¶ Dr. David Jockers | Fixing the Gut: IBS, Fasting, and Functional Nutrition BreakthroughsWe dive deep into a powerful "pain to purpose" journey with renowned functional nutrition expert Dr. David Jockers. From his early childhood in a holistic household. Thanks to his inquisitive and determined mother, to his personal struggles with irritable bowel and self diagonsed gut issues, Dr. Jockers shares how his own health challenges ignited a lifelong passion for helping others heal from the inside out. Dr. Jockers and Dr. Pompa explore the pivotal lessons that pain taught them, including the shift from a "victim mentality" to empowered thinking, and the invaluable wisdom that led them beyond conventional health advice.Watch it here: Dr. Daniel Pompa Social MediaForbes RileyDr. Daniel Pompa Social Media
Dr.
David Jockers is a functional medicine expert who's helped thousands of people heal their gut, reverse inflammation, and reclaim their energy. Host of the top-ranked functional nutrition podcast and author of The Fasting Transformation.
Dr. Jockers breaks down how gut repair protocols can radically transform your health from the inside out.
Here with Dr. David Jockers. Man, we have a history. Wait till you hear this. I'm telling you, I I feel I'm as excited as I'm sure they are. You know, I have to ask the question. I know the story. Well, I know parts of it. I can't wait to dig a little bit deeper, but I want them to hear your pain to purpose story.
Yeah.
You know, what are some of the things that led you into functional nutrition? Some of the life experiences. Let's even go back as a kid. I think start there before your even story. Like, you know, were things that happened led to this? Anything? Oh, childhood?
Well, 100%. So growing up, my mom actually got really into health. In fact, actually, she trained to become a naturopath. She's a naturopath now. And in the early 90s, the diet that was trendy was the macrobiotic diet. I don't know if you remember that. Lima beans, steamed kale. Yep. Right. And uh, you know, it was like it was low fat, low protein, right? It was low fat food-based. Yeah. But it was completely bland. Yeah. No salt. You know what I mean?
And so as a teenager, I rebelled against that. I was like, I'm not going to eat this. And so my my older brother, he had acne and he would get into candy. You know what when you're growing up in a holistic household, which is what I would what I was raised in. We never, you know, went to the hospital, never took drugs.
Okay. So I I got to stop you there. Remember where you're at. Okay. But I'm always interested in like, like, how did your parents get there? Were your mom and dad both, or just your mom?
Just my mom. Okay. So which my dad was.
Like, what the heck? You know? Yeah, exactly.
So my mom was actually a nurse. So she was a nurse and she saw how I was born. I was a cesarean. She didn't feel like I she needed a cesarean, right? Um, and they did the surgery. She saw my younger brother how he was born. Um, she saw what vaccines did to us. And this is back, you know, I was born in 1981. She just witnessed this. She saw people change, babies, children change after vaccines, and she was like, There's something wrong with this. Oh, wow.
She saw the pregnancies and how, you know, there was kind of a rush to do cesarean births, um, and rather than, you know, allowing it to go naturally and vaginally. And she just realized there's something wrong with this, and I want to learn something else.
So her paradigm shift was being on the front line.
Yes.
But I would say this still few people that are on the front lines, they see that.
Yeah.
But why don't they shift? There was something in your mother. What was it, do you think?
You know, she's always just been curious, uh-huh you know, lifelong learner. And uh, and so she just realized that there's got to be some better way. So she actually became a midwife and then a massage therapist, and she just kept learning. Like my whole childhood, she was always learning, and she became a naturopath.
Yeah.
And so again, she was, you know, this macrobiotic diet. I was rebelling against it. But my older brother had acne and she would link it to the foods he was eating. She's like, he's eating processed sugar, he's eating, you know, he's eating these Kit Kat bars, right? So you were learning, you were and I was like, well, if that's gonna cause acne, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm an insecure 13-year-old. I'm like, I'm not eating that. Um, and then I was an athlete growing up.
And so she said, Well, you got to eat your kale. That's gonna give you more energy. For, you know, I was a baseball player, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna perform better. And so for me, I was a driver, I was an athlete. And so it was like anything that would help me perform better, like I'll eat, I'll eat twice as much. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so that's basically how I learned was food impacts performance.
Now, what she teaches, what I teach now, is a lot different than what we taught back then. But what I learned was food that what I put in my body impacts my performance, how I show up each day. And that led me to, you know, and after I graduated high school, about a year or two after that, I became a personal trainer. And I enjoyed fitness, I enjoyed training. And so that was what I thought, you know, was basically taking that to the next level, right?
But of course, I learned all the wrong things. As a trainer, I learned you got to eat six meals a day, right? Uh, you know, processed protein powders in every meal, basically. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Uh-huh. Um, as a trainer, you barely sleep because, you know, especially when you're 19, 20 years old, because you your clients are at 5, 6 a.m. And, you know, for a 19, 20 year old, you're probably not going to bed at eight o'clock. Right.
Yeah, probably not.
So I was living a healthier lifestyle than the people I knew, but not living a healthy lifestyle by any means. And that ended up catching up with me in my early 20s. I developed irritable bowel syndrome. And so I went from about 175 pounds, which is basically where I'm at now, down to about 140 pounds. And I had orthostatic hypotension where I go from sitting to standing and I would feel really dizzy.
And I was still trying to work out, I was still trying to eat a lot, but I would have constant gut pain, you know, cramping, bloating, all of that. And I couldn't absorb my nutrients. And I had the, you know, the blood pressure issues. And so I realized whatever I'm doing is not working. I got to do something different. And that's actually when I came across, you know, several books. I uh somebody pointed me towards Dr. Mercola's website, and he had a book out that had just come out.
It was the no-real at this point.
Yeah. So I was 21. And so, um, so I went on the no-grain diet. Yeah.
Oh, that was one of his books. Yeah. No grain diet.
He had just came out with this book, The No Grain Diet.
Which was, by the way, not bad advice, right? Because grains carried a lot of pesticides.
Yep.
Right. Uh, you know, most grains were processed, right? You know, so yeah, so not bad.
Yeah. And I was eating a higher carbohydrate diet, five, six thousand calories a day. And so I went on the no-grain diet and completely changed my life, right? Completely transformed my life. And that's actually how I found intermittent fasting was nobody was talking about fasting. I just noticed I wasn't hungry. Like I just had satiation, it was a high protein diet.
Back then, I was talking about fasting. No one heard me, right? I didn't know you back then. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was like, I started studying fasting in the 90s just for my love of innate intelligence and what happens. But yeah, no one heard me. No, but it's true. Back then it was, yeah, nobody was talking about it.
Yep. And so I just noticed that I felt better. And uh, you know, basically some of the chiropractors at my gym, they they were the ones that turned me on to drmercola.com. They seemed to really enjoy what they were doing. And I said, you know what? I think I can do that. I can be a chiropractor chiropractor. And so I went to life university. I think you went there as well.
Oh, yeah, exactly. Um I was there, gosh, I when was I there? Early 90s, I guess. But you were you were on the I was leaving, you were coming type thing, right? I came in two uh 2004, 2005, that time frame. Oh yeah, no, what am I saying? Yeah, so you were after that. When did I oh yeah, so you were in my nutrition classes at Maximize Living Body by God.
Yeah. Yeah, okay, you're right.
So I was probably dealing with the irritable bowel around the time you were dealing with your heavy metal toxicity and all that kind of stuff. Interesting, yeah. And then I moved when I got to life university, I was getting better, right? Yep. And uh moved in with Isaac. Isaac was my my best friend.
I remember, I said this on the thing, I I remember you and Isaac in my classes, right? And I remember being out to dinner with you because Isaac was probably so aggressive that he was like, let's, you know, got me involved, right? And uh, but I remember the questions you asked, you know, and Isaac, and I was I knew you all were extraordinary. Like I knew that you all were going to be doing things in this space that were be going to be extraordinary. Here we are. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. That's a that's a great compliment because you've been a great mentor for me. I've learned so much from you. And uh, you know, I was reading books like when I was at life university, I realized what I'm learning in school is good vocabulary, but I'm not actually learning how to help you. And so I was reading Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill by Udo Erasmus. I was reading Mercola's books, The Maker's Diet Um by Jordan Rubin. Yeah, Body Prodigy Diet. Yeah, exactly.
