Health & Fitness

This article was previously published February 24, 2019, and has been updated with new information.

Dr.Jason Fung, is a nephrologist and author of three books, "The Obesity Code," "The Complete Guide to Fasting," and "The Longevity Solution," which is the topic of this interview. This book was also co-written with James DiNicolantonio, Pharm. D, who also happens to be the co-author of my book, "Superfuel."

The motivation for "The Longevity Solution" came from a discussion with DiNicolantonio. "He'd already talked about salt in his book, 'The Salt Fix,'" Fung says. "In 'Superfuel,' he talked about good fats, bad fats and super fuel. We thought it would be great to tie everything together in terms of the real dietary determinants of longevity." Fung added:

"I spend a good section of the book talking about protein — the different types of protein, animal versus plant protein, for example, and how much protein [you need]. These are really important questions because there's so much [information] out there, and you don't know who to believe."

From my review of the book, I think that is probably one of the most valuable pieces, because there's so much confusion about protein. There's good reason for this confusion, because it's a complex topic. An important part of the equation is the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), also known as the mechanistic target of rapamycin, a very important pathway responsible for controlling autophagy.

If you inhibit mTOR — which you can do by restricting protein — you activate autophagy, which is a good thing. However, I've personally made the mistake of not eating enough. While excess protein can activate mTOR, your protein needs do increase with age, as you need to counteract progressive loss of muscle mass. So, your age really needs to be taken into account as well.

Understanding the Role of mTOR

As noted by Fung, mTOR is basically a nutrient sensor. While insulin primarily senses your intake of carbohydrates, mTOR primarily senses protein. Different proteins will stimulate mTOR more than others. Fung explains:

"The reason is that mTOR senses the availability of protein and increases these growth pathways. If you're trying to increase muscle, like bodybuilders will, for example, then this might be a very good thing. On the other hand, it impacts aging. One of the real interesting theories of aging is that there's a sort of trade-off between the growth program and the longevity program.

That is, if you grow, it's actually the same pathway as aging. Whether it's good or bad depends on your age. When you're young, you want to grow, so you activate all these growth pathways. But as you get older, if you keep revving that growth engine, it's just going to burn out.

Just like your car engine, revving it is great if you want to go fast. But if, on the other hand, you want to keep that car for a long time, you don't want to rev it that much. Things change as you go along.

During childhood and early adulthood, you want that growth program to go forward, but that growth program is intrinsically at odds with the longevity program. After a certain point, you may want to cut things back. That's the understanding of mTOR; mTOR drives all this growth. But then as you get older, you wind up with diseases of too much growth …

There are all these chronic metabolic diseases where increasing the growth pathway, which is the same as the longevity-aging pathway, is not good. At some point, you want to slow it down. But as you get older, your body actually becomes resistant to some of these growth pathways.

Therefore, you actually need to take a little bit more. If you're elderly and you're at risk of falls, for example, then taking more protein might be a good thing. This is one of the reasons that protein is so hard to understand because everybody's so different … You just have to look at your own situation."

What Are Your Real Protein Needs?

All of that said, there are some general guidelines you can use to estimate your protein needs. Children, for example, generally need higher amounts of protein since they're in growth mode.

Now, when calculating your protein needs, it's important to make the calculation based on grams per kilograms (kg) of lean mass, not total body weight. The reason for this is because you do not need protein to maintain your fat mass. You need it to maintain your lean muscle mass. The following amounts can be used as a general guideline:

Children — 2 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass

Young adults — 0.8 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass

Adults — 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass

Bodybuilders — 1 to 1.2 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass

Endurance athletes — 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass

Seniors — 0.8 grams of protein per kg of lean body mass; possibly more if muscle wasting is a problem

The Importance of Cycling High and Low Protein Intake

The challenge here is find the balance so that the whole system is optimized. Muscle loss is a more or less inevitable consequence of age. But with age you also have more damaged cells that need to be removed by autophagy. My solution has been to devise a program in which I combine protein restriction with fasting, followed by increased protein intake on strength training days.

"I think that makes a lot of sense," Fung says. "If you look at the literature on longevity, the only really well-established thing that makes people live longer is calorie restriction, but it's very hard to do. One of the things is to cycle it back and forth, so that … some days, you're taking very little; some days you're taking a lot. I think that's actually how people were actually meant to live …

I think it makes a lot of sense because it's this sort of growth-versus-longevity paradigm. If you're always eating the same thing, then you're not going to be able to get that balance right. Because [when] you're in a pro-growth [pathway], that's also a pro-aging pathway.

You really want to go in between the two. Some days, you're going to take a lot. That will stimulate your mTOR, as well as insulin, for example, and put you in this growth pattern. Then you'll have days where your mTOR is going to be driven down very low. Those are the days your body's going to go into more of a survival mode, if you will. That's going to activate autophagy.

When you eat protein, for example, mTOR, which is a nutrient sensor, goes up. It basically just shuts off autophagy. Autophagy is this sort of cellular recycling process. It's very important for aging because it's a rejuvenating cycle for your cells …

When mTOR is very low, then your body will start to break down some of the subcellular parts. Those that are going to be broken down first are those older damaged parts. You're going to get rid of them all. Everybody thinks breaking down protein is bad. But it's not, because that's the first step in renewing yourself. You've got to get rid of all the old stuff and you've got to rebuild the new things. That's why it's important to cycle it …

I think you should, one day, maybe take 100 [grams of protein], and the next day zero. I think that's much better [than eating a specific amount of protein each day], because on the day you're taking zero, you get rid of all your old cells. Then on the day you're taking 100 grams, you're going to rebuild."

In addition to protein, other nutrients can also activate or inhibit mTOR:

• Nutrients that activate mTOR include branched-chain amino acids, glutamine, methyl folate and vitamin B12
• Nutrients thatinhibit mTOR include polyphenols like curcumin, fisetin quercetin, resveratrol (found in wine) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG, found in green tea). Organic coffee and dark chocolate also contain high amounts of mTOR inhibiting polyphenols

The Importance of Fasting for Longevity

In his book "Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy and Sleep Well Every Night," Satchidananda Panda, Ph.D., cites research showing that 90% of people eat across 12 hours a day or more, and compressing this eating window may in fact be one of the most important things you can do for your health.

Fung recently published a case series paper¹ detailing how fasting can be used as a therapeutic alternative for Type 2 diabetes. Three diabetic patients between the ages of 40 and 67 participated in a supervised fasting regimen to evaluate the effects on their insulin requirements. The patients had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes for 10, 20 and 25 years respectively, and were taking high doses of insulin daily.

Of the three patients, two did alternating-day 24-hour fasts, while one fasted for 24 hours three times a week over a period of several months. On fasting days, they were allowed to drink unlimited amounts of low-calorie fluids such as water, coffee, tea and bone broth, and to eat a low-calorie, low-carb dinner.

On nonfasting days, they were allowed both lunch and dinner, but all meals were low in sugar and refined carbohydrates throughout. (The complete manual of the fasting regimen used is described in Fung's book, "The Complete Guide to Fasting."²) Two of the patients were able to discontinue all of their diabetes medications while the third was able to discontinue three of his four drugs. All three also lost between 10 and 18% of their body weight.

"It was stunning because the time it took to get them off the insulin was between five and 18 days. The longest it took was 18 days … He had been told he'd be on it for the rest of his life … We got him off everything in 18 days," Fung says.

