Why the Show Exists and Battling Misinformation
Replay & Transcript of Episode 8

Health Seekers Radio January 23, 2016

Announcer:
This show is brought to you by The Genesis Communications Network, a world leader in talk radio since 1998. Visit GCNLive.com today. 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, a 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:
Hello, everybody. This is Phil Kaplan here to give you the information you need to change your life in some very, very positive ways. Typically, I do that with my good friend, Dr. Daniel Pompa. I want to tell you a little bit about how he and I connected. It might just be me and you today, me and you, the listener. I just want to have a little bit of an intimate conversation, and I want to help you understand why you’ve landed in the right place and why you need to be here.

If you don’t hear Dr. Pompa today, it’s purely for that reason. It’s not because he’s sleeping. It’s not because he thought we weren’t doing a show today. It’s purely because I’m supposed to talk to you privately. Pay attention. I said I want to start by explaining to you how I got in touch with Dr. Pompa. If you know me, hi. It’s nice to see you again. If you don’t, for about 20 years, I’ve been a fitness professional, and I’ve traveled around the world doing talks, seminars, TV shows, radio shows. In fact, I had a different radio show than this for 15 years.

In South Florida, where I live, I was looked at as a consumer advocate. I would go on the local news every week, and I had my show every week. People would call in, and they say, “Does this work? Does that work?”

Almost always, the answer was, “No.” It’s not because nothing works; it’s because, really, what people meant when they asked is, “Does the fat burner burn fat? Does something in and of itself provide the solution to my pain?” The truth is, no, typically not. You need more than just a thing, and you certainly need more than just a thing that is a scam or doesn’t work. That’s what’s out there.

I played the role of a consumer advocate. My entire life was about health. I owned health clubs, and I had a personal training company. Then, long story short, 2005, Hurricane Wilma came and literally blew the roof off of my office. I go in the day after the hurricane, walk into my 4,500 square foot space. It’s warehouse; it’s offices; it’s a training studio. No roof. The building was flooded, and here’s where I was very foolish. I called my attorney, and I asked him, I said, “What do I do? My building’s flooded. Everything’s ruined. I have insurance, but the owner, the landlord, is talking to me about using their insurance,” so I was just very confused.

My lawyer said to me, “Phil, never go back in that building.” I said, “No, Roy, I have to go back in there. That’s my livelihood, man. That’s where everything happens. That’s the center of my entire business. I have to. That’s how I support my family.” He said, “Phil, never go back in that building. I will get you out of your lease. It’s not going to be a problem. You’ll start somewhere else. We’ll take care of the insurance money.”

I was stubborn, as I’ve been accused of. I was stubborn. I said, “No, no. I’m going to fix it.” For three months, I stood in that wet, water-damaged building, paying contractors to tear out rotting drywall, carpet, and I’m in there breathing. Then I said to the builders, “The first thing we have to do is get my fitness training studio back up and running so my trainers can work.” The first thing they did is put together my training studio. Now, I’m in there everyday, getting my 5 a.m. workout and breathing, not just breathing, breathing hard.

Months later, I started to get some odd symptoms. About a year later, I was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Thankfully, I do not have Parkinson’s. It was a scary time in my life. I went from extreme health, and my whole life being about health, to suddenly, this diagnosis. It was daunting, to say the least. The next day, I woke up. I had a really bad 24 hours, emotionally, but I woke up the next day, and I said, “Okay, look, one of two things.” This was me talking to myself. “Either you have Parkinson’s, and you have to make peace with it, and you’re going to go connect with Michael J. Fox, and do everything possible – by the way, I watched Back to the Future II yesterday. How great was that series of movies?

I said, “I’m going to connect with Michael J. Fox and do everything I can to raise awareness, and find treatment, and ultimately, hopefully, find a cure, or there’s another option. Maybe I don’t have it.” I continued searching, and I went doctor to doctor to doctor. Why am I telling you this? I said I want to tell you how I met Dr. Pompa.

On my radio show at the time, I interviewed a chiropractor/fitness competitor, very beautiful. She competed in these bikini competitions, and she was a chiropractor, I want to say, in North Dakota. We had a great conversation. She was telling me a story on the air. She told me that there was a time she was so sick, she couldn’t take care of her child. She needed to ask her mom to take care of the child. She was in bed, couldn’t function, and then she said, “Thank God, I met this amazing doctor who cured me.”

