there's a certain type of person, and thankfully I'm not one of them, where if you kill their children, they will kill you.
Right. And so I, I just don't, I don't understand how our government, I. Isn't taking action on that. I think they might, but Well,
Dr Pompa: there's a chance right now.
Dave: Yeah.
Dr Pompa: Um, there, yeah. There's a new, uh, sheriff in town. There's a chance that this can all mm-hmm. You know, yeah, yeah.
Dave: Change. I hope it does. And one of the things about glyphosate that, that isn't well known is that glyphosate, when you spray it on soil and plants, it causes the toxic mold to make.
500 times more mold toxin and in things like corn. We used to just have mold on the corn. I mean, it's called fusarium, and it's one of the big toxic molds. Well, you could see it, but when you spray glyphosate, it goes into the roots of the corn and it binds to the sugar in the corn. Mm-hmm. And you can't see it.
And if you test the corn for this toxin, you won't see it. But once you digest the corn and your enzymes break the sugar apart, the toxins released. And so glyphosate is making mold toxins work. And it is making metal toxins worse.
Dr Pompa: Yes. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Does. You know something I heard you say recently and I said, wow, he's the first person that I've heard say this.
And it's true that when people were in a mold exposure, I. Oftentimes they get like mucus biofilms. Mm-hmm. And they have certain sinus problems that they have even certain mucus in the back of the throat. Yeah. And I'm always like, that's mold. And the reason is the fact is the bacteria and mold or enemies of each.
Yeah. Ancient enemies. Absolutely. So what a bacteria due to protect themselves, they felt biofilms. Mm-hmm. Right. So that is a sign mm-hmm. That I've talked about for many years. So I don't know how you, you figured it out or how you where you got that, but it's true. But I rarely hear people talk about that.
Dave: It. It's fundamentally important for parents, right? 'cause your kids have behavioral problems. And pandas is what happens when toxic mold messes with a streptococcus bacteria and it makes it form a biofilm in the sinus of your kids. Mm-hmm. And then they get chronic strep throat, the way I did antibiotics every month for 15 years.
Yep. But the toxins from strep causing autoimmune reaction. I think it's too, um. Probably to the lining of your nerves to myelin, but that's what causes this Pandas disorder, which makes you have OCD and ODD, both of which I used to have.
Dr Pompa: Yeah.
Dave: So you think, you know, my kid's not trying hard, or they, they have autism or whatever.
They might just have. Mold toxins, or they might have mold toxins that cause bacterial toxins. Absolute. And it's so real. Absolutely.
Dr Pompa: Because the mold will obviously have the opposite effect, right? Mm-hmm. It will cause bacterial problems, just like, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing. But see, the reason you know that is because you experienced Yeah, I do.
Right. The reason I know that is 'cause I experienced it. Right? Okay. Meaning like I had these, you know, impossible biofilms, right? A lot of people today are trying to solve their gut problem when again. They're in a mold problem. Mm-hmm. Or they have an upstream heavy metal issue. Makes me so happy. You were saying this in your doctor?
Yeah. So it's like, yeah. And they're going, oh, these, you know, probiotic, this, that other thing. It's like, hold on, you know what's 20 miles up the river? There might be a factory, you know, dumping a toxin in the river and that's why your fisher are dying down here, so stop trying to populate the fish. Mm-hmm.
You know, in other words, the microbiome. It's not gonna happen until you deal with what's going on up there. Mm-hmm. But you know, doctors don't want to hear it. We have more fancy testing. Right. Whether it's snip testing, genetic testing, microbiome testing, but yet I feel like alternative medicine is, is pulling away from that in a sense.
Yeah. And getting fancier instead of like dealing with the upstream issues. We got our lives back because we got to the cause
Dave: we're incredibly fortunate and it took an enormous amount of money and learning and that's why we're here. Yeah. And we're both able to educate. Mm-hmm. And I think you have so much leverage 'cause you're teaching doctors how to detox in a way that that's functional.
And so, you know, I'm, I practice gratitude for all the shit I went through, uh, because it. It motivated me. I, my blog, I thought five people read this and not go through all the hell I went through, and that was my goal.
Dr Pompa: Dave, look at the, the amount of people you've been able to impact, right? Yeah. And it's.
It would've never happened. Mm-hmm. If you hadn't suffered. Oh, yeah. So from pain to purpose has been my whole life story, man. I sit here because of that, you know? And I, I like to say pain to purpose, to promise, meaning I always believe God has a promise in it for someone that if, you know, if you anchor to it, mm-hmm.
It's like, watch what can happen. Watch what he does.
Dave: Completely agree. Yeah. All right. Let's start at the
Dr Pompa: top.
Dave: How do I get rid of toxins in my
Dr Pompa: sinuses? I. Well, let's say this. How do you get rid of toxins in your brain, sinuses, body? Right. Well, no doubt there's detox pathways that we all were born with. They start in our cell.
Mm-hmm.
They eventually have to work their way to the liver, kidneys, got, et cetera. Mm-hmm. But it all starts here. Okay. So if you've heard me say real detox. Is it the cell? Mm-hmm. It's a cellular issue. So agree. So we can't just say, I'm gonna get rid of these toxins using chelators binders. That's part of it.
I teach it. However, if we don't fix what's broken here mm-hmm. Then we're never going to fix the, what's the problem? So meaning if you, if your cells detox pathways start to slow down. Now you're broken from the very beginning. Mm-hmm. And you will never get well, so my saying is if we fix the cell, we get well, but let me give people an analogy they can hold onto.
So there's many different detox pathways that our cells utilize to get rid of toxins. And by the way, when your cells make energy. In the mitochondria, which is in our cells. Mm-hmm. They makes toxins. It's like burning wood in a fireplace. Yeah,
Dave: right. Reactive oxygen species. Absolutely.
Dr Pompa: A fireplace. If we don't have the damper open, meaning that the toxins can't get out mm-hmm.
And they come into the home, we die. Yeah. Right. Okay, so everyone has that analogy. Okay, here's one more. We know to make a car more powerful. Faster, right. Perform better. Mm-hmm. People put dual exhaust on them. Yep. And immediately the power goes up. Okay. That means that if we can get rid of toxins, we actually increase power.
Okay. Now let's do the opposite. Hold true story. I just,
Dave: I, I did that to my Tesla and nothing happened. I. Yeah, that's really weird. I,
Dr Pompa: I don't have a Tesla never owned an electric car. That's, fuck, just kidding. Well, good thing they might bomb it outside. Who knows what's gonna happen these days. But anyway, so it, so now if this is a true story, lemme tell the story.