So I was reading all of these books that were teaching real food nutrition, kind of, I guess back then uh the term that started coming about was paleo diet. You were using the healing diet, right? And so we started talking about the cellular healing diet, and um, you know, and it was it was cutting edge. There was very few people that were teaching this. You didn't have social media the way you did back then. I know.
Um, and nobody, you know, I'm going through graduate school with all these people that were going to become doctors, and I'm telling them what I'm doing. Like, hey, I'm on this no-grain diet, right? I'm intermittent fasting, right? Exercising, all this kind of stuff. And very few people there were actually living healthy lifestyles.
True. Yeah. No, it's true. I, you know, the one thing that we got from school is the philosophy.
Yeah.
You know, remove the interference, the body does the healing. But chiropractors at that point just saw that as neurological. Right. They didn't see that as the food that they were putting in their mouth, remove the interference, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So we were kind of like a little unique group within that, you know, little
¶ Early Health Struggles as a teen
microcosm. I want to go back uh to the irritable bow. Um, what was led up to that? Like the symptoms. How did you know? How long did it take you to get diagnosed? Or you know, and what and how old were you then, the first symptom?
Yeah, you know, I would say looking back my whole life, I had GI issues, right? I would struggle at times with constipation.
When you live in your own little world, sometimes you think it's just normal, right? Not to poop for three days. Yeah. Or whatever you were doing. I tell me about that.
I don't think I had that issue, but you know, I would have times where I remember, I remember my parents saying stuff like, Yeah, when he goes to the bathroom, he's got to be in there for like 20 minutes. Or you know what I mean? It would like take me a long time to get things moving. What are you doing in there? Yeah, honey, exactly. Yep, yep. And so, see, now that I have kids, I'm a little bit more aware of that.
Like I had one of my sons that I noticed that was like, all right, you know, let's make sure we're getting you some of the right supplements. Um, because I can see those kind of early warning signs, you know. And of course, you know, my genetics, he's got, you know, some of those genetics, and so he may be at risk there. Did you Okay?
So at what age then your first sign was you were in the bathroom a long time. Yeah. I hate to ask this question.
Yeah, but like what what like sometimes what was taking so long? Okay, sometimes painful bowel movements. Okay, all right. Yeah, sometimes painful bowel movements in general. Yeah. And uh so I struggled more with constipation than diarrhea. Um, yeah, and so that was an issue. So that was kind of the first thing that led to the biggest. Yeah. And then when I was in high school, I was a pitcher, right? I was a very good pitcher.
And my high school coach, and he was a great coach, and he was trying to give me advice that he thought was going to be helpful. And he said, number one, he said you need to drink a gallon of milk a day, right? I don't know if you got advice like that, but I was always really thin. Yeah. So he said you need to drink a gallon of milk a day. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were all into that. And of course, you know, we weren't getting organic milk.
It was, you know, it was commercial, commercial antibiotics in there for sure. And then he said, after you pitch, take ibuprofen. And so shoulder lubed up, man. You gotta keep the inflammation down, right? So, you know, of course, he meant take two. But you know, when you're 17, you're like, I'll take eight.
Wow.
I was taking like eight a day.
So you just kind of went on your own advice, though. Oh, yeah.
I'm like, I'm just gonna take eight a day. And that was the only drug my mom had in the house because my dad, my dad is anything but a healthy lifestyle. Like he would he completely rebelled. Like my mom and dad are are very opposite in the house, right? He kind of gets has gotten dragged along because he's got family members now.
You know, by the way, that's very common though.
The man gets dragged along, women are into the health. Not always, but absolutely. Well, you know, here's the big thing my dad did not support my mom at all when it came to a healthy lifestyle. But my that was something my mom put her foot down for her kids. And now all my brothers and sisters are into natural health, right? They're all um, they all live a healthier lifestyle than most Americans, some more than others.
Yeah, men men will give in for the kids, but they don't want to change. Right.
True. But they'll say, okay, yeah, give it to the kids, won't it won't hurt them. True, but that's also what a determined mother can do. So you know, if somebody's listening and you're like, hey, I can't get my spouse to be on board with this. If you put your foot down and you say, This is my dad knew it was right. Yeah, it just wasn't comfortable.
Yeah, okay, got it. Uh huh.
And so he was like, all right, whatever. Um, and so, but that made an impact on me for sure, right? And it made an impact on my brothers and sisters. And so I credit a lot of that to my mom. But of course, you know, I had to go my own path. And uh, yeah, so I was taking iberprofen, uh which destroyed your liver and gut. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's like, holy cow. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and then people may not know this, but I mean, being born C-section sets you up for the problem because you don't inherit your mother's good bacteria, her microbiome. Yep. Right. We know that now. Then I don't did we even know that then?
I don't even know if we knew. They didn't even know that then. Yeah. And I'm the only one that was born by C-section in my dad, and I had the worst gut issues at a you know, at a young age. So, um, so you know, there you go. And um, yeah, so I would credit it to to to bad diet, to taking the drug, you know, taking the ibuprofen, yeah, high doses. I mean, how much extended period of time? Did you do that for a year or two? I would do it during the season. Okay. You know what I mean?
So, like I would say I did it probably for two years, junior and senior year.
It's amazing nobody said, you know, that's bad.
No. You know, there's a lot of high schoolers, I'm sure, a lot of college athletes that are doing a lot of things. I mean, we had the opioid crisis, yeah, right. I'm sure a lot of athletes were involved in that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because hey, you notice it improves you and it it feels better, right?
Oh, yeah, right. I mean, it's like, man, they're right, you know, yeah. That makes amazing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Pitch hard again. And so, yeah. Yeah, so that kind of was like the perfect storm that happened. You got it. Yeah, you got it.
And that fell. So I okay. And then I would say as a personal trainer, when my sleep schedule went Oh yeah, that's another Yeah. I saw I, you know, at that point, uh, here I am 20 years old, thinking, I'm gonna work two jobs and go to school because I can because I'm 20, and I'm going to bed at midnight, waking up at 5 a.m. Right, and trying and thinking I could actually carry that out. And so all of that just built up, you know.
Did you like um did you realize like when when you realized you had a gut problem? I'm sure it wasn't diagnosed as irritable bowel at this point, right? But you knew you had a gut problem. Yeah. What were you thinking it was? And were you just thinking, like, you know, what were you attributing it to? Or did you maybe not realize you had a severe problem?
You know, you try I would say at that period of time in my life, it was more denial, just like, yeah, I'll get over this. You know, I've had issues like this in the past. Um, I'll get over it. You know, I just need to hydrate more. I noticed when I when I drank more water, things would come out better, right? I just need to hydrate more. Um whatever. Yeah.
So you're blaming that. I'm probably still on hydration. That'd be fine. Yeah, exactly. All right. At what point did you get the diagnosis? What point did it get back?
¶ Gut issues
I never actually got a full diagnosis. I I it's a kind more of a self-diagnosis. I just realized when I when I noticed I was losing weight, even though I was trying to lift, even though I was trying to eat, I knew something was wrong, right? Um, I'm having all this pain, bloating, cramping. I mean, there were some days where I had to call into work, right? Because I just had so much uh uncomfortability, you know what I mean? And so I realized something's wrong.
Was it affecting your energy?
Oh, 100% your brain work, you know. I mean, how was it affecting your life? I mean, 100 100%. So I was I was okay enough to do well, you know. Like I was never a great student growing up, but once I got into the field, like once I realized I want to learn about the body. Like it, I mean, it really God gave this. I remember my first anatomy class, I was failing it. And then all of a sudden I remember just crying out in in prayer. I had broken ankle at the time. That's another thing.
