Dr. Pompa Solo: Fasting Is Your Body’s Anti-Aging Switch, Do THIS To Turn It On

And of course, they had a lot of things that they thought she should do and that they wanted to do. And I said, Hun, you're gonna fast. She fasted for 11 days. We went back to that doctor and they did a different test on her. And they said, Whatever you did, it worked because our test came back better. She's been fine ever since. I'm asked the question often, does calorie restriction work?

And my answer is Yeah, look, fasting could be the answer for you if you struggled with weight loss, in particular, weight loss resistance, meaning the inability to lose weight, anxiety, hormone-related problems, even sleep problems. Fasting could be the answer. Today I'm going to show you why fasting could be more powerful than any supplement, any diet, exercise routine, or anything you're probably doing right now for your health.

Yeah, look, when you look at the science around fasting, because of something called autophagy, meaning the body's ability to get rid of bad cells, sometimes we call them senescent cells or zombie cells. These are cells that stay around longer than they should, live longer than they should, but they drive inflammation, premature aging, and really most chronic diseases. Fasting gets rid of those cells.

Therefore, it absolutely is what all of us should be doing if we are concerned about living long, healthy, you better add fasting into your daily routine. I'm asked the question often, does calorie restriction work? And my answer is, of course it works. You can always lose weight by restricting calories, but does it work long term? And the answer is no. And the reason why is because when you restrict calories, eventually the body will think it's starving and all it wants to do is survive.

So it will just lower the metabolism to hold on to its precious fat stores. So you could end up getting what I call skinny fat. Your body will literally tap into muscle and at all costs hold on to its fat. So look, caloric restriction, most of us can lose five, 10, even 15 pounds. But what happens later? And what are you actually losing? Are you losing fat? Maybe in the beginning, but ultimately it ends up to be muscle and the metabolism lowers and weight loss stops.

Look, if you incorporate fasting into your life, this is what I can guarantee is going to happen. Number one, you are going to age slower. Number two, you will absolutely stay leaner even as you age. Admittedly, as we age, it's harder to stay leaner, but it's because we're missing this one thing that I believe every human is designed to do. And that is fast. Listen, we've got the feasting down, uh, no doubt about it.

But fasting, I think it's just is one of those things because we don't have to go without food. We don't. And we're in a state of feast all the time. Uh, but look, I guarantee you this as well. Watch what happens to your hormone health. Yeah. Because what happens is the key to hormone health isn't necessarily just looking at blood hormone levels. The key to hormone health is actually how sensitive our cells are to hormones. And that's something that changes during fasting.

Oh, also, you have gut problems that you're struggling with. One of the benefits of fasting also is it creates more diversity in the microbiome. Oh, and it also resets our microbiome. So, yet another benefit. Here's yet another benefit. Um, because of this autophagy, our body's getting rid of bad cells and recreating new ones because every time it gets rid of a bad cell because it needs energy during a fast, it literally triggers a stem cell to replace that cell.

So you literally regenerate yourself. Again, you're aging slower. That I

guarantee. Yeah, fasting has impacted um obviously myself, but I think it's even more impactful when you see it impact someone you love in your family. My son, uh, true story. Foolishly, he jumped off a 60-foot cliff. Well, foolishly, he didn't uh look at where he was going to land first because he couldn't see the landing. He went off, and as he was dropping, he realized 10 feet off the water there was an outcliff. He hit square. He should have been dead.

Uh, no doubt, at least he should have been paralyzed. Uh, luckily there was a boat coming by and dragged him out of the water because when he hit the outcliff, he just flopped forward into the water and he would have drowned. Well, needless to say, um, he ends up in the emergency room, and of course, uh, I'm there as well. Well, the first thing they were talking about is surgery, and I said, My gosh, I I just need a couple days to think about this.

And they said, Well, you'll have that because the inflammation in the next two days, we have to wait for it to come down. Well, one of the first things that we did is we denied all food in the hospital. Why would we do that? Uh, because of the healing and anti-inflammatory benefits of fasting. They thought we were crazy, literally, uh, because we wouldn't eat. He didn't eat for five days.

Listen, what happens in a fast is yes, the body deinflames, but what you're happening is you're getting rid of bad cells through something called autophagy. It'll literally eat the bad cells that prevent healing, but more importantly, it stimulates your own stem cell production. So it drives this massive healing. So we de-inflamed, we drove healing, and well, long story short, we ended up with no surgery.

