Josh (01:18.218) So Dr. Merrick, it is an absolute pleasure to be here speaking with you, speaking with you about fasting, obviously our very big name in medicine. I've done some research on you over the years. You have developed a life-saving protocol for sepsis, which kills about a quarter million people a year in the US. You're especially trained in internal medicine.
critical care, neurocritical care, pharmacology, anesthesia, nutrition, tropical medicine and hygiene, former professor in chief of medicine and pulmonary and critical care. You've written over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles, 80 book chapters, you've authored over four critical care books, you've co-authored 10 papers on therapeutic aspects of COVID-19, you've been cited over 43,000 times in peer-reviewed publications, delivered 350 plus lectures all over the world. And are
to date the second most published critical care physician in the world. Did I miss anything?
Paul Marik (02:17.791) Peace.
Paul Marik (02:25.592) No, just I'm a mass murderer and I just got out of jail, but otherwise I think you pretty much hit all the high points.
Josh (02:35.662) We'll make sure we put that last part. We'll just slice that last bit out so nobody knows. It'll be our little secret. Love it. Well, I would love to talk to you about fasting. And before we do that, I'd love to learn a bit more about you as a medical doctor. What got you started in medicine and how did you end up where you are today doing all the things that you've done?
Paul Marik (02:40.677) Yeah, okay.
Paul Marik (02:58.015) Yeah, so, you know, it's a good question. It's not the journey that I particularly thought I would follow. I mean, I was intrigued by medicine, you know, when I was a teenager. And when it came to a career choice, the medicine seemed the obvious thing. There wasn't an alternative. At first, I thought I would do surgery or cardiology, but
My first rotation in critical care, I just fell in love with the specialty just because it's so hands-on, it's so based on physiology. I think you have to be a really good doctor to understand physiology and pharmacology, and it's such a multi-system disease. And so that's where my passion really was, and it's a very fulfilling specialty because patients come in sick.
And you know, many of them do survive, which is a good thing who otherwise would have died. And unfortunately, some are, you know, just overwhelmingly sick, but at least we can try and give them a peaceful death. So it is it is a fulfilling specialty. And I followed the traditional allopathic route up believed everything we were told. I swallowed the Kool-Aid. I thought what
that everything we were told was the truth, that what we taught at medical school, what we read in the journals, what we heard at symposia was all the truth. And then obviously COVID came around and things changed. I think COVID shone a bright light on the fraud, the dishonesty,
Paul Marik (04:50.291) in medicine in particular, but in life in general. And medicine is no different. Unfortunately, big pharma has a enormous stranglehold on medicine. They control the research agenda, they control the medical publications, they control what doctors are led to believe and how they understand disease.
and behind them is big corporations and vested interests. And so my journey has changed. I, what kind of a doctor am I now? I think I'm a science-based holistic medical practitioner because it must be based on good science. I think it always,
scientific observations are really important. And it doesn't have to be large, randomized, you know, multi-center studies. There are lots of permutations of science. You know, there's basic science, there's in vitro studies, there's animal data, there's observational clinical studies. So it's the putting together, synthesizing all this information, the totality of the evidence that...
that is actually important rather than any particular study. And unfortunately, modern medicine is so obsessed with large randomized controlled trials, which are very expensive and usually funded by big pharma. So it's really, you know, the totality of the evidence, that's important. And, you know, I've realized how big pharma and big food and big industry controls the narrative.
And most of what they've
Paul Marik (06:48.511) taught us or most of what we led to believe is false. It's fraudulent. It's following a false narrative that's not in the patient's best interest. We can talk about the many things that have, the rabbit holes that I've gone down and the things that I've seen. Once you see the truth, you can't unsee it. There are just so many blaring examples of how
deceitful and dishonest the big pharma and industry really are. One example is the, and it's not perpetuated today by big pharma and the food industry, is the saturated fat statin myth. It's a complete letter hoax. This was perpetuated or started by Ansel Keys in 1960, and basically Procter and Gamble
bought the American Heart Association, they paid them off, and they propagated this theory about saturated fats causing cardiac disease, the fat heart hypothesis, and therefore Procter & Gamble were pushing vegetable oils. It just so happens that it's completely false. Saturated fats are fine, and in fact, vegetable oils, these synthetic vegetable oils,
synthetic, increase your risk of cancer enormously, and they increase your risk of cardiac disease. So it's really the opposite of what they are proposing. And the current food pyramid, as promoted by the USDA and Bic Pharma, is completely upside down. It's completely inverted and wrong. And this whole statin myth, it's a complete myth, the use of statin drugs to control cholesterol.