I actually broke my ankle and I took biox, believe it or not, right? That the the uh podiatrist gave me free samples of biox, which later will get pulled off the market. But I remember taking that drug, uh, which didn't help either. But I remember crying out to to God, saying, like, I can't walk, I'm on crutches, right? Which as a personal trainer, I like I couldn't really work. I I was working at Publix as a cashier at the time, sitting down as well.
Um, and so I'm like, okay, and I'm failing my class. What am I supposed to do? And God gave me the words get up and walk. And it was like this idea of like, don't be a victim. You know what I mean? Like it was very strong in my heart. It was like stop being a victim and just go just go where I show you to go, right? Go out and and and and live your life, do what you need to do, right? Be a light to the world, be full of joy, love, and hope. Um, and and don't think like a victim, right?
When you heard those words at that time, yeah, how did it make you feel?
I mean, at the time I wanted to be a victim, right? But there's something so liberating about not being a victim, you know, it shifted the way that I looked at life. I think so many people get caught in this sort of victim mentality, whether you're dealing with a chronic health condition, right, or financial condition, a relational issue, right? Whatever it is, it's so easy to want to be a victim, but that literally paralyzes you.
Takes all your energy the fastest way to depression is thinking like a victim.
Yeah.
And so God said, Don't think like that.
So literally, you heard those words.
And then did you immediately like okay? Yeah. So it wasn't like I got up and like my ankle was healed.
I didn't have a walked through the pain.
Yeah. And so it was more of like stop complaining. Like focus on healing, focus on being a being in gratitude, focusing on being a blessing to the other people around you. Um, and that's what I tried to focus my energy on. And then God just started lining things up. I found that book. Um, I you know, I ended up committing to going to life university. That was scary. Wow, yeah. Oh, yeah, you're only gonna get, you know, six-figure debt, right? And another four years of college.
I remember that decision.
You're like, hey, I just grabbed I'm about to graduate with my degree, yeah. Uh, you know, and go out and work, make a living. And now, nope, four more years or whatever of school and you know, $150,000 worth of debt.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. I it's scary. I I remember, you know, at school going, I'm out of money. I'm I'm going home. I was telling my roommate, and then, you know, literally a knock on the door, guy selling the newspaper. I'm like, wrong door, man. I just told him I'm done. I'm bankrupt. Close the door. And I'm like, gosh, yeah. I'm like, you know, I can't believe, you know, God is allowing me to go through. I sit down in the chair like you. It's like, I just sent you the answer.
Boom, I get up, the chair goes flying back. I run after the guy. Hey, man, I call him back. He thinks he's gonna sell newspaper. I'm like, this job, you know, really. And so I called out in there, and the guy's like, yeah, the crew's all full. I'm like, no, listen, you you have to give me a chance, man. Just just one. If I'm not your number one sales guy in two weeks, fire me. He's like, okay, come meet me. He sets my resolve, my panic, who knows?
But, anyways, yeah, it was scary going to school, right? All the time and everything, but here we are.
So, really, God taught me how to think.
Yeah, right.
Like, I'm thankful for my parents, but my parents never really taught me the difference between powerful thinking and powerless thing. That was taught to me by God. And that, and it was through that experience.
Yeah.
And and and so then from there, you know, I went went to life university and met Isaac, was the first person I met. Um, God lined all of that up. I remember, you know, I had I didn't know where I was gonna live when I when I was about to start.
Isaac Jones, he he's running big seminars now and doing great things, yeah.
Yep. And Isaac's who connected me with you as well. And so, anyways, Isaac had just moved down from Canada the the literally the weekend before I moved. And on Monday, God told me in a dream, you need to live on campus. Right? I was gonna live off campus, and then that fell through. And I was moving on a Thursday.
So on Monday, Sunday night I had this dream, called up the uh, you know, it was it was uh the k the on on campus living, called them up on a Monday, and Isaac had just come down spontaneous. You know, Isaac's a very spontaneous person. So he and his his dad had driven him down the weekend before and they didn't even have a place. And uh the the Life University gave him like this apartment that needed to be cleaned. So he cleaned it up and then he needed to find roommates. And I had that dream.
The next day I call up and they're like, Well, there's everything's booked except this one place. This guy just came down from Canada and he's looking for roommates. So, anyways, he ends up calling me, right? And I moved down on Thursday. He's the first person I meet, and you know, we end up living together, best friends to this day. He was the best man at my wedding, lives 10 minutes from me. We raise our families together.
Love Isaac, connected me with you. You know, Isaac literally tracked me down in the bathroom and said, Will you mentor me? I mean, it's like, and you know what my answer was, no, I don't have time. And he kept at it. Uh literally, as as I I could tell he wasn't going away, you know, as I'm standing at the urinal and he's not going away. He's persistent, persistent. He literally was taking me down like five minutes, one minute a month. I remember him telling me that.
Yeah, probably to the point where I said yes, but look at look at how lives change, right? Yeah. Um, yeah, so did you guys end up in a moldy hotel? Or I mean the hotel hotel, a moldy apartment. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because that made Isaac sick. Did it retrigger your IBS at all?
Fortunately, it didn't. I think my body's better at detoxifying mold. So fortunately it didn't. I mean, I sure certainly wasn't healthy, but yeah, yeah. But uh yeah, that wasn't the trigger for me.
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, you know. It's we we all have our our weakness, our kryptonite, so to speak. So I pain to purpose. I I mean that's that's your story. Yeah, you know. I mean, if you didn't go through that, you know, you would never have the purpose that you do today. Matter of fact, saying that, do you think you'd ever be? Doing what you're doing today, helping the amount of people that you're helping if you didn't go through the IBS. I don't think so. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I would have continued to do what I was doing. You know, sometimes you need a wake-up call, right? Yeah, I know. I think I was that kind of kid. I needed that wake up call.
Isn't it amazing though, like, okay, so you had the pain to purpose situation, but God has to change our thinking of the times, right? I had that too. I can't tell you how many times God had to slap me, a similar situation that I can still anchor back into as an adult. You know, one of the things when I was sick, it would be it was easier for me feel sorry for myself and be angry even. Um, and I was literally trying to push my wife away uh because I just, you know, was in that bad mindset.
God spoke to her heart in her prayer, and she probably prayed for me and the family many times that not only is he going to get me well, but I'm gonna take a message to the world. When she would tell me that, I'd get so mad because I would say, I can't even help myself. You know, here
¶ Pain to purpose health journey
I sit today, right? But the point is that God literally has to change the way we think. I was so stuck in feeling sorry for myself at times.
Yeah, and I would say from your in your case, being a doctor and and being counted on by people to get well, it's even more humbling.
Yeah, you know, for me. I was embarrassed. I would imagine. Yeah, I mean I was. I I hid it from my family, I hid it from a lot of people. Obviously, the people that are really close saw something wasn't. I mean, you know, meaning my family, but um, yeah, it was it was hard. But you know, pain pain. Pain of purpose, exactly.
Yeah, this is more minor, but my wife was getting recurrent sinus infections that would come like every three months. They got so bad to where you know she would need antibiotics, she had an eardrum rupture. And I'm like, okay, we gotta figure this out. So good diet, good supplements, all this stuff. She had rest implants, we got those removed, detoxed her at her and hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, all this stuff, still getting sinus infections.
We had, you know, biological dentists looked at her teeth, everything looked good. But we and we had two biological dentists look at it, but I was still just something inside of me was like, those wisdom teeth. So she had had her wisdom teeth removed, and I was like, we need to get have somebody else look at it. We sent them out to Dr. Nunnalee, you know, Stuart Nunnalee.
Yeah, in Texas.
Yep, and he said there's definitely three infections, probably four, but I won't know unless I go in. So we flew out there, actually, this is last summer, right? She had all she had four infections in where cavitations where her wisdom teeth were. I can't tell you one that was right up into the sinus.
Oh, yeah.
Had that removed, hasn't had a sinus infection since.
I can't tell you how many people that have autoimmune, just chronic weird things that aren't going away, gut problems that won't go away, anxiety, sleep problems, aches and pains. We look for hidden infections in the mouth, and lo and behold, there it is.
And not all biological dentists are trained in that. No, no, no. Exactly.