They thought we were crazy, but they wanted to do this big, huge anterior surgery, um, infuse six vertebra uh in his body, and who'd had rods and metal in his body for his life. Well, none of that happened. And my son literally was on his feet within weeks of uh let being let out of the hospital, which they said he wouldn't even be close to being on his feet for at least 15 weeks. But that was just one inch that and that was just one uh example of how powerful fasting is.

Oh, and by the way, the same son, he had something going on as his life, and I'll spare you the details. But put it this way, as a parent, you know this. Your kids go through some hard stuff. My wife woke up literally in the middle of the night one one evening and God said, fast. And you know, my wife, we fasted. Matter of fact, a social media page was started, and it was from pain to purpose to promise. Anyways, that was it.

So fasting for a purpose was actually born, and that was the name of the actual page, fasting for a purpose. But um, so we called a fast, and we literally had thousands of people fasting for our son. Look, if you need to move the hand of God, fasting can do that. By the way, every religious group on the planet, they disagree on everything, even prayer. There's one thing that all religious groups line on. You know what it is? Fasting. It's true.

You know, I believe that one of the reasons why is it puts us in a weakened state, and it literally puts us in that reliance completely on God state. But you know, the Bible talks about some things, prayer alone is not good enough. We have to fast and pray. And for my son that day, that was one of the situations. You know, another amazing story that again in our family, this was in the 90s when I was just fascinated by fasting.

And one of the reasons I was fascinated by fasting was because I truly believe that it harnesses the innate intelligence that God put in every one of us that drives healing. Meaning, my my philosophy has always been remove the interference, the body knows how to heal. And I to this day are driven by that, and everything that I teach is driven by that. But fasting harnesses that intelligence that God put in our bodies.

So the story goes, my wife um ends up with some cervical dysplasia, which they thought was a cancer. And of course, they had a lot of things that they thought she should do and that they wanted to do. And I said, Hun, you're gonna fast. And this is what I'm learning. And this is in the 90s, this is when I first started studying fasting. But of course, I didn't even know of this word autophagy, where the body gets rid of bad cells like cancer cells.

All I knew is I was reading so many testimonies about how fasting can work for conditions like she had. So she was like, Okay, I'm gonna fast. She fasted for 11 days. We went back to that doctor and they did a different uh test on her. And lo and behold, they said, Okay, well, whatever you did, it worked because her test came back better. But you know what? They wanted us to come back in. You know, she never went in and for any further testing after that. She's been fine ever since.

I don't even remember, my wife could tell you how many years ago that was, but it was many, many years ago. Um, and she's been fine ever since. Look, I I wouldn't say fasting is an answer for every cancer. I'm telling you this story. But what fasting does is it gets rid of the bad cells that end up to be cancer cells. Fasting, because of this autophagy, is how you can move the body, harness that innate intelligence that you know God put in us that almost anything, I believe,

fasting is an answer for. You know, some of the myths, the dogmas around fasting, um, I think there's many. I I think one of them that I combat often is well, fasting is starving. Well, no, starving is starving. Now, you could do a fast for a certain amount of days and end up hitting starvation, but depending on your body weight, that could take well more than 40 days. Here's a true story. So um, I was teaching a seminar, and one of the topics was fasting, of course.

I I teach on it all the time. Well, a gentleman who, one of my doctors that I train, I've been training doctors for 20 years, he came to my seminar. He was on 121 days of a pure water fast. 121 days. Now, he was morbidly obese when he started the fast. At this point, he had lost already over 100 pounds. He was on 14 different medications when he started the fast. It was, matter of fact, his nutrition, every parameter of health was so bad.

The doctors thought he was going to die if he fasted because he was that unhealthy. When the exact opposite happened, he came off every one of those medications with their permission. As they watched him transform, literally before their very eyes, they were able to take him off another medication, another medication, another medication. He was off every medication by the time he stood at my seminar and giving his testimony. However, this is what I said to him.

I said, I was part of the lecture I was giving was on an extended fast, how do you know when to break the fast? So I said, the body will give you signs. One of the signs is your tongue will turn normal pink again because when you're fasting, you'll go from a very pink tongue to a white tongue to a green to a black to a fuzzy tongue. And he went through all of that. And his tongue actually had already turned back to pink. Here's the other thing the body's so smart, it will return hunger.