So, I, we were in high school and I drove my friends somewhere. I think it was a party. And, uh, I was the designated driver. And we got in the, uh, the car to drive home, and I'm driving home and the power's dying. Mm-hmm. And I'm dying. And I'm, I, at this point, I have it floored. Literally, I, I accelerated the gun.
I'm criticizing my friends how heavy they are. I'm like, literally, I, I wasn't processing. Finally, it gets so bad. The car just dies. The next scene was me calling my parents to come pick us up. Right. Okay. The next day we found out what happened. Someone who didn't like one of us stuffed an apple in the exhaust.
Right. An apple. Okay, so what happened? The toxins were building up in the engine and the engine was, power was getting less and less sound familiar. America, right. Your power See banana
Dave: thing from that movie. Yeah. Yeah,
Dr Pompa: exactly. But anyways, but until the point where the engine, you know, died. Right, right. But that's what's happening in people's cells.
When these detox pathways slowed down, you'd be dead. If they were, you know, if they just stopped but slowed down, the toxins are now building up in the cell. And just like the engine first sign is just low power. Gosh, I just feel I can't make it through a day, I feel like. But you know, you feel like you're gonna just go kaput, and that can happen.
But as those toxins build up in the cell, a lot of things happen. Your detox pathways, they get worse and worse. Your DNA that's in that cell as well starts to get triggered. Toxins, as we said, turn on the bad genes. So now you get the diagnosis. It's a thyroid condition, it's osteo, whatever it is, right?
Right. They start turning it on, but also more as the energy drops. So now energy's dropping. Inflammation is rising.
Right.
And all your methylation pathways are exhausted. Your glutathione pathways, you know, and your hormones don't work even if you're taking 'em just like us.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. That's Detox is about fixing what's broken there.
Dave: And it's in the cell, not the liver, not the kidneys. That's right. Okay. And not those, even the sweat glands.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. No, exactly. And listen, I'm all for saunas. I'm all, I have one. You know, I love 'em just as you do. I'm all for keeping the liver open. Part of my process is you have to keep the liver and the kidney and the gut open.
But the big part of what I've been teaching for 20 years is fixing this. I'm pointing at the cell.
Dave: How do you go about
Dr Pompa: fixing the cell? Okay, I, I have my five Rs. Which is a roadmap to do this, right? Uh, I don't wanna bore people with the deep science, I don't think bore them where your audience is pretty privy here.
So, but the five R came about, um, let me tell that story. First out of a, a very frustrating lecture that I gave in California. I was so. Jazzed talking about this, what I just said. Mm-hmm. Basically, right. I, I probably didn't have as good analogies then, but I was super excited, but I could tell they weren't my audience.
You've spoken enough, you know, when you have 'em, when you don't. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't have 'em, so beating myself up on the flight home, literally, um, I was like, gosh, you know, I, I just need to figure out a way to communi, and then I prayed. I literally mm-hmm. Just, I said a prayer and I'm telling you. It started coming and I reached down and grabbed my notebook and the five Rs was born.
Okay, so what are they, R number one, it's the obvious. You have to remove the source. We just talked about this. Mm-hmm. What's upstream? What's up the river? Right. Or the sources in your life you think you're gonna need to get Well, if you're still living in a moldy home mm-hmm. You, you're, you could do all your biohacks and all my techniques.
Yeah. It's not gonna work. You're gonna chase it. Some things might
Dave: feel a little better, so get rid of the mold. Get rid of the peanut butter. Get rid of the moldy coffee. All the normal sources. Yeah,
Dr Pompa: absolutely. You have to clean it up. R number one. R number two is you have to regenerate the cell membranes now.
Okay. I do whole weekend seminars just on membranes.
Dave: Mm.
Dr Pompa: It's not my saying, but there is one life and death begins on the membranes.
Dave: Is that Gilbert Ling?
Dr Pompa: Ah, is that Gilbert Ling? I
Dave: would guess.
Dr Pompa: Oh, I, I,
Dave: I didn't, I didn't. Seems like something from cells, des cells gels. Yeah.
Dr Pompa: I'm gonna, I, I gotta figure that out now.
Okay. 'cause I, I wanted to give credit to someone. I always just make sure that people don't think it's me. Got it. Here we're back to that credit do thing. It's not me. Yeah. We, we do our best. Right. Because I tell, I heard someone say one time, oh, well, I'm like, I didn't say that. Now, fix cell. Go. Well, that's me.
That life and death begins on the memories, not me, but it does. It's that important. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, I've already made the point that your hormone receptors. On those membranes. Okay. Right. So hormone health begins on the membranes. Your ability to lose weight or not lose weight could be on the membranes.
And by the way, it's not just the membrane of the outer cell that is a lipid bilayer. Two layers of really important fat, that is the gatekeeper of what comes in and what comes out. I already said how important that is. Right? Right. But. Those inner membranes, the mitochondrial membrane, that's where power happens.
That's it. That's where power happens, right? Mm. It's like without that, and you know how many people have so many toxins in their cell that their mitochondrial membrane, again, they're taking all these things, wonder why it's not working. I wonder why their energy horrible. It sucks. It's the mitochondrial membrane.
That is a problem.
Dave: So you're
Dr Pompa: doing phosphate, choline, phosphate, seine, and phosphocholine is very important. Yeah, because it makes up such an important part of the membrane. Here's, this is such a great topic. So we're on R two, but we're gonna stay here for a bit because this is such an important topic right now in our space.
Omega six is such a bad guy, and I understand why though. That's right. Because people are justing so much. All, all the vegetable oil, all the thing, all the grain fed meats, right? So we have a dominance of that. I get it. But here's the problem. Omega six is the king of the cell membrane. It's the most important.
But by the way, because of that, it's why it's so. Deadly when it's rancid Omega six. Mm-hmm. Right. So adulterated Omega six mm-hmm. Is so bad because omega six is so important. So my point is, is that when I teach fixing the membrane, my attention is that omega, uh, at the omega six, getting rid of the bad and bringing in the good.
And that's what people don't understand. It's not the bad guy. Right?
Dave: So, so, so you're giving people extra, but, but. Undamaged Omega six undamaged to flush out the fat. That's right. And their membranes. That's so when
Dr Pompa: people were eating all these rancid, seedle mill mm-hmm. They're, those omega sixes are going right to the membrane and they don't stay for hours.
They don't stay for days. They're in there for months.
Dave: 792 days or something. That's the last estimate, right? It's like, yeah, I found the study for that. Yeah. In my books.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. So that's driving cellular inflammation, uhhuh, which disrupts your hormones, which disrupts your nutrition and all your expensive supplements from getting its hormones in the cell.