Matter of fact, I more aren't than are, right? But we're talking biological dentists. We're talking about dentists who are holistic. But you know, the the cavitation where a wisdom tooth is pulled out, oftentimes more often than not, that it heals over no pain, but yet it's infection that's trashing your immune system in that case. My wife had a similar thing. She had um a tooth that was pulled out years ago and left a cavitation.
It was a wisdom tooth, and it was up the cavitation went up into her sinus. And she just had chronic sinus, chronic sinus, chronic sinus, and lo emball. That's exactly what happened. Exactly. It was that cavitation. Now that often doesn't happen, especially if it's on the bottom, yeah, but it will still lower immunity, create hyperimmunity. But yeah, when she got that out, it transformed her. Matter of fact, she walked out of the chair and she was like, I swear my hip pain went away.
Yeah. And I've seen that happen a lot.
Right. If that's a main driver, I mean, that's just bringing down inflammation so much.
Your gut issue led you to be an expert in gut. Um what are you what are you seeing today? Because it's way worse. I mean, you know, when we were when I was sick, you know, way back in two early 2000s, when you were sick. I mean, look at it today. You know, what's let's start with causative factors of why we're seeing this massive escalation in IBS, um, Crohn's, celiac, just unfixable gut bloating. You know, most people aren't diagnosed, but they have bloating after meals.
They're sensitive to all these different foods. What's what's going on?
Yeah. So for me, my journey to get healthy was diet change, right? Along with intermittent fasting, which just came intuitively. And then that alone, like literally, I got better, right? That that alone, and then just better, healthier lifestyle in general. It's getting out more in the sun more, sleeping more, things like that. That alone killed me. I didn't take any supplements, right? And I was able to get better. And today's day and age, I mean, you and I both know it's like I wish it was.
People change their diet.
People are being perfect, they're taking probiotics, and they're still not better. Exactly what the heck's going on.
Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, we're just bombarded by toxins. Those toxins are damaging our mitochondria. And the intestinal cells, I mean, they're replaced every three to five days. But most, most of the, you know, if if we're not replacing those mitochondria, if we're not undergoing autophagy, mitophagy, and breaking down those damaged mitochondria in there and regenerating new mitochondria, then those intestinal cells are very fragile, right?
So even as they're being replaced, they're extremely fragile. And then anytime we eat, that's mechanical stress on the gut, and they're just breaking down. We need really strong stress-resilient uh intestinal cells, and that depends on strong stress-resilient mitochondria. Yeah. And that that's really, you know, the key. In fact, I mean, new research is saying that the mitochondria regulate the oxygen levels in the gut.
Yeah.
And the kinds of bacteria that are associated with healthy metabolic, uh, you know, just healthy metabolism, fat burning, lower rates of autoimmunity, and chronic inflammation are these obligate anaerobic bacteria that need a very low oxygen environment, right? Acromanzia, mycinophilia, fecal bacterium presitziae, and they live deep in the mucosa.
And so when the mitochondria is working well, it's pulling oxygen out of the intestinal lumen so it can be used for energy, and that allows for this low oxygen environment. And when the mitochondria is not working well, it's not producing energy through oxidative phosphorylization. So the oxygen stays elevated in the intestines, kills off the bad, the good bacteria, and now the bad bacteria, klebsiella, siderobacter, H. pylori, all of these aerobic bacteria.
It's the right environment for them to thrive. And then they're histamine producing, and they produce uh endotoxins that drive up inflammation in the body. And so the mitochondria are becoming damaged and not being replaced, not being properly uh repaired and healed. And so that's going to come down to all the things you talk about. Toxins, right, are a huge driver. Microplastics, heavy metals, uh parabens, right? All of the different uh, you know, forever chemicals that we're being exposed to.
And then, of course, you know, dietary factors as well associated with that, or just poor, poor diet hygiene, too, right? Like just even going 12 to 14 hours, you know, between your last meal and your first meal gives your gut some time to heal and your liver a chance to heal.
Yeah, and you said autophagy, mitophagy. What that means is the body gets rid of the bad and creates new, right? It gets rid of the bad mitochondria. You know, um you know this work, right? The mitochondria is not just about making energy to your point with the oxygen, right? But it also is the cellular surveillance, right? It's like it's looking at like, okay, this is a danger.
And once it gets in a danger mode, literally, it starts to you know put ATP out of the cell and you know, do send all these inflammatory signals out. And you're meant to go through that briefly if you have a sickness, but people are stuck in this cellular danger thing and their mitochondria toxins affect them. Right.
They're in a wartime physiology. Yeah, we can be a peacetime physiology or a wartime physiology, and the cells are stuck in the same way. Explain the difference. Yeah, and what you're talking about is called the cell danger response, right? And and so basically, when the cell feels as though, right, when it when it senses that the the environment is is not hospitable, right? Too much toxins, too much stress, too much pathogens, exactly, then it hunkers down, it goes into this wartime physiology.
In wartime physiology, it might have so the mitochondria use oxygen to produce energy, and they can produce an abundant amount of energy if it goes through the electron transport system. But even in a high oxygen environment, like a good oxygen environment for the mitochondria, when it's in a wartime physiology, it won't produce energy through the electron transport system, only through glycolysis. Right.
And with glycolysis, you're producing a whole lot of uh, you know, metabolic byproducts that are in other words, using glucose as opposed to oxygen. Right, not fat. But then it uses glucose, which creates a lot of other more toxic byproducts, if you will. Make it simple here.
Yeah, basically, yeah, for the layperson, they're stuck in sugar burning. Right. Even when the environment says, hey, you should burn fat, yeah, like at night while we're sleeping, we should be burning fat. But they're stuck in this burn the sugar burning.
I wanted to have that, you know, Mark Sesson. I I had an interview with him, and I um we were talking about metabolic flexibility, being stuck as a sugar burner versus the ability to burn fat. I wanted to go the toxic route, but you know, the conversation was so dietary, and I thought he was giving great insight on how to get their dietarily to be more metabolically flexible.
But what I wanted to say is, oh my gosh, toxins keep people stuck as sugar burners with the inability to burn fat because of the damage in the mitochondria. So a lot of people are stuck as sugar burners for what you're saying. Even when they make dietary changes, yes, they will still be stuck. They're trying to go like keto or low carb repair, and there's they have no energy because their mitochondria can't use fat. So they don't transition.
And anyway, so I'm glad we're having this conversation.
Because they're stuck, those mitochondria are stuck in wartime physiology until you get that toxic burden or the pathogen burden, which pretty much those things go together. Yep. As toxins go up, pathogens go up. Yeah. And and actually your body getting rid of pathogens is one way it gets rid of toxins. And so basically, as that burden goes up, now, you know, or as it goes down, I should say, now it switches to peacetime physiology. But if it goes back, makes energy.
Yeah. Everything's working good.
You got it. So there's a certain threshold. Yeah. And you got to keep that toxic burden, the pathogen burden, and the stress burden, the overall allostatic load underneath that threshold. And that allows you to be in that peacetime physiology.
I hope people hear that because a lot of people are chasing their hormones, their cortisol, but they're missing this. Yeah. Right? Meaning, well, wait a minute. Why is your cortisol elevated all the time? Why are you in this sympathetic? Because you're in wartime mode.
Yeah.
Well, that's a mitochondria problem. And that's where you make energy. And your mitochondria do this surveillance to make sure that you're not stressed. Physical, chemical, or emotional stress, typically in a perfect storm, puts you in the wartime zone. Yeah. Man, that's a great analogy, bro. Yeah, that's awesome. And you're seeing that linked to all these gut problems, like so many of these gut problems. Yeah, absolutely.
And the mitochondria, like you said, even affecting these bad bacteria that are allowed to exist. That's a mitochondria issue. Who would think?
Yep. So, like probiotics can have a great effect. A lot of people have gotten help, helpful, you know, helpful results with probiotics, but it's downstream. It's not actually impacting the mitochondria. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yep. And so what the mitochondria need are really postbiotic compounds, right? And so a good healthy microbiome is going to produce postbiotics, things like urolithin A, butyric acid, short chain fatty acids, butyrate.
