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This article was previously published December 30, 2018, and has been updated with new information.

Fasting is one of the oldest dietary interventions in the world, and modern science confirms it can have a profoundly beneficial influence on your health. Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist (kidney specialist) with a practice in Canada, has written an important landmark book on this topic.It has a weekly 

"The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting," co-written with health blogger Jimmy Moore, details how to implement fasting and overcome some of the most common challenges that might arise, including persistent fears and myths associated with extended water fasting.

For the first decade of his practice, Fung was — like most doctors — conventionally oriented. As a kidney specialist, many of his patients had Type 2 diabetes as the primary cause of their kidney failure.

Fasting Helps Reverse Diabetes and Related Health Conditions

It became clear to him that the conventional treatment of Type 2 diabetes was seriously flawed. Despite patients' best efforts to manage their diabetes, take their insulin and follow the recommended diet, they would still end up with complications such as kidney disease, requiring dialysis, or they'd need amputations, or they'd go blind.

"As a doctor, we got trained to give medications, but obviously it wasn't working," he says. "The answer is actually pretty obvious. Because if diabetes, Type 2 predominantly, is what's causing the kidney disease, you're not going to be able to do anything about the kidney disease until you get rid of the diabetes.

That was kind of where I started. Then I thought, 'Everybody says Type 2 diabetes is this chronic kind of progressive disease … It only goes forward, one way.' But actually when you think about it, Type 2 diabetes isn't like that at all …

[I]f you want to get rid of the Type 2 diabetes, you have to get rid of the obesity … That's how you're going to help people get better. I started thinking about what causes weight gain … It's certainly not calories.

That's our big mistake. That's why we've been unsuccessful at creating weight loss, because we've got the wrong kind of target …

It's really about the hormonal balance and predominantly about insulin. We have to reduce insulin. Low-carbohydrate diets are a way to lower insulin … In some people, that'll reverse their diabetes …

I started using low-carbohydrate diets and it didn't really work. The problem was that it was a little complicated for people …

I had to make it simpler … I thought, 'Why not fasting?' … It's been used for thousands of years … I started looking at some of the science … There are actually huge benefits that we weren't recognizing.

Part of it was also we've always been trained, 'You have to eat. You have to eat.' But in fact, that's not true. If you think about it, in the old days … there would be lots of days where people didn't eat …

That's really what [body] fat is [for]. It's really simply stored fuel; stored food energy. We're using it [when we fast]. That's it. That's all that happens. There's no serious side effects or consequences to fasting.

If there was, we would have known about it several thousand years ago. But there wasn't. That's where I started from."

The Clinical Use of Fasting

Fung went on to implement fasting in his practice, and the results, he says, have been "unbelievable." He's been able to take many patients off all medications; they're losing weight, report increased energy, and their diabetes is reversed.

"This is why we go into medicine: to make people better. For the first time, this was what was happening. Before, for 10 years, all I did was watch people get worse until I put them on dialysis. That was really not the way to go," he says.

When he first sought to implement this program clinically, there was no formal guide to follow, which is what inspired him to write "The Complete Guide to Fasting." Using his own clinical experience, he created a guide that anyone can use to their benefit.

"When people start, they're super skeptical. They think it's [a] terrible [idea]. But then they come back and they're total converts. They're like, 'This is the best thing.'

Because they're losing weight, they're seeing that their medications are going down, their sugars are going down, it's obvious to them that they're actually getting much, much healthier," he says.

"This is all without medications. We're trying to take away medications. It's an all-natural solution. You're really letting your body just clean itself out from all of that excess sugar and fat.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's free. It's available. All we have to do is give people the knowledge and they can make themselves better, which is incredible."

If you're obese, nutritional ketosis is another excellent dietary protocol. I once interviewed Dr. Jeanne Drisko, head of the University of Kansas Integrative Medical Center, who has used a ketogenic protocol in a clinical setting for many years.

The challenge is implementation and compliance. Nutritional ketosis is more complicated than fasting. Fasting can also be a more rapid process. Rather than waiting weeks or months for your body to upregulate and be able to effectively metabolize fat again, fasting really jumpstarts this process.

Breaking Down Myths About Fasting

Fung's book is so helpful because it provides easy-to-follow basic guidelines for fasting, and reviews some of the most common myths and fears that keep many from implementing a fasting regimen.

One common myth is that fasting will lead to loss of muscle mass. The book clearly describes the process of protein catabolism, explaining how your body actually downregulates protein catabolism and upregulates growth hormones in response to fasting.

"If you follow the biochemistry, your body stores energy as glycogen in the liver, which is links or chains of sugar, and then it stores [it as] body fat.

During fasting, you start by burning off all the glycogen in the liver, which is all the sugar. There's a point there where some of the excess amino acids in your body need to get burnt as well.

That's where people say, 'That's where you're burning muscle.' That's not actually what happens. The body never upregulates its protein catabolism. Never is it burning muscle; there's a normal turnover that goes on.

There is a certain amount of protein that you need for a regular turnover. When you start fasting, that starts to go down and then fat oxidation goes way up. In essence, what you've done is you switched over from burning sugar to burning fat. Once you start burning fat, there's almost an unlimited amount of calories there. You could go for days and days.

What's interesting is that if you take a pound of fat, that's roughly 3,500 calories. If you eat somewhere around 1,800 to 2,000 calories a day, it takes two full days of fasting to burn a single pound of fat, which is very surprising to people.

If you're trying to lose 100 pounds, you could theoretically go 200 days of fasting just to burn all that fat … People worry about fasting for 24 hours. I'm like, 'You could go 200 days.' Then it's like, 'OK. Maybe it's OK to go 24 hours without eating.'"

The 'Starvation Mode' Myth

Another common fear is that fasting equals starvation, which is not true. First of all, starvation is a forced situation that you have no control over whereas fasting is optional. You have complete control. Many also believe they cannot or should not fast because it will send their body into "starvation mode" — a situation where the body starts holding on to fat rather than burning it off.

"What they're talking about is where the body's metabolism starts to slow down so significantly that instead of burning 2,000 calories a day, your body might burn 1,000 calories a day.

In that case, even if you're eating only 1,500 calories a day, for example, you're going to gain your weight back. That's actually what happens when you reduce your calories. We know that … as you cut your calorie intake, your calorie expenditure goes down as well.

Starvation mode actually is guaranteed if you just try and cut your calories. But what's interesting is that fasting doesn't do that. What happens during fasting is that … after four days of fasting, the basal metabolic rate is actually 10 percent higher than when you started.

The body has not shut down at all. In fact, what it's done is it switched fuel sources. It switched from burning food to burning [body] fat. Once it's burning [body] fat, it's like, 'Hey, there's plenty of this stuff. Let's burn our 2,000 calories'…"

This is also why fasting tends to increase energy opposed to leaving you feeling drained. If you're overweight and lethargic, fasting helps unlock all that energy already lodged in your body that you previously had no access to. Fasting forces your body to start accessing those stores of energy, and once that happens, your body suddenly has a near unlimited supply of energy!

Fasting also helps improve other biochemical systems in your body. There's interplay of hormonal systems like the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), AMPK, leptin and IGF-1 — all of which are optimized in the right direction when fasting. It also improves your mitochondrial function, allowing your mitochondria to regenerate. So it's not just simply turning on an enzyme switch to burn fat; it's a very complex process that upregulates in the direction of health.

Understanding the Role of Insulin

Insulin is the primary hormone that tells your body whether to store energy or burn it. When you eat, you're taking calories in and insulin goes up. Higher levels of insulin signal your body to store energy. When insulin falls, it tells your body to release energy. When you develop insulin resistance, your insulin levels remain chronically elevated; hence, your body is in constant fat-storing mode.