So yeah, stay away from seed oils, you know? And again, when you go to a seed, oil can be healthy, by the way. And in low doses. Yeah. And, and. Unadulterated. Mm-hmm. You know, and that's, that's the issue is people are everything in Whole Foods or a health food store, if it's in a package, it's very fragile. It Yes.
It's an adulterated oil. So telling people randomly stay away from seed oils. Yeah, yeah. I You get that, but it's a little more complicated. If
Dave: they're eating egg yolks, eating some avocados, are they not getting undamaged Omega sixes or not? Ah, see,
Dr Pompa: I, here's the way I answer this. I love vegetable oil and vegetables.
Dave: There you go.
Dr Pompa: I actually, this is controversial too. I love fish oil. And fish. Fish oil's more fragile than seed oils. Mm, it's double bonds. Think about this.
Yeah.
Fish oil has five. It's right. Fish oil has five to six double bonds. DHA what? It has six. I think the other one has five. Uh, EEPA has five. Um, three, two or three is seed oils.
Now, what are the most, what fats take heat, the best saturated fat? How many double bonds do they have? Zero.
Dave: That's kind of weird. They don't have any, they're fully
Dr Pompa: saturated with oxygen, so they're very hard to damage. That's right. Most of what I eat. Yeah. So again, I, you know, the more double bonds, the more fragile, so we have to be careful of our fats, obviously.
And, and like I said, the omega six is very important of fosto choline, 70% omega six. If I'm
Dave: in replacing my cell membranes detox mode, which is gonna take at least two years to replace half your cell membranes, what percentage of my fat should be undamaged? Omega six.
Dr Pompa: Well, yeah, that's, that's, listen, I, anywhere from a four one to one to a, some say six to one, I.
Ratios is what in your food, see in nature, right? Yeah. So think of it as in, you know, in those RA ratios, and again, if you're eating, to your point, egg yolks, right? Grass fed meat. Mm-hmm. You're gonna find those ratios are in nature. Why? Because it knows best.
Dave: The thing is though, in grass fed beef, it's 1.6% linoleic acid.
There's a lot of linolenic acid. Mm-hmm. Which is different, but the linoleic, it's pretty low and I don't have a problem with that. Yeah. But I do find that after 15 years of not eating processed seed oils at all, and I don't eat a lot of nuts 'cause of oxalate and all that, but I still get, you know, some that my ratio dropped to about 2.8 to one of omega six.
Omega-3, which is too low for longevity. We want it to be for, so then I eat a few walnuts or some, yeah. Other things like that, that are not roasted. Mm-hmm. And how far can that omega six to Omega-3 ratio go before it becomes like you need more Omega six?
Dr Pompa: Yeah. It, it's, to your point actually, which would be shocking to people, is that when you get that low, you actually start driving inflammatory processes.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Dave: When I, when I saw the labs, I'm like, dammit. Yeah. So
Dr Pompa: I
Dave: went out and,
Dr Pompa: you
Dave: know
Dr Pompa: mm-hmm. I got some walnut oil. A again, you, you mentioned, you. Glossed over. I I there's, you could read re uh, studies on the one-to-one ratio is good for the heart. The two to one ratio is good for your kidneys. The four to one ratio is a ratio that we target for the cell membrane.
That's not my research. That's some very smart people. Um, this guy, oh, he was a Japanese scientist. One of the first studies that I've read, Yoshi, I think his name is, but it was that four to one ratio. Is magic around the membrane. So that means it's good for this brain too. Yes. Right. And so I, I think targeting that is wise.
If you're trying to get your health back, olive oil, one bottle bond, right?
Dave: So. I've had to meaning more stable. It's, it's definitely more stable,
Dr Pompa: but it still can oxidize because Sure, yeah. People put it on their stove. Yeah. But the point, 'cause there's a double bond, right? Mm-hmm. So we're, you know, butter, uh, ghee, tallow, no double bond.
You could put it on your stove, you could fry in it, for goodness sakes. Yep. There is a double bond with olive oil. So you do have to be careful, you know, obviously it can happen. I,
Dave: you might know the answer to this. You're one of the few guys I could ask. I know that 30 to 50 grams of olive oil, it fits real.
Olive oil has health benefits and there's really clear stuff. I've always said. Yeah, of course. A couple tablespoons. Mm-hmm. A day. That's fine. But I. Excessive oleic acid causes a massive increase in oxidation of omega six of linoleic acid by driving something called D five D. So how much olive oil is too much and should I eat only olive oil the way some people are these days?
I
Dr Pompa: don't think
Dave: you should
Dr Pompa: only eat olive oil.
Dave: Yeah, I don't think it's good. Longevity practice.
Dr Pompa: Yeah, I don't either. Um, yeah, I, you know, I, I think it. The question is more complicated than we're our brains. You know, want to think about it because there's other protectors in that. Meaning if in a laboratory you're watching that oxidation in reality, there's other protective factors that can, so it literally, I, I, maybe there's one I don't think there is, but you'd have to study.
Um. You know, olive oil in its effect, specifically in that area, you know, with taking all other factors out. So that's a little hard.
Dave: It is hard, and I, I kind of roll my eyes at this point. Like, oh, it has all these protective antioxidants. I take hydroxy rool in a capsule that's like a thousand liters of olive oil in every pill.
So if you really want the antioxidants from olives, you can get olive polyphenols and they work much better than overdrive oleic acid. 'cause I would rather have clean, undamaged Omega six and small amounts and mostly saturated because I want my membranes to work. Mm-hmm. But I might be missing something like, what am I missing?
You're, you're an expert at this.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. No, I mean, I, I, again, I, I think that's where. Here's where your, you and i's personality can get us, right? Because we, we, we love to do it, and we do it the best and, and we can overdo it. So I think that when you're, you know, you're eating a balanced diet and not chugging a bunch of olive oil, that's when you get into trouble, right?
Yeah. I mean, listen, every people did it with coconut oil, not just people did it with, I mean, everything. Can work. My gosh, we can drink too much water. And people, I see people doing that, right. I mean, so everything can backfire on us. Right? So, you know, if you're eating olive oil and you're using it in your food, it's different if you start chugging.
Yeah. A lot of olive oil. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, again, too many antioxidants is bad. It's bad for your immune system. Yes. Right. It's like, and then we also know. That oxidants can actually be good Ozone, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, you know how most things work. You're the biohacking expert. Yep. Most biohacks work on a premise called hormesis, meaning it literally drives a reaction.