"We still follow those three … They're still off of all their medications. They manage it with their diet. The point is that if you have a disease that causes so much disability — Type 2 diabetes — you can allow your body to simply use up that excess sugar. It's like the body has too much sugar. That's the whole disease. Don't eat, and allow your body to burn it off. Now you have a completely free solution, a completely natural solution …

I don't know of anything that could be better for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. It turns out there are all kinds of other benefits [as well] … Some of the research shows the average person is actually eating for 14 hours and 45 minutes per day. If you start eating breakfast at 8 a.m., you don't stop until 10:45 p.m. on average. This is the average American. That is unbelievable.

The point is [you need to] cycle. You have to put your body in a fed state. That is, you eat and your insulin goes up. Your mTOR goes up. But then you have to fast. There's a daily cycle that we're not respecting. There's a fed state. There's a fasted state … If you don't ever use that energy that you're putting into your body, you're just going to store it, and then it makes you sick."

Finding the Sweet Spot for Time-Restricted Feeding

Opinions about how long one should fast each day when intermittently fasting varies. Clearly, if your eating window is less than 12 hours, you're doing better than most. As a general rule, the recommended range is between 12 and 18 hours of fasting each day.

I'm of the opinion that 16 to 18 hours of fasting might be the sweet spot, as this allows your body to deplete the glycogen stores in your liver more and suppress mTOR and activate autophagy better. Fung agrees, saying:

"I think that somewhere around 12 to 14 hours is a sort of a baseline … The next step up is somewhere around 16 to 18 hours. That's so easy to do. Once you get used to it, it's so easy. You can build that right into your day without any problems at all. I think that's where you're exactly right. Your glycogen stores last about 24 hours.

But if you're following a lower carbohydrate diet, you're not going to build up those glycogen reserves. Therefore, in 16 to 18 hours, you're going to get down to that point.

Remember, when you've gotten rid of a lot of those glycogen reserves, then your body's going to go into this mode where you're going into gluconeogenesis, which is starting to break some of the proteins down, which everybody thinks is bad, but I actually think is a highly beneficial thing, because you will rebuild that.

Then you start to get into burning fat. That's really where you want to be on a daily basis, 16 to 18 [hours of fasting]. It allows you to just jump into the 20- to 24-hour [fasting] range without any difficulty if you're at that baseline already."

How Growth Hormone Is Affected by Fasting

Many hormonal shifts occur during fasting. Paradoxically, growth hormone, which would appear to stimulate mTOR, does increase when you fast — increasing two to three times its baseline level within 24 hours of fasting — yet mTOR is suppressed during fasting. Fung explains:

"The growth hormone question is really interesting, because it does seem paradoxical. Why would your body make all this growth hormone if you've got nothing to eat? It's because the growth hormone acts through the liver to produce insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) … which mediates all the effects of growth hormone. If you knock out IGF-1 and give growth hormone, it has no effect.

During fasting and calorie restriction as well, your liver downregulates the growth hormone receptor in the liver. So [while] the growth hormone level goes way up, your body's not that receptive to it. Therefore, there's not a lot of IGF-1 going on. That's very interesting.

Because then when you eat again, this is when that big surge of growth hormone can start to hit you, and then you can start to rebuild all your muscle and so on … That's, again, is [part of] this rejuvenation process and this antiaging process."

Since your growth hormone level will remain elevated for up to 48 hours, you can further optimize your fitness by doing strength training on the day you break your fast, as then you will enter your workout with a very high growth hormone level, allowing for maximum muscle growth.

"That's what people do [when] training in the fasted state. They fast for 18 to 24 hours, get the high growth hormone levels, train and then they eat. That's when you got the big growth hormone surge. What they found also was that when you exercise, your body becomes more responsive to this growth, of course, because it wants to rebuild. But it'll last for like48 hours," Fung says.

"You don't have to eat before you exercise. You can exercise, then anytime within the next 24 to 48 hours, if you eat a lot of protein or whatever, you're going to have that rebuilding, because the growth hormone is there. The body is in that state where it's trying to rebuild."

One slight caution here is that fasting, being a stressor just like exercise, will also increase the stress hormone cortisol. While for most people, exposure to this mild stress every day will make them stronger and healthier, for some it may be problematic, and may require you to tweak your fasting schedule. You may find your body responds better to a once-a-week 24-hour fast, for example, opposed to daily intermittent fasting.

More Information

Fung also discusses the benefits of tea, known for their longevity-boosting effects. Green tea is rich in catechins such as ECGC. Fung likes Pique Tea Crystals, which contain far higher amounts of catechins than regular green tea. Just remember, for tea to be beneficial, you need to drink it "straight," without sweeteners and milk.

Whole leaf teas will also typically be of higher quality than bagged teas. Black tea contains thioflavins, which also appear highly beneficial. "Tea, I think, is one of the underappreciated sorts of things. I think it's just a part of a healthy lifestyle," Fung says, adding:

"The book itself, I think, is fantastic. It goes through everything sort of in a shorter form. If you want to get more information on fasting, you can go to 'The Complete Guide to Fasting.' If you want to get more information on salt, you can go to James' book, 'The Salt Fix.' If you want to get more information about healthy fats, you can go to 'Superfuel' or 'Fat for Fuel' … ['The Longevity Solution'] is sort of a synthesis of all that.

Then what we do is we look at the blue zones, which is these long-lived populations, and … see how they stack up [against] these simple ideas that we put out there for healthy living.

We also looked at this very interesting study called the 'Ramucirumab monotherapy for previously treated advanced gastric or gastro-oesophageal junction adenocarcinoma' (REGARD), which looked at the Southern diet, which is of the southern United States.

Turns out that fad diet is highly, highly detrimental. Why? It's a lot of processed foods, a lot of processed meats, processed fats, high in salt but not good because it's all processed …"

If you're intrigued by what you've heard so far and want to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of "The Longevity Solution." In addition, my book, "Ketofast" is also available.

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Dr. Jason Sonners, author of the book, “Oxygen Under Pressure: Using Hyperbaric Oxygen to Restore Health, Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Aging and Revolutionize Health Care,” started out as a chiropractor. His passion, however, is hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), which is the focus of his Ph.D. studies at the University of Miami.

While commonly used to speed up stubborn wounds and tissue infections, hyperbaric medicine can also be helpful in the treatment of infectious diseases such as COVID. It’s also enormously useful for stroke patients. I can't think of a more effective intervention than to get the stroke patient into a series of hyperbaric treatments as quickly as possible.

HBOT for General Health and Disease Reversal

Every cell in your body, with the exception of your red blood cells (which have no mitochondria that require oxygen), requires oxygen to create energy. Many chronic diseases of the modern world involve decreased mitochondrial function, increased systemic inflammation, and an inability of cells to generate the required amounts of energy for optimal function.

“We use hyperbaric oxygen, traditionally, for these terrible and severe conditions,” Sonners says. Unfortunately, it’s typically a last resort, literally right before an amputation surgery or as a life-saving mechanism for somebody with carbon monoxide poison or air gas embolism.

“So, we only think about it, traditionally, to help save the life or limb of somebody in a really severe condition, but the mechanisms that are working for those folks are very similar to the reasons that you and I might consider using hyperbaric oxygen:

For upregulating the oxygen levels inside your body, which will help reduce inflammation, increase mitochondrial function ... and thereby increasing the energy that those cells are able to generate ...” 

HBOT for Chronic Diseases

Sonners’ goal is to expand the use of HBOT from the acutely life-threatening issues like gangrene to more chronic conditions, such as autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases.

