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Rebuilding Intimacy: Why Sexual Rehabilitation Belongs in Modern Medicine with Prof. Rafi Herutihttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/d2a377d5-de14-40e7-88ef-b47c0017731d/audio.mp3Rebuilding Intimacy: Why Sexual Rehabilitation Belongs in Modern Medicine with Prof. Rafi HerutiSHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:https://www.tau.ac.il/

Featured Publications & ResearchProfessor Heruti has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications covering:

• • Sexual rehabilitation after sp
  • Neurological rehabilitation
  • Sexuality following trauma and chronic illnessinal cord injury
  • Rehabilitation medicine
  • Disability and quality of life

Rebuilding Intimacy: Why Sexual Rehabilitation Belongs in Modern Medicine with Prof. Rafi Heruti00:00 – 01:46 | Introduction of Prof. Rafi Heruti and the importance of sexual rehabilitation.

01:47 – 05:38 | Moving from general rehab to sexual rehab; discussing spinal cord injuries and Maslow’s hierarchy.

05:39 – 09:14 | Exploring the Biopsychosocial model and treating the “whole person.”

09:15 – 13:05 | Medical warning signs: Erectile dysfunction as an early indicator of cardiovascular disease.

13:06 – 16:12 | Shifting patient lifestyle and behavior before medical crises hit.

16:13 – 19:10 | Fleshing out biological, psychological, and social factors of sex.

19:11 – 23:02 | Aging and Andropause: Testosterone decline starting at age 35.

23:03 – 27:21 | The dangers of misuse of hormones (steroids) vs. targeted medical replacement therapy.

27:22 – 29:23 | The impact of pharmaceutical medications (like SSRI antidepressants) on sexual drive.

29:24 – 33:48 | Distinguishing Sex Therapy from complex Sexual Rehabilitation.

33:49 – 39:01 | Prof. Heruti’s work in Australia classifying athletes for the Paralympic movement.

39:02 – 42:54 | Moving from “patient” to “athlete”: Inspiring recovery stories (the Israeli combat pilot).

42:55 – 46:44 | Breaking down Surrogate Partner Therapy (SPT) and the clinical intimacy triangle.

46:45 – 51:29 | The modern isolation crisis in young men and why doctors must talk about sex.

51:30 – 56:09 | Moving away from “performance” and “penetration” to “pleasure” and “intimacy.”

56:10 – 1:00:19 | Lifelong sexual education from youth to the elderly.

1:00:20 – 1:03:19 | Prof. Heruti’s personal message on choosing well-being over career demands; closing thoughts.

Rebuilding Intimacy: Why Sexual Rehabilitation Belongs in Modern Medicine with Prof. Rafi HerutiProf. Rafi Heruti (00:00)

Sexual health is a pillar of overall health. Sexuality will reflect quality of life. Sexual health is strongly connected to well-being.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (00:17)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, sex. It’s an important part of our lives, and it’s something that we have covered before on my podcast, Ian Kerner. We’ll have links to that, of course, but he’s written many books.

But today we are talking about sexual rehabilitation. My guest today is Professor Raphael Rafi Haruti, a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation and a leader in the field.

Of sexual rehabilitation, particularly surrounding trauma, post-traumatic stress, or any other traumatic events. He’s based in Tel Aviv and at the Ruth Hilla Rehabilitation Hospital and affiliated with Tel Aviv University.

Rafi has spent many years working with people recovering from spinal cord injury, trauma, stroke, and chronic illness. And through his work, he’s come to recognize that sexuality and intimacy.

So central to identity, relationships, and the quality of life are often overlooked in medicine. Now today we explore why sexual health belongs within rehabilitation. We explore the bio, psychosocial model in medicine, trauma and intimacy, and also we touch on the world of Para Olympic sport. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Professor Rafi Haruti.

Welcome to the show, Rafi.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (01:47)

Thank you for hosting me on.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (01:50)

Rafi, your path into sexual rehabilitation, I mean, you trained as a rehabilitation physician. Can you tell us first how you came to realize that sexuality wasn’t was was one of the most neglected, and yet I think we’d all agree, essential aspects of recovery after injury or illness. How how did that how did you lead from rehabilitation physician to sexual rehabilitation focus?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (02:19)

So actually I think first of all it’s important to tell people what do what we do in rehabilitation because most people I don’t think they really know what is what rehabilitation deals with. Yes. And like in the medicine we we deal with saving organs.

You know, it can be a s saving a heart after a heart attack or saving a leg after diabetic causes or something like that. But in rehabilitation we don’t treat the organ.

We we treat the the old person per person. We focus on helping people regain function, regain quality of life and rebuild their lives. So if you understand the the concept of rehabilitation, you can understand that that sexual health it’s it’s is a crucial part of this quality of life model and of course we’ll give examples when we continue this conversation.

So so so as a young as a young physician training in rehabilitation, I I had I was working mainly with spinal cord patients. Spinal cord patients it’s usually young men, much more men than women. Usually after a big trauma, which is usually car accidents and you know, doing my doing training you have to stay long night nights at the hospital and you have time to talk with them.

You have time to talk with them. I was young then, I was in my late twenties, and you know those people, they lost the the ability to move, no mobility, they are confined to wheelchair, they don’t have no control on the like incontinence no control on the you in the first f

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (04:13)

Yes, basically.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (04:14)

Yeah. And and and w they they they wanted to talk with me about sex, about sexuality. And I was quite overwhelmed because you know why why why is it important when when you have such so many dramatic changes in your life? Those days, no Google, no AI.

I had to go the next day to read in the library and even in the the the the medical literature there was not a lot about sexuality. Like it was very, very neglected subject. Unfortunately until today it’s quite neglected. And I had to start and read and learn it by myself, lots of it by myself. And for my readings I understood how important it is.

How important it to talk with them about and at least to give them some knowledge, some hope, some some knowledge to know how to regain sexuality in the life because if I told you that in rehabilitation we help rebuild life. So how can we rebuild life without putting sexuality into it which is a very main aspect. Actually I I I I believe most of the listeners they know Maslow. Maslow was

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (05:39)

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (05:42)

Yeah, yeah, excellent. So it’s almost eighty years old and in his hierarchy of needs, in the most important level you have oxygen, you have food, you have how do you say feces and and and urine that you must give.

And in in this level he puts sex as well, which means even then they understood that sex is a very crucial and important part of life, of our needs in our life. And when I talk about sexuality I don’t talk only about sex. Maybe we can discuss it later.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (06:26)

Well, no, I think this is it’s it’s so interesting to use the comparison of incontinence, fe feces, urine incontinence ’cause these are functions that we give very little thought to. You know, I mean, we just assume this is what we do. I mean, obviously if people are constipated, they are more aware of it if they have diarrhea.

But but i not normal function of those everyday things is something we don’t give thought to and sexuality, well, is something we give thought to, but dysfunction of it is highlighted in all these areas during trauma, isn’t it? I mean this is a part of this highlights a whole range of things.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (07:10)

Yeah, yeah. Sexuality is actually one of the first things people lose after illness or injury. It’s not only trauma but but it’s you have to understand that unfortunately it’s it’s one of the last things medicine talks about. Yes. And and and and we can look at it through a very important model, I’m sure your listeners aware about because you talk about well being, it’s the bio psychosocial model.

Yes. Meaning that we we we treat we treat body, we treat mind, and we we we also have to treat relationship. We you cannot deal with one of them without talking about the others.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (07:56)

Yes, well we’ve talked a great deal about relationships and its importance in in well being. In fact, we’ve often quoted the Harvard study, which is the longest study on well being and longevity, and they talk they identify relationships as the key to long ongoing ongoing well being.

Now, you know, if you’re fortunate enough to have a significant other and that relationship is a very intimate one, then sex obviously becomes an important expression of that. I want to talk about the biosocial/psychosocial model in a moment, but to msexuality in medicine, because you’ve said when you were younger, you had to go off and explore this because it played such a small part in medicine, and even today it still does.

Why should sexual health be recognised as a fundamental part of of rehabilitation medicine? I mean it is of of life. I think we can all agree that, you know, some form of sexuality is a is an important part of quality of life, and that means many different things to many different people, but rehabilitation medicine, medicine in general, where should sexuality sit in that model?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (09:15)

Because sexual health is pub i i i is to my opinion it is a pillar of overall health. sexuality will reflect quality of life. Sexual health is is is is strongly connected to well being because when we talk about sexual health we we address all parts in life that are again connected to to the biological parts, biological aspects and to all the other aspects.

And if we if we don’t relate to those aspects, we actually do half of the work. We don’t do the complete holistic work. So I can talk about it for on and on and on. But for me it’s like the basic of the basic of the basic. And I I I see it as something, you know,

I like how do you say it’s not only my work but it’s also my my my my aim to to make doctors ax access this knowledge to doctors so they can talk with it with their patients and sh so that they know how to talk with it in a very early phase, so that they know how to talk with it without embarrass the patients and without embarrass themselves.

Because talking about it will help in many, many, many areas. Let’s take an example like a cardiologist. did you know that erectile dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, usually in in young person, is a sign that i is the one of the first signs of atterosclerosis of of of of the closure of the small b blood vessels in the body.

And usually when you have erectile dysfunction, five years later, according to literature, according to cardiologic literature, five years later, much, much bigger vessels in the body will close or can be closed. So sometimes a rectal dysfunction is a sign of probably myocardial inf infarction or cerebral CVA, cerebrovascular accident.

So if I have a young patient like he’s forty years old, he smokes a little bit, he doesn’t do sport, he doesn’t heat eat very healthy, and he’s you know, quite he’s not sick, he’s not ill, but he comes and he asks for Viaga and he’s forty years old. So he will be a criminal if I will give him Viaga and we’re not discuss him about the risk.

Look, you can take Viaga, it will help you, your erection will be better. But in five years you are in a big, big, big risk to have a my myocardial infarction or or cerebovascular accident if you don’t change your lifestyle. You have to stop smoking, you have to start and do some sport and you have to you understand? So it’s all connected.

So that’s that is only one example from the the health the medicine field. So a cardiologist not not knowing this fact that if a patient if your patient asks for a yaga and you you you don’t know that it’s a an early sign of a bigger disease, you are a criminal. You must if you you want to give give medicine, you have to give medicine to the full picture, not only to a small part of it.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (13:06)

Well, Rafa, you’ve you’ve gee, you’ve used you know, to I agree with you that we owe it to our patients to take a more holistic approach, but I’m guessing that that’s not the nor I mean, in my experience of forty plus years in healthcare, that holistic approach is most certainly not the normal way that people would approach it. I think they’d be reaching for the the prescription pattern, the Viagra very quickly.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (13:37)

I will give him the Vayaga. I will give him the Vayaga because giving him back a sex life and good direction it’s part of a quality of life. I didn’t say I will not give him, but I will give him the

Vayaga in in in in one condition that he will continue follow up and will continue understanding why I insist that he will stop smoking or or or at least lower the amount of smoking and why I insist I I want him to understand. I want him to change his lifestyle through understanding, not through forcing him not through waiting until he’s forty five and then he doesn’t have any choice but to change. So

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (14:25)

Do you think that the focus, I mean, you could be talking to him about his chance of getting a disease or a heart attack or sm a stroke, but do you think the fact that it’s manifested as erectile dysfunction is a is a great motivation for a lifestyle change?

Do you find that people who who that presents with are very motivated? I mean, men obviously are very motivated to change their lifestyle to protect.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (14:56)

You know that most of them are not. Until you are not in the threat, you will not change. I I I I know in Israel we know we have on the cigarette boxes, you have all those warning, you know, cigarettes smoking affects your your erectile dysfunction. So my patients say, So I will g buy another box which says it affects your pregnancy and I will never get pregnant.

Like they know how to suppress it and how to live, you know. We know how to to ignore those warnings, but if it will be in follow up in a professional field and and i i it will understand more than just what is written on the cigarette box, it might affect and I know from my experience it does help.

It does help, but you you have to learn how to to talk with the patient and and explain. It sh must come from the patient itself, from from his understanding. Yeah.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (15:52)

you mentioned now the bios the biopsychosocial model in practice and and you’ve mentioned that it’s a combination of mind, body and relationship. I wonder if we could just flesh that out a little bit more. I mean, how those intersect and the effect this model has on your approach to working with patients?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (16:13)

So so sexuality will never be a purely purely biological or psychological or things related with relationships. So maybe I will explain explain what I mean when I when I talk about biological factors, I talk about hormones, I talk about nerves, circulation, circulation of blood vessels as I mentioned, and also important factor is medication.

And the side effects and and lifestyle as as we mentioned mentioned smoking, sport. But then we also mention the psychological factors. I mean how much stress do you have in your life if you had a past trauma, anxiety or personality, anxiety or self esteem, body image, all all those things are very very connected to sexuality.

And the last but not least is the social the social aspects which is partner communications or culture which culture I will I will use a culture approach. I will not talk to someone who is ultra orthodox the same like I talk from someone who is from Schenken, which is a very very liberal street in Tel Aviv.

I will talk differently and and the expectations the so suc success successful sorry for my English successful treatment will usually require addressing all the three aspects and if you don’t deal with three aspects so it’s not a complete holistic approach because sexual function happens in the body

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (17:42)

Okay.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (18:10)

But sexuality actually happens in the whole person. So it’s a different a diff different way to look at it.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (18:24)

Yeah, yeah. So so I I

Prof. Rafi Heruti (18:26)

There’s a difference between sexual function and sexuality.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (18:31)

Yeah, yeah. The the interesting the hormone effect, because I mean breaking this bodily approach down before we get into the mind and relationship. But hormones are an interesting one, aren’t they?

Because we are exposed environmentally to so many endocrine disrupting chemicals that the you know, there there’s something in the word endocrine disrupting that is linked very intimately to hormones in general, but sex hormones in particular. What what what aspect what what do you how do you see that impacting people’s sexuality?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (19:11)

So so when I do an intake, an interview to a new patient, I will always always when I talk with him I will I will try to think w where where the body, where the mind and where the relationship are are concerned. And if I think there’s there’s a risk that that there might be hormonal aspects, I will do a blood test. And we we see it more and more.

We see it no more and more. Not not only because of the chemicals, but because of modern medicine. Human beings were not at were not supposed to live until their seventies and eighties.

They were supposed to die when they were forty after their son knew how to hunt the lion and and protect them. And today we live long lives and but but the the body stops to to to produce hormones. Like in women it happens abruptly when she’s forty, fifty, you know, with the the menstrual cycle starting, but also in men.

Nobody kn not a lot of people know that even men have andopause, which is the equivalent of the menopause. But we do it gradually. But you know on when do we start to lower the production of testosterone, which is the main sexual hormone, male sexual hormone, you know when it starts to go down

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (20:33)

I, I probably go on. I’m I know I’m not gonna like what you’re about to say, but go on, give it to me.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (20:41)

Thirty five. Thirty five.

When a male is thirty five the the the testicles start gradually lower the production of the testosterone. But but we do it very slowly so it’s about one percent a year. One percent a year sounds very very very slow slow, but if you are sixty five so it’s already thirty percent lower than what you used to have. Yeah.

So you will usually ask a blood test even when you fifty or when I suspect that there might be another problem and not only the natural decrease. This is a natural physiological decrease but you can also as you said have other diseases that might affect. But through a thorough intake storytelling I can know when to suspect that it is medical or when it is in the brain.

When it’s it is connected to maybe depression, anxiety or or other aspects. And then I will decide with my knowledge when to do those blood tests. But we see a lot in the older age, not very, very old, fifty, sixty, it’s not old.

That they will have a less amount of testosterone, which is very, very easily fixed. Very, very easily fixed. Like if someone has diabetes and he doesn’t have insulin, we will give him insulin from outer sources. The same with testosterone.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (22:11)

Can take testosterone as a supplement?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (22:14)

You can take testosterone not as a supplement, it’s it’s a a medication like insulin. I mean in you won’t you wouldn’t call insulin a supplement, would you? So it’s a medication and it needs lots of young people take it for building the body and then they can b do big damage to the body if they take it you know, with without recipe without prescription or without follow up and

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (22:23)

No you wouldn’t, no.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (22:44)

Mm. Okay. So it’s a supplement.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (22:49)

A lot of people who are in the weightlifting game, bodybuilding game, I’m sure, over perhaps are are likely or possible to overdo the the pus that that use of testosterone. Is that

Prof. Rafi Heruti (23:03)

Not only dystroxia, also steroids they take for it’s also steroids are also a hormone, if you talk about hormones.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (23:11)

Right. And and the effect of that on their sexuality? Do they become hypersexual on all of these hormones or does it have the opposite effect?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (23:21)

Usually, it will have eventually it will have the opposite effect.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (23:25)

Right, right. So so w I know that when blood tests we did a programme on men’s health many years ago with Dr. Rob King and he introduced me to the idea that I should be having testosterone checked regularly on my blood profiles, but as I reflected on my history of blood tests from the age of thirty or twenties,

I I I it was never even included in the panel. Is that should that be part of an an ordinary panel for Men and women, I mean, I’m guessing women’s progesterone and oestrogen levels are similarly affected.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (24:02)

In women they they won’t take testosterone because we don’t st we still don’t know how to to understand the results in women. But women also have testosterone but in a much, much, much lower levels, although they don’t have testicles, they produce him produce it in other organs like adrenals or ovaries, you know, but a very, very small amount because testosterone is not only a sex hormone for a for libido, for desire.

It also it is also important for building bones and preventing osteoporosis. It’s all it’s it’s important in in well being in in well being in your in in your mood. It can help with with your mood. It’s important in the immune system. So if if someone lacks testosterone I will not give it to him only

Because I want him to have more sex and more frequency of sex. I will look at the the the whole picture. With women the the blood test will will usually include other hormones such as Sogan and Progoster and and and in women it’s much more developed the the hormone therapy for the the menopause period.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (25:19)

You you mentioned you mentioned that incorrect prescription or use of testosterone will eventually have the opposite effect on a person’s libido, a male libido. What does the effect of hormone replacement therapy for women have on their sex on their sexual on their libido and sexual health?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (25:41)

Well, it’s a very tricky question. Okay. Because you know men and women are completely different. Many yeah, you’ve heard about it. And we’ve we we had lots of work suggesting that the brain, even the brain has a lot of difference, and you know men are much more physical and women are much more emotional.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (25:48)

I’ve heard that.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (26:10)

Most of the time the these are really true journalisation. You see it also in in in in in reality. So with men you will give him testosterone and and and you will feel you you will see a dramatic effect on his libido and on his life. With women, if you don’t deal with also with the emotional aspect, sometimes you will fix the hormone levels and nothing will happen.

So many women, especially in the States now they try to combine testosterone in the treatment of women and they have medications to improve a sec a libido in women that the the FDA has approved and cost a fortune by the way, and then they take it and they don’t understand why it doesn’t help. Huh.

Because not everything is medical, not everything is okay, you have this woman is low, take hormone, now it’s good finish. It’s not working like this. And it’s again, the biopsychosocial. You can’t just take care of the biological aspect and and and hope that now everything will be lovey dovey and good and

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (27:22)

But Rafi Rafi, you you’ve just described Western medicine’s approach to healthcare, which has resulted in a two and a half trillion dollar industry in pharmaceuticals because that’s exactly the way most medicine approaches the pharmaceutical solution to a problem. and this this is why this is why this program’s on. This is all about championing a holistic or or biopsychosocial approach.

To healthcare. the the other thing is of course medication because that’s so common. I mean, one in w one example in Australia is one in six Australians are on antidepressants, and I believe antidepressants would certainly have an impact on sexual health. What w is that your experience? What

Prof. Rafi Heruti (28:14)

Yeah, show them the the SSRIs, SSIs, the sortonine re uptake, whatever inhibit inhibitory, usually will cause will will will lower libido. and it’s also difficult because sometimes when some one someone takes it for depression or for anx for anxiety, you have to understand if it’s the the cause of that it the cause that for it it tak for for this reason it takes the medication if it’s the depression or the anxiety that lowers the l desire or maybe it’s the drug.

So you have the the disease that can affect but also the treatment that you give for the same disease can affect. And then you also al always have to play with it. So today we have a a newer generation that that have less side effects

And we have to play with this medication and to see when when the what the patient can achieve the best. When we give him a medication and we don’t harm him. That we don’t cause harm.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (29:24)

Yeah, there now sex therapy versus sexual rehabilitation. I mean, could you explain how those two approaches differ?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (29:34)

yeah. Sex therapy will often deal with it’s very important qu question because sex therapy will often deal with relationship, with the dynamics, with communication, with desire differences, things that I mentioned before. But sex sexual rehabilitation you must have much more knowledge.

Not every sex therapist can deal with sexual rehabilitation, most of sexual rehabilitation will have the knowledge in sex therapy before they will indwell in sexual rehabilitation because you have to have knowledge on the neurological diseases and the impact on on the body and on the

sexuality, chronic disease, the medication side effects, the physical limitations that your patient has and it will combine the sexual rehabilitation will actually combine the medical knowledge but with psychology some psychology or or sexual sexology is more precise and with the functional adaptation.

So and if you don’t have this knowledge you you you don’t you cannot really do full sexual rehabilitation. In sexual rehabilitation actually we walk at the intersection of medicine, psychology and relationship. It’s all of them together.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:07)

I imagine that I imagine the sex therapist deals with in that biopsychosocial model the relationship aspect of it, the perhaps the mind aspect of it, but not having the medical background to fully appreciate the biological impact as well would be important.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (32:36)

So if they have someone i with a spinal cord, you have to understand how it affects the body. And you have to understand that spinal cord, even though it sounds that it’s only body because it’s a big trauma, it also affects the the mind.

It also also affects the mind because your body image now is very, very damaged. You know, I was one eighty and now I’m one twenty on a wheelchair. It’s completely different. And and of course that can affect relationship. And it’s not only a spinal cord, traumatic brain injury. It’s much more complicated than spinal cord because it wi within spinal cord patients, the brain is not affected. So you have who to work with.

And with traumatic brain injury, sometimes the work is with the the spouse, with the family more more than with the patient himself, especially in the beginning when you cannot really communicate very good with the patient.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (33:40)

Yes, wow that’s amazing.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (33:41)

And just a small glimpse because each one of the subjects that we mention, you know, it’s a it’s it’s a it’s a world world of its own.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (33:49)

Yeah. Yeah, I I know that and we want to talk about your involvement in in classifying Paralympic sports. I know that’s what you know, that’s a part of your professional life and personal life as well.

Classifying that, but classifying trauma, classifying disability, I mean, my goodness, the range must be well, it’s a huge range of wha how we classify not for Paralympics, but in terms of actual patient experience, how we classify, quantify trauma and disability is an interesting challenge ’cause there there must be a a range, an incredible range.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (34:31)

Yeah so so actually I’m here in Australia because I was invited by the Australian Paralympic Committee to classify in the the an swimming competition for for disabled and and classification is is a a a very important and crucial field within the the the Paralympic movement within disabled sports because you want people to to to compete with people that have the same or similar functional ability.

So usually it involves two classifiers. One like me, which is medical and it knows the medical feel very good, he knows the impairments, the disabilities, the effect of the impairment on function and can measure it. And the other one is a technical classifier.

In swimming after I do my my my my examination my physical assessment, we will go with the swimmer to the swimming pool and then we will see him in in in swimming and the technical classifier will perform a thaw assessment in the water n and we both look if what we’ve seen on the bench is similar to what we see in the water. The third part the third part will be in doing the compete competition itself when we observe

Because some swimmers won’t show their best doing the medical assessment and the physical assessment and suddenly when we watch them in the competition, boom, you know, they fire themselves and they can be ruled out from the c from a competition. It’s like taking drugs in sport. but to your question, we we can measure function. We can measure function, it’s not something easy, it’s I do it for many, many years.

And well but we will measure the function according to the impairment of the patient. So if the pati the the it’s not a patient, it’s an athlete. Now we change my heart, it’s it’s an athlete, it’s not a patient anymore. So we will group it the pa the athletes according to the functional ability and we evaluate different things. So if it’s a spinal cord or someone who has a nerve injury, I will

I will measure the strength. I can measure measure measure the strength in many many muscle groups that are important in swimming. If it’s someone with CP cerebral palsy or someone that the attack impairments that affect coordination, we have a special coordination test. I can evaluate coordination and measure it and get points.

if it’s someone that has problems in range movement like outro gul gulposis, I can measure the range of every of every movement and see how much he has and how much is lost and again I can put it on a table of points and know the total function. And sometimes it’s someone who lose parts of the limbs and we know according to biomechanic studies

How important is each each part of the limb? And we can give score according to what percentage of this limb that he lost. And and and so the w the whole p person according to what he lost, we have the remaining points and you have to remember that some will have few problems. They can have you can have a a a cerebral pulsy person who became spinal cord, we who became paralyzed and then we can

use different few tests and but we will i will lose only for the lowest. You cannot lose twice. You cannot have below zero. So it’s not easy. It’s not easy and every every assessment can be one and a half to two hours for each athlete. And we are subject to criticism from the athlete themselves when they want to be in a lower class, which increases the chances chances to win.

But also from the other countries that think he has to be in a higher class because he endangers their athletes. So it’s

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (39:02)

Rafi on a on a personal level, I mean you said something there which I thought was incredibly inspired. You know, we’re not talking about a patient, we’re talking about an athlete. Now to somebody who has s had an injury or sustained or has a disability or trauma that has caused a disability, to move from being a patient to an athlete, just that word alone, must have a huge impact on their biopsychosocial.

Health, but for you as a as a practitioner who sees the person coming in on the first day for rehabilitation, and then here you are in the Olympics dealing with people who have not only come to terms with it, but have moved from being a patient to an athlete. That’s quite a range for you as a person to must be very empowering to see these people. Some very inspiring stories. Do you have any that come to mind?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (39:59)

This is why I really loved my involvement in the Paralympics sports, Paralympic movement and I do it actually voluntarily because in in the Paralympic sports this is the the I I constantly see this incr incredible adaptability of the human body. You know when you see them in the beginning you you don’t believe what they can do eventually. And I add patience.

that I as a young doctor that I had to accept them, you know, like a what we call almost total loss, you know, not functioning. And then a few years later I went with them to the Paralympics. I served as a team physician for like a few Paralympics in in the past. And one of them even was a pilot in the Israeli army, was a combat pilot in the Israeli army that was injured and became paralyzed.

When I told him look, this is your injury, it’s D twelve, whatever D twelve, he said so I understand. It’s from F fifteen to d D twelve. And then he became from F fifteen is the pilot.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (41:10)

Yes, I know. But D twelve is

Prof. Rafi Heruti (41:16)

Few years later he got the gold medal in the Athens Paralympic for sailing. Only a few like six or seven years later. So this for me it’s like it’s a wow. It’s a big

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (41:29)

Rafi, what was the D twelve? You mentioned he went from F six to

Prof. Rafi Heruti (41:32)

D twelve is the vertebra that was injured. I told him you are paralyzed between the b below the vertebra called D twelve, which is a thoracic vertebra, the lowest one. So he was paralyzed in the lower limbs.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (41:47)

Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (41:49)

So that’s a real story.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (41:51)

That is a real story and that must be you you there must be so many people that come to see you as an initial rehabilitation case who you wish you had the Para Olympic team sitting behind you saying, I know you feel life is is over, but these people are here to tell you it’s not.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (42:11)

So we involve them. I ask them, please come and visit, please come and give you the inspiration talk. Or I show they have do those talks on the YouTube and I s show the patient, look, watch it, we can talk about it tomorrow and it really helps that they see this is i they can be like this within a year.

That the the injury is not the end of life. It’s just the beginning of a new life. And it’s not an not necessarily worse life because sometimes some of my patients will say no it opened many things in me and I I understand life better so it’s not even not always necessarily bad.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (42:55)

Now one thing that I we we talked about this when we b before when we first met. You I me you mentioned the word surrogacy to me and I thought that is a very revolutionary approach, I imagine, professionally, although I suspect on a personal level many people explore this approach and give it other wor other names.

But within the context of sexual rehabilitation, can you talk to us a little bit about surrogacy and how

That is used and what it is what it is and how it’s used.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (43:29)

So we call it SPT Sourgate Partner Therapy. And actually it’s not very revolutionary because it is used since the seventies of last century, so it’s more than fifty years. But unfortunately not many use it. In Israel we are one of the pioneers in this field. The clinic where I work we use the Sourgate Partner Therapy and it’s a Sourgate, it can be men or woman that actually they play the role of a partner that the patient doesn’t have.

Okay? But they play the role of the partner not only for the not only for sex but mostly for social skills. We talk about patients that their social skills are very low. So the therapy doesn’t start in bed like many people outs in the outside world think that the Sourgat partner therapy will do sex with the patients and teaches him how to do sex, it’s wrong.

That’s wrong, it’s not true. It it starts in a coffee shop, they meet in a blind date. The the the Sourgate can say no, I i it doesn’t suit me. The patient can say no, it doesn’t suit me. It’s not it’s not a must and they know how to they they they they learn how to build relations.

And the sour gate is only part of a triangle. We see a triangle on one corner it’s the patient, other corner is the sour gate, but but the therapist, the sexual therapist, he decides how will it continue, and it will continue according to to the anxiety level of the patient. So if the patient has a very high anxiety, we will the next meeting will still be in the coffee shop.

They will learn how to go to the cinema and what to talk about or how to walk hand in hand on the beach and what to talk about. Because sometimes they don’t know how to to communicate. Sometimes going into the room, the room in the clinic where the where they where they practice intimacy can be even in the tenth or fifteenth appointment.

So we build it very, very gradually and it’s a it’s it’s like learning how to swim. Through YouTube and never go inside the water or jumping into the water and start to swim. And it’s a a a kind of therapy that r I call it the whole soys of the sexual therapy, because it’s also very expensive, but but but it changes lives of people. It actually changes lives of people.

And I see people in the beginning of the therapy and in the end and you see their completely different, even the body stature, even the confidence that they gain, even their communication and the way they look, the way they look, they they start to take care of themselves, you know, and they don’t neglect the their appearance.

So but this is a very you know it’s a very broad subject, a very fascinating subject I believe.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (46:45)

I mean, when we talk about a bio-psychosocial model of body, mind and relationships, and we reflect on our modern world where people are spending more and more time connecting with people all around the world, but not really connecting with them at all, spending a lot of time in their room.

I mean, I heard one statistic recently that in America young men between the age of twenty or thirty are spend less time outside than prisoners in jails. You know, so they spend less time outside. So the foundation for a bioso psychosocial health is really compromised, putting even aside bodily traumas and injuries, isn’t it? I mean, we’re starting from a low base society wise.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (47:42)

yeah, yeah, I think you’re right, you know, and and young people today they communicate much less and much better than than what we did, you know. We as kids we and we went to play outside, we had to talk, we had to fight and as i it’s it’s exactly like you said. Today they can fight with a computer.

They talk through writing on WhatsApp and and it’s a big problem, you know, a and we see it. We see more and more patients that don’t that that the main problem is communication. As I mentioned, social skills. But can I a can I ask you a question? Sure.

So I I actually when you you asked me to to be in this podcast, I didn’t know this podcast because I’m not from Australia and I listened and and I I’m curious because I I heard in your podcast lots of conversations about health and stress and holistic health and I I I am curious to know how often sexuality comes up as part of overall well being. Because you know for me it’s very crucial but

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (48:53)

Well well, thank you for that question. And I agree w I mean, I’ve done a program or two on sexual health. Ian Kerner, who is a very well known author from America, who’s written books like He Comes First, She Comes First, and that sexual scripts of romance, th those kind of books.

I’ve done programs, but you are right, and it may well be a reflection of why me sexuality isn’t part of mainstream medicine because people are maybe not as as keen to discuss it as as perhaps they should be because it’s such a central part of everybody’s life.

But having said that, Rafi, as soon as we met just last week over dinner, my you know I one of the first things I said to you was to correct the very problem you’ve just identified I’d love to have you on to talk about sex because we haven’t talked about it often enough.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (49:57)

Okay and I meant that when you talk with experts not from the sex field, like with the cardiologist or with does it come up even if they are not expert in the field? Does it come it comes even yeah.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (50:05)

Stay good. Up in passing, I mean the subjective erectile dysfunction has come up and and that’s related to we’ve done programmes on PTSD and and I want to talk to you about that as well. But PTSD and and trauma and its impact on that. We’ve done we’ve skirted around about it with in terms of fertility as it’s as a discussion.

We’ve t flirted around it in terms of digital nutrition as a discussion, but you know, this is a very important point for me, Rafi, and thank you for it. but I will definitely include questions about what is the impact of this on people’s sex lives a lot more a lot more often, and and thanks for calling me out on that.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (51:07)

I’m glad to hear that it will be a more prominent subject. But not only not only sexual function. I talk about sexuality in the board board, you know also the psychological or also the mind, relationships, etc. And I hope the listeners understand what an important field it is and how important it to discuss to talk about it.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (51:30)

Well, it’s an interesting one too, because for example, ten years ago I had prostate cancer and I had a prostatectomy. And one of the one of the side effects of a prostatectomy is the potential for nerve damage and a permanent erectile dysfunction.

And I know that in my own practice, which was a dental practice, and I’m not an expert on erectile dysfunction or prostate health, but but it was an interesting opening to discuss issues around it with with men who I had come into contact with that I was reluctant to discuss in the past.

So so that’s a very and and prostate health and prostatectomy in particular raises some very important questions for couples in general and and men in particular, doesn’t it? Because so much of sex for men and women, I guess, is penis centric and this challenges that focus. What are your thoughts on that?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (52:36)

It’s very important what what you ask but because also I hear from many patients posted patients that the the urologist that didn’t give them the side effects of the operation they didn’t know the nerves and they tell them look I saved your life what do you want and and then they need a process process of sexual rehabilitation but then the process if if they lose lose direction completely of we have ways to regain direction.

But but the main the main process will will regard the myth that sexuality equals to performance. Okay and sexuality doesn’t equal to performance because in reality sexuality is about connection about pleasure, about communication and you don’t need an erection for those aspects.

So we try to to move to shift to to shift people from concentrate concentrating on performance to intimacy. and if they understand that intimacy and pleasure they they are the focus so then things often improves. So so they must understand that sexuality works better or best when they stop being in performance.

Yes. So actually we take direction out, we move pleasure in, and concurrently I can I will try to to to help them with gaining erection because I don’t I don’t even argue with him that that penetration is a very pleasurable position but it’s not the only position and it’s only a position. Sex is not about penetration and performance.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (54:50)

Yes, I love that. It’s not a not about penetration and performance, it’s about intimacy and pleasure. And that’s quite a focus. because this gets to the heart of of sexuality as we develop as as young people. you know, I mean I didn’t my parents didn’t talk to me a lot about it. I mean, I d I doubt whether I don’t think many people’s parents did and

Prof. Rafi Heruti (55:11)

Mine as well?

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (55:18)

you know, I I I remember my my daughter who’s now thirty nine, but when she was about ten or twelve had learnt th she once asked us what’s the what’s ps number six what’s sixty nine, mum, dad, what’s sixty nine? you know, w can you explain it to me?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (55:37)

It’s a number of a house.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (55:41)

Yeah, she wasn’t going to accept that. But but but then I did say to her, it’s a sexual position. Did you want to hear more? And she said, No, no, that’s fine. I didn’t want to hear any more. And she she dropped the subject, but but really that kind of how do we talk to her, how do we prepare our our children to have a healthier approach to to sexuality? I mean, beyond, I guess it’s away from this performance. yeah.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (56:10)

Yeah, but but then we we differentiate between sexual education, sexual counselling and sexual therapy and in sexual therapy we have sexual rehabilitation. So we go down to sexual education, which is also very sad. I don’t know how what’s how it is in in Australia, but sexual education in Israel it’s usually until you are four years old.

And you know there’s a difference between a boy and a girl and a boy has a penis and a girl has a vagina and you shouldn’t touch and you can play but you don’t take your and then it finishes. And sexual education should be continued in every age.

In every age it it of course it should be adapted to the age and to the goals in this age, like the talk with your daughter when she was sixteen or seventeen or whatever. But sexual education we give e even for elderly. Yeah. Even for old patients.

Very old patients that they think, okay, it’s not correct that I’m doing sex, I’m old, it’s and but if you liked it when you’re sixteen, you will liked it where you will like it when you’re sixty and ninety. So this is also sexual education.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (57:27)

Yeah, yeah. And I think the the as we get older, perhaps, the importance of intimacy and and you mentioned after thirty five years old, I think that’s probably a you know, not a not a bad place to start. Probably twenty is not a bad place to start. Probably, you know, about the focus being more on intimacy than on performance.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (57:51)

yeah, and this is what we this is a crucial part in the sex therapy. When we when we have patients for sex therapy and sex therapy, most of sex therapy is not spinal cords and traumatic brain inju injuries and post traumatic as I said.

Ninety percent of them are regular people, you know, it’s a young person with a premature ejaculation, a young woman who has vaginis, which which is in involuntary involuntarily contraction of the muscle of the vagina. So the main aspects is i the beginning of the therapy will always include the sex education as well.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (58:32)

Mm. Hm. I I think it’s so interesting to talk about this biopsychosocial model because if we were talking about any any any condition, cancer, hearty cardiovascular disease, all every condition fits into this model, really, doesn’t it? Because the things that affect it positively affect sexual health positively, and the things which affect it negatively have the same impact.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (59:01)

Absolutely yes. And actually the biosychosocial model i it didn’t start in in in the sex field. It started in a rehabilitation field many, many years ago by a a psychiatrist called Engel and many many other fields adopted it. So it was adopted in the sex sex therapy field but also in the social work fields, in psychology. So we are we are not I talk about it but it’s not only mine.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (59:33)

No no no

Prof. Rafi Heruti (59:35)

We and it should be adopted adapt adapted in all medicine fields, to my opinion.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (59:41)

I you it’s music to my ears to hear you say that, Rafi, because we’ve done so many programs on an integrative functional or holistic approach to many, many conditions. Listen, I just want to take a step back. I wanna ask you this last question, because taking a step back from your role in rehabilitation and sexual rehabilitation in Paralympic sport as a professor, as an educator, we are all individuals.

On a health journey in this modern world, what do you think the biggest challenge is for us as individuals on that journey?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (1:00:20)

Can you elaborate on this question? Focusing on my answer.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (1:00:24)

Well well my question

No, you don’t I just want you to focus on, you know, you as an individual are trying to be as healthy as you can, knowing everything you know in in health. What do you think your message to people in general would be? What’s the biggest challenge for us in our modern world today? What do you think?

Prof. Rafi Heruti (1:00:50)

To improve our quality of life, always improve our quality of life a a good example will be that if you have a very good income and you walk and walk to improve your income, but you don’t put in your in your health, you neglect your your health or you neglect your leisure time, you don’t go on vacations, you don’t you neglect your relationship and you’re on the verge of a divorce maybe.

So you are bringing b doing a big big mistake. So you should every time and then stop and say, Do I need this very, very high income? Or maybe I can do better with a lower income, but focus on the other fields in that in my life that are more important. My body, my mind, my relationship. So you have to stop and focus on yourself to give yourself those answers.

And actually me myself I was working in a very, very demanding job in hospital until recently, until a year ago. I was big manager, you know, with many, many doctors under under me.

And even though I was very close to my pension time five years before I left it all to focus on my well being. and it took me about two years to reach this decision with a lot of help, but I did it and I’m very glad that I did it. So I give me out I give you also an example for my personal life.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (1:02:23)

Well, Rafi, that’s a great note for us to finish on and a great message for you to share. And I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done and are doing and for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us here today.

Prof. Rafi Heruti (1:02:36)

Thank you one for hosting me. It was I loved it. I I don’t do it a lot in English and it was a nice experience for me as well.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (1:02:44)

Well, sex is part of everybody’s life in one form or another and and it’s certainly an important part, but when we’re faced with the injury, trauma, stress, post-traumatic stress, i it is affected and it is has a a tremendous impact on our lives.

But starting a conversation and realizing what is important and how one can approach this is a very important first step. And I’ll have links to some of the resources that Rafi has shared. and we will do other programs on this issue from different perspectives.

I’d refer you back to that program I did with Ian Kerner, who has written some wonderful books like He Comes First, no, She Comes First, He Comes First, and all about sex scripts. We’ll have links to that. That was a great conversation. And I would also encourage you to join our unstressed health community because after all,

Addressing the five stressors and the five pillars lays down a very an optimal foundation for a healthier you and that will impact in all sorts of different ways. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

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Paradigm Shifts in Women’s Health and PCOS with Dr. Jim Parkerhttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/b6c29753-0c5b-4a23-8443-b46e003f8264/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES Learn more about Dr. Parker’s work: Visit the University of Wollongong Research Portal. * Mentioned Studies: 109 Studies on PCOS and Pregnancy Outcomes, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970)*.

Paradigm Shifts in Women’s Health and PCOS with Dr. Jim Parker00:03 – Introduction of Dr. Jim Parker and the topic of PCOS.

04:39 – The keyhole surgery revolution and Thomas Kuhn’s cycle of paradigm shifts.

09:29 – Why mainstream medicine gives lip service to lifestyle guidelines without executing them.

14:59 – Understanding PCOS as an ancestral evolutionary survival mechanism.

19:24 – The diagnostic criteria of PCOS and the movement to change its name.

22:00 – The “Seed and Soil” paradigm in pregnancy complications and pre-eclampsia.

32:00 – Historic data on how whole-food diets radically lower eclampsia rates.

35:30 – The structural failure of the traditional glucose-centric model of health.

41:36 – 5 ways listeners can measure their own metabolic syndrome markers at home.

46:57 – The clinical value of tracking high-sensitivity CRP and fasting insulin.

51:13 – The role of the oral and gut microbiome in driving systemic inflammation.

1:02:38 – The importance of translational medicine over repetitive molecular studies.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we are exploring women’s health and inviting back Professor, Associate Professor, Dr. Jim Parker. Had Jim on before. We’re talking about polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Now, before you say I don’t have that condition, I think it is an interesting condition to consider in terms of how it is approached in healthcare. Like so many other health conditions.

There are many commonalities to it. Jim is an obstetrician and a gynecologist with over thirty or maybe even forty years of clinical experience. He’s delivered thousands of babies and performing thousands of gynecological procedures.

So he has a great deal of experience. And after stepping away from clinical practice, he’s continued his work as an academic and as a researcher at the University of Wollongong.

Contributing extensively to research and medical education. I find that quite reassuring considering I first met Jim at the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine where he was a lecturer.

So for him to be lecturing medical students is great, is wonderful, reassuring and very optimistic note. His recent work explores a new paradigm, emerging paradigm shifts in women’s health, including new perspectives on

Polystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS, insulin resistance, which affects many of us, pregnancy complications, and the role of lifestyle and preventive medicine in improving women’s, and dare I say, men’s health outcomes. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Jim Parker. Welcome back, Jim.

Dr Jim Parker (01:50)

Thanks a lot, Ron. It’s nice to be speaking with you again.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:56)

Jim, I always like to touch base with some of my guests and get updates on where they are professionally. You’ve had a very long career and now focusing almost exclusively on education and research.

You started your career studying science and chiropractic and then transitioned into medicine and eventually obstetrics and gynecology. Now, reflecting on that journey over many years, what what was some of the experiences or questions initially that drew you?

Firstly into women’s health and then particularly focused on PCOS, pol polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Dr Jim Parker (02:35)

Yeah, well a as you said, I started this journey a long time ago, over fifty years ago now. And what initially I was just I was interested in all all aspects of human biology and health. And I was interested in lifestyle and all the things that go with that at the time.

And basically I just followed my nose. One thing led to another. I studied human biology. That led me into physiology and anatomy and like the helping sciences with chiropractic. We’ve talked about all this before. And then eventually into medicine.

And of course medicine is i is just an open book of what where you can go and what you can do with that. So I I worked in general practice. I trained as a generalist and then I I studied and worked in obstetrics in the country at Maitland.

And that’s where I got particularly interested in obstetrics and I was getting more and more involved and and thinking of moving further out into the country to work as a a GP type specialist and realized that I’d just need more training if I wanted to be in an independent environment.

And I was getting interested in the surgery and the gynecology. And anyway, one thing led to the other. And I eventually ended up at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. I got into the training program there, which was the best one of the best decisions of my life because of the quality of the training and how big a teaching center it was. And then I I immediately got involved in the endoscopic surgery revolution that was happening in the early nineties.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:27)

Yeah, remind our listener what end what distinguishes they’ll have heard of colonoscopy, perhaps, but endoscopy. Well tell us about endoscopy just briefly, one one.

Dr Jim Parker (04:39)

That was really the beginnings of this of this revolution in this change from open surgery, laparotomy, to keyhole surgery. And in gynecology, we were pretty well one of the first specialties to to move into that area.

And then after that, most other specialties got hold of it. But on the theme of what we’re talking today about paradigm shifts, that was a major paradigm shift that came around pretty quickly.