Our body and our bodies drive an opposite reaction to adapt to the stress that it created and that adaptation, if you adapt, becomes a good thing. Right? When you go into a cold plunge, your body literally thinks it's going to die. It raises norepinephrine, epinephrine, and growth hormone. But if you stay in too long.
Inflammation. Mm-hmm. You don't sleep as well. You know, because that's the premise of hormesis. If you adapt, it's amazing to, if you don't, it's bad. Yeah. Exercise, you can exercise too much. Right. If you exercise too much, you don't adapt. It becomes a good thing, becomes negative.
Dave: Okay. Totally agree with you.
So we're gonna replace the fat in our membranes with un poisoned fat because mold toxins and endocrine disruptors dissolve into your cell membranes. So I like this picture of if you have like a, a glass of water with a drop of food coloring in it, you have to add a lot of water before you wash all that out and faster the same way.
So it's gonna take you four years to get 75% of that die out if you just pour new fats into the system. And I've noticed. Over the years, people who start putting butter and MCT into their coffee every day the way I did when I was at Bulletproof. Now, danger, coffee's my new one. Mm-hmm. 'cause who knows what you might do after, like for the first few years, you cannot get enough.
It's, it's like manna from heaven, like, oh, I needed this. And almost two a day. Two years, which is when half the summer membranes have been replaced with more stable oils. You've flushed out the system. It's like, you know, I like this. And, uh. I do it sometimes, but the craving is gone. It is like the body finally got what it needed.
Dr Pompa: I've got this.
Dave: Okay.
Dr Pompa: Again, this is learning, working with so many sick children, autistic children, this is opposite of what most people teach. But when I'm teaching membrane, I say the most important thing is you have to bring in the, the glue, the stabilizers to the membrane first. Mm-hmm. And those are your saturated fats and cholesterol.
Yes. Thank you. So saturated and fat and cholesterol are the most. That's the base layer. Yeah. So people go opposite. So before we even think about the omega six, if you don't stabilize that membrane mm-hmm. With those saturates in the cholesterols, the, the matter of fact the two fats that are demonized the most is, is exactly what we need to start with to lay that foundation.
So your foundation when you were like, you need your body knew. Mm-hmm. Your. Intuition, your innate intelligence knew it needed the foundation, and then you don't need as much of the foundation. Then you start building on it with the good Omega six and Omega-3 too. I, you know, we're just talking about that.
But you know, those are Omega-3 and omega six are your, you know, those are your parent oils, okay? They're essential, meaning you have to get them in your diet, right? So, you know, you can make. D-H-A-E-P-A, but you have to get those oils in and they have to have the saturated fastened cholesterol, but that is the foundation.
Okay. Yeah. So you laid the foundation, all right, and then you acquired less later in innate intelligence knew it.
Dave: Okay, so there's our cell membranes. So we fixed those by increasing our intake of saturated and undamaged. Moderate amounts of polyunsaturated fats and some monounsaturated fats, including, uh, phosphocholine.
Mm-hmm. And just choline itself things like from egg yolks mm-hmm. And allowing the liver to make more cholesterol.
Dr Pompa: And, and by the way, one of the shakes that I made, I called up my membrane shake.
Mm-hmm.
It was filled with egg yolks.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, because again, it, it brought in right. That perfect egg yolks it, it's like, it's almost made for the membrane.
Yeah, it's brilliant. I mean, it's like, it's God's food for our cell membrane. So yes, I was literally putting like, you know, eight egg yolks in it every day. And you know, honestly, my, my hair went amazing. My skin got amazing. But that's a reflection of your cell health. Man.
Dave: It's so funny you reminding me. I haven't thought of this in a while.
Uh, my first book was a book on fertility, how to have Healthier Kids, and I invented this recipe. I that, yeah, my, um, mother of mine children, uh, was infertile when we met. Mm. And. It took five years to design the nutrition, paint the purpose, um, to restore fertility so we could have our kids. I mean, 'cause they're, you know, teenagers now and daughter's about to graduate from high school.
Yeah. I'm like, wow. And so we couldn't have kids and one of the most healing things that I made was this recipe. And I published it as get some ice cream and it's called Get Some because it had so many egg yolks and it had butter and MCT oil. Yeah. Phosphocholine. Um, yeah. Just from, dude, that's a membrane shake right there.
Yeah. But we put it in ice cream maker. Yeah. And when you eat, that's a membrane ice cream. An hour later you get this thing like, we should go to the bedroom. And I think it's 'cause the body says There's so much abundance, I should get pregnant now. Like this is a time that nutrients in the world are present.
Yeah. And thousands of people have emailed and posted saying, I thought you were crazy, but it totally works. Yeah. Right. So
Dr Pompa: yeah, it's the egg yolks, right? It is, man. I mean, you can't discount What's the benefits in the whites? Not the fats, but the proteins. Yeah. My biochemistry teacher, Dr. Shahi in, uh, in school, he said the perfect food is the egg.
It's the egg, you know? You know, and I, back then I'm like, why? Now? I, I get it. It's the egg. He's right. It's amazing.
Dave: I, I think though, you're supposed to cook the whites a little bit because if you take whites by themselves, you get biotin efficiency. Yeah. I,
Dr Pompa: I use in the shakes, I, I would just use the yolk.
Not that because you could, yeah, it's raise the bite.
Dave: What works even better is you take the egg whites and you feed 'em to your pigs, and then you eat the bacon.
Dr Pompa: There you go. That's,
Dave: that's what I did when we, when I was on the farm. Okay. So we've got our membranes handled and now our cells, our sensitivity to hormones are, are there and mm-hmm.
We're able to detox the cells.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. Bring good things in, good things out membranes. Yeah.
Dave: What, what's next on the RS?
Dr Pompa: R three is restoring cell energy. Okay. You know, this is key. My favorite. Yeah, it is your favorite because. Oftentimes when you're dealing with people who can't digest food, they're sensitive to the world.
This is where the biohacks can be beneficial. This is where red light can come in. This is where, because you're going around these things that are so broken, um, that we're able to biohack into the mitochondria and it's helpful. So if you can't digest
Dave: your food, you should definitely have
Dr Pompa: some alkaline water, right?
Well, I don't, I, you know, I'm not a believer in continually drinking alkaline water. I think it's a big mistake, actually, myself. Oh, you were being facetious. Okay. I was trying to trigger you. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I'm like, oh, I, I'm not a believer. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah.
Dave: If you drink alkaline water, you turn off your stomach acid, you can't
Dr Pompa: absorb so slightly.
Right. Stop it. You wonder. I pathogens will, you know. Feast on you. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm not a believer in alkaline water. Yeah. So a little story on that front. A friend runs, I'm glad we resonate on that. I was, I thought maybe you were. I, but I'm gonna tell you what I feel.