And that's going to get into that mitochondria, trigger mitophagy, the breakdown of the old damaged mitochondria, and the formation of new healthy mitochondria. I call that mitochondrial biogenesis. So creating a stronger, more stress-resilient mitochondria and ultimately more stress-resilient cell.
We're having a high-level conversation here, right? And I don't want to lose our listeners because this is really important. If we break that down and you would say, okay, how do we make our mitochondria better? Because that affects your energy, that affects your staying lean, you know, all these things that people want. It affects your ability for your brain to work. So you don't have brain fog, but it does affect the health of the gut. What would you say these three things do this?
Yeah. So the cool thing is intermittent fasting, right? Like and really the things that I talked about. So when I went on the no-grain diet. Because fasting, you get rid of the bad mitochondria. That's right. And you make new better ones. Absolutely. I agree. Yep. When I went on the no-grain diet, I really went on a high protein diet. Okay. And I also was trying to get Dr. Mercola, who I was reading at the time, was the first person.
You were the second person that was saying, hey, we need to do grass-fed, grass-fed, you know, animal products, right? And so we're getting less toxins there, getting more nutrients. And so I was on a high protein diet. Protein stabilizes your blood sugar, which then allows you to not have the cravings, the constant blood sugar roller coaster. You have a constant, consistent fuel for the cells of your body. And that allows you to go longer between
¶ Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Gut bacteria
meals. And what's cool is that, you know, microbiome researchers for years, they've looked at, okay, how do we reshape the microbiome, right? And what is the ideal microbiome? And they they they always talk about diversity, right? The amount of different types of species being a really beneficial effect.
Bacteria, fungi, the more diversity, the better.
That's right. And they always said you got to eat a lot of prebiotics, lots of fruits and vegetables in order to get there. And that is one way. That is one way to get there. Okay, but what's interesting is they found that intermittent fasting actually improves the diversity. And how does that, I mean, you're not even feeding them, right? Like how does that work? Well, really, what it does is it helps prune back what we call the primary feeders.
These are more the aerobic or uh facultative anaerobes, right? They can live in an oxygen-based environment. They're the primary feeders. They live on top of the mucosa and they're going to eat first, right? And if we're constantly feeding them, they drowned out, they create more oxygen and they they drowned out uh nutrient sites for the secondary feeders. And they actually lower the amount of diversity in the gut.
But when we take breaks from meals and we do some sort of intermittent fasting, that actually allows for the secondary feeders to really proliferate. And those secondary feeders, like, for example, acromansia, it breaks down polyphenols that we're taking from our diet and creates things like urolithin A, which is this really profound postbiotic that gets in and triggers mitophagy and triggers, you know, mitochondrial healing. And so we get this dramatic benefit from doing that.
And I always look at it like this. In my front yard, I'm blessed to have an apple tree and a blueberry bush right next to each other. Really? Yeah, right next to this. This is a real example. So apple tree and a blueberry bush. And the apple tree grows like crazy.
And every year we've got to pay a guy, because my wife doesn't trust me to do it, to go in and prune the apple tree and actually limit the amount of branches and limit the amount of potential fruit coming from the apple tree so that the sun is able to get on the blueberry bush so we get blueberries. If we don't do that, we don't get blueberries. So this is the analogy of the first feeders and the second feeders. Exactly.
We've got to trim back the primary feeders in order to allow the secondary feeders to flourish and create really a biodiverse.
And just going longer spells without food, intermittent fasting does that. It does that, right? Well, let me tell you something. I, you know, my principle of diet variation, diet change also helps diversity of the microbiome. Longer fasts, oftentimes people need, which your body gets like to the same point, right? It gets really, your body goes into massive autophagy and mitophagy, it gets rid of the bad cells, and you know, obviously has an effect on the microbiome too.
So there's we just gave you some principles and others. Fasting, go longer period, even if it's like you said, even push breakfast out, maybe put you know, skip dinner, whatever. There's ways to eat two meals and lengthen the your time of eating maybe 15 hours or 18 or 20.
And the key with that I found is high protein. So when you eat 30 to 50 or more grams of protein in a meal, that's gonna create satiation. You're gonna be satisfied, and you're not gonna be thinking about food. Like I haven't eaten since dinner last night. I don't know what time it is now, 3:30 or something like that. When we're doing this, I don't feel hungry at all, right?
I feel really using your fat as energy.
Absolutely.
And your cells, bad cells.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm burning the little visceral fat that I have, I'm burning that right now as a fuel source. Yeah, metabolically flexible, as we say.
Um, so okay, that's the fasting strategies, just pushing out, you know, meals, et cetera. What else?
Yeah, so fast, then protein. Protein was protein in the diet, and then really good sleep. Really good sleep is so critical because when you sleep, you're producing melatonin, right? And melaton is your sleep hormone. But melatonin, and and and I should, I'm gonna tie in sleep and light exposure, right?
And kind of put that in as the third thing because proper light exposure, getting out in the sun, right, early in the day and really throughout the day as much as much as you can, that is gonna actually stimulate that you're gonna get infrared exposure. And infrared is part of the visible spectrum you can't see, right? But you're being exposed every time you're out in the sun. And so that actually triggers melatonin production in the mitochondria.
And so we think about melatonin as our sleep hormone, and it is. There's more, but that's only 5% of melatonin. 95% is in our mitochondria and it cleans up the mitochondria. It's the most powerful antioxidant, cleaning up all the free radicals and oxidative stress in the mitochondria, which is going to help the gut, as we pointed out. If you can improve your mitochondria, you're gonna help the gut. Absolutely. So, how do we optimize melatonin production?
We do it through good sleep, but also good light exposure throughout the day. So getting out, getting as much real natural sunlight as possible. And obviously, everybody's gonna have a different tolerance for that. Okay, and if you burn easily, get out in the morning earlier in the day or in the evening, you'll get a lot of red and infrared there. UV light has great benefits as well. I try to get out all throughout the day as much as I can. I know you do as well. You're big on sun.
You're getting that melatonin production, and then really try to protect your light exposure at night. So, like in my family, we put our kids to bed, usually 8:30. We have all the lights dimmed. And then my wife and I wear blue light blocking glasses.
We have special bulbs, we never use the overhead, we have all the lamps, right?
But I mean, people should do this. It's not hard to do that. Yeah, no, it's not. It makes a huge difference. It really does. As somebody that that was a big trigger for me, I not only when I became a personal trainer was I not sleeping much, but I never slept well growing up, right? Like I never really felt like I was sleeping well. I'm very light sensitive. And so I wear an eye mask at night, even though my room is black, right? It's dark.
I still wear an eye mask and I notice better quality sleep and I protect my light exposure at night. I wear blue light blocking glasses, have all the lights dim. Did you notice a massive difference? Big difference. Yeah. Some people are noise sensitive. My wife is. Like she's got to have like the noise machine on, she'll have earplugs in, any noise she's right. For me, it's light. I'm light sensitive. And the benefit of that is I wake up, like when the sun comes up, I'm up. Yeah, I'm up.
Even if I have on my eye mask.
But there's a lot of debate on this. I can't wait to get your uh take on it. There's a lot of debate on whether you sleep in total blackness or the ancestral model is, you know, of course, you don't want outside light, yeah. Man-made light, right? But, you know, if the light of the moon, so to speak, right? The light of the night is what our ancestors typically were exposed to at night. And, you know, there's frequencies there that actually help your sleep.
So do you go complete black or do you let some of the natural light in? If you're in a city, you better black out, but I have some of the natural light.
Yeah. I live in an area where, you know, uh uh it's it's it's more in the country. And so um, I have like, you know, moonlight and stuff like that. Yeah still making its way in. Like yeah, and that's kind of how I know when it's daytime. Yeah, I think if you do have it completely dark, I could see somebody maybe as a shift worker doing that, which you know, you and I both know shift work is not healthy. You have to sleep during the day, it's not good.
Um, but for me, I I like waking up with the sun. Yeah, me too. I like that trip.