And all of the things, all of the research that I’m hoping to talk to you about today follows that same, it’s somewhere in this process of paradigm shift, which really, you know, when you get a new paradigm, this is what’s called Kuhn’s cycle, it’s based on his book from nineteen seventy,

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions it’s how science changes over time. It it just doesn’t gradually evolve slowly. There’s a there’s a s a process and a cycle, and that’s what he called tomb cycle. And it seems to be happening over and over again.

And it’s what I’ve witnessed in my lifetime as well. So a new paradigm comes in, and and as I said, we’ll be talking about some of these today that I’ve been involved in research and then everyone seems to fall in line with that paradigm.

The science and the research is all based around that paradigm and it just reinforces this new model that everyone’s very happy with. And then then there’s a bit of paradigm drift. People notice a few chinks.

There’s a few things that come up in the research that that don’t quite fit with with that model.

And this is the process of science evolving over time. It’s got to evolve and change. But you know, we we tend to get stuck on a paradigm for a while. So that that that re that model shift brings a bit of doubt into it.

And then sort of leaders and innovators start to research those areas a bit more and look into it a bit more. And then they find some mig major changes. And and then you

Then you’re you’ve really got a model crisis because here you are you’ve had this model going for could be years, could be decades. In in the case of the glucocentric model of insulin resistance that we’ll be talking about today, it’s been going for a hundred years.

So something comes up along the way, it then then it becomes more major ⁓ and then there becomes a model revolution. People develop new models and new ways of thinking about it instead of the old paradigm.

And and the and that that’s being termed the paradigm clash, a clash between the new and the old model. So it’s a really nice this cycle, this Kuhn cycle. Then you get to paradigm change and it all starts again.

And that’s how science progresses and we should expect that. And we shouldn’t resist it. We shouldn’t expect it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:53)

It’s so interesting to hear you say that, remind us about science that just using the words trust the science doesn’t really cut it in the real world of science. It does in media and in tropes or memes that designed to get compliance.

But trust the science is so unscientific, just that term alone, trust the science. Well, actually.

Let’s challenge the science. And I think it’s also interesting you talking about a paradigm shift because your background came from science, basic the basic sciences and chiropractic, which tends to take a very holistic approach,

and then to be dropped into medicine and reassuringly learning about some basic sciences, but then really not getting into it properly until pharmacology, where you can start not only diagnosing and prescribing.

That’s when you’re really a doctor and you pick up a scalpel. But you you didn’t do, I mean, you because of your background, that paradigm shift of traditional medicine, the way

traditionally medicine is practiced, and the way you were brought up to practice science would have been a real challenge at that time.

Would you not? You you must have gone through medicine and thought, hang on, why aren’t they thinking about, why aren’t they talking about, why aren’t they doing, you know?

When are we going to get that paradigm shift, Jim, back to ⁓ what your the the Jim Parker integrative approach, paradigm shift?

Dr Jim Parker (09:29)

I think we’re well and truly into that. It depends on where you where you think we are in this cycle. I I I think we’re already at the major crisis centre looking at looking at that model.

Every single international guideline in every area of medicine, whether it’s endocrinology, neurology, polycystic ovary syndrome, that’s my area, every guideline recommendation, the number one recommendation is for lifestyle.

So diabetes, obesity, you go to the guidelines on any of these things, heart disease, and you’ll find on the first page, the first recommendation is to implement lifestyle. So the the knowledge and the understanding’s there now in traditional medicine.

What’s missing is the translation of that of the evidence and that thinking into practice. So that’s that’s the where we’re up to in this paradigm shift.

So for instance, the old paradigm is in traditional medicine is health is the absence of disease. So you come along with symptoms, we do some tests, we diagnose the disease, and then retrospectively we quite we try and look back and find some causes.

Whereas the new paradigm and the functional medicine paradigm is that health is the maintenance of optimal physiology before you get to disease.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:55)

Interesting.

Dr Jim Parker (10:58)

And that paradigm is being taken on by mainstream now and it’s in all of those guidelines, but it’s not quite hit the desk of the people practicing because of a whole variety of reasons.

But maintaining optimal physiology really means coordinating all of the networks that control physiology in the body. The old paradigm was looking at systems.

Cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, reproductive. The new paradigm is looking at networks of these systems that cooperate and work together, all coordinated by the brain, which is the central processing unit of the whole human body.

It gets all the feedback from everywhere, integrates that, and then changes these systems to to maintain homeostasis and proper physiology and and health.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:56)

I mean, we’re gonna we’re gonna go into a little more detail that, but I just want to stay with that bigger picture because we have done many programs on an integrative approach in various areas.

And my experience is that unless a practitioner has themselves experienced some ⁓ crisis, be it themselves or a family member close to them, the discussion about lifestyle and nutrition is

Largely lip service, like I you know, I have to say that before I tell you what we’re really gonna do. You need to go off. It’s not until they actually believe I mean, if a practitioner doesn’t believe the power of lifestyle, nutritional and environmental medicine, they essentially just pay lip service to it, don’t they? Has that changed in education? I mean, nutrition, how much is it studied? Lifestyle, how much how big a part of the course is it?

Dr Jim Parker (12:54)

No, it’s not a big part and it never has been. But as you say, it’s been increasingly recognized. But if you think about it, if you go back to where we started today with the revolution in laparoscopic surgery,

if you didn’t do this surgery through a telescope and you just did open surgery and you never saw those patients as as you’ve suggested, you might not realise how radically the difference is between a patient.

That’s been operated on through a telescope the next day and and a patient who’s got a a very large hole in their abdomen. So once you see a few of these patients and they’re out of hospital within a couple of days instead of a week and and their recovery trajectories, you s you s you rapidly get converted. So there’s nothing there’s you can’t be seeing and experiencing things for yourself. The problem with lifestyle is

Often it’s harder to implement and slower to give results, if especially if you only take it up in a sort of piecemeal fashion, you know, so people aren’t necessarily going to see

quick. They’re there to be seen and and for a whole lot of reason reasons it it it ⁓ you know it will become it is becoming mainstream. My my my position is I see a big overlap between functional medicine and there’s a lot in common and that’s what I like about moving between these two worlds. I like bringing one to the other.

And in all my research papers, you’ll notice that I’ve got people from both from all disciplines and all walks of life on those papers involved in developing the ideas and supporting these new paradigms and concepts that are coming through. And that’s because there is so much overlap.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (14:59)

So Jim, you’ve written a lot about P PCOS and and you’ve even described it as an evolutionary adaption. I wonder if we might just remind our listener about what PCOS is and what you mean by it being an evolutionary adaptation, how that changes the way we think about it.

Dr Jim Parker (15:19)

Yeah, well that’s something I’ve been interested in for many years. And we’ve put together a a unified theory ⁓ based on evolutionary principles about why and how PCOS develops. And that’s based people started putting that talking about paradigm shifts, people started putting those ideas forward in the nineteen nineties, but without the word evolution, but still getting

Towards the the idea. And then we’ve built on the work of Shaw and Aziz and Dan Dumeric and put together, like, you know, taken bits and pieces of everyone’s ideas and put together a unified theory. But basically the principle of that is that women with PCOS have got the genes, ancestral genes, that were very well adapted to an ancient environment.

And so in times of starv starvation and hunger, stress, infection, there was a set of genes that allowed women with PCOS to have a particular survival advantage. Fast forward to now, and those genes are impacted by all the modern lifestyle influences: high highly processed diets, environmental chemicals, endocrine disruptors.

excessive stress, circadian disruption, and all of the other lifestyle things. And though they those genes therefore are are maladapted to this current environment, even though they’re very good survival genes in in an ancient environment. And and what’s important to realize about PCOS is it’s not actually a disease. It’s it’s not anything abnormal. All of the 25 or so genes that we know

provide a survival advantage are good to have. And so I look at PCOS and I tell women with PCOS that they’re the metabolically elite. They can store energy easily and 80% of women with PCOS are overweight or obese. But so is 50% of the world’s population. Anyone can become overweight and obese. Women with PCOS are just a bit better at doing it. They’re better adapted.

They’ve got slightly better gene variants that allow them to do that. They can implement insulin resistance easier. And therefore, that allows them to maintain higher blood sugar levels for better brain function to look for food when they’re starving and things like that from an evolutionary point of view. And similarly with fertility, women with PCOS have fertility problems. They can down-regulate fertility when there are metabolic problems in the body. And therefore, you know, why would you want to get pregnant if if you’ve got problems?

If you’re starving and hungry, for instance, in an ancestral v environment, you’d want to turn fertility off until times are better. But every woman can turn down fertility very easily. If you start running marathons or have a very high stressful life with the the death of a spouse or whatever,

Or you suddenly lose a lot of weight, your menstrual cycle will stop. And that’s what commonly happens, and it’s called functional hypothalamic amenorrhea. The brain turns off the menstrual cycle. Well, women with PCOS can do that even under less extreme conditions. So they have a metabolic advantage. It’s not an abnormality, it’s just a problem in today’s environment. And that’s the whole basis of the evolutionary model of PCOS.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:12)

But Jim, there are the you I think you mentioned once to me that there were three criteria for diagnosing and that that’s actually thinking about a name change. Can you just share with us that?

Dr Jim Parker (19:24)

Yeah, well, the three criteria are irregular periods, increased male hormones or androgens, and polycystic ovaries on ultrasound. But you don’t actually need you only need two of those things to be diagnosed with PCLS. So you don’t need to have polycystic ovaries. So and hence the impetus to change the name.

Because people have realized in this paradigm shift that it’s really a metabolic and an endocrine or hormonal problem, not so much a problem just with the ovary itself. And that opens up a whole lot of possibilities because once you realize that PCOS is a normal variant, it’s not a disease.

It’s just women that were better adapted to one environment in an in another environment. And of course adapting that evolutionary approach potentially gives women control. Because once you’ve got a a potential reason, then you then you may have just a little bit more incentive to do the lifestyle changes that are necessary.

To get some of the symptoms and problems under control. And it’s been well demonstrated, for instance, our second papers that followed on from that evolutionary model. When when we were doing that, we realized that there was a very under recognized problem of pregnancy complications.

Women with PCOS have double the risk of pregnancy complications everything from miscarriage to infertility to real pregnancy complications like pre eclampsia, preterm labor, and growth problems in the baby and even stillbirth. And that problem has not been well recognized or publicized in in either clinical practice or the literature in in any area of medicine. And so we I then got together a group of people and spent the next two years after that evolutionary paper researching that pregnancy type issue.

And of course all the same things apply. The paradigm shift had already started in pregnancy research because for years, or thirty years, the the main body of research was done looking at the placenta and the fetal side of pregnancy.

And what was going wrong there? It was presumed to be in the genetics of the f of the fetus. Remembering that when fertilization happens, the sperm and the egg come together, and you’ve got half the chromosomes of the mother and half the chromosomes of the father. And then the embryo develops from that, and by the time the embryo implants in the uterus, which is about day seven,

Some of those cells they they divide into two groups, one that’s going to develop into the embryo and the baby, and the other develops into the placenta. So those cells have got to attach to the lining layer of the uterus, the endometrium, and then burrow into the uterus and cause a whole lot of changes there, one of which is to not get rejected by the mother, because essentially fifty percent of the genes of that baby are from the father.

And if you took anything from the father with fifty percent of the genes and put it into any adult, it would like a kidney or a liver, it would be immediately rejected without very strong immunosuppressant drugs. But there’s a communication going on between the fetal cells that are developing the placenta and the underlying mother cells or maternal cells to down regulate that inflammatory immune response.

Anyway, the old paradigm was that all of these placental problems, preoclampsia and growth problems and stillbirth, were originating from the fetus and what was happening in the fetal tissues and the way they were developing the placenta. And over the last five to ten years it’s been realised that since the problem or n none of those problems have been solved, that maybe it’s the mother’s side.

So this is the seed in the soil thinking, the seed being the fetal side of it, the soil being the maternal or mother side. Maybe there’s a problem with the soil. Maybe there’s something going on in the mother, in the endometrium, in the lining layer of the uterus, with the lymphocytes, the macrophages and all of the other cells that are in there.

Maybe there’s something wrong with the way they’re responding as well that’s contributing to these pregnancy complications. And we then thought, well, what is the evidence that there’s an increased risk of pregnancy complications in women with PCOS? We know they have all these metabolic problems and insulin resistance and inflammation and how is that potentially affecting the placental development and the soil, if you like?

And what’s the evidence? So we s we did big research projects and published two papers on that. And what we found is that when obstetricians look at pregnant patients, we ask them about their history. If you’ve got a history of pre-eclampsia or blood pressure or other problems, then we will say that person’s at high risk and we might want to do more closely monitor them with ultrasound or even treat them, say for instance with aspirin but and and all of the major pregnancy groups around the world have got lists of risk factors that they consider major and minor. And PCOS wasn’t on any of those.

And in fact when you look at those risk factors, seventy-eight different risk factors have been identified. The number one risk factor, clearly above everything else, is obesity. Overweight and obesity increases your risk of pregnancy problems multiple fold. And when we looked at PCOS, eight eighty percent of women with PCOS are obese, this is all lifestyle.

So suddenly it clicked that lifestyle is affecting the mother’s systemic environment which is affecting the ovaries and the uterus, which is affecting the development of the placenta, and contributing to all these pregnancy complications.

So we sort of extended this the soil paradigm to go right back to not just what’s happening in the endometrium, but what’s happening in the mother and looking at all of those things. And we found 109 studies that have looked at PCOS and the risks of pregnancy complications. And it’s there’s a massive amount of data showing that that should be right up the top of the list. There’s a two to fourfold clearly increased risk of p pregnancy complications.

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Dr Jim Parker (28:05)

While we were researching the evolutionary paper and putting that together, we realized that there was quite a big gap in the understanding of pregnancy complications related to PCOS. And that stimulated me to put together a group of people after we finished that paper to research that issue. And what the the problem was.

Is that we knew that women with PCOS were at increased risk of getting pregnancy complications. That’s things like miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, preterm labor, delivering early, and preterm growth problems in in babies, and even things like stillbirth. But we didn’t know the extent of that problem. And we didn’t we didn’t really know how important it was, but when we started researching it.

We realized that there was a large amount of data, 109 studies we found, and six systematic reviews that had looked at what was the increased risk of pregnancy complications in women with PCOS. And there was a two to fourfold increased risk. Wow. But when you look at pregnancy complications, 78 different risk factors have been identified, and PCOS was way down the list.

And in fact, the number one risk factor was obesity, clearly contributing to pregnancy complications and clearly implicating lifestyle and changes in the mother’s metabolism and systemic features, things like insulin resistance, hormonal changes and inflammation that were affecting the ovaries and the endometrium and contributing to pregnancy complications.

So anyway, we started to look at that and dissect it apart and published information on that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:10)

Jim, I think you will have noticed it’s interesting that you know, two out of three symptoms, and one of those being even not having polycysts in your ovaries, you don’t even need that for a diagnosis and and this idea of rebranding the the does the syndrome as a metabolic one. Every c every conference, every course, didn’t matter whether you were doing it on cancer, heart disease, autoimmune conditions.

Everything is now being seen through the lens of metabolic health, isn’t it? So it’s hard hardly surprising. We’re starting to get to how dare I dare I say root cause issues.

Dr Jim Parker (30:51)

Yeah, well something’s got to cause the metabolic problems. You know, when you think of well, what is metabolism? Metabolism metabolism is the way the body makes, stores, and uses energy. So there’s roughly about thirty trillion cells in the human body all undergoing chemical reactions and biochemical reactions, breaking down like parts of the food we eat, the proteins, the fats and the carbohydrates and building up other molecules and allowing cells to to function.

And what we want to do is get metabolism working optimally so that all those systems are working together. So we figured that given that PCOS is characterized by problems with insulin resistance, which is a metabolic problem, and chronic systemic inflammation, which also is a metabolic problem.

And generated from excess energy storage in fat tissue, excess stress in the body from various reasons, and that these things were having an impact on both the ovaries, which then produce and release the hormones that affect the endometrium, and on the endometrium itself. So what we did is we we looked at what was going on there, and then we said, well.

If these things are happening in the mother, we know they’re caused by lifestyle. What evidence is there that lifestyle makes any difference in preeclampsia, for instance? We chose preeclampsia because it’s a sort of model pregnancy complication. And what we found is a hundred years of evidence and studies.

People had been implicating diet and lifestyle as a causative factor or contributing factor pre-eclampsia for a hundred years. And in the first half of the 20th century, 1900 to 1950, the first thing that people noticed is during World War One and World War II, rates of eclampsia, that’s fitting, caused as a progression of pre-eclampsia, which does kill 70,000 women a year now on the planet and 500,000 babies, rates of eclampsia dropped dramatically during the first and second world war.

Then a whole lot of researchers in that fifth first fifty years of last century went out into indigenous populations. And what they found is that in indigenous populations eating a whole filled food diet, the rates of a calamcia were dramatically less than urban city dwellers in European countries.

So there was a lot of circumstantial evidence. And of course, they looked at the dietary differences between the two. And nothing has changed from a hundred years ago to now, to what we’re saying. And in the second half of that 20th century, 1950 to 2000s, big epidemiological studies were done looking at the dietary profiles of women with PCOS and preeclampsia and pregnancy complications.

And big meta analyses of those studies showed that women eating a healthy diet, defined in specific ways that you’ll know, had a twenty two percent reduction in preoclamsium, and women eating a high ultra processed food diet had a twenty eight percent increase. So very good solid evidence.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:32)

Wouldn’t they also you know, that is interesting because so much of it relates to, well, glucose as one marker, but let’s say insulin as the main marker. And yet, and yet the health messages over the last fifty or sixty years have which has just changed recently, but we haven’t heard much about it, is to make the food pyramid the foundation of the food pyramid.

Carbohydrates, which are very quickly broken down into glucose, which affect insulin levels, shooting them up, and causing metabolic imbalances and an epidemic of chronic diseases. So arguably people following the food pyramid would have predisposed themselves to obesity and any one of a number of preventable diseases. What do you say to that?

Dr Jim Parker (35:30)

Thing I’d say is I should have invited you to be involved in our paper that we wrote after the pregnancy papers on insulin resistance, because that’s exactly what we said and researched in those papers. So from our pregnancy papers, we identified that diet was a factor, that by improving diet before pregnancy, you could improve pregnancy outcomes. And that is a big paradigm shift because and then and it’s way down, it’s still way down the circle.

Of paradigm shifting. That’s in the initial stages. It’s a long way from coming into clinical practice yet. But it it will go through that cycle and it will get there. But the evidence is there and and the evidence is clear. But anyway, that’s just part of the scientific process of paradigm shifting. But as you said, what we identified in that research.

Which we’d already identified in our evolutionary papers and many papers before that. The problem is a problem with insulin resistance. And the paradigm with insulin resistance developed from the discovery of insulin in nineteen twenty-seven. And that is we’ve always looked at insulin resistance as a glucose problem. We’ve had a glucose-centric model of insulin resistance for a hundred years.

And the we were looking at this cycle of change, we’ve gone through the minor things wrong with that to the major things wrong with that. And now we’re in the revolution stage where we’ve got this clash of paradigms between the glucose and the insulin-centric models. And our paper was looking at all the evidence and the history behind why we do have a glucose-centric model and why we should have an insulin-centric.

Centric model and why we haven’t. And of course, the problem with the glucose-centric model is that we measure glucose. And glucose stays normal because insulin goes up and keeps it normal for a decade or two before it gets to that magic number of seven millimoles per liter where we diagnose diabetes. So long before diabetes develops.

We’ve got a massive problem with metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance. And that we see that I in the people we diagnose with diabetes. Because a third of people diagnosed with diabetes already have complications. Loss of sight, kidney problems, peripheral vascular disease, neurological problems.

One-third of people with this low level just past the diagnostic criteria of seven, already had those complications. So we’ve missed the boat there. So our insulin-centric model presents all the evidence and rationale and the history behind why the glucocentric paradigm was good for about 50 years, but the last amount of decades, whatever that is, we should have been moving into the insulin-centric model.

And pretty well everyone knows that now. So we’re in that we’re in that real clash of paradigm stage, the last stage before a paradigm shift of getting people to actually measure insulin instead of glucose and pick up and diagnose the problem earlier. And

The real tragedy is, of course, that insulin resistance is the most common disease on the planet. It is a disease. It causes problems. So if you think about it, there’s eight hundred million diabetics on the planet. They all have insulin resistance. There’s another billion pre diabetics. Pre diabetes is insulin resistance. They’re the same. So you nearly got two million two billion.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:34)

Well well Jim Jim, I I’m gonna put my hand up here for another ⁓ you know, you should have included me in the com in the in the article because guess what? WHO did a study on oral diseases which are charac which are characterized by chronic inflammation.

Which I think we can agree, and they estimate that three and a half billion people globally suffer from oral diseases. And I would say that is without a doubt a gross underestimation because half the population haven’t been to the dentist in the last twelve months, and probably eighty or ninety percent of the population have never had what I would consider a comprehensive oral exam. So so there there’s a lot of

A lot of failings going on here, but I think it’s fair to say that the lower the insulin level, the healthier you will be, whether your diagnosis is PCOS, cancer, ⁓ autoimmune, whatever, the lower it is, the better. Is that a fair statement?

Dr Jim Parker (40:39)

It is a fair statement. And then the next question is how can you assess it? And your viewers today can all assess their level of insulin resistance. And they can all work out today where they are in this metabolic paradigm. Okay. Because one of the ways that you can assess insulin resistance is by looking at the characteristics of metabolic syndrome.

So there’s there’s a million complicated ways of working out and measuring insulin resistance. But don’t forget that insulin resistance, you’ve got to measure the action of insulin in every cell in the body. It’s going to be an inherently difficult thing to do. So you’ve got to work out strategies for doing that. Anyway, one thing that would be of interest to your listeners today is how they can assess themselves for

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:34)

Yes.

Dr Jim Parker (41:36)

How much insulin resistance they might have. And one way of doing it, and it’s very well accepted in traditional medicine as well, is to look at the parameters of metabolic syndrome. And that is five different things that you look at as in human health and physiology that characterizes metabolic syndrome. The number one thing is abdominal circumference.

An abdominal circumference less than eighty centimeters in women and less than ninety-four centimeters in men. So anyone can do this right in a minute by grabbing a tape measure and measuring at the level of their umbolicus all the way around. It’s less than eighty in women, less than ninety-four in men, then that’s a sign of metabolic health. And the simple reason is because metabolic abnormalities.

Come from visceral adipose tissue that’s deposited in the abdomen, deep in the abdomen, but it increases the abdominal circumference. So it’s just a surrogate measure of visceral adiposity, which is a the site that chronic inflammation and insulin resistance are generated from in the body, due to all of the lifestyle things impacting various pathways in that area.

So abdominal circumference, number one, blood pressure, number two. So obviously blood pressure is one of the most common problems on the planet, and funnily enough, so is insulin resistance. And we used to say that fifty percent of people with blood pressure had essential hypertension, and we essentially didn’t know that’s the old paradigm. But now we essentially know it’s due to diet and lifestyle. That’s the new paradigm.

So anyone can take their blood pressure. You buy a cheap blood pressure device from the chemist and you take it over numerous times a day for five days and look at what the profile is and work out a rough average. If your blood pressure is under 120 over 80, you are likely to have a healthy metabolic profile. Now, 110 over 70 is better.

Up to 140 over 90 is accepted as normal. But once you get over 120 over 80, your risk of cardiometabolic disease, in other words, heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, and all those things just progressively goes up. So everyone can measure their abdominal circumference, everyone can measure their blood pressure, and that’s two of the criteria. Then the third, the the other three things need to be done by your doctor.

But pretty well everyone listening to this today will have had them done. And they are fasting blood sugar level, which we said is a late marker for insulin resistance. You don’t want it at six point eight or seven, that’s diabetes. But if it’s under five point five fasting, then you’re more less likely to have insulin resistance. And there’s other things you can do then to look into it in more detail if you want to.

We can talk about these if we if you want to. But the other blood things that people do, everyone gets a cholesterol profile done. But metabolic syndrome, which is used by all doctors all around the world, does not include cholesterol. And it does not include LDL. And the simple reason is because cholesterol, absolute cholesterol and LDL levels are not predictive for cardiovascular disease and metabolic disease.

Half of the people that have heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels. But what is predictive, which is always done in that lipid profile, is triglycerides and HDL. So if your triglycerides, which everyone that’s had a cholesterol panel done, if they look at their results, they’ll find they’ve got triglycerides there. If they’re over 1.7, that’s indicative of insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. And ideally they should be under one.

So if your blood pressure, abdominal circumference, fasting blood sugar level and fasting triglycerides are normal, you’re very unlikely to have significant metabolic problems and you’re likely to be healthy. And the last one is your high density lipoprotein, HDL. If that’s high, this is supposed to be the good cholesterol, HDL, over one point five, then that goes with a a good and normal metabolic profile.

Then if you next time you go to your GP, you ask them to do a couple more tests and do a bit of negotiation and maybe stretch their paradigm a little bit, they might do a high sensitive CRP, which is a measure of inflammation. That’s now coming into traditional medical practice. If you look at the American Heart Association guidelines,

They’ll they’ll recommend that everyone has a high sensitive CRP now and other organisations around the world and authority bodies are taking it up.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:57)

So Jim, the higher that number, the worse it is. The more indicative of inflammation.

Dr Jim Parker (47:03)

It’s that’s right. It should be less than one. One to three is borderline. And over three is clearly abnormal and associated with a significantly increased risk of cardiometabolic problems. So it’s not too much of a stretch to ask your GP to do that now because it is coming in. And if they don’t know about it, do a quick search on any of your AI interfaces and take a summary of it to them because it it’ll it’ll just be there standing out.

So in those people that have a normal cholesterol and have a heart attack, a lot of those people will have an increased chronic inflammation, high sensitive CRP, because it’s inflammation that’s initiating the changes in the blood vessel walls and the deposition of the various cholesterol fragments that are found there once someone has a heart attack.

And the other thing that you can ask for on top of a HSCRP is a fasting insulin. And if you’re as well as getting your fasting blood sugar level, you do a fasting insulin. If your fasting insulin is less than seven, then you’re unlikely to have metabolic problems. Seven to seventeen is borderline, and above seventeen is abnormal.

Now the reason that Traditional medicine hasn’t gone to measuring insulin is because the levels can go up and down. There’s a bit of variability. But the information research we’ve got on insulin is much better than the level of evidence that we had when we introduced testing for glucose, the oral glucose tolerance test and hemoglobin A1C, which are all worth doing as well.

But if you do your blood fasting blood sugar level and it’s up a little bit and you do your fasting insulin and it’s up massively, you know that your blood ins sugar level is only in the normal range because of that high insulin.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:11)

Insulin is the insulin is regulating the glucose level, keeping it abnormally normal in inverted commas, whereas it itself is overworking and eventually could become insulin resistant.

Dr Jim Parker (49:25)

And your insulin is regulating your blood pressure through nitric oxide in in blood vessels. Yeah. And it and through sodium reabsorption, which is the function of insulin in the kidney to increase blood volume. So your insulin is regulating all those parameters that we just talked about. It’s regulating blood pressure, abdominal circumference, because when you’ve got insulin resistance, you get visceral adiposity and your abdominal circumference increases.

It’s regulating your triglyceride levels. That’s its job is to get glucose in and convert it to dry triglycerides and store it as fat and save it up for a rainy day or when you’re fasting overnight and release it then. So insulin resistance is the driving force or the what we call the core pathological, pathophysiological process behind all of those metabolic parameters that you measure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (50:23)

Yeah, and and Jim, Jim, most people will have had just that fasting glucose done. Don’t eat anything for twelve hours before you we want to do a fasting glucose level. So we’ve got abdominal circumference, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar. Yes, okay we’ve also got triglycerides, HDL, and and we’ve got the fasting insulin levels as well as CRP.

Another area that I think you are folk you’ve focused on and we’ve heard a lot about in terms of mental health is microbiome. The microbiome being a significant driver of health in general and your s your research explores all those things. What are we beginning to understand about the role of the microbiome in women’s reproductive health?

Dr Jim Parker (51:13)

Shaping up to have a role in virtually every women’s health problem, just like lifestyle is now. And and different women’s health problems are in different parts of that circle, that paradigm shift. Some are right at the beginning, like for instance heavy menstrual bleeding, and some are right at the end, like the insulin-centric paradigm.

And the microbiome, I’ve scene ship because when I used to lecture to medical students in the early 2010 to 2015, every time I did a tutorial with them and I had a group of eight or nine students, I out of interest, I used to ask them, put your hand up if you’ve heard of the microbiome. And for those five years I never saw a hand go up. Fast forward to 2020, and when I do similar lectures, half of the lecture hall

Put their hand up. Everyone knows about the microbiome. So we’ve seen that paradigm shift in medical education and in medical practitioners to understanding the role of the microbiome. And it ties in the whole theory of what’s happening there ties in with your comments on oral health. The original model of the microbiome in PCOS was put forward by

Professor Kelton Trumelton, who we just finished it publishing a paper together with as well, not necessarily on that aspect, on on another topic, which I’ll just briefly tell you about in a minute. But he put forward a very comprehensive theory back in 2012, in the early days of the microbiome’s role in chronic disease, that a high glycemic, high fat, low fiber diet caused changes in the microbiome, which caused a breakdown in the barrier, this leaky gut which activated chronic systemic inflammation

I by a whole lot of mechanisms that are well described, which then cause this low-grade inflammatory response throughout the body. And in our first papers, we put that in ⁓ as a mechanism. But in the last five or six years a lot of other mechanisms to do with the microbiome, not just the release of the lipopolysaccharide, which is the component that was put forward that caused the damage to the the the epithelium and the lining layer.

Now there’s a whole lot of other mechanisms like bile acids and choline and other molecules as well. So that whole concept has been extended. And we’ve extended it also to talk about the whole mucosal immune system, because the microbiome influencing inflammation in the gut

That process of activating inflammation can be done anywhere in any mucosal immune system, including the oral immune system. So if you’ve got an imbalanced microbiome or infection in the gums and in the mouth, that can initiate chronic systemic inflammation, which then impacts insulin function and contributes to insulin resistance. So and and similarly the endometrium.

Which hasn’t been really well studied, but any microbiome can initiate inflammation in the body. And then the downstream effects on chronic disease are the same. It doesn’t matter to the body where that inflammation starts. So the the microbiome model has been extended quite considerably in terms of mechanisms and in terms of initiating things.

So we know that air pollution and microplastics can initiate chronic inflammation in the lungs and then that can impact insulin resistance and metabolic function in the body.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (55:13)

So Jim, we’ve we’ve spoken about a lot of things here today. I wonder if we might just wrap this all up, sort of give us a summary of what we’ve what we’ve discussed. ‘Cause it’s it is there’s quite a lot here.

Dr Jim Parker (55:24)

Yes, true, Ron. We have covered a lot of ground. I mean, the theme of today’s talk being emerging new paradigms in women’s health. we have covered a lot of these potential new paradigms that are, you know, part the way through or almost all the way through. But from our research in the last few years, the evolution is is provides quite a a good framework.

It’s a unifying framework that we’ve put forward that it that provides a good basis to explain what’s going on in PCOS and in fact in most of the chronic diseases that we’re dealing with these days. And that i in in looking at that circle of how emerging paradigms come into in into play, that’s right just under the radar. It’s at the model crisis. There’s a real paradigm shift happening there. So hopefully that that that concept of the evolutionary model is getting a lot of international attention.

And and that paper of ours has been cited over 160 times already, just to give you some idea. Yeah. And of course our our pregnancy complications model, our model for preventing pregnancy complications using a combination of lifestyle intervention before pregnancy, the endometrium gets primed and is in an optimal state for when pregnancy occurs and and obviously limiting the risk of complications in pregnancy.

We’ve tied that lifestyle intervention in with the current existing biomedical screening tests, which have been very well researched over the last 20 years.

And the starting to come into practice in some of the tertiary centres in Australia and s and some of it’s still a way off. So that’s quite a forward-thinking model as well. And we talked about today the our insulin-centric model of looking at insulin resistance to replace the hundred-year-old glucose-centric model.

And we also talked about how everyone listening be able to assess their own metabolic health and determine whether they have those underlying risks for insulin resistance in terms of blood pressure, abdominal circumference, fasting blood sugar, and their lipid panels, particularly triglycerides and HDL.

But one thing that your listeners are probably picked up on throughout all of this discussion is that a lot of these complications and problems focus on the endometrium, which is the lining layer of the uterus. And the endometrium is an end organ. It gets blood supply from the rest of the body, so that everything that’s going on in the mother, like inflammation, insulin resistance, all of these hormonal changes and and everything else, actually has an impact on the endometrium.

And that’s why we see all these complications in women’s health sort of converging on this area. We’ve got abnormal uterine bleeding, which happens in a third of all women, heavy menstrual bleeding, quarter of all women, and iron deficiency anemia in sixty percent of those women. Iron deficiency anemia is the most common nutrient deficiency on the planet. And

Twenty-five percent of those women with heavy menstrual bleeding have got anemia, iron deficiency anemia. It’s a massive problem. And our that’s that was the focus of our last paper because the old paradigm looks at what’s going on in the endometrium, the endometrial events. What’s what are the hormone interactions that are happening there and the cellular changes and and the molecular changes within cells?

And it it really looks at that as a cause. But of course, the new paradigm, which we support as well, is that, well, what about the influence on what’s happening in the mother, which we’ve talked about many times throughout this talk today? How does insulin resistance, inflammation, and all these hormonal changes affect what’s happening in the endometrium, which increases the risk of miscarriage, abnormal bleeding, pregnancy complications, and even pre cancer and cancer later in life in women post menopausal.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:25)

Jim, it’s an interesting focus to to mention at this point the endometrium so much because of course endometriosis is a huge and undiagnosed problem. You mentioned a third of women have heavy bleeding, which is often dismissed as, well, that’s just normal, isn’t it? I mean, don’t worry about it, go off.

And we did a program on endometriosis many years ago where I was given this shocking statistic that it the average diagnosis it takes between seven to fourteen years for a woman to be diagnosed accurately with endometriosis. I mean, that’s quite a shocking indictment on what is normal.

Dr Jim Parker (1:01:08)

Yeah, that’s true. And that’s had your attention lately. And endometriosis, of course, is when the endometrium that we’re talking about today grows outside the uterus. But our last paper focused on all of the things that are happening inside the uterus in the endometrium that are influenced by what’s happening in the mother. And of course, by default, they are influenced by lifestyle.

Yeah. And that is in that is one of the things that is just not on the radar or not considered in the conventional approach to endometrial bleeding problems at the moment. And that’s why we’ve tried to introduce this as part of an another new paradigm in our recent paper.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:58)

I mean, Jim, I know that we’ve known each other for many years through the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, ACDEM, and you were lecturing there for many years.

So that’s why I was very excited to hear that you joined the teaching staff at Wollongong University and because I knew what your focus would be in obstructrics and gynecology. I mean, is I know we’re saying it’s a new paradigm and I know you are doing research on this.

Are you optimistic about the profession in general embracing this more, dare I say, holistic approach?

Dr Jim Parker (1:02:38)

Here I am actually as we spoke about before, all of the current guidelines have lifestyle first. So what what the the big gap is at the moment is called translational medicine, translating the research and knowledge into clinical practice. And you probably know that on the eighth of March, just two days ago, was International Women’s Day.

So this is a very appropriate time for you and I to be talking about paradigm shifts in women’s health and bringing all these things up for discussion and to for awareness to people. But what we really need to see now, and what I’m passionate about, is getting the existing research base into clinical practice.

And there’s so much repetition of existing data and studies. We do this, you know, like I mentioned, for instance, with polycystic ovary syndrome, 109 studies looking at pregnancy risks in women with PCOS, six systematic reviews. We do not need another systematic review, but there’d be someone doing it right now.

So we need and the International Guidelines Group published a paper outlining 150 areas that need to f be researched in PCOS. And they’ve said in that paper, which I agree with, the move should be towards translational medicine now and away from all these molecular studies and big systematic reviews that are just repeating the same thing and coming up with the same results, or saying we need more evidence.

We have so much evidence now and so much knowledge. It’s now the time to move that into clinical practice. And and that’s that’s what I’d like to see ⁓ happening now. We’re bringing all this holistic approach, if you like, with lifestyle. It’s already there, the research is there, there’s more than enough evidence. Obviously you can always have more evidence, but there’s more than enough evidence for us to take public health actions.

Sugar taxes on sugar drinks and ⁓ labeling, black labels on ultrapressous food. You know, there’s lots and lots of public health interventions that we could do. We need governments to take action, we need health authorities to take action, we need food pyramid changed, like it has recently been that you mentioned earlier in the US.

So we need to to to get the evidence that we’ve got and take action on that to intervene and get people’s hells ⁓ in now. And it doesn’t mean stopping all research, it just means changing direction.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:05:38)

Well, Jim, that’s a good note for us to finish on because it’s one of the reasons I got you back on to talk about that and to give us an update. And I’m also optimistic when I see people like you teaching medical students. So thank you so much for everything you’re doing, have done, and will continue to do in sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today. Thank you.

Dr Jim Parker (1:05:58)

Thanks for having me on, Ron. It’s been great. And happy International Women’s Day.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:06:05)

That’s a good note too. Well, emerging new paradigm, paradigm shift in how healthcare is approached. What a wonderful idea, because if the evidence is anything to go by, ⁓ we have some serious health problems that require paradigm shifts. And to see Jim involved in medical education is something to be truly optimistic about. We’ll have the links to some of those articles that Jim mentioned.

I would refer you back to some of the many other articles or rather programs we’ve done on women’s health. We did one on endometriosis a couple of years back and we need to revisit that. That’s often a a very undiagnosed, takes a long time to diagnose those kind of conditions. And again, so many health conditions being seen in the framework of metabolic health.

I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

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The Epigenetic Reset, Gut Microbiome & How to Build Healthier Future Generations with Donna Gates https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/1fbbe3e9-e48a-4237-a689-b4600035fe53/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:* https://bodyecology.com/

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The Epigenetic Reset, Gut Microbiome & How to Build Healthier Future Generations with Donna Gates 00:00 Introduction to Donna Gates and the gut microbiome

04:00 Donna’s Long COVID and chronic infection recovery journey

10:00 Epigenetic tags and the “epigenetic reset” after conception

15:00 Methylation explained

16:00 Pottinger’s Cats and generational health decline

19:00 Mindful preconception and preparing future parents

24:00 Seed oils, nutrition, and healthy pregnancy

26:00 Fermented vegetables and Lactobacillus plantarum

33:00 Yeast infections, oxalates, and gut imbalance

39:00 Sleep, recovery, and immune resilience

42:00 Vaccines, immune development, and “vaccinatable” children

54:00 The rise of preconception awareness and the “Zero Trimester”

57:00 Bifidobacteria and newborn gut development

1:03:00 C-section births and microbiome considerations

1:08:00 Mitochondrial health and nutrition

1:11:00 Methylation, MTHFR, and pregnancy preparation

1:17:00 Childhood vaccines and immune readiness discussion

Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized WellnessDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, over the last 10 or 15 years, the gut microbiome has really attracted a great deal of attention. The importance of it not only to our immune system, but to mental health. So many neurotransmitters are produced in the gut. 95% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. And serotonin, of course, is what is the focus of many antidepressants.

But immune function is also an important part. And this has been a revolution, if you like, in healthcare over the last 10 or 15 years. Well, my guest today is Donna Gates. And Donna is a pioneer in digestive health, nutrition, and the gut microbiome. And she has been a pioneer for over 30 years. She’s the creator of the body ecology diet, recovering your health and building your immunity.

Now it’s a groundbreaking approach approach that has helped people around the world restore gut balance and vitality. For decades, and I mean decades, Donna has been at the forefront of understanding how diet, stress, and the microbiome influence every stage of life, from conception to through adulthood. And today we’ll explore how the epigenetic reset. Now, this was a real aha moment for me.

As she talked about this epigenetic reset. The fact that you are not a victim to your genes, that your genes have epigenetic tags on them, which you’ve inherited from your mother and father and grandparents, epigenetic tags which cause your genes to express themselves in a certain way. Puts a whole new perspective on family history.

But those epigenetic tags go through a reset early on in life, in the first few days or weeks of life or even from conception. Look, I’m not going to spoil it. Have a listen to the podcast. The other interesting point, and and by the way, that that reset at conception offers a powerful opportunity to rebuild a healthier future generation and why stress management is so important for parents to be, not just prior to conception, not just during pregnancy, but from the moment of birth we have an influence on that on that child and how it develops.

So the other interesting point that Donna introduced me to today was the point of a person being vaccinatable. Vaccinatable. We’re not talking about anti vaxxing and you shouldn’t have a vaccine. The point that Donna raises is is your child vaccinatable? Should are they in good enough health to receive the vaccines that they are being given. And we talk about the difference between the American vaccine program and the Australian vaccine program. There is so much in this episode. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Donna Gates. Welcome to the show, Donna.

Donna Gates (03:23)

Thank you, Ron. We’ve actually had our past crossing for years now, so this is nice to reconnect.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:30)

We have, we have. And you were one of the first people ever to talk about microbiome in the gut and its effect on people’s health in general, but this is what we’re basically going to be talking about today. But you shared a very personal story about being a long hauler after multiple COVID infections and how that experienced led you to some new discoveries. Can you tell us a bit about what you found out during that time and why it’s such an urgent message, particularly for younger generations having children, planning to have children.

Donna Gates (04:05)

Yeah. What happened was I got COVID three times close together in a row and I was fine each time. But for some reason about three weeks after that I started getting really sick and every infection that I had, I had Debstein Barr and herpes virus and candida, everything that was in my body, these are residual residual infections and they live in different tissue in the body and they all came out.

So I was okay with that. I knew what to do with those problems. And I actually have a new book I just put up on Kendall. it’s called Caming the Dragon about how to get rid of viral infections that are residual. Like how to, you know, they they they’re living in your tissue. It’s difficult to measure for them because they are not out in the blood. And anyway, they when they come out, they cause more infection. And there’s a way to get them under control almost immediately with a diet.

So I was teaching about that diet for years and then realized how valuable w it would be when COVID hit. So I actually wrote a book and put it out. But anyway, during this time, when I was trying to figure out what was wrong and what was everything was going wrong, with these infections and working on getting rid of I I literally went through two months of being brain my brain just didn’t work.

And I had no energy. I was shocked at how I had no energy. I could barely get out of bed. So I spent a couple of months in bed actually. And I was not able to do anything. My nervous system was so screwed up that I I got nervous real easily. I literally could only do one thing and that was watch this one TV show about this man who went into the animal shelters and he’d pick out a dog and he’d train it. He was an animal trainer and he’d train it and give it to a family that needed a special kind of dog.

And so for some reason that calmed me down and I made it I th I’m sure I watched every segment they’ve ever put out. But anyway, during I I was pretty depressed during this time because I figured, you know, well I am almost eighty. I’ll be eighty in a year. And then you know, people die at a certain point. Lots of people really hit the wall in their eighties and I thought maybe this is how I’m gonna end my life. So done you know, the things I came to do and then I started thinking

I don’t feel like going yet. And I really, really, really still want to make a difference in the world. I really was the first person to ever talk about the microbiome thirty years ago and I wrote about it in a book and explained how we need to eat fermented foods to, you know, keep it alive inside of us. And so that book was a bestseller for a long time. And then, you know, I felt and then a lot of things happened. Like I introduced Stevia to the country.

We didn’t have any anything but aspartame at that point and coconut oil and a lot of things that are just part of our diet today were new at that time and so I I brought them in and explained why to eat them. But so, you know, I just felt like I I ha if there’s anything else I can still do before I leave this earth, I want to find it. And so I just sort of prayed and said, you know, is there something else I could bring into the world? learn something and teach others.

So I started coming into this body of knowledge. It was just just kind of like I stumbled on the microbiome y years ago because there were microbiologists out there and they were studying th you know, bacteria. They weren’t sharing it with us, normal people, and they weren’t explaining how it had any value to us to have about the microbiome. They didn’t ever talk about the head.

And so this body of information I came across that just kind of stumbled on it by asking Chad, I think is how I got it, is some questions. And basically in a nutshell I’ll explain what it is. When the egg and the sperm come together at conception, people don’t realize it’s ’cause just occurred. They just made love or whatever and they just conceived this baby. But a miracle starts happening.

And that miracle is that gosh I really I don’t know, I’m really off today. Okay. Let me start that segment over if I could. Okay. So I’d like to explain what that is, this miracle that happens when conception takes place. So when the egg and sperm come together, the everybody knows that the father is bringing his genes into the picture and the mother has her genes that she brings to the baby.

What people don’t realize is that on those genes are something called tags, epigenetic tags. And what that means is that all the mother’s lifetime when with her bad diet and maybe the father also bad diet, drinking, smoking pot, mother on birth control pills, all these bad things we end up doing to our body, they end up putting these little blemishes or marks or tags on the gene.

And they affect how the gene works. They either turn the gene up or turn it down or won’t let it fire at all. So it’s so t and that’s one of the reasons we age, by the way, is because these tags that we keep adding to us to our genes as we age, you know, the the genes don’t work as well. So these tags are a problem and they’re put on by a bad diet, by infections that we get, by all the toxins that we’re exposed to.