Dave: It's sometime around 1996 when I was trying to get better.
I bought this. $2,000 alkaline water machine from Japan when you couldn't get him in the us like the can and all that. And brother, the king makes perfectly good structured water. Just don't turn on the alkaline. So yeah. But I have this thing and I drank my alkaline water and I would find food undigested in my poop.
And it took like six months to realize it's this stupid alkaline water. Water. Yeah. Right. And what a waste of money. Yeah. And the CEO of one of the major, uh, bottled water companies, um, is a friend and. I was talking about this. 'cause one of his products is alkaline and he's just shake his head. He goes, it's such bullshit, but everyone wants to buy it.
So if you're listening to the show, run away from alkaline water. Yeah. It's bad for
Dr Pompa: you.
Dave: Yes.
Dr Pompa: Okay. Your gut's meant to be out, uh, acid for a reason, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, it makes no sense. Yeah, it it's crazy too because, you know, when you look at real water. It's like what water is running at these alkaline numbers?
It kills fish. Exactly. Stupid. It's like, this makes no sense, people, okay,
Dave: so we don't do that. I don't do that. So we increase our energy. This is by eating enough calories.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. I mean, look, there, there's so many things here that apply, but what I want people to understand is, is that the, the energy of the cell is everything.
Mm-hmm. It's, there's something called the Gibbs free energy equation. As cellular energy drops, inflammation rises, right? Yeah. And as cellular energy drops in the Gibbs for energy equation, glutathione drops and then inflammation increases. So the Gibbs for energy, it shows you the relationship of energy to glutathione.
Oh, and there's another equation is glutathione drops. Methylation drops. Mm-hmm. So it's a stress on methylation, right? It's like, look, gene and snip testing's fun. But really, I, it's. You know, I didn't have a snip in my methylation. I couldn't methylate at all. Stress plays into methylation. This is R five though, so we're gonna get to R five 'cause it's reestablishing methylation pathways, which are hugely important.
It's, it's, but it's not as simple as just, oh, I have the gene. You know, methylation is important for so many different functions that the body will prioritize. Mm-hmm. We will get to that. Okay. But let's figure out, let's, you know, the, the energy of the cell, if it's not restored. You know, then the problem is, is it's very difficult to restore any of the detox pathways.
It's very difficult to restore methylation. It's very difficult to drive down the inflammation, which is R number four is cellular inflammation,
Dave: so on, on the energy front in order to fix that. Fixing membranes helps. And then you take things like pq Q coq 10, what else? So I
Dr Pompa: built a lot of products that have all those things in it, right?
Because back when I was doing it, I didn't have one product. I was putting things together, right? I was experimenting with pqq, I was experimenting with, you know, all these things that worked in, in fact, the mitochondria, right? And listen, when I was getting well, I didn't have a Dave Asprey telling me about the benefits of red light.
I didn't have it. Mm. Right. And again, I got well without it, but my gosh, I think of myself, you know how much. Easier. Could it have been? Because yeah, that was, that's a big problem, is getting people cell energy enough up that where they can actually start to heal.
Dave: It's shocking what happens, even just 10 minutes that people with chronic pain, which is ultimately there's a mitochondrial issue there.
You put red light on 'em and magically their pain goes down a lot, and then you give 'em some charcoal, which is a toxin binder, and the next day they're like, oh, it doesn't hurt.
Dr Pompa: Like who would've thought? Yeah.
Dave: Okay, so we get our energy up with red light with some supplements and all that. And there's many ways, I mean, we've both read books about that one, so what's after that?
Yeah. Is methylation.
Dr Pompa: Yeah, no, the R four is just, we kinda hit on this, but you have to reduce the inflammation of the cell. Okay. This is where a lot of my diet strategies play, and of course I've developed a lot of products around cellular inflammation. Right, right. And, and I talked about when your membranes are inflamed, your hormones, don't worry.
You can't get the, so we kind of already talked about the damaging effects of inflammation. You know, my diet. Strategies are very different, uh, than most people. I, you know, everyone looks for the perfect diet. I said, nah, the perfect diet is oftentimes the change of diet. I believe people stay low carb too long.
Yes. But I love low carb. Agreed. I believe people stay in keto too long. Yes. Oh, I love keto. Amen. I believe people stay in carnivore too long. Yes. Because it sobey and I, but I love carnivore, right? Uhhuh. And I believe people can be plant-based too long. You, it's like, you mean like more than three days?
Yeah. So yeah, you and I, you know, we tend towards the other side, but the point is, if you look at every. Healthy culture that ever existed on the planet. They were forced to change their diet, whether it be animals, foods, this, that, I mean, so many reasons just season change, but fact is, is that today we don't have to do that.
Mm-hmm. But it's a mistake because diet change can actually act in that hormetic stress.
Your body's using its muscle. Mm-hmm. Because you need to increase your carbs. He ever does it to the extreme. Yeah. Now he's the extreme the other way. But anyway. Yeah. Now he's like drinking sugar or something. But anyway. Okay. So I said just listen. Add in two feast days a week where you eat. Mm-hmm. Good, healthy carbs.
Right. It transformed. Right? So I, I tell people, eat the pancakes, low toxin or whatever on Saturdays if you're fasting, like you have to do that. You have to do that. Okay. 'cause we we're like, here's the analogy, right? So the body will always, eventually think it's starving, right? Mm-hmm. Because it's going, okay, if this is fat, this is the only thing we're burning able to burn, I'm gonna hold onto it.
Mm-hmm. And the, the metabolism will, will continue to drop. Bodybuilders figured this out a long time ago, right? Yes. Original bio. They would carb load before competition and come and rip, so mm-hmm. I challenge people at a fe, a feast day where you increase your carbs and watch what happens. Two days later, your ketones are gonna go through the roof.
Mm-hmm. Which they always do because your body then leaves your muscle alone. It says. We have all this fuel now you're not starving and I'm gonna burn your fat now. Mm-hmm. So the analogy is, if you have a cabin in the middle of Alaska right, and you have a certain amount of wood that you know, gets you through the winter.
Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. This winter is really bad. Winter. It's a harsh winter, and you went through, you're going through your wood way faster. What are you going to do, Dave? If you're gonna burn more wood or burn less, you're gonna have to conserve. That's right. Because you wanna survive the winter. Yep. Just like your body wants to survive first.
Thing have to survive, right? So you're gonna burn less. That's lowering your metabolism. Meaning instead of being 70 in your house in the winter, you're gonna go to 60 and you're gonna say, but I'm good with it. 'cause I'm gonna live and I'm gonna make it through. So I'm burning half the amount of wood.