I must tell you something interesting. So I have, I've just finished a new project which looks at repurposed drugs for the treatment of cancer, which is truly an astonishingly interesting exercise. Cause the current theory of cancer is likely completely and totally false. It's not due to genetic mutations cause which, arise from a single cell resulting in these
Paul Marik (09:13.919) chromosomal abnormalities and people are then trying to target these chromosomal abnormalities. Probably completely false paradigm. It's most likely a metabolic disease which really becomes ties into everything we're talking about and there's really enormous data to support it. But what I discovered, believe it or not, is while statins are useless for controlling
In fact, simple drugs such as Berberine and Natacarna has significantly been shown to be better than reversing atheroma. But what they actually do, and there's really good data, is the lipophilic statins, such as atorvastatin, reduce the risk of dying in people with cancer. So that's an interesting twist to an interesting story that statins have no role
cardiac disease like zero. Maybe in patients with hereditary hypercholesterolemia, maybe, but that's such a rare condition. But they actually have a role in the treatment of cancer. So what you need to do, you know, what I do is you follow the science, the true science, not the NIH or CDC or FDA science or the Fauci science.
there is actually true science. And the nice thing about science is that if it's valid, it's reproducible, it's reproducible here in Norfolk, Virginia, it's reproducible in California, in New York, it's reproducible, believe it or not, in Canada, in Paris, in London. So that's the nice thing about scientific observations. If they're true and valid, then they're reproducible. And that's the really, the fantastic thing about science. And
It's just a matter of integrating and putting all these concepts together, looking at the kind of totality of evidence. So that's a long story. So, you know, how did I get here? Well, you know, obviously it was we realized that the whole COVID thing was a complete farce and we know it's a complete farce and the misinformation and the disinformation has been truly astonishing. You know, just
Josh (11:15.518) Wow.
Paul Marik (11:36.319) Two weeks ago, a paper came out looking at the mortality. This is a published paper, believe it or not, published in the peer review literature, looking at the death of people in the UK hospitalized with COVID and what they showed, if you were vaccinated, your risk of dying was 14% higher than if you were not vaccinated. So we know it doesn't prevent spread. We know it doesn't prevent dissemination.
There was the question if it prevents hospitalization and death, and we know that's not true. So, you know, it's been a complete and utter lie and misinformation. So how did I get into this intermittent fasting? Well, so I was thinking about people who've been spiked. So those are people who have spiked protein. And well, mainly from vaccination. Yes. So, you know, there's no
Josh (12:23.938) from the vaccinations.
Paul Marik (12:31.723) Spike protein is probably one of the most toxic proteins known to man. Now how it differs from cyanide. Cyanide is also toxic, but it kills you quickly and suddenly and you're dead. What happens with spike protein is it does this slowly, chronically over a long period of time, and it's profoundly disabling, incapacitating, and then kills you. So it's a different form of a
toxin to cyanide, but it's much more pervasive. It's much more, the societal impacts are enormous. And so, you know, the pathologist knows the truth. And if you look at the, there's a pathologist Arne Bernhold in Germany who's done an autopsy on over 50 patients who've died post vaccination. And what he's shown, it's truly astonishing. The body is completely overwhelmed with spike protein, completely overwhelmed.
So, you know, the nanoparticle, which is obviously a synthetic thing, crosses the blood-brain barrier, goes everywhere in the body. And what he shows is that the whole, you know, every organ is completely packed with spike protein. So the question then becomes is, you know, if you've been vaccinated and you've been spiked and maybe you also got COVID, which added to the problem, and there's no question that...
Getting COVID makes things worse. So if you get COVID, you wanna be treated early. By the way, there are something like 20 to 30 drugs that have been proven to be highly effective to treat COVID unlike what the agencies wanna tell you. So basically the bottom line is you wanna limit your amount of spike exposure by not being vaccinated, not getting more boosters and limiting your...
limiting the amount of spike you get, you get infected. So the question then becomes, how do you get rid of spike? And so it's not an easy question because those who invented this vaccine didn't invent an antidote. So we have to come up with some way to nullify the toxicity of spike. And so we came up with two strategies. The one is to try and mitigate the consequences.
Paul Marik (14:48.351) So we know spike causes all kinds of things. It causes inflammation, it causes clotting, it causes auto antibodies, it causes amyloid, it causes all kinds of stuff. It's a really bad thing. So the first is to try and mitigate the consequences. The second, the most important though is how do you get rid of spike? And so there are people who have these so-called detox.
programs or machines or devices which simply don't work. So what you have to do is you have to help the cell get rid of the spike. So the spike is largely intracellular particularly within the lining of blood vessels. So how do you get rid of spike? And so there's a process called autophagy or autophagy which basically is a preserved cellular response that
dates back to yeast. Almost every single organism uses autophagy as a self-cleaning mechanism. It's the way that the cell self-heals itself and cleans itself. So what this process does is it packages damaged protein, misfolded protein, damaged organelles, discarded protein.
basically puts them in a little vacuole called an autophagosome and then it fuses with a lysosome and gets broken down. And this process is called autophagy or autophagy. It's an absolutely essential process for normalizing cellular function. It's like the garbage control system of the cell. And the most effective way, the most effective way to activate autophagy is intermittent fasting.
That's how I came to intermittent fasting. It wasn't like I thought, well, I'm just gonna start doing intermittent fasting because it sounds a good idea. It was kind of backwards that I figured out the best way to activate autophagy was through intermittent fasting. And so that's how I started on this crusade. But intermittent fasting does a whole host of other things besides activating autophagy.