And even you'll become even more thirsty or more hungry. And he was already experiencing that. So I had told him that day, you're probably gonna end up breaking the fast in a few days from now. And that's exactly what happened. He, I think it was less than a week, and he broke the fast because his body told him to break the fast. So, look, a lot of myths, a lot of dogma around fasting. You know, look, I couldn't fast 121 days, right?

I couldn't probably fast uh more than 40 days, and my body would enter a starvation mode. But what people don't realize is our bodies, even the smallest of us, the skinniest of us, are able to fast many days before entering starvation. Fasting is not starvation. I also hear oftentimes that fasting, oh my gosh, you need nutrition, you need vitamins every day. Okay, not true. The body will get what it needs.

For example, the gentleman who fasted 121 days that I uh referenced, well, the doctors were stunned because every nutrition marker that they looked at before the fast improved during this long extended fast. Well, how would that happen? Well, remember that term autophagy where the body gets rid of bad cells, it's doing that to get nutrition. So literally, the body will find the nutrition that it needs. It's that smart.

And it's taking out bad cells that are driving inflammation to get that very nutrition. The nutrition's in us. The body just utilizes it and the innate intelligence utilizes it. His nutrition markers actually improved. That's the miracle of fasting.

I'm asked the question a lot: does intermittent fasting work for women in particular, with especially with thyroid and adrenal issues? I think it's a great question. I think I'd phrase it even just fasting in general, but intermittent fasting is in vogue right now. A lot of people say you can't fast if you have those conditions, or I hear even women shouldn't fast. Okay, not true.

However, I will say this how a woman with a thyroid condition or an adrenal condition fasts is different and should be different than a woman or a man who does not have an adrenal or thyroid issue. And I would argue that every if fasting can be different for everybody. Look, I want to start here. Fasting is a stress, but that's how it works. Exercise is a stress. And if the body adapts, then it gets stronger and faster.

But if the body doesn't adapt to exercise, you actually get weaker and slower, et cetera. Right? Well, no different than fasting. Matter of fact, the premise is called hormesis, meaning if we stress a biological system, well, it gets stronger if we adapt. But if it doesn't adapt, we actually get weaker. Okay, so keep that in mind. It's a premise, right? It works whether you believe it or not. Okay, so exercise, we know that if you over-train, you actually get worse, right?

That's why people hire very good trainers who make sure we don't over-train. But you also, to get better, you do have to stress the body. So think of fasting that way. If you have a hormone condition, thyroid adrenal condition, it simply means that you have to back up on the stress of fasting. So, therefore, intermittent fasting can be good for you. You just have to find a fasting window that works for you. So, in other words, maybe your friend is doing 18 hours uh of fasting a day.

That most likely would not work for the woman with a thyroid adrenal condition. But maybe a 12-hour fasting window does work, right? So you have to adjust the fast based on how your body adapts to the stress. So here's how you would know. Because, well, how do I know if that fasting window is working for me? What are your energy levels like, right? Are you losing muscle or fat, right? Meaning, are you getting skinny fat?

Your body will feed from muscle if you're not adapting, meaning if your fasting window is too long. So you have to look at that. Now, I do teach something else. I think everybody that's fasting should have a uh glucose ketone meter. And the one that I tell people to get all the time is one from Keto Mojo. KetoMojo.com, you can find it online. But it measures glucose and ketones. Here's what I like people to do. In the morning, you can measure your glucose and ketones.

Okay, before you do anything, write them down. As you go through your fast throughout the day, now remember you fasted through the night and you're still in a fasted mode and you're measuring your glucose and ketones. And as you fast through the day, what you should see, provided you don't exercise and provided you don't get too stressed out, you should see glucose trend down and ketones trend up.

If that's not happening, then that fasting window, you may be fasting too much and have to shorten your fast. So the answer to the question is yes, you can absolutely fast with a thyroid or an adrenal issue, but you might have to adapt to a less stressful fasting period. Yeah, it's true. We're seeing a lot of elite athletes and even silicone valley execs leaning towards fasting, intermittent fasting, instead of Ozempic, uh GLP1 receptor uh types of drugs that I have a problem with.

So I'm glad to see the trend. But I think people are cluing in a bit to the fact that you don't just lose fat with Ozempic, you lose muscle as well. As a matter of fact, even ligaments, tendons, important body tissue. Yeah, there's something called osempic butt. You know what that is? I'm being serious. It's when you can tell when someone's taking osempic because they lose their butt. Why the butt? Because it's the one of the largest muscles.

