Symptoms, Labels, and Conventional Medicine
Replay & Transcript of Episode 2

Health Seekers Radio December 12, 2015

Announcer:
Welcome to Health Seekers, a show where two mortal men with extraordinary curiosity and decades of experience work on your behalf to seek truth in the overlapping realms of body, mind, and spirit. The goal? Empowering you to achieve the highest levels of excellence. Dr. Dan Pompa, renowned expert in cellular health, and longtime health and fitness expert, Phil Kaplan, come together for a show that demands your full attention. Join Dan, Phil, and guests from around the planet sharing enlightenment and insight, all aimed at the best you’ve ever seen. This is an interactive broadcast. Call in with thoughts, questions, or comments. Now, Dr. Dan Pompa and Phil Kaplan turning on the heat, kicking up the dust, and finding the truth you deserve.

Phil Kaplan:
My head hurts. I’m so tired. My skin is breaking out in a rash. My hair is falling out, and my nails are brittle.

Dan:
Phil, stop right there. I hear these complaints every day.

Phil Kaplan:
Liquids are dripping out of the orifices of my body.

Dan:
Okay, I’ve never heard it put quite that way before.

Phil Kaplan:
I’m nauseous.

Dan:
I hear these every day, Phil. Okay. Where are you going with that?

Phil:
This is what people come with. I think — let’s get right to it. The medical field likes to give people labels. I would say the conventional medical model is you show up at the doctor’s office. The doctor says, “What’s wrong?” You go into that. You go, “Well, my head hurts, I get sore throats a lot, and I get a lot of infections.” The doctor’s mission is to find a diagnosis so now they can give you the medicine, right?

Dan:
Absolutely. If you can’t put a label on it, Phil, then how are we legally, ethically allowed to give you the solution? I don’t know if I want to call it a solution but the prescription medication.

Phil:
The purported solution; that’s the idea, that we are going to give you this thing and it’s going to make you well. I want to say this, and I’m going to ask you either back me up on it or challenge me, either way.

Dan:
Alright.

Phil:
When I look at what we call the symptoms checklist, because when we do intake in my studios, when we do an intake with a new client and we have them fill out this form where they rate their symptoms zero through four. Zero, I never had it at all; four, I have it severe and frequent, right?

Dan:
Yeah.

Phil:
They list all of these symptoms that they have, and I would say the great majority of them are tied to the endocrine system. What I mean is hormones.

Dan:
Absolutely.

Phil:
You agree?

Dan:
Absolutely. Hormones are at the root of most of why people don’t feel well today.

Phil:
They don’t come in and say, “I have a hormonal imbalance.” They never say that.

Dan:
Never.

Phil:
Is it fair to say that most people — in fact most people who are listening to us right now who have symptoms — have a hormonal imbalance and don’t even know it?

Dan:
Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it.

Phil:
I would take it a step further. I would say not only the symptoms but also the condition. Here’s a condition that people have that they never identified, and it all ties to hormones. Weight loss resistance. Dan, you have become the go-to guru on weight loss resistance, but most people don’t even know that’s what they have. Really, what that is is a hormonal imbalance. I want to make one more statement: I believe obesity isn’t a condition as much as, based on the way medicine categorizes diseases, a chronic metabolic disease, and it has the endocrine system at its core.

Dan:
There’s no doubt. Back in the day, Phil, as we say, people would be able to just change their diet, exercise a little more, and lose weight. Today, there’s a term that really didn’t exist back then. The term back then was gluttony or lazy. The term today is actually weight loss resistance, meaning despite how you eat and how much you exercise, people today, in a growing number, cannot lose weight.

Phil:
Despite how you eat and despite how you exercise. Let’s think about that because that’s what most people try.

Dan:
Yeah.

Phil:
Let’s talk about the impact of hormones, first in the way that people can relate to, and then let’s go a little deeper. I want to start with this. I’m going to give you three letters: PMS. You’ve heard of it?

Dan:
I’ve experienced it. Not personally. Maybe I have.

Phil:
Me, too. On the other end. On the receiving end. PMS was originally seen as an imagined disease. It was in people’s heads, in women’s heads.