Paul Marik (17:10.327) which are really very important. So, and you need to combine intermittent fasting with eating real food. So as we know, most Western people don't eat real food. They eat 80% is processed food. This is synthetic food. It's full of chemicals and preservatives and all kinds of bad ingredients. So you really, you know.
that's not the way we were designed to eat. So, you know, we wanna go back to our roots, the way we were designed is to eat real food. And the way you tell if it's real food is if it looks like food, it's food. If it has a package insert or a label or comes in a box, it's likely not real food.
Josh (17:57.282) You've got a saying that says if your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it.
Paul Marik (18:02.019) Exactly. And so it's an outrage that, you know, that the diet of children is they start the day off eating, you know, cereal, processed cereal, which is nothing more than chemicals and fructose and glucose. And so fructose is particularly bad. So this is corn, corn syrup, because it gets converted unlike glucose, it gets converted to fat in the liver. It causes fatty liver. It causes insulin resistance.
So maybe I've just gone off track a bit. So, you know, what we recommend is intermittent fasting plus real food. And so it became personal to me because I was a diabetic, a type 2 diabetic. And I believed as the traditional teaching that this is a chronic progressive disease, it's not curable and you treat it with drugs that lower glucose. But in fact, through intermittent fasting, eating real food,
and then add to adding berberine, I've actually cured myself of diabetes and insulin resistance. So it's really important because it's projected that by 20, 30, 50% of the world is gonna be insulin resistant and 30% are diabetic. And as it so happens, and I didn't realize this, one of the biggest causes of, cancer is a largely preventable disease. So...
you can prevent it by not smoking, but insulin resistance is one of the most potent causes of cancer. So if you treat insulin resistance, you obviously treat diabetes, you treat obesity, you reduce your risk of getting cancer. So there are multiple, oh, and then it reduces your risk of Alzheimer's disease, or Parkinson's disease, it prevents, it allows you to live a much healthier.
productive life. So there are numerous benefits to, you know, intermittent fasting and eating real food. And although it sounds like it's a difficult thing to do, it's not. It's the way we were designed to eat. You know, our Neanderthal predecessors didn't have a store up the road and didn't eat and snack all the time. You know, they ate once or twice a day. That's the way we were designed to eat. And it's actually very simple to do.
Paul Marik (20:25.543) The people that struggle are the people that are insulin resistance and addicted to carbohydrates, as I was, I was a carbohydrate addict. And it's because insulin resistance causes you, activates your appetite, and then you eat more, causes more insulin resistance. It neutralizes, it prevents leptin acting, so it becomes a positive feedback. So people are addicted to glucose and there's...
and sugar, there's really good data in animals that glucose and fructose is more addictive than cocaine. So we have these people who are glucose addicts. So that's how I started this journey. And you know, once once you realize the benefits of intermittent fasting, which is basically a healthy lifestyle and eating good foods and then adding some exercise and
walking outdoors and getting some sunshine, you realize the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. And you figure out that all these expensive medications that Big Pharma are pushing simply don't work. They control symptoms, they have terrible adverse events, terrible side effects, and they don't really cure any disease.
Josh (21:44.382) Isn't that the narrative of Big Pharma where we treat these chronic inflammatory conditions by treating them as if they're acute and masking the symptoms without actually getting to the root cause? They precipitate, we have more medications and more medications, then we get sicker with more medications, now they interact and cause side effects, there's a medication for that. We become these permanent subscribers to pharmaceuticals where 66% of American adults are on at least one or more prescription medications.
Paul Marik (22:12.323) Yeah, so I mean, it's not uncommon for a patient to be on 10 or 15 different medications. And as you say, the interactions become, you know, almost impossible to figure out. And the data shows that England recently a study 20% of patients were hospitalized due to adverse drug events or drug interactions. So the medication that they're actually giving us to so called
Josh (22:17.794) Wow.
Paul Marik (22:38.463) treat the disease, doesn't treat the disease, it actually causes symptoms, causes side effects, and prolongs the disease. And so this is part of the hoax. This is the saturated fat cholesterol hoax, it's the diabetes hoax. And then also, as I've discovered, there are many effective drugs to both prevent cancer and treat cancer. Wouldn't that be important for folks to know?
And so there was a study published a few months ago that looked at three simple interventions. This was a randomized double-blind study, so this was the gold standard. They looked at two grams a day of omega-3 fatty acids, fish oil. They looked at, I think it was, either two or 4,000 international units of vitamin D, so it's omega-3s and vitamin D, and then exercise. And they showed that that program
could reduce your risk of cancer by 40%. Just imagine that. And so now we know there are a whole host of drugs you can take that can significantly reduce your risk of cancer. Vitamin D is probably the most important and it really needs to be taken in good doses. Vitamin D is truly an astonishing, it's not really a vitamin, it's a hormone. It acts on like 500 different genes and there's now overwhelming data. It's not
This is not snake-well medicine. That vitamin D both prevents cancer, and if you have it, it treats it. One of the more interesting observations, and this is relevant for you in Canada, is that as you go more north in latitude, you get less vitamin D and your risk of cancer goes up. There's a very strong relationship between increasing latitude, vitamin D status, cancer.
and in fact also Alzheimer's disease. So, you know, there's simple things people can do to reduce their risk of getting cancer. And so, you know, this is not expensive. I bought online a bottle of high-potency vitamin D for $15 that will last me the whole year, 360 tablets. So, you know what? We're not talking about, you know, expensive therapy.