I like it too.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I've done complete dark and I I it feels like I lose the rhythm a little bit, right? So, yeah. I mean, so there's there's an argument for that, obviously. But definitely you don't want all of the artificial light. If you live in the city and you're getting a lot of artificial city light in, that's totally different. Yeah, you better put some thick shades on. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so okay, you gave a lot of great advice.
I mean, obviously the fasting strategies, the the protein, how much protein? We didn't answer that. Like, I get that question all the time, people how much protein?
I would say 30 to 50 grams of protein, but it really depends on your nativity level too. Yeah, per meal. See, we used to think the maximum, you heard this, the maximum you could absorb is 30 grams at a meal. That's what they used to say. And now we know that that is not true. Okay. Um, as long as you know you're metabolically healthy, you're gonna absorb you know as much amino acids as you need.
Well, it's it's like the tribe who gets the kill. Yeah. They're going over 30 grams.
Oh, yeah, for sure. They're they're feasting. I mean, yeah, I I typically eat two meals a day and sometimes one meal and sometimes three meal. You know, I do square variation.
I'm the same.
Yeah. And so like today is a one meal day, right? And I'll probably eat 100, 150 grams of protein easy right in that one meal. Exactly. And then if I'm eating two meals, sometimes it's like a hundred grams in a meal, you know. And now for me, I work, I lift weights six days a week. So to recover, I need the protein and I have a good appetite. And here's a great thing, too.
When you're metabolically flexible and you're doing this right, I don't know about you, but I really don't get hungry until I start eating. When I start eating, then I my my boom. Yeah, my system says, Oh, oh, okay, now we're eating. Let's make sure we get our appetite.
By the way, that's why I, you know, I teach different modes of fasting, right? Pure water fasting, partial fasting is too fast. Yeah. I always say pure water fasting is so much easier for me because once I eat a little bit, the train just wants to go, right? It's like I have to pull back. So partial fasting is harder for me. Like having a little bit of taste, pure water, two days, I'm done. I don't even need food anymore.
Yeah. Once I start, it's like I have to eat. Yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, that's what that's what I would say is a minimum 30 grams in a meal. And it depends on your activity level, your appetite, your calorie needs. Um, but you're not going to overeat on protein, right? Make sure you're getting good, clean, clean sources of protein. Where some people go wrong is like like for me, I can eat high amounts of fat in a meal. My wife can't.
She eats too much fat in a meal, she gets really bloated, right? And so for some people, depending on their bioflow, their gallbladder health, and usually women need a little bit less fat. Men can typically eat more fat and be real satiated.
You're one of the only people that I've heard do what I promote and teach is the diet variation, right? I mix it up. Some days I eat one meal. Some days I eat three. You know, some days I eat two. And then I even move in and out of low carb. You do that? Yep. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah. So I when I when I think about like vegetables, fibers, things like that, I look at it like a like a spectrum. There's some people on the far left. These are people that thrive on little to no fiber. They're the carnivore diet. Yeah. And on the far right, you've got your plant-based people, right? And they're the high, super high fiber, you know, people. And they seem to thrive. Okay.
My wife's more on this side, I'm more on this side. Right.
And there's a lot of people on one of these sides that actually don't thrive where they're at, but they're doing it because they've been told that's what they should. Yeah. Most of us are somewhere on this spectrum, right? And like you said, your wife is more tilted more towards plant-based, and and my wife is as well. And then I'm definitely a lot more towards carnivore, right? I I can do well on a fairly low fiber.
I do well with, you know, some plant foods, but lower FOD map, the um the different types of fibers that ferment in our system. So which typically some people, that's me.
I I get too big all your cruciferous vegetables. Yeah, I don't know.
Too many of those I don't do.
Exactly.
So I do great with like arugula, cucumbers, right?
Me too.
Um, I love extra virgin olive oil. I love salads with like arugula, extra virgin olive oil, lemon, stuff like that. And I eat a lot of fruit. I I do great on fruit. And I'm very active. And so I do a lot of fruit, especially in the summertime. You know, the more summer you can.
I eat more fruit in the summer. That's part of my diet variation, right? And in the winter, I definitely tend towards keto, low carb. It's just easier. But yeah, so I believe that creates diversity. I believe people get stuck in the same darn eight foods. And people go always go, I eat more than eight foods. No, you don't. Typically, it's eight foods that people eat and they're doing the same diet all the time. And it's monocultures and it pulls away from the diversity that we need.
What's your feeling? Um, on I mean, this is so popular right now, lectins, phytates, oxalates. Yeah, like what's your feeling about that whole subject?
I think it needs to be personalized. You know, I think that they are potentially hormetic stressors that can be overdue.
That's what I say.
Yeah, they are just like exercise.
Yeah, you can do too much, especially for some people.
So, like I love to exercise, but I could easily overtrain. In fact, when I when we had our twins, you know, I wasn't sleeping much at night and I was still trying to train six days a week, totally overtrained. Right. And so now I'm able to sleep well at night, six days a week, I can train well, right? And so when my gut was not healthy, lactins, oxalates, all that stuff flared it up.
Now I can handle a certain amount of yeah, you know. Yeah, it applies to the hormitic principle, right? If you adapt to a stress, it's a positive. Those plant toxins can actually help your microbiome.
Absolutely.
If you're all inflamed for other reasons, now they're the it's too much stress. Can't handle them. But uh here's the problem, though. The the world now thinks that they're bad.
Right.
Right? It's not that they're bad. It's just if you're not adapting, they are bad, right? It's like so it's a little confusing.
Well, that's that's the challenge in our culture today, where everybody's getting their information, 30-second clips. Yeah, I know. And everybody's trying to do like you know, buzzwords, right? And stuff like that. Like, I don't know uh uh if you know this, but everybody's there's a lot of people out there that are like fasting raises cortisol, so it's bad.
And they forget all about growth hormones. If you adapt to the fasting stress, you get better. If you don't, you know, not everyone can water fast, it might be too stressful. And this is a guy who's taught it for years. Exactly. Yeah, I yeah, so yeah, we we we line on that.
So everybody's you know, it's easy to get clicks when you say oxalates are bad. I know. You know, if you're eating, you know, chocolate, right? If you're eating whatever nuts, you are destroying your gut.
You know, and the world loves that. They love to be like, this is bad, this is good. Chocolate bad. Yeah, alcohol bad. We just had this conversation off the camera with with someone. Is alcohol good or bad? They want you to say good or bad. I'm like, well, every healthy culture, every blue zone culture has some alcohol. Too much alcohol, bad. Yeah, you know, a little bit could be good. It's a stress, and it could a little bit of stress can be actually good. You've got to get the right dose.
Yeah, the right dose.
But the right dose is different for you than me, though. That's the problem, right? Personalized dose. Exactly. I mean, the best nutrition plan is a personalized nutrition plan. So you it's good to have the knowledge of, oh, okay, this food is higher in oxalates. This is a little bit higher in lectin, this is a little higher in FODMAS.
Maybe I'm tolerating it, maybe I'm not. Yeah, exactly.
And kind of know where your threshold sends.
Yep. Yeah. But see, this is why I I go back to, okay, why aren't you tolerating gluten, right? Gluten, modern-day gluten's bad, but if your gut's not leaking, people, you know, tolerate it, right? Lectin's, phytates, you know, very similar conversation. So why aren't you tolerating it? You know, this is a toxic conversation. Upstream, something's irritating the gut cells, the lining, affecting the mitochondria. You have too many bad guys, not enough good, right? Get to that, right?
But that's a that's a conversation, even alternative medicine is kind of, I think, screwing up.
Well, 100%. I mean, it's it's it, you know, people want a cookie cutter result. That's really the reason why. And so if you just follow this elimination diet. Yeah.
Tell me what
¶ Optimal Gut Diet and Nutritional advice
to eat. Don't eat this, don't eat that. People love those diets. Tell me what's voodoo, stay away from it. And, you know, they that's what they want. Not, well, wait a minute, you know, let's deal with the toxic overload upstream.