Without the signal to burn energy, you end up feeling tired and sluggish. You have plenty of fuel available, but it's all "locked away" in your fat cells, and it will remain unavailable until your body receives the appropriate signal — a drop in insulin. This is also why it's so difficult to lose weight when you are insulin resistant.

The key to breaking this cycle is to have sustained low insulin for periods of time, and this is why fasting can be so tremendously beneficial. Fasting lowers insulin more powerfully than any other strategy, which then allows the stored energy (body fat) to be used again.

"That's why you start to use up some of your fat stores and you're not hungry, because you're, in essence, eating your own fat. That's the other thing that people are always surprised about. When they come back, they say, 'Hey, I'm not actually that hungry.' I'm like, 'That's no surprise, because your body is burning fat. If it's burning [body] fat, it doesn't need to eat,'" Fung explains.

"We talk a lot about what you should eat and what you shouldn't eat. But people never talk about meal timing — making sure you have long periods where you're not eating. Look at the word "breakfast" in English. That's break fast. That's the meal that breaks your fast. That implies two things: One, fasting is a part of everyday life. We've forgotten that. We think it's some sort of Herculean effort, but it's not. We should be fasting every day.

If you balance your periods of feeding and fasting, you will stay in balance. If you are always in feeding phase, then you're not going to be in balance and you're going to gain weight. The second thing it means is that you can break your fast at any time. It doesn't have to be 8:00 in the morning. You can break your fast at any time of the day or you can eat two days later.

It's not that important … People, even when they're not hungry, are forcing themselves to eat something … Forcing yourself to eat when you're not hungry is not a winning strategy for weight loss. Logically, it doesn't make sense. But these sort of illogical thoughts get propagated and then it becomes conventional dietary advice."

Variations of Fasting

There are many ways to do an extended fast. Following are some of the most common variations:

Dietary fat produces a very minor insulin response, and since you're keeping your insulin levels low, you're still getting most of the benefits of fasting even though you're consuming plenty of calories. Adding healthy fats such as butter, coconut oil, MCT oil and avocado can make the fasting experience a lot easier. "Lots of people have done very well with this sort of fat fast," Fung notes, adding "Anything that increases your probability of success I'm all for."

I'm personally quite intrigued with the fat fast. I recommended water fasting to my landscaper, but after three days she felt really fatigued. While this is a normal response in the initial stages, I made her a "fat-bomb drink," which perked her right back up. I use Pau d'arco tea as the base.

It contains beta-lapachone, which upregulates NAD+, an important electron transfer mechanism and mitochondrial signaling molecule. To that, I add some coconut oil, MCT C8 oil, butter and a little stevia. It contains about 400 or 500 calories per cup.

Part of the key is to avoid protein to inhibit mTOR. While the level of protein at which you'll counteract the benefits of fasting is individual, Fung believes you'll likely see results as long as you stay below 10 or 20 grams of protein per day. As a reminder, protein raises your insulin, although not to the same degree as net carbs do. Excess protein is likely more damaging metabolically than excess carbs.

"I was looking at some data recently where they graphed where your blood sugars are in relation to where your ketones are. Ketones start to go up as your blood glucose falls [but] that slope changes in different people," Fung says. "If you look at, for instance, Type 2 diabetics, they have a very steep slope. That is their blood glucose — even as it falls — ketones don't go up.

That's probably why they feel like crap, because they're not getting the ketones. The blood glucose is going down, which it should, but the body should be producing ketones for their fuel for the brain, but it's not.

In those cases, some of the fat bombs, some of the exogenous ketones, may actually make it a lot easier for people to get through that. As your body becomes [fat] adapted, which can take two weeks to a month, that shouldn't happen anymore …

If you have never fasted and you do a three-day fast, you may feel pretty lousy. We tell people to expect that. You can either continue or you can take a break and let your body become more adapted to it."

The same applies to hunger pangs, which tend to kick in the hardest on the second day of a fast. By the fifth or sixth day, however, hunger practically disappears.

Important Contraindications

While 80 percent of the population would likely benefit from water fasting, there are several absolute contraindications. If any of the following apply to you, you should NOT do extended types of fasting:

• Underweight, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 or less.
• Malnourished (in which case you need to eat healthier, more nutritious food).
• Children should not fast for longer than 24 hours, as they need nutrients for continued growth. If your child needs to lose weight, a far safer and more appropriate approach is to cut out refined sugars and grains. Fasting is risky for children as it cuts out ALL nutrients, including those they need a steady supply of.
• Pregnant and/or breastfeeding women. The mother needs a steady supply of nutrients in order to assure the baby's healthy growth and development, so fasting during pregnancy or while breastfeeding is simply too risky for the child.

Use Caution if You're on Medication

If you're on medication, you need to use caution when fasting, as some drugs may need to be taken with food. This includes metformin, aspirin and any other drugs that might cause stomach upset or stomach ulcers. Risks are especially high if you're on diabetes medication. If you take the same dose of medication but don't eat, you run the risk of having very low blood sugars (hypoglycemia), which can be very dangerous.

So, if you're on diabetes drugs, you must adjust your medication before you fast. If your doctor is adverse toward or unfamiliar with fasting, you'd be wise to find one that has some experience in this area so they can guide you on how to do this safely.

Keep in mind that hypoglycemia is best diagnosed by symptoms alone, opposed to any specific blood glucose number. I wear a 24-hour continuous glucose monitor. Sometimes when I'm really pushing my carbs low, I'll go down to 35 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl) at night, yet I'm not symptomatic at all. For someone who's hypoglycemic or used to having blood sugar levels of 180, dropping to 35 could put them in serious trouble.

Also be aware that if you have high uric acid, fasting can precipitate gout. Fasting tends to increase your uric acid level because your kidneys increase their reabsorption of uric acid when you don't eat. Most people will not experience a problem, but if you have gout you may need to consult with your physician about this.

Interesting Facts About Fasting and Meal Timing

Your body is a marvel of ingenuity, and the more you work WITH it rather than against it, the healthier you're likely to be. Consider the following: Intermittent fasting involves scheduling your meals in such a way that you get a period of fasting each day. Typically, you'll eat all of your meals within a six- or seven-hour window. When I first started intermittent fasting, I decided to skip breakfast.

However, in studying mitochondrial function, I realized it's not a good idea to eat late at night, because that's when your body is readying for rest, regeneration and repair. Eating in the evening creates surplus ATP, which will simply generate excessive amounts of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS). At that point, I began avoiding food for a minimum of three hours (and typically it's closer to five or even six hours) before bedtime.

"There's some interesting data on that," Fung says. "If you look at insulin response, insulin drives a lot of weight gain. But if you take the same meal close to bedtime versus in the middle of the day, you actually get a higher insulin response at the end of the day, which is interesting and which is not good.

I actually think it's best to take your biggest meal sometime [around] lunch to early afternoon, and then go easy at [your] night time meal and into the next day. I think there's something in that … There's not a lot of science out there, but I think it really makes a lot of sense. In terms of the advantages of fasting, the key thing to understand is that fasting is almost the opposite of every diet that's out there. That's why it's so successful.

There are so many advantages to it: It's not complicating your life. It's actually simplifying your life. It doesn't cost any money. In fact, this saves you money. It doesn't take any time. In fact, it saves you time because you don't have to cook, you don't have to eat, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to plan for it.

There are so many different ways that it's beneficial. You can add it to any diet. If you're vegetarian, you can still fast. If you don't eat nuts, if you have an allergy to meat, if you can't cook, you can still fast. Any diet can be improved by fasting. It's so powerful. You can continue fasting as long as you want until you get the benefits that you want. The world record is 382 days. You can go a long time powered on your own body fat."