“My thought process is that the mechanisms of action of hyperbaric are the same whether we're talking about gangrene, radiation burns and osteonecrosis, or TBI [traumatic brain injury], concussion, maybe MS [multiple sclerosis] and post-stroke.

If we really get a mastery of the mechanisms of action, we can start to apply those mechanisms across the board. Clinically, we've seen hyperbaric work for so many of these other chronic illnesses ...

So, if we could really home in on those mechanisms and understand them better, and then get a better feeling for what time and pressure settings we require in order to get those mechanisms to kick in, then we can really, with more confidence, apply this therapy to these other conditions and have more consistent results in doing so.

A lot of the work I'm proposing to do is tagging onto some of this work in regenerative medicine, where they were looking at the collagen, fibroblast and stem cell response to hyperbaric. A study came out in 2020 on telomeres, and looking at this potential, upwards of 20% increase in telomere length, especially in certain immune system cells.

I want to build on that knowledge base, so what I'm doing is I'm creating a study that's going to have a lower-pressure group and a higher-pressure group, and we're going to be looking at a whole cytokine panel, so we can understand the mechanisms of the anti-inflammatory side.

We're going to have a methylation panel so that we can start looking at the epigenetic effects of hyperbaric. We're going to have a telomere component, similar to the telomere study that was done a year and a half ago.

And we're going to start comparing all of those metrics across roughly a three- to six-month timeframe of treatment, and over two separate pressure settings, to better understand which pressures are getting which effects, and again, what period of time should we be expecting before we get the results that we're looking for?”

Research Underway

On the low end, Sonners will be using 1.3 atmospheres (4.2 PSI) at 100% oxygen, and on the high end, he’ll use 2.0 atmospheres (14.7 PSI) at 100% oxygen. All patients will use hard chambers at two different pressures. The lower pressure group will be at 4.2 psi, which is the same as soft chamber pressures. 

“There's nowhere near the amount of research in soft chambers as there are in hard chambers,” Sonners says. “The overwhelming majority of research is done at that 2-atmosphere range, which is why I'm choosing that as the upper end of the research that I'm doing in the soft chamber research.

There is definitely some [research] on sports recovery. There's actually some ongoing studies right now on hyperbaric for stem cell use that we're waiting for. In some cases, 1.3 [atmospheres] has been used as the sham group, opposed to a treatment arm in the research. Maybe the study team really thought that 1.3 wasn't going to have an effect and it's a legitimate sham ...

I'm not sure, but there are some great studies. There's a study that was done on cerebral palsy (CP) and 1.3 was used as the sham group ... In this particular study, with 1.3 being the sham group, there was also a ... control group that got no hyperbaric at all.

Within the sham group, there was significant improvement on the metrics they were measuring. Then they had a 1.5 [atmospheres at] 100% oxygen, which also had a good improvement and then, a 1.75 [atmospheres at] 100% oxygen, which had even a greater improvement.

The issue in the study was that while all three of those groups improved, there was no statistical difference or enough of a statistical difference between the 1.3, the 1.5 and the 1.75. So, the conclusion of the study was therefore that hyperbaric does not work for CP, although all three of those groups had significant improvement.

So, because the sham group was not considered a treatment, that was the conclusion of that study. Now, the natural consequence of that should have been redoing the study and creating a different level of what the sham and the treatment arms ought to be, but that was never redone.

So, as a result, there's this study with results that say hyperbaric does not work for CP. Meanwhile, clearly, what it means is we need more studies. It's just that studies are expensive. They’re very time consuming and you really have to have a large interest in trying to come up with the right answers to put forth the effort and time and money to get that kind of work done.”

Mechanisms of Action

If you breathe 100% oxygen under pressure, it’s intuitively obvious that you're going to deliver more oxygen to your tissues. That’s one clear mechanism, but it’s not the only or even primary reason for most of the benefits of hyperbaric therapy.

Evidence suggests part of the benefit might be related to the degeneration of a molecule called hypoxia-inducible factor alpha (HIF-1 alpha), which is generated when you lower the pressure. The pressure is high inside the chamber, and is lowered when you exit the chamber and enter the normal atmosphere. That means some of the benefit might actually be occurring when you get out of the chamber. Sonners explains:

“We don't have an exact number right now, but roughly half of the treatment is occurring while you're in the chamber, being exposed to the pressure, being exposed to the oxygen and literally accumulating a surplus of oxygen because of the therapy itself.

The other half of the therapy is when you get out of the chamber, as that oxygen can no longer stay in solution. It literally starts trying to bubble out of solution. As that happens, it's not inert, it's actually very active. So, as it's coming out of solution, it's interacting with all of our cells.

As a result, it's triggering a massive cascade of events, cellular communication that seems to stimulate multiple series of regeneration and anti-inflammatory [events], even within the reactive oxygen species themselves.

When we look at the first part, which is the dosage of oxygen a person is getting, and that's measurable, you could say, ‘Here's a person, they were in a chamber, they were at this pressure, breathing this percentage of oxygen for this amount of time,’ and you could literally calculate the theoretical dose of oxygen that person was exposed to and should have been able to absorb.

We've kind of just stayed in that mindset for all these years. [However], there was a great paper out of Israel called ‘The Hypoxia-Hyperoxia Paradox,’ and what they're saying is we know that there's amazing benefits of hypoxia actually.”

Benefits of Relative Hypoxia

Some of these benefits include the stimulation of HIF-1 alpha, stem cell responses, collagen responses and the angiogenic responses. For these reasons, Sonners views hyperbaric as an anabolic therapy — a therapy that stimulates vitally important growth and repair, as growth factors such as VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor), and BDNF (brain derived neurotropic factor) are both stimulated.

Again, these growth factors are not stimulated by the hyper-oxygenation. They're a result from the hypoxic component, the process your body goes through as the oxygen is leaving your body.

“The important thing to note is that once you've accumulated all this extra oxygen, your hyper-oxygenation component, as that oxygen is leaving your body, you're never truly hypoxic,” Sonners says, “but the cell signaling factors that respond to traditional hypoxia are also seemingly responding to this relative hypoxia.

If you look at that paper [‘The Hypoxia-Hyperoxia Paradox’] ... it seemed to delineate this. With hypoxia alone, you will still get VEGF, which means you'll still get a lot of angiogenics, the rebuilding of the endothelial lining, the creation of a new micro-circulation bed, all this capillary regrowth will happen from hypoxia.

You'll get these stem cell releases, this potential for increase in the regenerative nature of cells. You'll get this increase in the HIF-1 alpha. But if you're chronically hypoxic, you're also going to get a downregulation of sirtuins [longevity proteins] and you're going to get a downregulation of mitochondrial function.

Sirtuins could play a great role in things like cell cycle life, getting cells out of cellular senescence — kicking them back into active life — or apoptosis, killing that cell so that we can replace it with a new stem cell, or even the genetic and epigenetic repair mechanisms. A lot of that has to do with sirtuins, so we don't want to downregulate those. We want to upregulate those.”

So, to clarify, with HBOT, you get the benefits of hypoxia with none of the downsides. Rather than inhibiting sirtuins, which are important for health and longevity, you actually get an upregulation of sirtuin activity. It also upregulates mitochondrial function and boosts mitochondrial replication, which the complete opposite to what happens in true hypoxia.

What About the Free Radical Component?