Josh (25:08.502) So it really can be that easy. And I feel like I could just listen to you talk all day. There are so many things. You know, we were emailing you, sent me a document on fasting, one on cancer, one on diabetes, and there's just so much information and they all tie in together. They all have same cause and effect and correlation and all kinds. And something I get asked a lot, I love to dive into the nuances of some of the fasting and some of the details around that. And hopefully I actually have a chance to meet with Dr. McCullough about this as well. I...
work, I specialize in inflammatory bowel disease. I see a lot of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. And so I've recently had a lot of people come to me with their kids or with themselves who have had these COVID vaccinations and that induced A, a permanent flare or B, induced colitis they just can't get rid of, which we can correlate back to spike proteins. And so I'd love to talk about fasting and the ways to flush some of these and what it can do for the body. You mentioned how it can...
produce autophagy, which can help flush some of these proteins. There's immune homeostasis, which if we have these T1, T2 irregularities, and the T reg cells are all over the place, is fasting safe for people who are dealing with these autoimmune conditions?
Paul Marik (26:19.583) Yeah, absolutely. So there are very few contraindications to fasting. The one is if you're a type 1 diabetic. So if you're a type 1 diabetic, you have to be really careful. Now the current approach to treating diabetes is also completely BS, because they promote the use of carbohydrates, which is absurd. So you know, you wouldn't fast a type 1 diabetic, but certainly you want to reduce the amount of
process carbohydrate they take. So the first would be type 1 diabetes. The second would be someone who's obviously malnourished. If you are malnourished, fasting is not a good idea. And if you have a severe eating disorder, that's about it. There's nobody else who can't fast. And it's an evolutionarily preserved phenomenon. Everybody can fast. You know, many religions such as the Ramadan.
They fast, you know, once a year for a whole month. And it's part of the religion, and everyone does it. So it's part of many cultures. The only precaution would be in women during the reproductive years, they have to be careful because it can interfere with their menstrual cycle.
And so they need to do it a little bit more cautiously and a little differently. Probably the first thing that I should say is that to distinguish starvation from intermittent fasting. So when you fast, you're not starving. And that's really an important concept. You're not going into starvation mode. So when you do intermittent fasting, actually your basal metabolic rate goes up and growth hormone goes up. That's really important.
because what happens when you starve, which is complete cessation of nutrients, your basal metabolic rate actually goes down to try and compensate and growth hormone goes down. So this is what you do is you have a period of not eating fasting and a period of eating nutrient dense food. It's important. So this is not starving. You're not breaking down protein. You're not decreasing basal metabolic rate.
Paul Marik (28:42.367) And this effect, apart from having effect on autophagy, as I said, it reduces glucose. It profound is the best way of treating insulin resistance. It's very good for your immune system, as you said. It's really good for your T cells and polarization of your T cells and immune cell function. It's potently anti-inflammatory. So people with chronic inflammatory diseases, whether they be
inflammatory bowel disease or, or articular or joint inflammation, it's very good or skin, or it's very good for autoimmune disease, because there's anti inflammatory properties, it's very good for normalizing the immune system. So the only caution is in, you know, in women who menstruating
Josh (29:15.095) Thank you.
Paul Marik (29:41.247) quickly or too abruptly, the pituitary gonadal axis thinks that the patient is starving, and obviously with starvation you don't want to reproduce. So what we recommend in women who are menstruating is they do it slowly. The first step is to start off eating a healthy diet. The first step is a healthy diet without question.
And then the next step is to miss maybe one meal a day, miss breakfast. Breakfast is a stupid meal anyway. And you get really high glucose and insulin levels. So that what you do is you can miss a meal and then very slowly increase the fasting window and then just see what happens. And if women do notice that it does interfere with the menstrual cycle, then what we would suggest is adapting the
Josh (30:14.21) Yeah.
Paul Marik (30:38.087) intermittent fasting cycle to the menstrual cycle such that they fast during the first, you know, two weeks or so or three weeks and then definitely in the second, in the progesterone phase, the luteal phase, they don't, they cut back on ketosis and they cut back on fasting so that they adjust the cycle, the cycle of fasting to their menstrual cycle.
Josh (31:06.774) I mean, that all makes sense. There's so much of a correlation between the carbohydrate use and the body producing hormones towards the end of the cycle and it ramping up. And that's something I think is really important people to understand is that it is situationally dependent. And I'd be very interested to learn about fasting versus caloric needs. You look at somebody like athletes, you look at people who are on the go all day. We talk about, you know, if you were to eat 800 calories a day spread out during the day for a month, you can really slow that basal metabolic.
