Dr. Pompa Solo: This Popular Fast Destroys Your Muscle

And I prefer five-day fasts as a minimum, to be honest with you. I'll talk about the reason for that. They would just think, oh my gosh, going without food is very difficult. All right, well, partial fasting is actually where I like to start most people into a fast. So that means that you can actually eat a little bit of food every day and achieve the same results, oftentimes for some people, better results, and I'll tell you why. Okay, so what is a partial fast and how do you do it?

Okay, I think, first of all, partial fasting is a safer way to fast for many people, taking medications and even her just very metabolically challenged. I think partial fasting is a way to actually increase your results, and arguably it's easier, at least emotionally. Because if you think about eating a little food every day versus taking away all food, which one sounds more challenging? Well, I would argue that most people would say that uh a little food sounds easier than taking away all food.

But I'm gonna be honest with you, I prefer actually pure water fasting. Now, I've done an episode on dry fasting where you don't do food or water, another subject. Um, but the fact is, is that for me, eating a little bit of food, I just want to keep eating, but that's not the case for most people. Most people find partial fasting easier. But why did I say that maybe you get better results? Well, here's why.

Because when you take all food away from many people, their body is so broken at the cellular level that they have an inability to utilize fat as energy. And therefore, they have an inability also to go into what we call autophagy. Their body resists going into autophagy and they break down muscle into glucose. And that is not a good thing. It's called gluconeogenesis because then the fast is very, very challenging and oftentimes they lose the wrong weight.

Okay, so fasting may not be water fasting may not be for everybody, but I believe partial fasting is where most people actually get the most benefit and should start. So the fact is, is that people would say, yeah, but if you're eating a little bit of food, wouldn't you actually take away the benefits of fasting, that autophagy that you talk about? So let me just start from the top in case you haven't seen some of my other fasting episodes. So in a fasted state, the body needs to survive.

So it breaks down only bad cells in the body that are typically called senescent cells. These are cells that live too long, these are cells that drive inflammation, that also drive autoimmune, even cancer. So we want to get rid of these cells. The body's so smart that in a fasted state, it eats those bad cells. And here's the best part it stimulates a stem cell to replace it. So we actually get rid of the old and establish new. So that is a way that you can change your body.

You can change conditions like autoimmune. You know, if you have uh hypersensitivities to food, chemicals, things of that sort, and you can actually slow down aging because of autophagy. Science shows it, right? But that's the benefit of fasting. Okay, so does partial fasting still achieve this incredible benefit? The answer is yes.

As a matter of fact, a gentleman named Walter Longo, he actually, in some of his studies, showed that you actually get more autophagy in a partial fast than a pure water fast. Now hold on. I would argue that because you're looking at studying the average person who really is not really fat adapted, and when they fast, they don't really dig into that autophagy until maybe day four, five, or six.

Okay, so the fact is, is I would agree the average person will get more autophagy in a partial fast than they actually would in a water, a pure water fast. Now, if you're a seasoned faster, I believe Volter's wrong on that, and I love Volter, um, but I do disagree with him. I believe that a absolute seasoned faster will get more autophagy, meaning getting rid of more of those bad cells doing a water fast than they would a partial fast.

That said, the majority of people I think will benefit more starting with a partial fast. So let me tell you what it is, how to do it, because I think that's the most important part. But let me let me tell you a story

first, because in the 90s, I was into fasting. I studied fasting. Herbert Shelton wrote all the books on fasting, and I read all of them. Matter of fact, I was going to all of these Natural Hygiene Society seminars where it was a bunch of vegan vegetarians, and then there was me who wasn't. And because I was there because these were big fasters. They had some of the best fasting scientists in the world talking at their seminars.

So I would show up at these things, and I would even go to fasting clinics, and I wanted to know everything about fasting. And well, I found this French gentleman, Albert Mazier, and he was a big extended water faster. People would go to uh his clinics and they would uh spend a lot of time there extended fasting. But what he found was very interesting. He found that oftentimes when people would hit the wall on like, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 day fasts, I think most of his were at least a month.