Without any doubt, HBOT is a type of oxidative stress, but it doesn’t have the adverse effects you’d expect. Sonners explains:

“There was a great paper done by Dominic D'Agostino and Angela Poff, back in 2017 or 2018, specifically looking at the reactive oxygen species or the free radical component of hyperbaric oxygen. What are the benefits or consequences as we upregulate, as we increase the amount of oxygen into the body?

As the cells and the mitochondria start to uptake that oxygen, producing more energy, there is a natural consequence where this byproduct of free radicals are released as a part of normal cellular respiration. Excess free radicals is obviously consequential to cell membranes, lipid peroxidation and protein degradation.

It could destroy cell membranes, mitochondrial membranes, nuclear membranes, genetic material ... At the same time, it's a normal response to cellular respiration and our bodies have their own intrinsic mechanisms for dealing with some of this excess free radical, things like the superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione pathways.

So, there seems to be a distinction that we should make. One is that some of the free radicals our bodies are exposed to come from the outside world in. Radiation, smoking, air pollution, the list goes on and on. So, we need to have a robust, intrinsic ability to tolerate these free radicals with our own antioxidant system.

But in excess, we could be getting too much free radicals and we could be depleting our own systems, in which case supplementation should certainly be considered and used. On the flip side, we look at hyperbaric oxygen as this tool that theoretically has all these great effects, but one of those consequences would also be this increase in free radical exposure.

There seems to be a very big delineation between a body that's exposed to free radicals from the outside world, versus a body that is exposed to free radicals that it's creating on its own.

One of those distinctions is that through the use of hyperbaric oxygen, even without supplementation, and the increase in free radical production from mitochondrial ATB production, the body itself — assuming it has the right raw materials — will actually increase its own superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione pathways.

This would No. 1, help make you more resilient to hyperbaric oxygen, but No. 2, would also help make you more resilient to all the other free radicals that you’re potentially exposed to in your environment.

So, I would say two things. One, especially with patients who are a little bit more fragile when it comes to oxidative stress, those people, I would tend to not over oxidize to begin with, so I might start at a gentler hyperbaric protocol with them, and I'm likely to want to start quickly upregulating their own system, getting the right supplementation for improving their intrinsic antioxidant systems ...

Then, as their system improves their tolerance for reactive oxygen species, we may not need as much of that, or if we're going to be using high dose hyperbaric oxygen for a period of time, we might use things like certain SOD precursors, or molecular hydrogen.

Through conversations with you, it has become one my favorite antioxidants that we use. Between 45 minutes to an hour before [hyperbaric treatment], we’ll start loading people with the molecular hydrogen as a mechanism to reduce the consequences. There are benefits, in other words. Reactive oxygen species on its own also helps stimulate hormone balance and helps stimulate cell repair by themselves. So, there has to be this balance.

We don't want to quelch all the free radicals because free radicals are a very important signaling molecule for so much cellular activity and at the same time, we want to be aware of the fact that hyperbaric does increase that, and we want to make sure that we're not over-exposing somebody.”

HBOT Functional Medicine Course Now Available

Sonners also reviews the curriculum he developed for the International Board of Undersea Medicine. The IBUM has been certifying people in hyperbaric medicine for 25 years, and the curriculum Sonners created has been taught as a functional medicine hyperbaric course for clinicians for the past year.

“A big push for me, and even for the research I'm doing, is to help create awareness that gets more doctors excited about [HBOT], that want to actually use it in their practice,” Sonners says. “So, this has been an attempt to really improve the education so that people aren't just going to hyperbaric courses to learn about wound care.

We needed courses to help practitioners like myself or other people interested in the regenerative side to be able to learn how to apply it that way. So, we now have a course that I teach a few times a year to get people on the same page.

The majority of this last year, other than getting through school and writing the thesis, has been developing and promoting that course. I think we've certified about 125 to 150 practitioners and technicians specifically on the functional medicine side of hyperbaric use ...

At this time, I still see a pretty big mix between soft chamber use and hard chamber use. A lot of those doctors are either Dos, MDs, chiropractors or naturopaths, getting into more of a functional medicine base, just looking for other natural approaches to the things they are treating.

Hyperbaric supplies the body with a fundamental ingredient and it's so necessary for cellular performance. It just seems to make sense to start implementing a tool and a modality like that into a setting where you're trying to reduce inflammation, you're trying to improve energy production cellularly.”

HBOT Has at Least 100 Indications for Use

While the list of potential uses for HBOT is extremely long, in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has approved and most insurance will pay for HBOT for the following 14 conditions:¹

Air or gas embolism	Carbon monoxide poisoning
Clostridial myositis and myonecrosis (gas gangrene)	Crush injuries, compartment syndrome and other acute traumatic ischemia
Decompression sickness	Arterial insufficiencies, such as central retinal artery occlusion
Severe anemia	Intracranial abscess
Necrotizing soft tissue infections	Osteomyelitis
Delayed radiation injury (soft tissue and bone necrosis)	Compromised grafts and flaps
Acute thermal burn injury	Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss

In terms of conditions that can benefit from HBOT, I would certainly add stroke, TBI, heart attack, anytime there's post ischemic reperfusion injury, and most neurodegenerative conditions. Internationally, there are about 100 recognized indications. While that might make it sound like a magical cure-all, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t cure anything directly.

What it does is provide your body with a foundational nutrient, oxygen, that virtually all cells require. HBOT supplies your body oxygen in a surplus, creating an excess reservoir of oxygen to improve that function. That’s why it can help improve such a wide variety of health conditions.

Even autoimmune diseases such as MS, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, just to name a few, may benefit, Sonners says. A whole other category of potential use would be wellness, longevity and regenerative-type therapies.

“We're just applying the tools slightly differently to help match the intensity of the therapy to the severity of the condition. We can utilize the principles of gas exchange in various ways to help so many different types and various types of conditions,” Sonners says.

“One condition or subclass that we talked about it in the beginning is, from the immune system standpoint, upregulating your ability to fight infection by increasing white blood cell activation through the reactive oxygen species mechanisms. We use it for anaerobic infection, bacterial infections all the time.

One of the main reasons that hyperbaric works in those severe conditions is those bacteria are anaerobic. They don't live in high oxygen environments.

So, we know that putting a patient in a high oxygen environment massively decreases bacteria's ability to function, potentially helps to kill that infection, helps to block the toxicity of that infection and helps to break down the biofilms around that infection. So, hyperbaric becomes an amazing tool in the capacity of immune system balancing and/or ability to help fight infection.”

More Information

As a general guidance, Sonners recommends doing hyperbaric for about two hours a week on a regular basis. That’s his personal routine. In addition to that, three times a year he does a 30- to 40-hour protocol over the course of six to eight weeks. He explains why:

“We know that in general ... three or four sessions is not going to ever cut it. The main effect of hyperbaric is really achieved through the cumulative effect and the increasing and decreasing — the wave of hyper-oxygenation back to normal oxygen levels — creating that hyperoxia-hypoxia type paradox ...

When you do a protocol similar to like what I would do for a patient, let's say four to six hours a week for eight weeks, the frequency of those ... the space in between them, really shrinks and you get far more signaling to occur ...

If all we cared about was the physical dose, we would stay at 100% oxygen as long as we possibly could, at the highest pressure we could tolerate to get the most oxygen absorption. I don't think that that's where the majority of benefit exists.

Every time your pressure changes or your percentage of oxygen changes, you're stimulating HIF-1 alpha, the reactive oxygen species load, sirtuins, you're signaling a hormetic effect. I picture them as switches. You're flipping that switch on, off, on, off, on, off. I think it's the amount of times that you stimulate that switch that will create the benefits we're looking for, more than the physical dose of oxygen over time.”