And the body literally will not just burn fat, it's burning muscle. Fasting done correctly, the body spares muscle. You know one of the benefits of fasting? You're literally your cells become more hormone sensitive, which is what I call hormone optimization, and it raises growth hormone. You know why it does that? Because it wants to survive and it wants to hold on to its muscle. Exact opposite of what's happening when people are taking Ozempic. They're losing uh muscle.

What happens when you lose muscle? Well, I'll tell you what happens. Your metabolism slows down. So guess what? People are being stuck on Ozempic. Yeah, meaning when they come off, their metabolism now has lowered because of the muscle loss, the tissue loss, so much that they're gonna gain every bit of the weight back. And that's what's happening. So now they're stuck on a very expensive drug that is that is actually lowering their metabolism and I believe affecting their health.

Look, more studies are coming out, and I think this is another fad that we're going through. But the fact that people can lose weight so quickly is why this fat is taken off. But look, the smart people are leaning towards fasting, intermittent fasting, fasting in general done correctly, the opposite happens. We keep

muscle and we absolutely lose fat healthy. Three biggest mistakes that I see when people start fasting is number one, they fast like their friend or family member did, meaning what works for them isn't necessarily what's right for you. Remember, fasting is a stress. But when we adapt to a stress like exercise, we get stronger if we adapt. That's the premise of hormesis. But if we don't adapt to the stress, we get weaker, right? So, uh, or more unhealthy in this case.

So the fact is, is you can't fast like your friend fasted. You have to fast just like you started exercise. You would never start an exercise program and you know, do an exercise program like my fen, like my friend Ben Greenfield, right? Like he is absolutely insane and he does insane exercises, but he's built up to that, or you wouldn't exercise like any elite athlete would. You would never do that, right? It would be a negative towards you. No, you start small and work your way up.

Fasting's no different. Start small and work your way up. Meaning if you're intermittent fasting, you know, maybe you start with uh fasting in a 10, 12 hour window. Push breakfast out a couple hours. Start there. Don't just fast a whole day. Or if you're doing an extended fast, maybe you start with a partial fast. You know what that means? A partial fast means that it's you're going a thousand calories or under instead of just a pure water fast. Oh, and you have to keep protein under 20 grams.

That's a partial fast. I tell most people if you're going to do an extended fast, start there as opposed to jumping into a very stressful water fast that your metabolism may not be able to handle. All right, mistake number two, especially around intermittent fasting, is I see people fasting too much. What does that mean? They feel the benefits of fasting. They lose weight, they can see that they're actually losing fat, they feel more energy, their brain's working better. So guess what they do?

They keep fasting more. The problem is, is that if you're fasting, like intermittent fasting, one meal a day, every day for seven days a week, eventually your body will think it's starving. So you know what it does? It starts to hold on to its fat and it starts to break muscle down. So now when I go to these conferences, I see them. I'm meaning the people that are fasting too much. I never thought this day would come, but here it is.

You have to understand I've studied fasting since the 1990s, right? For years, I was the lonely wolf out there saying, listen, you have to fast. Humans are designed to fast. We need to fast if we want to be healthy. Okay, now I'm telling people, you need to feast. So the message is the feast is as important as the fast. Meaning, one or two days a week, if you throw a day in where you eat three or four meals a day, maybe it's higher carbs, higher protein. That reminds the body it's not starving.

So I call them feast days. So I have some different intermittent fasting programs that I do. You intermittent fast for five days. Pick a day where you either don't eat at all. That could be your Sunday fast day, or maybe you just eat one meal that day if you're intermittent fasting with two meals, right? So we'll call that a fast day. And then you pick a day where you feast. Maybe that's Saturday, maybe it's a random day during the week. And that's the day where you eat more healthy carbs.

That's the day where you definitely eat uh three or four meals a day instead of one. So five days, you do your intermittent fasting. Maybe it's an you know 18-hour fast, maybe it's 15 hours, whatever that is, five days. Pick a feast day and pick a famine day. You know, that's where you eat one meal or no meals. That's my five-one one. But you can also do a four-two-one.

So you could do four days where you're picking your fasting window, doing intermittent fasting, low carb, and then you pick two days to feast. And by the way, people with hormone challenges, thyroid conditions, adrenal conditions, you may need two or three days of feasting. And again, feasting could be high protein, high carbs, or more meals. All of that could be a feast. It's as important as the fast. And then you pick one day where you don't eat or eat one meal. That's my 4-2-1.