You can see a lot of negative effect that way versus where if you ate just that amount within a smaller window or two or three thousand calories within a window. So what's the difference between effectively in the body and the way it manifests between caloric restriction in fasting? We know there's autophagy, but how does it impact your BMR? How does it impact somebody in weight loss or somebody with immunity? What's the difference there?
Paul Marik (31:59.715) Yes, I think it needs to be adapted. So the nice thing about intermittent fasting is very flexible and it's cheap and it's easy to do and it should be adapted to a person's particular lifestyle, you know, depending on how active they are, how much exercise they're doing, and so they can make it make it much more flexible and you know they can cycle it with, you know, there is a question
Paul Marik (32:29.803) you should exercise before you eat or after you eat. So some people think you should eat and then exercise. Other people think you should exercise, sorry, you should eat and then exercise. And the benefit of exercising after you eat is it's the best way of controlling your blood glucose.
because now your glucose is being taken up into the exercising muscles and is being taken up and it's really good for insulin resistance. And, you know, people say, well, what about, because fasting activates growth hormone. So actually if you exercise while you're doing intermittent fasting, it actually allows you to, and you do resistance training to put on muscle bulk. But the difference is if you take growth hormone
injection or it has a very short half life. But the growth hormone that your body produces through this process is a longer half life. So you still get the benefits of intermittent fasting and high growth hormone if you exercise or do resistance training after eating rather than before eating. So while the issue is not completely settled, we would suggest to
exercise after a meal. The other thing is that this obsession with doing high endurance, excessive exercise training is completely unphysiologic. The human body is not designed for it. It causes severe stress and inflammation. So, you know, this endurance athletic activity I think is quite harmful.
And, you know, there are many athletes, you see it in marathons, the end of the marathon, how many people drop dead from cardiac disease. It's profoundly pro-inflammatory, it causes a severe stress response. So I think exercise needs to, you know, just common sense. The human body wasn't designed to run, you know, like a cheetah or a lion. That's not the way our body was designed, you know.
Josh (34:50.114) We often try to compare them to, well, a gorilla does this or a lion does this, so I should do it. I'm like, I'm not a lion. I'm not nearly that hairy.
Paul Marik (35:00.091) Yeah, so I think, you know, it's just common sense in terms of I think resistance training is important. But it doesn't mean you got to bench press, you know, 300 kilograms. I think, you know, you can do resistance training with your own body weight. You can use light weights and resistance training is really important because particularly as we age.
So the loss of lean body mass and muscle mass is really a really bad predictor of aging and senescence. So particularly as people age, they wanna maintain lean body mass by resistance training. The bottom line is the data shows you actually wanna combine aerobic training with resistance training. They both have their advantages and together, they actually are more
beneficial than either alone. So you wanna do some resistance training, some aerobic training. You also wanna go outdoors, get some sunshine.
Josh (36:07.982) I would love to ask, what is the impact, because we talked about gut disease and autoimmunity and how it can really regulate the T1, T2, Treg cells, natural killer cells, all that, but how does it impact somebody dealing with, rather than autoimmune related gut issues, what about somebody with dysbiosis? They have bacterial imbalances, they have overgrowth of morganella, provatella, coloncella, candida, how does fasting impact somebody dealing with those types of issues?
Paul Marik (36:34.595) Yeah, so actually just intermittent fasting per se allows the restoration of normal bowel flora because you're not continually supplying, you know, all these toxins and chemicals which alter the bowel flora. So just in and of itself, intermittent fasting has a good effect on dysbiosis. The other thing is that you want to make sure you take a good amount of fiber.
And so one of the problems is that we don't have enough fiber in our diet. And fiber is really important because it's the scaffolding on which the microbiome is built. So we wanna make sure that we take adequate, people might call them prebiotics. You wanna take adequate, both soluble and insoluble fiber, which then provides this environment for the bacteria to flourish.
So intermittent fasting per se is good for flora, but if people do have dysbiosis, they do have GI issues, then obviously I would recommend both soluble and insoluble fiber. You do wanna avoid wheat products because even people who don't have gluten sensitivity, there's a high likelihood that people will have some degree of sensitivity to gluten in wheat.
So wheat products are probably not a good thing and processed wheat anyway is just a terrible source of carbohydrate and has very little nutritional value.
Josh (38:10.186) So when you say somebody who's fasting has dysbiosis, by fasting they're decreasing the chemicals and stuff, they're feeding the bacteria, is that under the assumption we're eating the standard American diet of processed foods and other foods? Is that relating to pesticides and fungicides on our food or is that just feeding any bacteria in general?