Think of that wood as your fat. But a friend comes over, I say, Dave, oh my gosh. I sh why don't you tell me I have so much. Let me bring you some and I bring you a bunch more wood. What are you gonna do? You gonna warm up the house? That's right. That's the feast man. That's what the feast does. Now Dave says, I have plenty of wood now, so I'm gonna burn more.
And you fire up the, you know, fire up the engine. And that's what your body does on feast days. So we have all these people that are low carb, too long, intermittent fasting, too much, and their body is literally starving and it goes into a survival mode. And they wonder why they don't have enough cellular energy and they wonder why they're gaining fat and losing muscle.
Dave: This problem. The Bulletproof Diet was the first modern intermittent fasting book as far as I'm aware. And like three books later. I wrote fast this way, my second book on fasting, because everybody started over fasting. Over fasting. Like it's, it's a scalpel and you don't need to use a scalpel for everything in your home.
You'll get holes in your couch. Like it doesn't work fast. Things are stress. Yeah. Okay. So if your body adapts, it's awesome. Mm-hmm. But here's the other thing too. So people jump into a water fast. I love water fasting because I fast a lot, but most people today metabolically, they can't even handle a water fast.
Dr Pompa: They're body goes after the muscle right away. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't bounce out of it because they're so broken in their mitochondria, right? Mm-hmm. And that's where you use fat for energy. But you know, so some people would better off starting with partial fasting and then you know, later, but the point is, is that people are just fasting because they hear people do it and sometimes they feel better just because.
You know, they're taking away foods that were inflaming them. They're not eating gar, they're not eating garbage. And oftentimes what works, people get locked into what diet works. They get locked into what fasting they get locked into. Okay. So yeah, these are good topics because people are confused on these subjects.
Dave: There's one toxin you didn't mention, and I've come over the past maybe five years to think that, that I wrote about it at the beginning of the Bulletproof Diet book, but I think I under, I. Uh, I under index on how important it's, and it's oxalate. Hmm. Well, I mean, oxalates, they're plant toxins. Lectins are plant toxins, right?
Dr Pompa: Mm-hmm. Now, very different types of toxins. We, we might disagree on this, right, and, but I. I believe plant toxins can be very bad, but they can also be good tally depending on the dose. Right. So depending on the dose. That's exactly right. Depending on the dose. So the fact is, is that when you have leaky gut, the dose lowers dramatically on what you can talk though.
Well, they can. It's in higher doses, right, because So again, that's why I said I. Showed people, okay, in keto too long is bad, but these plant-based diets that are loaded up with oxalates, that's the dose that can actually drive inflammation. That trashed me when I was a vegan, but then I. You know, I, I look at what would happen like on a feast day, um, back in the, the Bulletproof Diet.
Dave: I'm like, okay, I'll have some kind of dessert made with almond flour, and I'll have a bunch of sweet potatoes and I'll have some raspberries, right? Even though I cut out spinach and kale, I was still getting too much oxalate because. Uh, we can handle about 200 milligrams a day and I was probably getting a gram.
And it forms those razor sharp crystals. Yeah, they're, they're a little spiky. Yeah, they, they, they literally cut the membrane and I know that I was getting too much because when I was eating a lot of raspberries. I ended up going to the urologist 'cause I had to pee like 25 times a day. Yeah. And so many women are eating so many oxalates in their health foods.
Even on low carb diets, sugar diets. Well, worst. Yeah. They're juicing kale or you know, they're juicing it all up and then putting it down and there's no protectors. It just shreds the gut. Yeah. And they get uts you too, if some oxalates. With meats and different things. You have protectors there. Yeah. You know, so the dose, particularly with, with calcium, right.
Dr Pompa: And Yeah, exactly. And with other foods that protect you from it. Mm-hmm. Again, it's not, it, it's not what you think. It, it, I guess that there's, there's an upper limit and a lot of people are, are crossing over the upper limit, I would say, without knowing it. And 80% of people at autopsy have calcium oxalate crystals in their thyroid.
Dave: Like, it, it, it is, it is. I'm starting to believe foundational for a lot of the disease cancer. Yeah. You know, I wonder how much of it is because the amount of massive gut inflammation and we know, uh, when someone's gut's leaky and open that amount going into their bloodstream becomes even more normal. So again, their limit gets way lower and then they're still eating this limit.
There's leaky gut. You know, dysbiosis means the small amount of bacteria, not very much in humans can break it down. And then. Toxic mold drives oxalate, uh, development inside your metabolism Too much collagen above about 20 grams a day drives it too much. Glycine drives it. So we get some from our metabolic processes, a bunch from our diet, and we now have the studies that show it directly damages mitochondrial membranes and cell membranes.
So I'm like, you have chronic muscle pain, joints hurt and you have to pee all the time. You're getting chronic UTIs. I like to look at oxalate in the diet and lower it, but not eliminate it. Well, especially if someone already knows they have leaky gut and they're already challenged. Yeah. I mean, you know, when they take it away, they feel better.
Dr Pompa: Right? Right. They do. Right. I mean, it's like I said, lectins. I can make an argument for why lectins are really important for a microbiome, but if your guts wide open, you take lectins where you go, I feel better. My digestion is a little bit. Hmm. Right, because you know, there, there are things that we should be able to ingest in the right amounts, normal amounts, we'll say what, you know, whatever that is.
It may be somewhat genetic though. It seems like the nightshade thing really is a genetic. Yeah. But Dave, I wonder if people had nightshade problems in the 1920s. I would argue, I think they did. There was a threats. Okay. There was arthritis back then. I don't know. I, I don't know the answer to that, but I would argue probably not.
You answer your, well, I, we had arthritis was, was documented forever. Yeah. Uhhuh and the, the reason I think it's so genetic, my kids eat real similar diets and one of 'em has the genes. Um, and I found out if I eat nightshades, the arthritis that I was diagnosed with when I was 14 comes back in one day. Hmm.
Dave: Right. And. I, it just causes systemic inflammation, brain fog, all that stuff. And my God, it's pretty healthy. One of my kids has this. Yeah, you, you definitely have a pathway that was either damaged or, yeah, to your point, epigenetically triggered. Yeah. And you're not able to break it down. So one kid I. Few bites of potatoes, uh, neck hurts, all the same stuff that I dealt with for so long.
Other kid eats it all day long. Yeah. So either way, like that three-legged stool Yeah. That gene got triggered? I think so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Was it triggered from your mother maybe or was it triggered in you? Probably, yeah. And now it's in your, your son. Exactly. And I think both my parents have that. Mm-hmm. But it's, it's fascinating and we may not ever know for sure.