After the show was over, I called her. I said, “Hey, I’m just curious. Who’s that amazing doctor?” She said, “His name’s Dr. Dan Pompa.” I said, “Where do I find Dr. Dan Pompa?” She said, “Well, he’s really busy, but I’m going to see him in a few weeks in Tampa. I’ll make the introduction.” I get a phone call. I remember exactly where I was. I was at the go-cart park with my daughter, and my phone’s ringing. It’s really noisy, and I don’t recognize the number. I answer it, and it’s this woman. She goes, “Hey, I told you I would introduce you to Dan Pompa,” and she put me on the phone with him. It was just like I was talking to a kindred spirit. We just connected.

I invited him to speak at one of my events, and he invited me to speak at one of his. We just connected. What we found is we speak the same language. He does it from a medical perspective; I do it from a fitness perspective. We land in this place called health. What we’ve found is the reason people fail to get the fitness, health, or weight loss result they’re looking for is the same across the board. They are misled. They are given bad information.

There are two kinds of bad information. There is what we call misinformation. That’s not like mister information’s daughter. Misinformation is somebody tells you something that they believe to be true, but it just isn’t. When I was standing in the checkout line, I heard the woman in front of me, who was buying cases of ginger ale, tell the cashier about the amazing ginger ale diet. She said, “The ginger takes care of your appetite and makes your cravings go away, and the carbonation makes you feel full.” That’s nonsense, but she believed it for whatever reason. That was misinformation.

Disinformation is intentional. It’s when they’re advertising, when they’re putting out a product, when they’re running ads on TV, when they’re running ads on the radio, when they’re placing ads in magazines, showing up on Facebook. You believe that it’s true because they have done a very good job, in most cases, of paying fantastic copywriters, to write compelling copy, to almost hypnotize you into buying something that really, deep down, doesn’t make any sense. They know that when you purchase something, you’re making an emotional decision. You’re not making a rational decision; you’re making an emotional decision. They know if they can speak to your emotion, your rational brain ignores it.

The more I came to know Dr. Pompa, the more we saw the vital importance of what we can do together. We go to different parts of the world, and we speak to people. We help people understand. We help them make better choices. That’s why this show exists. It’s really important that you land here every, single week, that you become a regular listener of this show. From week to week to week, you’re going to become more and more empowered. Now, you, the person who’s sitting there listening, who’s really fit – no, not you, you, right now. I’m talking to you because if you’re really fit, you’re trying to maintain it, or you’re trying to get better. In most cases, you’re trying to get better. You want to be bigger, faster, leaner, stronger, whatever it is. Lots of the things that are being purported as great performance enhancers or muscle builders are really not going to bring you the long-term result you’re looking for. That applies to things that are legal, things that are illegal, and things that are what we would call gray market.

Now, if you’re not fit, and if the idea of gym, or a health club, or an exercise session is really alien to you because you hate that stuff, I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you because it’s very easy to get fooled. What I’ll do as we go through the show today is help you see through some of the myths, some of the nonsense, some of the skewed marketing that makes millions and hundreds of million of dollars.

I’ll tell you this: I was working with some companies that do infomercials. It didn’t turn out well. It wasn’t for me. There was nothing ethical about it. When they have what the call a home run, they make $400 million from a single product. I’ll be back. You’re listening to Phil Kaplan on Health Seekers radio, where I’m always joined by Dr. Dan Pompa. Be back after this.

[commercials]

I’m here, Phil Kaplan, missing my friend, Dr. Daniel Pompa, who is typically here with me every week, but today, he’s allowed me to speak to you privately. I want to make sure you understand how important it is to listen to this show. Now, am I biased? Of course I’m biased. I’m the host of the show. Do I mean what I say? I do. I really do.

I will tell you this: We will have many guests on the show. Matter of fact, you can look forward to hearing from my friend, Viggo Snowhill, who is Mr. Denmark. You got to meet him. You got to meet him. He was Mr. Scandinavia. He had all these titles. He had the nickname of The Great Dane. He is 295 pounds, ripped, beyond ripped. He looks like he’s 0% body fat.

He’s a professional body builder. He’s 55 years old. He’s been on the professional body building stage as recently as a year ago. He’s amazing, but here’s the thing you’re going to love about Viggo: He’s honest. If you want to know about the dirt, if you want to know what really goes on in professional sports, if you want to know about the drugs and the steroids, then he’s the guy who’s going to tell you.