Like anything that’s bad for us makes a tag. Now what happens on day one, right after the egg and sperm come together, is the tags start being erased. The tags that the babies inherited from her mother, from his father, they’re starting to come off. The father’s tags cough off v come will come off very quickly. And the mother’s tag tags come off sort of quickly, but they’re gone in within five days. Then what happens is this little fertilized egg is gonna implant into the uterus.

And now new tags, if the mother, you know, continue to eat a bad diet or she’s being exposed to toxins, you know, chemicals around the house, whatever, all these things that are now they’re new tags being put onto this baby who originally just had a clean slate. So it’s an incredible opportunity if parents understood that the clean slate that you’re giving your baby.

You want to, you know, go on from there and build a healthy baby with a really bright brain and healthy body and all and you can do that now because all your tags are gone. There’s a few left remaining. They’re sort of survival tags and it’s okay to have those. But the bad things that we do and I think there’s probably no mother who gets pregnant that doesn’t wonder along the way. was all that crazy wild stuff I did in college

Was that diet that I grew up on, so and so, was that birth control pill? Are they is my baby gonna be okay? So this is a way to pro show you that your baby’s gonna be okay. So the so the thing is, by day f all these days, one, two, three, four and five, the mother doesn’t even know she’s pregnant yet. She just can see if she hasn’t mer missed a period.

So what happens then is the they all well in other words, they take advantages advantage of this miracle, you have to do you have to come to that pregnancy, come to that conception, with your body as clean and pure as you can get it, as well fed as you can get it, well rested, ’cause stress also puts tags on the GN the methyl they’re called methylation tags, and they keep the methylations the the genes from methylating properly.

So they are so it’s an i just an incredible opportunity to give your baby this clean slate and start over life and all you ha what you have to do to do that is months ahead of time, like for the father about three months, for the mother even longer, like six months or a year will make an enormous difference in everything about your child.

The whole rest of their life has changed, the way they age, how they’re s how resilient their immune system is, how happy they are, because their brain is brighter and you know, you’re just happier like you we were talking at one point about the gut microbiome and the connection we know to to the mental disorders, like even things that kids have today like pans and pandas and autism and all are neurological disorders, but there’s always a gut imbalance.

So imagine if you’re one of these parents, couples, let’s say, and you’d like to have a baby, but you’re concerned because look at how many people you know have I mean, it’s like almost you can ask almost anybody and they will know someone with a child with autism.

That’s how bad it’s become. So, you know, and at least if they don’t express it in the back of their mind, they really are concerned about how will they be the one that draws that unlucky straw and have that child with autism. So this is this is like an insurance policy. It’s like a miracle or a gift, I think a gift from nature. And the more I study this kind of stuff, it makes me realize how much nature really loves us.

It’s giving this b in love’s b babies like the most powerful force in all of nature is the is the force to reproduce that next generation in pl in the plant world and the animal world. Getting that next generation into the world is everything to nature. So nature’s got all these different ways of starting the baby’s life.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:53)

I’d like to come to them, but gee whiz, what a what a concept of epigenetic tags being present. dear, none of us have been perfect in our journey, particularly in the early years of our lives and then here we are faced with conception or the the opportunity to have a baby to make another human being, which is incredible and doesn’t matter how many times but to know that those epig I as you were speaking,

I was thinking well, you know, we we’ve always liked to blame our parents, and this is the evidence for it, right there, epigenetic tags. But no, they’re lost and they give us a clean slate and we have an opportunity to do things. You mentioned also methylation in passing, and it is a really important process. Just give us methylation one one before we go into how wonderful nature is, etc. What’s methylation?

Donna Gates (14:50)

Well, it’s just probably the most critical process, genetic process in the body. It’s w how the genes are basically turned off and turned on. And it’s just that simple really. But do you Ron, have you heard about the Pottinger’s Cat story?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:08)

Now Donna, I am on the board of the Price Pottinger Ancestral Nutrition Foundation. So the answer to that question is most definitely yes, but my listener may not have. So please share it with us.

Donna Gates (15:22)

Okay, so Francis Pottinger, I think I’m not sure exactly when it do you know exactly when he started. I think it was in the

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:29)

Twenty. Ninete twenties. Yeah.

Donna Gates (15:32)

So he had these two different groups of cats and one of the groups got raw meat and f raw milk and was a very healthy group, always fed healthy things. The other group though got what would be equivalent to cooked food and what would be equivalent to our jungfu diet basically. And so in the very first generation, the next first generation to come along, they weren’t so there were some problems, there were some allergies and a little bit of autoimmunity and everything, but not so bad.

The next generation got worse and when people start to study, you know, generational genetics. So that’s by that next generation, which we mean your grandchildren, more problems are gonna show up. So basically p what have ended up happening with the cats, and you can please add to my story, add to my explanation here, but the the poor group, the poor groups that got bad food and didn’t get the healthy raw milk and all today, they just couldn’t couldn’t conceive anymore.

They were they couldn’t reproduce. That was the end of the line for them. Where the other ones were continuing to go on nice and healthy. So I think people maybe they know that story, but they’re not by tying it into where we are right now. We really are the genera we’re seeing the generation that’s not going to be able to have. Of course we came along with IVF so we can artificially help.

Parents, but that doesn’t it very often doesn’t work. It cost a fortune and it’s painful. It’s a difficult, painful emotionally and physically process. So it’s not really a good solution. An easier solution is to teach the young men and women coming up to think someday they want to be a parent and have a family that how to take care of the body before we get to that stage where we’re ready to conceive. So I

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:23)

Yeah. Donna, I just I will just jump in there and add because people may be wondering, what does cats have to do with me? Well well, you know, he went through so many genera well, about five or six generations, and and progressively their skull’s shapes and their health deteriorated. Literally their skull s became smaller, their airways became smaller, they had more difficulty conceiving, and the and he has the skulls.

In fact we as a foundation have those skulls and we are just about to put them all back together again in an animation to make that point. But the beauty of it was when he then fed the fourth or fifth generation healthy food, guess what? They they improved their health, they physically regenerated. And in case people are wondering, well what’s that got to do with me?

Here’s a point that I would ask all of our listeners, we’ve evolved to have two hands, two feet, five fingers on every hand, two eyes, two ears. We’ve also evolved to have thirty-two teeth in our mouth. Now how many people listening to this have enough room for all thirty-two of their teeth, that means your wisdom teeth, through and in perfect order because the size and shape of your mouth literally determines the size and shape of your upper airway.

So if you think sleeping and breathing are important, all thirty two teeth will guarantee well not guarantee you, but predispose you to better sleeping and breathing. So a lot of our modern population is physically degenerated, to your point, in a similar way to Pottinger’s cats. Please proceed.

Donna Gates (19:11)

Well, I’m glad you added all that. It makes a better a much better point. But so the thing is is that you want to I call it mindful preconception. And if anybody wants to go to the webs my website, bodyecology.com, they can get a free checklist of the things you have to do to get your body ready. Or if you’re a mother of a child, a boy or a girl, you know, we need to have like a value in our culture where we want our young boys and girls to grow up realizing that they have they have the responsibility to make this next generation.

And it’s an incredible responsibility. For some reason I knew that really early in life. I d I knew I w wanted a family. But I just always had this feeling that gosh, you know, I’d have a be able to create another human being. And I think people really realize that when they when they meet their baby for the first time. Like the baby comes out and all of a sudden it’s like, my God, I’ve been carrying this baby around for nine months, but it’s more than I ever could imagine.

And so, and then people you often get real concerned about the baby, you know, want to take perfect care of them. But you know, odds isn’t well, let me go back and exp add this to it too. My my grandmother was born in the early nineteen like n I think like tw nineteen hundreds, like nineteen seven or something, in the South and you know, in the South mothers got married ridiculously early, like sixteen and seventeen.

So my grandmother had my mother when she was seventeen. And then my mother came along and had me, and then I had a generation do s daughter and two sons and then I have and then they have grandchildren. So we’re at that that point, you know. I mean, you might think, well, maybe we have long time to go, but we don’t. And what we’re seeing with the neurological disorders like autism they’re just warning signs that we’re there.

We’re like n before you know it, we aren’t gonna be able to reproduce. But I’m glad you brought up the fact that the Pottinger found that by feeding the cats well, he could bring back again. I and I don’t think he could bring back a hundred percent right away in one generation, but he could start that trend. And that’s, you know, back I don’t know, during the War world the war with Hitler, there was a big movement in this country called eugenics.

And that was where they decided, let’s grow healthy, beautiful, strong, good looking people. And so there’s a lot of money put, you know, Rockefellers and other huge people with huge money put a tremendous millions and millions of dollars into the research on how to do that. And it was a big mov movement in our country, but it was picked up by the Germans.

And then they of course the problem with that whole theory, it’s nice to think of growing healthier generations, but but there was ch it was judgmental. Like some it wouldn’t it assumed that certain people were inferior. And that’s one of the ways we can make this happen is let’s get rid of all the inferior people. This is not I’m not talking about that at all. I’m saying that everybody,

I don’t care, even if you were raised in a a terrible environment in a food desert or something you can change, you can start your family on a whole different trajectory toward really strong, healthy human beings. And I don’t I mean it just took a couple of generations to do that. But what we also have right now that we they wouldn’t have had in the past is really the opportunity to have access to really superior food. I mean, I know we have a lot of junk food. Too much junk food. some point I want to make too this will fit right in with your Western egg price thing too. But you know

The big, big thing at the moment is everybody’s talking about these bad seed oils. Well, you know, they need to be more specific and explain that the oils they’re talking about are oils that have been bleached, deodorized, refined, like canola oil in this country has been bleached, deodorized, refined. Otherwise, it’s it’s not it’s not an unhealthy oil. It’s just that it tastes horrible. So in order to be able to use it everywhere, they bleached, deodorize it, and refined it.

But there are people like here in in America here, there’s a man named I Andreas, and he makes seed oils and he presses them with a real fine press, old fashioned German style of press. And the way they used to press oil a long time ago, which was take a small amount and press it and get the oil out of it.

That’s not what we have today. But if you go to someone like him, you can get pumpkin seed oil, for example, that’s really, really rich in zinc great way to get zinc, which is a great nutrient if you want to have a healthy baby. So, you know, the I I wish that whole conversation around seed oils would get corrected but

Dr Ron Ehrlich (24:07)

Donna, you’ll be very pleased to hear that we did a a programme on that very topic to say, you know, all seed oils are not created equally. And we’ll have links to that that in our in our notes. But yes, it’s an interesting point to make that you know categorizing all seed oils as bad is is easy, rolls off the tongue well, but what we’re talking about is highly processed seed oils, and there are other alternatives there, ’cause

Omega six and omega three, both important oils. I think we get far too much of processed omega six oils and not enough omega three, that’s true, but but ⁓ it’s not quite as simple as that we’ve done Exactly

Donna Gates (24:51)

Yeah. So that’s one of the things you want to do is when you’re changing your di ch changing your diet is the first step. If you want to be one of those fortunate parents that doesn’t have that really does have a beautiful child that’s super smart, healthy, you know, that which is what every parent wants really, there’s a way to do it. And so again, like I said, I have this pre preconception checklist on the website, but I also have something right here to remind me. So nutrition is the most important thing.

And let’s see. So off the top, you wanna just never eat any more processed foods. And you do want to eat a lot of vegetables, for example, they’re really great for the gut microbiome. And you also I I mean, I could this is what I could talk for a long time about is fermented vegetables.

They’re the more I study health, the more I study the gut and the microbiome and everything, it always comes back to how the vegetables are just amazing for what they do. And they they really have to be in our diet. And so if a woman wants to get pregnant, even a man, because the sperm, you know, the sperm can be dysbiotic also. And if it is dysbiotic, there’s a good chance that the woman’s woman’s vaginal microbiome won’t even accept that sperm. So that could be definitely a reason why we have such an infertility problem today, is dads are drinking alcohol, maybe smoking whatever, eating really bad food, especially the men.

I mean, women seem to be more conscientious about that, but men are sometimes terrible haters when they’re young. So anyway, so I think that, you know, diet’s the first most important step and I would

Dr Ron Ehrlich (26:35)

And Donna Donna, you you’ve mentioned there and I want to I think it does bear repeating, and that is that vegetables, yes, but fermented vegetables, particularly cultured vegetables. What are some I mean, sauerkraut’s an example of that, kimchi, things like that. Is that what we are talking about?

Donna Gates (26:53)

Well, so so years ago, you know, when I wrote the book, I had a whole chapter on these you know, I explained to how the we had this world in our gut and then how it gets there and then how to keep it there as we go through life so we can be healthy. So I had a whole chapter on fermented vegetables with r recipes on how to make them. But the the thing is is that sauerkraut is usually thought of to be just cabbage. And kimchi is very, very spicy. You have to really like spicy foods.

Which of course the Koreans do, but you can take other vegetables and shred up, pack in a jar. I like to put in a brine. And another thing I discovered is that a lot of people are histamine intolerant. And so right now there’s a big conversation going around about how you know, don’t eat fermented vegetables, anything fermented. But what I found is that I didn’t have that problem. I mean, when I had so what came out of my two years in bed and everything was I took a test and learned that I had Lyme disease.

So then I had to start getting over that. So I’ve been slowly recovering from that and working on it. But the thing is is that, you know, I had histamine intolerance. So I really got to experience what that felt like. And then well, when I f started eating my own fermented vegetables because I’m just so used to them and the meal is so f it’s like to me, the meal’s not complete without the nice freshness of these v fermented vegetables.

And I make great, you know, really good tasting ones. Like a real popular recipe that I make is just cabbage, carrots, garlic and ginger. That’s a really good one to that I when I wanna introduce people to them and I want to like Everybody likes those. They always have a sweetness to them. But I so I was missing that and I thought, Well, I’m not supposed to eat if I’m gonna be itching. So anyway I decided to eat and I didn’t have any reaction.

And then I realize that that’s because the way I make this I make our own cultured vegetables and the way I make them is I ⁓ I’m I shred up the vegetables and pack them in a jar. But before I put them in the jar, I create a brine. A brine is like just a liquid. In my brine I put about four cut up apples because I want to sweeten it. Because what I’m gonna do with that brine is I’m really feeding the bacteria and they like that little bit of sweetness.

And so and I also put our minerals. We have ancient earth minerals that they also love. And so I’ll put some of those in there, the liquids liquid minerals. And then the other thing I do that no I don’t think people think to do is I we saw a starter, a vegetable c starter, which is lactobacillus plantarum, which is the between plonterum and bifidus, those are the two most important bacteria they’re gonna have. The lactobacillus family and the bifidus family are the two most important.

Which means that other strains of bacteria are are important too, but those are s have special functions that we have to have in our gut. The bifidus bacteria is the first bacteria that inoculates a baby’s gut when we’re born. But anyway, back to making the vegetables. So I I take the brine, put in the apples and the minerals and some salt, and then I put in our starter. And the starter’s the lactobacillus.

And I just put in one package and stir all that brine into the veggies and pack them in a jar and let them sit for a week. Well, I decided to have, you know, see what that did a couple years back. And I sent some jars of fermented vegetables with the starter. And some jars of fermented vegetables without using a starter, sent them up to c University of Nebraska, actually did her lab. And in a couple of weeks they came back and told me the difference and it was just I couldn’t believe it.

I could not believe that they would multiply such an incredibly large numbers in the ones that have the starter. But see, Lactopacillus is one of those keystone bacteria that that the b the it it’s a sort of a like a general in an army. People all the other bacteria pay attention to it and follow it. And so, you know, it th it just grew out this un wish I could remember the exact I was shocked anyway. So that was it for me. I decided I’m just gonna always add the starter and so I think

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:15)

Starter and the Donna the starter contains the bifidus and the back.

Donna Gates (31:19)

No, no, that that starter is just Lactobacillus plantarum. So plantarum is naturally present on plants. Lactobacillus plantarum. But it’s a it is a special bacteria and it is lactobacillus you’ll find in reproduction, like in the the woman’s vagina, in the microbiome of a woman that’s healthy, there’s a huge amount of lactopacillus.

And it’s the it has special qualities. Like one of the qualities that it has is it degrades histamine. So then I realized, no wonder I’m not having a reaction because I’ve got so much lycopacillus in my cultured vegetables that I make at home that they degrade any histamine that I am eating. So anyway, that thank God for that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:08)

Donna, that that recipe, which I love and I’m madly trying to write it all down, but that will be on your website, bodyecology.com, I’m guessing. Because you’re doing a fermented vegetable mix of cabbage, carrot, garlic, and ginger. That’s all in the one fermented group, but you’re using a brine which contains apples and minerals. Do you then strain the apple and start?

Donna Gates (32:18)

Definitely. yeah, for sure. Well no when you blend with

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:38)

In the apples and minerals and you put it all in together.

Donna Gates (32:41)

Yeah, and it’s in a blender. So you turn the blender on and it just whips up into like a juice. And I just poured all that in. But so you reminded me of something else, Ron. when people have a yeast infection, and many, many millions and millions of people do, and unfortunately lots of women come to a pregnancy with an infection, like a yeast infection or other infections too.

You won wanna definitely get rid of those. But during the pregnancy, the Hormones like estrogen and go up so much during their pregnancy that the the yeast will come back. And so you really have to stay off of sugar. You want a low carb, very healthy diet with a lot of vegetables. I guess could get more into diet, but see what I was gonna say. yeah. So so the thing about people that have had have yeast infections in their body, they yeast make oxolates in our body.

And so mint years ago and I was working with groups of kids that had autism. One of the things so we had a we had a email group that the moms constantly wrote in. So it was a great way to learn a lot about the kids. And it was called Bedrock, Body Ecology Diet Recovering Our Kids and and you have it over there in Australia.

But one of the things that was interesting that moms some moms would report on is that their kids get like funny red ears or they had other symptoms that weren’t kind of unexplainable. And then digging deeper into it, the it began to people trying to Susan Owen, she figured out it was oxolates. And then she really dug into what are oxolates. And it was in the autism community that the that oxolates first got kind of known about.

So those kids, every single one of the those kids that have autism have a yeast infection. Just like everybody that has cancer has a yeast infection. And then they open them up and autopsy them, they see, you know, this white sheet of fungus in the body. So, but the thing is my point I’m trying to make is that oxalids are in food also. And so if you’re eating foods which are very popular now, like nuts and seeds, for example.

People eat all the time. They don’t soak or anything, they just eat And then they, they’re they’re very high in lysine, so they’re gonna bring I mean arginine, so they’re gonna bring out herbes infections. But also they’re super high in oxalates. So you just have too many oxalates in your body today, and between the ones you’re making endogenously from the yeast and then the ones that are eating, a a low oxalant diet is really a better diet.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:26)

Now now Donna, you’ll also be very pleased to know that we’ve done a program with a very good friend of yours, Maria Hunt, who has body ecology in Australia about oxalates. And of course that is one of the challenges. You mentioned them being present in nuts, and I know personally from my knowledge, having met you twenty five or more twenty or twenty-five years ago,

that soaking of nuts and then dry roasting them reduces that and the phytates and because you mention a lot of people do mention vegetables as the bedrock of of a diet, but vegetables also carry their own challenges, don’t they? Phytates, oxalates, salicylates, lectins, you know. Vegetables are not without their challenges as well. What do you say to that?

Donna Gates (36:17)

Well, I say that’s why people, you know, do well so well in the carnivore diet, ’cause they’re not getting any of those plant toxins and so they feel do feel better. And you know, it’s not a bad idea to experiment with that diet, see if you do feel. Sometimes people only do it for several months, but they could get a benefit from it. So I I totally understand where that’s coming from. But so the thing is I I think ultimately it all these sensitivities that we have to food is that the gut’s messed up.

And so ultimately having a really healthy gut microbiome from the beginning of life, treasuring it, don’t take antibiotics if you can possibly, you know, do but if you you know, here’s another interesting thing about lactopsolus plantarum. If you do have to take an antibiotic, eat the co fermented vegetables because plantarum isn’t bothered by almost any of the other antibiotics out there. So it’s not destroyed. You won’t get that overgrowth of yeast in your gut. And they’re like I said, they’re kind of like leaders and the other ones come back faster with Pantarum present too. So but I

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:26)

It’s interesting, Donna, you mentioned yeast because boy, how many people would have some form of yeast infection given A their use of an the y the common use of antibiotics and B the food pyramid putting carbs at the foundation which loves yeasts love carbs, particularly those that are not prepared properly. So we have a lot of yeast problems whether people know it or not.

Donna Gates (37:55)

And we do from the beginning of life. Like people when if your baby’s born with cradle cap, that’s a yeast infection. And a lot of women when I tell them that say, my gosh, I had no idea but their baby was born is common to do to have a cradle cap. And then another thing is d much of the causes of diaper rash and then as kids get a little bit older, like eczema, when there so many children by the age of two have eczema, that’s all yeast. In an adult dandruff is but but that

that means I mean, that can be helped if a mother takes biotin during the pregnancy, that’d be vitamin biotin. that’s actually ultimately why, that’s happening. You know, they the biotin is not necessary. So,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:39)

Now Donna, you you mentioned I know you’re kind of making a very strong case, that nature has great potential, nature vaccinates a child before it’s born, I think you’ve said. And and I think you’ve gone some way to explaining that. you know, how how how can parents well prepare for that ⁓ with this this whole you were talking about nutrition as being the first thing and and you know, with fermented foods and

Donna Gates (39:11)

Well I think that if they really want to get their you know, be ready to conceive a child, they want to detoxify, they want f it’s maybe the first easiest thing to do is change your diet. And then do cha lifestyle changes, like really prioritize sleep. Even though you’re starting to watch something on TV and and that it comes to an end and you’ve just gotta see what happens on the next episode. Next thing you know, another couple of hours have gone by and you think, Darn, I I’m not gonna get more than five hours of sleep, you can’t do that.

So it means breaking habits, sac making sacrifices, but it’s so important. Sleep is so important. I would say looking back over the struggle I’ve had for the last couple of years with these infections and especially once I I took the test and found out to my shock that I had Lyme disease. Really the thing and and being a long hauler and having that nervous system issue, the th thing that helped most of all was rest, being still and sleeping.

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Donna Gates (41:19)

I’m sure I wouldn’t be well if I hadn’t really prioritized sleep. So I wish people would it’s just not it’s hard to do ’cause it’s not in our culture to to go to bed early. I mean, we all know we should, but nobody they don’t really ’cause they think of let me just do a few more things here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:34)

Well, Donna, my I’m c I’m almost certain that no one who is a regular listener to my podcast would dare do something like that. You know, they will have heard this message many times. Listen, the topic of vaccines is an interesting one too, and it’s clearly evolving. And given recent C D C statements and report what what does the report say and what’s driving the trend, the change that’s going on in the States?

Donna Gates (42:00)

Well, I think that the artisan community, the mothers, for many years well, twenty years is since I’ve been involved, they knew their children were damaged by vaccines. They will tell me I I so many of I always interview them and want to know their blood type, what’s your son’s son’s blood type and all these other questions. And most of them are blood type A, by the way. So, you know, and and I’d ask about vaccines and and except for two or three people.

Everybody told me I have videos of him running around. He was so normal. He was talking and then he was vaccinated. And then all he’ll do now is go back in the bedroom and watch videos games all day long. And isn’t social anymore. So so Bobby Kennedy has been involved with that community for a long time. And he knows that vaccines but he has to walk, you know, it’s like walking on eggshells. He’s gotta walk carefully.

So here’s what I wanted to say. When I wish all parents were told this because somehow or other, back with like 17, 1726 or something, Jenner Vox vaccinated the first little boy. I think it was eight or nine years old. But he grew up in a farm. He had a super healthy immune system and microbiome, you know, he wouldn’t have had prost foods and everything. And so he got a little bit of cowpox put into him. He had a little fever, small mild fever, and he felt kind of off. But the next day he was fine. So that was the beginning of vaccinations. And somehow we’ve totally lost our way.

And I’m I’m kind of ashamed of our scientists because one of the things I’ve said for years and years, decades actually, is that major nature vaccinates us. Nature knows, you know, watch nature. Let’s copy nature. Let’s do what nature does. Like that’s how I figured out all about the microbiome and and how it got started and everything. I just started finding out how nature does things. So here’s the thing about vaccinations. Nature does vaccinate us.

And because that’s because nature cares more than anything in the world that that the next generation is healthy. Like it’s a powerful force, the most powerful force in nature is to bring out the next generation. So in the sperm and in the egg, there before they’ve even come together and a new person is starting to be formed, they they already have things like the the egg has mitochondria in it. That’s in a critical part of an immune system is the mitochondria. It gives energy that’s one thing everybody knows that. But what a lot of people don’t know it’s a sensor of danger.

So if a if s we or baby or anything is exposed to a bacteria or a virus, then the immune system, the mitochondria actually immediately detect that bacteria and they shut down the body. So all of a sudden people are very tired. my gosh, you know, I don’t know what happened to me. I was fine this morning, I’m so exhausted. That’s because the mitochondria are detected something in your a virus or something. And so it’s shut down so that the virus can’t have a lot of energy to take over.

Now that’s important, and that’s in the egg. And the mother passes her mitochondria on to her each generation. That’s how they originally can found mitochondrial eve, because they found one or a group of women, I guess, that had the this mitochondria, and so they know it’s only from with the woman. But over on the man’s side, there are something called microRNAs, and they’re signalers.

So they and they they have a real important and they signal the brain. They don’t make the brain, but they send signals to the brain to for the micro microglia in the brain, which is the immune cell of the brain. So the sperm is doing that. It’s very involved in the immune system and the immune system in the brain. So already from the very beginning, nature’s doing something.

So let’s say you’re a really smart young scientist and you want to think you you think, well that is s interesting. I’m gonna figure out, I’m gonna look at these two aspects. What’s in the egg, immune system, you know, what is in the sperm, so on. And let’s start seeing how that works and even to like enhance it, magnify it, and do it even better. But we’re copying nature, which is okay to copy it. But so we don’t we’re we’re not thinking that way. And and and parents unfortunately are so scared today.

They they read one thing and now they think, I’ve got to vaccinate, and then they read another thing and no, I’m not gonna vaccinate. It’s really a difficult time. But if if we had more confidence in nature, because nature’s working very hard to protect us. So the next thing is is once the little egg and sperm are together and starting to form a little baby, you’ve got this microbiome from the mother beginning to the b this baby is going inside the inside the womb.

The baby is getting exposed to bacteria, but it’s not worried about being killed by a bacteria or something, because there’s a wonderful organ called the placenta that’s already formed, formed by the genes of the mom and the dad. And that placenta is nourishing the baby, giving the nutrients to the baby so it will grow, but also the placenta is feeding oxygen to the baby.

And it’s protecting the baby from bugs, b bacteria and you know, viruses, for example. So, so that’s an immune system right there. The placenta is behaving in a way to protect the baby and let’s see what else and the mother’s got her her microbiome f you know, constantly teaching the baby’s immune system. But in that very, very first beginning when the conception occurs, there’s actually a microbiome in the baby. And it’s a it’s a microbiome that’s quiet and still. It’s not learning to kill. It’s not a warrior’s microbiome.

It’s a it’s a learning microbiome. It’s learning how to w be calm. Because, you know, a healthy immune system is calm when it’s supposed to be most of the time. And then only flare up and fight if it does have a but s but in this case the placenta in the mother’s

The mother’s immune system is teaching. The placenta is protecting. And so the baby is starting to have his first immune system in the very beginning. And it’s a calm one, not a w not a warrior’s immune system.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:58)

One thing I think is worth reminding our listener, because you’ve mentioned autism and you’ve mentioned vaccinations, and I think it’s sobering to learn the trends that have occurred over the last twenty or thirty years and the number, which is quite staggering. I mean, I know when my daughters, who are now in their late thirties, were were born, I think there were eleven vaccinations here in Australia.

Now there are twenty seven but in America it’s a whole it’s an even more than that. Tell us about the the trend of autism from twenty or thirty years ago to today in America and tell us the number of vaccinations that a child up until this latest C D C report was exposed to.

Donna Gates (49:46)

I’m not sure because it sort of changes what I think was up to fifty two, wasn’t it?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:51)

I think it was. I think it was fifty or sixty. In the first eighteen years of life it would be something

Donna Gates (49:57)

Sooner than that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:59)

Mm maybe in the first ten or twelve years of life.

Donna Gates (50:02)

What they started doing was they started dumping putting a bunch in together, which is crazy. I mean so another question nobody’s asking is are our children vaccinatable? See, getting back to gender, the whole concept, the reason that worked was you had this healthy little eight or nine year old boy who grew up in a farm, had a great immune system, and you get a little bit of a pathogen in him and he feels kind of lousy and then he gets a Sorry, well done. That’s okay.

See, I would already start that again. So so going back to Jenner, he vaccinated a little boy who was eight or nine years, ten years old, maybe. He grew up on a farm, had a strong immune system, and Jenner put a little bit of a cowpax virus in him. And he got a little bit sick and he got over it the next day. So he was vaccinatable, I would say. But I I know from talking to my mom for years that a lot of times the child isn’t vaccinatable, but they had an appointment to go in on Tuesday.

But over the weekend, you know, my son was sick, had a little flu, we don’t know what’s wrong with him, he had runny nose and everything. But we have this appointment on Tuesday. So you take him in anyway. And that is another big mistake that we’re n making is we’re not asking that question, is my child vaccinatable?

And then of course what I want people to do is to start thinking differently so that from the beginning of life from can you know, just know that there’s already forces at play vaccinating your child. Nature wants that too. Nature knows very well that the baby’s gonna live in a world with potential pathogens, you know, bacteria and viruses for example. but it is that’s why nature does that, why it’s all set up for that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (51:58)

I mean, Donna, you know, sorry, that statistic let me just share because we did do a programme with Liz Mumper, who I’m sure you know. I know this. And Liz is really one of America’s top pediatricians, and she shared with me a rather staggering statistic that and she did research on this, ⁓ where I think twenty or thirty years ago the incidence was one in ten thousand or one in five thousand children who have autism. And now in parts of America that number is one in thirty or forty.

Donna Gates (52:34)

In California they say one in thirty nine, yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:36)

One in thirty nine. So that is quite a statistical shocking stat statistic and it’s not described by any genetic thing or over diagnosis. It is just a reality and and we have to ask ourselves why is it so? and science is not a religion. Science is about challenging sci you know, facts and exploring them and and and making them but but you know, that that is I’m just really interested to know what gives you the most hope moving forward?

I mean you’ve given us hope by telling us what’s possible, but what gives you the most hope about the future generation, given you’d have to say our health is not great. I mean, with knowledge comes power and that’s what this podcast is about. Tell us what gives you hope.

Donna Gates (53:31)

Well, my sister sent me an email last night and she said, Look at this issue of Wired magazine. So I don’t, you know, read that magazine, but I decided to look it up online and there was an amazing story about what’s called I forget the title of the the article, but it’s clear when you go go to their website and type in wired and look at their latest issue.

There there’s a new thing forming all over the internet, young influencers that want to, you know, they’re they’re very concerned about how they look and how they dress and doing everything perfectly, but they want to have healthy children. So there’s a new concept. There, there’s a lot of them talking about preconception. I like to say mindful preconception because you want to be mindful about what you’re doing. But there’s a new term that pee somebody’s come up with called zero trimester.

So not the first trimester or the second one, but the third trimester is of course when the baby’s gonna come, but the zero trimester is before you even have your first trimester. So this new it’s in other words, evidently a sort of taking off on the internet for women to start taking better care of themselves and get ready for the conception.

So women are doing everything. They’re they’re listening to different podcasts and they’re doing fitness and detoxing and eating and you know, ev trying everything and and that’s a great thing. And that’s really who I want to reach. If we could just create a movement by educating them, that and and they don’t the the people that are on the internet, these influencers, they don’t know what I just shared at the beginning. That we come the genes come with tags.

No one knows that. They just think, I’m passing my genes on to my baby. But the genes come with tags and the tags are going to be erase over the first five days and then six and seven, the baby implants and starts adding new tags. So so do the pre mindful preconception and get when those when it’s time for the new tags to be added on, you know, just there aren’t any bad tags to add, you know, you’re not washing your clothes in horrible dish terrible detergent and wearing chemical clothes and all that stuff.

You know, you don’t you don’t gonna put that on your baby. So, you know, we we wanna just be mindful in in conceiving a child. It’s not, you know, if somebody gets raped there’s no mindfulness there, but a whole lot of people, you know, they they aren’t getting pregnant today. And so they’re starting to, you know, kind of talk it over like what if we can’t get pregnant or we’ve tried her three or four times and it still hasn’t happened.

You know, there’s a lot more conscious, aware people that are concerned. And then if they realize this there’s literally gift from nature to get rid of the tags that you inherited from your mom and dad and everything and yourself, it that it’s it’s an extraordinary finding, I think, and a a it should inspire everybody to get ready for the conception.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (56:45)

We’ve covered so many topics in this discussion, Donna. I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into one question, and that was can you explain why bifidous bacteria are the first to colonize the newborn gut?

Donna Gates (57:01)

You know, that’s something I’ve wondered for thirty years. And a a long time ago nobody knew very much about the bifidus bacteria, but now it’s a very you know, it’s one of those bacteria that a lot of researchers are on top of. And one of the things we know that it does is it calms inflammation. And babies, believe it or not, are born with an inflamed gut. And I was wondering why. But I think it’s ’cause the whole process of, you know

We think of the mother but we don’t think that the baby is under stress. Stress will cause the gut to be inflamed. So the baby could you mu the mom could be in labor for hours, you know, the half a day or longer. And that’s a very stressful thing for the little baby. But anyway, they are born with an inflamed gut, and bifidus helps calm that inflammation down. It amazes me how nature

just understands the whole process so well and has so much support for us. But anyway, the other special thing that bifidus does is it helps seal the gut lining. Now babies are born with a an open gut lining, but just this is important because there’s colostrum first when the baby’s born for the first couple of days, colostrum is produced and that’s a really, really important substance.

It’s hugely important for the baby’s immune system it’s got these immunoglobulins and th things from the mother, you know, that are being passed to the baby. And it’s also feeding the bacteria, the bifidus bacteria, and helping them grow. But the gut’s open and permeable, that’s good because you want that colostrum to get in. And something I learned from vets is that all animals are born with a open permeable gut because they have to get colostrum too.

If they don’t get colostrum within the first week, these baby animals will die. So the farmers make sure their goats or whatever cows whatever get that clostrum. If not from the mom, from another cow or goat. But anyway, so first is clostrum and then the breast milk comes in. And the bifidus is very, very the the breast milk feeds that bifidus and helps it grow. But the other thing about about the the bifidus is it educates the immune system because we don’t have an immune system yet.

It’s just I mean, we have one. It’s quiet. I would do wanna mention that. I want to talk about how the immune system develops because it will surprise people. Most people think that when the baby’s born, that’s the beginning of their immune system. They get the bacteria the in their gut, the bacteria start to grow and that’s their immune system.

But actually that’s not true. But still, the bifidous bacteria is gonna once the those bacteria get into the gut, Bifid is gonna start educating that those microbes. They have to be taught and trained. They’re they they’re kind of like babies and infants and they need to be taught, you know, this is a dangerous microbe. So if you see that, you’re gonna try to kill it. This one is harmful and beneficial.

And so you wanna don’t don’t attack that one. So really, really important. Now in breast milk there are human milk sugars that are gonna feed the bifidus and make it grow. The neat thing about these human milk sugars is they don’t feed pathogens. So that’s another thing going on in the baby’s gut. Keeping protecting the baby, you know, so those path pathogens can’t get in his body.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:40)

It’s interesting, Donna, you mention that there’s stress response ’cause I’m it’s something we don’t often think about. The baby, from conception, right through those first four well, let’s say forty weeks or thirty nine and a half weeks, and then there start to be contractions. And this would be the first, hopefully, the first really stressful situation a human faces, you know, this warm, comfortable environment inside the mother. And suddenly stuff’s going on and things are changing really quickly. And what the hell is going on here? Exactly. and this Yeah, it’s gotta be

Donna Gates (1:01:19)

That’s interesting.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:25)

Yeah, that’s kind of been distressed. Sorry, the I’m just wanna say this is

Donna Gates (1:01:28)

For me, that’s the only thing I can find figure out. Why would a baby be born with an inflamed gut? Well, stress will inflame the gut for all of us. But what I was just thinking about when you mentioned that is that the microbiome of the mother changes throughout the pregnancy. And in the very beginning, the first trimester, that microbiome, the the microbes stay the same. They just get assigned different duties. Now they’re gonna start that process of making a baby.

But in the second trimester, the baby’s gonna grow a whole lot. So the microbes that come aboard, they are they’re gonna be really, really good at extracting nutrients from the mother’s gut. You know, she’s eating those they they will extract a lot of nutrients and help that baby grow bigger. And then that last trust trimester actually is preparing for that big moment when the baby’s born.

And so those the for one thing that happens, the their bifidus is of course there, that’s very important. But so more lactobacillus increase in the last trimester and especially in the vagina, because as the baby passes through that birth canal, that lactobacillus is really critical for making the vag birth canal vagina birth canal more acidic so pathogens can’t grow. ‘Cause

you know, the whole process is just get the baby into the world, give him a chance to get a really healthy microbiome with good bacteria, bifidus and lectobacillus, and not you know, not the bad ones.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:03:08)

How does because cesarean births are a lot more common as as in our in our modern world and with older mothers, you know, cesarean births a lot more common and and yet this passage through the birth canal is clearly very important. How can women who have had a cesarean compensate for that?

Donna Gates (1:03:31)

You know, a lot of people are recommending to take like a gauze or something from them and take the bacteria out of the mother’s breath canal and actually put it all over the baby in his mouth, in his nose. So he’s breathing that just all over him. And then but to just remind me of something else about that’s right. It’ll come back to me in a minute, but there’s I know No,

I was gonna say that a lot of reason that those women, you know, have C-sections is because the doctor w doesn’t it’s more convenient. It’s hard to be a OBGYN and get up in the middle of the night and deliver babies and wait around for hours. So a lot of them, you know, really prefer a scheduled delivery time and they’ll say, let’s set you up for two o’clock.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:03:59)

Yeah, go on.

Donna Gates (1:04:23)

Tuesday and come on in and we’ll get the baby out. And a lot of mothers think, well, that sounds good because, you know, they just cut it out and pull the baby out and and we’re good to go. But that’s a huge mistake. If you don’t have to have one, don’t have one because the whole beginning of life is is completely different. And what happens in the very beginning literally sets the baby up for their entire life

Their immune system, their brain development, everything is going to be different if they don’t follow nature’s way. And I’m a huge believer, as I said before, in following nature. What does nature do? Well, what nature does is it puts bifidus in in the beginning. There are lactobacillus there. Those two make oxytocin, by the way. And right now there’s a big thing all over. A lot of people are doing it. Dr. William Davis, he’s promoting this la what’s it’s called?

Lactobacillus routeri bacteria and and he says, you know, that lactobacillus routeri, it makes ⁓ oxytocin. Well a whole bunch of them have both bifidus and lactobacillus, many of them have the genes to make oxytocin, but that’s important because, you know, first of all, one of the things it does is it helps calm down the mother and she’s not you know, she’s not maybe in pain as much, more endorphins and everything.

Make like within a day or so she’s completely forgotten about the whole process of the delivery if it was complicated or painful because of those endorphins and because of the oxytocin. And most of all, they’re bonding with each other. The oxytocin that in the baby’s body, the oxytocin in the mother, make them love and bond with each other. So another beautiful arrangement.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:06:15)

Donna but Donna, yeah, I accept that the nature’s way is the best way. That’s you know, that’s understandable. But the reality is that probably half I don’t even know what the statistics are, but it’s a significant number. A third. About a third. Significant number. So for those third, I mean surely life isn’t you know, I mean we’ve got to be able to compensate in some way. What would you say to those mothers? Use you mentioned the swab from the vagina to around the face and to inhale, but beyond that there must be more that one can do.

Donna Gates (1:06:28)

It’s supposed to be about a third. Well well one thing that’s important to do that I guide my mothers to do is to take bifidus throughout the entire pregnancy. So she’s gonna pass that on in her colostum in her milk. And and then and that’s really important because that that’s something that may not get established well in the if the baby’s born by a C section. So you’ve got to get that bifidus in there. It’s again nature’s way. There’s a whole a bunch of important you know, you don’t want it it seals the gut.

And it gets rid of the inflammation and it’s off to a really great start. I made a bunch of notes about bifidus. So it’s also calming, by the way. It it produces GABA. A lot of lactobacillus produce GABA as well, so it’s calming. The GABA’s the neurotransmitter that’s calming.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:37)

That’s the G A B A GABA or GABA. GABA GABA GABA. Tomatoes, tomatoes. But anyway, GABA. Yep.

Donna Gates (1:07:45)

Listen to you in Australia, I’m in America.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:49)

One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, ’cause the woman she transfers mitochondria to the fetus and and there’s certain things you mentioned take bifidus through the pregnancy that needs to do certain things to strengthen those mitochondria even before the baby’s born. I’m really intrigued by that. I mean, we’ve covered a bit of that in that part of our discussion, but let’s flesh that out a bit more.

Donna Gates (1:08:16)

Yeah. Okay, so the egg and the sperm, both of them have mitochondria. Those little energy factories. For the sperm it’s important ’cause the energy you want the sperm to have a lot of mitochondria ’cause it will help them swim up and find an egg. And ⁓ so that’s important. But in the mother, actually when his sperm penetrates the egg and conception occurs, his mitochondria is kind of washed away.

He he doesn’t the egg doesn’t get his mitochondria, but it does but then the egg, the mitochondria at conception is from the mother and that’s critical. So the whole process process of living really and having enough energy and then even birthing, it’s all driven by mitochondria. So energy, mitochondria are energy, and the mother’s the one who gives the baby the mitochondria.

So I assume I know I sound like a broken record all the time, but you how you eat builds strong mitochondria. So certain things, certain foods they found that are very good for the mitochondria are blueberries, pomegranate, and juice from those. But fatty fish like salmon, which I usually have a couple of times a week, and then sardines. Sardines are excellent.

If you don’t want to take fish all cabinets, just open a can or two of sardines a couple times a week and get fantastic fat fatty acid. That’s really, really good. Those kind of fats are real good for the mitochondria. They they they are really pumped up by dark chocolate. So you can make a salad actually with put in some walnuts. Walnuts are good too. Put in some arugla or and then during the nighttime eat some dark green leafy vegetables.

Have some salmon, have a salmon in your salad even. Open up some some s once a day. I do this a lot. I’ll open up a can of sardines because I’m really busy during the day and I’ll just get hungry and I’ll just go get a can of sardines and olive oil and eat that. It’s very nourishing, but you know, it’s nourishing my mitochondria. They need magnesium, they need carnitine, they need vitamin C, ALA, cocu chin. If you want to take supplements.

Definitely they need B vitamins. So you can take those as supplements and that’ll feed your mitochondria. But you know, you have to strengthen the gut microbione if you’re gonna have strong mitochondria. And where I sound like a broken record is I always come back to the fact is you need bifidus, you need lactobacillus, and a fantastic way to get lactobacillus, particularly plantarum, which is a superstar, is actually by eating fermented foods.

So if your life is busy and you find yourself pregnant and you wanna, you know, simp you know, have a healthy pregnancy, have a healthy baby, if you just I think take bifidus and eat fermented vegetables, you’re gonna satisfy so many things that the body needs by doing those two simple things. And and I’d say take those supplements like B vitamins are especially important.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:11:30)

Yeah. Now another thing that we touched on, we may have mentioned just briefly, but I’d love to flesh this out because because methylation is a word that we hear sometimes about, we don’t, but it’s actually a really important process that goes on in the body. And I wondered if we might just flesh out, give us kind of a methylation one one so people are at least at least familiar with that term and how important it is.

Donna Gates (1:11:57)

It’s extremely important. If you wanna get pregnant, you gotta have this gene working. It is it’s a s pr cycle in the body that goes around billions of times in a second. And what it’s doing is it’s turning genes off and on. That’s critical, especially in the beginning. And it is making neurotransmitters, it’s detoxifying.

All the things it does are absolutely essential to a healthy baby. And usually you can get your genes tested. As a matter of fact, I think if you go to an OBGYN or just do it on your own, you wanna check the MTHFR and all the other genes, the V twelve genes, T R, T R, they’re also in that cycle and they produce methylcobolamine. So you wanna see if those genes are working and even if you know, they’re not so great, or even if they look like they’re great, you can take B vitamins with methylfolate, methyl B twelve, and you can support that cycle. So it goes around and detox detoxifies.

It and and about maybe some populations, more than half of the people, have SNPs or variations in this b gene. People from Italy, about eighty percent my father was from Italy, so I thought that was interesting. I definitely have two copies of that, two SNPs in the MGHFR gene. And that didn’t surprise me since I had the Italian genes, but also the the Hispanic, you know, South all of South America, eighty-five percent of them. But it was interesting because we’re working with autistic children, about eighty eighty-five percent of them have a problem with methylation. They they have a problem with those genes.