And the moral of the story here is if you eat something. And it consistently causes problems and you fix your gut. It may not be a food that's highly compatible for you, and that's okay, but it'd be nice if you could eat it. Right. Um, so, so it it's, it, it's cool to hear you say, not all lectins are bad.
'cause I don't believe that either. If they don't affect you, then you want to eat them and maybe you just want a little bite because it's triggering changing your gut bacteria. Right? Yeah. I mean, I. Uh, right now it's like you said, I, everyone's going after lectins as if they're bad. But again, the premise of hormesis.
Dr Pompa: Mm-hmm. You knows stress when can be good. Yeah. There are plant toes, there's stressors to your microbiome. But the fact is, is that that can be good. But arguably I too much stress. Too much oxalate. Too much lectins can, will be very bad for you. 'cause you won't adapt. Especially if you're already challenged in your gut, you're not going to adapt to a small amount of those plant toxins.
I can handle a lot more. Yes. Than when I was sick. When I was sick, I couldn't handle gluten. I can eat gluten now. Right? It's like, because I, my body's dealing with it. Do you American? I can overload. Do you eat American gluten? Well, I, I, I can eat it, but do I want eat it? No. I eat Italian gluten. Yeah. Do I want eat it?
But I can't. No, but you understand. Not Italian. Don't, don't do that. Do you know what's going on? The double zero? I, I eat it all the time. I, there's a shortage of Italian gluten. They're shipping American Glu to Italy. They, they're grinding it up. Salt. Yeah, of course. Just like the olive oil. But French gluten is safe.
Dave: I, I ate French. I, I make sourdough from French white flour and. One teaspoon of American flour trashes by, by the way, they did the same thing with olive oil. Yeah. They send the bat olive oil to the US. Mm-hmm. So you have to know your olive oil. Yeah. To your point, you have to even know your Italian flowers now.
Dr Pompa: Mm-hmm. But it is a different gluten, it's a different wheat, obviously. And uh, okay. Yeah. Alright. I have, but my point there is, okay, yeah, I can eat American gluten and I have no reaction even with a glyphosate. I, I'm Oga Organic. I don't even quite assume. Oh, okay. But my point is, is I used to react. Got it.
Dave: That's the point I was making. I haven't, I haven't, I don't feel confident in finding American gluten, so I don't really wanna test myself, um, that doesn't have glyphosate. But, uh, the fact that I can eat some sourdough, which is well fermented, has like, holy crap. I would've told you there's no chance I could ever touch gluten again.
But I, I've also healed at like we're talking about. Yeah, I was just gonna say, which, yeah, it doesn't seem to be making me fat, so. Oh, no, Uhuh. Okay. There's something about detox that you're one of the only people who will really talk about this. What's the role of emotional trauma with toxins and even spiritual awakening?
What role toxins play in those? When I was sick, you know, I am, I, it was very hard for me. Mm-hmm. To think positively. Oh yeah. Right. You know, I mean, so when people say, just think positive, uh, I guess you've never. Yeah, she's been sick because, you know, it's really hard to get your head around. Thanks for saying that.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so it gives you a lot of sympathy and empathy for people and, you know, also spiritually, you know, I mean, I, you get massively disconnected. I listen my, my wife. Mm-hmm. This is a true story. I mean, her crying out for an answer for our family, for me. Yeah. I had two young boys at the time, five kids now.
It was hard. Right. And, um. She literally on her knees probably many times. This particular time, God spoke to her heart that not only is he going to get me well. But I'm gonna take an answer to the world. A message to the world was her exact quote. Wow. And when she would tell me that, I didn't want to hear it, Dave.
Mm-hmm. I didn't because my exact words to her were, I can't even get myself. Well, yeah. I mean, that's my negativity. And honestly, there I wanted to die. I did. Mm-hmm. I wasn't planning suicide, although I thought about it because for me, living. Death was far less scary than living my life like I was. And yeah.
And that was my reality at that point. I think you just gave a gift to a lot of people with mold and, and these, these illnesses, everything feels impossible 'cause it's so big and you, mitochondria not making energy, so it is big because you just don't have it. Mm-hmm. My experiences at mitochondria are the antennas that make life forced, but they also allow you to connect spiritually.
Dave: They're, they're the interface to the spiritual reality. Yeah. And when they're broken, you can't connect to the spiritual source. It's hard to connect to other people and it, it sucks on a level that, yeah, people have been really sick, may not understand. I mean, I was trying. To drive my wife away. I think, you know, out of guilt, out of my own, I don't know.
Dr Pompa: Mm-hmm. But, and looking back, but she, she hung in there, man, you know, and you know, here I am today because what she said is right, or God through her was right. You know? Wow. Taking a message to the world, pain to purpose. Mm-hmm. To promise do people, that's the pro, that was the promise, by the way. So pain to purpose, to promise I, I closed that loop mm-hmm.
Of why I've added the pain to purpose, to the promise. Do people give you a hard time about bringing God into medicine? Yeah, I'm sure, but it's who I am. You know, I I I love that answer. Like, it's like I You don't like it go somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. I can't not be it because that's just that he, I, yeah, it's just, it's every, he's everything to me, and that's me.
And, and again, I, I'm so glad I live in a country that I can be me and you could be you and he can be he, and she could be he I her and yeah, it's like, but I'm me, so yeah. I always say, thank you for allowing me to be me. There you go. It's, it's been an interesting shift, uh, in Silicon Valley, uh, during my career there.
Dave: If you brought up. Any kind of spirituality, uh, or your Christianity, which is the, the most shunned type, you'd almost get excommunicated from the tech community. Right? 'cause you weren't logical. And where things are in Silicon Valley today is actually, there's a rise in Christianity. I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's, wow. It's actually happening in a, in a very interesting way. I think Peter Thiel. Uh, has maybe played a, a meaningful role in that. Um, who's a, a very interesting human being. Mm. He's the first guy to offer to fund Bulletproof. Back when I ran Bulletproof. Oh, wow. He's, he said, I said, you know, I'll put a half a million dollars in if you'll build a coffee shop, buy my office or my home.
And I said, Peter. There's no foot traffic by your office or your home. So that would be a bad investment. And I didn't take the money and, but it was, it was really cool and just watched him say, well this is what I believe, you know, he's also gay. Right. So he is like, I'm just gonna be me. Yeah. Right. And I respect the hell out of that.
And so seeing the shit where people are saying there is a role for spirituality. In medicine and in healing. And if you don't have purpose and connection, you might just hold onto that lead in mercury and mold. Toxin way harder. And is there evidence for that? Well, it there, there is, yeah. Because you know, the emotions, the spirit, the emotion, the body all work together, right.