So the bought the bottom line is I call that feast famine cycling. So a big mistake, again, is just fasting too much. Last mistake that I commonly see with intermittent fasting in particular is people are picking a fasting window that is too long for them. Meaning they're just jumping in and doing 20 hours and eating one meal a day. And that fasting window may have worked for their friend, but for you, it may be too long of a window.

So I tell people, start with a small fasting window, maybe it's 10, 12 hours, and work up to see what your body is able to utilize. How would you know? Well, you know, by am I losing muscle or am I losing fat? That's an important gauge. What's your energy like? How do you sleep that night? Right. So don't push the fasting too much. It may be too much for you. Look, when we look at the science of fasting, it's strong.

I mean, uh, humans are meant to fast. I could show you so many studies on what fasting does for the gut, your microbiome, what fasting does for your brain, aging prematurely, all of that. But let's look at ancient cultures, right? They fasted because they had to, right? Our bodies are designed to be in fasted states. Matter of fact, I was in Africa uh many times, but the first time I visited a tribe, and this tribe, they never saw a guy that looked like me, let's put it that way.

I was blessed because they said, we're going to out to meet this tribe that just came down from the mountains. And the reason they did is because the drought was so long that they came down and they had to relocate. Okay, well, in ancient tribes that happens a lot, right? The the food moves, meaning uh perhaps the prey got thin because of a drought, or uh any type of uh change in the weather can move a tribe.

But the bottom line is they came down out of the mountains and I saw this tribe that was extraordinary. I had so many questions. One of the thick questions I had was, where are all the men? Okay, well, they got up at like four in the morning before it got hot and they went out looking for prey. And they wouldn't typically get back to like three or four in the afternoon. No one ate until they got back. Well, depending on what they got or didn't get, is depending on what they ate.

But what I saw was a tribe who was naturally fasting through the day and then feasting when they had kill. Right. So I I guess our the way to look at it is our ancestors were forced into doing what I call feast famine. And they were forced into times of fasting, they had to, and um, or times of famine, if you will, right, where they're eating so little. But the fact is, is today, unfortunately, even the poorest of us can go in 7-Eleven or a convenience store.

I'm not recommending that, and actually feast. And that's the problem, is we always have food. But I believe to reset our DNA, to reset our hormones, to reset our microbiome, fasting, and to get rid of bad cells. Fasting is something that all humans should be doing. But today, I believe we're forced to fast. I fast at least twice a year, extended fast, where I do five days, and there's a reason for five-day fasts.

I prefer it over three-day fasts that are probably more popular, because by day four, people enter into what we call max autophagy, where your body's just massively getting rid of bad cells and creating new ones via stem cells. So that doesn't happen until three or four days. So we want to carry it out at least one more day to get, I believe, a maximum benefit from a fast.

And again, a fast could be all water for five days, or it could be a partial fast where you're under a thousand calories a day and under 20 grams of protein. Both you will achieve autophagy, getting rid of bad and recreating new via stem cells. So humans were meant to fast. There's many different types of fasting. There's pure water fasting, which I absolutely love, but probably not a good place for most people to start.

Remember, fasting is a stress, and if we overstress and don't adapt, it becomes a negative. However, I believe that's a five-day extended water fast is something we can all evolve into and look forward to. There's partial fasting where we can do an extended fast for five days, where we're limiting our calories and our protein. And I think that is a really good place for people to start.

Then there's intermittent fasting, which has become very popular, where we're just fasting for overnight perhaps, which is, you know, you're sleeping for eight hours and then you push breakfast out, and maybe it's a 10, 12 hours uh fast, and then we eat in a window maybe of six, eight hours. Maybe it's two meals, maybe it's one meal, um, but that has become very popular. And I think intermittent fasting is a good place for everybody to start. So how do you do that?

Right? I I kind of said it, right? You can fast through the night because you're not eating during the night, and just push out your first meal a couple hours. All right, then how do you feel doing that after your body adjusts to that? Then you could push it out two more hours. Now all of a sudden your first meal is say noon, and your eating window is say, I'm going to eat between noon and 6 p.m. So that's a six-hour eating window.

Maybe eat two times, maybe eat three times in that eating window. So think about intermittent fasting as a fasting window in an eating window and choosing when that window is. I have to say that people that have more metabolic challenges, sometimes actually skipping dinner or pushing dinner earlier is a better way. So therefore, you push your dinner, maybe you eat at four instead of seven or eight at night, which is better for you anyway.