So they don’t detoxify, you know, for example. They don’t produce the neurotram transmitters. And it’s such a simple thing. And then, you know, like I don’t know the new term today, but when you have that split lip and your gun what is that called today? Clefella, yeah. I know they used to call it something else, but anyway, it’s that not having enough of methylfolate will cause that. Smina bifida.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:14:03)

Cliff Cliff Pellet.

Donna Gates (1:14:16)

So you wanna check your food and you wanna check your supplements and make sure they don’t say folic acid, especially those prenatal vitamins. You need to have methylfolate and methyl B twelve to get this support this cycle. Now, another thing that’s kind of popular right now is people are taking creatine or they’re putting it in something hot like coffee. That’s a really good thing to do because one of the genes in that cycle produces most of the creatine in your body. And so you’re supporting that by taking creatine in your coffee or whatever. So I like to that

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:14:53)

Yeah. So that gene that you mentioned, T H F R and I I I do know what it stands for, but I can’t remember. But but I know I know I have I know I have that s that gene in that I have trouble methylating. And interestingly, although I’m not a big drinker of alcohol, I’m I’m what I describe as a social drinker and at times in my life I’ve been too social.

But I realized that methylate I I really cannot methylate alcohol and it’s really not good for me. Interestingly, just recently stopped drinking alcohol and the chronic cough that I’d had for forty years that had been thought to be asthma; I’d been on all these different other things, or it had been reflux, been on all these other things. You know, none of that worked. Getting off alcohol.

Because I couldn’t methylate alcohol, because I have the MTHFR, you know, has made a huge difference to my health. And that’s just one example.

Donna Gates (1:15:55)

Interesting. Well you might check another gene, A L D H. That also tells you how you handle alcohol. Actually, I think getting your g when you’re before you get pregnant, the mother and the father, it’s a really good idea and it’s really easy to do today. Get your genes, test your genes, see which one you’re like, is the methylation genes, are they going to be an issue? Because it’s so easy to fix. But other genes,

Like a lot of people, most all the kids with the vi autism have what’s called the vitamin D receptor gene. I have that gene. It’s real common. And what and then you go get tested for vitamin D and they’ll say, your vitamin D is really high. You shouldn’t take any more. It isn’t that. It’s that the receptor isn’t working effectively. And so the vitamin D is not getting in. So you actually have to take more of it. But anyway, it’s there’s so much that you can learn about what you best for you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:16:53)

Yeah. Look, I I know that we’re gonna we’re gonna obviously have the links in our show notes to your website and there’s some great great resources there as there have been for very long this is something that you’ve been working on for a very long time. Listen, one other one other one other person one other thing we mentioned, we touched on vaccines and you introduced me to this you you used the term vaccinatable. That that is the child actually vaccinatable? You know, I love I kinda like that.

But can you confirm for us, because I do think in America they have a hell of a lot more vaccines in the first two years of life than we do in Australia. I remember when my kids were born, and that’s over thirty years ago, they’re thirty-nine and thirty-six kids, they’re not kids. But they had about eleven vaccines in the first eighteen years of life or something like that. Now there’s something like twenty

Donna Gates (1:17:50)

It’s twenty five in the first eighteen months over here. It’s really criminal because it’s not necessary.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:17:57)

Hang on, Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, stop. Twenty do say that again. Twenty-five vaccinations.

Donna Gates (1:18:04)

18 months, there are 25 given to a baby. A lot of them, a lot of the vaccinations that are given, there’s three of them together. The really so all the years I worked with families, at one point I had a group called a Gene Group. And so we had over two thousand parents in that group and we got tons of feedback and I asked would ask questions all the time when I did consultations with our mothers, you know, I just would say, you know, tell me why you think your child is is autistic.

And they would tell me over and over again, he was fine until he got the MTHFR gene at 18 months. And so that was so commonplace. There’s even they even have videos showing how normal the child was until that vaccine. And then at that point they regressed. And, you know, they went back in the room and wouldn’t come out and weren’t weren’t social and didn’t make eye contact. And it was that was a gene. But but then they felt that there were other signs even earlier on too that were you know, like one mother, I remember her telling me that she just could she hated herself. There’s so much guilt in the moms, unfortunately.

They feel like they’re real responsible. It’s a hard thing to do with. But she felt terrible because her son over the weekend had some kind of you know, something was wrong with him, a stomach bug and a cold or something. But they had an appointment on Tuesday to get this vax vaccine. And of course she wasn’t gonna, you know, not go. So she took him in and then that he he got, you know, started regressing. So you want a healthy child, that’s the whole secret.

Back in like the late seventeen hundreds, I guess, when Jenner, who gets credit for the first vaccine, he vaccinated he by the way, that’s wrong. They were using vaccinations long, long, long hundreds of years before that. Mummies, I mean, back in Europe and all over, they were already vaccinating.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:20:13)

Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, you’re talking about Jenner who invented, developed the smallpox vaccine by getting cowpox and he did that in the seventeen hundreds. Go on, tell us the story about that incident again. I think you mentioned

Donna Gates (1:20:29)

Yeah, this is important because he he really didn’t invent it. It was he got the idea because people in Europe were doing it very successfully, even members of the royal family were having their kids vaccinated. They didn’t call it that then. But he changed the term to vaccination and he worked very hard to get the concept out into the world. And and and it did work. But you have to think about this.

The child that he immunized grew up in a farm. He was eight years old at the time. He would have already had a very strong immune system. So if you put a little virus into them, they’ve got an immune system that’s gonna fight it. And that’s exactly what happened. This little this James, his name was, he was sick for about a day and then he quickly rec you know, he didn’t feel good and little fever.

But the next day he was fine because he had an immune system. That’s the whole thing. The concept of vaccines is you put in something like one virus, say, you know, something very simple. And but in a body of someone of a child who’s got an immune system. And that’s what is really wrong. And I don’t understand why people don’t bring that up, but I want to explain this.

We our scientists, our thought leaders in the microbiome, there’s a million of them today, they think that the microbiome starts when we’re born, we get that bacteria in our gut, but actually our microbiome, our our immune system starts way before that. As soon as the egg and the sperm come together, there are signals in the egg and and in the sperm also.

That start the formation of the thymus gland, bone marrow, spleen, they’re all critical organs for immunity. They start developing immediately. And then ⁓ another thing that happens is the the as the pregnancy develops, all the things that are part of the immune system are there. The T cells and cytokines, everything is in that baby.

The only thing is the gut the body, the baby’s body is keeping it quiet because they don’t it would be a bad thing if the if the baby had an immune system that was inf causing inflammation, for example. And so it’s kept very quiet. It’s even sort of educated to be quiet and to learn what to react to and what not to react to, because if there was inflammation, it would d damage the baby during different developmental stages.

So that’s really important to know. It doesn’t we don’t come out of the womb without any immune system. We come out with an immune system. What our scientists need to do is study that and then real you know, and then build on that. Like what is nature already doing? And then we should help nature, you know, support nature and make it enhance what nature’s doing, I guess you could say. But we don’t we start off with an immune system.

Yeah, it’s just not developed. So when the baby’s born and the microbes start, you know but by the way, another part of what’s happening in them with the baby in the womb, the placenta is an extremely important organ that’s developed immediately. And the placenta, by the way, the you know, this is where you’re a specialist, the oral microbiome is very, very involved in forming the placenta. So if there’s infections in the mother’s mouth.

The placenta is supposed to protect the baby. Anyway, that’s the Ms. placenta’s job. It protects the baby through the whole entire time. So we don’t need to have a real active immune system in a baby’s body with the placenta there doing its job. And gosh, I have so much I could say about

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:24:36)

Well Donna Donna, we’ve covered so much territory here and and actually this idea that my God, twenty seven or twenty five vaccines in the first eighteen months of life and and you know, a child should be vaccinatable, being meaning a healthy child, feeling good with a healthy immune system. Now that’s a challenge given the health of the community in general.

You mentioned the oral microbiome and my god, we could well we have done a whole series, but oral diseases are the biggest by far health noncommunicable disease in in man, woman and child. It’s a big it’s a big issue. But listen, w we’re gonna have we’re gonna have links to your website and where there are some wonderful resources.

Donna Gates (1:25:26)

Well I would like to let people know that we have a couple of free, you know, handouts. One of them is, you know, what do you have to do to have a healthy microbiome when you’re pregnant? The whole thing really gets back to you just can’t have a baby. You have to prepare for it. And this is actually how we’re gonna reverse, like we talked about the Pottinger caps. Our kids are getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

It’s wouldn’t take long, a generation or certainly two, if all the women and men in the world who want to have a baby prepared for that baby. So we have a preconception checklist that people can download for free. And what do you have to do to get your body ready to conceive this child? So you get to take advantage of all the thing nature’s set up to do for us. It’s it’s extraordinary,

The whole process of having a baby is just beyond belief. And I think parents realize that when the baby comes out and they look at this child that they created by basically doing nothing except having making love or whatever. And it’s just an extraordinary process. But so many other things are happening before you have that baby in your arms. And now you want to, he’s out. You want to get that inner ecosystem that his immune system protecting him. Because what you do in the very, very beginning sets up his metabolic health.

In other words, will he have obesity? Will he be diabetes? Will he have heart disease later on? Later? And and what about brain development so and the immune system? That’s all set up in the very, very beginning. So give your child a chance, you know, a great chance, but more than that, it’s almost time, I mean it’s very much time for people to become conscious and have mindful preconception.

Get their body ready to conceive that child and turn around this illness that we’re seeing in our children. It’s very doable.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:27:22)

Donna, what a note to finish on, and of course we’re gonna have links in our show notes for that. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Donna Gates (1:27:29)

Thank you very much, Ron. I think it’s an important message to get out. I appreciate this. Thank you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:27:35)

Well, there’s a lot there, isn’t there? We all agree, I think every practitioner would agree that the gut microbiome, which incidentally includes the oral microbiome as part of the gut, the oral microbiome, the gut microbiome are critically important to whole body health, both physical and mental, and what a wonderful concept the epigenetic research reset is and what an interesting question about whether your child or a child is a vaccinatable or not.

Look, we’ll have links to Donna’s site, Body Ecology Diet and her site. There are so many wonderful resources on that, as there are on our Unstress Health platform, which I invite you to join. Until next time though, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized Wellnesshttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/737afb4d-8acc-464f-83a3-b45100d46fce/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:* Dr. Sam Shay Official Website (https://drsamshay.com) * FitGenes USA (https://fitgenesusa.com)

𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮:* Instagram – (https://www.instagram.com/drsamshay/) * YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@drsamshay * Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/drsamshay * LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsamshay

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Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized Wellness00:00 – Introduction to Functional Genetics & Personalized Health

01:40 – What Functional Genetics Actually Means

05:00 – The 7 Main Drivers of Disease Explained

09:30 – Why Vitamin D Receptors Matter

17:30 – Methylation & MTHFR Myths

24:00 – Exercise Genetics & Recovery

29:00 – Overtraining, Inflammation & Weight Gain

37:00 – Carb Tolerance & Personalized Nutrition

45:00 – Sugar Cravings, Satiety & Eating Behaviors

50:00 – Genetics vs Epigenetics

53:00 – Histamine, Caffeine & Alcohol Sensitivities

1:00:00 – The Neuro-Harmony Health Model

1:05:00 – Why Personalized Health Needs a Blueprint

1:07:00 – Final Thoughts & Closing Remarks

Decode Your DNA for Better Health | Dr. Sam Shay on Functional Genetics & Personalized WellnessDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, personalized medicine is definitely the way of the future. And with all the technology that is becoming available to us, it’s an exciting prospect to think that so much of our health journey through life can be personalized and what could be more personal than your own genetic profile.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get some idea of, some of the drivers of disease and to see whether you are predisposed to them. What about nutritionally? What is your genetic predisposition for various nutritional approaches? And also what about exercise? Well, my guest today is Dr. Sam Shay and Sam is a functional medicine expert specializing in fatigue, brain fog, hormonal balance and personalized health.

So after, after overcoming his own complex chronic illness, he developed a practical approach that combines genetics, functional testing, and nervous system regulation to help patients understand why they feel unwell. And even, even when they’re lab tests, sell them their normal and guide them back toward more vibrant health.

Look, so much of this program is about personal empowerment and being personally empowered with your own genetic predispositions seems a very positive step in a personalized medicine journey. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Sam Shay. Welcome to the show, Sam.

Dr Sam Shay (01:40)

Good to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:41)

Sam, we’re going to be talking about functional genetics and how you got involved in it. But I guess that’s the first question I think we should cover. Give us functional genetics 101 for those of us that aren’t aware of it and want to know more about it.

Dr Sam Shay (01:55)

Sure. So there’s four main types of genetics tests out in the world and functional genetics is only one of the four. The first thing when people think about genetics testing is usually like what percentage Irish are you? Like that’s that’s genealogical. And then the other type of that’s not what I’m talking about. The one the the other type of test is like, who’s your daddy? This is not paternity testing. Third type of test is checking usually at birth for do you have a hardwired genetic issue that’s going to have meaningful formative consequences that’s just hardwired in.

It’s like Trisomy 21, Huntington’s disease, and other hardwired genetic issues that are extremely problematic. And those are hardwired. That’s not what I’m talking about here. The functional genetics, we’re not looking at pathology genes. We’re not looking at the genes of disease. We’re not looking at the genes of cancer, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia.

We’re not looking at those genes. We’re looking instead of two different classes of genes. And we only looking at those two class genes within those two classes that we can do something about, but we can change how the genes behave. We will not change the genes themselves. We will just change their behavior. And that’s important for people to understand.

We only functional genetics is a message of optimism and a message of self agency and a message of hope because there are genes that you canshift how they behave in the ways we want. There’s tens of thousands of genes, like 25, like there’s about 30,000 genes, like, and we’re, only looking at 140 or so, that’s it. And we are looking at these, of those 140, they’re split roughly in two, and you have diet genes and some exercise genes, and then you’ve got the drivers of all diseases genes.

Now,some people say, wait, you said we’re not looking for disease genes. We’re not. We’re looking at the drivers of disease genes. It’s a very important difference. So the drivers are, we’re looking at the genes that look at these in one or more of the seven main categories of the drivers of all disease. So we’re not looking at the genes that are the cancer gene, heart disease, stroke disease, dementia gene, et cetera.

We’re looking at the genes above them that if they’re provoked, we’ll go and poke downstream at those quote disease genes. So the seven drivers are in order of priority, inflammation. So we’re looking at the genes that are willing to the most upstream genes that control inflammation. So there’s hundreds of genes that control or influence directly and directly inflammation. I’m not interested in all of them. I’m only interested in the top 15 or 16. And I want to know, because they’re the ones that control the ones underneath.

So I want to know which of those 15, 16 genes that I’ve got that are that that have a non-ideal version. So genes can have, you know, three versions that can have green, yellow, red, like a traffic light. That’s the convention that the genetic community at large decided decades ago. So green means you got two good copies, a good copy from mom and dad. A yellow means one good copy from mom or dad, a bad copy from mom or dad. And a red is two bad copies.

Now, I want to know how many of those 15, 16 inflammatory genes have red and yellow dots. And just for people thinking like, you know, people have different relationships with the yellow traffic light, you know, some people that think it’s just, it’s just a mildly tinged, it’s just kind of a mistinged green, you just have to hit the gas harder and you can go through it. And other people just interpret as a red, a stop, as a stop, other people interpret it as a green.

Now, in in in almost almost all cases in the functional genetics world yellow is We take very seriously it is Nearly as bad as a red. It’s not middle of the road between green and red It’s not just a slightly less less less good version of a green note we treat yellows extremely seriously a couple exceptions that that thing a bit too granular to go into but just as a general rule of thumb, we treat yellow seriously like we treat reds.

So I want to know if I’ve now for me personally, of those 16 inflammatory genes, I have 14 out of the 16 as red and yellow dots. That’s terrible. That is terrible. For seven years, I had the goal. was a gold medalist in the crappy Gene Olympics. Since I’ve started running genetics as a gold medalist, I got dethroned after year seven to silver medalist, and then got dethroned again the next year to bronze medalist. It’s not a competition.

I’m, I think I guess I’m not pouting, you are, I’m pouting. So what that means is that I’m not looking at 14 separate recommendations. I’m looking at what are the fewest number of recommendations, lifestyle, diet, nutrition that help the most number of those 14 most important genes. So I’m looking at like three things to do, not 14 things to do, because those three things cover all 14 you know, an overlap into like one thing covers 12, another thing comes 10, another thing comes eight, whatever.

So that’s the strategy around functional genetics is you identify the most important things you can do on the highest priority genes that are the most important to look at for the most important things for the longest period of time. That’s functional genetics. So you look at the seven drivers of disease, we talk inflammation, 15, 16 genes. Then we got free radical damage scavenging. There’s only three genes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:37)

Yep.

Dr Sam Shay (07:42)

Here’s a great example of prioritization where ninety five percent of all free radicals generated

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:43)

Go on.

Dr Sam Shay (07:44)

Mitochondria. Okay. There are three superoxide dismutase genes in the body. SOD genes. That’s the first step for quenching free radicals. The most important enzyme for quenching free radicals. Only SOD2 lives in the mitochondria where 95 % of the free radicals are generated. So just by the numbers, do I really care about SOD1 or SOD3? Comparatively, not at all. I only care about SOD2 because I’m not looking to capture every last percentage of possibility to support genes. I’m looking at the highest priority gene.

So I want to look at the most important genes that are in the most important hotspot of where you find the most free radical damage. So I’m looking at SOD2, catalase, GPX1 or glutathione peroxidase. But SOD2, that’s the kicker. That’s the one that crunches about, I think it’s like four million free radicals a second or something insanely high. Like it is the most power, I call it the head janitor of the mitochondria. So, free radical inflammation, free radical damage scavenging. Then we have liver detox. And so there’s about seven, eight most important genes for liver detox split roughly between phase one, phase two. Then we have vitamin D receptors. So EDR1, VDR2. Now vitamin D receptors,

This is not making vitamin D from sunlight. That’s great. There’s about six genes between the sunlight and us. That’s wonderful. Thumbs up. That’s not the important bit because you can get vitamin D from food supplements, not just sunlight. And most people don’t even get it from sunlight because one, they’re not outside enough. And number two, if they are inside, they’re covered up. Number three, they’re not outside at the time and the season when there’s UVB out. mean, it’s not reliable. It’s just not reliable.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (09:47)

Particularly Sam, I would argue in the context of following public health advice, stay out of the sun. It’s very, very dangerous.

Dr Sam Shay (09:56)

Yeah, I think part of the problem, part of the issue with the stay out of the sun is that people are so nutritionally depleted that they don’t actually can actually make the enzymes to deal with UV UV damage. So what is the issue the sun or is the issue crappy nutrition? Which means they’re not able to handle the sun. But the other thing that there’s another there’s another strategy here that I’ve heard about. And it makes it makes sense.

The first principles is that you can do sun spotting where you can be out for like five minutes or so and get sun and then like all your enzymes to ramp up, because there is your enzymes to deal with the free radical damage from the sun or the UV damage, they ramp up, but they have an upper limit. it’s like you can get, if you have concentrated sun that’s on you and your enzymes are rising up to meet that challenge.

But there’s, comes up an inflection point where the intensity of the sun is exceeding the capacity of the enzymes to deal with the damage. But if you go into the brief, you know, then the input of more of the sunlight goes down, but the enzymes are still active. So there’s a way of kind of, and there’s articles written about this by other people more knowledgeable it’s it’s it’s it’s even then if you have poor enzymatic capacity you can still have strategies to be outside and get safe amounts of sun right so

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:26)

Talking about the seven main areas and inflammation free radicals, liver detox and vitamin D receptors.

Dr Sam Shay (11:37)

The receptors are, the important thing about the receptors is that it’s the thing that gets the vitamin D into your cells. Getting vitamin D into the blood is sunlight, food and supplements. getting to the cells is a completely separate set of genes called BDRs. Now, the thing about vitamin D is that, mean, technically, as most people, hopefully nowadays know that it’s actually a hormone, not a vitamin, it was just misnamed. That vitamin D controls anywhere between three and 5 % of your entire DNA. That’s massive.

And most of the work vitamin D does is not for bone density does do that thumbs up, but that’s not the important thing about it. Vitamin D actually does is control inflammation in your immunity. Very important, like super important. In fact, it’s so important. I made an observation after doing hundreds and hundreds of these gene tests. I found in every single case of someone with chronic disease that I worked with, with only one exception, had yellows and red dots in their VDR receptors.

Only one exception and that person with the double greens had horrific stress of a nature I will not mention but it was formative and would drive anyone to chronic disease and kind of the exception that proved the rule and I went and asked the chief scientist at the lab and also to ask him to ask his other top practitioners is there a correlation between VDR variations, yellow red dots and chronic disease? He got back to me. I don’t know if it was a month or three months. It was a while ago. He said there’s absolutely correlation. I think you’re onto something.

Am I saying that every person that has VDR variations will have chronic disease? I don’t know. But in my practice, I saw everyone chronic disease minus one. Yes. Had had had VDR.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:17)

I mean, this throws a whole added perspective, if you like, onto the whole vitamin D story, because, you know, I think it’s pretty well accepted that vitamin D deficiency is pandemic or epidemic, depending on how we define it.

But, but I think, you know, I know there was a study done and we talked a lot about vitamin D just at the time of the pandemic and, and shared an article from a emergency, say emergency room saying 70 % of people admitted to ICU for treatment, ⁓ vitamin D deficient. So adding the, the, commonality of vitamin D deficiency to this very common vitamin D receptor issue is a double whammy really, isn’t it?

Dr Sam Shay (14:06)

Well, there’s even more to that story. I know what you’re talking about with that article. It’s even more sinister than that. the things that suppress VDR expression, meaning that it withdraws receptors from the cells, it, mean, deficiency is one thing, but now you don’t even have the docking sites on what little vitamin D you’ve got circulating. What withdraws that is smoking and pollution.

So when you look at Italy that got hit seemingly the hardest, at the very beginning, a lot of smoking there. there’s, there’s, you have people that are vulnerable for the vitamin D deficiency, but then you’re also withdrawing a lot of the receptors from them even to be able to use what little vitamin D they have. And there’s not, that there’s not a lot of things that upregulate vitamin D receptors. I one of them is avoiding smoking of all types, first, third, first, second and third order to be exposure. Also want to avoid air pollution. Sulfuraphane is one of the few things that has been shown to upregulate VDR receptors. I predicted five years ago or more that sulfuraphane is going to eclipse turmeric as the most important anti-inflammatory substance in the world.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:28)

That again, just the compound you took not so for so for a fine okay

Did I hear correct? I heard once, and it was a pretty profound, a harm moment for me that, ⁓ there are two things that are on every cell receptors on every cell in the body. One of them is a vitamin D receptor.

Dr Sam Shay (15:53)

The other is only two cell types that don’t red blood cells and dead skin cells on the surface of your every other cell type except those two but

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:58)

Okay, The other one is thyroid hormone.

Dr Sam Shay (16:04)

I feel that that that sounds familiar. I’m sure there’s an exception here there, but that sounds right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:05)

Not sure about that.

Dr Sam Shay (16:30)

That’s why there’s receptors for thyroid hormone because the mitochondria is the business end of the thyroid. The whole reason why thyroid acts, the whole point of T4 is it’s ⁓ called the four wheel. It’s a four wheel drive car that leaves the thyroid gets on the superhighway of the bloodstream and then pulls into the parking lot of the mitochondria makes that transformer noise like from the movies and like one door opens and becomes an arm.

So not to T3, it’s three wheels and that extra arms that button matches on the control panel to dial up the activity of the mitochondria. So T4 becomes T3. like the, the cardiology is good, right? And then, and a button mashes that now the T3 is the, is a robot engineer. And now it activates the mitochondria. Now, if you don’t have mitochondria working in your cells, there’s a problem. That’s really bad. So that what you said about thyroid hormone from first principles, that feels very accurate to me. So we’ve got vitamin D receptors, inflammation free radicals, liver detox, vitamin D receptors.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:05)

Luckily

Dr Sam Shay (17:28)

Then we have methylation. Methylation is the fifth priority, not the first. And this is a big problem in the genetics world where you have MTHFR, suffers from Founder’s effect, where it was the first really popular functional genetics test that everyone freaked out about and has undue precedence in the consciousness.

And if people want my very long angry rant about it, I have three separate podcasts after I heard the Gary Brekka go on Rogan and talk about all you need are these five methylation genes. I was like literally screaming into my podcast player. And when I get angry, I make a PowerPoint.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:02)

Okay. Give me an abridged version. Give me a brief version and try to contain your anger, but I’d to hear what you have to say.

Dr Sam Shay (18:08)

Don’t make me in the terms of the Hulk here on camera. So I think Hulk was just hangry. I think just throw him some cashews. He would have calmed down. I think talking him down was just not the right strategy. Anyway, so the abridged version is that genes operate in order of priority. Methylation is controlled by inflammation. If you want to control methylation, work on inflammation. If you want to work on methylation, and I showed the receipts, I have all the scientific references, all that.

At best, Methylation is bi-directional and it’s influenced between liver detox and vitamin D receptors and free radical scabies. It was very clear inflammation controls methylation. So the idea that to put methylation as the top of the piles of the five most important things is utterly bonkers and utterly bonkers. it’s not a very empowering message to tell people that, my God, methylation is everything. You’re going to die tomorrow because you got a red dot MTHFR. First off, there’s about a dozen and a half super important methylation genes, not just MTHFR.

I mean, it’s like, you know, comp CBS, MTR, MTRR, BHMT, TCN, FUT2, like I can just rattle them off. You know, even some three of the major liver genes, GCL, CGS, TP1, GCLM, those are part of the methylation pathway that converts homocysteine down the CBS pathway into glutathione. So you’re, you actually can make glutathione from, from homocysteine, but you actually use liver genes to do that.

So there.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:38)

You’re highlighting something, you know, you’re talking about seven or so different methylation genes, at least, know, this is part of the challenge of getting into the genetics, isn’t it? I mean, I think it’s great that you’re saying we’re really only going to deal with those that we can do something about because it can be overwhelming.

But even the combination of those that we can do something about, you know, when we get one or two genes, have four different combinations. When we have three genes, have nine different, you know,

Dr Sam Shay (20:10)

I just also that so this is the good news. It’s like, let’s like I’ve solved for that. And that’s I’ve been involved with the next over 10 years. And you actually this is this is where prioritization comes on. Okay, the prioritization is the key. So more genes is not better. No better prioritize genes is better. This is the problem with with other genetics tests where they just shock on you with 300 plus genes and with the attending 300 health tips that are prioritized. That’s self sap that that’s not effective.

That just says the overwhelm nihilistic paralysis and like, ⁓ I’m to give up just pass the turnkeys. The way to do this is to know the order of priority. Inflammation number one, free radical damage, scavenging, liver detox, vitamin D receptors, then methylation, then it’s cardiovascular circulation, then it’s fat and energy metabolism. So once you know the order of priority, that’s the first variable. Then you look at how many red and yellow dots are there amongst all of those highest priority genes.

Then you look at what are the fewest number of genes that have peer reviewed research done on humans, not wombats or nematodes that show that the lifestyle diet nutrition change alone will beneficially shift the expression of these red and yellow dots to behave more green like. Because that’s the goal is to make the red and yellow dots behave more green like.

But the better goal is what’s the highest priority genes to become more green like even better. What’s the fewest number of lifestyle recommendations that help the most important and most number of those highest priority genes behave more green like. And that’s where you can whittle down your recommendations down to like, here’s the top five supplements based on your specific genes in order of priority.

Here is your diet. If you haven’t gotten to the diet, we will in a minute. Here is the most important things you should do for your diet based on your genetics. Here’s the most important shifts you need to do for your exercise. You start there.

The 300 other health tips, they’re waiting for you. They’re excited to meet you. But you don’t like you can only shake so many hands. Like we’re going to start with we’re going to start with the most important things to do. And that’s what makes genetics now winnable as opposed to overwhelming, complicated and so on. One of the things that I’ve done with my genetics reports is I’ve taken the the like, let’s say, let’s take the 16 inflammatory genes. So

You can actually now have a weighted average of like, where is someone in their inflammatory load? Like, are you globally weighted in your relationship to inflammation as such, a yellow dot or red dot or a green dot? And then you can take all the recommendations that are listed in your priority and you can just psychologically like, okay, I’m just an overinflamer. Just, okay, I know that. So I have to live in anti-inflammatory lifestyle.

That automatically just solves so many issues and answer so many questions. I am an overinflamer, period, full stop, end of story. I now have to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Now, like your level of awareness and how you should focus all your lifestyle changes is now permanently changed to be put through this one singular filter. That does wonders by itself. Then you’ve got the specifics. Here’s the top five supplements. Here’s the exercise. Here’s how you recover. Here’s your diet.

it just condenses it into something very, very practical. you can have, and like in my report, I look over the dozen plus methylation genes, but here’s how I talk about methylation. Focus on inflammation first. That’s how I do it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:49)

Well, well, I mean, it is as any regular listener of this podcast would know, we all, listeners know that inflammation is the common denominator in all diseases and actually physical and mental. You know, it’s the common denominator. So to hear you place inflammation at the top of the pyramid, of the pyramid there, you mentioned also some, because you’ve gone through very eloquently. love this seven prioritized areas.

And you finished with after methylation, cardiovascular circulation and fat metabolism. Let’s just focus a little on the diet and, and exercise genes. I’m fascinated about shows as well.

Dr Sam Shay (24:30)

So the exercise genes, you’re looking at three, there’s four or five major components of exercise genetics, but the top three are number one, what’s your fiber type? The action three gene is, are you a slow twitch, fast twitch or an intermediate twitch? It’s meaning that are you built more for sprinting, for endurance or some mixture and the intermediate which is really weighted towards sprint, but not as much as the sprint.

So that’s important because if you are trying to fit a square peg and round hole with your performance and you got the wrong Twitch fiber type, well, that’s going to lead to injury, disappointment, inflammation and low self-esteem. Because if you’re trying to compete in a long distance thing, but you’re a fast Twitch fiber type, you ain’t going to win. And if you’re doing sprints and you got a slow fiber type and that means you’re more built for endurance, you ain’t going to win.

So knowing your fiber type means you can actually pick the sports that you are more optimized for. The second thing to look at is what is your relationship to collagen? There’s two major collagen genes that dictate, are you, I mean, there’s more than two collagen genes, just to be clear, just like there’s more than 15, 16 inflammatory genes. So like asterisk for all the early damless folks out there who are now screaming at this podcast. Fair call.

So there’s two major ones. And if you’ve got red and yellow dots between them, that means that your collagen fibers are not as flexible and more easily damaged. what does that mean practically? That means you’ve got to nourish your collagen better than other people. So that means like taking things like collagen, vitamin C, inositol, creatinine, and you’ve got to focus on your recovery. The biggest thing about exercise that people don’t do when they get into exercise is they don’t recover. I’m looking at you CrossFit.

And I just, I just, and I, I’m, mean, CrossFit don’t get along because I’ve seen so many people injured and I talk very publicly about this.

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Dr Sam Shay (27:42)

And the the if you do not recover when you have genetic vulnerabilities, you will get injured. So then the third thing, which is related to collagen, it’s not identical. Which connects back to inflammation is like, you over inflamer? Because if you’re an over inflamer, when you over exercise, you are now going to create net

gain of inflammation, not negative reduction of inflammation. And the four genes I look at and have a weighted average of them is VDR1, VDR2, TNF-alpha, interleukin-6, the four most pro-inflammatory genes we got in the body. In fact, I’ve actually had a gentleman’s argument at a genetics conference with the chief scientists where I thought VDR1 and VDR2 were actually more important than the top 15, 16 inflammatory genes precisely because they controlled inflammation more than the 15, 16 inflammatory genes.

It was a fascinating dialogue. Basically, he said, you have a valid point and dot, like it’s like two done has one or the other. the point from my standpoint, VDR1 and VDR2 are inflammatory genes that should be shunted up on a priority precisely because of inflammation, not because they’re something above inflammation.

The point being is that if someone is a hyper inflamer, they are more likely to over inflame as a result of over exercising. And I actually lectured in genetics conferences on the topic of and this is real, exercised induced obesity. So to get exercise induced obesity. Okay. And before some before everyone’s brain explodes, let me explain.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:34)

Give us the elevator pitch.

Dr Sam Shay (29:37)

Is that when there are three types of weight gain I’ve identified in the functional genetics, inflammatory water weight gain, hormonal toxic weight gain, and then there’s fat calorie weight gain. The least common type that affects people weight, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen clinically, is the fat calorie weight gain. The most common type is the inflammatory water weight. Why does that put on weight? Why does inflammation put on weight? Very simple. When you become overinflamed.

The inflammatory chemicals are really, really bad to circulate in your body for long periods of time. They hurt and damage and destroy cells and tissues. So your body will retain water in the interstitial space, which is Scrabble speak, nerd speak for the spaces between your cells. So if you dilute these damaging chemicals with extra water, the solution to pollution is dilution. The solution to poison is dilution.

The solution because inflammatory chemicals, if they stick around and there’s too much of them, they cause damage. So your body will retain water. So you swell up with water. You see this in CrossFit all the time. You walk in, people are strong. Some people are strong, but they don’t have definition. You can’t see their muscles like this water weight, like this water layer on top of it. They’re over inflamed. You can literally see it. Face is kind of ruddy. Like they just look like they’ve got this water layer on them. So it’s this inflammatory water weight.

And if you over exercise and you’ve got a specific set of gene combinations in there, you will start to put on water weight the more you, particularly if you over exercise, you don’t give yourself time to recover. you do like twice a week with two days break in between, you do proper recovery, like it’d be very rare someone to actually be inflamed if they actually do the, something else going on like a hidden infection that’s another night of inflammation or whatever.

But like there’s what I did for my, had three case studies. One guy who was just he lost 40 pounds in one month because I asked him to not exercise more and eat less. That was very silly. I’d be very silly. I put him on an anti-inflammatory diet, liver supporting diet to help him deal with the inflammation and get some other toxic issues going on as well.

He actually has developed man boobs. And if your liver is inflamed, because he can’t process all the inflammation. He’s got genetics to make his liver over inflamed to begin with. And he’s constantly inflamed. His body won’t prioritize detoxing hormones because if the kitchen’s on fire, but you also have a full garbage can, you’re going to prioritize the fire. So his he had all this excess estrogen build up because he was also having exogenous oxygen exposure, which I discovered. So the fat was redistributing to his chest because he had excess estrogen from exogenous estrogen, but his liver was overwhelmed with all the inflammation, so he couldn’t even detox the estrogen.

So he started to develop estrogen dominance. And so he started to develop man boobs. But the trick was to deflame on the diet, deflame with nutrients, stop over exercising, increase recovering. I’m not saying not exercise. I’m saying don’t over exercise, remove the poison of the exogenous estrogens, et cetera, et cetera. He lost 40 pounds in one month. Man boobs completely went away. The other guy took him.

11 to 13 weeks somewhere. was some prime number above 10. I can’t remember which one is 11 or 13 weeks. He also lost about 40 pounds. He didn’t do all the recommendations. I didn’t do like some of them. So that’s why I took them longer. Three months instead of one. in the third case study, he had the same thing. Man boobs, lots of weight, more is working out. The more pain he was, the fatter he got. Third case study was a female where more she’s joined a CrossFit without telling me.

And she started helping pain, water weight started looking worse, feeling worse, and her she didn’t develop ⁓ larger breasts, her cycles went sideways. That’s what happened with her as female physiology. So that same thing, just follow the genetics, the simple recommendations shifted around the exercise, increased recovery, etc. She totally normalized got her figure back cycles, normalize.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:50)

Sam, you mentioned water, inflammation, water, fat, calorie. was the third hormonal toxin?

Dr Sam Shay (33:56)

Monotoxic fat. That’s more that’s more you’ve got problems with your liver detox pathways plus exogenous exposure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:04)

And I’m just intrigued because I have some misgivings about it too, but I’d love to hear your short assessment of what is wrong with cross.

Dr Sam Shay (34:12)

How you said short very definitively. Why ever ever? When have I ever will sound unattended? am offended. Okay, yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:22)

I have the sense that we could be talking for a very long time, which I totally would enjoy. But listen, just want to know briefly what, what your problem with CrossFit is. I agree with you, but I’d love to hear you articulate.

Dr Sam Shay (34:41)

Let me, let me start off by steel manning them. What’s, what’s the good parts of CrossFit just so they don’t completely alienate the CrossFit community. So the good parts of our CrossFit is that you have a community and you have consistency and you have a lot of support and you achieve that dopamine hits of achieve going through your personal records, your PRs. And you, you have a culture of progress and support in a community.

And it’s, it’s, it’s because as our modern culture dissolves more and more communities and replaces them with networks. Having communities that are reliable towards a common goal, we’re supporting each other. And there’s you can, you don’t have to you don’t have to feel awkward about talking, you just talk about the common activity like exercise or say good job.

So there’s a massive set of positives that are, I you can take those positives and transpose them to other different communities. doesn’t have to be exercise, can be some of the things, but CrossFit has a uniquely effective culture for those positives. Now, here’s the downside. The downside is that the local culture of CrossFit can pressure people to over exercise and go beyond their limits and get injured and then dilute themselves into some sort of no pain, no gain philosophy and to ignore the feedback systems and messages from one’s own body that you’re doing too much or the wrong thing.

And there’s the same culture that really encourages personal records. You can do it, you can do it. Can be counterproductive by encouraging people to go beyond their own capacity or their self-awareness and lead to injury. And that’s the issue.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:30)

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I agree with you. Totally agree with you. Listen, I love this, this exercise profile on genetics of this idea of being able to identify your type fiber type, your collagen, which is all about holding you together and repairing basically. And this over inflamer. love this. Okay. What about, let’s talk a bit about nutritional, you know,

Dr Sam Shay (37:00)

So in diet, there’s a couple major levers to pull. you’re looking at… So in genetics, there’s… Do you have these set of food triggers? What is the three main categories? What are your food triggers? What are your genetically driven eating behaviors? What’s your carb tolerance?

Those are big three. We’ll start with the carb tolerance. Carb tolerance is. Can you generate enough? Enzyme to break down carbohydrates. If not, you can have the best quality. can have organic quinoa grown by left handed monks harvested on the last wolf moon and each individual grain was delivered by newly hatched monarch butterflies.

If it’s not a quality issue, it’s a quantity issue. This is what I had. I was having a perfect Mediterranean diet. And I mean, perfect. I knew the names of my farmers and their chickens. And it was a Mediterranean style diet because that’s what the science said, because that’s what the bell curve says. You have to be Mediterranean diet because that’s what the science says. guess what? You know what defines a bell curve? The other ends of the bell. There’s people that live on the other sides of those bell like me.

It turns out genetically, I’m a low carb paleo borderline keto carb tolerance. It’s a different type of genetics test. It’s not green, yellow, red dot. It’s actually looking at the duplicates of this amylase producing gene. So you can have between one and 20 copies and it’s additive. So someone with one copy produces approximately one tenth the amount of enzyme, someone with 10 copies.

Someone with two copies generates one tenth the amount of proximal with 20 copies or one fifth the amount of 10 copies. So it’s additive. So what that means is that if you have a fewer number of these things, your body is a fort, your digestive system is a fort and the carbs rushing your digestive system are Vikings. And the number of genes are the number of cannons lining your fort to mow down these Vikings. That’s the easiest analogy I could think of. If you have number of cannons, you’re going to a hard time with those Vikings.

So, this is the case that you got some genetic sets that claim, well, it’s the version of the can because the Amy one gene we’re talking about has a green, yellow, red. It’s the version that is no, doesn’t. This is one of the few cases where the green, yellow, red dot distinction is trivial. It’s actually the number of duplicates of the gene that matters. I would rather have 10 red cannons than one green cannon.

So the fewer number of copies, the less carbohydrates you can navigate. So on average, a Mediterranean diet is about a six, seven number of copies. I had a grand total of two. Just so and it’s the same. Now my lineage comes from the northern latitudes of Russia. Not a lot grows there. And you know who also has the lowest numbers of these copy numbers between one and four? The same people have the highest rates of diabetes, the Inuit Pacific Islanders, aborigine native american.

The fewer number of copies you have, the less carb tolerance you have. So what this means is you can find out what your carb number is, your carb choice number, and then you can know if you are more suited for a keto style, a paleo style, a Mediterranean style, or a higher carb style. And yes, higher carb styles exist.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:49)

I was going to say, I was going to say to you, cause we’ve done so many programs on type two diabetes on, insulin resistance, which I think we can all agree the lower the insulin level, all diseases are better for that. But, but, interesting to given your experience of looking at many profiles of people, how many people out of a hundred, let’s pick a figure you would say have a carb tolerance issue. Is it a 50-50 split or is it an 80-20 split or is it? Can’t we even say that?

Dr Sam Shay (41:23)

So it really depends on what your long-term lineage is. So in Asia, particularly China, it’s an average of an eight.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:31)

Eight out of 14.

Dr Sam Shay (41:33)

And 20 but but here’s the let me let me give you the cutoffs. So ones are just like almost straight up keto, two to two to fours or paleo now know to cannot has only half as many carbs as a four. So there’s some shades of gray there. There’s nuance.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:47)

the because we use the word Amelies as though we knew everybody knew what that meant. Just paint a picture as to what the score of one, two, three to 20 is and the significance of Amelies to carbohydrate.

Dr Sam Shay (42:06)

So amylase is salivary amylase is the enzyme in your saliva glands made mostly by your parotid glands, which is on the side of your cheeks. This is the enzyme that is the first enzyme that meets carbohydrates in your mouth. And it’s a critical first step to digest your carbohydrates through your whole system.

If you don’t have enough amylase, you cannot properly digest carbohydrates, which lead to digestive issues digestive issues, inflammatory issues, mood issues, and energy issues, which was what I was dealing with with my Mediterranean diet, even though it was all organic and local, I was having mood, digestive, and energy issues cycling through the day. And then within one week of changing to a low carb diet, I individually, my own genetics should have been, those things leveled out. Now, people have different capacities genetically to make amylase.

Amylase is the enzyme, how much of it you make is depends on a couple factors. The number of genes that you can have one gene, two genes, three genes, four genes, five genes, 16, seven, eight, nine, 10, all the way up to 20. That’s the that’s the that’s what I mean by your score of a 123. It’s literally like how many copies you got. Your score of a one is you got one G score of a two is you got to score of a 10, you got 10 copies of this thing.

So the things that regulate your amylase production is number one, how many genes you have. So how many cannons? The firing rate can shift based on are you engaging in, are you eating slowly and enjoying your food and engaging parasympathetic activation so that you’re actually generating more saliva and the intending amylase that comes with it? Are you eating foods that support amylase production? Things like lemon juice, lime juice, things that make you salivate.

There’s a whole in the report. There’s a whole list of foods that increase Emily’s production. Then there’s some foods that shut down Emily’s production that that makes it harder now this rice strangely enough is one of them and this is why I think I Hypothesize that the reason why it’s an average of an eight in China and eight in Europe and a six in Europe is because There was a micro genetic pressure in a five thousand year old rice culture that they had to genetically pack on some extra copies of the amylase gene in order to make up for the depression of the production of amylase per unit gene.

So they needed to have extra cannons because their firing rate was lowered because the thing they were eating was lowering the firing rate, if that makes sense. So you have different, so on average, like what is the number of this? It depends on what population you’re looking at Maori, Inuit, Native American, Pacific Islander, Abirji.

One and four that between one and four, that’s the average northern latitudes like where I come from, northern Russia, one and four, central European, six, seven, China, eight. So it really depends on what demographic that you’re looking at. But it’s those numbers are not you can you can get estimate based on your lineage. But, you know, it’s better just to know based on the

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:23)

Okay. So we’re talking about carb tolerance. We’re talking about the other two food trigger and eating and eating behavior.

Dr Sam Shay (45:31)

So the eating behaviors are this. There’s a couple of big ones. Satiety gene. How full do you feel after normal amounts of food? Some people do not feel full after normal amounts of food because feeling full is in the brain, not the stomach. It’s a signal to the brain, which is genetically mediated. So if you have a red and yellow dot in the satiety genes, which I do, that means that you have a tendency to overeat.

Now, some people may hear this as well. I just will give up because my gene says this. No, no, no. What you can do is not your your for war, just for armed with like, what is your genetic reality? I’m a big fan of reality. It’s for these people, including me, you now give them this one instruction. This one instruction is worth price of admission to this podcast. It is easier to change your environment than to change your willpower.

It is easier to change your environment than to change your willpower. So what that means is if someone tends to overeat, you don’t bring the things into the house that you have a tendency to overeat on. I don’t buy bread because I’m not stronger than bread. I’m smarter than bread, but I’m not stronger than it. Half of it will make it to the car from the grocery store and the other half will make it to the house as I ate it on the way from the drive from the grocery store.

So it’s it’s I make my environment unfailable. That’s how to win at that. Then there’s some other things like the increasing fiber in your diet slowing down when you eat, because then you give more time for that signal to hit your brain. You don’t watch social media. You don’t argue while you eat. You don’t do stressful things because you tend you actually give your body a chance to actually engage with the signal and more time for it to engage in the signal.