Dan:
Yeah, you’re right.

Phil:
I think that’s what women were told, right? “It’s all in your head.” The formal medical description of Premenstrual syndrome, which was later extended to PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, goes back about 70 years. It wasn’t until the 1980s that it kind of became socially accepted as a reason for odd behavior, right?

Dan:
I like that, odd behavior. That’s kind of nice.

Phil:
It’s uncharacteristic behavior. The very sane, happy wife becomes a raving lunatic.

Dan:
[Laughter]

Phil:
Alright, send your letters, send your emails. Hey look, I’m speaking from personal experience. I had one of those for a while.

Dan:
In my house, myself and my children are not allowed to say, “Mom, is it close to your period?” We’re not allowed to say that because we’re insinuating it’s the hormones. To me, I go, “That’s the best excuse in the world. What do you mean?” I wish it were my hormones when I’m pissed off. I don’t understand that.

Phil:
You wish it were your hormones. Let me tell you this. When I was — I’m going to say 14, 15, I wanted to have sex with the hottest girl in my school. My crazy body wanted to have sex with the ugliest, or the prettiest, or my Spanish teacher, or the older sisters of my friends; it didn’t matter. Along with that, my sense of what was right and wrong went right out the window. My brain flipped upside-down. Dan, I know we had this conversation privately. When I was that age, I used to fight for no reason. All of a sudden, I’d see a guy and we’d looked at each other a certain way. “What are you looking at?” “What are you looking at?” We fight. It was this sudden aggression.

Dan:
High T syndrome.

Phil:
It’s hormones. Am I right?

Dan:
Absolutely. It’s hormones. They made you crazy, Phil.

Phil:
In my 20s, and, again, I’m speaking from personal experience, I didn’t want to sleep with everything female. I was more selective at that time, a little more discerning. Friday nights, my buddies and I, we would go out. That’s what we did. “Hey, you want to go out?” “Yeah, we’re going out.” It really meant we’re looking to conquer. I would say alcohol made it easier, to a point. It really was a driving force beneath my conscious want. It was something deeper that created this Friday night or Saturday night mission that really — hey, politically correct or not — it felt like a hunt. It felt like we’re going on a hunt.

Dan:
This sounds very hormonal. It sounds like what happens watching Wild Kingdom. You see the hunt going down, hormone-driven.

Phil:
Exactly right. We are victims of that. As mammals, we go through that. What I’m describing with purpose here are periods of hormonal shifts that sends specific hormones into dominance. Is it fair to say hormones can make us crazy?

Dan:
Yeah. You have a lot of ladies out there that don’t like you right now. You might want to reel this back in. Ladies, there’s hope here. There’s hope for Phil. There’s hope for me. There’s hope for you. Hormones will direct us into — male or female, it can make us crazy. It can make us tired. It can make us not lose weight. It can make us not be able to think. It can give us brain fog, or the opposite. It can give us energy. It can make us think very clearly, remember things, feel great, sleep on time, wake up refreshed. Hormones are responsible for all that, for better or for worse.

Phil:
Dan, we were recently together at an event, speaking at an event. If you remember, I spoke about subconscious or subliminal influence. I was sharing how advertisers have learned to get people to make irrational decisions. I’m not going to talk about that here, but I would say it is mind-blowing. Would you agree?

Dan:
It is. I watch my teenage boys. I see this all the time at my house. I have a house full of teenagers, Phil, you don’t have to convince me.

Phil:
Hormones flying everywhere. I’ll tell you what the advertisers do. They create a hormonal environment of receptiveness that make people buy impulsively. We’ll be back.

Phil:
Words can make us buy. We’ll be back right after this.

Phil:
All right, so again, right before we left, you said something.

Dr. Pompa:
What did I say?

Phil:
They make us buy.

Dr. Pompa:
Uh-huh, yes, they make us—hormones can make us buy? Come on, Phil, really? Come on. Come on.

Phil:
Wait. Let’s be clear here. We’re not saying B-I, right? We’re not saying bi like you like men and women.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, like—oh, bisexual?