I mean, he fasted people a long time. What would happen is when they would start to break the fast, he would notice that they would break through certain health conditions and even like turn bright-eyed and they would just feel absolutely amazing. And he would also notice that certain things like on their skin would start to clear up.

So he knew, even though he didn't know a lot about autophagy then, this is new science, this science around autophagy, the body feeding from bad cells, but he knew that something amazing happened and kept going in the healing process. That's what he identified after they would break the fast. Now, you have to understand, you don't just break a fast and start eating normal again. You break a fast with little amounts of food, aka a partial fast.

So when you come out of a pure water fast, you break it with a partial fast. But he would notice this phenomena of like these incredible healings that would happen while they were in the partial fast. So guess what he did? He would actually extend this partial fast even further, and he would see these results escalating as you know this partial fast would go on.

He came up with an idea of saying, wait a minute, these really sick people that oftentimes we don't get the good results with a water fast, let me just start them in a partial fast and just partial fast them. And the outcomes were extraordinary, especially for people who had a lot of health challenges. So born was the partial fast. Fast forward to modern day science, and Volter Longo, the Italian scientist, has made partial fasting very popular again. He calls it the fasting mimicking diet.

And matter of fact, he even has a box of food for five days. It's so funny because back years ago when I was into fasting people, I came upon five days. Here's why. I noticed that three days, and that's what typically most people do, a three-day water fast for some reason. But at three days, most people would just break through or almost break through. So I would say, go another day. And day four, they would feel amazing. And then I would say, carry it one more day to five.

So I just kind of evolved into a five-day fast as kind of being a sweet spot. Maybe some days, you know, some people seven. But five days to me became a minimum because of where I saw people break through. Now, look, I knew nothing about autophagy. I knew nothing about what was going on in the body. I was simply responding to what I saw. Today we know that most people hit what we call max autophagy, meaning your body getting rid of those really bad cells around day four.

So why not give it one more day? Volter Longo has said five days is a sweet spot because you even get a max growth hormone rise around day five. So he established a five-day fast. So I was like, oh yeah, I kind of happened upon that too. He thinks that's a sweet spot. But he came to this uh science around eating less. Well, one of his uh predecessors um was in the Biosphere 2 project.

I don't know if you remember what that was, but the science around eating less, a 30% reduction in calories, would extend your life and trigger a cert one gene, which extends people's lives. So the biosphere 2, they put the, they built this perfect environment, perfect food, perfect everything. And eight people went in this for two years. And they thought, hey, we're gonna extend our life. Every biomarker they measured, everything is gonna be extraordinary.

Our health's gonna go to another level, and we're proving it that decreased calories extends life. Well, it worked in frogs, mice, uh, all kinds of different animal studies, but something happened in the human study. It actually failed. They did trigger that CERT one gene, but the problem is, is they were catabolic. They were low calorie too long, their organs shrunk, their immune system got worse, fail.

But out of that came partial fasting in short periods of time, reduced calories in short periods of time, and that's what Volter Longo. So he didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. He said, How do we absolutely take that science to lengthen our life and actually make it so our body doesn't go into this catabolic state? Two years low calorie, yeah, it's gonna be bad. Five-day

fasts and partial fasts. So what is it? It's reducing your calories under a thousand. If you're stand uh typically most males under a thousand calories and under 20 grams of protein, if you're a smaller male or a female, it's more like you get your calories under 800. If you're really small, maybe even 600, and that's their daily calories, by the way. And getting your protein under 15 grams a day. Protein and calories, most important part.

Typically, carbohydrates fall um into that norm and you don't have to pay much attention. But if you want to number, make sure your carbs are under 50 grams a day. But again, that'll happen pretty naturally. Now, of course, we want to keep those foods healthy, right? So you're going to be eating a lot of different vegetables. I love olives, a little bit of avocado. You can't eat meat because it's too high a protein. But so you want to keep the foods very simple.

Anyways, Valtter actually put five days of food in a box. It's called proloan. And for many people, I think it's great. So I think it's a great idea. Proloan gives you a box of food day one, box of food for day two, around all those parameters that I just told you about. Um, and he believes even a perfect balance of the food. It's a it's a good thing.