So that’s a satiety. The other is some people over crave sugar and also a separate gene over over consuming sugar. Now, some people may think, well, that’s really unlucky. Why would, how would that make any anthropological sense that someone would over crave sugar? Well, because if you crave, now had a very meta experience.

I was recording a video for my training program and for my learning library for people who do the, whether it’s health coaches or life practitioners who want to run my genetics in the practice or for people who lay public who just want to run their genetics with me. I have a learning library and I have a meta moment where I was recording the video on sugar craving.

And it was on Mother’s Day. The reason I know this is because natural grocers, the local store here, had to think, get a free chocolate bar, organic chocolate bar when you come in, buy anything for Mother’s Day. I had this gene where I over craved sugar. And guess what? My hyper foraging mind just kicked in. This happened. went, I went to high gear where my foraging mind, I had a million years of evolution of trying to forage for quick calories, just go six gear. And all I could do was think about that chocolate bar as I was recording the video on sugar craving. And I said it, like, explain this like-

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:29)

Sam, it almost sounds like you’re human, but, god.

Dr Sam Shay (48:32)

Amazing

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:35)

It’s reassuring, you know, it’s reassuring

Dr Sam Shay (48:38)

So what happened is that if you if you have this sugar craving gene from an evolutionary, biological and evolutionary psychological perspective, you will forage harder. So you will go an extra five minutes a day, an extra 15 minutes a day. So you will have a net. Eventually, you’ll hit a score of blueberries, raspberries, apple tree, like you will. It creates an evolutionary benefit.

Chlorically, if you have this gene that makes you a little crazy around sugar, the promise of it. So the reason I’m sharing this is that some people, and I’m a former sugar addict and I had the genetics to prove it. I didn’t find out about it I was like 35, 36. But what happened is I forgave my body when I saw my genetics. Like, oh, I’m not a weak willed loser. I’m actually hardwired and I have to stop trying to force my willpower.

I have to just change my environment. And that’s that that is so freeing. It was so freeing to now come from a place of agency instead of I’m a moral failure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:46)

Yeah. Well, you’ve raised a very important point and you’ve mentioned it a couple of times that we’re not a victim to our genes. In fact, this is very much about personal empowerment. And I have to say, as you go through your dietary and exercise, genes predispositions and the seven drivers, I think this is a really exciting and empowering idea because a lot of people’s experience with genetics is they go to see their doctor, usually a medical practitioner or specialist. They’ve just been given a diagnosis of colon cancer and they say, how did I end up with it? And the doctor who probably doesn’t know the answer to that question will say, it’s just genetics. Look, there’s not much you can do about it. And this leads me to the next, a very important question, which I think we should articulate for our listener.

And that is the difference between genetics and epigenetics because ultimately that’s what we’re talking about here.

Dr Sam Shay (50:51)

Absolutely. So the best way I like to describe epigenetics, which is the whole reason we’re doing this type, which is the whole point of functional genetics is to find genes you can do something about. There’s something about that’s epigenetics. That’s gene functional genetics is not a switch. It’s a dial. That’s the way to think about it. It’s a dial. So you’ve got with the exception of that Amy one carb tolerance, carb choice thing that that’s that’s the number of do-blins.

That’s something separate. But even then you can do behaviors to increase the firing rate. So even then you can dial up and dial down. The green, yellow, red dots. Okay. So someone’s a red dot or yellow dot or a green dot. What that means is your default setting of the dial is that color. I default, if I’m a green dot, I default to green, which means I have to work hard in the wrong direction to make it behave like a yellow or red dot.

If I’m a yellow dot, I have to work hard consistently to push the behavior to dial it to green like behavior. It won’t become green. It will behave like a great. If I’m a red dot, I default harder. It’s have to work even harder to get it to behave more green like epigenetics is the lifestyle diet nutrition to change the dial to behave more green like. That’s it. That’s epigenetics. Just shifting the dial.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:10)

And I, think that is a very important message. Well, it’s actually the whole reason for this podcast is all about personal empowerment, but when it comes to genetics, so often, so often, and I hear is it, and it’s often comes from medical practitioner who cannot bring themselves to say, you know what? I don’t know. Oh, we, I should find this out rather than say those words. They will often dismiss the patient and say, look, there’s nothing much you can do about it.

It’s your genes, but as we are learning here now, there is a great deal that you can do it. And I’m guessing this is the DNA decoded program that you are, you are championing and teaching and using in your practice. I’m, I’m fascinated by it. I’ve had some connection with a DNA program called self decode many years ago. was, I’m an old, always an early adopter, but talk about, ⁓ overwhelm.

Dr Sam Shay (53:18)

Just quick. What you want to check for new genetics or trigger foods is the following. Are you histamine sensitive? That’s a big one. Going on an anti histamine diet is nontrivial because a lot of quote health foods are high in histamine like cacao and avocados, citrus fruits and so on. Bone broth. Yeah. Well, some ways of making the broth makes a much higher histamine than others. But yeah, like in general bone broth.

OK, there’s so I want to just give people, when people do my genetics and they come up with they need a high anti-histamine elimination diet, I’ve made a giant diet chart for people. And here’s how to win at histamine. Histamine is dose dependent. So it’s like the more histamine foods you have and the more higher amounts you have, like the more variety, like it’s going to fill your histamine bucket.

So the way to get started in transitioning to a low histamine diet is you your top 10 to 15 high histamine foods favorite because it’s quality life or convenience. Like ground meat is super convenient. It is, this is reality. So you pick the top 10 to 15 and you keep eating those, asterisk, assuming you don’t have an anaphylactic reaction to like a hyper high histamine sensitivity, but you know that if you are, you would know that by now. You pick your top 10 to 15 and you keep eating those and you just eliminate the rest. It’s an 80-20 game.

You pick the 20 % of high histamine foods that give you 80 % of the value. And I promise you, it is not as bad as it sounds. I do this. I’m histamine sensitive. have my top 10. I stick to my top 10. It is totally… I once argued with a client who ran his… We spent 45 minutes on avocados, arguing about far-fetched avocados. That’s when I made the list. I was like, okay, we can’t do this anymore. We cannot argue over avocados for 45 minutes. So pick your top 10 of 15.

Because the lower the fewer number in the field level, you’re going to be winning the histamine game. That’s how to win. So, okay, so check for histamine sensitivity. You check for caffeine sensitivity. Very, very important.

There’s a meaningful percentage of a minimum 10 % of population has caffeine induced anxiety and depression like me. I have this. I don’t care how bulletproof you make it. I know because I tried. You can stuff as much coconut oil as you want into that. Doesn’t work. You become an I became an anxious depressed mess when I had coffee and I was just like, oh, look, I’ve got all this energy. No, I had anxiety. That’s what it was. So you figure out if you’re caffeine sensitive. That’s real. Take that seriously.

People, if you’re worried about your unstressed health, literally, it’s in the title of your thing. Unstressed health. You must find out if you’re caffeine sensitive. You must do this because if you have any caffeine, you have these genes and you’re trying to live as unstressed life as possible. You will at best hit a plateau in your unstressed life. histamine sensitivity, caffeine sensitivity, gluten sensitivity. Got to know if you’re vulnerable to celiac. If you are, get off gluten. Lactose intolerance, alcohol sensitivity.

And are you reactive to food allergens in general? So the test doesn’t check for specific food allergens. It’s like, are you just in general reactive to allergenic foods, which the strategy behind that is that you remove as many. Highly known, probable allergenic foods as possible, like you want an elimination diet, so that’s like.

No shellfish, no soy, no dairy, no gluten, no tree nuts, et cetera. And just as a general rule, you stay off those things because you’re more prone to having a disproportionate immune response.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (57:12)

Sam I’m really interested in this too because alcohol and caffeine is so ubiquitous, particularly alcohol and methylation, the link between the methylation genes and the alcohol. What’s your thoughts on that? I mean, it’s there,

Dr Sam Shay (57:29)

It’s there mean, the methylation connection is there, but there’s the aldehyde dehydrogenate, like there’s there’s there’s the LD aldehyde, dehydrox, aldo something I’m blanking at the moment’s been a long day. They there’s there’s multiple genes involved with detoxing alcohol, multiple, but there’s some major ones. And if you don’t have the these genes as green dots, what’s going to happen is that the alcohol itself will now be become even more toxic in your body.

And this is what we call, see this in Asia a lot. It’s literally called the Asian flush. Like this, this gene variations are so common in Asia. It’s literally called the Asian flush where they get the red, the red complexion. feel really unwell. And it’s, it’s, it’s just real. Like an eye look, I spent eight years in New Zealand where the only thing more popular than rugby was drinking. And the

And it’s like, it’s just bonkers how much people drink over there. And I’ve had about a half dozen people quit alcohol on the spot when they saw their genes for alcohol. Many other people didn’t, unfortunately, but those six did. I’m proud of them. And it’s just a reality. fan of reality. Know your genetics, know your reality.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (58:53)

Yeah. And, and one would say, at least, you know, at least, you know, you’re making an informed decision one way or another.

Dr Sam Shay (59:02)

Yeah, you can’t blame ignorance on this one anymore. need to poison yourself in a very specific way. Do it consciously and don’t kid yourself.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:05)

Yeah, yeah, Yes. Yes. Well, you’ve made a very compelling outline there. have to say having been a little familiar and I’m not pretending to be an expert by any means.

Dr Sam Shay (59:23)

Can see all the books behind you even though Yeah, yeah, that’s

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:25)

Just know that’s just photoshopped photoshopped them all

Dr Sam Shay (59:28)

Okay, alright, I’m gonna get you much credit then

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:30)

But actually one of them is mine. have to send you a copy, but that’s another story. The other one, the, you’ve got the DNA decoded program, which I love this, this structure. And it makes a lot of sense. And it’s very accessible, very doable, very practical, very functional. What a wonderful term. But there’s another area called the, that you focus on, which is neuro, the neuro harmony model. And I was intrigued, intrigued by that. Tell us briefly about that as well.

Dr Sam Shay (1:00:00)

So that’s pretty straightforward. So you have the mind-body connection, but what’s been missing is the chemistry that links the two. And so the mind-body connection, what mediates the connection between the mind and the body is biochemistry. So the neuro-harmony model, the way you look at the mind, body, and chemistry is you have a framework for analyzing lifestyle and a framework for analyzing labs.

And when you combine the two together, lifestyle and labs, you get holistic medicine. That’s holistic medicine. If anyone listen to this, if you are going to work with a functional medicine practitioner or natural or whatever, what are you going to call it?

The best practitioners are the ones that have a framework for analyzing your lifestyle and a framework for choosing and analyzing labs. Both. Together. If you just go to someone who just does labs.

It’s not the full story. If you go some just who does lifestyle, it’s not the full story. There are places to have, you know, compartmental like focus here and focus there. But it’s like the neural harmony model is specific to frameworks, one for lifestyle, one for labs that have combined that are very logical, very structured way to precision personalized analysis for your particular situation with lifestyle and labs.

Now we don’t have time, it’s gonna be separate podcasts. The lifestyle thing is 10 colors of health. The labs are five lab categories. We’ve covered one, genetics, but there’s gut labs, hormone labs, mitochondria metabolism labs, and then what I professionally call the weird stuff, metals, mold, toxins, infections. then there’s, so those are the broad categories gut hormones, mitochondria, weird stuff, genetics, but there are sub tests and subcategories underneath them. But just those are the big five.

And on other podcasts I’ve taught, I’ve just gone through those five in much more detail or I’m on summits or whatever. But that’s an example of a framework. Other people have other frameworks for their labs, other frames for the lives of minds, the temple as well. Some people have like the triangle of health or the five pill steps of this or the Inverting Hypotenuse of Wells. I don’t care something they’ve got to have a framework.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:02:29)

Yeah. No, no. I, well, I have my own framework, but it’s not about me. This is about you today. And I, and I love the way you’ve structured it for practitioners or coaches who were interested in learning a bit more about this, how, and wanting to access these kinds of tests. Tell us a little bit about how they might do that.

Dr Sam Shay (1:02:48)

So the primary thing I’m training on at the moment is the fit genes, is the genetics. ⁓ If there’s enough interest, I could do a teaching cohort for the 10 pillars ⁓ and the other five labs. But my primary focus is to really help practitioners and health coaches get the genetics testing into their practice.

FitGenesUSA, F-I-T-G-E-N-E-S-U-S-A.com. And I’m the lead trainer for fit genes around the world. And I’ve created ⁓ my own lab reports. I have training videos. I do trainings for people that are just interested in just getting their genes done. That’s the DNA Decoded program. That’s on my website, DrSamShea.com. And that involves the genetics test, a six month implementation program, the learning library.

And then there’s a gold program version where I do six months of group coaching. And that for people that are interested in that, you can use a coupon code gold 100 for a hundred bucks off for the gold program. that’s, that’s how I find the genetics is really, really well suited for group coaching because a lot of people just have the same questions around their genes and people don’t feel so alone.

And it’s a really efficient and cost effective way to engage with me personally, if you’re wanting to just get your genetics done. But the Fitching USA, that’s where I’m training practitioners and health coaches. And if you’re outside the Western Hemisphere, like I do this, that’s for people in like Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

If you’re in Australia or New Zealand, there’s the Fitching itself, is an Australia Nutrisurch is a distributor in New Zealand, but I also train people there. So you’ll still get access to my reports and get access to my training, no matter where you are in the world that are wanting to do this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:54)

Yeah. Well, we’ll have, course, links to that, your website and people can access that. it’s, we will get you back to talk about the 10 lifestyle and five testing breakdown. just want to finish by asking you this question because we are all on a, we all are, we’re all individuals on a health journey in this modern world. And taking a step back from your role as a health practitioner, what do you think the biggest challenge for us as individuals on that journey is?

Dr Sam Shay (1:05:25)

Individuals on the journey for optimal health, not having a blueprint

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:05:34)

Not having a bloop

Dr Sam Shay (1:05:35)

Having a blueprint. mean, I mean, not not to be more even more self referential. I mean, I literally the two names of my reports are called the fit genes, genetic blueprint, and then the carb choice blueprint. Like, so it’s like the blueprint is like, okay, diet supplements, exercise. What is my unique blueprint? Because otherwise, if you’re trying to be optimal, you’re going to end up like a biohacker. Like I, my first ebook was criticizing the biohacker community. It was shiny objects chase is shiny object syndrome.

There was no map. There was no blueprint. And that was my 10 pillars of health. That was my answer. I was like, look, love the shiny objects. Awesome. Super shiny. Great. How do know if you actually need them or not? You don’t. You’re guessing you’re just buying shiny stuff and hope it works. Instead, have a road map, have a blueprint to analyze what you actually need and then pick the appropriate shiny object as needed and combine them where appropriate.

That’s the issue. And same thing with labs. People are just like, I’m just going to do a lab. I’m just going to do a lab. No, okay. Well, once you pick the lab that is the most relevant to you and the combination is most relevant to you. And it’s the blueprint because we’re, it used to be, it used to because you asked about today. The problem is today. It used to be 40 years ago, no one had access to information in the lay public.

There was no podcasting. There was no internet. There was no, you know, like health books were in a super niche corner, probably next to the occult section in the bookstore. Like there, there was no information that was easily accessible. We now have the opposite problem. We have information overwhelm. So that’s where having a blueprint is is the most important thing, not more information. It’s the blueprint for which you can now nest all the information and filter the information you’re being bombarded with.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:30)

Well, Sam, that’s a great note for us to finish on and particularly at a time when personalized medicine is being championed as the medicine of the future. Thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Sam Shay (1:07:44)

Thank you for hosting. This was a lot of fun.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:46)

Well, I’ve often said that this podcast is a really self-indulgent form of education for me. get to ask people that know so much more than I do about a subject. I ask them questions and they answer them and I learn and I hope you do too. And in this journey of personalized medicine and in general and genetic testing in particular, it’s been something I’ve been very interested in for some time. I’ve explored other platforms.

I’m exploring this platform, FitGenes which I’ll be looking at and our follow up program on this will be Sam going through my genetic ⁓ profile and I don’t mind sharing it with you and we’ll all learn a lot from it. Look, we’ll have links to Sam Shea’s site, the FitGenes site as well.

I would also hope that you could leave some reviews for the podcast and I’d encourage you to join the unstressed health community, which you’ll be hearing more about in a moment. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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Sleep Apnea Isn’t What You Think: Dr Dave McCarty on Breathing, Sleep & Personal Empowermenthttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/3cfa8881-d357-4b0c-b466-b44400532783/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:Empowered Sleep Apnea

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸

Empowered Sleep Apnea: A Handbook for Patients and the People Who Care About Them – co-authored with Ellen Stothard, PhD.

Organizations / AffiliationsSpeaker at the 22nd Sleep Education Consortium Conference.

Guest on multiple podcasts discussing:

• sleep apnea
• insomnia
• airway health
• patient-centered sleep medicine
• ADHD/sleep disorder overlap
• oral appliance therapy
• whole-person healthcare approaches

Blog: https://www.empoweredsleepapnea.com/daves-notes

Courses & Education: https://www.empoweredsleepapnea.com/learn

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/empowered-sleep-apnea/id1643770403

00:00 Intro & Importance of Sleep

02:10 Sleep Apnea Explained

05:00 Obstructive vs Central Apnea

08:15 Problems with Sleep Labels

10:50 Facial Development & Breathing

14:14 Five Reasons to Treat

19:56 Apnea, Hypopnea & Hypoxia Definitions

23:00 ADHD & Sleep Connection

31:14 Patient Empowerment

33:48 Five-Finger Framework

43:26 Narrative-Based Medicine

51:06 The Nose Rules & Nasal Breathing

54:26 Nitric Oxide & Oral Microbiome

56:08 Final Reflections & Outro

Sleep Apnea Isn’t What You Think: Dr Dave McCarty on Breathing, Sleep & Personal Empowerment Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we are exploring possibly the most important part of the day, and that is how well we sleep. It sets us up for not just the next day and how well we approach it physically, more mentally and physically, but it also lays down the foundation for every aspect of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Sleep apnea, for example, affects close to a billion people worldwide. Yet most people feel lost the moment they receive a diagnosis. Well, Dave McCarty is my guest today and I’m welcoming him back. He’s a sleep physician, an author, and a creator of empowered sleep apnea. I don’t, we love that word empowered. I mean, if I was looking for a mission for unstressed health in the word empowered for you to be empowered would be it.

It’s a platform sent powered sleep apnea is a platform dedicated to turning confusion into genuine understanding and importantly, personal agency. Now Dave’s approach is quite unique and inspiring, not only with cartoons, which he illustrates himself, not only with storytelling and cold hard science, Dave is rewriting the way patients and practitioners navigate this complex condition.

I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Dave McCarty. Welcome back, Dave.

Dr Dave McCarty (01:35)

Great to be here, Ron. Thank you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:37)

Dave, with some of my guests, not all of them, I love to get them back regularly. And I love getting you back because not only have you got such an important and powerful message, but sleep is so fundamental.

In fact, one of the, sleep sleep apnea, which I know is something you focus on a lot is often described as a simple problem with a simple solution. you, yes, I thought it would get a laugh out of you, but your whole project says, otherwise, can you walk us through the many moving parts of sleep problems.

Dr Dave McCarty (02:10)

You know, I would love to, Ron, because I think that’s the biggest misconception. Once you name something that the human desire is to, I think it’s very simple. And so let’s just talk about that term, sleep apnea, right? The word apnea means not breathing. And so if I go tell somebody that they have sleep apnea, that means I’m not breathing when I sleep. And it’s a nonsensical idea. Of course you’re breathing when you’re sleeping.

So this is a jargon term that means something else, right? So what does it mean? It means that the breathing is not stable during sleep, right? So it’s unstable breathing during sleep that affects one’s health. Now we’re getting somewhere. Unstable breathing during sleep that affects your health in a negative way. And by the way, that unstable breathing can happen for two reasons.

One is obstructive sleep apnea. the airway can get obstructed when we’re trying to breathe. So breathing against a closed or a semi-closed airway, also known as choking, right? Choking. So that’s one reason the breathing can be unstable. But the other reason the breathing can be unstable is the physiology is similar to the pause in breathing that might follow several large deep breaths.

So if you took a very heavy sigh, for example, you might find that you could sit there and wait for a long period of time before you felt like you needed to breathe. Right? So that’s a different flavor of instability. And that flavor of instability of breathing is called central sleep apnea. Okay. So now if we have the concept that sleep apnea is actually unstable breathing during sleep, that negatively impacts health, that can happen for obstructive reasons or central reason. And then if we have the idea that, why does the obstructive sleep apnea reason happen?

Now we get into the many moving parts. So it happens for lots of reasons. It might happen because, well, this person, for example, happened to breathe with their mouth open and their tongue happened to fall back because their nose was a little too blocked. That was their reason. Another person’s reason might be because they’re very heavy. And so there’s a lot of extra heaviness here too. And so the reasons can actually be listed. Same thing is true on the central sleep apnea site.

So if we accept now that this is unstable breathing during sleep that negatively impacts health, that can happen for one of two reasons, obstructed bar central, and each of those reasons has many moving parts. And now we think this instability can be fluid across time, space, and situation. So, you know, if you take a person with a certain type of breathing pattern at sea level and put that person at 10,000 feet, the instability will change.

It will be a different flavor of instability. So we get the notion now that labeling someone is sort of an exercise and well, it’s just a snapshot in a very complex moving picture. So the concept that I’m trying to get across with this empowered sleep apnea idea is that the word sleep apnea is always sort of a gateway. It’s an entry point. People wanna talk about it.

Hey, I heard I might have sleep apnea or I screen positive on my Apple Watch or sleep app. It’s just an entryway. It doesn’t really tell you what it is or what to do about it yet. It tells you that there’s unstable breathing during sleep and you got to question what you might want to do about it. But it really opens the larger question of why is this happening to you? Which moving parts are relevant for you? Because obviously you’re the person who’s going to have to decide to do something about that. So it’s a big question. Thanks for leading with that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:02)

Yeah, look, it’s an interesting one too, because in order to solve a problem, if there is one, it always helps to know what that problem is. Yes. I mean, I know that sounds so obvious, but we do rush off to solve a problem before we’ve completely identified it. And yet people, it’s a bit like breathing, isn’t it? Look, I’m breathing. I mean, what more is there to breathing than breathing? I mean, for us who are involved in this professionally.

We understand there’s optimal breathing and there’s dysfunctional breathing. But for how many, the 95 % of the population, I’m breathing. I’m alive. What’s what more is there to it? I sleep. This is the way I’ve always slept. It’s no big deal. mean, that is the probably one of the biggest hurdles, isn’t it? For people to realize, and this is why I love your word in power.

Dr Dave McCarty (06:54)

Yeah, well, it’s a question of where you fall on a spectrum rather than a binary anymore. And that’s problem with language. ⁓ We started this journey understanding about what is sleep apnea based on the narrative of the so-called Pickwickian patient, you know, the very heavy person who snores, who is sleepy in the daytime. That’s a specific picture.

And that’s where we got the notion that sleep apnea even exists. That’s the first type of ⁓ category we got. But the further we waded into the diagnostics, the more we realized that you don’t have to be heavy and you don’t have to snore and you don’t really have to even drop your oxygen levels anymore. So just has to disrupt your sleep. So the definition of sleep apnea has changed to be something that no longer even requires you to stop breathing.

You just have to have unstable breathing that affects the quality of your sleep. So this language has sort of tried to expand to contain a beast that it’s just that that term is too small to contain it. And all that means is if we say sleep apnea, we need to have a method of opening it up to talk about what that term actually means because the visual picture is such a large spectrum that it doesn’t mean anything.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (08:15)

I mean, you are a sleep physician and it’d be interesting to put this in perspective for us that you’ve identified these two areas, obstructive and central. So for every hundred patients that comes through your door, what proportion of them suffer from obstructive and what subject subjects suffer from central? And is there a combination of the two?

Dr Dave McCarty (08:38)

That’s a great question and I’d like us to think about these two physiologies as independent but they also have a way of communicating with each other. So it’s a trick question because I’ll say all of them have both potentially depending on how you’ve kind of twitch those variables and this is true because altitude is a pretty dramatic accelerant for central apnea physiology.

So you take a situation like a CPAP mask, right? That’s gonna help with the obstructive flavor. And up here in the mountains though, that CPAP mask is a little more likely to push you towards the hyperventilation side of things. A little more likely to help you overventilate and create that unstable breathing pattern that we all call treatment emergent central sleep apnea or TEXA. Okay, so these labels

They come in handy because they help us categorize things. I’m afraid many times the labels just kind of run away with the show and you see someone’s chart and it says obstructive sleep apnea G47.33. And what crosses your mind is that’s the only thing going on with this person. Right.

And of course that’s foolish because if you took that person and put them at 10,000 feet, of course they’d have central sleep apnea. So we have to start thinking of these things a little more physiologically and a little more fluidly and get ourselves away from the trap that those labels impose on us cognitively.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:08)

You mentioned obstructive having a couple of different drivers and obesity, blocked airway allergies. ⁓ and, and I, I’m guessing we should also include narrow jaws and crowded teeth. I wouldn’t be, you know, and when I think about the proportion of population that a could be a little obese, that B may be a little bit sensitive to some of the many environmental toxins of out there.

And C, considering 95 % of the population don’t have enough room for all 32 of their teeth. I mean, this must be a huge and undiagnosed problem.

Dr Dave McCarty (10:50)

Well, is. It’s hugely undiagnosed, but I think we’re getting close to overcoming that barrier because of all the wearables now. It’s not going to be long before you can get this diagnosis by simply buying something at the Best Buy or whatever the technology store is. My concern is what are we going to do with this new label once we get it? Because it really does need to be unpacked.

As you said, there’s many moving parts and one of them is the jargony term is the crania facial respiratory complex, right? That’s the bony and soft tissue constituents that compose the upper airway. And the narrative now is that the development of our face is just different than we were genetically programmed to achieve. So our pre-industrial forebears, as you mentioned, had room for all 32 teeth.

And even the wisdom teeth quote unquote erupted in front of the ramus, right? That’s interesting. And that means that ⁓ the width of the face, that ⁓ the lateral dimensionality of these faces was larger and the depth of the face was larger. And so it doesn’t take, you know, a real sort of architect to understand that the tongue that’s sitting in there and all of that soft tissue stuff and the, with the roof of the mouth being the floor of the nose that architecture makes for an easier time of nasal breathing, right?

So once we sort of recognize that genetically, we could achieve a different size and shape of face, and that it actually could contain all of our teeth, that has a direct impact on the size and shape and function of our airspace and our airway. And that’s a new revelation for many of us, because we think about, you know, why is our teeth crooked? Well, it’s because we need braces because we need orthodontia, know, orthodontia.

So straight teeth. And the truth is possibly a little more complex than that, that the reason these teeth are crowded is because the face hasn’t really developed this way and this way. And there are ways to reverse engineer that. So we can spot that earlier now in kids. And for adults, there’s ways to sort of widen the palette. Marpy is one technique, but there’s evolving field engineered techniques about how to make the facial architecture a little bit more like our pre-industrial forefares so that we can actually breathe through our noses better and sleep better.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:26)

As someone who’s been in practice or had been in practice for over 45 years and who very enthusiastically embraced orthodontics and orthopedics with that in mind, it didn’t take me long to come to the conclusion that while there were many benefits to that kind of treatment for those that chose it, thank goodness, the human being is more adaptive than, know, you either get the dental treatment or you’re stuffed for the rest of your life.

Fortunately, that’s not the case, but it definitely helps. Now you talk about five reasons for treating. think you talk about risks, snoring, sleep, comorbidities, reframe the question to why treat this whole conversation. Can you take us through those five reasons to treat?

Dr Dave McCarty (14:14)

I’d be delighted. This is the step. It’s kind of like the, you have a timeout step before you saw someone’s leg in the operating room. This is the step that says, why are we doing this? If we, if we make the statement, okay, Ron, you’ve got unstable breathing during sleep and we think it’s affecting your health. Then the next step is why should Ron Ehrlich stabilize this unstable breathing pattern? What, what, what’s in it for you? Okay.

And so the five reasons to treat them, in I’m wearing my button here. I don’t know if you can see that, but this is from the Empowered Sleep Hapnia Project. five reasons to treat are risk, snoring, sleep, wake and comorbidities, as you said. Risk is first because it’s a timeout. It’s the hardest one to actually talk about because we can’t really get away with using labels like mild, moderate and severe anymore to drive the conversation.

This is the hard part. We want to so bad because it’s so easy. But the problem is these labels can be misused, misapplied, and they can actually cause harm. I’ll give you an example. Let’s take an 80-year-old woman who has kind of a narrow face, so she’s got a blocked nose, and she’s also got restless leg syndrome. And we move this woman up to 8,000 feet above sea level.

So now she’s got a little blocked nose, so she’s breathing with her mouth open. And every 30 seconds, she’s got one of these periodic limb movements of sleep. Right? So it causes a brief arousal and during that arousal with her mouth open, she’ll go, and then following that, there’ll be kind of a pause or a reduced effort and oxygen goes up and down. Okay. So we have an unstable breathing pattern. We can see deviation in oxygen and she will have

In this fictional example, she’ll have lots of hypopneas, lots of under breathing events being scored. And hypopneas by definition are neither designated, neither obstructive or central because it’s hard to do that. So we don’t have to. So she would have a lot of hypopneas and she might have enough hypopneas per hour that maybe even 30 or 35 per hour. Now she’s being told you have severe sleep apnea. And this is before she’s even mentioned anything about how she’s feeling, right?

So I’ve seen this scenario play out. This is a person who probably wouldn’t do well on CPAP. So now she’s a CPAP intolerant, severe sleep apnea. So now you get the idea. And then now there’s ever more drastic things being lined up in the name of defending her against this severe disease. Meanwhile, we really don’t have any sort of evidence to show anyone that central hypopneas caused by this mechanism are dangerous, right?

So it starts to get the cart way before the horse if we use language like that. So instead of the mild, moderate, severe, how do we do it? Well, we try and break down, is this an obstructive problem or a central problem? We try and figure out how frequently those events are happening. We can see how deeply the oxygen is desaturating. So there’s something called the hypoxic burden.

So different sort of flavors of figuring out, is this the flavor of sleep apnea? that’s going to cause harm because we have pretty good data from our population-based cohort studies that obstructive flavor events are pretty bad for you. The more frequently they happen and the more deeply they cause the oxygen to drop. That choking, that trying to breathe against a closed or a semi-closed airway is pretty physiologically alarming.

You know, it’s called choking. And so there’s a different degree of physiologic stress that comes from the obstructive flavor compared to the central flavor of events. And just breaking this part out and recognizing that it’s not the same for everybody, and we need to talk about whether this is the flavor of sleep apnea that’s going to hurt you.

Sometimes it’s not clea and so in our current clinical project called Rebus, we offer advanced and blood work testing to take a look at some of the cardiometabolic risk factors, markers, if you will. So this woman that I’m talking about, this fictional patient up in the mountains, she could be absolutely a vascular perfection. She could be the type of person who’s running ultra marathons in the mountains and she’s still got this AHA of 35 because of the central event.

So is this the type of thing that we should offer her stabilization for in the name of risk, right? Sometimes it’s hard. And if you do blood work and her blood work all says, hey, this person is metabolically tranquil, this looks beautiful, there is no inflammation, cardiometabolic markers are down. We can say, know, hmm, maybe risk is not a reason for us to stabilize this and we can move on from it.

Okay, the point of it being the first step of the process is to call attention to it’s not easy and it deserves pause before you start bossing people around by virtue of what their members are.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:42)

Now, Dave, just let’s just remind our listener very quickly to give us the couple. You mentioned a couple of words there, our listener may not be as familiar as you and I are apnea, hypopnea and hypoxia. Give us those 101.

Dr Dave McCarty (19:56)

Yes.

They’re great jargony words. So apnea, as we talked about at the beginning of the program, means not breathing. And so an event where there is no airflow at all for a certain period of time is called an apnea and you score it. A hypapnea, that word means under breathing. So it just means several breaths that are a little too small to get the job done. And it causes instability in oxygen or something, and it causes stress. So they’re not breathing enough.

At the end of it, there is usually recovery breathing, at which point things come back into shape and perhaps there’s an arousal from sleep or an awakening or a movement or something like that. The word hypoxia just means a drop in oxygen levels in the bloodstream. So if your breathing is interrupted to where out of a reason, the blood oxygen level tends to go up and down and that instability, the body doesn’t like that. It really wants for things to be real stable like that. Thanks for clarifying that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (20:58)

Last definition, just to put our listener in context is the reference to AHI index. You mentioned 35 of those, a score of 35 is severe. Remind us again of what an AHI index is.

Dr Dave McCarty (21:14)

For sure, yeah. So this is just tallying the number of these events that you can see per hour. So it’s an event rate. So the apnea hypopnea index is one of the most common metrics that’s used to say, bad is this problem? How many events per hour are you having? And we’ve gotten into the habit of using benchmarks to say, well, this is mild, this is moderate, and this is severe. And that works for some iterations, but it

It often leaves people out or it misleads people. You know the person who has so-called mild disease You know by virtue of an AHI of five or six that person may really suffer from that and and so the mandate to Straighten that out for that person may be very high based on the other four reasons to treat so let’s just go through them Yes, we talked about risk risk is first because that’s the hardest to talk about but snoring

I call that out as an independent reason to treat because it’s specific for sleep apnea. It’s a cause of a lot of nuisance that people are afraid to talk about. And it’s also a way to explore something that people might not know themselves. So if you say, snoring is a reason to treat because, you know, the rattling of the all of the tissues up here, we think that’s one of the reasons why people who have sleep apnea have a higher risk for a stroke is that all of these tissues are very close to the carotid arteries and it can cause damage to the lining of the arteries when you’re sort of rattling those tissues with such profound energy over and over again.

Snoring causes social consequences. So we’ve heard of the sleep divorce where people have to go sleep in different rooms. So asking about it, clarifying whether someone breathes through their mouth or through their nose during the discussion about whether snoring is a reason.

I’d like to sort of bring about some of the new understanding about breathing physiology. Nose breathing is just different from mouth breathing, right? So breathing through the nose, we think tips us towards the rest and digest functions, the parasympathetic, whereas mouth breathing tips us towards the sympathetic or the fight or flight.

So if we kind of think that just that small thought, hey, if I’m breathing with my mouth open during sleep, it’s tweaking my fight or flight nervous system a little more than it should, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m not sleeping well. Okay, so second reason to treat snoring allows that whole discussion and that discovery to happen with the patient. Third reason to treat is the sleep experience. So this just calls attention to the fact that sleep apnea does things to sleep and it can do all kinds of things to sleep. It can make you feel like you can’t sleep, for example.

It can cause frequent awakenings frequent trips to the bathroom. If you have a tendency towards some sort of other sleep disorder like sleepwalking, well, sleep apnea kind of pushes you in that direction too. We get to that when we talk again about comorbidities. an assessment of the sleep experience and is this tranquil, deep, continuous, restful, comfortable or something other than that? Fourth reason to treat is the wake experience.

So, you know, how we sleep affects how we wake. So if a person is feeling cognitively limited, decision making is tough, attention deficit type symptoms, you know, all of these, we lump them into daytime neurobehavioral impairment or neurocognitive impairment symptoms. And the hard part about this is, A, we’re embarrassed when we feel limited, so we don’t like to talk about it.

And B, we use a lot of things to compensate. So caffeine, nicotine, all kinds of stuff to do to keep ourselves awake. We might even get ourselves a diagnosis here and there that gets us access to stimulant type medication to treat that. it’s a, what is daytime impairment? That’s something that really needs to be explored with an open mind and kind of the idea that we’re looking to discover what’s going on here.

And then the final reason to treat, of course, I didn’t even mention daytime sleepiness, because that’s where we started the journey of understanding sleep apnea was abject, falling asleep during the daytime. But the fifth reason to treat is comorbid conditions. Comorbidities is a mouthful that just means other health problems. And there’s lots of them. And so there’s no complete list.

But lots of problems get worse with the nonspecific stress of sleep fragmentation, sleep curtailment, and intermittent hypoxia and the other stresses that come from sleep apnea. things like migraine headaches, bruxism, teeth grinding, high blood pressure, diabetes, blood sugars, anxiety, so mental health disorders, on and on and on. The key here is to inventory one’s own kind of list of maladies, seeing what one is working on, and ask the question, could

You out and you be making this worse?

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Dr Dave McCarty (27:44)

be more challenging to treat because of this other foundational problem, know, sleep and breathing, a couple of the foundational activities that we do. So if those are disrupted, could it be making other health problems worse? And after that co-discovery exercise, if the patient and the provider, the healthcare clinician, both sort of say, yeah, you know, you’ve really got some reasons to get in there and try and stabilize this like you mean it, then what happens next is whatever one tries as a treatment or stabilizing strategy, we’ve now got built-in goals about what we’re trying to achieve.

So we know if that treatment is achieving our goals. That’s, think, one of the most important steps here is it puts the agency back in the patient’s ⁓ control, that they know why they’re doing this, and they’re going to know when they’re there. They can escape from the fear of doing a treatment because they’ve been given this scary label and now this person in a white coat needs to tell them what to do.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:48)

Hmm. It’s interesting, Dave, because we’ve done a program with pediatric respiratory physician, Jim Papadopoulos here in Australia. And he said something which was quite surprising, shocking in fact, and that is that 50 % of children diagnosed with ADHD have an undiagnosed sleep disorder breathing condition. And when, and when I think about the number of adults, because this is becoming a very, common and I might add a very popular diagnosis for adults. ADHD. I’ve got ADHD. This explains so much. And my doctor gave me Ritalin. And guess what? I’m getting so much more done. Not surprising.

Dr Dave McCarty (29:34)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:38)

As a sleep physician must be wondering hmm I wonder whether they haven’t addressed other issues there this is an easy pharmaceutical trick

Dr Dave McCarty (29:49)

I’m afraid of the same sort of slippery slope is that ADHD is such a non-specific form of dysfunction, you know, because lots of flavors of that neurocognitive impairment can fit into that. And it’s so commonly overlapping with just not sleeping well. So those symptoms, the Venn diagram is pretty large.

And if we don’t address the breathing, if we don’t even look for the breathing, we won’t even find it quite frankly, the diagnosis of sleep apnea is not hard to achieve anymore. So you just need to have five non-desaturating, non-oxygen dropping obstructive events per hour, plus some sort of complaint about the sleep wake experience. So it’s really not, if you really wanted to push the matter, it’s not hard to get that diagnosis onto your chart. The real question is, know, which moving parts are important to you?

And what steps should we take to try to get you closer to that tranquil, deep, continuous sleep that makes you feel restored? Usually it’s there’s a lot more in there than just apply CPAP. You’re good to go. Yes. You know, it’s a bigger puzzle than that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:14)

And in fact, by approaching it as a bigger puzzle, the upsides are much greater as well. The rewards, the rewards.

Dr Dave McCarty (31:25)

I think so. think so. know, what I’ve seen and I write in all my work when I do things on social media, I’ll put hashtag empowerment saves. You know, it sounds like I’m running some sort of a, I know, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

when I recognize them, when you give people the pieces of the puzzle and they suddenly see there’s the lights come on and they say, well, if this is true, what if I did this? And that you can suddenly see the wheels start turning and they get engaged in the process. And it’s a moment. And it’s a moment when they become empowered with their own kind of future and trajectory in healthcare. So I love that moment when it happens.

And the five reasons to treat curated discussion is a repetitive way to see that moment again and again. And it’s strange. It’s something as a clinician, it’s a little shot of dopamine because you feel that that person sitting across from you, they finally get it and they can finally sort of start navigating this on their own steam a little bit. Does that make any sense? Have you seen that moment come on in a patient’s

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:51)

Yes, absolutely. And I mean, I think this is the beauty of personally empowering patients to take control of many aspects of their health rather than take a more fatalistic, well, it’s genetic. It’s my family or because the doctor does all, all this is not uncommon either Dave, the doctor, because they don’t know what to do. Say there is nothing that you can do. It’s genetic.

You know, if I don’t know it, if I don’t know it, it’s not worth knowing. Just go off and put your affairs in order. But that, that kind of segues into the next question. And I love the way Dave, that you’ve always come back to these five. I’ve done the same with my five stressors and five pillars. There must be something about our five fingers, but if the five-fingered approach was born from a patient encounter, you had, think the woman’s name was Daria. Can you tell us that story and what the framework actually does?

Dr Dave McCarty (33:48)

It’s a fictionalized name, but the story was true. This is told in the Empowered Sleep Apnea Project. But the idea was that this was a patient that I saw for the first time as a new attending. So I was a new attending in sleep, which means that I was kind of helping other trainees learn the ropes of sleep medicine. And I open up this chart for this young woman who has this diagnosis called sleep apnea.

And at the time, this was still relatively new. I felt like a hotshot because I kind of knew what apnea was. But I’m opening this chart and looking through the progress notes. And each one was pretty much like the last. It said, you know, they were soap notes, subjective, you know, patient presents, per follow up of sleep apnea, no complaints, objective, vital signs stable, no dermal irritation, know, assessment, doing well on CPAP plan, follow up one year. You know, it all sounded… kind of like, wow, easy, easy.

There’s like five notes like this. So I figured this was probably going to be a fairly simple visit when I walked in. And when I met this woman, it was clearly not straightforward. She was, you know, had this device in her lap, but really wasn’t looking very engaged. And when I started pressing her on this, I couldn’t figure out what this machine was doing for her. And neither could she.

and she remained excessively sleepy. She really didn’t feel like it was doing much of it. So bottom line was we went and retested her and she had lost some weight since her original label or diagnosis had been given. Her repeat apnea hypopnea index was sort of sub threshold for diagnosis even.

And when we actually sort of pursued this, the reason for her symptoms was that she had type one narcolepsy. And so I was left kind of wondering how could we have done this? You know, who made this mistake? And there was no mistake because they diagnosed sleep apnea, they treated sleep apnea and everything was right, but it was so wrong. And when she said, no,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:56)

the

Dr Dave McCarty (36:01)

Narcolepsy is a different type of neurologic disorder that causes people to feel sleepy in the daytime. So the problem was we were fooled from the beginning because she said, I’m sleepy and someone asked me a snore and she might’ve said, yes, once. And then someone said, I know what that is. I know what that is. That’s we have a thing for that. That’s called sleep out. And so there’s this desire to diagnose stuff that you know how to treat.

And once you get there,

there’s this very human need to kind of care for that thing that you’ve diagnosed. That’s the thing you’re working on. And so it takes on a life of its own. So the problem here was somewhere along the line, we lost track of this woman’s narrative. We lost track of her story and we started caring for her label. And so I got obsessed after that moment with why doctors can make mistakes. Why do diagnostic mistakes happen?

And I started reading about this and I determined that I didn’t want this to happen in my training program again. So the type of mistake that happened with Daria’s case was a case called early closure of decision-making. They call it a search satisfying error. Satisfying is a blended word like smog is a blended word, but it means that it’s satisfactory and sufficient. It makes sense.

And so when you get there, you take a mental nap and you stop problem solving because you feel like you’ve arrived. It’s a way for the human brain to deal with terrible complexity. And so a way to protect yourself against that is to have a way of mapping back to the patient’s story so that you can’t forget what you’re working on. So this is what the five finger approach really is, is you start with the patient’s narrative.

What’s wrong with you? What do you feel is wrong? And then you take it to the hand. And so you can just investigate. Again, this is a co-discovery kind of process, but you walk with the patient through several different domains. And the thumb of the five finger approach is circadian misalignment. And that’s a jargony mouthful. That just means that your days and nights are kind of mixed up. Think the last time you got jet lag, how hard it was to go to sleep or how hard it was to wake up. People can do that to themselves based on when they’re experiencing light exposure and stuff. So it’s hard to talk about. Circadian rhythm involves the notion of circular time and teaching about it can be a little bit difficult. So in the Empowered Sleep Apnea Project for your listeners, we try and make everything a little bit more fun.

There’s a toy called the Circadian Rhythmo Wheel that you can download from the site and you can print it out and just as you kind of spin this thing around so you can see where these circadian events happen and you can start getting your head wrapped around why having your circadian rhythm out of whack can contribute to things like insomnia. So that’s the thumb circadian misalignment.

The others are something that you just kind of walk through and ask yourself, could it be this? So the index finger is pharmacologic factors. These are all the things we take, drink, smoke, eat, apply, all of the stuff that might be pharmacologically active. Take a critical look at it. Could the reason for this person’s narrative be coming from one of these things? Okay, it’s an important step.

And this came from the recognition that I would see of young people coming in for a terrible complaint of insomnia and you review their their medication lists and somewhere along the line they’ve been given several very very potent cns stimulating agents for other diagnoses you know anxiety or something venlafaxine is a pretty potent cns stimulating agent as you mentioned amphetamines given for adhd can be really stimulating so if you don’t take a look at them at the meds, you can really do the person a disservice and blame everything on something else.