And then you're fasting through the evening and through the night, and then waking up and eating actually breakfast. So that does work better for some people than actually missing breakfast. But the point I want you to hear is you choose your fasting window, your fasting time and length, and you choose your eating window when you're eating. But you can also choose, again, how many times you're eating in the window. Most people just eat two meals in an eating window.

Um, but that fasting window, I think it does really make a difference for people who are more hormonally or metabolically challenged to actually miss dinner or push dinner earlier than it is breakfast. Here's the challenge there. And this is a challenge that I would have. Dinner is a very social time with your family. And skip dinner is very difficult for some people. So I agree that that may not be feasible. So therefore, we're back to skipping breakfast or pushing breakfast later.

Either way, you choose your fasting window, you choose your eating window. But here's the thing always keep that food healthy in the eating window. I'm seeing a lot of people who are intermittent fasting and then they're eating junk in their eating window. Not a good idea. And the other key point here is you know, just because this fasting or eating window is working for your friend doesn't mean it's working for you. Listen to your body, it's very important.

You're created very differently than the next person. Fasting is a stress. We have to respect it and make sure our body's adapting to the stress. Yeah, look, don't overthink this. Remember, fasting is as natural as eating. Your body knows exactly what to do when you're not eating. It does, right? So I think what we have to really put our minds to is just picking what meal, if we're going to intermittent fast, picking what meal we're pushing either earlier or later, right?

Whether it be breakfast or dinner, but your body knows what to do in a fasted state. But I think the most important thing, you don't overthink it and you listen to your body. Is your energy better or worse? If it's worse, then maybe you need to actually push the fasting window back, meaning squeeze the fasting window a bit and uh shorten the amount of time you're fasting. Listen to the body. I see people just keep pushing, pushing. It's like you don't push through hard exercise.

If you're not adapting and you're getting more tired after you started with a certain exercise regimen, yeah, you're probably doing too much. The same applies for fasting. It's as simple as just limiting your eating window and in your day. It is. It is that absolute simple.

And if you're going to do an extended fast, it's as simple as starting with something as simple as a partial fast where you're eating foods that you do good with, healthy foods, and getting your calories under a thousand, your protein under 20 grams daily. It's that simple. It's not hard. Watch what happens. Now, I will say this on a longer extended fast, you're probably going to lack energy for the first three days before you break through into this max autophagy that I talk about.

So as long as you expect that, then no problem at all. It's as simple as doing what our bodies naturally do: feed from the bad cells. Listen, the bottom line, you want to transform your health this year. I believe fasting is the number one thing that you can add. Don't overcomplicate it, right? We can start with some intermittent fasting daily, choose a fasting window, simple.

We can plan ahead and plan an extended fast where we're really getting rid of bad cells and recreating new ones via stem cells. Listen, the body was designed to fast. Your innate intelligence, that's that intelligence that God put in all of us that runs and heals our body daily without thinking about it. Fasting harnesses that, right? So if you want to harness what God gave us to heal, yep, plan a fast. Start fasting. Keep it simple. Start with some intermittent fasting, plan an extended fast.

Watch what your body does. You want to hormonally optimize, fast. You have a gut problem and you want to reset your gut fast. If you have genes that were turned on, bad DNA, and you want to reset those genes, fasting, right? This is the key to it all. And fasting is probably the simplest thing we can do. Oh, by the way, did I mention it's free? Yeah. We spend a lot of money on expensive supplements and different uh programs and uh things that probably don't work.

I mean, we've all done it, right? Fasting works. As long as you don't overstress it and do too much. Fasting always works. Simplest thing we can do. I challenge you to add fasting this year to your health regime and it's free. Watch what happens to your health. Let your body do what it automatically does.

Heal. Yeah, look, fasting has all kinds of benefits. These are the seven that I think stand out. And I I love whether I'm teaching doctors or anybody. If you understand these seven men, if this doesn't motivate you to add an extended fast, especially into your year to get healthy, this should do it. Autophagy, this is where your body actually gets rid of bad cells and bad DNA. That's what ages us prematurely, drives most health problems that we don't want.