Paul Marik (38:29.287) So, you know, it's a good question. So obviously what you want to do is you want to feed the bowel with normal, with food, you know, it's kind of obvious that because, you know, the food that you get at the store is processed. These have enormous amounts of chemicals, colorants, toxins, and obviously they have bad effects on metabolism.
and obviously bad effects on the microbiome. So actually, Dr. Bean's a good friend of mine, and he reviewed a really interesting paper. It was awarded the Banting Award for the best lecture in diabetes. And so what this investigator did is she was looking at what causes insulin resistance, and what she postulated and what she actually demonstrated is
many of the colorants and chemicals in our diet actually cause oxidative injury to the pancreas and causes the pancreas to release insulin and the insulin then causes the cells to hold on to lipid. So rather than obesity causing insulin resistance, what she's postulating is it's the
causes release of insulin, which causes their obesity. So it is an interesting paradigm shift. Whichever is correct, I think they're both probably important, but it highlights the, you know, when we eat food, so-called food, if you look at the packaged label, and if there are unpronounceable names added to the food,
that you don't know what you're eating. You're eating these terrible chemicals which do terrible things to the body. So that's why, you know, one should eat real food. And we know that 80% of what Western people eat is processed and it's vegetable oils and chemicals and colorants and all kinds of things. And obviously it has toxic effect on the pancreas, but also...
Paul Marik (40:53.851) has a bad effect on the microbiome. So the best way to establish a normal microbiome is to eat vegetables. You know, the way we were meant to. Green leafy vegetables are really excellent for restoring, providing fiber and restoring the microbiome.
Josh (41:12.914) Absolutely. I love that. And it's interesting when you get a conventional GI doctor who, you know, take the drugs, here's the thing, 10 years, we'll cut out your colon, there's nothing we can do. They don't do any basic GI mapping, which isn't the be all end all for autoimmunity and IBD. But they don't even look at the balance of floor, the good, the bad dysbiosis. It's just, do you have C. diff, E. coli, MRSA, varicella? Nope, you're fine. And they send them on their way. And in the same breath, they'll tell them, eat whatever you want.
food has no impact on this disease, but also in the same breath, tell them avoid gluten and dairy. Which is it? And we have these imbalances and people are looking for answers. And I absolutely agree. Fiber is a huge part in the right context. Now, if I have somebody coming in with SIBO, with this small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, they have this huge overgrowth of bacteria, I might put them on carnivore for two weeks just to calm the bacterial down and all those post-biotics and organic acids. And I think the context is huge.
Paul Marik (42:09.935) Yeah, so, you know, like most things you want to do it slowly. And so, you know, I think the more metabolic deranged you are or the more dysbiosis you have, you want to do it slowly. You don't want to jump into it just so that the body can adapt to the diet. And obviously the other thing is antibiotics. You know, the antibiotics destroy, I mean, have a profound effect on our gut flora and it can last for months.
And unfortunately, we take too many antibiotics for all kinds of nonsense reasons, the most being the common cold. It's a viral infection for God's sake. It's not bacterial. So we know that 90% of people who get the flu or cold will get an antibiotic. I mean, it's an absurdity.
Josh (43:00.41) I'm seeing, I'm actually working with a family right now that have a nine year old girl who has ulcerative colitis who since age three, four to five times a year should be given antibiotics for a flu or a cold. And now she has this ulcerative colitis that they can't shake and we're just getting started together. So there's a lot that can be done in that regard. Now you talk in this paper you had sent me here regarding autophagy, you talk about functional and dysfunctional autophagy. What is the difference and what are...
what are the consequences of one versus the other?
Paul Marik (43:32.539) Yeah, so I think, you know, autophagy is a good thing. There is a question that if you have cancer, is autophagy good or bad? And it seems to go both ways, but the more recent data suggests that actually activating autophagy is a good thing in patients with cancer. So the way I see it is there's no downside to autophagy. The other thing that's really important
eating before you go to sleep, that's a really bad thing. Cause the way the brain recovers is that firstly, there's something called the glymphatic system, which I really hadn't heard of. And the glymphatic system is this like lymphatic system of the brain, and it's only active at night, and it allows the toxic metabolic products to be washed out of the brain. So what activates it is intermittent fasting activates it.
Sleep activates it, alcohol deactivates it. So you, and the other thing is you've gotta have sleep. People think they can get away with three or four hours of sleep, that's nonsense. If you actually look at neurological function, you need at least six or seven hours of sleep. So sleep is really important because it restores brain function. It gets rid of all of these dysfunctional proteins, it gets rid of those toxins. And so what...
The worst thing to do is to have a meal and then go to sleep because then it switches off autophagy. You want autophagy to be activated when you're sleeping. So you shouldn't eat for at least three or four hours before going to sleep. It's a really important rule. It's important because of the glymphatic system. It's important because of activating autophagy. And you need to have good
Paul Marik (45:30.639) making sure that when you go to sleep they're not bright lights or white light which interfere with melatonin production. So there's the whole maintaining the circadian rhythm which is important.
Josh (45:46.746) circadian rhythm is so tied to our GI systems and it's really amazing how it all balances. There's a fella named Gary Brekka and he's a self-proclaimed biohacker. He actually worked in the insurance industry for over 20 years as a mortality expert. So he would determine within the month looking at blood labs and different metrics and genetics when people would die, he'd say, yep, you have 10.4 years. And they relied on him for all these investments in life insurance.
It's really fascinating the stuff that he talks about when it comes down to genes and food and the gut and our circadian rhythm. There's all kinds of really cool stuff there. I'd love to put you guys in touch. I'm sure you'd really love to connect with the guy. I'd love to connect with you.