Yes, Fasting Is Safe and, Yes, You Can Do It

Barring you fall into any of the contraindicated groups, fasting is safe. Even very sick patients have done it and improved their health in the process. Fung has been using water fasting and variations thereof in his clinical practice for the past five years.

In that time, he's placed well over 1,000 patients on various fasting regimens. Some do tremendously well. One man in his mid-50s had struggled with diabetes for two decades. Within two weeks, he was able to quit taking all of his diabetes medications. His blood sugar was back to normal without them.

"Then his sister saw he was doing really well. She comes in. She's on three pills for diabetes. Within a month, we took her off all three. She takes herself off the other two blood pressure medications and cholesterol pills. We took her off six medications in a month and a half. That's amazing. Obviously, they did very well. But that just goes to show you what can happen when you try some of these things," Fung says.

"Initially, there was a huge amount of skepticism. Everybody thought I was crazy. But now I have so much support from my own local area because everybody has seen the results. I have lots of doctors at my hospital who are doing it. Once they see it themselves, they're like … 'This is amazing.'

They start referring me patients and say, 'I want these benefits for my patients' because they know they can't provide that kind of supportive environment that we can provide; that we set up in our clinic, where we kind of anticipate their problems, give them the support, the online resources, the books … to be able to do it successfully.

That's the key: to have the acceptance. There are so many naysayers out there who say, 'You shouldn't do this. You can't do this.' But within my own local area now, we're really seeing a lot of strong support for this, because it's undeniable."

More Information

I believe Fung has written an excellent, if not the best, book on how to implement extended fasting. If you're overweight or struggle with chronic illness, I highly recommend getting "The Complete Guide to Fasting," as it will really guide you through the process. Most likely — unless you're taking medications — you will not require a professional health care consultant to help you. It's nice to have, but you can likely manage on your own.

You can also learn more by visiting Fung's website, thefastingmethod.com. It has a weekly blog you can click on that provides a lot of information about fasting and related topics.

"The most important message, I suppose, is that health is really yours to take back, to take back from all the drug pushers and the people who just want you to take medications and who tell you that you can't do it and you'll always have Type 2 diabetes," Fung says.

"The solutions are all there. It's all within your grasp. It just requires the right knowledge … As physicians, the 19th to 20th century is all about drugs because we had a lot of infections. That was a great model. You take those antibiotics, you get better.

But now as we go onto the 21st century, it's all metabolic diseases. They're all dietary diseases. The problem is we're trying to use drugs for dietary diseases. Then we wonder why our drugs are no good. It's because the premise is entirely wrong. It's like bringing a snorkel to a bicycle race. It's just the wrong thing. We've got to move on."

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Ryan Smith is the founder of TruDiagnostic, a commercial testing system that tests your biological age, as opposed to your chronological age. It's can be a profoundly useful tool, because you need an objective barometer to tell you whether or not the things you're doing to improve your health are actually having the desired impact.

TruDiagnostic was founded in March 2020, right as the COVID pandemic hit, and the first commercial testing began in July that year. Since then, the company has launched more than 30 ongoing clinical trials, looking at a variety of interventions. They're also looking at how COVID-19 affects health metrics and longevity.

"We've built out new algorithms, new ways to read these DNA methylation markers that we measure for other functional health benefits," Smith says. "DNA methylation is a really robust platform. But it's also very new. We even have ways to look at how much arsenic or heavy metals you've been exposed to over your entire life, how many plastics you've been exposed to.

If there's one thing to take away from this talk, I think it's that this epigenetic platform will change every area of medicine as a diagnostic, which is changeable, but also can tell us a lot about different areas of medicine and really fit a need that we don't have in a lot of diagnostics.

So, I'm very excited about the field, but particularly aging — how to quantify that process, and then hopefully how to reverse it so that we can have really good results on increasing people's health span and life span, making them not only live longer, but live a high-quality life as well."

What Is DNA Methylation?

The idea of epigenetic methylation is rooted in the concept that every cell in your body has the exact same DNA, but express that DNA in very different ways. The cells of your skin do not express the same genes as your heart cells, for example.

We now know that the expression of genes is regulated, in part, epigenetically. As your cells differentiate into different types of tissues, they change their epigenetic expression to regulate what genes are turned on and turned off.

"I liken it to a light bulb. You can have an engineer look at a light bulb and tell you exactly what it's made for and how to turn it on, but if you don't know if it's on or off, then you're missing a big point of why it was created. It's the same with our cells.

This idea of measuring how things were turned on or turned off in our DNA expression has been known for a long time, but only recently scaled to a platform where we can actually investigate this on a large scale. So, what we measure is DNA methylation."

DNA methylation is the silencing of gene transcription. Your genes have promoter sites at the beginning of the DNA strand, and methylation is measured at those sites. The level of methylation at the promoter site correlates to the degree of expression of that particular gene.

"The converse process is a process called acetylation, which is a charged molecule which can open up those proteins to allow your genes to be transcribed [i.e., the turning on of the gene]. We measure specifically just that negative regulatory process, the DNA methylation," Smith explains.

What's being measured is not your ability to methylate or not methylate. Rather, it measures the actual expression of your DNA. And, contrary to conventional genetic testing like 23andMe, which is done once, DNA methylation can be measured multiple times as the actual expression of your DNA is alterable and changes over time.

"Due to advances with big data analysis and artificial intelligence, what we're able to do is take large scales of that data, so we can look at over 900,000 locations in your genome to see what the percentage of methylation is. Then we can correlate it to several different things."

DNA Methylation and Aging

Biological aging was one of the first things to be looked at using this platform because there was such a high correlation between DNA methylation and aging. Publications on this go back to 2009. In 2013, Dr. Steven Horvath created a chronological age-trained methylation clock, which, with just a couple nanograms of DNA, could help determine how old, chronologically, an individual was. Ryan states:

"It elucidated this idea that aging, the aging process, can actually be quantified very, very accurately, but also might even be responsible for a lot of the health considerations we see with age.

It's important to note that aging is the No. 1 risk factor for all chronic disease and death. If there's one thing you could do in a lifestyle capacity to prevent the development of age-related diseases, it is to essentially not age.

So that's a goal, but it's also a very difficult one to measure and do, because chronological age has been our only measurement for this for some time. We all know people in their 70s who look like they're in the 50s. We all know people in their 50s who look like they're in their 70s. So, chronological age has never been the best measurement. This molecular measurement can give us a much better idea of how we're aging."

The field of epigenetics is still in its infancy, and there are many fascinating areas of study underway. For example, there are already products on the market that are able to help diagnose up to 50 types of cancer from a single blood test.

Researchers are also looking senolytic clocks, which can be useful in the treatment of COVID, as they can tell you the overall burden of senescence in your body, and whether you might benefit from senolytic products.

How TruDiagnostic Compares to Other Companies

When asked how TruDiagnostic compares to other companies working with similar platforms, Smith replies:

"There are three things I like to draw attention to whenever I get asked that question. The first is the breadth of the measurement. With new clocks and new analyses coming out every day, one of the important things is making sure that you're measuring a lot of data, because as these new clocks or new algorithms come out, you want to be able to update them to make them even more accurate and more insightful.

So, one of the core tenets of what we wanted to do was to measure a lot of DNA. We measure over 900,000 locations. That is generally out of 26 million, approximately. So, it's still a very small amount of the total, but it's significantly more than any of our competitors, which might be measuring at most a 100,000.

So, we definitely like to scale because this is going to be a forward compatible platform. The human genome was only recently finished in terms of sequencing and the same will happen with epigenetic methylation, where, as we learn how to use this information, we'll be able to interpret it different ways.

We release new reports every three to four weeks with additional insights that are published in the literature. That way, we can keep everyone informed and up to date ... We want to provide any of our customers who do our test with the continuing updates.