To learn more about HBOT in general, be sure to pick up Sonners’ book, “Oxygen Under Pressure: Using Hyperbaric Oxygen to Restore Health, Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Aging and Revolutionize Health Care.”

In the interview, we also discuss how you can incorporate HBOT in your fitness routine, along with fasting, to augment and upregulate cellular performance, recovery and regeneration. So, if that’s of interest to you, be sure to listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.

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Patients diagnosed with a type of brain tumor survived for longer when they were treated aggressively with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But far from suggesting that more treatment always leads to better survival, the study underscores the critical role of genomic profiling in diagnosing and grading brain tumors.

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This story is about a very brave researcher at Columbia University who co-authored a paper on risks associated with COVID vaccination (“vaccine-induced fatality rate”), in October 2021.

The researcher’s name is Spiro Pantazatos, Ph.D. He is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology (Psychiatry) at Columbia University. He is also Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The title of his paper (a preprint) is “COVID vaccination and age-stratified all-cause mortality risk”:

“Accurate estimates of COVID vaccine-induced severe adverse event and death rates are critical for risk-benefit ratio analyses of vaccination and boosters against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in different age groups. However, existing surveillance studies are not designed to reliably estimate life-threatening event or vaccine-induced fatality rates (VFR).

Here, regional variation in vaccination rates was used to predict all-cause mortality and non-COVID deaths in subsequent time periods using two independent, publicly available datasets from the US and Europe (month-and week-level resolutions, respectively).”

Currently Dr. Pantazatos is trying to fund a home for this paper but all journals where he submitted it have declined so far.

Dr. Pantazatos was interviewed for the “Perspectives on the Pandemic” series, and in my opinion, the interview came out stunning (with a disclaimer that the topic is gruesome, so it’s a stunning interview about a horrible thing). Dr. Pantazatos’ presentation is so graceful and even-headed that it could be “the” video to send to your friends who have been calling you crazy all this time!

Dr. Pantazatos’ Initial COVID Position Was 100% “Mainstream”

Early in the pandemic, Dr. Pantazatos was very moved by the vivid images that the media was feeding us — and, as a result, he became terrified of the virus. His initial plan was to lockdown inside his house until the vaccines came out.

What Compelled Him to Get More Skeptical

But then he started looking at data presented by scientists like John Ioannidis, for example, and he quickly realized that the situation was different from the one painted by the media.

Then Dr. Pantazatos’ co-author on this paper, Herve Seligmann, came up with an analysis of European data showing a consistent trend where a vaccination campaign seemed to be accompanied by an increase in all-cause mortality during the month following the vaccination campaign.

Dr. Pantazatos didn’t like that conclusion very much as it implied the unthinkable, and so he decided to do his own analysis based on the U.S. data (vaccinations and all-cause mortality), published by the CDC. And when he did his analysis using the U.S. data, it showed the same trend. His analysis of the CDC data showed that following a vaccination campaign in a given locality, there was an increase in all-cause mortality during the following month, followed by a decrease.

In Dr. Pantazatos’ opinion, the risk associated with COVID injections is comparable to the risk associated with getting COVID — if the risk associated with COVID is assessed at the high, early-in-the-pandemic level. And given that the two risks are comparable, and the injection risks seem to increase with each subsequent does — and the pharma companies are pushing for boosters from here into the horizon — he believes that we really need to discuss the VFR.

Why Rejection From the Journals Then?

Interestingly, Dr. Pantazatos mentioned in the interview that even before 2020, he was well aware of the fact that the process of getting scientific works published in prestigious journals was tainted. He referred to the 2005 article in “PLOS Medicine” called, “Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies” that talked about how exactly the journals are incentivized by pharma companies.

Furthermore, scientists themselves have developed a habit of trading total integrity of research for the prestige and benefits of having their works published — and so even before 2020, it was not uncommon for researchers to “massage” the angle etc. in order to fit in. From myself, I would like to add the following quote from the Lancet:

“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness,” wrote Richard Horton, the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet in 2015.

Incidentally, I wrote an article about corruption in the medical establishment last year, in case you are curious.

The Importance of Speaking Out

Dr. Pantazatos is not shy at all about sharing his analysis, and he is also tremendously graceful and humble when presenting it. Personally, I am very impressed by Dr. Pantazatos’ scientific integrity and his ability to actually “follow the science” — as well as by the grace with which he presents this rather ugly topic.

He believes the issue is important, and speaking out is crucial. His message for other scientists is to find their voice and stop being silent.

Full transcript of the interview.

About the Author

To find more of Tessa Lena's work, be sure to check out her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.

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This article was previously published May 8, 2019, and has been updated with new information.

Are artificial sweeteners such as Splenda still part of your daily diet? If so, I would strongly recommend reconsidering. It's important to realize that while artificial sweeteners have no (or very few) calories, they are still metabolically active,¹ and not in a beneficial way.

For example, research^2,3 published in the online version of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health August 21, 2018, shows sucralose — sold under brand names such as Splenda, Splenda Zero, Zero-Cal, Sukrana, Apriva, SucraPlus, Candys, Cukren and Nevella — is metabolized and accumulates in fat cells.

Remarkably, artificial sweeteners have become so ubiquitous, research⁴ published in the April 2019 issue of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety refers to them as an "emerging" environmental contaminant, noting they have "high water persistence."

According to this paper, artificial sweeteners are chemically stable in the environment and water supplies appear to be at greatest risk for contamination. The researchers looked at 24 environmental studies assessing the presence of artificial sweeteners in the environment from 38 locations around the world, including Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Asia.

"Overall, the quantitative findings suggested that the occurrence of non-nutritive artificial sweeteners is present in surface water, tap water, groundwater, seawater, lakes and atmosphere," the paper states. What the ultimate ramifications for wildlife, especially marine life, and human health might be are still anyone's guess.

Artificial Sweeteners Promote Obesity, Diabetes and More

As explained in the 2016 paper,⁵ "Metabolic Effects of Non-Nutritive Sweeteners," many studies have linked artificial sweeteners to an increased risk for obesity, insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. This is in stark contrast to what you're told by industry, which continues to promote artificial sweeteners as a way to lower your risk of those conditions.

The paper presents several mechanisms by which artificial sweeteners promote metabolic dysfunction:

Why You Should Never Cook With Splenda

Splenda (sucralose) is frequently recommended for cooking and baking,¹³ and is often used in processed foods in which high heat was involved. This, despite the fact that scientists have warned about the dangers of heating sucralose for years.

In the 2013 paper,¹⁴ "Sucralose, a Synthetic Organochloride Sweetener: Overview of Biological Issues," the authors state that "Cooking with sucralose at high temperatures … generates chloropropanols, a potentially toxic class of compounds." This paper also warns the acceptable daily intake set for sucralose may in fact be hundreds of times too high to ensure safety.

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) recently issued a report¹⁵ on the available data on sucralose, confirming that cooking with sucralose is likely a terrible idea, as chlorinated compounds are formed at high temperatures. As reported by MedicalXpress:¹⁶

"When sucralose (E 955) is heated to temperatures higher than 120 degrees C a gradual — and with further continuously increasing temperature — decomposition and dechlorination of the sweetener occurs.