But the right strategies work on a number of different systems, right? Like fasting, for example. I mean, we know for sure, obviously it's a it's a hormetic stressor that if you adapt to properly, you're gonna get better. But it also has an effect on reducing toxic load, right? Because your body's gonna now excrete toxins.
Hopefully, you know, you're you're hydrating well and uh doing other things, maybe taking a binder to help grab those toxins and escort them out of the body, but it's gonna reduce your overall toxic.
On this topic, I I have to ask this question. You know, what beliefs have you had to assess, change, abandon to get to where you are today?
Yeah, a lot. I mean, I I fell into a lot of these categories too. It was like, okay, this one strategy is gonna work for everybody. You know, like when I first started working with probiotics, I mean, this is back, you know, 2006, 2007. We just need bacteria. Yeah. And if you got a probiotic with a lot, like a diverse amount of strains, not just one, yeah, right, like a whole bunch of strains, and it had to be, you know, you had to have spore formers in there, right?
Then that was gonna work for everybody. And I saw a few people get wetter belt better from it, and that was even worse because then I was like, it works, it works for everybody.
I I think we I fell into that for a bit too. Yeah. So I what do you think right now we're doing in this natural health space that we're gonna look back and go, oh man, because you know, we're doing something right now that five years from now we're gonna go, yeah, that was a miss. What do you think it is?
Yeah, that's if I knew uh if I knew, I wouldn't even be sitting in this chair. Yeah, exactly. That's a good question. Um, you know, again, I think people, I think back to our conversation where people take everything to extremes. You know what I mean?
Like so what do you what are you what are we taking to an extreme right now?
There's a lot, well, the oxalates, the lectins, all of those types of things. Um, you know, even like the fasting conversation, right? So when it comes to cortisol and fasting, I look at something called the the growth hormone to cortisol ratio. And it's you you can get testing done on this, but you don't need to get blood testing done.
If you feel good when you're fasting and you're not losing muscle and you just actually just feel strong and you feel resilient and uh mentally clear, you're producing growth hormone. Yeah, it's buffering the catabolic. To protect your muscle. That's right. So growth hormone is your quintessential anti-aging hormone. So it's protecting your muscle tissue, your bone tissue, it's helping promote your immune system.
So where where the cortisol response to fasting becomes a problem is when you're not getting the growth hormone release. And that typically happens if you're overstressed or if you're very insulin resistant, right? Because insulin is an antagonist to growth hormones. As long as insulin is elevated, growth hormone stays down. But typically fasting was is gonna bring the insulin down and growth hormone will go up.
But but if you're if you're fasting and you're drinking a lot of sweetened drinks, maybe you know, diet sodas or you know, even things with stevia, that could potentially increase your insulin to where you're not gonna get growth hormone release.
Yeah.
Or for some people, they find out, hey, I can drink black coffee during my fast. So they drink a lot of black coffee. Right. And that overshoots their stress hormone, depletes their growth hormone.
Yeah, no, no doubt. You know, one of the things that I I find right now in our in the health space, right, people, that they're fasting too much. Yeah. Um, you can see them. Like it, it's they're starting to look like long distance runners, right? It's like so you know they're too catabolic. I I find myself going around telling people the feast is as important as the fast. Remind your body it's not starving. You're fasting. Fasting is a stress, and if it's applied correctly, I I love fasting.
It's like, but yet I can't believe I'm reminding people that to feast. I love feasting and fasting. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Emotional minds are going, well, what do you mean I love fasting? You know, it's like you're you know, feasting is what we all want to do. No, but the fasting, yeah, I love the health benefits of fasting. Right. Um, but we all love to feast. However, in our world, we have people that are just eating one meal a day every day. Yeah and that I do that periodically.
But if you do it every day, the body will think it's starving eventually.
Yeah, and that brings up a good point too. Like in the longevity space, there's an over-emphasis on the m-TOR pathway. Yeah. Just basically like a building pathway. Yes, right? Kind of goes a hand in hand.
It's opposite of autophagy. Meaning when you fast, you stimulate the pathway autophagy. Catabolic can be good. Do too much of it, bad. Anabolic is mTOR. Bodybuilders love mTOR.
Exactly. So bodybuilder, a bodybuilder lifestyle is about spiking mTOR. They want maximal growth in their body. So what are they doing? They're eating high protein, right? Every three hours, every two to three hours, all throughout the day. They wake up high calorie. I've had some bodybuilders told me they wake up. This one guy My son did this. He would wake up at 2 a.m. because he was afraid he was going to lose muscle.
Oh, yeah, my son did this. And eat a chicken breast. My son led himself into obesity that way, my youngest. Yeah, but he's different now. But anyway, yeah, yeah. No, so but here's the thing though, both pathways God created, they're both important. Exactly. Anti-agers hate mTOR because they'll say, mTOR, it it ages you prematurely, right? Well, they're right. If you're always in mTOR, the average age of a bodybuilder dies, I think, is 63 or 64 years old. It's like, it does age you prematurely.
But when you feast and you get mTOR stimulated, man, the joints can heal, things heal, things get better.
You maintain your muscle mass and build muscle. Absolutely. It's an anabolic state. We want to protect our muscle mass. Muscle mass is expense. It's it's hard to build, right? I'm a lean guy. Especially the older you get. Yeah, exactly. And sarcopenia loss of muscle mass is a huge predictor for all cause mortality and morbidity, right? So your your chance of developing chronic disease and dying early. Yeah. It's very much related to the amount of muscle mass you're able to maintain.
So you need mTOR to preserve that muscle mass. So you need to cycle back and forth between autophagy and mTOR. And a lot of the people a lot of these people in the longevity space are they're they're doing low protein diet along with lots of fasting. Oh. In order, because they're like, well, I don't want to elevate mT. They get sunken. Exactly.
Yep.
They don't maintain their muscle mass. Their testosterone, you know, if they're male, testosterone goes way down. Um, male or female, I mean, their libido is going to go way down. Um, they're going to lose bone mass, muscle tissue. They're not going to age successfully.
Yeah. And by the way, you know, new studies are showing um, yeah, how you keep muscle is how good the brain works. Absolutely.
Mitochondrial reasons. Yeah. There's these compounds, these proteins that come out of muscle myokines, yeah, that play a significant role with brain health. And they drive up BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor, which helps with preserving the neurons and the synapses, little gaps between the neurons, right? You need really good BDNF production to develop that synaptoplasticity. And I don't know if you know about the Einstein study. Do you know about that?
No, no, no.
So at Stanford, they looked at Einstein's brain.
Oh no, I don't know about that.
They wanted to see what was different about Einstein's brain than somebody else that was of his age and body size. And they thought, well, maybe the hypothesis was he had more neurons than somebody else. Like his brain was heavier and more dense than the other person. And so they, when they looked at it, they found that it was roughly the same. Like it wasn't an it wasn't an amount of neurons or amount of protein in the brain.
Well, what they found was he had twice as many synapses, these little gaps between the neurons that actually allow us for greater complexity of thought, um, greater connectivity of the whole brain. So greater amount of creativity, um, innovative thought. Right. That's a good question, right? So I don't know exactly what he was doing. But here's one thing that they did know about Einstein was that when he would think, he would pace, he would walk back and forth and pace.
And sometimes he would close his eyes. And so when you are getting, you know, I I've never had this done, but when they're testing somebody for a DUI, they have him do a heel-to-toe walk. Because the cerebellum, which is called your little brain, right in the back of your brain, connects to your your cerebral cortex, connects everything, right? And that is the most sensitive area to alcohol. And so they're testing how is your cerebellum functioning.
When he's pacing back and forth, he's actually training, he's actually strengthening his cerebellum and ramping up neural pathways. So actually taking a walk and thinking, like if you're having if you're trying to solve problems in your business, if you're trying to solve problems in your relationships, take a walk. Take a walk. Don't close your eyes too long.
You might walk off.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But but do some balance training from time to time, too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, obviously he was born with more synapses. However, that said, um, obviously there's a lot of things we can avoid to that get rid of synapse. Yeah, like too much alcohol. Exactly. You know, too many drugs, right? Lack of sleep, right? For sure. But we know that also keeping muscle on as we age really plays into positive.