Generally, even if someone did a test when we first started, they'll probably be getting updates for the next decade as we continue to see how this information and the ability to interpret it progresses ...

The next part of it is the algorithms piece, particularly the interpretation of that data. We only use published algorithms.

That is one of the things that we are very adamant about because otherwise, if you don't know how these measurements are related to health outcomes or related to different therapies, it's like taking the word of a fortune teller ... Publication is one of the main ways to have that scientifically valid and reliable measurement.

[Lastly], the important thing when you're taking these DNA methylation samples is the tissue that you're taking. We only use blood, the reason being is that most of these algorithms have been created off of blood samples. One of the interesting things about epigenetics is that every cell type is different.

If we were to measure your brain with the same algorithm we [used to] measure your blood, we would get much lower ages than we would on your blood. If we tested your breast tissue, for instance, we get much higher ages than if we tested your blood. So, the tissue type is very important, which is why we only use blood. Although it's not as easy to collect, it is definitely more scientifically reliable.

So, as you're evaluating which epigenetic companies to use, those would be my three criteria. Figure out the algorithms that they're using and reporting, make sure they're published, make sure they're measuring a good number of locations in case you want to know anything about that sample in the future.

Then lastly, make sure that they're using a collection method that has been validated in the literature, which mainly at this point is either blood or skin."

DNA Methylation Versus Telomere Length

One technique used to assess biological aging in the past has been to measure telomere length. Both Smith and I agree that epigenetic clocks are far superior for this purpose.

Telomeres are the sequences at the end of your DNA. Every time your cell undergoes a replication, you lose a little bit of that telomere, making it shorter and shorter over time. Eventually, you can start losing actual DNA. As the telomere shortens, the cell can start experiencing problems.

"Telomeres for many years have been thought of as the gold standard for aging because it's a process which highly correlates to how old someone is because they're going to have more replications and more cellular turnover as they get older," Smith says.

However, in head-to-head comparisons, DNA methylation is significantly more correlated to the aging process than telomeres. More importantly, it's also more predictive of health outcomes.

"So, if we're really trying to predict the results, the disease and health span-related things which are associated with aging, DNA methylation is a much better way of doing that," Smith says. "That said, telomere length is still one of those things that is a biomarker of aging. It is a separate process.

If you were to make sure that the telomere length never decreased in a cell, you'd still see methylation-related biological aging. If you made sure that the methylation age was reset, you would still see telomere length aging. So, there's two separate processes.

In a recent review, they actually looked at twins and tried to ascribe how much of the difference in their aging process was affected by these different markers. They said right around 2% of the variance in phenotypic aging was due to telomere length, whereas right around 35% of that was based on these epigenetic methylation clocks.

So, while they both might be important, we definitely would think that the DNA methylation clocks are significantly better. But with that being said, we also can estimate your telomere length via DNA methylation and that's one of the reports that we do."

DNA Methylation and COVID Outcomes

During the course of the COVID pandemic, Smith has been collaborating with Cornell University's immunology department, looking at DNA methylation and COVID outcomes. They were in the fortunate situation of being able to compare pre-COVID measurements with post-COVID measurements from patients who were getting routinely tested before the pandemic broke out, and then went on to develop COVID-19.

"We saw some really interesting things as it related to COVID-19 and aging," Smith says. The first thing they noticed was telomere length shortening. Several studies have now demonstrated that telomere length decreases with COVID exposure.

"I can't really speculate on the mechanism for that yet, but we definitely know that several studies with different measurements of telomere length have all concluded the same thing," Smith says. However, they also found a curious difference in biological aging as it related to chronological age. He explains:

"In our cohort, which is still relatively small, only 22 people, we saw that people who were over 50 tended to have advanced ageing as a result of COVID-19 exposure, where they were aging even with mild and moderate disease. However, people under 50 had a different response. People under 50 actually showed an anti-aging effect, where they actually got a little bit younger."

The Promise of Very Small Embryonic-Like Stem Cells

Among the more exciting antiaging therapies now available is very small embryonic-like stem cells (Vsels). Vsels are so small, they're easily transported through the lung capillary, so if you were to get an IV injection of them, they can spread to the rest of your body without being broken down or distorted.

Now, your body has mechanisms to replenish Vsels. It's one of the strategies your body uses to stay healthy. Vsels are extracted from your peripheral blood, unlike regular stem cells, assuming that they're autologous, which means they're from your own body. They're not taken from your bone marrow or your fat tissue, which are the two most common sources for stem cells.

Importantly, Vsels are pluripotential, meaning they can differentiate into almost any tissue in your body, whereas mesenchymal stem cells don't have as much differentiation capacity. This, I believe, make Vsels an ideal antiaging therapy.

Other Antiaging Strategies Showing Great Promise

Senolytics are also showing promise. A senescent cell is an elderly or aging cell that has lost the ability to reproduce. It just hangs around, not reproducing and not being cleared out. As a result, it starts creating inflammatory byproducts.

Senolytics selectively identify these senescent cells and destroy them. That's what senolytic therapy means. "Seno" meaning it's the senescent cell and "lytic" means that lyses, i.e., destroys, it.

Another interesting technique is called plasma exchange apheresis. This arose from studies in which the vascular systems of old and young mice were interconnected so that the mice started sharing blood with each other. Curiously, the older mice experienced a rejuvenating effect, and the younger mice experienced more rapid aging.

This led researchers to theorize that there might be something in our blood that influences aging and phenotypical health process. One evolution of this hypothesis is taking your own plasma out of your body, filtering it, putting in one or more new ingredients and then reinfusing it.

Lifestyle Strategies Help Lower Your Biological Age

In closing, here's a list of low-risk strategies that can go a long way toward lowering your biological age:

More Information

If you're interested in exploring DNA methylation testing for yourself, all of the tests are available for purchase direct to consumer. The TruAge Complete Collection will give you the metrics discussed in this interview — everything from telomere length to immune cell subsets, your intrinsic age, your immune age, and your instantaneous rate of aging.

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Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, whom I’ve interviewed twice previously, was among the first U.S. physicians to develop an early treatment program for the novel SARS-CoV-2 infection. He popularized the use of hydroxychloroquine and zinc, and when hydroxychloroquine became increasingly difficult to obtain, he was also among the first to identify quercetin as a viable alternative.

When the pandemic started, Zelenko was practicing in New York. He has since moved to Florida, where he’s been giving interviews for several hours a day, trying to spread the word about early treatment and prevention. As noted by Zelenko:

“It's a very treatable infection — or should I say bioweapon? — if done within the first few days, because COVID is two diseases. It's the infectious stage of the virus, and then a week later, you have the pathogenic inflammatory reaction that does all the damage to the lungs and causes blood clots.

So, it's all about timing. And the data is very clear. There are dozens of peer-reviewed studies that prove if you treat COVID within the first few days, you have an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death. It's a no-brainer. You could have saved 700,000 people from going to the hospital out of 800,000.”

While licensed to practice medicine in Florida, Zelenko now spends most of his time educating the public and other doctors. He’s also available via telemedicine, but his passion has become researching and developing simple, natural approaches to complex health problems — including his own.

The Road Less Traveled

Zelenko has a rare type of cancer called pulmonary artery sarcoma, which is typically fatal. He’s also undergone two open-heart surgeries and three years of chemo and radiation, none of which has resolved his problems.

“Almost four years ago, I was diagnosed with pulmonary artery sarcoma. There are only 10 cases on average per year, and they're all found at autopsy. In my case, they thought it was a blood clot that didn't respond to blood-thinning medication.

So, the decision was made to do an embolectomy, open my chest, go into the pulmonary artery and take out the blood clot. But when they did that, they saw it was a tumor, and it had completely destroyed my right lung. So, I lost my right lung. And they resected a large part of the pulmonary artery and had to reconstruct it because you need that artery to live.