Dr Pompa: And people, we all have trapped emotions. Mm-hmm. Same place in the cell, at the cell level that affects our DNAI. Listen, Bruce Lipton, we both read his book. Oh, okay. Right. But wasn't he the first to bring science to it? You met him? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's he's a great guy. Oh my gosh. But he was like the first to make it popular.
Yeah. The science around. Wait a minute. Okay. I, I told you everyone that the membrane, uh, on the cell membrane are these receptors to our hormones. Mm-hmm. That's pretty easy to understand. Right. You know, it's like, okay. Yeah, they have to doctor. That's it. But. What he showed was that membrane and those receptors, integral membrane proteins.
Mm-hmm. Your thoughts too, in a wavelength come in and they attach to that receptor. Yeah. And then get the, the message goes in the cell. Mm-hmm. And you know, that then will tell your cells, you know, to produce certain proteins. Yeah. And then those proteins are who we are and who we become. So your thoughts become who we are.
Mm-hmm. Right. For the, for better or for worse. Right. The there, that's science. So yeah. The fact is, is that when our thoughts are negative, you know, the, the that's trapped in those cells just like toxins. Mm-hmm. And we become that. Right. So Absolutely. You can't separate it it without the biology of belief, his big book, I don't think there would be biohacking.
Dave: It was really like, oh yeah, the environment really provably. Does change our biology for better or for worse. Exactly. And uh. A lot of people don't know this about Bruce Lipton. He's a hardcore cell biologist. He's a membrane guy. He was one of the first guys to like clone cells in a lab. Like he's, he's not a Yeah, yeah.
You know, hippie dippy guy, which some people would think, yeah, he's as scientific as he gets. Yeah. He just did what he saw in the lab. And wrote the book and be started. The whole movement there under epigenetics. What book was this in? This is a story, the Biology of Beliefs. No, no, this story I, oh, this is true.
Dr Pompa: Right. Okay, so here's the story. I don't, I don't think his book has the cell biologist. I interviewed him and he told me about it. That's why No, no. Okay. So a Ja, they took a Japanese man. Yeah. From World War ii. My dad was in World War ii. So a lot of traumas, right? God, yeah. So they, they took him and they showed him scenes of World War ii.
Over there in the room. They were under the microscope. They were watching his cells. Wow. And they would write down, when the cells would react in a, a violent or manner, visibly react, they would mark the time, 1 28. You know, two 20, whatever. And he sells out of the guy's body. Out of the guy's body. Yeah.
Okay. And they would document it and it was every time the scenes, they could see and it would correlate. So they did something else, they took them 50 miles away, they're quantumly, entangled, doesn't matter how far and it still happened. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. I mean, so if that doesn't get you to understand Yeah.
Dave: You know, that, that connection, that sounds like that might be one of the HeartMath books. Yeah. That was my question to you. I thought. Yeah, it, it, it's. I don't remember the Japanese guy. I, I hate saying the story without giving credit. When I read it, I didn't forget. Um, and it's what it means. And certainly my, my new book heavily meditated.
It's like, what is the process for removing trauma all the way down to the subcellular level? Mm-hmm. So that. Your entire being becomes non-reactive to something that was formerly a trauma. Mm-hmm. And that's been a lot of my last 20 years. Yeah. Personally. And there's a neuroscience way of measuring it, uh, and a kind of an eight step process.
Yeah. Yeah. What's your favorite way of removing emotional trauma? Oh boy. I mean, and my thing is, is my prayer time. That's my meditation time. Start every morning. And, you know, I mean, look, I, and that is gratitude. Um, you know, it's right at the core vi Vitamin G man. I mean, it, it is, you know, that's. That's everything, you know, it just, it anchors me.
Dr Pompa: To who I am, who God created me to be and what for. And I'm just grad. I have so much gratitude around it. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I do. It's, it's part of, um, my day. I, I'm so great today. Started it the same way as I do every day. Um, gratitude's been a part of the, the biohacking movement for a long time. And where I am today is, is you need to take the right supplements in the right order.
Dave: So I start with vitamin G, and then you gotta take vitamin F right away afterwards. And so vitamin G is gratitude. Vitamin F is forgiveness. So that's huge. Gratitude opens that state that allows you to do forgiveness, which is a process of being non-reactive to trauma. Mm-hmm. And it has nothing to do with telling when you forgive them or saying that it's what they, it's just about, I.
It no longer left a mark. It's like cleaning yourself up, which is a form of detoxing. And I have had That's true. Multiple people tell me with their patients, oh, they do EMDR, they do emotional release work, they do trauma work, and suddenly the metals come out in their pee, but they hold onto the metals as long as they hold onto the toxins.
Do you see that? Because if they're both stored in the cell mm-hmm. That means that they both affect your detox pathways. Mm-hmm. So therefore. The toxins then are affected. Correct. Yeah. You see, so you can't separate it. Mm-hmm. Right. And you know, I used to always say to people when I. Took very challenging cases on, I would, I would, I got very good at knowing when people had a lot of their toxin traumas, right?
Dr Pompa: Mm-hmm. Toxic traumas. And I wouldn't take them on because I knew that those are the ones I couldn't help. And, and those patients, and they can't be helped. They're patients who sue you too. Absolutely. And, and it's not that they can't be helped, I just wa I always would say I'm just not the expert then.
Yeah. And, and I'm still not the expert there. Mm-hmm. You know what I'm saying? So I, I just, I know my limitations for them out. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. I, you know, in a very good way, I'd say, you know what, go read this, da da da. You, you know, because I don't want to add one more layer of the toxic trauma they have.
Mm-hmm. But I also don't wanna take their money if I, I can't help them or think they can't help. But I mean, people that had a lot of stored up, you know, toxic trauma. Where people, that's not my expertise. It's just not. Well, Dan, I, I very much respect that take, uh, and I respect the way you just stand up for being yourself, and you've trained a lot of physicians.
Dave: Long time in this new way of thinking, is cell membrane centric, toxin centric? The frameworks. You're using, they're useful for doctors. They're also useful for people who just are sick and tired of being sick. Yeah. So thanks for just putting it out there. The books you write, the, the courses you teach. I appreciate you coming out as well.
Dr Pompa: Yeah. Well, I appreciate what you've done too because you put some great stuff on the map, man. So thank you as well. Honored to be here. If you liked today's episode, you know what to do. You should check out Dan Poppa's work. He's got so much cool stuff. And hey, check out Bruce Lipton too while we're at it.
Dave: He's OG.