You know, that's really good stuff, man.
Really good stuff.
Well, that feast famine cycling is is really the best thing for autophagy and for maintaining muscle mass. Yep, right. That's a great thing. You can fast and actually preserve muscle mass, right? And actually feel great. In fact, I don't know if you know this, the Spartans, right? Like, you did you ever watch the movie 300? Oh, yeah. Well, that great movie, right?
And so the Spartans were known to work hard all day and feast in the evening and eat like they probably eat 300 grams of protein, right? Yeah. In like one or two, you know, like in a short period of time, they would eat a high amount of protein, but they found that they did their best work in a fasted state. I find that for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
Honestly, I do.
Yeah, I mean, feast famine. I I've taught this principle for years. You know, it's like, um, I think people need to hear it today more than ever, because obviously you have the group that is all feast, no famine. You need to famine. Uh, you know, go without most of our society. Yeah, that's most of our society. But then you have this other group, this new group that is like they need to feast, right? Or or even they're low carb too long, right?
And the body will still think it's starving if they're low carb too long. And I I think I brought this up on uh Mark's interview, Sesson, you know, that if you just remind the body it's not starving once or twice a week, where you, you know, eat high healthy carbs, or you eat more meals that day, right? A feast could be high carbs that you don't typically eat, right?
A feast could be high protein, you know, that you're like a bodybuilder, like a lot of protein that day, like the tribe who just gets the kill and eats 150 grams at sitting, 200. Um, or it could be high calorie. Right. Any of those can str basically activate that mTOR pathway. That's the build pathway. Yeah. But again, if you stay there too long, that's not good either. Yeah. Right? You know, so it is this balance of feast and famine that people need to do. I I think our ancestors did it.
They were forced to do it. Right. Because we can go down the street and eat anywhere, we're not forced to do it, right? So yeah, we have to be intentional about it. Catch me up just where you're at now. Like, what do you like? You're you're teaching some, you know, you're you're kind of you know, showing up at a lot of seminars, podcasts, things like that. Are you still taking clients on? What what's your main thing? And what do you see for yourself?
Yeah, so you know, I used to see clients for about 12 years. I sold my practice about five years ago, and uh, you know, now I just create content. So YouTube podcasts, blog articles. You know, I'm really I'm a visual learner.
You're great at creating content, you're great at writing, you know. So you're really doing it.
Yeah, and I'm a really visual learner. So I love infographics. So we put out a lot of infographics on, you know, all these different topics, feed spam, and cycling, all this kind of stuff, mTOR. We put out graphics on lots of these kinds of topics. Cause that's just the way that I've always learned is in pictures. Even as I talk to you, when I'm talking about concepts, I'm actually seeing pictures in my head, right? And so that's how I've always wanted to learn.
And so uh dyslexics, I'm dyslexic.
Yeah, I I see that too.
What you know, looking back, what are some of the uh the hardest cases um that you've ran into?
I mean, uh when you have advanced cancers, right? Things like that, really tough stuff. Um, I've helped a lot of people with gut issues. Uh the most the toughest cases are the advanced cancers where there's you know hypaxia and things like that. And you know, I like to send them to Hope for Cancer or, you know, one of those types of clinics where they can do just around the clock, like integrative therapies.
Um but you know, a lot of advanced gut cases, autoimmune types of cases, um you know, really going back to trying to restore the mitochondria. I mean, it's really like a lot of the things you talk about, right? The the five R's, right? It's it's really going back to the roadmap to help people get well. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I know, I know. Today uh people violate so many of the things that create cell health. Yeah, they're creating the opposite. That's why my saying is you have to fix the cell to get well. Yeah, the mitochondria part of the cell. This whole interview, if there's one thing that you want people to hear take away, what would it be?
Your body was created to heal itself, right? And we in in chiropractic I learned this term you know, your body doesn't need any help, just no interference. Okay. And as a chiropractor, I would work on trying to remove interference from the spine and nervous system. But as a functional nutritionist, I really focus on removing interference from the dietary stressors, right?
As well as the toxins that are that that people are ingesting every single day with the the food they eat, the water they drink, with the the what they're breathing in on a regular basis, the things they're putting on their skin. We've got to do everything we can to remove those toxic sources. Yeah. And then allow the body to do what it was supposed to do. And so the things we talked about from a nutrition perspective, when we get our protein right, we get blood sugar stability.
It allows us to go longer between meals. And that fasting period, we're just removing the interference and allowing the innate intelligence to go to work.
Couldn't agree more, man. I think that's what we got out of our education the best, our chiropractic education. Absolutely. What do you think right now of the biohacking uh that's going on, right? I mean, it's very popular, but yeah. Red lights, cold plunges, you know, high heat, all of it. What what's your take on all of it? You do some of it, none of it, all of it?
I I do I do a good bit of it. You know, my morning routine, I'm doing red and infrared light. I try to get in front of a, you know, a double panel, one in the front, one in the back for about 10 minutes. And I do breath holds during that period of time. And I have worship music on, right? So I'm just worshiping. Um, I try to get in my sauna. I try to get 100 minutes a week uh in my sauna if possible. Okay. Um, you know, and I have four young kids, right?
And I try to help out as much as I can around the house. So it entails me getting up at 6 a.m. to try to get a lot of this stuff done. But I feel so much better when I'm doing it. Yeah. I don't have a cold plunge, but I'll get in a, I'll, I'll turn my shower on cold. Um, I think it all depends on your your hormetic set point.
Yeah.
Right. Like you don't want to overwhelm your system.
It's true. Uh all those things can be that's they work based on stress. Right. So Mark Sisson, I in my interview with him, he doesn't do red light. Um, he believes strongly in the benefits of red light from the sun. Yeah. But he's suspicious of of um you know just focus on uh you know a couple channels of red light so you know I I I found that interesting I I feel him on that I I like a biohack but I remind myself it's a biohack. Yeah you know there's nothing better than full spectrum sun.
Right.
You know isolating a few spectrum it's a biohack, right? Meaning, you know, a biohack could be good, but I don't know about every day sometimes, you know?
Yeah. Cycle it I mean and that's a great thing. You don't have to do these things every day. Right.
In fact in a lot of cases you shouldn't do. Yeah, yeah. No, like I call cold plunges. He made the argument yeah you know it's it that's it works because if it's a great stress your body thinks it's gonna die. But that's the problem too. Yeah you can easily go over that board especially if you're already stressed.
Yeah exactly. So yeah you really have to just have a good idea good radar on what your stress bucket looks like right now.
Yeah yeah that's that's what I say.
And not overwhelm your system. Yeah absolutely but all these things can be very helpful yeah and they're great tools that you have in your tool belt.
Yep absolutely you just have to respect them for the stress that they are like fasting. That's what we said right and nothing is a cure all yeah I think that's the other big thing.
Our society wants the cure all what is the one herb right what's the one diet what's the one food what you know exactly is this the one thing if I just do this one thing and the reality is we just got to think about what our ancestors were exposed to and the kind of way that they live and in a sense with our modern technology and our modern comforts try to somewhat mimic it.
Yeah I agree. Where can people find out more about yeah well thanks again uh Dan Dr.
Pampa is a great mentor of mine great great leader in the health space for sure thank you and uh I would I would you know I'd be honored to just consider myself a a a prodigy you know of his right a student of his and so you can find me at drjockers.com Dr. Jockers functional nutrition podcast and my YouTube as well Dr. David Jocker.
Oh man thank you for being here wow yeah I just wealth of knowledge loved everything you taught today awesome man thanks for thank you yep yeah another great show of the Dr. Pompa podcast pain to purpose you heard the story right there so always always always look for your purpose in your pain but remember what I always say more important pain to purpose to promise I believe God has a promise in it somewhere but we do have to ask.
So awesome info but you have to apply it start applying it everything that you heard today. Share the episode and give it a lot of likes you know why there's so many people out here that need this gut information out there. There's a lot of people hurting with gut and they're doing it the wrong way. You heard it the right way here. See you on the next episode