We have a lot of interesting guests, some celebrities, and some people who you may not know, but I’m promising you they have interesting things to share. You want to make sure you’re here. I’ll tell you this: We will, in all likelihood, never have Khloe Kardashian on the show. It’s not on our agenda. I know lots of people like to have her on their shows. If you’re somebody who wants to hear Khloe Kardashian, you need to listen to other shows, as well. If that’s not interesting to you at all, then you should be here every week.

Why? We’re protecting you. We’re empowering you. It’s more than just talk radio; it’s us taking combined 50 years of professional knowledge in what you do to better your body, better your health, and better your life and giving it to you in a way that it releases your power. That’s important to understand.

You have the power to change. If you’re sitting there going, “I’ve tried diet and exercise. They don’t work for me. I can’t stick to it. I have no willpower,” these are what I call rational lies. We rationalize. We tell ourselves rational lies. They sound good. They make sense. “I’m just not going to go to the gym anymore because that doesn’t work for me. I know this pill probably won’t work, but I’m going to try it because maybe my metabolism’s different.” You find all of these ways to reassure yourself so you don’t feel like you’re making a bad decision, rational lies.

I want to strip those away. I don’t want you to feel guilty. I want you to feel empowered. I want you to understand because when you understand the truth – here’s some truth: Diet makes people fat. A diet will make you fatter. I can’t say it anymore plainly than that. A calorie-restrictive diet will make you fatter. You may now ask, “Don’t you and Dr. Pompa talk to people about their diet?” Of course we do, but it’s never as simple as cutting out calories. There always has to be more. It’s not only about what you don’t eat; it’s about what you do eat.

Now, you might have heard us talk about a concept called intermittent fasting. In that case, it’s about training your body so your body learns to use different periods of, “Yes, I’m getting food right now. I need to go into storage mode” with “I don’t have to worry. My body is working like a machine, so I’m burning my own fat.” When somebody says, “All you have to do is count your points, count your calories,” they are lying to you. They are lying to you.

Why do you need to listen? That’s one reason. People lie. You know who lies the most? They. The day that Dr. Pompa and I conceptualized this show, we were visiting with a friend’s grandmother. We were making a business trip. The three of us are friends as well as business associates. We happened to be in another city, and this friend, David, said, “Hey, my grandmother lives here. Do you guys mind if we go visit her?” We went to visit his 92-year-old grandmother, sweet lady. Really sharp at 92, 93 years old and not bad looking, either.

She was telling us about how she stays so healthy. In that discussion, she goes, “They say – ” We left. I spoke to Dr. Pompa. I go, “Who are they?” I always hear about they saying stuff, but who are they? Then we decided it’s a mystery. We’re going to find they. We were, of course, half joking, but really, this is where the concept of the show came from. People are listening to what they say, and they lie. People are listening to lies.

They don’t always lie. If they always lied, it would be simple because when somebody goes, “Hey, they say – ” then you go, “I can’t listen. I know they lie.” The problem is, they lie sometimes. They often confuse. Remember, in the movie, The Exorcist, which really was the only scary movie I ever saw. You can tell me about other movies, and Halloween, and all – the only scary movie I ever saw was The Exorcist. I remember, the experienced exorcist takes the young priest to meet the demon. Right before they go in the room, he says, “Don’t believe anything that she tells you,” because it is in the body of a little girl. “Don’t believe anything she tells you because they will mix lies with the truth.”

That’s what I’m telling you about they. They mix lies with the truth. They’re going to confuse you. They’re going to tell you some things that make sense, and then they’re going to throw in something that doesn’t. If you were with me at the beginning, you heard me say, “The only reason people fail is because they’re misled.” They’re given misinformation, disinformation, and as a result, they lose their power. We are here to give you your power back. Why should you be here? They lie. They confuse. People follow. People follow.

Niccolo Machiavelli, I think it’s 15^th century, this great philosopher. He said, “The human ape is a mimic.” We learn by mimicry. In a society, somebody has to always rise to the level of a leader. Psychologists might call that a Machiavellian personality. The reason somebody has to rise to the level of a leader is because everyone else is wired to follow. Dr. Pompa and I often talk about sheeple. They follow. That doesn’t make you bad. It doesn’t make you stupid. Lots of intelligent people become sheeple. Yes, there are lots of intelligent sheep. This has nothing to do with IQ, nothing to do with intellect, but they’re fooled. They are misled into believing that something that doesn’t work is going to work.