Paul Marik (46:27.727) Yes, so you know there's a biological clock in every organ and the gut has its own circadian rhythm, you're absolutely right. And so it's quite a complicated business, the circadian rhythm. The other thing which is astonishing is the modern man has lost exposure to infrared. So you know, most of the time when we were Neanderthal,
We went outdoors and got sunshine at night. We exposed to fires which have infrared. So the fluorescent lights that we have, the LEDs do not emit infrared. The glass that we use blocks out infrared. So many people are completely infrared deficient and you require infrared to actually make melatonin. So you make melatonin, your mitochondria make melatonin during the day.
because of exposure to infrared, you then make melatonin at night through the pineal gland by not being exposed to light. So it's really important to maintain this normal cycle of circadian rhythm of darkness and lightness and exposure to infrared. So it's really going back to a more natural, normal, healthy lifestyle.
Josh (47:50.69) Wow, that's really interesting. Are you familiar with the science of earthing and grounding?
Paul Marik (47:55.955) So I don't know a lot about it, but I have heard about it. And I have heard that it makes sense. You want to just walk on the ground, put you in touch with the ground and the grounding. So to be honest, I have heard of it. I think it makes sense. So there are a lot of athletes, actually, who run barefoot just so that they can get that grounding effect.
Josh (48:24.194) Yeah, it's really amazing we look at the pH. I mean, pH is potential hydrogen, which carries a charge and you can discharge all this excess into the earth. It's this big grounding wire. It's really, really quite fascinating. And we can see on live blood analysis, when you take someone's blood who's not been grounded, you can see the blood cells start to clump together and they don't move very seamlessly. And then they go out and ground, 10, 15 minutes touching the earth, you come back and all the cells are fully spread, equidistant and moving really smoothly.
It's really fascinating stuff.
Paul Marik (48:55.367) Yeah, so I think there are lots of things we don't understand and I think one has to have an open mind. And I think the more back to basics we get, I think the healthier a lifestyle.
Josh (49:09.366) I like that. I think that's, I was going to ask if, because I know we've actually got a little overtime here for the interview as planned. I was going to ask for any last words, anything we missed, anything you think people need to know. And I love right off the bat, get back to a healthy lifestyle. But on that note, is there anything that we haven't covered around fasting and health that you think people should know, and even your general population dealing with any kind of gut issue or autoimmune diseases or anything around that?
Paul Marik (49:37.903) Yeah, so I think it's a lifestyle change. And so this is not a diet. Diets don't work. I think people have, it's a lifestyle change and it has to be a complete overhaul of getting back to basics, living much more natural lifestyle. It's about eating the right foods. It's about not eating all the time. It's about getting some sunshine, getting some exercise.
The other thing which is really important is getting adequate vitamin D. I think if people would supplement their diet with vitamin D, because I don't think you can get enough through sunshine, it would have an enormous benefit. As I said, it's really quite inexpensive and it can certainly improve your immune system. People who have autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases, it's really good for immune function.
And obviously, as I said, it significantly reduces your risk of cancer. So I think it should be part of a healthy lifestyle.
Josh (50:43.726) I like that. Well, Dr. Merrick, we have covered so much and we really spread into so many different topics. Like I said, I feel like I could talk to you all day and just you have such a wealth of information. Like we said at the beginning, you've done everything that medicine has to offer. You're just the guy now. So I appreciate you taking all the time and just spending this last bit with us.
Paul Marik (51:03.583) Sure. So you know, a lot of this stuff is available on our website as a free download. We have our protocols and guidance. So it's FLCCC.net. FLCCC.net people can download our protocols and guidance and use it as they see fit.
Josh (51:24.762) Is there anything you're working on right now, new publications or a book or anything that you'd like to let everybody listening know to go and check out?
Paul Marik (51:32.559) Yeah, so I've just finished writing this guidance on repurposed drugs for cancer, which I think is really important. So there's a smaller section on preventing cancer, but a more important section on treatment. And I think it's really important because I think almost everybody knows somebody who has cancer. And the current paradigm is completely misguided. It's highly toxic. And there are
There are safe, effective ways of treating cancer. But obviously oncologists don't want to talk about this because it will erode into their profits, both their profits and big pharma's profits. Because obviously, you know, there's not a lot of money to be made in repurposed drugs. Although I should tell you, which is quite astonishing, there is a drug called Mabendazole.
Mabendazole is an anti-parasitic drug that's been shown to be highly effective for treating cancer. There are a few famous people actually who had terminal cancer who took Mabendazole were absolutely cured. And so the drug company caught wind of this. And so while the tablets used to be 10 cents each, you're not gonna believe it. This is what Big Pharma does in North America. So a single tablet now
of Mabendazole is $555. One single tablet from 10 cents. So that gives you an idea how evil, I think it's pure evil these big pharmaceutical companies are. They have no interest in promoting the health and welfare of people on this planet. Their goal is to exploit people for money. Just an interesting anecdote.