Then I was in chemo ... I was pretty good for two years, and then it came back and had spread to my hip as well. And so, I had another open-heart surgery. They had to replace one of my heart valves, pulmonic valve. Then I went for radiation to my hip [followed by] really heavy chemo.

After two months on that, I went into congestive heart failure and developed cardiomyopathy ... I recovered from that, and was put on heart failure medication ... A month after that ... I developed COVID pneumonia ... I was pretty sure I was going to leave in a box, yet I recovered.

A few months later, I went for another CT scan, and they found, again, the tumor was back in the pulmonary artery, but this time, no doctor wanted to operate on me. A third open-heart procedure is very dangerous. They estimated more than 50% likelihood I would die on the table, which I didn't like. So, I ended up having pretty intense radiation to my mediastinum, where the tumor was.

That's when you came into the picture, in terms of advising me about treatment. I ended up having immunotherapy in Europe for two months with checkpoint inhibitors, but also hyperthermia and mistletoe injections, and alpha lipoic acid, high-dose vitamin C [infusions] and different other modalities. And I feel better than ever.

I had a CT scan last week, and it showed the tumor shrank by one-third. I spoke to the radiation oncologist who told me that a good result would've been the same size or smaller. It takes years to resolve. So, time will tell, but it's easier for me to walk, and hemodynamically I'm more stable, and I feel good. Amen.”

The Surprising Role of Immunotherapy in Cancer

Overall, the “COVID story has completely changed the way I look at life,” Zelenko says. When he saw how natural, effective, over-the-counter solutions for COVID were suppressed, while experimental gene transfer shots were pushed, he realized other treatments might also be suppressed, such as cancer treatments.

“Probably, effective approaches were marginalized in lieu of the more expensive pharmaceutical approaches,” he says. “I'll give you one example. Dr. [William] Coley was an oncological surgeon who lived around 100 years ago, maybe 120 years ago. He noticed that he would operate on his patients, and the tumor would come back and they would die. And then he observed something very interesting.

He had a patient with pancreatic cancer, Stage 4, inoperable. That patient got very sick with an infection and became septic. He almost died, but he recovered and his tumor went away. He noticed that type of phenomenon a few more times, and realized that there must be some immune reaction, immune response to the infection that wakes up the immune system to also attack the tumor.

So basically, in my opinion, that was the birth of immunotherapy. Fever seems to play a role. It seems to have antitumor properties, as well as activating certain parts of your immune system. So, it's fascinating. And that information was buried for a good long time — 50, 60 years — until some doctors rediscovered it and started doing research. And I benefited from that in Europe.”

Hyperthermic Treatment for Cancer

We’ve come a long way since the days of Coley, who used toxins to trigger infection and fever. Today, hyperthermic treatment is used instead. Basically, it’s all about raising your body temperature to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit for four to six hours. Zelenko describes the treatment he underwent:

“It was quite an experience, having a temperature around 40 Celsius, let's say 104 degrees Fahrenheit, for five hours. You become a little loopy and a little anxious, but I drank a lot of fluids and had a nurse with me all the time. It was a pretty interesting experience.

There were whole-body hyperthermia machines and localized hyperthermia. Both are basically a fancy sauna. It was like a spa actually. I did enjoy the treatment in most cases.”

As an aside, I sincerely believe sauna bathing is one of the most powerful biohacks available. I do it four times a week. I get my temperature up to about 102 degrees F. or so, for 20 minutes. I’ve found it to be a profoundly effective health habit to nip infections in the bud, and may also help put the brakes on any potential malignancies. I am currently using a prototype full-spectrum SaunaSpace sauna that is EMF-free, has eight 250 watt bulbs and will likely be available later this year.

Omicron Is Unstoppable, But Not To Be Feared

Getting back to the issue of COVID, over the past two years, the SARS-CoV-2 infection has gone through a number of changes. Omicron, for example, is far more contagious, but has far less severe symptoms. As noted by Zelenko:

“Omicron is unstoppable. It's more infectious than measles. Everyone's going to get it. Sorry, but that's the case. However, it seems to attack only the upper airway in most cases, and there are very few deaths. It’s very responsive to treatment as well, so there's no reason to be afraid of it.”

In fact, we appear to have been gifted a best-case scenario, in which a highly contagious virus will rip through the population, causing only mild cold symptoms, thus producing herd immunity without the risk of mass casualties. “When two-thirds of the population gets through it, it essentially shuts down the pandemic,” Zelenko says.

Vaccinating During a Pandemic Breeds Variants

In the interview, Zelenko explains how the many variants we’ve seen have probably been a result of the mass “vaccination” campaign.

Three respected immunologists, Dr. Luc Montagnier (who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of the HIV virus), Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, the most published immunologist in history, and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a top immunologist in The Netherlands, have all warned that when you mass vaccinate in the middle of an active outbreak, you cause variants to emerge.

“You exert evolutionary pressure and breed more varying viruses,” Zelenko says. “Now, there are two or three possibilities. One could be that it was unintentional. Good, well-meaning people developed what they thought would help — a vaccine. However, giving it to people during a pandemic has been an absolute failure. ‘Oops, we're sorry.’ That's one possibility.

The other possibility is that whoever has orchestrated this knows exactly what they're doing, and they are doing it on purpose to maintain the new variants and the consequences of that, which is essentially a psyop [to cause] a global psychosis due to fear, lockdowns and wearing a face diaper.

There's one more possibility. There's no dispute; everyone who knows the facts and has studied the issue knows that COVID-19 is a weapon made in a laboratory. Gain-of-function research is nothing more than making a weapon of mass destruction and genocide, and there's a patent trail 20 years long that documents the different stages of development of this weapon.

And here's my supposition. I have no evidence of this, but I could say the following: If I could make the original virus, I could make variants. It's very easy. You just change a few sequences of the code that goes with the spike protein. You change its three-dimensional shape, and if you do it enough, eliminate existing antibodies.

So again, I don't have evidence for that, but I do have evidence that [SARS-CoV-2] is an artificially-made bioweapon. So why wouldn't it be possible to make variants the same way? I think it's kind of a combination, multifactorial cause of variants — the natural God factor, the evolutionary pressure exerted by vaccinating people during an active pandemic, and then just outright making them.”

Antidotes to the Bioweapon Were Developed Beforehand

Zelenko goes on to recount a relatively recent realization. Back in March 2020, he saw a MedCram video, episode 34,¹ in which Dr. Roger Seheult explained some of the principles that he then ended up building his COVID protocol on. Seheult specifically quoted a paper that explained the functioning of zinc ionophores.

That mechanism is what Zelenko relied upon when developing his own protocol. However, he didn’t realize until December 2021 that the author of that central paper was Dr. Ralph Baric. Why does that matter? Zelenko explains:

“In 1999, Ralph Baric, funded by the U.S. government, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, figured out how to take an animal virus and have it be able to infect other species, different animals, in other words, cross-species infection.

In 2015, the same Dr. Ralph Baric, and Dr. Zhengli [at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China], funded by the National Institutes of Health, figured out how to make a corona bat virus infect human beings, and augmented its lethality to human lives. That was in 2015. But in 2010, Baric published that paper that I'm referring to.

So, the development of the weapon happened in stages, but before it was unleashed onto the human population, or the development of it being able to infect human beings, an antidote was made. Research paid for by the government was published.

The same people that made the bomb, let's say, also created the antidote to diffuse the bomb. And then, when the pandemic arrived, doctors like myself, out of necessity, came up with creative solutions, based — in my case, unknowingly — on this work. And immediately, that information was marginalized and suppressed, and doctors were deplatformed for advocating for it.