Temperatures of between 120 degrees C [248 degrees Fahrenheit] and 150 degrees C [302 degrees F] are possible during industrial manufacturing and processing of foods, and are also reached in private households during cooking and baking of foods containing sucralose.

This may lead to the formation of chlorinated organic compounds with a health-damaging potential, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD), dibenzofurans (PCDF) and chloropropanols."

Chloropropanols, while still poorly understood, are believed to have adverse effects on your kidneys and may have carcinogenic effects.¹⁷ One good reason to be suspicious of chloropropanols is because they're part of a class of toxins known as dioxins, and dioxins are known to cause cancer and endocrine disruption.

The fact that sucralose creates toxic dioxins when heated is also a concern for those who use vaping liquid containing this artificial sweetener. A 2017 study¹⁸ found sucralose contributes sweet taste only when used in a cartridge system, and chemical analysis showed the use of a cartridge system also raised the concentration of sucralose in the aerosol.

I find it interesting that these studies are now confirming what I suspected and published in my book, published over 10 years ago — "Sweet Deception" — which was an expose on Splenda.

Sucralose Shown to Have Carcinogenic Potential

Research¹⁹ published in 2016 in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health tested the carcinogenic potential of sucralose by adding it to mouse feed, at various concentrations, starting at 12 days of gestation and continuing throughout their natural life span.

Results showed male mice experienced a significant dose-related increase in malignant tumors and hematopoietic neoplasias (cancer of the blood, bone marrow and the lymphatic system). The dosages tested were 0, 500, 2,000, 8,000 and 16,000 parts per million (ppm). The worst results occurred in males given 2,000 ppm and 16,000 ppm. According to the authors:

"These findings do not support previous data that sucralose is biologically inert. More studies are necessary to show the safety of sucralose, including new and more adequate carcinogenic bioassay on rats. Considering that millions of people are likely exposed, follow-up studies are urgent."

Pregnant Women Beware

More recent research,²⁰ published in 2018, revealed the artificial sweeteners sucralose and acesulfame-potassium transfer into breast milk — a crucial fact that pregnant women need to be mindful of, considering the harmful effects of these compounds. To determine whether the sweeteners could transfer into breast milk, the researchers enrolled 34 women who were exclusively breastfeeding.

Each of the women drank 12 ounces of Diet Rite Cola, which contains 68 milligrams (mg) of sucralose and 41 mg of acesulfame-potassium, before breakfast. Habitual use of artificial sweeteners was also assessed via a diet questionnaire. Breast milk samples were collected before ingestion and every hour thereafter for six hours. As reported by the authors:

"Owing to one mother having extremely high concentrations, peak sucralose and acesulfame-potassium concentrations following ingestion of diet soda ranged from 4.0 to 7387.9 ng/mL and 299.0 to 4764.2 ng/mL, respectively."

This is believed to be the first time researchers have demonstrated that infants are in fact exposed to artificial sweeteners even when exclusively breastfed (if the mother consumes them). An accompanying commentary²¹ by pediatric experts notes:

"NNS [non-nutritive sweeteners] were present in the breast milk of all subjects in physiologically significant amounts, and … at concentrations well above the taste thresholds. Why is this important?

NNS or non-caloric artificial sweeteners (NCAS) are ubiquitous in the modern diet … Despite the approval by the FDA and European Food Safety Authority, concerns, admittedly largely unproven, persist about their safety … The concerns about NNS are three-fold.

First, that they may adversely alter taste preferences. Second, that the ultimate effect may be contrary to what is intended and their ingestion may increase food consumption. Third, that they may adversely alter the gut bacterial microbiome and its metabolites.

All of these concerns are magnified with early exposure in life. The evidence to support these concerns is either inductive or based on experimental models and emerging human data."

'Diet' Beverages Linked to Risk of Stroke and Heart Attack

Another 2018 study²² by the American Heart Association (AHA) found that, compared to drinking none or just one "diet" drink per week, women over 50 who drank two or more artificially sweetened beverages per day had a:²³

• 31% increased risk for ischemic stroke
• 29% increased risk of coronary heart disease
• 23% increased risk of all types of stroke
• 16% increased risk of early death

The risk is particularly high for women with no previous history of heart disease, those who are obese and/or African-American women. The study included more than 81,714 women from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study, a longitudinal study of the health of 93,676 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 79. The mean follow-up time was close to 11.9 years. According to the authors:

"In women with no prior history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes mellitus, high consumption of ASB [artificially-sweetened beverages] was associated with more than a twofold increased risk of small artery occlusion ischemic stroke … High consumption of ASBs was associated with significantly increased risk of ischemic stroke in women with body mass index ≥30 …"

In an accompanying editorial,²⁴ "Artificial Sweeteners, Real Risks," Hannah Gardener, assistant scientist in the department of neurology at the University of Miami, and Dr. Michell Elkind at Columbia University, suggest drinking pure water instead of no-calories sweetened beverages, as it is by far the safest and healthiest low-calorie drink there is.

If you want some flavor, just squeeze a little bit of fresh lemon or lime into mineral water. In instances where your cooking, baking or beverage needs a little sweetener, be mindful of your choice.

Sucralose Linked to Liver, Kidney and Thymus Damage

Other recent research²⁵ published in the journal Morphologie found sucralose caused "definite changes" in the liver of treated rats, "indicating toxic effects on regular ingestion." The researchers warn these findings suggest sucralose should be "taken with caution to avoid hepatic damage."

In other words, regularly using Splenda could damage your liver. Here, adult rats were given a much higher (yet nonlethal) oral dose of sucralose — 3 grams (3,000 mg) per kilo body mass per day for 30 days, after which the animals' livers were dissected and compared to the livers of unexposed controls. According to the authors:

"Experimental rats showed features of patchy degeneration of hepatocytes along with Kupffer cells hyperplasia, lymphocytic infiltration, sinusoidal dilatation and fibrosis indicating a definite hepatic damage on regular ingestion of sucralose. Sinusoidal width was also found to be increased in experimental animals as compared to controls."

Studies have also linked sucralose consumption to liver and kidney enlargement^26,27 and kidney calcification.^28,29 Another organ affected by sucralose is your thymus, with studies linking sucralose consumption to shrinkage of the thymus (up to 40%^30,31) and an increase in leukocyte populations (immune system cells) in the thymus and lymph nodes.³²

Sucralose Safety Has Been Repeatedly Questioned

As of April 12, 2022, there are 21,800 references to sucralose in the scientific search engine Google Scholar, so there's no shortage of studies to review if you're curious. Here's a small sampling of papers raising questions about the safety of this artificial sweetener.

Artificial Sweetener Such as Sucralose May Promote Inflammation in Human Subcutaneous Fat-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells, 2017 33 — Research presented at GW Annual Research Days in 2017 shows sucralose consumption caused an increase in superoxide accumulation and cellular inflammation. The sweetener also Increased expression of a specific sweet taste receptor. According to the researchers, "upregulation of adipogenic genes … cultured in near physiological concentrations of sucralose, indicate possible causality between increased fat deposition and sweetener use."

The Non-Caloric Sweeteners Aspartame, Sucralose and Stevia sp. Induce Specific but Differential Responses to Compartmentalized Adipose Tissue Accumulation, 201734 — In this study, consumption of sucralose resulted in weight gain and elevated blood glucose and body fat accumulation.

Sucralose Activates an ERK1/2–Ribosomal Protein S6 Signaling Axis, 201635 — Sucralose was found to stimulate insulin secretion much like glucose, but through completely different and poorly understood pathways. According to the authors, these findings "will have implications for diabetes."