Phil:
Yeah, we’re saying purchase. To make you purchase, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, purchase, purchase. I was going to say, we’re going into this conversation right now, really?

Phil:
I didn’t want people to misunderstand when right before the break you said we’re bi. I wanted people to understand we’re—no, no. I want to be clear.

Dr. Pompa:
No, we’re not talking about bisexual. We’re talking about actually purchasing things that maybe we don’t even need, right? Happens all the time, doesn’t it?

Phil:
Right, so advertisers have learned the science of changing the hormonal environment affecting two neurotransmitters, dopamine and oxytocin, that completely changed the hormonal chemical makeup of the body so you’re put in a state where you can behave irrationally.

Dr. Pompa:
Beautiful.

Phil:
So we have to understand that hormones are to blame for many of the behaviors that we see on a daily basis. Now, no, this is not a show about hormones. This is show about your health and finding answers, and what I’m saying to you is if you’ve had some of the symptoms we spoke about earlier and your doctor didn’t speak to you about hormonal imbalance, I think it’s time to go back for another visit or maybe seek a little more. Maybe go to a different doctor. Maybe go to a different expert. Because when you get hormones in balance—I’m not saying it cures everything, but I’m saying many of the symptoms that people display in our society today tend to minimize, lessen, or in some cases, go away. We’re looking at hormonal imbalances where one sort of counters another, or it goes up to high, and the endocrine system works in a cascade. You can’t mess with one hormone without messing with another, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Uh-huh, that’s right.

Phil:
So if people know this, isn’t it as simple as going for hormone shots? I mean, people are hearing this now, and they’re going, okay, yeah, maybe it is my hormones. I saw an ad for hormone replacement therapy. Is that going to be the solution?

Dr. Pompa:
Well, you’re—right now you’re tapping into what is very in vogue, giving more hormones, whether it’s the allopathic side of things giving artificial hormones or the natural side giving bioidentical hormones. This, Phil, is in vogue right now, big time. The question is does it work?

Phil:
And the question is is it safe, and the question is what is the long-term outcome? So if you think about what we were talking about earlier, when we were in our teens and 20’s, I mean, everybody kind of wants to feel like they did back then, and you can eject hormones that are going to give you that sense. Absolutely, you can, right? You can get hormones that are going to give you increased libido, and increased sex drive, and increased aggression. You can do that.

Dr. Pompa:
I mean, if we asked the bodybuilders—this is your world, Phil, and I looked at a guy who’s 250 pounds in front of me and ripped. These guys are 280 and ripped now, aren’t they? The question would be does it work? The answer is obvious. Of course it works. Look at this guy. He could never look like this, this big, this lean, if it wasn’t for steroids, testosterone growth hormone, or whatever they’re using, right? So then it does work, Phil.

Phil:
It does work, and it works if the goal is to build massive muscle. It does work, yes. It works if the goal is to become aggressive beyond what would be considered the norm. It does work. It does work for athletes to perform better. It does work. It works to speed recovery. Absolutely, it works.

And for many years, I did more of a fitness oriented show, and I had regular guests who were bodybuilders and athletes. And I got people to open up and speak about the drug use or abuse, and it is excessive. It has been excessive for 30 years. It’s kind of this big lie. You know, people get upset, the public gets upset when they hear a baseball player was using steroids, and all of a sudden, he tarnishes his reputation.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, Pete Rose.

Phil:
Yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty long list at this point, and it’s not only baseball. I mean, golfers are using steroids, but I think what people need to understand is there is a hypocrisy. Because if you want to see somebody perform at a superhuman level on a football field, and get their head bashed in, and carry the ball again, and get their head crushed into the ground, and carry the ball again, and you want them to come back next week, the human body’s not capable of that unless it is chemically enhanced. So the public creates this demand that can only be met by using something external to get that, so—and if you pay some…

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
If you pay somebody $35 million, they can, I think, justify meeting the demand that the public wants, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Same thing happened to Lance Armstrong. I mean, this is the cycling world. They were all using. You know, Lance got singled out because he was the best, right? And the French hated him too. But what people don’t understand is that the whole industry is using. To compete at that level, to recover as fast as you have to, to ride 23 days practically in a row, you to compete, if there’s ten guys on it, all have to take it. So yeah, great pressure, Phil, yeah.