So, the government who made the bomb also knew about the solution. And the reason why is they didn't want to die. The stakeholders here don't want their families to die. But for you and for me, they have a different agenda. So, they had that information.

I have knowledge that the Google executives are all taking hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for prophylaxis, as is half of Congress. And so, the people that have orchestrated this knew the answer, and use it for themselves. Even doctors know the answer for themselves.

They prescribe [these drugs] for themselves, or they call me. But when patients come, they say there's no treatment, go home, take Tylenol. So, this is mass murder.”

The COVID Jabs — Another Crime Against Humanity

In addition to killing untold numbers of people by denying and suppressing early treatment options, governments around the world are also killing people with the COVID jabs. A year into the aggressive campaign to inject as many people as possible, it’s likely the shots have killed more people than have died from the infection. It’s very difficult to tell, unfortunately, because the data are so seriously manipulated.

Zelenko estimates somewhere between 500,000 to 1 million Americans have been killed by the shots to date. Disturbingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was aware that the shots could have serious consequences, yet they pushed them anyway. What’s more, they refuse to address the mindboggling number of adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). The safety signal couldn’t possibly be clearer.

“In October, 2020, two months before the vaccine rollout, there was an internal presentation in the FDA to its scientists, and on slide 16 of that presentation, there was a list of side effects: death, heart attack, stroke, blood clots, horrific neurological diseases, myocarditis and many, many more,” Zelenko says.

“Now keep in mind, this is two months prior to the rollout. After the vaccines were rolled out, and a few months into it, when the VAERS database started showing the side effects that people were experiencing, there's a 100% correlation with what that slide said would happen, and what actually happened to human beings.

That is premeditated mass murder. FDA knew exactly what it was doing. They knew exactly the side effects, and they released it anyway ...”

What’s the Real Agenda?

Why would the FDA behave this way? Why aren’t they safeguarding public health from a clearly lethal treatment? And on the other hand, why aren’t they allowing doctors to help people with early treatment? Zelenko explains:

“In the mid-‘90s, it became obvious that the American economy was doomed. The Medicare and Social Security systems would become insolvent, and that would cause a tsunami-like effect nationally and internationally. And it was unstoppable. It was [mathematically inevitable].

Medicare, according to Congressional Budget Office, in 2027 will begin the process towards bankruptcy. So, security as of today [will last until] 2034. Now, the major stakeholders in the world economies saw an existential threat. They understood that their power and wealth was in real jeopardy.

And so a plan was developed, which was beyond the technology at that time, but the technology was being developed. So, for example, the Human Genome Project was mapped and completed.

Then CRISPR technology was developed, which is gene editing or gene splicing in very precise ways. That was sold as a way to cure genetic diseases. There's a defective gene. You can just cut it out and splice in, cut and paste, basically, a healthy gene.

That's the upside. The downside is that it creates possibilities to do gene editing for nefarious reasons. In 2015, Bill Gates said that the world population needs to be reduced by 15% through the use of vaccines because of global warming.

The same Bill Gates in 2020 said 7 billion people must be vaccinated. So, the obvious rhetorical question is, ‘Why would I take a vaccine for my health from someone who's advocating the use of vaccines to reduce the world population?’

In 2016, Klaus Schwab, in an interview said something very strange. He said that within 10 years, by 2026, every single human being will be tagged with a digital identifier. What does that mean, and why?

Let's go through the sequence of events. A bioweapon is made with an antidote, which is being suppressed and hidden. [The bioweapon] is released. It's extremely easy to treat. However, that information is being suppressed, and access to those medications is being suppressed, and doctors who are advocating for it are being persecuted.

Anything that seems to give people hope, lessen anxiety, encourage reintegration with your loved ones seems to be immediately vilified, even early intervention. If you look at the NIH, they recommend, as of today, not to treat COVID unless they're in the hospital with lung damage. Don't do that.

And so, I was wondering, what is really going on? And why this incessant push to vaccinate everyone? Why jail doctors for using meds at work? Because it encourages the vaccine hesitancy.

Then I realized something. There were two patents that I became aware of. They're separated by a year, but they're linked in the puzzle, in the concept. One was August 31, 2021, that describes ... nanotechnology engineering.² It basically describes the following:

That there is the capability, the technology, already existing, in these vaccines that allows for the measurement of biometric data, meaning your heart rate, your respiratory rate, temperature, and then the transmission of that data with your location to a third party.

That didn't even make sense to me. Like what? But then I realized there's another patent owned by Microsoft. This one I remember by heart. It's an international patent, WO202060606. You can't make this stuff up. That patent describes linkage of biometric data transmission to cryptocurrency.

Then I got it. And by the way, 2026, when everyone's supposed to be tagged with a digital ID, let's call it an internal Auschwitz tattoo, is a year before the beginning of the insolvency of Medicare and the beginning of economic collapse. And so, the real agenda has become obvious to me.

It's never been about health. COVID-19 is easy to treat. It was always about using fear and mass psychosis to get 7 billion people to willfully get injected with the technology that would permit them to participate in the new cryptocurrency-based system, the system that the world will use for finance.

Fiat currency and all the traditional ways of transactions will be gone. The only way that you actually will be able to participate in transactions, of buying bread, let's say, is having a transmitting sensor of information with your location. It's the mark of the beast, if you really want to know. With that, you can then buy bread for your family ...

Gates and Schwab [are] both talking talk about how these vaccines change who you are. What does that mean? They explain it. [With] the gene editing technology, they are making the human better. That's transhumanism. I call it Human 2.0. Human 1.0 is the version made by God. We are is imprinted [with God] in our genetic code. We're made in the image of God because we have his code in us.

Now, would you give Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab the password to your home security system? Why would we give him access to our genetic code? Human 2.0, in the demented, depraved, deranged minds of these people is the next step up in the evolution of human beings. And I'm saying that if you allow that to happen to yourself, you're no longer made in the image of God. You're made in the image of Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab.”

A Ploy to Tag Us for the NWO’s Slave System

So, in summary, Zelenko believes that everything we’ve experienced so far — the aggressive marketing of the shots, the coercion and threats made to get as many injected as possible — has all been a ploy to “tag” as many people as possible in preparation for the New World Order’s cryptocurrency system, which will be managed by a small select group, and used to enslave all of humanity.

As noted by Zelenko, the World Economic Forum has publicly announced that by 2030, the U.S. will no longer be a superpower, and a few countries will be in charge of global governance. Now, how do you destabilize an economic engine like the U.S.?

“You create a pandemic,” Zelenko says. “You lock down middle class businesses, small businesses ... But you leave Walmart and Home Depot open ... It’s a wealth transfer from the middle class to the people in power. It's a robbery, basically.

This is one big attempt at enslaving humanity. It's a brilliant plan, by the way. It's evil, but it's brilliant because slavery has always been the most lucrative industry and asset throughout human history. Now is no different. And so, you have a few sociopaths who believe in their immortality and think that they'll transfer their consciousness to some cyborg, enjoying the whole world as their playground.”

Zelenko goes on to discuss the statements inscribed on the Georgia Guidestones, a huge granite monument erected anonymously in a small town in Georgia, which lays out 10 commandments. The first one is that the world population should be reduced to and maintained at 500 million. If the COVID shots continue, it’s not inconceivable that the human population might be reduced to that size.

The Why Behind the Genocide

A few months ago, Elon Musk debuted his humanoid robots, saying that since these robots will eliminate 90% of the workforce, we therefore need universal basic income. This too is part of The Great Reset plan, which embraces both technocracy and transhumanism.

“Keep in mind that in the minds of these people, we're not made in the divine [image]. We're cockroaches. And they're not going to throw endless universal income resources at cockroaches for too long. They'll do it initially to identify the useless eaters, and then they will be liquidated. This has happened before.