Like sleep apnea. The middle finger medical factors, medical factors. So this is just the notion that if I come to the doctor and I say, Hey, I don’t feel good. ⁓ If all I’m looking for is sleep apnea, that’s all I’m going to treat. And I might sort of miss a lot of other things that can make you feel lousy.

So let’s just take a common for example. In the modern age, a lot of people don’t get outside as much as they should and they’re working in a little cubicle. It’s not uncommon for an adult to have real critical vitamin D deficiency. That’s a real thing. And that makes you feel lousy in lots of different ways. And if it’s not discovered, you might miss an opportunity to help this person heal.

So medical factors think about the medical problems that could be causing this array of symptoms. Ring finger in the five finger approach is psychiatric and psychosocial factors. This is based on the, I’d call it a common sense understanding of sleep wake experience. If we don’t explore that through the lens of mental health and personal safety, we’re missing another way to kind of think about this. So it’s a stopping point.

Are you safe at home? PTSD physiology, post-traumatic stress disorder physiology, isn’t just for combat vets anymore. A lot of people are living with kind of physiology of stress and that’s part of their sleep-wake disturbance. So understanding that that is there is the first step. And as we visit these, we actually visit the five-finger approach in clinic with our patients as a system.

So that they can kind of see what we’re working on and they can sort of weigh in. yeah, yeah, I think that is something I’d like to talk about because cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia isn’t just for specialists anymore. These are techniques that we need to be talking about as clinicians in a much larger sense and the tools are something we all can learn about. So that’s the ring finger. Pinky finger of the five finger approach is so-called primary sleep diagnoses. I put that very last to prevent the mistake like Darius from happening so that folks would do the full review.

And if we get to sleep apnea, we would also recognize that, hey, there’s other things in that finger too. And so if the person’s not getting better, we can revisit this. This is an iterative process. So, hey, Ron, you’re back. How’s your narrative? you’re still sleepy? Hmm. We’ve got your sleep apnea under control. I wonder which finger we should be looking at and we can kind of revisit it.

I find that I love teaching this to my patients because especially the ones who kind of they like to know where the gears are on their car and they like to know where the oil is. So they people understand this schema. And if someone comes back and they say, well, I’m not doing so well, I say, well, I when I want to talk about it, they say, I know what it is. I’ve been I’ve been watching TV too late. My circadian rhythms really drifted.

So I know what I’m supposed to do, Doc. You don’t need to lecture me. but but you see, the point is they feel like they’ve got their hand wrapped around it and it gives people a sense of ownership and a way to investigate something that can be a very, very messy topic.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (43:26)

Well, this is the empowered story coming back. The, the, mean, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. You’re, you’re a very prolific writer, Dave. And I love reading your blog posts, which, you know, we’ll have links to on, on from your website, Dave’s notes. think, but, but you, wrote about, and you’ve said it a couple of times here, but I want to bring it out a bit more. This narrative based medicine that it’s, you know, you could even say it might save us all.

You kind of think to yourself, well, okay, what, not only what is it, but what are, what are we, what’s the alternative to it that people are probably a lot more familiar with and think, isn’t this the way medicine is done? And what is this thing called narrative based medicine? Give us the, what it is now, most often that people are exposed to and what you’ve described as narrative based medicine.

Dr Dave McCarty (44:21)

Well, I’m trying to start a conversation about the goal of what we’re trying to achieve with the visit. What sleep medicine has been reduced to in the name of efficiency and access is a very efficient mechanism to get someone labeled, diagnosed, and have access on effective treatment, which is usually a CPAP machine or maybe a mandibular advancement device. So it’s very efficient.

And it makes a lot of sense when you view it from that lens. But when we view sleep apnea from the other side, back to the beginning of our conversation, that it’s not one thing, that it’s this very complex set of things that have many moving parts. And we get the idea that there has to be a little bit more patient involvement in terms of which moving part we’re going to work on now and why. So this comes down to the patient’s story.

We have to then step away from the label as a basis for making decisions and recommendations. And we go back to the story. And this is where it gets really messy. Because we’ve all kind of learned as medical trainees how bad it is to interrupt your patient. There’s a lecture about doctors interrupt their patient on average after about 30 seconds. They show you the video. I don’t know if they’re still doing that.

But there’s this big study that came out. internalistic flavor of medicine is not necessarily a good thing. So we’re told about empathy and we’re told about the things that one does like leaning in and the body language. It’s all part of the curriculum, right? So yet dot dot dot. If you let the patient walk in the room and simply tell you their story, there is no end to that because they have lots of ideas about what it could be.

They may or may not be right. And so this becomes in very short order a very large hot mess. And so what do you do with that? You revert to the label and you end up with a problem like Darya’s again, because it’s too scary to deal with that hot mess. So ⁓ I’m talking about the process of label-based medicine versus narrative-based medicine, because the alternative to the label, which is the hot mess, has to have some structure. And this is where

The five finger approach comes in as a nice shareable structure and the five reasons to treat is a nice complexity structure that we can say, you know, this is a, this is a big problem. Let’s how, can we share the way we can talk about this between clinician and patient so that everyone’s on the same page and the patient ultimately is the one who makes the decision rather than someone telling that patient what to do.

So narrative based medicine is complex complexity requires some sort of structure and in the sleep medicine environment, the two five-point mnemonics that we’re just talking about, five-point complexity deconstruction tools, which is the five-finger approach and the five reasons to treat, these work well. Because I think it boils down to if we’re going to share a complex journey, we need to prepare the patient with language that allows them to work with people in different silos of thought the language of sleep apnea has diverged.

Some people use upper airway resistance syndrome now. Some people call it breathing disordered sleep. Some people still say, no, it has to be called sleep apnea. So we’ve got language that’s spreading out. And if the patient gets caught in the middle of those little language wars, it doesn’t do them any good. So I think that in order for us to play nicely together, we have to share collectively the answers to three fundamental questions, right? Three fundamental questions. Question one, what is sleep apnea?

And we started this program with my answer to that. It’s sleep apnea is a jargon word that means unstable breathing during sleep that has two different flavors, each of which has many moving parts. So what is sleep apnea? How we talk about that is really crucial. And if you ask a lot of, know, ask around just socially, ask people, know, tell me what sleep apnea is.

They’ll tell you different answers and they’ll all be right, but they might not prepare the person to have a journey in a different silo other than theirs. So that’s question one. What is sleep apnea? Second question is, what else could this be? That’s our stopping point so we don’t make the mistake for daria. And we actually think about the five finger approach. And then the third question is, why should we treat it?

Why should we stabilize it? And the answer to that comes with the five reasons to treat discussion. narrative-based medicine, hard, complicated, complex, hot mess. If you don’t have structure, adding structure allows us to navigate through it, but we have to be able to share that structure with our patients to allow them to participate in the conversations. That’s narrative-based medicine to me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:39)

I love it. And, and I’m reminded of a, a mentor of mine who has influenced my practice for over 30, 35 years. She was 92 when I did her program. used to be president Kennedy and president Johnson’s doctor in the white house. Wow. And Janet Trevelle is her name. And she said, if you ask your patients the right questions, they’ll often not only tell you what’s wrong with them, but they’ll tell you how to fix it.

And I think your five-fingered approach and five reasons to treat provides a very good structure to listen to that narrative. And when you think about how we as health practitioners learnt, very didactic, you sit in a lecture hall and listen and write notes. We take that into our, our, our clinics and we are didactically dictating to our patients what they should do. We really should be facilitating a conversation.

And your structure provides a great way to do it. love it, Dave. This is why I get you back. I also need, I also need updates on this and I’m sure my patients do too. Listen, you are, as I said, you’re so prolific. You’re right. You draw beautifully. So many of your, all your artwork is great. I’d rate, we’re to have links to your website and books, but I’m really interested in what is inspiring you most in 2026 and what is the message that you most want people to walk away with?

Dr Dave McCarty (51:06)

No question. It’s about the nose. So the latest book in the Empowered Sleep Apnea project is called The Nose Rules. Empowered Sleep Apnea presents the Nose Rules. And the basic idea is nasal breathing is different. And I now consider myself to be a nasocentric breathing sleep physician, if that makes any sense. We now have a new and different emerging tools to assess not just nasal structure, but nasal function. So a brand new tool, and this is actually the unveiling of this is coming very soon to our clinical ecosystem. It’s called nasal rhino manometry. ever heard of that?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (51:55)

No, but if we break it down, nasal, rhino, go on, Rhino, go on, break that down.

Dr Dave McCarty (52:01)

Yes.

Rhino manometry. So that means we’re actually measuring pressures and flow through the nose. So, know, clinically I can say, well, I have some difficulty breathing through my nose, but it’s hard to quantify that. We have ways of quantifying breathing with something called pulmonary function testing. That’s for asthma and emphysema and those types of disorders, but no real standard clinical tool in sleep medicine to assess nasal breathing. And if we accept that the nose is important and nasal breathing is important, and it might predict who’s gonna do well with CPAP versus who might need something done first, then this is an important part of our treatment planning. So if you ask me what’s the most important message for 2026, it’s about awareness for the importance of nasal breathing, that this is physiologically different. Nasal breathing allows us better bioavailability of oxygen.

If that makes any sense. So there is this phenomenon of the paranasal sinuses, illicit a substance called nitric oxide. And as we breathe, that nitric oxide mixes with the air. And those people who follow medicine got interested in nitric oxide because that’s the molecule that affects blood flow. And for Viagra, it was the molecule of interest. So nitric oxide affects blood flow. And when we breathe in through our nose, it allows for better alveolar filling of alveolar blood flow. So it allows better bioavailability of the oxygen that we breathe.

What? That’s incredible. But not only that, nasal breathing while we are developing, as opposed to mouth breathing as we’re growing, can make our faces a different shape. Think about that for a minute. Because where is the tongue when we’re nasal breathing?

The tongue is up there at the roof of the mouth. And if the mouth is open, well, the roof of the mouth might just end up shaped like that, which means that the nose is correspondingly collapsed. So if I could spread one big message worldwide, it’s not just about the sleep, it’s not just about the breathing, it’s about helping us reestablish functional, effortless nasodiaphrasmatic breathing 24-7 day and night.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:26)

Well, this is, this is music to our ears. Cause you know, breathing is a very, it’s a major pillar of what we’ve focused on in this program as well. And interestingly, I remember talking to Dr. Resul, but Courtney who’s done a PhD. She’s an osteopath with 40, 50 years of experience who after 20 years decided, yes, after 20 years of osteopathy decided that the best way she could help her patients was to do a PhD in breathing.

And, that’s what she did. And she once said to me, 60 % of the body’s nitric oxide is produced in the paranasal sinuses only when you breathe through your nose. And I thought, wow, not only is a vasodilator, but also as an antimicrobial powerful. But then I did another podcast with somebody just on nitric oxide who said, unless the oral mic, the only way that happens, Ron.

I was telling him this and I was very proud of myself. And he said, the only way this happens Ron is if the enzymes in the oral cavity will facilitate that. And if the oral microbiome is out of balance, that isn’t true. I thought, well, yes, I know.

Dr Dave McCarty (55:39)

Yeah, the oral microbiome is another rabbit hole of fascinating discovery.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (55:46)

It is, is. Dave, I want to thank you. love getting you back on for all the reasons I’ve already said. And I want to thank you for all the wonderful work you are doing and the energy you are bringing to this very complex field. And thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Dave McCarty (56:06)

Ron, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (56:08)

Well, as I said, if it, a practitioner, this narrative based approach, which is what my mentor of over 35 years ago, inspired me for, but what I love about Dave is not only his empowered focus, but the structure to have that narrative with a patient, the five reasons to treat what is your risk? Do you snore? How do you sleep? What do you like when you’re awake? And what are some of the comorbidities? What about the five-fingered approach circadian harmony. mean, my goodness, there’s a whole subject on its own.

Our relationship with sun, particularly early morning sun and the radiation, which we bathe ourselves in constantly and the blue lights that we also bathe ourselves. Pharma, the pharmacological interactions. And when you think about not just the medications people are on, but a whole lot more medical factors, psychosocial, issues and of course finally interestingly for a discussion on sleep the actual diagnosis itself look we’ll have links to Dave’s site Empowered

Sleep Apnea I’d encourage you to follow him and his notes or his essays that he writes they are so interesting and stimulating and inspiring and I would also encourage you to join our unstressed health community until next time this is Dr Ron Erlich

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Walking Your Way to Vitality with Dr. Jacques MoraMarco & Dr. Yun Kimhttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/22e1ab04-2ac4-4660-9bdf-b43600497e1e/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲𝘀 & 𝗢𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 / 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹* Emperor’s College of Traditional East Asian Medicine + Main institutional site (faculty leadership, programs) * Emperor’s Wellness + Founded by Dr. Yun Kim (wellness + acupuncture practice)

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 Walking Your Way to Vitality

• Co-authored (2026)
• Focus: walking, breathwork, mindfulness, Eastern medicine integration

𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 (𝗗𝗿. 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗼) 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨: 𝘌𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘝𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦 𝘎𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘨 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬

𝗔𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 “Research Supports the Integration of Acupuncture in Mainstream Health Care…” (2025)

• Co-authored by both doctors

Organizations / Affiliations𝗗𝗿. 𝗝𝗮𝗰𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗼* Academic Dean (former/emeritus) at Emperor’s College of Traditional East Asian Medicine * Co-founder of International Sun Tai Chi Association * Worked with: + Being Alive + VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (PTSD clinic)

𝗗𝗿. 𝗬𝘂𝗻 𝗞𝗶𝗺* President of Emperor’s College of Traditional East Asian Medicine * Founder of Emperor’s Wellness * Former board member: + Korean American Family Services * Roles in: + Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine + Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine

00:00 – Introduction to walking as a powerful health tool

02:00 – Guest backgrounds & inspiration behind the book

05:00 – Why walking is transformative (body, mind, spirit)

06:00 – Retro walking explained

09:00 – Mindful walking & present awareness

11:00 – Vitality walk & breathwork technique

14:00 – Hand mudras & energy flow

17:00 – Tai Chi vs Qigong walking styles

18:30 – Cat walk, rooster stance & balance longevity

21:00 – Bear walk & advanced movement

22:00 – Circle walking (tiger & dragon)

25:00 – Immunity walk & cancer support

27:00 – Lymphatic health & movement science

29:00 – Ancient wisdom & longevity insights

32:00 – Walking as a modern public health solution

36:00 – Breathwork, mindfulness & healing integration

40:00 – Final reflections & book recommendation

Walking Your Way to Vitality with Dr. Jacques MoraMarco & Dr. Yun KimDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we are talking about one of the most accessible, sustainable, effective, enjoyable, cheapest, gosh, it’s so many wins there, form of exercise that you can do and give you a whole new perspective on it. It’s about walking. And if you thought this was just about putting one foot in front of the other, well, today’s episode is a real eye-opener. I’ve been walking for almost 70 years and I’ve been walked, I’ve walked across Spain, I’ve walked through France and Italy and through central Australia and the Larapinta Walk. I’ve done lots of walking, but today this episode is a total revelation to me and got me extremely excited. You can probably tell. Today I’m joined by Dr Jacques MoraMarco and Dr. Yun Kim.

Two thoughtful advocates of the most powerful and most overlooked form of human movement, walking. Now through their work, through their writing and lived experience, they explore walking not simply as an exercise, but as a pathway to mental clarity, resilience, connection, and even transformation. In a fast-paced technology-driven world, which we live in, they invite us to do something deeply human.

The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other and rediscovering health in the process. This is not just about that. You’ll be learning about a retro walk, a vitality walk, a cat walk, a bear walk, a dragon walk, a tiger walk, and immunity walk and a circle walk. Yes, it’s a really wonderful and empowering episode. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Jacques MoraMarco and Dr. Yun Kim.

Welcome to the show Jacques, welcome to the show Yun.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (01:59)

Thank you for having us.

Dr Yun Kim (02:00)

Thank you for having us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:02)

Well, this is when I got information about your book and the opportunity for us to be talking. I jumped at it very enthusiastically because walking is very much part of my life, both my daily life and my recreational life holidays. And it’s very unusual for me, as I said before, we came on to have two guests at once. ⁓ But, but I wondered if you might each share with us

your own background, what led you to write this book? Jacques, perhaps you first.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (02:37)

Well, about 25 years ago, I wrote a book called The Way of Walking, which was a really cutting edge book of its time. And it was also based on a lot of my experience with AIDS patients from the 80s, where these AIDS patients were only given 18 months life expectancy. And by doing some of these techniques, some of these very specific walks, coordinating walking and breathing, they were able to extend their lifespan until the proper medication came around, which was about the mid 90s.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:11)

Your background is in medicine.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (03:14)

In Eastern medicine, yes. I took the very first acupuncture examining board test here in California in 1977. So I did that. And then, you know, I’ve had a 50 year background in martial arts, including Tai Chi and Qigong and the Chinese arts. So was very lucky to have studied that also in China for about 10 years from 1994 to 2004.

So Sun Tai Chi, there’s five different styles of Tai Chi. So I studied with the granddaughter or the founder of the style. So was very lucky to do.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:49)

Wow, and Yun, your background?

Dr Yun Kim (03:52)

I am also a doctor of acupuncture in East Asian medicine. I don’t have half a century of experience as Dr. Moro Marco does, but about 20 years ago, I started a practice in mindful meditation and I was very honored to do some retreats at Deer Park Monastery here in California with the great Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. And his emphasis was, he since passed, on walking, walking meditation.

And I participated in walking meditation with him and with the reach of participants. And it was an incredibly inspirational, memorable, life-changing experience. And since then, I’ve really have incorporated mindful walking into my practice and really love it and want everyone to practice it because I’m so passionate about this particular form of walking and mindful practice.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:58)

Wow. Well, I’m looking forward to hearing more about this because I mean, walking is arguably the most evolutionary consistent form of movement we have. So from your perspective, what is it about walking physiologically, psychologically, and even spiritually that makes it so transformative?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (05:21)

Well, I think the one thing that our book features is the regular walking or what we know as traditional walking. But what we have is this very specific styles of walking. So not only the traditional walking, which includes like retro walking or backwards walking. Something quite interesting is that I first saw that practice in the parks in China, but 30 years ago, I never saw anybody practicing it. This reverse or retro walking gear, which affects all this balance, the proprioceptor, it really affects your calves, your quadriceps and all the balance mechanism and it saves on the knees. So now when I go to the park here in LA, there’s a very big park that has some hills. I see quite a number of people doing retro walking. That’s part of the traditional style.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:13)

Well, I mean, have not heard of retro walking. mean, psychologically, one could say many people do walk backwards, but, to physically do that. Now you mentioned there are different styles of walking and you’ve just given us wealth. The one that we know all about is what takes us from point A to point B every single day of our lives. But here we are already with retro walking and that, that is that that’s one mean, Let’s go on. mean, this is just so.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (06:44)

Yeah. So the one little interesting clue on that retro walking is nothing new in 1915. There was a gentleman named Harmon who had a bet and he won $5,000 and he walked from San Francisco to New York and the bet retro was to be able to do it under one year. And he did it in 260 days. Well, he had a mirror, of course, to be able to see what he was doing. that’s a fun fact.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:11)

Yeah. But, but, you know, you, you’ve mentioned it’s impact on physiology, on the musculature, but I mean, you really must be using a different, because walking is such a reflex activity for us all. Walking backwards elevates it to a whole new level. What’s going on there?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (07:32)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the amount of engagement for the proprioceptors, which is your ability to see yourself in space, like a GPS that we have, it’s at a much higher level. And just to make it very simple, you have those abilities by placing your foot in a different position where you, instead of landing heel, toes, here you’re going with the ball of the foot backwards stepping with the heel. just a little bit of an insight on the retro walking. That’s part of it. We have it in the traditional walk. So we have many different walks. So that’s just one idea.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (08:14)

Well, let’s, let’s get going on this journey that you’re taking us on now. Obviously we’re to have links to this book. And people will be able to flesh this out, but this is part of this conversation. I’m just intrigued. Let’s go on to another area of walking that we should discuss or be aware of.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (08:33)

to you.

Dr Yun Kim (08:34)

I briefly mentioned mindful walking, which is my passion. You know, everyone talks about mindfulness these days. It’s such a prevalent word. And what does it really mean? And I really want to make it very simple for our audience and our readers. Mindfulness really just means being in the present moment and feeling the feelings you are feeling right here, right now. The sensations of the body. Any tightness or any tension, bringing our whole attention to the body as we walk. Instead of ruminating about the past, worrying about the future, being here now, and that can bring great health benefits. We’ve looked at the research about the benefits of Tai Chi and Qi Gong and some of these movement exercises. And really the key ingredient is the mindful awareness of the present moment. Feeling the breath, feeling the feet on the ground, feeling the temperature, all of these ⁓ awareness activities bring us to the present moment where we can really truly be happy, where we can be really living our lives in the present moment.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (09:58)

Well, mean, the, the, any activity or anything that makes us feel present in the moment where we physically are actually present, not, not halfway around the world with all our friends and followers is, is, is clearly something we need more of.

Dr Yun Kim (10:19)

Exactly, exactly. And so once you train your mind and your body to do this while walking, we can bring it to other areas of our lives. Washing the dishes, doing the laundry, getting your children ready for work. We can do it with a lot of joy and fulfillment because we’re right here right now and really living our lives fully present.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:47)

You want to add anything, Jacques, I kind of-

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (10:49)

You know, I was saying that that was one chapter, the mindfulness walk, which also has some other components such as even hand position or called mudras in the yogic terms. So another chapter that we have is called the actual vitality walk. And this is a walk that is derived from some of the tradition in Himalayan region in the Hunza Valley and that part of the world which I experienced where you actually walk and you coordinate some dynamic breath which the stepping so it’s not just breathing in breathing out but you actually learn how to do a dynamic breath what I mean by dynamic breath that will demonstrate it’s a very dynamic inhalation and then you will do another one and then you will exhale out and then you will count certain steps.

So it’s a five step pattern, which is amazing. I’ve used this for the last 40 years. Also on my AIDS patients were back in the eighties and it really was a life changing technique to be used on a regular basis. This vitality, you are really oxygenating your body. You bring so much oxygen and it affects all those components that are linked with your hormones, with your oxygen, with all the mechanism that deal with the breath, which is a core practice in yogic tradition, the pranayama and in the Chinese medical traditions, have those, uh, shi gong is called shi gong, which is the practice of breath.

Dr Yun Kim (12:29)

And the Vitality Walk is just wonderful. actually one of my favorite walks. It’s very simple, very powerful. And we’ve done it as a class at Empress College where we both worked previously. And what’s wonderful about this walk is that it’s a concentration practice because you’re stepping, you’re also doing a particular kind of breath work. And so

After the walk, we would ask the students, how did you feel? And everyone said that they felt so concentrated that the mind wasn’t elsewhere. They were right here, right now in the park, doing the breathing, doing the stepping, doing the hand movements. And so it’s, again, is a very powerful mindfulness practice with the added benefits of the breath work and the hand mudra.

It’s wonderful and you can do it anywhere. You can do it going to the park. You can do it, you know, in the parking lot, going to your car. It’s not something that requires special equipment or anything like that. Almost anybody can do this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:40)

Hmm. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? Because that type of breath, in to inhale like that, uh, is, being coined by a very famous podcaster at the moment from, uh, one of the universities in America as the physiological side, a great way of relieving anxiety quickly. Uh, and, there’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary about it. It’s just the new. The rebranding of a very ancient practice.

Another one that he is introduced was the conscious resting, know, where you, the physiological resting, where you literally just rest for 20 minutes, consciously scanning the body. Well, we used to call that yoga nidra for many, many years, but this is apparently a new breakdown, a breakthrough way of resting. You know, so it’s interesting to see these ancient practices.

You talk also about hand position or hand movement. Can we talk a little bit? Cause you know, we generally swing our hands from side to side as we walk. But of course there could be much more in it than that.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (14:52)

Yeah, for the vitality walk, it’s a very simple mudra and what you do, you place your thumb inside and you have a loose fist. So that is the mudra. It’s a very basic mudra, which in Chinese medicine, the thumb correlates with the lung meridians, the lung energy. So this is also in terms of primordial, you see a lot of the babies, they have this position. It kind of keeps the energy within.

So it’s kind of gives you that sense of and strength. So that’s the key mudra for the vitality walk. Different walks have different position, but this is the key mudra. So you will see it also as our book has some QR codes. can see the reader can actually see a video, not only see the position in the book, but they also see a video.

Dr Yun Kim (15:46)

And the point in the middle of the palm, it’s called the Lao Gong. It’s a very important acupuncture point that we ask students to concentrate on when you are doing Qi Gong. And so you’re not only activating the lung channel, but this specific point on the palm called the Lao Gong. And so I’ve actually, a patient of mine already got the book and is doing the exercises. And she told me that she can walk further just with the Mudra, just with the hand.

position and she’s a professor of kinesiology and she’s someone who’s very very knowledgeable about movement and it’s it’s it’s a delight that she’s finding something new in there that she can apply right away.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:33)

Now you’ve both mentioned Qigong and Tai Chi and of course these are terms that many of us are familiar with and some of us may have seen people moving very purposefully in the park and thought, that’s Tai Chi or Qigong. Let’s come back to some basics here because it is a movement, Tai Chi and Qigong and so is walking, just to remind us of the difference between Tai Chi and Qigong.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (17:02)

Yeah, so generally when you do Tai Chi form, it has maybe 108 movements or 98 movements where you actually do a very slow motion of your hands and you’re actually moving through space. The Qigong mostly is more static and you might be doing some sounds or some breathing exercises, but there’s not as much physical movement. So Qigong and Tai Chi sometimes are interchanged, however, in our book, we do use the Tai Chi walking method.

And the one specific component of that Tai Chi chapter is you’re not learning the form, which is quite complicated to learn, but you actually are taking three specific walking methods. One of them is called the cat walk, walking just as a cat would do with a very gentle, supple awareness being able to lift your leg and place it softly heel to toes and be able to move in a very gentle fashion.

Then the second one, it’s the golden rooster. That’s part of the Sun Tai Chi style. This actual motion is found in the different schools of Tai Chi where you actually do one leg posture. So it’s like, you know, the flamingo stance that is actually one of the great predictors for longevity and they found out that after the age of 60, your ability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds diminishes at 70. If you can stand for 10 seconds on one leg, then you have a good prospect of longevity.

Dr Yun Kim (18:40)

We’ll try right now.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:42)

Well, I’m tempted to, I’m tempted to, do you know, was, it is interesting that you’re talking about predictability of longevity because I remember when I wrote my own book, a life less stressed, 10 years ago, I was exploring a UK study, which said, walking speed was an excellent predictor of, of longevity for the next five, a five year predictor, know, so that’s not

That’s not surprising when you think about it, because if you see someone struggling at one or two kilometers per hour, you kind of think they’re not well. So you don’t have to be a rocket science to know that, but that’s an interesting one. And now we’re talking about balancing on one leg as being another predictor. Okay. So we’ve got

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:48)

Retro walk, which I love the, I’m going to be doing this when I go to pick up my grandchildren this afternoon, a total war total heel. we have the vitality walk with its mudra and breath work. Dynamic breath work. That’s important. And I love the mudra with its connection to the lung Meridian. And, and then we have the cat walk, which is just this very gentle.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (20:56)

Dynamic breath

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:42)

Walk and I’m guessing the rooster walk is a kind of a strut, a strutting one leg at a time kind

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (21:16)

Something like that, you know, of course, you know, there has martial arts implication because all the Tai Chi moves were used as a martial arts. So you can think of it like a knee strike or a toe strike. So it does have some martial component. And of course, the last one, which is a little bit more advanced is called the bear spirit walk. And that requires you to move more in a zigzag pattern and you create a bear shoulder where your shoulder around it and you have some more pressure in the intrascapular area. So that’s also a very powerful walk that you can do just. Yeah. So that’s in that chapter.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:55)

Wow.

Okay. But that, but now is that the, mean, are there, must be more walks than that. ⁓ I’m guessing, cause my mind is just boggling when you’re drawing all these analogies with different movements in Tai Chi, Chi Gong, martial arts, you know, animals of different ways of walking. mean, is there a, how many more walks have we got here in your book?

Dr Yun Kim (22:22)

We have two more chapters. So immunity walk for, to nourish our immunity and also as cancer support and then, the circle walk and I’ll have our expert Dr. Moore Marco talk about them.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (22:38)

Yes. So yeah, the, the circle walk is called Ba Gua, which is a Ba Gua in Chinese translates as eight trigram or eight directions. So that’s if you have ever seen a specific, sometimes you see them in Chinese restaurants or stores where you see a mirror with this trigram, this straight line and broken lines. And those are a specific style of walking that you walk in a circular pattern. And you have two types of walk that we teach in our book. One of them is called the tiger walk and the other one is the dragon walk.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:20)

This is in the circle walk shark. So the tiger walk and the dragon walk. Okay.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (23:26)

So the tiger walk is very basic. Again, you’re walking around the pattern of maybe start with 16 feet, 16 step, but eventually you will narrow down the circle to 1.5 meter, which is eight steps. So you walk in a circle and you’re holding your hands in a very specific position for the tiger walk. The dragon walk requires you to hold your hands more stretched out in the air. And, you know, that is kind of a…like almost like an isometric exercise. So you are strengthening up your shoulder girdle and of course you strengthen up the intrascapular area. So that’s one of the walks that we show in that one of the two walks and then there is a stretching method.

Dr Yun Kim (24:11)

Yeah, and it’s very unusual because we normally don’t in the Western society walk in that way, do the circle walk. And I know because there’s a spiritual component to the circle walk as well. And also it really works on the lymphatics. We’re like squeezing the limbs in the inguinal area and to really work working, flushing out the lives and there aren’t many exercises that people do that work in that way. And so it’s very unusual, but it’s wonderful for our health.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (24:46)

Yeah, that’s a side effect of side benefit from that. And in terms of Dr. Yun, you mentioned the spiritual attributes that that’s called circumambulation. So you see it done, you know, around, you know, some very specific spiritual sites and all the way to the very famous Kalish mountain in Tibet, where the people would actually walk around the whole mountain as a spiritual practice or.

Dr Yun Kim (25:13)

In many traditions, Catholic tradition, know, there are different mazes where you walk in a circular way.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (25:23)

Mmm,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:24)

Okay. Okay. So circle. Yeah, please go on.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (25:28)

And then Dr. you might want to, as you are the actual individual in that QR code for the immunity walk.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:36)

Yes

Dr Yun Kim (25:37)

Immunity walk. This is again to support the immunity and especially as an adjunct treatment for cancer, for cancer patients. So this is a type of walk that’s very, very recognized and well known in China. And people get into groups and practice this walk to support the immunity. It’s sort of a qigong, it’s a qigong walk.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (26:05)

And what can give us a bit of a clues to what that is? mean, I’m trying to visualize

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (26:10)

So that requires you to move in a very specific pattern where you actually are planting your heel, you’re inhaling, you’re inhaling two times again, two dynamic inhale and an exhale. And you do this pattern one, two, three, shi shi he, which means inhale, inhale, exhale in Chinese. So it’s a shi shi he pattern done very often as a cancer support group and you will go any park in China in the morning, you will have the group of cancer patients that will be doing this.

That was originally developed by a very famous artist called Wu Lin and she was diagnosed as terminal cancer way back in the 60s and then she incorporated this walk and she went into a remission. So it became very popular and now it’s prescribed for cancer support.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (27:04)

Wow. mean, I love this integration of, of breath of movement, not just the movement of one foot in front of the other, but the movement of the body. mentioned lymphatic drainage and, the talk to me a little bit more about how that works. mean, I may, mean, movement improves lymphatic drainage, but this

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (27:27)

So what I wanted to say is that Bagua is, you know, through my, you know, 50 years of martial arts practice and observing different teachers and different styles of martial arts, what was really interesting that in the 1930s, when this, you know, this became part of the health therapeutic system in China, the Tai Chi, the Qigong, the Bagua, all those were taken away from the actual martial combat but use as a health preservation or how to enhance your own health and well-being.

So in terms of the lymphatic is something that we have observed that when you actually are walking in this pattern with this, in Chinese called koubu, it’s called like a pigeon toe, but you’re going in a circle and then you open it up, you are actually stimulating and squeezing those lips and in a daily walk or you know even if you do some basic exercise you’re a great exercise in salute to the sun you do maybe you do the 12 different partial but you don’t have that actual rotation of the hip so it is very interesting and also the ability to move the axilla and to open up the that that key area under the armpit is very interesting now the longevity factor is

Some of these teachers in the 1930s were the average age in China was around 30 years of age. you know, during the Roman Empire, the average age was 19 years of age. These teachers from that generation that was the first generation were able to live in their 80s. That is tremendous longevity factor.

Dr Yun Kim (29:18)

Do you to mention Sun Simiao? We start the book with a quote from Sun Simiao. Do you want to say it?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (29:23)

Ahead, Dr. Ginn.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:26)

Absolutely! We’re with Baited Baratheon,

Dr Yun Kim (29:30)

So the first chapter, we quote this quote from the great Chinese physician Sun Simeo from ⁓ 9th century. And he says, running water is never stale and a door hinge never gets warm eaten. Thus it is with a man’s, a person’s vital energy and physique. And so this idea of movement is so important, so vital to our health. And Sun Simeo lived for how many years, Dr. Murmur?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (30:00)

He lived 101 years of age.

Dr Yun Kim (30:03)

Which

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:06)

In the ninth century, I imagine that was a very unusual, you this is a not well, you mentioned salute to the sun, Jacques. And I’m pleased to say that when I was at university, I did yoga and the yoga teacher said to me, if there’s one exercise you should continue to do for the rest of your life, do salute to the sun. And that’s exactly, that’s exactly what I have done for the last 30 or 40 years.

And I believe it’s been a good part of keeping my back in reasonable condition, considering my background in dentistry, not very good, you know, salute to the sun, a wonderful exercise.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (30:46)

Yeah, great exercise. know, traditionally in India, when I spend time there, traveling and visiting India, they would do it 49 repetition. Wow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:58)

Okay. Okay, I think I’m doing well when I do 10 reps in the morning.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (31:02)

10 is fantastic. 10 is fantastic.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:05)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, five on each leg type thing, you know, kicking back anyway, let’s not go into that into the detail, but, but, this walking now, now, you know, pilgrimages have been a very interesting part of people’s life in history. The only way we get around was walking, but pilgrimages were a particularly, important thing. How, how, you know, that long sustained walk, what, what are your, how do you view that physiologically, spiritually? psychologically, do you talk about long walks in your book?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (31:39)

I don’t think we approach the different walks that you maybe you did the walk in Spain from the northern area.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:48)

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of those kinds of walks, I think in tra what they’re all different, but, what’s similar is you set out at the beginning of a day with a certain mindset and you finish the day in a very different mindset. And whether it’s a pilgrimage to a religious site or not, it is a pilgrimage of some sort in your own head. Yes. Sustained walking does for you.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (32:15)

Absolutely not here in California because we’re in California can speak of the missions they have this the Spanish missions that were you know before California separated and became you know part of the state so the missions are at an 18 miles distance so every 18 miles there’s a mission and that they found out that that was a good test for one’s faith for one’s ability to walk 18 miles so

They would start in the morning at one mission and then 18 miles later, there would be the next mission and they could rest and be there. So that’s how they would go from, you know, what we consider now the Mexican border all the way up to San Francisco.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:58)

mission to mission. Interesting because in my experience, I’ve come to realize that about 26 kilometers, which is about 18 miles is in a day is my comfortable level. So I’d have gone quite well on that, but it’s, it’s kind of walking. What I love so love about walking is it’s accessibility. It’s really not part of a public health initiative. it? Why is it?

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (32:59)

Correct.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:25)

Why isn’t it being championed? mean, your book will go some way to addressing this, but how do we get it out there into the world? Apart from your book, we need to encourage people.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (33:40)

I think what’s happened, of course, with the advent of the automobile and you can see in different cities where I actually observe people, let’s say in Paris, if you’re in Paris and you see the individuals taking the metro, the subway, you will notice that they have to actually walk about 20 to 30 minutes to get to the subway. There’s at least possibly one train exchange. That’s another 20 minutes and then another 20 minutes the other way.

So you already got the one hour there and when I’m back, so they’re walking the two hours a day. But, know, unless you’re in, I’m talking for United States in cities like New York or maybe San Francisco in Los Angeles, there’s not much walking going on unless you specifically do it.

Dr Yun Kim (34:25)

There are a lot of sitting and we know as clinicians that they’re just sitting is detrimental to your health. It’s no neck pain, back pain, terrible sciatica. And you’re right, it really needs to be part of a public health campaign. We need people to walk, you don’t need expensive equipment, you don’t need to join the gym. It’s so simple, almost everyone can do it. You don’t have to be athletic.

I myself am not but I totally enjoy walking and again you know when patients come in we’ve I’ve never had a patient come in because of an injury from walking. Certainly pickleball you know lifting lifting lots of lifting injuries yoga pilates lots of injuries but never from walking so its safety is number one and as patients come in and they don’t they don’t know what to do we can’t just say well you need to exercise we need we need to give them a whole program.

That’s one of the reasons why we wrote this book, reshoot this book to give a handbook to a patient and they can start where they are. They can just start with the mudra. You know, start with a mudra walking to your car, start with one block around the house. That’s fine. And you, you build up, you build up.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:44)

Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I mean, and I love this integration of the breath work. talk about nutras and hand positions. We’ve done so many programs on the breath and I identified as one of my pillars of health. Obviously, life is in the breath, but to incorporate breathing into these different movements adds another dimension.

Dr Yun Kim (36:07)

Absolutely.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (36:07)

And going back into time, the great physician, Chinese physician named Watou, he’s actually in the second century was able to observe some specific animals like a bear, like a tiger, like a crane, like a monkey. And he was able to absorb their energy. In other words, what made them so special? Integrate those movements and that is what we talk about Qigong but some of them have very specific breaths so nothing new this is nothing new this is something that is part of ancient medicine that’s one of the you know they do have the acupuncture they do have the herb they have the Trinama which is the medical massage but one of the key thing is the medical movements you know Tai Chi, Qigong, walking, breath work all those martial practices are part of that.

And going back to the Shaolin temple in China, where the great patriarch Bodhidharma, he actually noticed that the monks were just sitting meditation and they were getting weak. So he developed a series of exercises somewhat similar to some of the yogic practices and they have changed and improved and were able to live much longer healthier lives.

Dr Yun Kim (37:30)

And I do want to highlight the Veteran Administration, the VA. It’s the largest healthcare program in the United States for veterans. And at the West LA VA, they offer acupuncture and Tai Chi, teach breath work, mindfulness. It’s incredible. So it’s really integrated here in Los Angeles. And so, we’re really, really proud that the, these ancient practices are part of the VA system and off offered, uh, to our, our veterans who are so deserving. Dr. Moore Marco and I have been volunteering at the, uh, PTSD clinic at the West Los Angeles VA doing.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (38:18)

Yeah, for combat veterans. do have to say that from that standpoint, the key thing here is that you have to realize that these techniques are so powerful and so important in making those changes, know, even a little bit at a time. So, you know, in terms of we were talking about walking, most people heard that.

10,000 steps you have to do that. That was from the little step counter, Manco pie is Japanese step counter that had 10,000. So it went around and then you have the 10,000 next time I should have it and show it to you. However, you know, even adding 500 to a thousand steps a day can be drastically improving your health and longevity, your cardiovascular, you know, you know, the diabetes, all the cancer prevention, all those factors just a little bit at the time and of course longevity factors.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:14)

Hmm. Well, I think, you know, it’s accessibility, it’s safety. It’s, you know, it’s longevity as an exercise through life, being outdoors in nature, being able to talk socially while you’re doing it. I mean, there is just, there’s so many wins in this and this is, and in your book is you’ve talked about so many different walks.

You’ve really whetted my appetite the book has, actual demonstrations of this through QR codes or links for that to be demonstrated. I mean, this is so empowering, so wonderful. really want to thank you both for this wonderful, you know, bringing it together and, and, and making it so interesting and exciting and empowering. thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge with us here today and in your book, which I look forward to reading.

Dr Jacques MoraMarco (40:10)

Thank you, Ron. Thank you so much for all the work you’ve done over the years.

Dr Yun Kim (40:13)

Thank you very much, Dr. Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:16)

Well, I receive many suggestions about potential guests on my podcast, but when I got this invitation, I jumped at it because as I said at the intro, walking is not just a part of my everyday life. I do try and do 10,000 steps at least today. But for two weeks every year, I go on a walking holiday and I have done for the last 12 or 13 years. And this year I’m walking in the Dolomites in Europe.

But what I love about it is it’s such a mentally, it’s a way of slowing down. It’s a way of taking the time to smell the roses, to see, to smell, to hear nature as we walk along, as we see something in the distance and walk towards it and walk through it, a village usually or a town or a street or wherever it is, just to be mindful about what we are approaching and what we are doing.

But this book takes us on a journey that is just so transformative. The book is called Walking Your Way to Vitality. Integrating walking, breath work and mindfulness into your daily exercise. And we have talked about movement, we have talked about breath work, we have talked about mindfulness, we’ve talked about the importance of being out in nature, the sociability of being together the taking the time to literally smell the roses.

This has it all. And we will of course have links to that book, Walking Your Way to Vitality. And I would recommend it very highly. There are demonstrations of each of those walks we’ve discussed in the book. Well, I would also encourage you to join Unstressed Health Community where we can discuss this and many other aspects of work and health that are empowering and good for your health and well-being. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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Is Cancer a Parasite? A Radical New Perspective with William F. Supple PhDhttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/e3f3b1d1-2728-4fba-b048-b42e004c5bfc/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES Email Address* billsupple24@gmail.com

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸

• Cancer is a Parasite
• The Sunlight Solution (upcoming June)

He shares research and case studies via his Substack:
https://fenbendazole.substack.com

00:00 – Introduction to cancer and current models
03:30 – Guest introduction & background
05:00 – Personal story: mother-in-law case
10:00 – Fenbendazole discovery & early results
15:00 – Scientific background and credibility
16:30 – Cancer as a parasite theory explained
25:00 – Mechanisms: microtubules & cell destruction
30:00 – Multiple pathways of antiparasitic action
35:00 – Historical research & suppression claims
40:00 – Evidence and controversy in medicine
45:00 – Doctors, risks, and adoption barriers
47:00 – Global parasite treatment vs cancer rates
53:00 – Prevention insights and public health
54:30 – Practical advice and dosage discussion
59:00 – Closing thoughts and summary

Is Cancer a Parasite? A Radical New Perspective with William F. Supple PhDDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we explore the subject of cancer, but from a very, very unique perspective. Now cancer affects something like 500 million people globally, about 10 million people a year die from cancer. It’s very unlikely that anyone listening to this doesn’t know someone within one degree of separation from themselves, if not themselves who hasn’t had it.

So cancer is a huge and growing problem and literally billions of dollars have been spent looking for the magic bullet, looking for the cure for cancer. And so much of the attention in cancer research has been around cancer as a mutation of gene production of genes in general. And I would have to say if the evidence is anything to go by and so much.

All of this research has been focused on that model, that something is seriously wrong if we are indeed practicing evidence-based medicine. Well, my guest today challenges that. My guest is William Supple Jr. Now William has got a PhD in neuroscience, so he has certainly understands the science and arguably because he is not directly involved in cancer research.

He may well approach this or he has, as you will hear, approach this from a very open minded perspective, driven by his own personal experience, which is often the way that medical practitioners or people in general have an epiphany. He’s the author of a book called Cancer is a Parasite. And he’s also the author of another book coming up in June called the Sunlight Solution.

And we’ll definitely be getting him back for that, but in his work, Bill explores provocative ideas about cancer biology and repurpose drugs, medications, and the role of chronic of vitamin D in chronic disease. So today we examine the science behind his hypothesis about cancer as a parasite. Now, I must admit when I first got suggested to talk to William, I did it pick my interest as to what he actually meant by that.

And he defines that very carefully and comes up with some truly a-ha shocking moments and very empowering moments too. And here we are again, talking about repurposed drugs. Now to any regular listener of this podcast, you will know that the two words business model seem to go a long way to explain how our world works in general and how our health system works in particular. It’s a great business model, just not a very good health model.

And repurpose drugs have very little appeal to researchers and public health authorities, ironically, because, well, guess what? Some of them are a little bit too effective and that’s not good for the business model. Well, today we explore one of those drugs and I think you will be truly shocked and surprised and I hope empowered by what we cover here today. I hope you enjoy this conversation I have with William Supple.

Welcome to the show, Bill.

William F. Supple PhD (03:31)

Thanks Ron, great to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:33)

Now, Bill, you’ve written a very interesting book with a very compelling title, Cancer is a Parasite, and you offer a very different framework of an understanding of, of cancer. So what, what initially made you question that traditional genetic mutation model of cancer?

William F. Supple PhD (03:54)

Well, mean, first off, I’m here with good news today. There appear to be legitimate cures for a number of different types of cancer in the form of antiparasitic drugs. And my book is about Phenbendazole in particular. So I got into this kind of as a happy accident. So my mother-in-law was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer back in 2021. And she, at the time, she was 83 and had, you know, went in for a bowel obstruction and they did some imaging and found that she basically had cancer everywhere. Lungs, liver, bones, kidneys, basically too many places to count.