Phil:
And Dan, I want to be clear. Because if I were listening right now, I would think, oh, here are two guys who are going to sell me on hormonal replacement. They’re about to make the offer, right? Come in, $200. We’re going to—we’re not.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we’ve painted one side. We’ve painted one side of that picture.

Phil:
Yeah. If we were to tell you the truth as we have been doing, we’d have to acknowledge that steroids work for athletic performance, for putting on muscle. There’s no question. Because you are overloading your endocrine system with the predominantly male hormone testosterone in the cases we’re talking about, but here’s what people don’t know. Let me start by saying this. There are lots of bodybuilders who are now in their late 30’s or 40’s who are very glad that Viagra was invented.

Dr. Pompa:
Because they don’t have it themselves.

Phil:
That’s right. They lose it.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.

Phil:
So they look very, very male, but the body is trying desperately to restore balance because things are out of balance. I personally know over 20 bodybuilders who have had gynecomastia removed.

Dr. Pompa:
Aka, bitch tits, am I right? I’m not being a wise guy. That’s really what it’s called.

Phil:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
It is female breast tissue develops in somebody who is massively male, right? Why? Because the body’s trying to—it’s going, wow, testosterone out of control. Let me convert some of it into estrogen. We’ll do a future show on this. We’ll actually have some professional bodybuilders who can speak from the inside, but I’ll mention it. There are about, I’d say, 25 professional level bodybuilders, most of whom I’ve known personally, who died somewhere between 22 and 44 years old. I mean, these are guys who are at the top of their game. Mohammed Benaziza won an event. I think it was the Grand Prix.

Dr. Pompa:
I remember that, yeah.

Phil:
Went back stage and died, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
So when we look at that and we go, okay, here are—this is the epitome of the individual who takes hormonal supplementation. I’ve heard them call it chemical therapy, but they’re putting drugs in their body to become more masculine. It seems to cut their lifespan in half.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, but, you know, I think that people listening are going, yeah, but that’s different, Phil. You know, these people had normal hormones, and then they’re just giving hormones. But me, my estrogen’s low. My progesterone’s low. My testosterone is low. So it’s different because I’m taking something, and I’m making up that difference.

Phil:
And it is different, but I think it’s important that people look at the example that we just discussed to just realize that you mess around with the hormonal cascade, and there’s going to be some outcome on the other end.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
When you look at an extreme, it’s an extreme outcome, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Right, there’s no doubt, absolutely.

Phil:
I know in—when we’re having dinner with people, you love to ask me to talk about the female bodybuilder that I interviewed.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, gosh, if we get on that subject, we’re not coming out. We’re not coming out alive.

Phil:
We’ll save that for another time.

Dr. Pompa:
And he still—he won’t even describe it to me, folks. He won’t even describe what he saw. I’m not kidding.

Phil:
I actually saw. I saw what was going on.

Dr. Pompa:
I know. He won’t tell me what it—I want to know. I want to—I think you want to know. Let’s get him to describe it when we come back.

Phil:
We will be back.

Phil:
All right, so listen. I decided.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, boy.

Phil:
I’m not going to talk about the female bodybuilder today.

Dr. Pompa:
Of course, save that, but don’t—we’re going to get you to describe what you saw that day, and I’m bound and determined to do that.

Phil:
Oof, okay. Yeah, I get very weird…

Dr. Pompa:
See, I heard that. I heard you retreat, wha, wha. Because that’s what he says, folks. He says, you know, I can’t describe because I get literally sick. And you heard that wha in the background. If we were watching you, I could see you just turn inside yourself as I—when I bring up the subject.

Phil:
And just so people understand what—I mean I’m not talking about looking at her externally. I saw the…

Dr. Pompa:
Yes, right, the genitalia.

Phil:
Yeah, so…

Dr. Pompa:
Yes, uh-huh, right, got it.