Just 80 years ago you had the Nazi ideology based on eugenics, which created three classes of people. You have the ubermensch, what Nietzsche would call Superman. Then the mensch, which is the human, and then the untermensch, which is the subhuman. In the [Nazi] model, the [Nazis were] Supermen, descendants of Aryan gods. That gave them the power to enslave others.

So, for example, the Anglo-Saxons, basically Europeans, were meant to be slaves to the Aryans. And the subhumans, which I belong to — Jews, gypsies, Slavs, handicapped, political prisoners — we were meant to be vaporized, become dust.

That ideology did not go away. It resurfaced with the nuance that is not antisemitic right now. In a kind of an abstract way, we're all Jews this time, because the hierarchy here is not based on religion or identity, but rather on the deranged belief that they've evolved, the Superman of this generation, into a higher level of consciousness.

They're woke and they understand and are enlightened about the nature of the human condition. They're custodians of the planet, and therefore it's their responsibility to make sure the planet has solvency, that it continues to exist. And therefore, we have to reduce the world population.”

Cause for Optimism

While humanity is in a most precarious situation, Zelenko is optimistic about the future.

“I'll tell you what I really think is going on,” he says. “There’s what we see, and then there's the, let's call it spiritual physics, at play. Karl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, wrote, ‘The moral degradation of society begins with the degradation of the individual.’ From that, we can actually learn that moral improvement of society begins with improvement of the individual.

We, as a society, over the last 50, 60 years, have made some very bad choices. For example, we've desanctified or defiled gender roles ... Marriage has lost its sanctity. The unborn are being massacred. In the Bible, there are two cities that were destroyed, Sodom and Gomorrah, and there's an analysis why that happened. It wasn't because of the immorality, because the whole world was immoral.

It was because they codified immorality into the law of the land. That's exactly what has happened in [the U.S.] We've devolved ... We worship the God of science, the god of technology, the god of money, god of power. Anything but [the true] God. And we are clearly practicing child sacrifice.

Dr. Michael Yeadon, former VP of Pfizer, told me personally, and then he actually publicized it, that for every one child that dies of COVID, 100 die from the vaccine. The [COVID shot] is 100 times more lethal to children than COVID. What do you call that? That's child sacrifice.

So, I feel that, by way of analogy, we're in the generation of flood. The house is going to get cleaned, and each individual is given a choice to get on the ark or not.

Or, to make it simpler, who do you bow down to? Do you bow down to your creator, who makes you in every instant of time? Do you ask [God] for fortitude, endurance, strength, resolve, the ability to deal with the unknown and fear? Or are you going to give in to the fear and bow down to corrupt sociopaths, oligarchs, corrupt governments, and the false promise of the golden calf of these vaccines?

Because at this point, in this country at least, no one's holding you down and putting a needle into your arm. The majority of people, they want to travel by plane. They don't want to lose their job. They want to go to school. It's all these kinds of quality of life decisions. In other words, in a normal society, the parents sacrifice for the well-being of the children. In pagan societies, we sacrifice the children for the purpose of the adults.”

Peaceful Civil Disobedience Is the Answer

So, what’s the answer? Can we stop this transhumanist trajectory that threatens the very core of what makes us human? Can we prevent this plan for our enslavement from coming to fruition? Zelenko believes there is a way, as do I.

“The answer is we need organized civil disobedience. Do not comply. They can't imprison everyone. They can't fire everyone. They can't expel everyone. They can't lock down everyone. There's many more of us than them. And actually, let me speak to the military leaders, to the police, to people that are charged to protect society.

You also have children. You also have parents. And we are relying on you to do what's best for the citizens of this country, to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic. All we need to do is to coalesce with like-minded people. Take your kids out of school. Homeschool them. You can teach them morality.

The World Health Organization came out with an edict that if your kids go to school, that's implied consent for the vaccine because you could have not sent them. And since you sent them to school, that's implying that you're consenting for them to be vaccinated, even without your knowledge.

Basically, we have to make small pockets, like cities of refuge, in a sense, of like-minded people; create an alternate society; do commerce with ourselves. I know there are forces really working hard to create an alternate cryptocurrency or blockchain system that is decentralized and would allow for people who don't want to be tagged with a digital identifier to transact with each other.”

As noted by Zelenko, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the pandemic measures were never about protecting us from COVID. It was always about creating a new world order. It was about setting the stage for a Great Reset to “Build Back Better.”

But better for whom? The Build Back Better plan is about building “a society run by a few sociopaths and the rest of us enslaved,” Zelenko says. The good news is that more and more people are now starting to see this plan, and “once that realization reaches a certain threshold of people, countries are going to change and fall like dominoes,” he says.

As for when we might get our freedom back, that depends on us. As noted by Zelenko, “freedom isn't free.” We were free (at least up until 2020) because our forefathers had the courage to confront tyranny. If we want our children to be free, we now have to display that same courage.

“Whether or not our children will be free depends on whether or not we are ready to sacrifice,” Zelenko says. “Are we ready, in this generation, to pay the price to ensure that our children thrive in freedom and have the ability to maintain God consciousness?

It's going to happen. The unknown variable is to body count. I would hope that this interview reaches the consciousness of every single human being. People must choose to say no from this point on.”

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By Dr. Mercola

If you think your birth control pill is the best pregnancy prevention tool there is, you may be surprised by new research looking into its failure rates.

Compared to other forms of protection, the Pill failed miserably, which only adds to the myriad of reasons why you should heavily question its use.

The Pill Fails 20 Times More Often

About 99 percent of sexually active women use at least one method of birth control, the most common of which is the birth control pill (oral contraceptives). The Pill was used by nearly 11 million U.S. women from 2006-2008.ⁱ

Meanwhile, nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended.ⁱⁱ Certainly not all of these are due to a birth control failure, but some of them -- estimates suggest about half -- undoubtedly are. Which brings me to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.ⁱⁱⁱ Out of the 7,500 women in the study, who used various forms of birth control including an intrauterine device (IUD), implant, birth control pills, patch, ring and contraceptive injection, 334 became pregnant, 156 of which were due to birth control failure.

The contraceptive failure rate among pills, patch or ring was 4.55 percent, compared to 0.27 percent among participants using reversible contraception such as intrauterine devices. The effectiveness—or non-effectiveness—was no different in adolescents or young women. The implications—that birth control pills are 20 times more likely to fail than IUDs—should give some women a pause to think about the method of contraception they want to use.

As for the varying degrees of effectiveness, the Pill must be taken daily, preferably around the same time for it to work its best. Study author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, noted:^iv

"This study is the best evidence we have that long-acting reversible methods are far superior to the birth control pill, patch and ring. IUDs and implants are more effective because women can forget about them after clinicians put the devices in place ... If there were a drug for cancer, heart disease or diabetes that was 20 times more effective, we would recommend it first."

Hormone-Based Contraceptives Have Steep Risks

Unintended pregnancy is clearly a big one, but artificially manipulating your hormones using oral contraceptives, the patch or ring, or an injection like Depo-Provera is also a very risky proposition. Most birth control pills are a combination of the derivatives of the hormones estrogen and a synthetic progesterone(progestin). They work by disrupting the hormones in your body, essentially fooling your intricate hormonal reproductive system into producing the following effects:

• Preventing your ovaries from releasing eggs
• Thickening your cervical mucus to help block sperm from fertilizing an egg
• Thinning the lining of your uterus, which would make it difficult for an egg to implant, should it become fertilized

However, it is naive to believe that these are the only impacts the synthetic hormones are having. Your reproductive system does not exist in a bubble ... it is connected to all of your other bodily systems as well. The Pill, too, does not only influence your reproductive status; it's capable of altering much more.