They’re led to believe that whatever the new diet of the day is, the popular one that they’re reading about in the checkout line, is the way to go. Now, common sense would say, “If you’ve been on 42 diets in your life,” – because a new magazine comes out every month, and they always have a great, new diet. If you’ve been on 42 diets in your life, and you’re still looking for a diet, here’s common sense. Here’s rational thought. “The 42 diets you tried failed you,” not, “You failed.” The diets failed you because you bought into this idea that a calorie-restrictive diet, whether on that diet, you were eating jelly beans, or you were eating cabbage soup, or you were giving up a specific nutrient, bottom line is if you’re still looking for a diet, none of them worked.

Here’s the rational lie: The rational lie is, “When I was on the Atkins diet, I lost 41 pounds.” If you’re still looking for diets, something happened. People know dates, and people know numbers. They go, “Well, 1991, I did so-and-so diet, and I lost 14 pounds. In 1997, I did this diet. I lost 28 pounds.” As they’re going through their diet history, I’m doing math, and I realize they now weigh minus 40. We totaled it all up. Obviously, something happened. They gained the weight back.

If you’re being misled, and you’re attempting to change with a flawed approach, with something that cannot possibly work, you tend to doubt whether it’s possible for you. Here’s what I’m telling you: It is possible for you. If you are a human being born on the planet earth, it is possible for you. If you listen to what Dr. Pompa and I tell you week after week after week, you’re going to change the way you think.

When you change the way you think, you’re going to change the way you look, and the way you feel, and the way you function. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the reason you need to come back for the second half, where I’m going to share some specifics about where people are misled. You need to come back every, single week. This is Phil Kaplan on Health Seekers radio. Be right back after this.

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This is it, the second half of Health Seekers radio today. You’re listening to Philip Kaplan, half of the Health Seekers team. The other half, of course, will be here next week and every week thereafter, Dr. Daniel Pompa. I explained in the first half how we met and why we do the show. The bottom line is, the show is to help you. That’s it. You. Yup. The show is to help you because no longer should you be fooled. No longer should you live with any doubt that you can be the best you’ve ever been, no longer.

You should know that you have the power, and you should have people that you can rely upon to make sure you access that power, and you do, myself, Phil Kaplan, and Dr. Daniel Pompa. You’ve got us, and you’ve got us right here on Health Seekers, so you’ve got to be here every week.

I told you that people fail because they’re misled. I told you that people fail because they’re lured into traps to buy products. I also told you that very often, the sellers of these products rely on very good copywriters. They rely, at some level, on brain scientists who understand how to get you to respond, and they study – this becomes a full-time pursuit. They study which words – because they’re copywriters. They write the copy. They write the text. They write the words that the person on TV says – what words will get you to respond. There are some really powerful words that drive response.

“Right now,” “weight loss,” or “lose weight” – if you want to make a lot of money, and you don’t have any ethics at all, find anything – and I mean anything because I’ve seen it all – that you can claim will make people lose weight, and sell it. You’re going to make a lot of money. Sooner or later, what we hope is the FTC will shut you down. They’ll go, “Wait a minute. You’re lying. These fingernail clippings that people are eating because they’re buying them from you do not make people lose weight.” Then you get fined a lot of money.

A challenge here is the larger sellers of products like this, it’s the cost of doing business. In other words, “How much can we make before the fine? If we could make $100 million, and we get fined $3 million, man, that’s a good way to do business.” Then they’ll just come out with the next one. It’s not conspiracy theory talk. This is really, really, really the way it happens. Lose weight – they know. They put it in an ad. People are going to respond. Slim down – I don’t know why, but those are very powerful words that get people to respond, slim down.

They will choose diseases that people suffer with, and they’ll say, “Reverse.” “Reverse diabetes.” Makes people respond. If they claim a drink, or a capsule, or a new herbal compound is going to reverse the disease, the people who have the disease will buy it until sooner or later, the FTC looks at it. When it gets big enough, they go, “Oh, they’re lying. Can’t say that.” Then there’s another big word, “Detox.” People buy detox because they’ve been led to believe that the root of all of their problems is something that’s built up in an organ or a system of their body. They’ve read that they have 30 pounds of junk clogging their digestive tract, and it’s all in their colon. If they get on a colon cleanse, not only will all this junk come out, but they will suddenly be well. It will fix it all.