Josh (52:59.874) from Ten Cents.
Josh (53:25.078) It's interesting. I posed a question to my audience online once and I said, it would be illegal for me to go into the heart of a hurricane after a storm or after Hurricane Katrina hit and sell a bottle of water for $25. That's war profiteering. That's an offense. But you get people like Big Pharma, you get these companies who can absolutely milk people for every dime because they're sick, but there's no criminal charges for that.
Paul Marik (53:51.271) Yeah, I think it's just outrageous. And, you know, obviously the health agencies are in cahoots with Big Pharma. And so this is a major issue that needs to be resolved because the healthcare agencies aren't there to promote the health of the people that they should be promoting. They're basically promoting the economic health and profiteering of Big Pharma.
Josh (54:18.774) That's gross. What a world we're in now. Well, I wanna say thank you. I didn't know if I'd ever get a chance to meet you in my lifetime, but for the work that you guys have been doing all throughout COVID at the FLCCC, I'm a huge fan. I know my dad's a huge fan. I told him I had an interview with Paul Merrick and he just burst out laughing. He says, there's no way. So we are big fans and the work you're doing is making a difference. Yes.
Paul Marik (54:24.289) Sure.
Paul Marik (54:41.331) Sure, thanks. And so you can do me a favor. I'm interested, I heard about grounding. I don't know a lot about it. If you have a few papers, you can send me on grounding because you know what? I think in this world, you have to keep an open mind. As long as there's some good scientific data and as long as it's safe and not harmful, you know, well, why not?
Josh (55:04.978) Absolutely. I'll pull some stuff up and fire that over. And on our first call, we actually just chatting on the phone there, I mentioned Dr. David Sinclair. I believe he's a Harvard professor on anti-aging and reversing of aging. We're dealing with CRISPR technology in reversing the actual aging process. And they can restore a brand new eyeball that was cataracts, it was aged in a rat. They can reverse its age and it's a brand new eye. I'll find some stuff and I'll fire that over to you as well. I think you find it very interesting.
Paul Marik (55:34.527) Okay, thanks, Josh. Are you in Calgary? Okay, I kind of know where that is.
Josh (55:37.549) Yes, sir.
Josh (55:40.998) It's north of Montana and it's cold as hell. We, uh, the winters get colder than the surface of the moon here. So just don't bother. All right, doc. And, uh.
Paul Marik (55:43.772) Yeah.
Paul Marik (55:49.091) Okay, thanks, A. Once you've done and it's edited, I suppose you just need to edit out that first little bit. You can send me the link.
Josh (55:59.018) Yeah, for your own sharing purposes, would you like me to edit that out or leave it in? I'm happy to leave in all the pieces.
Paul Marik (56:04.215) Yeah, I don't know, it's probably best to cut it out, you know, because obviously it was a joke between me and you, but people sometimes don't have a sense of humor and they may take it too seriously, so it's probably better just to cut it out.
Josh (56:19.094) All right, I'll make sure I do that. There's a theory that Bob Ross, all the paintings he's done and places he's hid the bodies, but some people don't find that funny either. So I'll make sure we do that. And if I could ask Dr. Merrick, in doing this podcast, there's two kinds of medicine that we see in the industry. There's popular medicine and there's real medicine and somewhere in between. It's a big sliding scale. So we have doctors like yourself, you're the guy, you do all the teaching, you've done all the studying, you've read all the papers, you've written half the papers.
Paul Marik (56:27.39) Yeah.
Josh (56:47.914) And then we have influencers on Instagram and Facebook who sort of have, it's almost like a game of telephone. Knowledge as it disseminates down to the masses becomes more and more diluted, right? And so we start to lose what it was eventually, what it was supposed to say. And so through this podcast, I'm trying to blend the two and take quality influencers with hundreds of thousands of audience and blend it with doctors like yourself who don't have an Instagram account with millions so we can educate everyone on one big platform. And so through that,
I'd love to ask if there are any doctors, specialists or professionals, big audiences or small that you think might be a good fit for this podcast. I'd love to have an email introduction or a referral that I can bring them on and continue to grow this.
Paul Marik (57:30.979) Okay, yeah, so it's not something that I do and you correct. So I kind of keep away from social media because I think that, you know, while the internet is good because it allows you to get access, a lot of information, it's not filtered. And so there are people out there that, you know, take advantage of people who, who, you know, may not understand all the nuances of a particular topic and are easily influenced.
So I kind of avoid social media, but you know, obviously what you're doing is a good thing because you know, you want to disseminate good information and solid information and not misinformation or disinformation.
Josh (58:01.518) It's wise.
Josh (58:16.478) Yeah, that's it exactly. And I had actually sent an email to Dr. McCullough just to see if you'd be interested in speaking on COVID vaccinations and autoimmune conditions being, A, created or, B, precipitated. I've seen a lot of as well. So I'll look forward to hearing back from him on that. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Merrick. I appreciate your time. And hopefully, we'll connect soon. Take care.
Paul Marik (58:32.923) OK, thanks, Josh.
Sure. Sure, thanks, hey. Bye.