Ten years ago, in 2002, one of the largest and best-designed federal studies of hormone replacement therapy was halted because women taking these synthetic hormones had a such a higher risk of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots that continuing forward with the study would have been unethical. The news made headlines because millions of women were already taking these synthetic hormones, but fortunately it prompted many of them to quit. And what do you think happened a year after millions of women quit taking hormone replacement therapy? Incidents of breast cancer fell dramatically -- by 7 percent!

What does this have to do with the Pill? Birth control pills contain the SAME type of synthetic hormones -- estrogen and progestin -- that were used in the ill-fated study!

That's just one risk. Oral contraceptives have been linked to more than two dozen conditions, including heart disease, liver cancer, deep vein thrombosis and inflammatory bowel disease.^v Research suggests they are not only carcinogenic (cancer-causing) but also cardiotoxic (toxic to your heart) and endocrine disrupting.

Why I Advise Most Women to Stop Hormonal Contraceptives

Birth control pills are rarely, if ever, necessary or beneficial. In exchange for the convenience of preventing pregnancy (which you can do naturally perhaps even more effectively, and I'll explain how below), you are putting yourself at risk of a myriad of health issues.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that several types of hormone-based birth control methods increased women's risk of heart attack and stroke.^vi The link was found between oral contraceptives as well as contraceptive patches and the vaginal ring. Women using the ring were found to have a 2.5 times greater risk of stroke compared to those not using hormonal contraceptives, whereas the other methods increased the risk to varying degrees.

Other known health risks of hormone-based birth control include:

Cancer: Women who take birth control pills increase their risk of cervical and breast cancers, and possibly liver cancer as well.	Fatal blood clots: All birth control pills increase your risk of blood clots and subsequent stroke.	Thinner bones: Women who take birth control pills have lower bone mineral density (BMD) than women who have never used oral contraceptives.	Impaired muscle gains: A study found that oral contraceptive use impairs muscle gains from resistance exercise training in women.vii
Long-term sexual dysfunction: The Pill may limit the availability and/or action of testosterone, leading to long-term sexual dysfunction, including decreased desire and arousal.	Heart disease: Long-term use of birth control pills may increase the buildup of arterial plaque, which may raise your risk of heart disease and cardiac mortality.viii	Migraines and nausea	Weight gain and mood changes
Irregular bleeding or spotting	Breast tenderness	Yeast overgrowth	Yeast infection

The other hormonal-based options are not much better. Birth control patches (Ortho Evra) have resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits over the past several years due to the overwhelming health problems women have experienced from using them. One of the reasons the patch is so risky is that you absorb up to 60 percent more synthetic estrogen than if you were taking an oral contraceptive. Side effects of the patch include:

Raised risk of heart attack and stroke	Irregular bleeding	Problems wearing contact lenses	Fluid retention or raised blood pressure
Nausea	Headache	Breast tenderness	Mood changes
Menstrual cramps	Abdominal pain	Skin irritation or rashes at site of patch

As far as injections like Depo-Provera, or depo medroxyprogesterone (DMPA), go, this synthetic analogue of natural progesterone known as a progestin interferes with hormone signaling to prevent your ovaries from releasing eggs. Progestins carry with them a vast array of negative side effects, including:

Side Effects of Depo-Provera
Weight gain Headaches Breast swelling and tenderness Decreased sexual desire Depression Bloating Swelling of the hands and feet Nervousness Abdominal cramps Dizziness Weakness of fatigue Leg cramps Nausea Vaginal discharge or irritation	Backache Insomnia Acne Pelvic pain Lack of hair growth or excessive hair loss Rashes Hot flashes Joint pain Convulsions Jaundice Urinary tract infections Allergic reactions Fainting Paralysis Osteoporosis	Lack of return to fertility Deep vein thrombosis Pulmonary embolus Breast and cervical cancers Abnormal menstrual bleeding Increased risk for STDs Unexpected breast milk production Changes in speech, coordination, or vision Swelling of face, ankles or feet Mood changes Unusual fatigue

Is an IUD a Better Option?

Intrauterine devices are small, plastic, T-shaped sticks with a string attached to the end. The IUD is placed inside the uterus and prevents pregnancy by rendering the sperm unable to fertilize an egg, and by changing the lining of the uterus so that it is less supportive for an embryo. It also works by releasing hormones into your body, specifically a progestin hormone called levonorgestrel, which is often used in birth control pills.

One of its major advantages, and what contributes to its increased effectiveness rate, is that it essentially eliminates the compliance failure issue as all you do is insert it once. There is no daily task to remember to do. However, it, too, carries significant risks, including some that are unique to a foreign body being placed inside your uterus. Among them:

• Pelvic infection: IUDs may lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, a serious infection
• The device may attach to or go through the wall of the uterus
• Pregnancy while using an IUD can be life threatening, and may result in loss of the pregnancy or fertility
• Ovarian cysts may occur
• Bleeding and spotting

Take Charge of Your Body Using Natural Birth Control Methods

You may not be aware that there are many effective and safe methods for preventing pregnancy. Some of the more common, barrier methods are:

• Male condoms: Condoms have a 98 percent effectiveness rate when used correctly. A water-based lubricant will increase the effectiveness; do not use an oil-based lubricant, however, as they break the latex and usually are petrochemical in origin.
• Female condoms: These thin, soft polyurethane pouches fitted inside the vagina before sex are 95 percent effective. Female condoms are less likely to tear than male condoms.
• Diaphragm: Diaphragms, which must be fitted by a doctor, act as a barrier to sperm. When used correctly with spermicidal jellies, they are 92 to 98 percent effective.
• Cervical cap: This heavy rubber cap fits tightly against the cervix and can be left in place for 48 hours. Like the diaphragm, a doctor must fit the cap. Proper fitting enhances the effectiveness above 91 percent.
• Cervical sponges: The sponge, made of polyurethane foam, is moistened with water and inserted into the vagina prior to sex. It works as a barrier between sperm and the cervix, both trapping and absorbing sperm and releasing a spermicide to kill them. It can be left in for up to 24 hours at a time. When used correctly, the sponge is about 89-91 percent effective.

Many people are familiar with these barrier methods, and less familiar with natural family planning (NFP) tools, which a woman uses to track when she is ovulating, and then avoid sex during that time (or does so only using a back-up barrier method). Many women feel empowered by NFP because it allows them to get in touch with their fertility cycle.

Some of the most popular methods include:

• Calendar Method: Abstention from sex during the week the woman is ovulating. This technique works best when a woman's menstrual cycle is very regular. The calendar method doesn't work very well for couples who use it by itself (about a 75 percent success rate), but it can be effective when combined with the temperature and mucus methods described below.
• The Temperature Method: This is a way to pinpoint the day of ovulation so that sex can be avoided for a few days before and after. It involves taking your basal body temperature (your temperature upon first waking) each morning with an accurate "basal" thermometer, and noting the rise in temperature that occurs after ovulation.
  
  Illness or lack of sleep can change your body temperature and make this method unreliable by itself, but when it is combined with the mucus method, it can be an accurate way of assessing fertility. The two methods combined can have a success rate as high as 98 percent.
• The Mucus Method: This involves tracking changes in the amount and texture of vaginal discharge, which reflect rising levels of estrogen in your body. For the first few days after your period, there is often no discharge, but there will be a cloudy, tacky mucus as estrogen starts to rise. When the discharge starts to increase in volume and becomes clear and stringy, ovulation is near. A return to the tacky, cloudy mucus or no discharge means that ovulation has passed.

I encourage you to become actively involved in fertility awareness, and embrace natural family planning or barrier methods that will not interfere with your hormones and health. Some excellent reading to get you started on this path include:

1. The Ovulation Method: Natural Family Planning, by John J. Billings
2. Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health, by Toni Weschler
3. Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook, by Katie Singer

References:

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