Then there are other people who will read something about a liver cleanse. There’s going to be some very compelling copy that says, “Because over the years, you’ve consumed alcohol, and because you’ve eaten sugar, and because you’ve had high fructose corn syrup – if you’re tired, if you can’t lose weight, it’s about your liver. All you have to do is buy the detox plan.”

I will not even attempt to present solutions as Dr. Pompa does, but I will tell you this: He is all about detoxifying. It’s not about detoxifying a macro-system of your body. It’s about getting the toxins out of the cell. That may not sound sexy. That may not work in an infomercial on TV, but it’s what works to get people well, getting the cell to function, getting the cells to function together the way they did when you were born into perfect health, getting the interference out of the way, removing the toxins.

Because detox is a compelling word, lots of people can sell you lots of stuff, and go, “Here’s the gall bladder cleanse. Now, a liver cleanse. Then you get a colon cleanse.” Is there virtue in some of these? Yeah. Are they risky? In some cases, yeah. Are they dangerous? In some cases, yeah. The bottom line is it all comes down to what’s going on at the cellular level. I don’t know too many people who are going to tell you that, but you’re going to hear about it here on Health Seekers radio. You’re not only going to hear about it, you’re going to understand strategies to do it, to actually get those toxins, get that interference out of the cell.

We are capable of becoming biologically younger. You might have just heard that and said, “Okay. I was with the guy until now. Now he’s nuts. He’s telling me I can get younger, biologically younger.” We cannot get chronologically younger, but we can build cells. We can build new cells that are biologically younger than the cells we have now by making changes. We’ve got to make those changes at the cellular level.

If you see a word, “detox,” all I’m asking you to do is be guarded. I’m not saying dismiss it. If it’s really talking about how you detoxify at the cellular level, and it’s backed by actual science, then consider it. If it’s presenting a specific line of supplements as a cleanse of an organ in your body, and this is somehow going to bring you the result you’ve always wanted, whether it is weight loss, or feeling better, or energy, I’m just going to tell you to have your guard up. Be careful. I’m not telling you, “Don’t buy it.” Maybe something out there will really have what you’re looking for, but be guarded. Don’t be gullible. Don’t be vulnerable.

Remember, I told you earlier, it has nothing to do with intellect. This is not an insult of your intelligence. Very smart people fall for stuff. What should you know? Number one, you should know it isn’t your fault. You hear that a lot because people say, “It’s not my fault. I was born this way.” That’s not what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is if you’ve attempted to change with a product, with a cleanse, with a diet, with an exercise program, and it didn’t work, it’s not your fault. It was a flawed approach. It was a bad diet. It was a valueless product. Part of the challenge for people is the more investment they make in valueless products, the more they tend to doubt their own power. Know that it isn’t your fault. If you’ve failed to lose weight, you didn’t fail; the diet failed you.

Also, know this: You have the innate ability to heal. Now, I don’t want to get myself in any trouble here. I’m not saying every, single person can heal themselves of whatever ails them. I’m not saying that. There are times that even medical science throws up its hands and says, “Oh, we can’t help you. We’d like to. We’re trying to figure it out. We can’t help you.” At least know that as humans, we have the ability to heal. We have the ability to return to health.

There’s a difference between cure and heal. There’s a difference. I think heal, H-E-A-L, not the bottom of your foot of the back of your foot, but heal means to make something – to make an organism whole, to restore it, to restore it to a healthful state. Cure really means to get rid of evidence that there’s a disease.

If somebody has an infection, they have a bladder infection, I’m not going to suggest that they meditate away the infection. Is it possible? Maybe it is, but that’s certainly not a strategy that I would rely on. In that case, you might go to a doctor and get some kind of medication. Now, what would happen is if you go to the doctor, and you get an antibiotic, now they’re going to test you, and you won’t have the infection anymore. They say you are cured. There’s no remaining evidence of the disease. It’s gone.

Same would be true if they lop off a basal cell. They go, “Okay. You’re cured. The cell is gone.” Have they healed you? In many cases, no. Whatever put that cell there in the first place, the mechanisms in your body that caused that cell to grow, they’re still happening. They’re still working. You’ve got to understand, systemically, it all comes down to the cell. We’ve got to get the cell well, and then you heal. I’ll be back for one more segment sharing truth, sharing power, giving you the ability to be the best you’ve ever been. This is Phil Kaplan. You’re listening to Health Seekers radio.