Changes in the Expression of Cell Surface Markers in Spleen Leukocytes in a Murine Model of Frequent Sucralose Intake, 201636 — This study found frequent sucralose intake may affect your immune function. According to the authors: "Our results show a decrease in the frequency of B lymphocyte population and T lymphocytes in comparison to the control group. In B and T lymphocytes the analysis of co-stimulatory molecules show a lower frequency compared to the control group. The immune response depends on the differentiation and activation of cellular populations. We hypothesized that chronic ingestion of commercial sucralose might be affecting the immune response by modifying the frequencies of cellular populations, as well as the expression of co-stimulatory and inhibitory molecules … by decreasing the ability of co-stimulation between B an T lymphocytes, with a probable effect on the immune response. It is necessary to further determine if sucralose intake affects the efficiency of the immune response."

Popular Sweetener Sucralose as a Migraine Trigger, 200637 — As noted by the authors, "This observation of a potential causal relationship between sucralose and migraines may be important for physicians to remember this can be a possible trigger during dietary history taking. Identifying further triggers for migraine headaches, in this case sucralose, may help alleviate some of the cost burden (through expensive medical therapy or missed work opportunity) as well as provide relief to migraineurs."

Healthier Sugar Substitutes

Two of the best sugar substitutes are Stevia and Lo Han Kuo (also spelled Luo Han Guo). Stevia, a highly sweet herb derived from the leaf of the South American stevia plant, is sold as a supplement. It's completely safe in its natural form and can be used to sweeten most dishes and drinks.

Lo Han Kuo is similar to Stevia, but is my personal favorite. I use the Lakanto brand vanilla flavor which is a real treat for me. The Lo Han fruit has been used as a sweetener for centuries, and is about 200 times sweeter than sugar.

A third alternative is to use pure glucose, also known as dextrose. Dextrose is only 70% as sweet as sucrose, so you'll end up using a bit more of it for the same amount of sweetness, making it slightly more expensive than regular sugar. But, it is safer than regular sugar, which is 50% fructose.

So, dextrose is well worth it for your health as it does not contain any fructose whatsoever. Contrary to fructose, glucose can be used directly by every cell in your body and as such is a far safer sugar alternative.

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In the video above, finance expert Mark Moss, coauthor of “The UNcommunist Manifesto” and founder of Market Disruptors, interviews me about simple strategies with big payoffs, in terms of health, which I believe is the greatest asset of all. Without health, you won’t be able to protect your freedom or enjoy your wealth.

I will be speaking at Mark Moss’ Market Disruptors Live event in Dallas, Texas, May 6 through May 8, 2022. The conference will cover topics like how to increase your wealth using little-known alternative asset classes, how the central banks’ plans will affect you, and how to increase personal freedom by bulletproofing your assets so you won’t get caught up in The Great Reset.

So, if you want to connect with me in person, this would be a great opportunity as I will be there for the entire event.

The Oil Industry Vanquished True Medicine a Century Ago

In the beginning of the interview, I touch on how the medical industry was vanquished 112 years ago by John D. Rockefeller, who became the world’s first billionaire after founding Standard Oil in 1870.

John’s father was William Avery Rockefeller, an authentic “snake oil salesman” who conned people into buying his useless “Rock Oil” tonic for cancer — a mixture of laxative and petroleum. Avery once admitted he would cheat his children every chance he got, in order to “make ‘em sharp.”¹

John D. learned the lessons of duplicity and fraud well, and by the time he was 40, he controlled 90% of the global oil refineries. Within another few years (early 1880s), he also controlled 90% of the marketing of oil, and one-third of all oil wells.

Together with General Motors, Rockefeller secretly bought up and dismantled the public transportation system in the U.S., to promote the need for a family car. They also replaced electric streetcars with gas-guzzling busses to expand their petroleum business.

In 1902, Rockefeller funded the establishment of the General Education Board, through which he intended to control public education. Other oil-backed schemes to mold and reshape the American education system followed, including a scheme to alter the teaching of American history to promote a view of collectivism, as well as a program culminating in the transformation of the practice of medicine.

Naturopathic-based herbal medicine was the norm at that time, and Rockefeller set out to shift the medical industry toward using oil-derived pharmaceuticals. To this end, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was established in 1901, headed up by Simon Flexner.

Simon’s brother, Abraham, was contracted to write a report on the state of the American medical education system, and his study, The Flexner Report,² published in 1910, paved the way for Rockefeller to completely overhaul the American medical system.

Naturopathic and homeopathic medicine — anything that couldn’t be patented — was abolished. Natural remedies and known cures were dismissed as quackery. The only medicines deemed reputable were patentable synthetic drugs, invented in the oil cartel’s own research centers.

The Rockefeller Legacy of Monopolized Control

Around the same time, the oil cartel also found a way to take over and control the U.S. financial system, through the creation of the Federal Reserve, established in 1913. The Rockefeller’s have been powerbrokers in the banking industry ever since. In the 1950s, James Stillman Rockefeller, the grandson of John D.’s brother, became the head of National City Bank, while David Rockefeller, John D.’s grandson, took over Chase Manhattan Bank.

They also sought to consolidate control over the global food supply, using philanthropy as their cover for the takeover. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Green Revolution that led to the introduction of petroleum-based agricultural chemicals, which quickly transformed agriculture, both in the U.S. and abroad.

President Johnson’s “Food for Peace” program actually mandated the use of petroleum-dependent technologies and chemicals by aid recipients, and countries that could not afford it were granted loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Rockefeller Foundation also funded the “gene revolution” that brought us patentable genetically modified seeds.

Today, The Rockefeller Foundation is part of The Great Reset cast, which seeks to gain total control over every person in the world — financially, medically, physically and psychologically.

The Path of Health

I, like many other physicians, were thoroughly brainwashed in medical school. I bought the Rockefeller-invented paradigm hook, line and sinker, and ran a conventional medical practice, prescribing drugs and vaccines, for about five years.

I eventually woke up, realizing these “remedies” did nothing to address the root cause of any disease, and started educating myself about nutrition and foundational health practices, which have been my focus ever since. It’s a never-ending journey of learning, and I’ve experimented a lot through the years. Oftentimes, the devil’s in the details when it comes to various strategies.

For example, as I mention in the interview, I focused my exercise almost exclusively on cardio during my youth and became a decent marathon runner. Today, I realize that was a big mistake, as you can get most of your cardio requirement through strength training, if done properly.

Building muscle is by far one of the most important things you can do to improve and safeguard your health. While there’s certainly benefit to cardiovascular exercise — mitochondrial biogenesis, for example — resistance training is far more foundational to your long-term health, because skeletal muscle is the organ of longevity.

The greater your muscle mass, the higher your survivability against all diseases, including cancer. It really optimizes you for longevity. Why? Because you need protein reserves to survive serious disease, and most of your protein is stored in muscle. If you have very little muscle, you're going to pass away prematurely because you have no amino acid reserves.

Your muscle is also a primary regulator of your metabolism. It’s a primary site for glucose disposal because of the GLUT4 insulin receptors embedded in the muscle cell membranes. These receptors lower your glucose levels after a meal and decrease your risk for diabetes. It also interfaces with your immune system and helps optimize it.