Phil:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that was a good thing. Because people would think, oh, what do you mean? Was she that—no.

Phil:
No.

Dr. Pompa:
I think we understand now.

Phil:
We’re going in a different direction right now, okay.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah, pull it back, Phil. Pull it back now. Come on.

Phil:
Okay, so how does this really apply to the general population? Well, it applies to the patients that you speak to every single day. It applies to the people we meet in the grocery store, the people who come to our seminars, because many of them are dealing with hormonal imbalance that they don’t understand.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Phil:
So they’ve been diagnosed with conditions. They’ve told they have diabetes. They mistakenly think diabetes is a blood sugar condition.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s a hormone condition.

Phil:
It’s a hormone condition. They’ve been told they have a thyroid problem. They believe that’s a problem with the thyroid gland.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.

Phil:
They don’t understand that there are little messengers, things in their body, that are affecting the way they look and feel, and so much of it stems from this hormonal cascade. And we are seeing epidemic of hormonal imbalance. So let’s help people identify some of it. So Dan, talk a little bit about all of the people that you’ve run into as patients who have been diagnosed with something like hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, whatever categorization you want to give it. They come to you, and they have symptoms. So talk about that.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I mean, most of them present with low energy. If it’s thyroid, the hair can start to thin, fall out. They don’t sleep as well. That starts. And then the weight gain eventually starts, and then the weight loss resistance eventually starts. Most of the people who end up my way or the doctors that we train, their way, they’ve already been the medical route. And they were put on medications.

You know, by the way, let me back up a second. A lot of them come in. They’ve said, man, I think something’s going on with my thyroid because I can’t lose weight or maybe their blood sugar, and their bloodwork is often normal for years before they actually get a diagnosis. Because it takes years for your bloodwork to really go out of line. However, let’s say that it is at this point. Then they go to their doctor, and they’re typically put on thyroid medication. Some type of insulin replacement or something like Metformin that changes the hormones in the body. But eventually, the problem is this. Their bloodwork gets normal, Phil, but they still don’t feel well. That’s what we see day in and day out, or they haven’t lost weight.

Phil:
Okay, let’s back up. Let’s back up. The bloodwork gets normal from what? What makes the…

Dr. Pompa:
The medication will make the bloodwork normal, but if it makes them feel better, it’s very short lived. So even if they do feel a little better—and that’s kind of what people say. I feel a little better, or this helped. That didn’t. Typically, that even weans down. I mean, that kind of goes away, even the feeling good, to where they end up back where they are, not feeling well, but darn it. The bloodwork looks better. Why don’t I feel well?

Phil:
So let’s understand what happened. They went to the doctor, and they ultimately got a diagnosis. It was based on bloodwork, and bloodwork showed there was a deficiency in some hormone, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Correct.

Phil:
T4, T3, TSH, or some deficiency.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, but it takes years of symptoms even before you get there, but yes, correct.

Phil:
Right, so now the doctor says, oh, now we know what it is, right? Eureka! We figured it out. All we have to do is give you the medication, but the medication in most cases is the hormone. Correct?

Dr. Pompa:
Correct. Correct.

Phil:
So they are exogenously—not unlike the bodybuilder. Very different but there’s a similarity here. They are taking a hormone external of them and putting it in the body.

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.

Phil:
If the hormone was low in the body and they now put it in from the outside, it’s certainly reasonable that now the bloodwork will show a higher level.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it seems very logical.

Phil:
But the question is did the body do anything? And that’s part of where people are very deceived. So they go back to the doctor. As you said, the doctor looks at the bloodwork and goes everything’s fine, and now they feel lost, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s right.

Phil:
And not unlike—you know, I started the show. We talked about the PMS. They use to say it was in women’s heads. At this point, the doctor says you’re okay. It must be in your head. Let’s get you some Prozac.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
It is a hormonal issue, and according to what you just said, Dr. Pompa, the fix is not always taking an external hormone and putting it into the body in the form of a medication. Am I right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no doubt. Look, there’s a time and a place. If you don’t have a thyroid, you’re going to have to take some thyroid hormone. If you don’t have your pancreas, the beta cells in the pancreas are gone. Then you’re going to need to take insulin, possibly the rest of your life. But folks listening, that’s—those are rare cases that I’m speaking of right there, and even those folks have to consider this. It’s not about how much hormones you’re taking. It’s about how that your cells in your body actually hear the hormones.