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Giving you the power you need – yeah, giving you the power to heal, to take control of your health, and to it from the cellular level forward. On today’s show, my intention was to connect you, to help you understand what you’re hearing today is not a typical version of this Health Seekers radio because normally, my partner, Dr. Daniel Pompa, is here, my co-host. Today, it’s just me talking to you because I want people to understand why it is so vital to listen to this show.

Listen, we’re not radio people. If I don’t sound like a radio person, it’s because I’m not. I’m a fitness guy. I’m an exercise physiologist who’s developed a pretty intensive knowledge of nutrition and the way the human body functions. I work hand-in-hand with the medical field. Dr. Pompa speaks to doctors all over the world, helping them understand how to get people well. We have connected because we want you to understand the truth.

I started out by telling you lots of people get fooled. This is the place that you can come every week where you can trust that what you hear is true. When we open up the phone lines, you can call in with your health and fitness challenges and questions, and you’re going to get real answers. Nobody here has an agenda. Nobody here is trying to sell you anything. We’re doing the show for you.

I watch, every year, around New Years, people make crazy investments. They buy stuff. The area of weight loss is probably where they’re the most vulnerable. I remember, I owned a health club, and I walked in one day, and the entire front desk staff were wearing these crazy-looking shoes that had no heel. They were two inches under the ball of the foot, and then you would fall backwards if you weren’t using your balance. I said, “What are those, guys?” They go, “Oh, they’re weight loss shoes.”

Somebody came in, and this person had been trying to make an appointment with me. I didn’t make the appointment, so they came in, and they gave them all samples to try, weight loss shoes. They’re wearing these goofy-looking shoes. Now, figure it out. If you’re walking around on the ball of your foot, you’re contracting the calf muscles. What happened? They wanted to wear them. They wore them for about a week, and they all had aching, sore calves, but their calves looked really good. Okay, if you want to wear that, you can. It’s great, but is it a weight loss shoe? No. I just saw them again.

I just saw them again. Not the same model, but I saw them being advertised, weight loss shoes. Will they work? I have to say no. You can prove me wrong. If you prove me wrong, I want you to email me, Phil@PhilKaplan.com. If you prove me wrong, I want you to call in the show. Until somebody does that, I got to say they’re not going to work.

I’ll tell you something else that keeps showing up every year, and it’s hard for me to believe they keep showing up, body wraps. Sometimes, they’re sophisticated. They’re really expensive-looking suits that you put your body in. Looks like you’re wearing a hazmat suit. Other times, it’s just like you’re wrapping yourself up in Saran Wrap. They give this pseudo-science. They go, “Well, what the body wraps do is they increase your core temperature, and as a result, you sweat. As a result of sweat, it activates the fat-burning mechanism in your body,” and it’s all a lot of nonsense.

I know, having been around athletes, there are some sports we have to weigh a certain thing on a given day, like wrestling or boxing. Athletes in those arenas are notorious for sweating off pounds so they can weigh the right thing, but that’s not speeding metabolism. That’s not getting rid of fat with any permanence at all. In most cases, it’s simply water displacement.

The creams that people rub on their thighs, it’s hard for me to believe that people are still looking for the answer to their cellulite in a cream. It’s not here. I don’t think it’s coming. Again, prove me wrong. You have seen an endless parade of fat-loss capsules. Just as I said earlier with diets, if you’ve tried some of them, many of them are stimulants. Many of them are very high in caffeine and some other stimulant compounds. Sometimes, they’ll have L-Tyrosine, which is an amino acid, but it has a stimulant effect. Sometimes, they’ll have Yohimbe, or Yohimbe and hydrochloride, stimulants. They put together these herbal stimulants. It’ll have green tea.

All of these things cause the body to crank up because they’re central nervous system stimulants. They’re not fat burners. Do they initiate part of the process that might cause your metabolism to work at a higher level? Yeah. Are they solutions? No. You know what? If they worked at all, here’s the downside: They’re addictive. If they’re not addictive, they don’t work at all. When I say, “Work at all,” if you’re looking for long-term fat loss, weight loss, none of them are going to work.