It is never too late to start resistance training. You can build muscle mass after 60, which is about when I started, and last week, as you can see in the video below, I set a new personal record in the leg press for 600 pounds, which I believe is better than the 400-pound deadlift I did last year.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

However, as I note in the interview, our ancestors didn’t need a gym because they were engaged in heavy manual labor on a near-daily basis. That is certainly not something I do and I suspect few of you engage in, hence the need to substitute in regular exercise/work to stay healthy.

Our ancestors were using and strengthening their muscles well into old age. They worked on farms and in factories, they walked and bicycled distances most won’t even consider nowadays. The only reason most people today need to schedule in exercise is because they’re not doing manual labor; worse, they’re barely moving at all.

How to Optimize Your Exercise Benefits

If you really want to optimize your exercise, implement time-restricted eating (TRE) and exercise while fasting. TRE involves eating all your meals and snacks within a six- to eight-hour window each day, making sure your last meal is at least three hours before bedtime, and then fasting for the remaining 16 to 18 hours. In this scenario, you’d exercise sometime in the morning, and then break your fast afterward.

TRE will also make you metabolically flexible, so that you can burn both fat and carbs. If you’re constantly hungry, chances are you’re metabolically inflexible and cannot efficiently burn fat. Your body is basically just screaming for another quick energy fix, because carbs burn fast and when they’re gone, you need more. Once your body can efficiently burn fat, hunger usually just disappears.

The Benefits of Near-Infrared

Directly post-exercise is also an ideal time to do sauna therapy. I advise caution when using cryotherapy together with exercise, because if you jump into an ice bath after strenuous exercise, you’ll actually abort the production of inflammatory reactors of the exercise, and those inflammatory reactors are what trigger the benefits from the exercise.

Sauna therapy has many important health benefits. For example, it can ease pain, kill disease-causing viruses, improve cardiovascular health and facilitate detoxification of heavy metals and other toxins.

My preference is near-infrared saunas rather than far-infrared, as it penetrates deeper and therefore can release toxins more efficiently. Even more importantly, 95% of melatonin is produced in your mitochondria in response to near-infrared light. The melatonin released by your pineal gland account for just 5% of the melatonin in your body.

Mitochondria are tiny organelles found in most of your cells responsible for cellular energy production, and mitochondrial dysfunction is a root cause of most chronic disease. Melatonin, meanwhile, is a very powerful antioxidant that reduces oxidative stress. By mopping up free radicals, melatonin reduces damage to the mitochondria and helps them work optimally.

Melatonin also helps increase glutathione, which is a major detoxification agent. Importantly, NONE of the oral melatonin you take will ever make its way into the mitochondria. Oral melatonin can help regulate sleep, when taken at the appropriate time (in the evening, shortly before bed), but it will not do anything for your mitochondria.

The only thing that will trigger that is near-infrared light. Of course, the best source of near-infrared light is natural sunshine, which brings us to another foundational health habit: sun exposure.

The Importance of Sun Exposure

While melatonin production is triggered by the near-infrared light in sunlight, ultraviolet B (UVB) rays trigger the production of vitamin D in your skin. Ideally, you would not take any oral vitamin D at all, getting you needs fulfilled from sensible sun exposure.

This is entirely possible if you live close enough to the equator. I’ve lived in Florida for nearly 12 years now and have not needed to supplement with oral vitamin D since I moved here from Chicago.

Sun exposure also activates vitamin A (retinol), forming active metabolites called retinoids. (Beta carotene, which many mistakenly believe is vitamin A, is a precursor to vitamin A.) Vitamin A is just as important as vitamin D for health, especially immune health, but it has to be the active form.

The Danger of High Iron

Another crucially important health strategy is to make sure you don’t have high iron. Most men and postmenopausal women have high iron, largely thanks to so many processed foods being “fortified” with dangerous forms of iron like iron fillings, and the fact that there’s no pathway of elimination other than blood loss.

Stored iron is incredibly damaging to all of your internal systems as it promotes oxidative stress. It’s also one of the most common causes of fatigue because of how it impairs the mitochondrial production of energy.

I first became aware of the danger of excess iron over 30 years ago when I diagnosed my dad with hemochromatosis. His ferritin level was close to 1,000. He had beta thalassemia, which predisposed him to iron accumulation. I inherited that from my father and my ferritin was also in the 100s in the 1980s.

I mentioned that mitochondria produce cellular energy, but they’re also crucial recycling centers. Iron has a terminal destination in the mitochondria and must be recycled. However, for that to occur, you must have enough copper, and most people don’t. As a result, the iron gets “stuck” and cannot be recycled.

So, a low ferritin level is not necessarily a sign that you need iron. You may already have too much stored, seeing how the average person accumulates about 1 milligram of iron a day, but it’s not being recycled due to a copper deficiency. This is why many get into a vicious cycle. They’re told they have low iron and need iron supplementation, but the problem is really a copper deficiency. So, they keep loading in iron, and their health suffers as a result.

The good news is that high iron is easy to address. All you need to do is donate blood. If donating a full pint (half a liter) of blood three to four times a year is problematic, you can remove blood in smaller amounts once a month on the schedule listed below. If you have congestive heart failure or severe COPD, you should discuss this with your doctor, but otherwise this is a fairly appropriate recommendation for most.

Men	Postmenopausal Women	Premenopausal Women
150 ml	100 ml	50 ml

A Recipe for Disaster

I now believe high iron may be the No. 1 most harmful health mistake, closely followed by seed oil consumption. Combined, they’re a recipe for disaster. The primary problem with seed oils is that they’re loaded with linoleic acid (an omega-6 fat), which acts as a metabolic poison when consumed in excess.³ This is the topic of my next book, “The LA Diet,” which should be out later this year.

Seed oils, courtesy of the LA, are incredibly proinflammatory⁴ and drive oxidation in your body. This oxidation, in turn, triggers mitochondrial dysfunction that then drives the disease process.^{5,6,7,8,9,10,11} Anything over 10 to 15 grams a day is likely to cause problems in the long run, and the average American is eating 80 grams a day.

A main problem is that your body breaks down LA into harmful sub-components called advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALEs) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMs), which can cause significant damage at the cellular level. For example, an ALE called 4HNE is a mutagen known to cause DNA damage, and OXLAMs are cytotoxic, genotoxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, thrombogenic, atherogenic and obesogenic.¹²

LA breaks down into 4HNE faster when the oil it is contained in is heated,¹³ which is why cardiologists recommend avoiding fried foods. In addition to all of that, most seed oils are made from genetically engineered crops, making them a significant source of toxic glyphosate.

As explained in the interview, seed oils can also make sun exposure more dangerous. The LA gets incorporated into your cellular membranes (where they can remain for up to seven years), and if you have high levels of LA in your cells, you’re going to be more prone to both sunburn and skin cancer. So, how do you cut seed oils out of your diet? Top culprits to minimize or eliminate include:

Vegetable oils or seed oils used in cooking	Processed foods, especially sauces, dressings and other condiments
All restaurant foods (not just fast food), as most will cook the food in seed oil, not butter or lard	Conventionally raised chicken and pork (both are high in LA due to being fed omega-6 grains14)
Most seeds and nuts (most, with the exception of macadamia nuts are loaded with LA)	Bread and other grain products

Take-Home Summary

So, in summary, a handful of strategies that can go a long way toward improving and safeguarding your health, giving you lots of bang for your buck (figuratively speaking, as they’re all free!) are, in no particular order:

Avoiding seed oils	TRE
Donating blood to lower your stored iron	Strength training to build muscle, and exercising in a fasted state
Getting regular sun exposure on large portions of your body	Optimizing your sleep

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