However, um, I'm oftentimes in my doctors that I train dealing with people who have a lot of challenges, a lot of mast cell activations, sensitivities, and they have to build their own around the rules that I just uh set out for you. So it's pretty easy, right? You get up in the day and you can eat as many times as you want. When I partial fast, I typically still like to eat two meals a day, but some people do just like to eat throughout the day.

And for this, really, it's okay because keeping your calories under the thousand or eight hundred or six hundred, depending on body size, and keeping the protein under the 20 grams or 15 grams will keep you in autophagy. And as I pointed out, um, Volter actually showed that people still get max autophagy, even in a partial fast. So here's a way I tell people to fast always get yourself a glucose ketone meter.

If you go to ketomojo.com, keto mojo.com, you can buy one that does glucose and ketones. And I always say test your first morning glucose and ketones. Throughout a fast, you should see glucose dropping and ketones rising. When you hit a one-to-one ratio, we know that someone enters into what we call maxitophagy. Now, this is something that I put together. Thomas Seyfried used this one-to-one ratio.

They noticed that when tumors in a fasted state would stop shrinking, then they left that max autophagy. When they would continue to shrink at a high rate, they were maxitophagy. And he noticed this one-to-one ratio, they saw the fastest shrinkage in tumors, maxitophagy, meaning you're getting rid of a lot of bad cells. And but let me point out something. This is an important.

So if you're taking notes, if your glucose is, say, 90, you have to divide 90, or if it's 80, 90, doesn't matter, but you divide the glucose by 18. And now you get a number more like 3.8, right? So you I didn't do the math in my head correctly, perhaps, but um, but you get a number that now matches the ketones in millimolars. So you now compare the that to the ketones. So your ketones in a facid state are typically going to be 2.8, 4.8, even up to 8.8.

I'm I don't know why I keep saying the point. I'm just using examples. So it could be eight. It could be, you know, but when you enter something called ketosis, you're above 0.5 and above. But when a fasc state, typically you're getting very high ketones. 3.0, 4. something, 5. something, you get the point. And then you compare it to the glucose. When it's 1 to 1, so let's say your ketones are 3.3, you divide your glucose by 18, and it's 3.3, one-to-one ratio, max autophagy.

Now, let's say your ketones are 4.5 and your glucose is it comes out to be 3.1. Now you're even more max autophagy. So the higher the ketones, the lower the glucose, the more autophagy. Make sense? So I would suggest every day you wake up measuring those two numbers. And what you'll see is glucose trending down and ketones trending up, meaning your fast is doing the right thing. I sometimes people would text me and say, My glucose is 38. Am I okay? And I say, How do you feel? I feel fine.

I actually feel better. What are your ketones? 7.9. Well, that's why you feel amazing. And that's why your glucose is dropping. So it's normal to see that trend of ketones going up and glucose dropping. So very normal, don't panic. But the point is, is that during a partial fast, oftentimes we see better numbers for people that are metabolically challenged.

So I would say that that's the case for maybe perimetopausal women, people with thyroid problems, adrenal problems, other hormone challenges, people who are obese and really have trouble burning fat. Right? So a partial fast, you'll actually see better numbers than if they purely waterfasted. And their glucose isn't trending down because they're burning muscle. Does that make sense?

If you can turn glucose into muscle through something called gluconeogenesis, the glucose won't go down, ketones won't go up, and then you don't get a

lot of autophagy where you're getting rid of bad cells. So that's why for most people I suggest a partial fast. Now, back to Volter Longo. Volter actually showed, now this was an animal study to be clear, but they're duplicating this study in humans that a partial fast, five days for four consecutive months, actually reversed type 1. Did you hear that correctly? Type 1 diabetes in the rats reversed it.

Meaning what happened was is that they got rid of a lot of bad cells, these senescent cells, decreased a lot of inflammation, they got rid of bad cells uh in the uh the pancreas, but they created via stem cells new beta cells, and that's where you make insulin. Pretty cool. So the point is if you have typically most even type 1 diabetes have some beta cells left, and if you have some left, the body can actually produce more, and that's where they showed the diabetes reversal.