Let me give a quick example, Phil, and I’ll—it’ll take me here a second. Look, it’s like shouting at our kids, folks. We can take—we can shout louder at our children. In the beginning, they seem to listen better, but Phil, what happens as we keep shouting at our children? Do they listen better or worse?

Phil:
They become deaf.

Dr. Pompa:
Yes. They become deaf, so too your cells. We can take hormones, and often times, feel a little bit better. But then it goes on, and it’s shouting at your cells, shouting at your cells. Your cells start to not hear the hormones. So it doesn’t matter really what the hormone level becomes. It really matters what’s happening at your cell. Can your cells even hear the hormones? That’s really the issue, Phil.

Phil:
So we spoke about thyroid, and now you mentioned the pancreas at certain point. Let’s talk about that. Because we’re seeing metabolic syndrome, Type II diabetes, blood sugar elevations, also hormonal., which ties in very closely with appetite, overeating or undereating, and obesity, all hormonal, right?

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right, yep.

Phil:
So talk about those hormones. What are we looking at here?

Dr. Pompa:
Well, I mean, look, you have to understand. Type II diabetes, right, this is where you have plenty of insulin. Therefore, meaning you have plenty of hormone, matter of fact, too much hormone. But wait a minute. Why can’t I get the glucose in my cell? And by the way, that’s what insulin does. It just shuttles the glucose in the cell. So you can have energy, and feel good. Think normal.

But the problem is is wait, I have all this hormone. But yet, wait a minute. I don’t feel well. Well, because, see, the amount of insulin doesn’t matter. The fact is is it can’t communicate with the receptors on the cell and get the glucose in. See, there’s something called—and I—every person listening has heard inflammation, right? Oh, my gosh, this evil thing. It is literally the cause of every disease from cancer, to diabetes, to thyroid. Even the reason why people can’t lose weight today despite what they eat and how much they exercise, inflammation.

But folks, I’m not talking about shoulder inflammation. That is inflammation, but I’m talking about cellular inflammation. It blunts these hormone receptors and keeps your cells from hearing. So I don’t care how loud you shout at those kids. They become more and more deaf the more hormones we’re taking.

Phil:
So very similar to the thyroid—the person diagnosed with thyroid issues taking a thyroid hormone, the person diagnosed with blood sugar issues typically is prescribed a blood sugar medication. And Metformin, Glucophage, those are kind of the mainstays.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Phil:
What they do is they hold glycogen in the liver.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
So in the moment that they measure blood, they go, oh, your blood glucose is better. That’s not because things are working properly. That’s because they now exogenously put something in that prevented the liver from releasing glucose into the bloodstream. But you said it is excessive insulin. It’s just that the insulin isn’t working, and as Doctor Pompa said, insulin shovels the glucose, the blood—the sugar into the cell. So now the pancreas is making more and more and more. Going I don’t know why it’s not working. I got to make more. I got to make more. I got to make more. If nobody’s addressing the overproduction of insulin, then nobody’s identifying the problem is at the cellular level.

Dr. Pompa:
Yes.

Phil:
That’s where it exists, and I believe, you’ll back me up on this, that’s where it’s fixed. Correct?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, so what do we do?

Phil:
Well, that’s what we’ll answer when we come back. We’ll talk about what are the solutions? What can you do to get that hormonal system back in balance? Don’t go away.

Phil:
We haven’t really spoken about our archenemy today.

Dr. Pompa:
Who’s that?

Phil:
They.

Dr. Pompa:
Haha, yes, well, they say that hormones can help, Phil. So if they said, then maybe that is the answer.

Phil:
And I know. I know that whenever we get behind the microphone and do a show, as I told you last week, they speed up time. They make it go really fast because they don’t want this out there.

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, man.