Yeah, in a fasted state, your body gets rid of the bad and recreates the new. And that's number two. Literally, when you get rid of a bad cell, your body will stimulate a stem cell to replace it. Oh, how does that help me? Okay, so many people are in hyperimmunity or have autoimmunity, and your body will literally get rid of a bad immune cell, a hyperimmune cell that's driving autoimmunity and recreate a naive new cell that's chill. It's not attacking you. Okay, so massive benefit there.

Turns on your longevity genes and turns off bad genes. Listen, all of us, due to any stressor in life, get genes that are turned on. It's called epigenetics. Your DNA is not your destiny. However, that said, genes do get triggered. Fasting is the best way to turn the bad ones off and turn the good ones back on. Energy diversion, I love this. When you eat food, it takes massive amounts of energy to digest that food and assimilate that food. Well, guess what happens when you're not eating?

Your body doesn't just get rid of that energy. No, it takes that energy that it would utilize to digest and assimilate food, and it starts healing your body with that energy. It's remarkable because it's like when we come, we take a week off of work, and now all of a sudden the honeydew list that we're we have, the body's healing list, you start knocking those things off, and that's exactly what your body does.

Well, elevated ketones, a lot of people are in diets like keto diets, and we hear about the benefits of ketones, but there's something called therapeutic levels of ketones, meaning if the ketones are so high, it actually starts to heal your brain and your gut and other problems that you may have. But typically we don't hit those high levels of ketones just being in a diet. We actually need fasting to hit those super high levels. Resets the microbiome.

Many people are trying to do things to fix their gut with no success. Try fasting. Watch what it does on the reset to your gut. Hormone optimization, one of my favorites. A lot of people are looking at low blood levels of hormone, taking hormones, trying to fix that. Well, the key to hormone health is actually getting our cells to actually be more sensitive to the hormones. Well, fasting does just that. It makes us more sensitive to our hormones. I call

it hormone optimization. If those seven things don't motivate you to add a longer fast into your health plan this year, I don't know what will. Yeah, look, there's many types of fasts. These are the three that I think are the most important. Partial fasting, which is under a thousand calories a day, under 20 grams of protein, and under 50 grams of carbs typically. This is best for beginners and people who have hormone or metabolic challenges. Water fasting only, it's my favorite type of fast.

However, it is more stressful for the body and definitely not probably as good for the beginner. But I believe it provides the most autophagy, meaning that the body gets rid of a lot of bad cells. Intermittent fasting, daily, most popular right now, I would say. But in this show, you're going to learn how to do it properly because many people are not. Yeah, when we talk about autophagy, uh, this gentleman I give a lot of credit for.

No one even knew the word until this gentleman won a Nobel Prize. It was back in 2016. So if we just read what we have here, autophagy becomes especially intensive when an organism is under stress. For example, when it fasts. Remember, fasting is a stress. But in this case, a cell produces energy using its internal resources, that is, the cellular rubbish, including pathogenic bacteria.

Literally, your body in a state of autophagy, as he proved, gets rid of the bad, even bad bacteria, let alone bad cells. This other gentleman, if we look at this, this gentleman, Dr. Volter Longo, an Italian scientist, I love what he said. Fasting purges and rebuilds the immune cell population with naive T cells. What he's saying is, so many people have cells that are in hypermode, immune cells that are attacking our own body.

We call it autoimmune, whether it's autoimmune thyroid or um like like Hashimoto's or autoimmune gut conditions. But what he's saying is in a fasted state, the body gets rid of the hypercells and it creates a new naive T cell that's not attacking us. Yeah, it's why it works so well for autoimmune. Volter was one of the scientists who actually proved that. So if you wonder why you don't lose muscle during a properly done fast, this is one of the reasons why. So fasting increases growth hormone.

It does that to actually preserve muscle mass. And it does it by optimizing your hormones, hormone optimization. So you can see the first day of a fast, we see growth hormone going up. By day five of an extended fast, we see this massive growth hormone rise. It's doing that to hold on to its muscle because it's smart enough to know that it has to do this for survival's sake. I think this study proves my point. Fasting fixes the gut barrier.

You know how many people are trying many things to fix their gut. This study is just showing that when you fast, literally, it turns off autoimmunity, meaning many gut problems that are unfixable. Your own immune system is driving inflammation of the gut. And this is saying that, hey, it actually can turn off that gene during a fast and actually fix the gut.

I love this study because what we know about the gut, something called microbiome diversity literally can predict how healthy our immune systems are and even how good our brains work. Meaning, the more bacteria and diversity in that bacteria in our gut, the healthier we are. And we can actually easily do those tests to show that. But what it's saying is when we fast, we actually create more diversity. And by the way, creating diversity is not as simple as just taking pills of probiotics.