The HCG diets have become very, very popular, and that is people get an injection. They get an injection of something called HCG. What’s really mind-blowing is many of them don’t even know what that is. What it does is it actually works very much like a steroid. It is a compound that body builders use. Not only is it a fertility drug, but body builders use it when they stop using steroids so that they don’t lose all the muscle. When you stop using steroids, you go through some biochemical changes that put your body in a state where it wants to cannibalize muscle. They use HCG to protect that muscle tissue.

The theory here is if you diet, if you cut calories severely, normally, your body will feed off of muscle, but by giving you the HCG, you’ll hold onto that muscle so you’ll only lose fat. It happens. It happens in the very short term, but what people don’t realize is they’re changing their endocrine systems, setting themselves up to get fatter in the long run. It is a trick. If somebody said to you, “Yeah. You could lose weight. Take anabolic steroids,” you’d think twice. If it’s HCG, something that you don’t fully understand, then you might do it.

Protein-based weight loss products, a lot of money being made here. Athletes certainly need protein because it’s the material that we use, the amino acids, for cellular growth, and cellular repair, what we call anabolism, the growth of tissue. When you see a lot of athletes who are lean, it’s easy to draw the association. You go, “Oh, look at that. They have low fat because they eat a lot of protein.” Protein is not a fat burner. It is a nutrient. It’s certainly a vital nutrient. You need to take in adequate protein. For many people, a protein supplement helps you get more protein in your intake, and that may be valuable. If you’re thinking it is a weight loss solution, you are being misled.

On previous shows, Dr. Pompa and I have spoken – we’ve invested quite a bit of conversation in the hormonal cascade in the endocrine system, and there’s a reason. In my world and in his, when we meet people who have symptoms – and those symptoms can be excessive weight, trouble losing weight, slower metabolism, a sense of sluggishness, low energy, brain fog. I can go on and on and on, headaches, muscle pain. Almost always, these can be linked to a hormonal imbalance.

Your hormonal network is really an innate intelligence within your body that allows your brain to communicate and to create events within your body. When you mess around with the natural hormonal balance, you’re going to pay. At some level, you’re going to pay. When you hear that hormones are the root of it, there might be a tendency to want to take hormones, but no, no, no. Taking hormones further disrupts what your body is doing because now you’re putting something in exogenously. I’m telling you this because lots of products now are being released with claims that they will positively affect your hormonal system.

Is the science real? The science is real. If you’ve heard about or read about leptin, and you’ve heard it called the obesity hormone, it is, in fact, a hormone. It is a protein. It’s manufactured in fat cells. It’s something you produce naturally, but it’s a part of the brain’s communication with the body. It is, in essence, the way that the fat cell is telling your brain, “You’re okay. You’ve eaten enough. You’re satiated right now.” Leptin really tells your brain, “You’re eating for survival. You’re eating for fuel, and you’ve eaten enough. You got it covered right now. You’ve got enough fuel for your heart to beat, and for your digestive tract to digest, and for your lungs to take in oxygen, and you’re okay.”

In 1994, they discovered this hormone called leptin, and they found an association between leptin levels and obesity. What it comes down to is leptin doesn’t cause obesity. Leptin actually signals the brain to stop producing hunger. Further experiments with leptin showed that because somebody’s leptin level is high doesn’t mean they’re fat because of leptin. What it means is just like in the case of insulin resistance, when the pancreas makes insulin, but the cells don’t, as Dr. Pompa says, “Hear it,” the cells don’t respond to it.

The fat cells produce leptin, going, “Hey, brain. We’ve had enough. We’ve had enough. We don’t need anymore fuel,” but the brain’s not receiving it. It becomes leptin resistance. If you understand that, then you also understand that if somebody’s selling you a pill and going, “This is the leptin pill. This will make you feel satiated. You won’t be hungry,” no. Putting more leptin into a body that is not receiving it does either nothing or amplifies the problem.

It is hormonal, but when I say you can heal, you can bring your body back toward hormonal balance naturally by making the right choices. I mentioned the pancreas and insulin. The pancreas makes two hormones, insulin and glucagon. Insulin is a storage hormone. When you eat sugar, your body produces more insulin to take that sugar and store it in the muscles and in the liver. Glucagon is a release hormone. It allows you to access the energy from your cells. You need both.

I’m hearing music. While I was about to go down a path, talking about a compound, a hormonal compound called GLP-1, it’s going to have to wait. I’m promising you this: On an upcoming show, Dr. Pompa and I will talk about GLP-1, your solutions, your power. We’ll talk to you then. Bye, everybody.