So exciting science. So if it happens for diabetes, what else can we reverse? Thomas Seifried, shrinking tumors during fasting. And again, partial fasting is, I think, psychologically so much easier for people. So how many people want to plan the next, maybe to plan three months or if five days next month, pick another five days, next month, another five days. Now, let me challenge you. I teach something called feast famine, where I believe the feasting is as important as the famine.

If you have five days where you're eating very less, you know, a lot less in a partial fast a month, I would say pick five days somewhere else in the month, ladies. Pick five days in feast. What is a feast? You'll perhaps eat more meals if you're an intermittent faster. Maybe eat three, four meals for five days in a row or even a week. Break it up, is my point. Maybe it's high protein. Well you're trying to get one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So lean body weight.

So if your lean body weight is 130 pounds, you try to get 130 grams of protein in that day. That could be a feast, right? Even more for some people, but high protein is a feast. More food and more meals is a feast. And also it could be more carbohydrates if you're someone in healthy carbs, if you're someone who runs low carbs all the time. Feasting is as important as the fasting. It reminds the body it's not starving.

Remember what happened in the Biosphere 2 project, low calorie too long, not good. But also uh putting the body in that anabolic state, a lot of healing happens. And I would say most women, we tend to need to feed them up like that. Feasting is really important. It fires up the metabolism, and then you get more benefit when you actually fast. And now you're in the state of autophagy. Look, the feast famine, there's two pathways that are at play here. I already taught you one.

The pathway in fasted state, whether it's partial or pure water, is autophagy. The body's getting rid of bad cells. That's a catabolic state, meaning getting rid of. But in a feast, the body is stimulating a pathway called mTOR. Now, anti-agers would say mTOR ages you prematurely. It can drive cancer. Well, if you stay in that feasted state long, disaster. It does do that. Matter of fact, same criticism here.

When the people in the Biosphere 2 project stayed in that autophagy state, reducing calories, they became catabolic. They lowered their immunity. It was a fail. So either autophagy or mTOR too long is bad. So you don't want to feast too long, which this is what a lot of Americans do, their every day is a feast, not good. Okay. But times of feasting, five days a month, perhaps, in times of famine is magic. Even weekly, we do this.

So if we have like one or two days a week where we eat one meal or no meals, okay, there's the famine state. But we add a couple days in where we feast. Wake up and eat three, four meals that day, higher protein, just as I described. Feast famine creates a hormitic stress on the body and actually improves your microbiome. It actually improves your microbiome and actually adds diversity into the microbiome. So there's a lot of benefits.

We even have a hormone optimization with feast famine cycling. I've done shows on this, I've done podcasts on how to do feast famine cycling weekly, monthly, and even seasonally. Um, but it works. But look, my challenge is to you is that try a partial fast. If you've never fasted, this is where you start. And once again, for many of you, this is the better way. You'll actually get better results.

Now, as you become seasoned, then you can move into a pure water fast, and it's going to be very easy for you, and you might like it more. But look, Thomas Seyfried, he's one of the top can, I just mentioned him as giving him credit for how this we f figured out the one-to-one ratio for max autophagy. Um, he is one of the top cancer doctors in the world, I believe. He said, one fast a year can decrease your chances of cancer up to 95%. One fast a year.

I'm challenging you to do a couple months, maybe three months, even five, or yeah, whatever. But pick five days and do a partial fast, like Volter did in the study. Watch what your body does with that. Watch what your body can get rid of. Take the old you out and reestablish the new you. And by the way, many people who don't feel well, they're autoimmune. Meaning the body's attacking itself. It's hyperimmunity and they have low, good immunity. Well, guess what?

When you do these types of fasts, what your body does is it gets rid of these hyperimmune cells, then it stimulates a stem cell and creates a naive immune cell which doesn't overreact. So it's a way to reverse the hyperimmunity, often called autoimmunity. But I challenge many people to do it. Partial fast. Try it, watch what happens to your health. Share this episode. People need to know this information. And stay tuned for the next incredible podcast, Dr. Pompa Podcast.