Phil:
They don’t want people to know.

Dr. Pompa:
There’s no doubt. Listen, we better give them some answers, but I can tell you this, folks, listen, the philosophy is this. A hundred and eighty degrees opposite of what you’re hearing. Everyone’s saying hormones, hormones, hormones. Even alternative doctors, take more hormones, more bioidentical hormones. Shout louder. It’s your kids. But the answer is somehow always 180 degrees opposite of what you’re hearing. So what’s that, Phil?

Phil:
And let’s just help people understand that if you have a thyroid issue, you have a hormonal issue—I’m repeating what we said earlier for those who just tuned in.

Dr. Pompa:
Uh-huh.

Phil:
If you have a diabetes condition, you have a hormonal issue.

Dr. Pompa:
Correct.

Phil:
And then we have many issues that are related to the sex hormones, right, primarily estrogen, and testosterone, and imbalances in progesterone, and everything else that happens along that cascade. So here’s the big question. If in fact so much of what people are suffering with relates to hormonal imbalance, and if hormonal replacement therapy is not, in fact, the panacea that cures all, can there be something natural? Can there be a process? Can there be a system? Can there be a protocol that helps people to restore and maintain hormonal balance naturally?

Dr. Pompa:
Well, I felt like you were going to sell me something there for a second. I was getting a little panicked. You know, the moment I hear is there something natural? Is there something—everyone wants the pill. Everybody wants the pill, powder potion lotion, the magic. Instead of asking the question, hold on a second. Dr. Pompa said this is cellular inflammation that’s blocking the hormones, right?

So it doesn’t matter. We can give more hormones. Feel good temporarily. But ultimately, it’s not fixing the problem. We have to ask ourselves what’s causing the cellular inflammation, Phil, because that’s where the magic lies. Wait a minute. If we can downregulate this cellular inflammation, then, therefore, your hormones will start being heard by the cell, and then you’ll feel better. Is that true? I can tell you it is true, every time, Phil.

Phil:
It’s also interesting—it’s interesting that you picked on that. You said I feel like you’re trying to sell me something. Because I said is there something natural? It’s interesting that people now think natural means a supplement.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil:
So natural, in their mind, has become something in a bottle that’s put out by a manufacturer, and I think the word natural is misunderstood.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
And I—at its roots, at its early roots, medicine had two components: Panacea and Hygeia. This is from ancient Greek or became Greek mythology. Panacea was the goddess of herbs, and interventions, and surgeries. And Hygiea was the goddess of healthy lifestyle, right, to bring it to a 21st century term. Medicine today is all Panacea. They sort of forgot about Hygeia. So when I say natural, I don’t necessarily mean a natural supplement. I mean something we can do without drugs. Something we can do without taking things from the outside, or there’s strategies we can use to restore hormonal balance.

Dr. Pompa:
Well, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, you know, look, folks, you have to change your diet. When we look at the three main causes of inflammation, I always—there’s many, but I say there’s three main ones. Number one, you have to control your glucose and insulin. If you want to age faster than anybody in your neighborhoods, friends, family, just keep spiking your insulin and glucose, and by the way, folks, that’s the—I know most of you listening are saying I don’t eat sugar. I’m very good. My diet’s very good. You know, everybody that comes to me with problems, their diet was good too.

But the fact is is the American diet is not good, even if you tried to be good. So but glucose spikes, all the grains we’re eating today spike glucose. They’re refined. They’re processed. They’re GMO. There’s major problems with that, and we’ll do a future show on it. But folks, if you’re spiking glucose, if you’re eating like most Americans, I promise you, you are spiking glucose and insulin, and it’s driving inflammation.

The second, the bad fats that are in everything people are eating. It’s not the saturated fat and cholesterol. I alluded to that in the last show. Matter of fact, those fats are—they actually are shown to fix these hormone conditions. Go figure, saturated fat and cholesterol, really, 180 degrees opposite, folks. But it’s the vegetable oils. These things are everywhere. Go in whole foods. Go in health food stores. They’re everywhere. Canola oil, this vegetable oil, they’re rancid oils that stick to the fatty membrane, and they drive cellular inflammation.