I wish it were that simple. It's not. But this study is showing it does it through this premise of hormesis, meaning fasting is a stress. And when we stress the microbiome, we actually create more diversity. And therefore, what does that mean for us? Better immunity and better brain health. One of the biggest mistakes I see is people

break their fast incorrectly. They do an extended fast and then they just go right into the big pasta dish or the big meal. Even if it's a healthy meal, too much is not good because during the fasted state, a lot of your enzymes that we need to break down food, like hydrochloric acid, lower. And your microbiome also lowers. And by the way, that's a good thing because you lower good and bad bacteria. And when we start eating slow and low, the good guys come back and the bad guys don't.

It's a way we can fix dysbiosis. But if you break a fast too abruptly, you literally ruin the results of your fast. So this is just a good way to break a fast with some good fermented foods, soft foods like avocados, and be careful with eating too sweet of anything, even healthy foods like fruit. But um, cooked vegetables are easy to digest than raw vegetables. I noticed that people come off a fast and they start eating raw vegetables. It's very difficult to break them down.

So steam your vegetables is better. Soups, broths, and shakes are absolutely really good to break fast with them because it's easy to digest. And remember, your enzymes are already low because of the fast. Reduce your calories for at least two days based on body size. So if you fast for five days, which is what I like to do on an extended fast, take two days of reduced calories, meaning you don't just jump in to your normal way of eating. Give your body a time to reset itself.

And of course, knowing uh that your digestive enzymes are low, taking some digestive enzymes can help when you break a fast. Very important to break a fast correctly. Don't ruin what you just work so hard to get. I'm asked this question all the time. Is daily intermittent fasting just as effective as an extended fast? I will say that extended fast, you do get more autophagy. Of course you do. But the thing I love about intermittent fasting is it's easy, right? It's easy for most people.

As I explained, fasting is a stress. Intermittent fasting is less stressful. So maybe you don't get the as good of benefits as an extended fast, but because you can do it every day, I think it's absolutely as benefit. Beneficial. Almost everyone can do it. Studies show that you still get some autophagy, even 13 hours or more of a fast, forces up ketones even when you're not in ketosis. Remember, there's benefits to ketones. So daily intermittent fasting, you still get some ketone benefit.

It definitely drops inflammation markers according to the studies. Hormone optimization. Again, your cells increase the sensitivity to your hormones even on these shorter daily fasts. And studies show you still get a growth hormone rise, even up to 2,000%. So yes, it still is a benefit. I'm asked this question all the time. In my fasting window, in my daily intermittent fast or even an extended fast, does my coffee work for me? Can I drink coffee? I get that. Okay. The answer is I don't know.

But you can test. And that is the real answer because it's different for everybody. So if you're uh pushing your breakfast out and you want to know if you can have your coffee, this is what you do. So you take your morning glucose and write that number down. Let's say it's 90. Okay, then you have your coffee, wait 30 minutes to an hour, and retest your glucose. If it rises more than five on average, then coffee is not working in your fasting window.

You could do that three or four days to get an average of that. Some of you will find that your glucose actually may drop and therefore your coffee's good, or stay the same on average, therefore your coffee's good. But let's say it raises five or more and it's like, darn, my coffee's not good. Here's a tip. What you can do is add some fat to your coffee because that may make your coffee okay. Add a little bit of medium-chain triglycerides like coconut oil or MCT oil, that may do the trick too.

Or it may be the caffeine, and therefore you might have to do decaf or a try-tea or another drink. Because I know you wake up in the morning, you want something warm, so you want it to work, but you may have to try something else. But testing is best. See if it's right for you. Hey, if this resonates with you, share it with a friend. You know how many people that you know are stuck looking for an answer? Yeah, give them the answer that you just learned. I think that we owe it to them.

So share it with them. Oh, and by the way, hit smash the like button. No doubt about it. We need more people to get this message. Hey, I want to hear your experience. So drop a comment because we need to hear from others. Matter of fact, it encourages others. So please give us your comments. Okay, first of all, thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Dr. Pompa podcast. Remember, from pain to purpose, God has purpose in our pain.

And if you're watching this, subscribe to my YouTube channel. And if you're listening, rate and review the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you're listening. Hey, if you do those two things for me, it's gonna help me get this word out to more people who need it.