And at 83, she had decided she didn’t want to go through chemotherapy. So she went, was released home to hospice. I mean, she was so bad that she actually received last rights in the hospital because she wasn’t sure she would make the trip home, which was about five miles. So she was that bad. ironically, the morning after we got that news, I was just going through what I typically read.

And I just happened to be looking at an article on vitamin D of all things. I was reading a specific article about how bacteria causes stomach cancer. And in the comments, there was a comment that said, look at fendendazole, it cured my prostate cancer. And that started to where we are today that kind of lit a match to an interest. So I started to look at the research and I found a few case reports, but the preclinical research on fendendazole was pretty compelling that it’s worth a shot, especially for someone who’s not going to do anything else.

So I went down to, you know, it’s over the counter. It’s an animal anti-parasitic drug. I went down to in the states in Vermont, we have what’s known as tractor supply and it’s basically an animal feed type store. So I went down and got a package of it and I tried it myself. It didn’t kill me. And I sent a pack to my, it’s about, you know, $8. So I sent a pack to my wife who was with her mother down in Florida and she tried it. We figured 50 % genetic match. You know, we didn’t want to make a sick person sicker.

So my wife took it. No reaction. So we, presented the idea that maybe my mother-in-law should try fennbendazole to see what happens. She had nothing to lose and it was basically a Hail Mary. Well, her husband, we got a bunch of it on Amazon. You know, for about $50, you can get about six months supply. So we bought it on Amazon and he started mixing it in her daily yogurt. You know, she was kind of out of it.

Whether she realized she was getting it or not, you know All the kids agreed that she should do it and you know her husband and she did as well so in about two to three weeks she started to perk up and her appearance activity appetite all greatly rebounded from where she was which was basically moribund and she Felt well enough to dismiss hospice and after about a month, she felt well enough to go back to the oncologist who had dismissed her, given up on her for dead. So she was surprised. He was surprised to see her. So they did some testing in her blood tumor marker for breast cancer, which is CA 2729, went from 316 down to 131. So we knew something was happening. The only thing she had gotten was vanvendazole.

So, you know, obviously he was amazed and he said, continue to do what you’re doing. So she continued to do what she was doing. And after about six months, her blood tumor markers were normal. She was up and around, you know, she started riding her bike at three to four months. And, know, she’s getting ready to celebrate her 88th birthday. So if I didn’t actually see that, I wouldn’t have believed it. It was just a remarkable turnaround.

Not one single side effect. So it was as if, you know, it was a true miracle happening right in front of us. So she, she kind of became an urban legend and in her little town. So everyone wanted to know how did she do it? You know, how come she’s still here? How did she survive metastatic breast cancer?

So, you know, it’s like anything word of mouth travels fast and we my wife and I would tell people what happened, but you end up telling the same story. Dozens of times it gets tedious. So we determined that we should have some sort of a vehicle to get her story out there. So what I did is I started a sub stack, which is a online publication here in the States that has a lot of alternative medical stuff in it. So it’s actually a nice service.

So I started that sub stack called bend, bend is all dot sub stack.com. And I did it under the pseudonym Ben fan because I’m not an oncologist and I’m not an MD, I’m a PhD. And I felt that the, the message was what mattered, not the messenger. So I did it anonymously. So, so I published her case report so I had all her information and it was about a year out from her initial diagnosis and she was happy as a clam.

I published that and then what started to happen were simultaneously other people were both motivated to try to self-treat their own cancers or were currently self-treating with fendt-bendazole and they said it worked for me too. So it kind of became this online gathering place where people who were self-treating with fendendazole could tell their story. So I did that for a couple of years and was publishing detailed case reports as best that we could. People would tell us, give us information.

Again, as best they could, they just come through a hellish experience and they weren’t necessarily trying to record all the information for publication, but they had pretty good records. the common feature, the power in the case reports was that everybody did something different. The control was the lack of control.

It was so haphazard that the only thing that was common in all the case reports, you’ll see them in the book, was the presence or absence of fendendazole. So it didn’t really matter what type of solid tumor cancer they had. It didn’t really matter how much they took as long as they were sure that they had absorbed it. And it didn’t really matter how often they took it.

So it’s a really interesting product where it seems to be like a primary poison for cancer cells. the interesting thing is that, again, it’s an anti-parasitic used for animals primarily. But there are analogs in humans as well that are basically the same drug, but it’s approved for humans human use so it’s going to be a lot more expensive obviously but the pharmacological scaffold is the same. So whether you use my bendazole, albendazole, fenben, oxy, fendazole, thibendazole, it’s all kind of the same stuff. So I forget where I was going with that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:59)

Well, well, well, hang on there, Bill, because where you are got up to is quite extraordinary. There’s so much here to unpack about, a cheap, repurposed drug. mean, the alarm bells are going off in the cancer industry right there, because we hear so many breakthroughs of wonderful new drugs that are phenomenally expensive.

And yet we still have an epidemic of you know, of cancers it’s interesting because so much disease, are two schools that I’ve been aware of, and you’ve introduced another one, the mutation model of gene mutation. And that’s been the focus of literally billions of dollars worth of research and literally billions or trillions of dollars worth of sales. The fact that cancer is a genetic mutation model of cancer. That’s one thing.

I think a lot of people look at cancer as a metabolic disease and an energy thing. Um, but here you are introducing a different model. What do you think? And do your background will come? Well, actually it might be interesting to just get a little bit of your background there first, uh, in terms of you’ve got a PhD. Tell us a little bit about your background.

William F. Supple PhD (14:24)

Right. So I’m trained as a neuroscientist. So I graduated from Dartmouth in 1986 and I, I studied brainstem mechanisms of behavior, broadly defined specifically learning and memory. Right. So I used, you know, I used, you know, various neuroanatomical behavioral and electrophysiological methods to basically record how neurons learned and remembered things in living, behaving animals.

So that’s my background is systems neurobiology, looking for where the stuff of learning and memory is stored and how that might be expressed in behavior. So I actually found one of the N-grams in 1986 and we published a paper in Science that found the N-gram for what’s known as long-term habituation in the midline cerebellar vermis. So that was kind of my claim to fame way back then.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:41)

But I guess, I guess the point about, I guess the point in just giving us that little bit of background is you’ve got a PhD in neuroscience. So you will have a fair grasp of, I think this is an understatement and I say it with all due respect, you’ve got a good grasp of, of science and the scientific model.

And yet, and yes, perhaps one could argue that not being an oncologist, not being locked into the gene mutation model, not being connected with research or requiring a research funding. You approach this with an open professional mind. And, and now my next question to you is, cause you must have thought about this many times. What is, what do you think the biological mechanisms are that you’re proposing here? What’s going on?

William F. Supple PhD (16:36)

Well, one common misperception with the cancer is a parasite notion is that parasites cause cancer. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m describing is the nature of cancer. What is cancer? And what I’m saying is cancer is parasite. It doesn’t speak to what causes cancer. Now, as you get deep into the book, we talk about, you know, untreated subthreshold parasitic infections that are rampant in the Western world that could be a, occult risk factor for cancer. But that those two ideas are totally separate. So what, the book is all about, later in the book.

So the book starts out describing, how fendt-bendazole kills parasites.I talk about how Fendendazol uses the same mechanisms to kill cancer cells. you know, lucky us, cancer cells have the same structural weakness that parasites do. So, and then I talk about why are, why is this information not really well known? And that’s kind of an interesting side of the book. But as far as what causes cancer. I really don’t speak to that. The cancer as a parasite theory is just that, it’s a theory, it’s a way to think about it.

And the way I came up with it was I was reading a bunch of articles about parasitology and cancer at the same time and I kept it over the months I would be deep into an article and I have to go back to the title to determine whether it’s reading about cancer or a parasite. And you do that 50 times, eventually the light bulb goes off that we’re talking about two things that are very similar.

And the fact that an anti-parasitic drug is killing cancer cells. It’s not, you know, you don’t have to be Einstein to make the leap that cancer and parasites share all these different features, most notably you know, the elephant in the room is that an anti-parasitic drug. fendendazole is what I focused on because it’s over the counter and cheap and easy to find. And that’s what people are self-treating with. But there’s a lot of different anti-parasitic drugs that have anti-cancer capabilities.

So it’s not just fendendazole. the basic clinical Petri dish, in vivo, animal stuff, all that research has been done. And, you know, a lot of the scientists who endeavor in that field have done all the heavy lifting. And what’s missing is the translation to human clinical trials. And this is where the politics come into it. There been a number of instances where, you know, this wheel keeps getting reinvented. To fend bend is all anti-parasitic, secure cancer wheel. And I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but it will, a scientist will discover what I discovered. You know, usually there’ll be an research institution and that has all the institutional capture and regulatory capture and professional risk that these people would entail, would endure if they were to say that publish a book like I did.

Mean, I’m the only one who could have published this book because I have nothing to lose, which is I think what you’re getting at before. it’s kind of like, so, and I’m not really captured intellectually or by what I, by dogma, you know, to say for an oncologist to say that cancer is a parasite would be heresy. They’d be, you know, laughed. Left out of the the arena because it’s so obvious and because it’s so it’s a bold statement, but it’s true.

And what happened was as I tried to, so the way scientists work is you do hypothesis testing, you try to prove that cancer isn’t a parasite, right? You would try to prove that statement to be wrong. Well, I couldn’t prove it wrong. And what I’m hoping is that when the book is out, the parasitologist, the bug people will hook up with the oncologists.

The cancer people and that they will realize that there’s a lot of synergy between their two fields. And the really exciting thing is if you’re using parasites as a model for cancer, you can accelerate the development of drugs on parasites. You don’t have to test it on humans. So you could have rapid drug development.

You could see how the parasite is going to develop resistance to it. And you can anticipate all of these things and tweak your drug and make it more perfect before you ever test it on a human. the model is very powerful and some of the details in the book where cancer is a parasite so that we can, one thing I wanted to really make sure that I talked about today was if this is, why is it somebody like me discovering this and it’s really not me. This Phenbendazole and anti-parasitics appear to go through like a 20 year cycle where they’re discovered and then they disappear. It seems like they’ve been been suppressed. So as I go through, as I was going through my research.

I was about 95 % sure that Fenbendazole was the real deal because I had my mother-in-law who, you know, it cured her. It’s not like ⁓ in between response. No im- you know, blood tumor marker normal, no evidence of, no imaging evidence of cancer at all. Till today. So, breast cancer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:24)

Can I just stop you because, mean, this is quite a remarkable discovery or connection, let’s put it that way, fraught with problems, fraught with problems, because if anybody in a research institute that studies cancer would come up with a cure for cancer that is worth a dollar or two, they will be pillar read, run out of research and we’ll never see the light of day again. And I think this is a story that is very easy for the public to miss. But once you become aware of it, difficult to ignore. I think your scientific background, which clearly you have in order your neuroscience and PhD background, is, is clearly well placed to make connections. You mentioned that Pat, the, and I love the fact that you’re saying parasites don’t cause cancer and you’re not even sure, we’re not even talking about why that might even be the case.

We’ve covered many reasons in environmental nutritional medicine. You know, the question is, why don’t we all have cancer given what we’re exposed to, not why did I get it? But I’m intrigued by your statement about the structural weaknesses, the similarities between a parasite and a cancer cell, because essentially a cancer cell in the breast is, is really instead of breast cells being there, there are cancer cells which don’t do the same work as a breast cells do. And similarly in a prostate and in lung and gut, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re rogue cells. What’s the structural weakness that I have in common.

William F. Supple PhD (25:09)

So the main, know, if it was a multiple choice test and you asked on the test, is the main similarity attacked by fanbendazole that cancer and parasite cells share? would be, it attacks the microtubules. So parasite and cancer microtubules share the same structural weakness where that Phenbendazole binds, highly, has a high affinity to bind to both parasite beta tubulin and ⁓ cancer beta tubulin. So they both share that same genetic weakness. But Phenbendazole, that’s main reason. So once you clog the microtubules, which is the skeleton and the transport system of the cell, it dies a number of different ways. It starves to death, it explodes.

You know, if a cancer cell has a problem, it will self-destruct through a process called apoptosis and through oncogenes, P53 being the main oncogene will be triggered to kill the cell or disabled so that a cancer cell remains active. the way that, so that’s just one mechanism that FenBEN uses to kill cancer cells and parasites, but it has 10 other ways. So some of them are, it’ll block glucose uptake, it’ll block angiogenesis, the development of new blood vessels.

It’ll mess around with molecular mimicry so that the phembendazole prevents a cancer cell from cloaking itself in antigens that protect it from the immune system. Essentially, it becomes invisible. So, Phenbendazole destroys that. It also disrupts the tumor microenvironment, which a tumor is a heterogeneous group of cells.

And what it does as it forms the tumor, it will create what’s known as a stroma, which is more or less like a force field of cells that keep material and it’s a protective coating that protects the cancer cells inside, especially important in pancreatic tumors. So, Phenbendazole blows that apart. It destroys the stroma.

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William F. Supple PhD (29:04)

It also will disrupt the drug efflux pumps on the surface of the cell. So cancer cells and parasites have defense mechanisms to protect them from outside agents that might disrupt them. let’s say you infuse a toxic substance, a cancer drug or an anti-parasitic, next to a parasite cell or cancer cell or vice versa. It has a defense mechanism called drug efflux pump, P, glycoprotein pump, if you’re interested in that.

Excuse me. the, the, instead of, so as the substance is being passively diffused into the cell, these pumps pump it out, kind of like a leaking boat with a bilge pump antiparasitics disrupt that process as well. So there’s a number of different ways that phenbendazole can kill the cancer cell. The reason why you have no side effects with phenbendazole is because the cancer cell or the parasite has a hundred times greater affinity for the drug than to do healthy cells. So you don’t get any side effects.

So, and the beauty of and bend is all is that it’s you take it by mouth. It goes through the circulatory system and binds like a magnet to the cancer cell, finds it and destroys it. And the reason why it’s so effective is it, like I said before, it doesn’t just kill the cell one way. Like if the cell is trying, if the cancer cell is mutating and it becomes less sensitive to the microtubule effect.

It’s got nine other ways that phenbenzoyl is going to kill it. So it completely wipes out the whole tumor. that, so because of its affinity for the cancer cell and its multiple redundant mechanisms to kill the cell, there’s none left to become drug resistant because they’re all killed the first time through. Whereas with traditional chemotherapy.

What happens there is it will kill the cells that are vulnerable, but leave the cells that aren’t. And those are known as cancer stem cells. And those are the cells that metastasize and eventually kill the patient because there’s no treatment by definition. Phenbendazole has been shown in many labs to kill those stem cells. So after they’ve developed from traditional treatment like in Christine, the taxing tax halls, you know, standard of care, chemotherapy.

If you come in and give the animal, fan, Ben is all, kills those metastasized stem cells. So the, the, the, I have a chapter in the book. How come the people in my case reports, how did they survive after going through all the chemo? So the one thing you should realize, so I’ve got 21.

20 case reports, including my mother-in-law. And most of the people, my mother-in-law is one of the outliers who did no other treatment other than Phenbendazole. But many people, you did Phenbendazole as a last resort. They had gone through chemo, radiation, and you just can’t do that forever. You kind of reach the endpoint and the doctor says, that’s it. You know, get your affairs in order. Sorry, we did everything we could for you.

That’s when most of the people in the case reports started Fenben and lived to tell about it with no side effects. the case reports are proof positive that this works in humans. The animal research, the preclinical Petri dish research suggests that this would be a powerful anti-cancer drug.

The human case reports prove it. So do you really need to do human clinical trial and with no side effects? So it’s almost too good to be true. So I started before to tell you as a, when I was doing this book, I was 95 % sure that Fenbend is always the real deal, but being a scientist, you always have to see that there could be an uncontrolled artifact that is influencing all these successful case report, some uncontrolled variable. When, as, as a course of doing my research, when I came across this word in a published paper in 1975, on code is on code is okay.

NCO, which means tumor dissolve. This is Fenben dissolve renamed as a cancer drug in 1976 a I knew about and Ben Dissolve as a cure for cancer. I had, here’s the paper in 1976. So they named it Octa Dissolve. So as a scientist, as a nerd, I can tell you exactly what happened. So this was done in Belgium. The scientists were experimenting with a molecule, an anti-parasitic molecule anti-parasite molecule that was off patent since 1961.

They found that, you know, it disrupted the microtubules and rat brain tumors. And they’re just not going to do one paper. They’re going to do many things in parallel. They’re going to be testing it in animals. They’re going to give it to their friends who have cancer. They’re going to have all types of parallel experiments going. And by the time this paper comes out, they’re going to know whether they have a real cure for cancer. And they did. Two reasons. One, to name it octodissolve, tells you what its function is. When I saw that word, I knew van bendizol is a cure for cancer, and Pharma knew about it. In 1976. I go through the book and I show how I prove that it was suppressed. Would you like to know how I did that?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:03)

Bill, Bill, would I like to know? Yes, I would. And I’m sure my listeners would too.

William F. Supple PhD (36:10)

Okay, so and remember I said that every 20 years or so, fendendazole is rediscovered, that wheel is rediscovered, that this cures cancer. So in 2002, there was a paper, they looked at mabendazole, but again, that’s a functional equivalent for fendendazole. And this was at the University of Texas in conjunction with MD Anderson Cancer Center, which is a big cancer center here. So they did all the experiments that you would want to do to prove that mabendazole is a cure for cancer in animals.

So they showed that at very low physiological doses, it killed cancer cells, all different types of human cancer cells in the petri dish, know, breast, ovarian, prostate, lung cancer, you know, glioblastoma. So all different types of human cancers, it killed at nanomolar concentrations. Then they put it, then they implanted the tumors into rats, killed them, didn’t kill the rats, the rats were fine. So they published this paper that said, hey, we’ve discovered that this novel microtubule disruptor known as medendazole is a cure for cancer in 2002. So they mentioned, they said that it was novel three or four times. And if you go through that, references of that paper.

They don’t cite this 1976 paper because it would be unscholarly not to if they had known about it. So the 2002 paper by an Indian, his name’s hard to pronounce, but I’ll butcher it, Mercopathy, 2002 in clinical oncology. was a very high level journal that researchers didn’t know about auto-dissolve being a cure for cancer from the 1976 paper. The reviewers, the peer reviewers who were supposed to be the oncological experts didn’t know about it. And none of the readers of the paper know about it either because someone would have said, hey, wait a minute, what about that 1976 paper that found that Benzol derivative?

Is a cure for cancer. They renamed it off itself. So the paper was suppressed. So what happened? How did this paper get suppressed? Well, it’s from 1976. 1976, all journals were on paper in the stacks and medical libraries. So you had to have a physical copy of the journal. What happened in 2002? Well, that was kind of the transition from paper to digital, like the internet for science was that there were some resources, but things were still being indexed and cataloged. In 2025, when I found the paper.

Everything was digitized. You know in this paper is actually these are photographs. They’re not actually keyed in it’s a photograph of the actual paper You’ll see some of those and some of the old journals so between 2002 and 2025 a complete set of Biochemical and biophysical research communications was indexed for the internet and that’s how I found it.

So in 2002, for the Merck Capotti paper, this paper, for whatever reason, was not available. It was suppressed. By 2025, it was available because it was somebody indexed the whole journal like they should. There was no reason not to. So I don’t know where this paper went in 2002. My guess is it’s only a four or five page paper. was probably ripped out of a lot of the journals in medical libraries.

So if someone were to actually do the, the, the legwork, they might find that these pages are missing. So anyway, so it’s kind of like a spy novel that we have here, but the word Anka dissolve, but the word Anka dissolve kind of tells you all you need to know. They know they knew what it did.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:45)

And, is that article in 1976 available now? Would you, how would anyone find it?

William F. Supple PhD (40:52)

yeah. Yeah. This is the actual article. My daughter is affiliated with a university. had to have her printed out for me, but it’s, it’s available. I mean, I don’t think you can suppress it now. I actually published, actually am in the book. It’s so unbelievable. I published this page. I bought the copyright for it so that I would have a paper, a financial paper trail in case this did disappear.

So academic press, I paid them to be able to publish this in the book. So we have a financial paper trail. anyway, so it’s kind of became like this substance cures cancer. And why doesn’t my doctor know about it? Well, your doctor doesn’t know about it because he’s been duped like everyone else. It’s been suppressed.

And doctors, they knew about the power of Phenbendazole, they would certainly give it to their patients. And it doesn’t mean that it’s a binary choice. You have to choose traditional or Phenbendazole. You can do both. it’s whatever people want to do is fine. Everybody has their own life to save.

And if you want to go a traditional route, that’s fine. If you want to go non-traditional, that’s fine, but you know, the rational thing is to go both, you know, cover your basis. And, you know, eventually what will happen, which should happen is people will say, gee, my side of my traditional treatment has all these side effects and it’s a very high risk and you know, low reward.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:38)

Cytotoxic?

William F. Supple PhD (42:40)

cytotoxic and you know, maybe I just want to go with the Fenban and Ivermectin and Mabendazole. So we’re kind of at a kind of a transition here where the this word tells you all you need to know. Farman knows that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (43:02)

Let me just ask this. mean, I was going to ask you, and I think we’ve already answered this. The, what level of evidence do you think would be necessary before such an approach should be widely adopted? But, you already mentioned the terrible word that won a Nobel prize in medicine for humans, I’ve a mectin, which is another cheap, effective, safe, antiviral.

So we’ve already had the experience and I would think any doctor listening to this would be shuddering. Well, there’s two responses. One is to say, I must try this. My patients health is at risk, is, is at stake here. And the other one would be if I tried this, I may get deregistered like a lot of doctors did who had the, the, the, the courage to use something that was effective and cheap, but not recognized by regulatory bodies.

I mean, this is a very, this is a, story is not new. Ivermectin is a good example of that, isn’t it?

William F. Supple PhD (44:07)

Yeah, well, I think what your listeners need to realize is that when doctors get cancer, they use Fendendazole. So, and I know that because they’re subscribers to my sub stack and they write in, you know, thank you for turning me on to Fendendazole. saved my life. So doctors know about it. Doctors will, it’s not standard of care. So their hands are tied.

But they will know about it after this book is out. And it’ll be up to them to push for quick clinical trials to determine the optimal dosage, the optimal co-factors that enhance absorption, and the optimal protocol. Because I think all the legwork has been done by the the basic scientists who have shown that the causal mechanism, the lack of side effects, and what the case reports have done is more or less done clinical trials showing efficacy. Now one more thing that’s going to blow your mind. Do you have enough time to hear this?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:30)

Bill, Bill, Bill, please continue.

William F. Supple PhD (45:33)

Okay, so the number one question that I get on my sub stack is if this cures cancer will it prevent it? It’s kind of a chicken or egg issue, but the it’s very hard to scientifically prove a preventative agent because you you can’t prove a negative like you would never know whether you would have gotten cancer or not if you’re taking you know ground up eggshells or eating crayons or whatever it is. So it’s kind of a logical inconsistency. But what if we had a experiment in nature that was already running on a huge scale that answered that question for us? And we do. So this is what’s so exciting. I mean, I chills talking about this. This is my favorite.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:29)

I’m choked

listening to you and I’m guessing we’re moving towards another book

William F. Supple PhD (46:32)

No, this is in the book. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, we’re talking about anti-parasitics and we’re talking about phenbenzol, albenzol, and flubenzol. These drugs are used to control parasites on a massive scale in 123 countries around the world. There are 62 countries that don’t use them.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:35)

I’ll see you in book, okay?

William F. Supple PhD (47:01)

They’re the wealthier Western countries because there’s this myth that we’re clean, we don’t have parasites, and we have nothing to worry about. The developing countries administer these drugs, most notably albendazole, which is a direct analog of fendendazole, to their populations twice a year to manage parasitic infections. They have, as a group, one half the rate of cancer that the developed countries that don’t use antiparasitics do. One half. And you’re in Australia. So I’ll give you an example. So in Australia, according to the WHO, all these data are not hard to find. Anybody with an internet connection can find them. The WHO, GlobalCan, cancer incidence data. And Canada, it’s about 400 per 100,000.

You guys don’t use have mass drug administration for anti-parasite for parasite control in a place like India, which does the cancer incidence rate is 98. So it’s four times greater in Australia versus India in the U S it’s three times greater than India. Now, when you look at all the countries around the world that use antiparasitics, it’s Mexico, India, most places in Africa, you know, they’re so different genetically, culturally, diet, environment.

The only common feature is the population wide use of antiparasitics and the fact that it’s such a dramatic effect with hap- you’re not even targeting people at risk. You’re giving it to children and adults who, who, you know, are at risk for a parasitic infection, not for cancer. Imagine if they were giving, if they were targeting older people with anti-parasitics, the rate would be. So, so the, the chapter in my book is the unexplained global disparity in cancer incidence explained. So the differential use of anti-parasitic drugs in countries that deworm the population prevents cancer. The elephant in the room is that the countries that don’t use deworm, dewormers, the rich.

Western countries have twice the incidence of cancer. They also have four times the per capita income. So the rich countries don’t use anti-parasitics and we have all types of cancer. Now you can put two and two together. You can see that where I’m going with this, that the, so what is the U S is Australia. Are we free of parasites? No.

The recently did a series of alarming articles that really got no play, but they’re in the book, basically saying that the rich, wealthy countries, including the US, are whistling through the graveyard if we think that we’re not infested with parasites. one article talks about toxoplasmosis, which you get from cats.

They estimate that in the US alone, 60 million people were chronically infected with this parasite. And that’s a lot of people. the problem with that, so the problem with being infected with, infested with a parasite is it causes inflammation.

Untreated inflammation is a major cause of cancer. we still, before when you were getting at what causes cancer, the parasite, it’s not that parasites cause cancer as a, way that most people think about it. They could as a risk factor, untreated parasitic infections could cause cancer through inflammation, through uncontrolled inflammation.

So you’re dealing with kind of like a straw that breaks the camel’s back model where you may have genetic risk factors and then you add on a uncontrolled sub-threshold untreated parasitic infection. Now you could develop cancer. that to me that’s another nail in the coffin of pharma that

Why don’t we treat in the West? Why don’t we treat for parasitic infections? Because we treat for, which affect everyone. Why do we, why are we so fanatical about vaccinations for a sporadic seasonal flu that only some people get? Yet everybody’s infected with parasites. don’t, you, you manage a parasitic infection.

Anybody who has an animal, a pet, you know, we treat our dogs and cats periodically, maybe two, three times a year, we deworm them. Yet people kiss them on the mouth. It’s a parasitic egg transfer behavior. We get infected by the same thing. So we’re infected with parasites. We have to admit it. And all we have to do is start taking anti-parasitic drugs and we’ll prevent cancer at the same time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (53:08)

Now, listen, listen, I mean, this, is, I mean, well, this is mind boggling. It’s, fantastic to hear this story. And it’s not a, mean, it’s taken it to a whole other level. I mean, we’ve done many stories about the influence of big farmer and big food on public health, but with millions, literally hundreds of millions of people that have died since 1976 and everybody listening to this including myself, and I’m sure you would know many people who have died.

It’s a shocking fact. Let’s finish now. Listen, I know you’re writing another book that’s coming out in June about sunlight, and that’s a favorite topic of ours. And I think we will definitely get you back to discuss that. But I want to leave our listener now, and they’re obviously going to have to read your book.

And we’ll have links to that. But what advice would you leave our listener with who A would want to prevent and B if they had a diagnosis, what would be the protocol for taking this incredibly safe and cheap drunk?

William F. Supple PhD (54:24)

Well, what? You know, obviously I’m not a physician, so I don’t actually recommend.

William F. Supple PhD (54:37)

Right, so there’s 21 different case reports in the book and on the sub stack. There’s more case reports on the sub stack. So what I encourage people to do is go to your cancer, you know, go to your diagnosis. So if you have, you know, renal cancer, you know, non small cell lung cancer, NRAS mutated melanoma.

There’s a bunch of them there. Find ear cancer and then see what the person did. know, monkey see, monkey do. See how much they took. You know, it doesn’t mean that it’s the ideal amount to take or that what they did is what you want to do, but take a look at what they did. See what’s right for you. You know, the common theme for all the case reports is the presence or absence of Fenbendazole.

And that doesn’t mean that down the road there’s not going to be, you know, somebody else write a book about Mbendizal or you know some other ivermectin i mean that’s going to be coming soon ivermectin has different mechanisms but just to go back to what kind of what’s happening in the background so i don’t know if you could see my book and then this book see the real Anthony Fauci here

Dr Ron Ehrlich (55:55)

Yes, yes. No, we’ll be doing a story on that.

William F. Supple PhD (55:59)

Right that’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy’s book. The publisher of this book is the publisher of this book. Yep. The government knows about fennbenzo. So we’re very hopeful that things are going to happen quickly. you know, Big Pharma can make just as much money helping people live from cancer than die a slow painful death.

So what I’m asking is that they rethink factor in something like fendendazole into their treatment models and cure people. People should live, not die. And they should, they should have, uh, uh, they should die of old age, like hopefully my mother-in-law will.

And you know, the best thing you can do once you learn about Fenbendazole and you read the book, you read the substack is when you encounter someone who has cancer to just tell them about it, let them do their own research. It’s not going to be right for everybody, but it will be right for someone. And when you help save that person, it’s a unbelievable feeling. And then

You’re motivated to go out and do it more. So there are people who have benefited from the Substack who are out there like apostles spreading the word on Phenbendazole and they’re everywhere. So it’s really a miraculous word of mouth thing. And the beauty of Phenbendazole is you can buy it on Amazon.

You know, they sell it in 50 pound bags. They dump it on cattle feed. So it’s so inexpensive. people get worried about, am I taking too much? Am I not? You just have to take some. And it would be nice to know what the ideal dose is. The minimum dose is 222 milligrams. That’s been the smallest dose. The largest dose that are in our case reports is 2000 milligrams per day. yeah, that’s kind of the range. So that’s a big range, but I have no idea, you know, what, I don’t know what the optimal dose is. From my mother-in-law, she used 222 and, you know, eradicated it so it’s, leave it to people smarter than us to figure out the ideal doses.

Well,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (58:47)

Bill, Bill, I want to, I want to thank you for, sharing this with us. It’s an extraordinary story. And, and we will of course have links to that book and to the sub stack, but thank you for sharing your journey, your knowledge and your, well, there’s not a discovery, but putting it all together and, and sharing it with us today. Thank you so much.

William F. Supple PhD (59:13)

You’re welcome. Thank you. Wow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (59:15)

Well, I think this story highlight some of the problems in medicine. And that is that if you are a researcher and let’s face it, there are so many PhDs out there in the world now who have made their careers medical research. Well, you go looking for research money or funding to find a definitive cure for a chronic disease. One that provides a cure. Well, I think you will actually have trouble finding that money because the return on investment for whoever gives you that money is not there.

Chronic disease management with expensive patented drugs is what the healthcare system is about. And having someone like William, who is a neuroscientist, who has done his PhD, understands scientific research, but comes at it from an open mind and free of conflict of interest. In fact, quite the opposite.

The conflict of interest for William was to find a solution to a problem. And he did that with an, has done that with an open mind. Well, is it a solution? Well, it’s certainly promising and it’s certainly empowering and it’s certainly cheap. if, if Williams research bears it out, it is also very effective. And the rationale behind it, I think is also very interesting.

So much of research now is looking at all these diseases as a metabolic disease. And I, we’ve done some programs on a ketogenic diet being way of approaching cancer because every researcher, every clinician knows that cancer loves glucose. That’s exactly what a PET scan is. You want to find out if cancer has, extended through your body. Well, you inject radioactive glucose cause research knows that cancer cells love glucose. So ketogenic diets are one way of reducing the food available to cancer cells.

But this is a whole new way of looking at it. Now we will have links to a Williams book. Cancer is a parasite and exploring the repurposed drug, which he refers to in his in this podcast. So again, you will have links to that in the show notes. I’d encourage you to join the unstresshealth community. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich well.

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COVID, Immunity & The Truth We Missed – with Prof Robert Clancyhttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/c08f8fcc-6423-4d79-b369-b428005757c0/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES Email Address* robert.clancy181@gmail.com

Social Media Accounts* 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 + @emeritus-prof-robert-clancy-am

Organizations & Affiliations University of Newcastle – Emeritus Professor * Royal Australasian College of Physicians – Fellow (FRACP) * Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia – Fellow (FRCPA) * Biomune – Research/Founder role * Editorial board member – MDPI journal Vaccines*

Books & Publications* Covid Through Our Eyes (co-author)

Key Academic ContributionsHe has:

• 300+ scientific publications (journal articles, clinical trials, immunology research)
• Work on:
  • COPD vaccine development
  • Mucosal immune system
  • Respiratory infections

Notable Research Topics* “The Common Mucosal System Fifty Years On…” * “Towards a vaccine for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease”

00:00 – Introduction Dr Ron introduces Prof Robert Clancy and the topic of immunity and COVID

02:00 – Pandemic Plan Breakdown Discussion on historical pandemic planning vs what actually happened

06:00 – Evidence-Based Medicine & Trust Issues Debate around “trust the science”

10:00 – Ivermectin & Treatment Controversy Clancy shares views on alternative treatments

17:00 – Public Trust & Media Influence Impact of messaging and misinformation

25:00 – Immunology Explained Simply Understanding immune response and suppression

32:00 – Natural Immunity vs Vaccination How the body actually builds protection

39:00 – Medical Education Gaps Why doctors struggled with new information

45:00 – Pharma Influence & Marketing Discussion on evidence-based marketing

50:00 – University & Research Conflicts Case studies including Monash and vaccine research

55:00 – mRNA Vaccine Concerns Risks, unknowns, and long-term effects

1:01:00 – Long-Term Health Implications Cardiac risks and immune system impacts

COVID, Immunity & The Truth We Missed – with Prof Robert Clancy Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we explore the subject of your immunity with a professor of immunology. My guest today is actually Professor Robert Clancy, who is an immunologist, a co-editor of COVID Through Our Eyes, an Australian story of mistakes, mistreatment and misinformation.

Now with decades of experience in clinical immunology and medical research, he brings a critical perspective to Australia’s pandemic response in exploring public health policies, regulatory decision-making and the lessons we must learn to better protect both patients and practitioners in the future. Now, whenever any discussion of COVID in general and the novel mRNA gene therapy slash vaccines is made, then the meme of anti-vaxxer or trust the science is always thrown up, which if you ever wanted anything less scientific, that would be it.

But it seems to be the way that so much of this discussion and debate is approached in our, in our world today. So talking to professor Robert Clancy, and immunologists have so much experience where we are not talking about anti-vaccines far from it, but we are talking about the lessons we have learned from the pandemic in general and the vaccines in particular. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Professor Robert Clancy. Welcome to the show, Robert.

Prof Robert Clancy (01:52)

Thank you very much for having me Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:54)

Now, Robert, you’ve had a long and distinguished career in immunology and immunology is pretty important when we’re talking about pandemics. So this is why I was so looking forward to speaking to you. Was there a particular moment during the pandemic that challenged your assumptions or shifted your perspective significantly?

Prof Robert Clancy (02:16)

Well, that’s a very good question. And no one’s ever asked me that before. The bottom line is this, that I went into the COVID pandemic with the understanding and beliefs that had been incorporated into a pandemic plan. That pandemic plan had been developed over essentially a hundred years through the experience very particular experiences that we’d had with pandemics from the pandemic of 1900 with bubonic plague.

Now that plan had been updated for influenza in 2019 and when COVID appeared, which was very similar to influenza, it’s an inhaled RNA virus infecting the obviously the airways and so it wasn’t difficult for the department of health to modify that plan to encompass COVID, which it did very quickly and very effectively and released that plan around about February, March 2020.

And then I noticed that all of a sudden the plan was not mentioned. various principles of the plan, which included defining public health on the basis of local epidemiology by using whatever drugs you could get, repurposed drugs specifically, as they had been in moderately effectively in other pandemics and using those until and unless specific antivirals appeared. And thirdly, to not have vaccine as the centerpiece of the pandemic plan, because for lot of reasons, it was not going to be the main part of resolving the pandemic, but to use that when it arrived as a very helpful adjunct. And by the time we were getting into the middle of 2020, we were being exposed to lockdowns, masks, all types of public health issues that bore no relationship to any form of epidemiological study and in fact was contra to the one very good study that had been done, which was in a part of California by the Stanford University crew. They did a very good study in March of 2020, very early, finding that 3 % of the population had already been infected with COVID.

But 40 % of those were asymptomatic and most of these cases were mild. And the people who were high risk of getting serious disease was very quickly identified as the people over the age of 65 and people with collateral diseases. And so all of that sort of made sense, scientifically, but didn’t make sense with what was happening in Australia.

So to answer your question, I guess it was something that crept up on me through 2020 and it was still evolving. I went back and read something I wrote in January of 2021, which I think turned out to be pretty right. But I think if I rewrote it now, I can’t do that for 2021. I probably would have been a little more emphatic on some of the points.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (05:58)

Hmm. I mean, you mentioning a plan that had taken a hundred years to develop, but it had really been updated. think it had been updated as late as August, 2019. When we’re talking about these kinds of pandemic plans for a country, we’re not talking about one or two people sitting around trying to work out. Would we do this? This was a comprehensive plan bringing together a lot of expertise. Is that a fair assessment of how a plan like that is done?

Prof Robert Clancy (06:34)

Very true, very accurate. And in fact, you yourself may have been involved, but certainly my group and team and department was involved when I was working at the University of Newcastle. I can remember at least one occasion we had a day practice run where we were, you know, this is long before the pandemic. is seven or eight years ago. were practicing, we were talking about how we would cope.

And in fact, that particular the medical school at Newcastle was very epidemiologically based in the sense that many of the problems that we had as a problem-based learning school were around issues like some catastrophe occurring in the community. So, yeah, we were teaching our students the importance of epidemiology.

And McMaster University, where I’d been earlier, had begun this with people like Dave Sackett who is the father of problem-based learning ⁓ and problem-based medicine. He ⁓ was very, very active in looking at all aspects of medicine through an epidemiologic and statistical lens.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:50)

Mean, David, say you mentioned David Sackett and I know that name because I think he was one of the founders of the Cochrane collaboration, which was set up precisely to help us navigate through the science. mean, the trope or meme trust the science was used a lot during the pandemic. What’s your response to that meme?

Prof Robert Clancy (08:15)

Well, first, Dave and I were the two, we were the receiving internal physician, internal medicine physicians at McMaster for about two or three years. So I knew David very well. And in fact, when we were doing our ward rounds, looking at new patients coming in the next morning, if I saw David, I’d sort of move as quickly as I could to the next ward, because I knew if I got caught, I was going to get a lecture, almost certainly exactly the same one that I’d had a week in, week out before.

He was an amazing guy and he changed the way in fact I think we did medicine although I think it’s pretty important for people to believe that we doctors actually did things for a cause and reason. Before David came up with the idea of evidence-based medicine I think we’d like to think that we always used evidence that really touches on a very wonderful part of my professional career. Sorry, what was the other part of the question?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (09:18)

You know, I just mentioned that, that name is very, very famous. Yeah. Well known to me because of him, coining the term evidence-based medicine. my point, my question was the name was trust the science during the pandemic. And, ⁓ you know, that would be a wonderful idea if we could.

Prof Robert Clancy (09:41)

Just think of those clowns that appeared on television. I shouldn’t say this, but looking back, and even at the time, they were clowns. People getting up and trusting the science. The one thing they never trusted, let alone understood, was the science mean, these were the same guys who were stopping people using things like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. I mean, the evidence was so clear.

I was looking at the other day, because it’s consolidated now. I think at the time, by the end of 2020, when everyone was running around saying, you know, these terrible drugs, they’re dangerous. What a joke that was. They’re the safest drugs you can possibly use. think, oh, we must have randomized controlled trials, which of course, you know, is used by the, when it’s appropriate to use them to say, look, if something’s no good, unless it has a randomized control trial. The randomized control trials for ivermectin in at the end of 2020, there were over 20 randomized controlled trials. Over 20.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:44)

Related to COVID, related to COVID. Yes.

Prof Robert Clancy (10:46)

Related to Related to COVID. And they were published. Anyone can look it up on the web now. And there’s a wonderful graph that sort of graphs the number of studies done over a period of time. You look up IVMMETA.com. IVMMETA.com. And every drug. It’s not a thing just about either mectin or hydroxychloroquine.

Every drug. And you can move on to the wonder drugs still being prescribed by family practitioners. It’s part of the biggest con job that exists. The most recent studies, huge studies, randomized controlled trials show that Mong New Puravera and Pax Lomid have zero impact, Mong New Puravera in particular, and they’re moderately dangerous trials.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:46)

The were introduced during the pandemic and received very quick approval. Very quick. They were basically copies of, but not quite good enough of either mectad.

Prof Robert Clancy (11:58)

Yep. Well, they, the copies of the old HIV drugs, they, that is recycle them, which meant they could charge a thousand dollars a pop. So every time you go along to, a doctor and Dr. So while I write to a script, it’s easy to write one from our new peer review. So that gets used, that’s a thousand dollars and it has zero impact, zero impact.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it might make you feel slightly better one day earlier or something absolutely minor but really has no impact compared with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine which save lives. So yeah we’re looking back in 21, 22 when these drugs were available but not used people died because the drugs were not used. People died in this country and it’s just tragedy, just a tragedy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:51)

Robert, I think it’s fair to say that while you and I and probably a reasonable cohort of people are aware of this, I would estimate 80 % at least of the population. And I would include doctors in this. If you said the word I’ve amectan to them, they would first think of horse dewormers and Joe Rogan, depending yellow or green.

Prof Robert Clancy (13:16)

I’m going to show you that while we’re talking, I’m going to show you a photograph that I took of a patient of mine. Okay. Last week. Can you see that?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:29)

Probably not, but okay, yes.

Prof Robert Clancy (13:31)

So have great thing in middle. Yes. That is a patient of mine holding a tin of sheep. Yep. Cheaper did containing Ivermectin. He’d seen and done his own homework. It’s a true story. He’s given me permission to use the photo. Obviously won’t mention his name. He it’s so unbelievable.

He’d been trying to see me for some time and I’m a seriously old guy and I don’t see a lot of patients anymore. And so it turned out you couldn’t have made a nicer guy. And he said, he wanted to come along really to meet me. He said he’d basically been fixed because he’d seen an interview I’d done with John Campbell, who is an amazing guy in England who runs a like yours. And we must have talked about either making once or twice.

And so he went out to all his doctor friends and said, know, can you write me a prescription because it’s perfectly legal. It’s nothing illegal about writing a prescription for Ivermectin for a period of time. They made it illegal, which was one of the most appalling things that’s happened in my 50 plus years of medical practice. But, but it was, legal now. No one, no one would touch it. No mirroring your comments. And so he went off and bought sheep dip because it’s very good for sheep parasites.

And he worked out the dose, worked it all out and he’s eating, he’s drinking this sheep. And a condition of a post COVID vaccine syndrome, he was, it dramatically changed, which it does in most patients who take lipamectin. And he wanted to come along and tell me that, that, that this had happened. But can you believe in 2026 in February of 2026, you know, I can show you a photograph like that of a patient holding a jar of sheep.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:33)

But, but to put it into perspective, patients, doctors who prescribed ivermectin was seriously challenged about their registration and chemists fulfilling that prescription were also seriously challenged. mean, the degree of capture. I mean, I’ve been following the story of corporate capture of healthcare for over 40 years now, but even I was shocked.

Prof Robert Clancy (16:04)

Well, I avoid legal cases as best I can, but I am involved in a couple at the moment. Exactly these cases, the two that I’m involved in, these are outstanding, unblemished doctors with 20, 30 years experience without complaint. Both of them have not been able to work for four years, four years because they told the truth and prescribed wrote prescriptions for Ibomagddon. In one instance, city GP saved a woman’s life because she went out of her way far more than I think ⁓ you’d expect probably from most doctors, an amazing person. And the other person is in another state.

These are people who are still unable to practice. And you look at what they did, they actually looked at what the science was and said, wait a second, you know, this is not what’s coming out. We’re seeing all the randomized controls trials being used for either mectin hydroxy chloroquine. And, and it looks pretty good, because you remember, right at the time, if you got COVID, then you are being told, stay at home, if you get breathless, there’s no treatment, if you get breathless, go to hospital and they’ll give you oxygen. That was what we being told. When they had two drugs that could fix you up very often in a day or two and certainly reduce your chance of dying and reduce your chance of going to hospital.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:51)

And yet Robert, would argue that if we had a survey now of the medical profession in Australia, 80 % of them would still say, or the horse tea worm. And now we’d never use that and yet ignoring, ignoring the fact that it got a no.

Prof Robert Clancy (18:11)

That piece of sheep do you Wormer? Sheep don’t.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:13)

that it got a Nobel prize for medicine in 2015 for treatment of humans has had literally billions of doses with a handful relatively of adverse reactions. One of the safest, most effective drugs in human history was pilloried like that and prosecuted well in the way you’ve just described.