And the third is toxins, and Phil, we’re going to do so many shows on neurotoxic illness. Because, look, I take criticism for this comment and I’ll take criticism today, perhaps, but look, the inability to lose weight today has more to do with hormones that even what we eat. And I just feel like you might think I contradicted myself. I didn’t. But because this is a toxic driven problem, these hormone issues, these toxins come in. They attach to the membrane. Drive this cellular inflammation. Folks, this is why you don’t feel well. This is why you can’t hear your hormones.

So if we can change these three things, we can change people’s hormone health. And then guess what? Magic can happen after that, and we use a lot of other strategies: fasting, intermittent fasting. And we’ll talk a lot about that, and I do a lot of shows on Cellular Healing TV on that, on those topics, Phil.

Phil:
And you know what? I know to many people it sounds like a lot of work. You know, I had somebody say to me the other day, well, this is hard. Changing the way I eat is hard. Yeah, it’s hard. Sure.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Phil:
But I think living in fatigue is hard. I think being unhappy with the way you look and feel every day is hard. I think wishing you had the energy to keep up with your kids is hard. So by comparison, why wouldn’t you?

Dr. Pompa:
Brain fog’s hard. You know?

Phil:
Yeah, so—yeah, you got to change the way you eat. You got to make some changes in lifestyle, but here’s the really good news. The really good news is when you get the exercise piece right. You get the nutrition piece right, and you use a strategy that really does eliminate some of those toxins Dr. Pompa is talking about. And it’s not a colon cleanse. It’s not like you just take something and the toxins go away. But when you understand the process, guess what system moves back toward balance, and that’s why…

Dr. Pompa:
The hormonal system.

Phil:
Yeah. When you look at the systems checklist, and you look at what people indicate when they come in, and we look at them weeks or months later, after they’ve gone through these changes, their symptoms dropped to almost nothing. And what’s interesting is nobody did anything to treat the symptoms.

Dr. Pompa:
No.

Phil:
All we did was restore balance. So if you walk away from nothing else on today’s show, understand this. You have far greater control than you were led to believe. And I’m not saying there’s never a time that you should go for hormonal supplementation or therapeutic use of hormones, but I will say this. When you mess around with the natural process that your endocrine system is driving, there is always going to be another end. You cannot mess with a single hormone because the hormonal cascade is exactly that. And as soon as you change one, there’s another change. So it’s a slippery slope.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, yeah.

Phil:
And sometimes there’s no coming back from it.

Dr. Pompa:
Hey, Phil…

Phil:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
Go ahead. Finish your point.

Phil:
I did. There’s no coming back from it.

Dr. Pompa:
There’s no coming back from it. There’s no coming back. Well, you know, I’m often asked this question, and because we’re doing a show like this, I would be asked this question. What about the HCG diet? My friend lost 30 pounds. You know, and folks, you’re going to hear us talk about why caloric restriction, cutting calories, it works. Eh, ladies tend, if you’re really lucky, 15 pounds, but then it stops working, right? It stops, and then you can’t lose any more weight. Then you start gaining it again.

But, you know, the HCG diet, I’ve watched people lose 30 pounds on that. Well, because it’s a hormone like testosterone. It keeps you from losing muscle while you cut your calories down to 500, and your body catabolizing itself and crushing its metabolism. So yes, it works on the short-term. But in the long-term, your body stops making certain hormones. It creates more hormone resistance and, therefore, more hormone problem. Not just even more weight gain later when you stop the hormone, but it creates other hormone imbalance. And I get many of these people, Phil, so you’re right. You take a hormone, you know, and all of a sudden, you’re left feeling like horrific after the hormone goes away.

Phil, there are many natural solutions. There really are, and we’re not talking about just pills. And we’re going to do a lot of future shows on this, and how mercury, lead, and all these neurotoxins, even mold exposures, can crush your hormones and have you in this stage.

Phil:
Write down on a sheet of paper right this minute Health Seekers Radio. We’ll be back every week. Don’t miss it. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Dr. Pompa:
See you, folks.