Prof Robert Clancy (18:38)

That’s an amazing, great. it’s look, it’s basically it’s, if you, whatever reason, taking it, you’ve got three months supply for 60, $70. You know, it’s very cheap. Yeah. That’s the center of the problem because there’s no, there’s no, patent on it. And, the big companies can’t charge them a thousand dollars.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:49)

Is that part of the problem? It’s interesting because at the time I was, I had the honor of being president of the Australasian college of nutritional environmental medicine and Ian bright hope who I know, you know, he drafted up a letter to the TGA, to the NH and MRC, to all the professional organizations suggesting that in combination with vitamin D. Now we actually put aside either mectom said, just give vulnerable people vitamin D vitamin C zinc and magnesium and at least protect that. And the response we got from the TGA was there’s insufficient evidence to support it. And then one year later on the basis of two trials supplied by the company that produced it, Molna Purivir was rushed through TGA approved.

Prof Robert Clancy (19:52)

You know, it’s quite interesting. Molnir Puravir, obviously, I think it was Merck, company, had a captive woman doing the randomized controlled trials. And the first trial looked as though, you know, was having some impact. But the Oxford group in England, as a multi-center trial, said, look, let’s really look at this because there’ve been so much nonsense going on about trials and treatments.

And they looked at 20,000 people treated and it made basically no difference. I, I don’t, I’m not even sure it’s used much at all in England, but my guess is it’s still used a lot here. That’s more new purview. Now the Pax Lovett, which is the Pfizer drug remember Pfizer may was making a billion dollars, a billion us dollars a year from its vaccine and Paxlovin at the height of COVID. A billion dollars a year, a lot of money. A lot of look-back.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:00)

One of my recurring themes is about public health messaging and it’s often confusing and sometimes contradictory from your perspective. What happened to public trust during this period? to, and, well, what happened to public trust during this period? What do you think?

Prof Robert Clancy (21:18)

It’s interesting, isn’t it? When we talk about COVID now, we, we talk more about the impact, of COVID and the regulations around it on, on public health, on the public reactions. I think if we’d had this interview three or four years ago, we’d be sitting talking about the incidents of COVID vaccine damage and all those sorts of things we’ll get on to Robert. I, my perception, my perception, Ron is that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:40)

Onto that

Prof Robert Clancy (21:47)

People, the person in the street is more savvy than a lot of professionals, I think in this area, because they can see through the nonsense. Shameful, shameful acts by some of the newspapers. were articles in the Sydney Morning Herald that were so shameful by turned out be a 1920 year old girl who was a reporter.

And the reporters stopped reporting the facts in the news and became opinion leaders on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. There was one article, it was so bad that quite frankly, I’m surprised someone didn’t sue her. So I wrote her a nice letter, a really nice letter, as nice as I can do anyway. The surprising thing is she wrote back to me. I sent her an email and she sent me an email back and her email was a rather arrogant sort of email saying, look, you you don’t know anything. We only thought about things.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:33)

Yeah.

Prof Robert Clancy (22:46)

For a randomized controlled trial. You know, she pulled out the RCT randomized controlled trial because you know, someone told that’s what you do. So I said, well, that’s terrific. I’m all for that. So I wrote back to her with a list of the randomized controlled trials on one side of the page for ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and then zero for the messenger RNA vaccines outside of the very initial one, which didn’t show are protected against serious disease. So for serious disease there’s never been a randomized controlled trial. Not one.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:22)

The mRNA vaccines.

Prof Robert Clancy (23:24)

The MRA, the only randomized controlled trials were done were the registration trials where they were contrived. They didn’t want people who were very sick just in case it ruined the trial. They got wealthy adults and showed there was a reduction of acute infection, but no impact at all on serious disease.

And so what was desperately needed was randomized controlled trials on the high risk people and to see if you could stop admission to hospital or death. know, the two indicators. Never done. So what happened? There was a whole lot of reports, observational studies showing, look, we reduce the amount of admission to hospital. We reduce deaths, all very short term. Some of them six weeks, some of them eight weeks, maybe three months, all very short term.

And it’s very good reason not to do it any longer because after three months is no effect. And then as the boosters were being used, you started dipping down and getting negative immunity. Now this is very scary. All of this is predictable. All of this was predictable because the same occurs if you give lots of flu shots for same type of disease, so negative immunity means that in that study, the people who were vaccinated are getting more infections and more serious infections than the control group.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:00)

You just said something, you used the word predictable, which for you as an immunologist of 50 years experience may, may, may be so. Iit is so, but, but, for, know, for you, knowing everything you did, you know, that was predictable that the more boosters you got, the more susceptible you were to the disease.

Prof Robert Clancy (25:27)

That’s true. Well, let me tell you why. And now you and anyone listening to this will probably know a lot more than the people who make the political decisions. if you think of the role of the immune response in the body, we have a body inside us, which the body inside of us cannot tolerate one bug because that can quickly grow and get septicemia and you’re dead. And so you need an immune system that will be sterilizing, stop it cold dead.

But when you look at the surface of the body, so we’ve moved from the inside of the body to the surface, it’s covered in bacteria. You’re breathing, you’re eating them in, you’ve got food, all these foreign proteins. And so the immune response that’s operating at those surfaces has to be very clever. It’s got to selectively let the things you want into the body, but it’s got to stop nasties coming in.

And so it has to do that, it has to be highly regulated and regulation means a turn off tap, which you don’t have to anywhere near that degree inside the body because you know, you’ve got to do everything you have as quickly as you can to stop this tsunami of bugs growing in your bloodstream like a culture medium. So you have this suppression that occurs. Now that suppression, here we get a COVID virus that comes in and

Because you’ve been getting Corona viruses for years, you’re already seen that virus to some extent. And so you’ve got this balanced positive and negative aspects of immunity. And it’s the net effect of the positive protective and the negative promotion aspects or suppression of the positive that gives you the net effect.

Now, the more you give vaccines, the more you actually stimulate suppression. Now I’ll give you an example. Well, I’ll ask you, you’ve got a 10 year old little boy who’s getting hay fever all day, every day. And you go along to the allergist. What’s that allergist likely to do? You’ve tried all the antihistamines and things. What’s he going to do? He’s going to give you allergy shots. What’s an allergy shot?

An allergy shot is just like a COVID. You’re injecting the antigen into the skin systemically. And the aim is to keep giving these injections, just like you do with COVID boosters to get a net suppression of the inflammatory response to the pollens that you’re breathing in. The body doesn’t know the difference between a pollen and a COVID virus. And so the principles are exactly the same. Does that make sense to you?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:14)

Yes. Well, I think so. And, you know, I mean, the point about natural immunity was also challenged. Wasn’t it? I mean, I remember doing a podcast where I literally asked the question, does natural immunity still count?

Prof Robert Clancy (28:32)

what do we mean by natural immunity? We basically mean the resilience, the immune resilience of the airways, which is what we’re talking about here. That means, it’s just really, really getting to the nub of what’s going on and maybe the lesson we can learn. And certainly it’s very close to my own interests. If you ask anybody in the street, tell you what they know about COVID, sooner or later they’ll say, most people just get a sniffle.

Few people get very sick. You line those people up in a line up and you say, right, which is the one who’s going to get sick and half well, unless they crippled and can’t breathe, they’re all looking much the same. So what it’s saying is that some of us have our immune system tuned and ready to go and others it’s not tuned and ready to go.

And underpinning this tuning is the experience that that person’s had before which you would call natural immunity, the capacity. But it’s also more than that. It’s when you do get a virus infection, the airways don’t make the immune response down there in the airways because the airways, the respiratory system, the lungs have one function. It’s gas exchange.

It wants oxygen to come into the body, carbon dioxide out. And so it parks in the gut, the factory to make the immune cells. And so we sit here while we’re sitting here, we’re swallowing a couple of spoonfuls of secretions without knowing it that carry up any viruses or bugs that we’ve breathed in and dump them into the gut, right up through the mouth and into the gut. And this is a system that my group in Newcastle was able to sort out. So that’s why we’re very interested in it. Now there are little factories in the wall where we knew this from a number of studies done in the 60s and 70s.

There are factories in the wall of the gut called payers patches. And these factories sense as you swallow the bugs, it picks up the bugs and makes specific T cells and B cells. These are the immune cells that are going to instruct the basic effector mechanisms in the airways to do their job.

There’s a little stamp on the cells. come out of the payers patch, get into the bloodstream and they go around until the stamp says we’re in the lung and they pop out until the lung to protect itself. What we’ve been able to show is that about 20 % of people don’t do this process very effectively. And this is a 20 % that seemed to be very prone to developing more severe disease.

And we can make that work much more effectively. So we make the person prone to serious disease, prone to mild disease, by simply reinforcing that loop by giving them, and you’ll love this, you probably know a bit about this anyway, we give them enteric-coated tablets containing killed bugs. So we’re giving a big mouthful of bugs to make sure that process, it’s as simple as that. And we’ve been measuring all the, we’ve been working on this for 40 years.

So we know it works and people with bad lungs, it stops emphysema patients going to hospital. People with mild lungs ⁓ stops them getting serious infections. It keeps the infection in the airway and doesn’t let it get out into the gas exchange part of the lung. Does that make sense?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:13)

Yes it does and it’s amazing and I imagine not particularly costly. Very cheap, very cheap.

Prof Robert Clancy (32:18)

Wary toos!

Very hard to get people interested, Ron, because it’s not a, not sexy, not money making. And so the big companies, we were on the edge of big companies buying this from us when we had a patent for $2 million or thereabouts only to bury it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:27)

Moneymaker.

Yes. I was going to say, can imagine the reason was it was a little bit too effective and one could, could easily bury that kind of thing. Cause there’s much more money to be made, but you know, they’re coming back to these public health messages and perceptions and public trust. You say that the public are more, are much cleverer than, the medical profession for many reasons. But I think there’s still a polarized view of how the pandemic was handled.

And this is true of the public and the medical profession. are those, and a friend of mine is a professor of infectious diseases. I’m sure you know him. won’t mention his name, but a professor of infectious diseases thinks the pandemic was handled brilliantly. mean, how amazing that we got through this and we had such compliance and we got the new vaccines through and you’ve got the other group who say, well, like you, like myself, well, could we have.

We didn’t look at the science. fact, we buried the science. So this kind of polarization has really become, I mean, it’s just a fact of our modern world, isn’t it?

Prof Robert Clancy (33:51)

Well, it’s very true. I can only say that the power of persuasion is enormous aren’t more stupid than people in the, they’re like everyone else in society. You have very smart ones and ones that are not quite as smart. And some of those are still pretty smart doctors.

We all as a profession were absolutely overwhelmed with statements, dogmatic statements of follow the science, et cetera, et cetera, when there was absolutely no science. And I’m afraid that the infectious disease physicians who do a terrific job with infectious disease, and believe me, many of my friends are infectious disease physicians, but they do not understand the modern aspect of immunology.

They do not understand the yang and yang of mucosal immunology. They just don’t. you know, I’m looking without mentioning any names or situations. A little while ago, I had to respond to one of the doctors that you were talking about who was pilloried by a senior non-New South Wales infectious disease physician.

I must admit I’ve never heard of, but when I, I Googled him, he wrote a lot about himself as being pretty important. And I couldn’t believe the things that he was saying. He had zero knowledge, negative knowledge of, of COVID, even though he had a very powerful role to play in that whole process.

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Prof Robert Clancy (36:19)

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:38)

Click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you.

Prof Robert Clancy (36:50)

Well, think the great sadness is that we didn’t, well, if you ever get on a medical education, we can get on to some aspects of this. But I think what was lacking was not necessarily me, but people with my sort of experience, people who’d worked in the immunology of mucosal research and who were clinicians, who understood, I think, how these things were likely to come about because none of this was ever discussed.

You may remember, I don’t know if you remember, but I wrote an article in January 2020, was an honest article. It was an article trying to explain to people what was going on. right at the beginning, I think I said I’d write a little bit differently now, but that’s how it was. And these are coming out. This is for Quadrant. I ended up writing 14 articles for Quadrant. Amazing journal. They’re bringing it out as a book actually in the next month or two 14 of them with an introduction and a thing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:53)

Can’t you know? Yeah

Prof Robert Clancy (37:55)

Let’s finish because what I was trying to do there was to put what we knew coming into the pandemic. What we found out through the pandemic reinforced that information. Sorry, I interrupted.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:11)

No, no, no, listen, I’m, I’m interested in what you say, not what I say, but medical education. Now we did a podcast a few years back with professor Julia Rutledge from Christchurch from New Zealand. And she wrote a book on brain food. And she said to me that she thought it was perfectly natural for doctors to be skeptical and curious.

And I said, I like that idea Julia, I really do. My observation would be that most doctors are only curious from the point of their education where they studied pathology, the identification of disease and pharmacology, the application of a pharmaceutical solution to that disease. And they appear to be very skeptical of their earlier undergraduate training, which was the basic sciences of biochemistry, immunology, histology, all of those subjects. Well, what do you say to that? I mean, you’re very involved in medical education.

Prof Robert Clancy (39:12)

Well, it’s been my career. I would say a couple of things. First, I think that, in my experience, you can’t blame a lot of the doctors, particularly those that have been graduated for a number of years, because the actual teaching they got in a lot of these basic science, I know, particularly something like immunology was totally irrelevant to real life immunology.

You know, what’s happens out there, what often happens, particularly in a structured medical course, you have preclinical and the preclinical you’re having basic PhD scientists who are very good at what they do, but they’re teaching immunology from their experience in mice and rats and rabbits. And that’s fine. But when you get through into the clinical years, you’ve had your immunology training. so these ideas, particularly ideas of surface immunity, airway immunity, relating to vaccines with so much on about vaccines these days. never, they never were taught a lot of this.

And I think the second point I’d make is that a lot of medicine is about sticking to the rules. Now, if you stick, if you talk to a surgeon, which I do, the surgeons will tell you that, if you’re doing an operation, you have a series of things you stick to, not quite religiously, cause things can change and you’ve got to make decisions as you go.

I mean, you’re, you’re a dental surgeon you know, yourself, you, you, have a set of rules, for a particular problem things change in the middle of it, which sadly it often does, you have to, but then you have rules probably on how you do that. But the problem is when.

If you take rules too seriously, and this is like barefoot doctors in Papua New Guinea, which is very good for the bulk, but you’re using exactly the same thing. There’s no room for movement. so people get told this is what you do. And so that is what you do. You religiously do this and this and this. And if you’re seeing 30 or 40 patients in a day, it’s, you know, you don’t have the luxury of sitting and working out little variations here and there.

So I think a lot of things come together where doctors have in their mind a set of processes. And when COVID came, that set was reinforced by these, quite frankly, clowns that were on television news. mean, they really were saying, you know, follow the science, do this. And they got it so terribly wrong. One or two were good.

One or two were good, but a lot of them were not. And they got a terribly wrong. And the papers would pick this up and no one actually went and asked questions about whether these rules that were being handed on were in fact based on science. So it’s complicated.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:28)

It is complicated. And there’s a term you mentioned David Sackett, the father of evidence-based medicine. And I would, I would observe that the term evidence-based medicine, as long as you preface whatever with that word, it’s like a mantra. It’s like, you know, hail me. I’m going to say my hail Mary’s. going to say evidence-based medicine, follow the science. Nothing else matters after you’ve said those words.

And, you would be familiar, I’m sure with the work of John A. Ineedis in, Stanford, the epidemiologist who, who said that that’s very difficult now to tell the difference between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based marketing. What’s your response to that?

Prof Robert Clancy (43:16)

Well, it shouldn’t be different. think that what he’s saying is that the mindset of the recipient, the doctor, who’s an incredibly busy person, who’s had a rigidity built into the thinking processes by what they were taught fairly dogmatically, the guidelines that have been given to them, which are based on sort of averages of what’s happening and to some extent, of course, their experience with the bulk of cases get pneumonia, most pneumonia is going to behave in a certain way.

Are you going to treat them with the same? You’re going to take the same test, look for the pathogen, treat with antibiotic, but of course some go in different directions. so the recipient of the commercial on very and marketing has become very sophisticated and behind the big companies now, you’ve got a marketing component to the education.

Now, if you, you know, I’m supposed to be going to an education medical meeting tomorrow night. And it’ll be sponsored by a pharmaceutical company and the topic will be something to do with one of their products. Now this is just the way medicine is structured. Always has been, ever since I’ve been graduated.

It’s become much more sophisticated now and rules and regulations have forced things to be done. You’re not in a, you know, exactly what I’m talking about. But we still go, we still get a free meal and actually the meals are getting better. So, when I started becoming a little critical of some of these things and started doing a little bit of my own work looking at different ways of approaching.

I suddenly found, not that I ever accepted, I stopped getting invitations from my wife and myself to go to Hong Kong for a medical meeting. I’m going back now 20 or 30 years, but that’s what was happening. And now it’s, well, we’re going to have a meeting in Sydney. We know you’re in Adelaide or Perth, but of course, we’ll cover your costs coming up because it’s an educational meeting.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:39)

Yeah. Well, I think what’s has shocked me and I’ve always known about the far.

Prof Robert Clancy (45:45)

I’m just saying this is why you can see how evidence-based medicine and evidence-based marketing is actually converging, which was the question.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:53)

Yes.

Yes. And I think what shocked me is, and because I knew that pharmaceutical companies would put on educational dinners and courses and all that, what I became aware of during the pandemic, when I started to see government health departments and big media outlets like the Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian, the ABC, all behaving in a uniformed way with the uniformed voice.

I realized that the tentacles of PR marketing had extended way beyond what I even was aware of.

Prof Robert Clancy (46:32)

Not true.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:33)

Listen, your book, your book, go on, if you’d love to hear your comment on that.

Prof Robert Clancy (46:40)

No, I think it’s become very sophisticated and very clever because the medical profession is interesting that when you and I graduated, Ron, I’ll put you in. Yeah, yeah. I think you’re probably a few years behind me, but still when we graduated, certainly in medicine and I suspect in dentistry because I used to actually teach the immunology in the postgraduate dental course that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:54)

Don’t let Farah Pound

Prof Robert Clancy (47:09)

Graham Thomas used to and Ivan Kiburg. We all went to school together. Sydney High.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (47:15)

The I knew it was close. I knew it was close. Okay, we get distracted. Come back.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (47:38)

We did get, we did get off on, on a bit of a tangent there, just about evidence-based medicine, evidence-based marketing and of the tentacles of tentacles extending to governments and media outlets, all speaking with a unified voice.

Prof Robert Clancy (47:46)

Yes.

Well, I’ll tell you two things. Well, I’ll just stick to one because we’ve talked a bit about the individual doctor. The greatest challenge in medicine today is the way in which we’ve switched from trickle down professional training to a global acceptance supported by institutions and universities. Now, I’ll give you one example. this is COVID laid bare a lot of this.

The Moderna particularly, but Pfizer and other companies have essentially bought the universities and institutions in this country. They’re bought well. Now I can say that because I’m still a member of the university. I’m very proudly a member of the university, but this, and I don’t think my university is nearly as involved as some of the others, but look at Monash.

Now I got my PhD at Monash, so I shouldn’t be saying not appreciating it, but Monash University, and this is a classic example, I love this example, there’s a very smart young lady there had been working on ivermectin for years. had been showed, she showed that it was effective against the whole range of viruses. And in pretty much February, March of 2020, very quickly, she showed it was quite effective in a cell system with COVID virus.

And she wrote this up and it began. is where the COVID, the story began at Monash University. She was jumped on, jumped on by the university. And of course she came out with all sorts of, well, you know, I don’t, know, the doses aren’t quite right. And we’re just looking at cell systems by which time, of course, half a dozen people have done trials and whatever showing it was very effective in humans with a reasonable dose.

Now, she was shut down. Now what happened one month, couple of months later? Big adverse, a big thing. Monash now is just accepting a partnership with Moderna, multi-million dollars handed over. They’re to make a hundred million doses of vaccines a year. Now how many arms have Australians got? How many vaccines is that going to be? mean, unabashedly.

They were talking about how we’re going to transform vaccinology into this messenger RNA genetic vaccines. Not a study had been done to show that they were needed. They were better or as good as good old fashioned ground up bugs that you inject into people that we know a lot about. Not a bit. So Kylie, the young lady involved who I don’t know, but I have great admiration for her.

She quietly plotted away way back there in 1921 and did her own little study showing that when her people around her got COVID and gave them one tablet of ivermectin, one tablet and did a randomized controlled trial, she really labored over it because she seemed to exclude most of the people in it. And guess what? People who had one tablet got delayed and much shorter episodes of COVID.

Now that’s not the way to prevent it. You need to take it more than just one tablet. You need to take it for a few days, but even on one tablet. And this is a girl who was shut down saying, well, you know, I can’t, we have to do randomized controlled trials. She did a randomized control, but let me tell you two things about this randomized control trial that was successful. Number one, it was published in the most, a journal no one had ever heard of, so obscure.

Fortunately was picked up by somebody and circulated amongst people. And guess what? It was published in late 2025 after the pandemic. So here she was sitting on all this, sitting on all this. And this is Monash University. But let me tell you an even better one. And this is against my own alma mater, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Do you remember in 2020 when COVID was around?

And people in both America and France were talking about hydroxychloroquine getting really quite interesting results. So Hall Institute did the right thing, took millions of public money, millions of dollars and set up a big study of prophylaxis of hydroxychloroquine. Huge study in health workers. That was 2020.

Now every year, religiously, I write down to my friends at the Hall Institute saying, look guys, I haven’t seen the results of this study. Where are the results? know, now can you imagine? I love the Hall Institute. I really do. But can you imagine not publishing? So, I mean, that’s their bread and butter. Numbers of publications are critical. Never ever release the results. But the Oxford University did in 2025.

They did a study with 20,000 people, something like the Hall Institute, got a 70 % reduction, giving it to people who are contacts of COVID, and got a 70 % reduction of incidents of COVID in the most beautiful randomized controlled trial ever done. Published in, I think it was November, December.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (53:34)

Robert, you know, this is a recurring theme on this podcast too, where we explore health and environmental issues that seemed contradictory to health and environment. And the only, there are only two words that can make sense of it, that seem to explain it and those two words are business model. If you preface these things with the words business model, then it all makes perfectly good sense. But let me ask you this question because as an

Prof Robert Clancy (54:03)

I haven’t read, I get carried away with the story. The reason for the story was, this corruption occurring at a bigger level? And my answer briefly is yes, it’s occurring at the top level. It’s not the corruption of some individual putting money in their bank account. It’s a corruption of a process and that’s occurring in our universities. It’s occurring.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:07)

No, I love the character

Prof Robert Clancy (54:32)

In the institutes, research institutes, because there’s so much money. Who are the owners of the messenger RNA factories that are being made?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:44)

I want to, I want to talk about that too, but, but let me just put in a word for all doctors, because I know many, many doctors who were integrative and holistic. And I also know many doctors who see 30 or 40 patients a day. And one thing they all have in common, I believe is they want the best for their patients. They really do. those that are sick, every doctor does. I don’t deny that for a moment. The busy doctor is so busy.

Prof Robert Clancy (55:07)

Every doctor does every doctor

Dr Ron Ehrlich (55:13)

This is a story that is easy to miss, but once you hear it, difficult to ignore, but you got to hear it. You got to listen for it and you got to hear it.

Prof Robert Clancy (55:25)

True.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (55:27)

Listen, as an immunologist, how do you see the balance though, between innovation, such as novel vaccine platforms and caution? Cause again, a lot of people polarizingly think how fantastic we didn’t have to wait five or 10 years for any of these bullshit safety studies. We got the MNRA vaccine out and look at it. It’s, it’s, it’s gone a great thing. What’s your view of that?

Prof Robert Clancy (55:52)

Well, let’s stick with the COVID theme. What we must understand about the COVID vaccine story is that messenger RNA vaccine was basically totally untested, was never ever shown to be of any value, yet it ended up in over half the world population. The second point is that the basic concept of vaccination is that you give to someone the protection from an infection without the disease.

You can’t expect more than that. with systemic infections that go through the bloodstream as part of the pathogenesis, the disease process, you can get a pretty much 95, 100 % protection. know that things like measles, polio, tetanus diphtheria where you’re looking at toxins, circulating any toxins it’s a very different situation when it comes to a mucosal infection, flu, COVID RSV, which are the ones they’re trying to start with, with the messenger RNA the third point is that, with the messenger RNA, you have no control of the dose. Now you were talking about pharmacology.

You talk to any pharmacologist and they’re beside themselves over one thing usually and that’s dose response curves. Well the issue with most vaccines is you use a bit of ground up bug or a bit of inactivated toxin, you inject into an arm, it goes to a local lymph node and that’s as far as it goes and you stimulate an immune response and you get the protection from the immunity without the disease from the tetanus or the diphtheria or the whatever.

With messenger RNA, you’re actually injecting a message to make the antigen, make the factor that’s going to stimulate the immunity. So there’s another step being brought in. And if you go right back to the animal studies that they even talked about in small print when they brought the vaccine out, they were finding the messenger RNA in the ovaries, in the liver, in various parts of the body, the mice, were right at the back.

And course we now know that the spike protein, is the active principle produced from the encoded in the messenger RNA, the spike protein is around for weeks and months and years, years, which is why people get these post-COVID syndromes. And it’s because you’re actually instructing potentially every cell in the body to make this antigen to stimulate the immunity.

And you make that on the surface of say a thyroid gland and the body’s going to say it’s a foreign protein and it’s going to whip in a few T cells to knock it off. And so you get basically getting like an autoimmune disease. So what’s the surprise that we’re getting so many, so many issues. And so there are all these things that have, have crept in and happened that we didn’t expect. And the fourth thing, which I think is really interesting is that

We know that the messenger RNA vaccine causes an unacceptable amount of cardiac damage in young men. They started off with one in 10,000. We now know it’s probably one in 70, one in 60 or 70 get some damage. know that. It’s that high. It’s that high. The biggest study was a study in Thailand and they found two to 3 % of high school boys had some evidence of heart damage when they look for it, when they look for it, not looking in a report done down the line when they look for it prospectively.

So they said, well, look, let’s start off with the messenger RNA, but we will give them an antigen vaccine to act as a booster because we don’t want to give them more messenger RNA. Guess what? The antigen vaccine was more, they compared it with the messenger RNA, was more effective at preventing infections than was the messenger RNA.

Now it’s complicated, but what it’s saying is that this is the only comparative study I’m aware of. There’s a couple of dodgy ones with flu, which no one can understand, but this one’s a very clear cut one in COVID where they expected or they didn’t expect this answer. So,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:41)

But Robert did the boosters are typically MR and over.

Prof Robert Clancy (1:00:46)

So all you need is more messenger RNA to make more of the…

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:50)

Now you said something very important there, which our listener may not have heard when you give a normal vaccine with the ground up dead, whatever, or toxins, it goes to the nearest lymph node and starts to produce the antibodies that are the reason for giving you the vaccine. But the mRNA vaccine goes all over the body. Okay. I doubt you said that in passing.

Prof Robert Clancy (1:01:14)

Correct.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:18)

Yeah. I just wanted to remind our listener about that. Listen, one other thing, can talk, what unintended consequences of the pandemic policy do you believe we still need to properly acknowledge and study?

Prof Robert Clancy (1:01:36)

Well, think we have to sort out. I mean, if you want my view, we put an absolute halt on all messenger RNA vaccines until and unless the safety and efficacy and the relative advantages of them are better defined. That has to happen. And the fact that it’s not happening tells you who’s running medicine in this country. Secondly, think, look, I’m not against messenger RNA. You won’t believe it, but this puts my age at risk.

Um, in 1963, I took a year off from medicine to do a, uh, an honors bachelor of science, uh, research degree. And, uh, what we’ve, we were the first people in the world to actually found messenger RNA in multi cell systems more by accident and the good measure. Um, so I’ve been around messenger RNA for what was that 60, 60 years, uh, over 60 years. So it’s, um, uh, it, it messenger RNA is not is something I’m very fond of.

And I’m hoping one day we can sort out that we can control this. But at the moment, it’s, you know, we’re using a delivery system that is, is allowing reversal of message into the DNA. We’re finding tumors that are containing, increase in tumors. Some people are finding and more and more people are finding, we’re finding the messenger RNA stuck in the tumor cells causing linked to mutations, underpinning the cancers.

So all of these things have got to be sorted out. We can’t keep pushing these things into people. We have no idea what the long-term outcome. Let’s take the cardiac issues. If 2%, I’m going to say it’s 1 % of people get some cardiac damage. The heart can’t repair itself the same way as some tissues. And so it repairs by fibrous tissue.

In other words, a scar. Now you put a scar in a heart that’s bleeding away a hundred times a minute for 50 years. It’s a pretty lot of stress on that little bit of fibrous scar. of course, before COVID, people were getting post-viral myocarditis after a whole lot of flu and different other viruses. these clinically diagnosed cases were followed up.

for 10 years and 10 years, even though many of them were thought to be mild, at 10 years, half those people were dead or had heart transplants. Wow. So, mean, I don’t know. No, you don’t know. None of us know what’s going to happen. What we do know is those scars are still people now are looking at MRIs two, three years down the line and they’re finding the scars as well. No surprise. It’s still there.

So we don’t know what this damage is doing long term. We don’t. It’s just not good enough to say it was a mild episode. They’re all over it because you’re giving a scar to a heart. That’s quite a lot of beating to do over the next 20. These are kids of 15, 16, 17. So we don’t.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:51)

Is it fair to say that the population has been used as part of a phase four clinical trial, or I forget what phase it would be in, you know, but it’s a lot, it’s a clinical trial on a global level.

Prof Robert Clancy (1:05:02)

I mean, I think that this is a study that vested interests, some commercial, some political, some defense forces in the states, that they wanted to see how it went. They all had their own interests and reasons for doing it. What was not considered was whether it was a smart thing to do. You’re probably aware that a friend of mine from Adelaide developed an antigen vaccine. Antigen vaccines are the vaccines of the traditional type. This was a very upmarket modernized antigen. The famous Nick Petrosky. Nick’s a great friend of mine if we had to make a list, he wrote a chapter in that book you were talking about for us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:05:43)

Nicholas Petrovsky

Prof Robert Clancy (1:05:57)

Nick produced a very good vaccine he has been absolutely victimized. mean, he’s won his big law case. No one knows how much money he’s got, but he’s not allowed to talk about it. But we know he won his case. very quiet. Didn’t see that on the front page of the Herald, did you? Did you see that?

He all did. all did. He had his university. had his, he had his proper soil position. Now this guy made a fantastic vaccine. Guess what? Guess where it was used? Iran. He used it very successfully in Iran. And guess what? As far as Nick’s aware, there is, you don’t get this high antigen problem of tolerance, which means that you get more infections rather than less that to the best of his knowledge that hasn’t been described and you don’t get Bon COVID which 10 % of people after messenger RNA have their lives screwed up for up to a year or two.

So here we are, we’ve got an Australian vaccine that no one knows much about that’s been very effective, probably just as effective as any of the messenger RNA in the short term, but probably longer term and able to be used to say an effective booster because you’re not spreading the antigen around in the body.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:28)

You mentioned long COVID and I think a lot of people who have long COVID would say, I got COVID, but I got a booster. I got all my boosters. So thank goodness I got all my boosters because otherwise God knows how bad I would have been.

Prof Robert Clancy (1:07:45)

Yeah. lot of people, no, they do. They do. I see a lot of people with long COVID and post COVID vaccine syndrome are basically the same. they’re both variants of what many people watching this might know as chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome. And this is, I think very important that, at least the people I’ve seen mostly are the, vaccine damaged people, but, I also see a number of the long COVID.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:07:46)

People would be saying that, wouldn’t they?

Prof Robert Clancy (1:08:15)

What you’re looking at here is a persistent antigen in a genetically predisposed group of people, probably 20, 25 % of the population have a cluster of genes interact. you don’t, you, you facilitate an antigen, foreign protein persisting in the body. it’s very easy if you inject it, it’s, there. Messenger RNase keeping making, you’re not getting rid of it.

But the classic one is Epstar-Barr virus, which is glandular fever for most people. But 90 % of people in the community have got it. And I call it the HSC disease in 17 and 18 year olds because you see, probably, your kids or their kids friends, someone gets, they get glandular and they get fatigue and the stress of the HSC, which is probably the most stressful thing most people go through in life brings out or prevents the control of the Epistavar virus and they get energy activated fatigue.

They push themselves, it pushes back. Now what I’ve been finding and no one ever asked this question, don’t think, the people who’ve got the energy activated fatigue following the vaccine or from one COVID in your earlier life, did you or did you not ever have a period where you were just buggered for 10, for months as a result of some virus?

And around about 25 to 30%. I haven’t added them all. Like I don’t quite see that many or, or run big research programs now, but, um, about 20 or 30%. So, oh yeah. So I can remember I, I can hardly get out of bed for two or three months. Uh, when I was 17 or 18, I got glandular for, I got this infection or glandular fever.

And we looked at this in athletes and we were able to work out the relationship between the gut dysbiosis, which they get, uh, the immune defect they’ve got, the effect of training, all of these things are put together and that’s helped us understand the post COVID vaccine. So we’ve got this syndrome where long COVID and if you like long vaccine COVID fits into a much bigger picture.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:10:39)

the the

Prof Robert Clancy (1:10:46)

I’m concerned about genetic vaccines that have not been properly tested. I’m very happy for antigen vaccines to be used in COVID. And I just such a shame that they weren’t in this country to any extent. But ⁓ it’s quite interesting though that you raised the point that people are seeing through the COVID vaccine problem and they’re unfortunately extrapolating to all vaccinations.

And this is so wrong because you can’t throw the baby out with bathwater. What we’re talking about causing problems is not a traditional vaccine. It’s not the diphtheria, the mumps, the measles, the German measles, the smallpox. All of these are systemic vaccines. The flu vaccine done properly is of value. Although even that now is getting compromised by the down regulation imposed on it from too many COVID vaccines.

Yeah, it’s all very, that’s a very complex area at the moment, but classical vaccines for kids and things, you know, it breaks your heart to see that the numbers are dropping from 97, 98 to 93, 94%. But let me just say one thing, a lot of the problems we’re seeing, particularly with whooping cough and RSV infections, things like this, that people say, it’s a result of, anti-vaccine vaccine. These infections are occurring in vaccinated populations and they’re part of an overflow of the suppression of too many vaccines from COVID. the Cleveland Clinic has led the way in showing this may be something we have to look at very carefully.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:12:44)

Wow. That’s a, that’s a huge, problem. Huge problem. Listen, if let’s finish it up now, but if we were to face another global health crisis tomorrow, what three lessons would you want policy makers, regulators and clinicians to remember?

Prof Robert Clancy (1:13:00)

One, make sure that I’m still allowed to play tennis on Saturday afternoons.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:13:07)

So no lockdowns? No lockdowns?

Prof Robert Clancy (1:13:09)

No, no, the first lesson, the first list is do our own epidemiology. What changed? if we go back to 1900, when we had the black death in Sydney, most people aren’t even aware we had the black death. What changed it from being a common major problem is one guy called Ashburton Thompson, who was in charge of public health and what he did.

He actually took blood from thousands, 10 to 20,000 rats in the Darling Harbor area. And when he started getting positive bugs in the bloodstream, he knew that the rats were about to become sick and the fleas would leave the rats in droves, take the bug and hop onto humans. That was the greatest medical discoveries, one of the biggest in Australia.

And it showed the importance of base epidemiology that was done in California. talked about earlier in this podcast and it shaped the great Barrington declaration, which you might’ve heard of, which has been signed by a million plus health professionals around the world ⁓ used to some extent in Sweden, to no extent in Australia. So my first thing is to go back to the lessons of the plan.

Do the epidemiology, determine who’s at risk and identify public health measures around protecting the at-risk people in a way you maintain the economy and the mental health and the education capacities of the rest of society. Number two, you search for what medications might be useful. Just as we were supposed to do it and we’re supposed to find either and hydroxychloroquine.

Think of how many lives could have been saved around the world and certainly in many other parts of the world they were who did adopt. mean some of the South American countries and India, parts of India did adopt using these drugs with dramatic outcomes, protection outcomes. So that’s the second. The third, sure we’re going to develop a vaccine but let’s look at the biology.

You can’t beat the biology. The biology determines the outcome of a vaccine, not the system you use to vaccinate. And then let’s develop right from the beginning, a modern day antigen vaccine, unless and until, until and unless someone works out all the problems that exist. Huge problems. Give you an example.

Nobel Prize two years ago was won by the guy who showed you could change the bases, the four little marbles that make up messenger RNA in repeating units and put what’s called pseudouridine. Got a Nobel Prize for it. Two months later, Cambridge group said, oh, you put the pseudouridine in and that’s what’s causing abnormal reading of the message, funny proteins.

Oh, dear me. Some of these might be causing amyloid depositing on the brain and causing dementia, low and behold is demonstrated in a big study in Japan. know, the fourth thing is don’t award the Nobel Prize for 10 years.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:16:47)

Robin, I’ve been so looking forward to this conversation and you’ve reminded me over the last hour or more. Why? Listen, one last question, because you you said, uh, 1963, you know, we were contemporaries, 1963, you were going off to get some, uh, you know, start your education. 1963. was just entering primary school or infants anyway, but that I’ll put that aside.

Taking a step back from your many years as an immunologist, because we are all individuals on a health journey in this modern world. What do you think the biggest challenge for us as individuals is on that journey?

Prof Robert Clancy (1:17:28)

I think, well, I’ll give you, I don’t know if it’s the biggest, but it’s something that I feel strongly about. I think what’s happened, a number of things, we didn’t get around a medical education and whatever. I think we have to really rethink. We’ve turned around from a pyramidal system to a system that’s balancing on the point. And that’s got very bad equilibrium. We need to really look at how we educate people in the healthcare professions right across the board.

Number two, I think that we have to recognize the way things are at the moment. Doctors are very good at saving lives, good at looking after people who are very sick. What we’re not good about are the things that screw up people’s lives on a day-to-day basis. The levels of fatigue, aches and pains, the things that your colleagues who are involved in complementary medicine, holistic medicine, strange terms, aren’t they?

There are doctors who share that view. They’ve taken a route which is probably different to mine. I’m a fairly traditional physician, but I understand what people are trying to do. And I do understand that the smart public has said, we want to take more control about our health. And that to me is the big change. And I think COVID catalyzed that evolution. And so we’ve now got a situation where people are wanting to be involved.

They want to analyze the evidence themselves. And I think we’re going to see, and this is certainly the way, if I was even younger, I’d be putting together programs where we can translate the knowledge that we get into safe, everyday processes that people can access and get involved in. I think the medical profession is going to want to go huge changes from my wife’s a pharmacist and can see the pharmacist saying, well, yeah, we’ve got roles to play.

I think when I first went to Newcastle, got a Christian was working and we made lists of the people coming into the pharmacy to ask her questions and the people coming into a general practice asking their questions. So it was the same lists, same issues. you know, I think we’ve got to relook at all of these things and come up with better ways of looking after, of promoting health so that people don’t get sick.

Preventative medicine has never been popular because the big companies make no money out of it. Well, that’s tough, but we still have to come up with programs whereby we can keep people fitter. And that’s why I’ve got very involved in airway. I like using the term resilience. And I think, you know, if I had the time, I’d get involved in gut resilience because we can do the same.

How do we keep the gut healthy? And they’re very real things that we can put data to now. And we can put ⁓ intervention that works and we can do randomized controlled studies to prove it works. All of these things we’ve been doing in the airways the problem is that entropic heap to get across that entropic barrier to say, look, it’s worth putting a few dollars in this so that we can get it across the regular few hoops,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:20:58)

That’s good. And thank you want to thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with all of us. So thank you so much.

Prof Robert Clancy (1:21:07)

Great pleasure Ron, very nice pleasure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:21:09)

Well, as I said at the beginning of the podcast discussion about COVID in general and mRNA vaccines in particular, often elicits the terms of anti-vaxxer or trust the science or how anti-science you are. So to speak to someone of Robert’s experience and knowledge in this area, I ask the relevant question at the time of the pandemic, is natural immunity still important?

Because if you listen to the government, the regulatory bodies that were mandating the vaccines, you would have thought that nothing, your immune system did not even come close to what these wonderful new technologies would bring us. And that clearly that’s just not the case. So trust the science. Well, if anybody that knows anything about science would agree that science is about proving and disproving and challenging hypotheses.

And Robert certainly brings many, many years of experience. It was a great conversation. His book, COVID through our eyes, an Australian story of mistakes, mistreatment and misinformation. We’ll have the links to it in our show notes. I’d encourage you to join our unstressed health community until next time. This is Dr. Ron Erlich. Be well.

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From Food Critic to Regenerative Farmer: Rethinking What We Eat with Matthew Evanshttps://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/d9a53e04-1392-418c-9a20-b421005e6c99/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:

• https://groundedaustralia.com.au
• Official/primary presence:
  • SBS Food (host profile & TV work)
• Associated property/business:
  • Fat Pig Farm (Tasmania) – his farm and food project (no official direct site confirmed in sources, but widely referenced as his base of operations)

Email Address

• tastejunkie@iinet.net.au
• matthew@groundedaustralia.com.au

Social Media Accounts* Instagram: commonly associated with Fat Pig Farm / Gourmet Farmer content * Facebook: pages linked to Gourmet Farmer / SBS Food

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸

He has written 10+ books on food, farming, and ethics. Key titles include:

Major works* On Eating Meat – ethics of meat consumption * The Dirty Chef – transition from critic to farmer * The Real Food Companion – comprehensive cooking guide

Organizations / Affiliations SBS Food – TV collaborations * Fat Pig Farm* – his farm, restaurant, and education space in Tasmania * Works with food festivals, markets, and ethical food advocacy initiatives

00:00 Intro & guest background

01:30 Journey from food critic to farmer

04:40 Industrial fishing & seafood truths

07:30 Farmed fish and antibiotics

12:30 What “better meat” means

15:50 Nutrition & food quality differences

17:30 Soil crisis explained

25:40 Regenerative agriculture

30:00 Dairy myths & plant-based debate

37:00 Ultra-processed foods

43:00 Raw milk discussion

43:30 Grounded Festival

47:40 Practical consumer advice

From Food Critic to Regenerative Farmer: Rethinking What We Eat with Matthew EvansDr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, today we are covering many, many topics with someone whose work I have followed thoroughly enjoyed for over 10 years. My guest today is Matthew Evans. Now Matthew has worn many hats. In fact, many more hats than most. He’s a food critic, used to be the Sydney Morning Herald food critic. He’s been a chef. He’s an author. He’s a documentary maker and now a regenerative farmer.

And I would add also the organizer of a festival, I’ll tell you about in a moment. Now, Matthew traded restaurant reviews for raising pigs and growing food on fat pig farm in Tasmania in the Huon Valley. I visited him there about five or six years ago. And along the way, he’s written books and hosted documentaries on many subjects, including soil, milk, seafood, meat, and all of which challenged how we think about what we eat. He’s also the co-founder of the grounded festival.

Australia’s only roaming food and farming festival, which arrives in Victoria in April this year, late April. So we’ll have links to that in the show notes. So I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Matthew Evans. Welcome to the show, Matthew.

Matthew Evans (01:23)

Thanks for having me, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:24)

Matthew, I have been following your career for many, years and been a great fan. So this is great. I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity. You went from being one of Australia’s top food critics, regenerative farmer in Tasmania, where I’m talking to you from today. What triggered that shift?

Matthew Evans (01:46)

Uh, gluttony. Really, Ron? I relate to that. Yeah. Yeah. I’m, you know, I, I’m afraid to say that a lot of my life choices have been very much in self-interest, and I have always, since I was a kid, I wanted to eat, I wanted to eat more originally because I was really hungry. And then I want to eat better. When I realized there was a difference between good food and bad food, was like, Oh, I want to, I want to eat better food. And then so I became a restaurant critic cause you know, I found someone who could pay me to go and eat in restaurants and I thought I was eating the best food in Australia and sometimes the best food in the world.

You know, cause Australian chefs are pretty talented people and, and I did travel the world and got to, to, you know, sometimes on someone else’s dime. But then I guess what happened was I started tasting food that was even better than these fancy restaurants and it was home gardeners was people, you know, it was farmers who really cared about soil and I ended up going, actually really good food comes from somewhere doesn’t just sort of, it isn’t like, every carrot is the same.

And there are, there’s a person in the, in, this, in this mix and it’s the farmer or the person who smokes you bacon or the person who, you know, makes the cheese or whatever it might be. That person, once you put them in the mix, actually, when you’re eating and getting joy, you’re actually tasting the fruits of their labor. You’re, you’re getting an impression of you know, of their soul. and so I was like, wow.

You know, growing food, you can actually grow really good food and do it, you know, like you can actually have an impact on flavor. I’d love to grow my own food. And I’d always had a dream of having a farm. probably like a lot of people like naive, ridiculous, I just like to have a farm, you know, no idea, ⁓ how much money you can spend farming. and,

And just did it lept in had moved to Tasmania went, I can book, you know, I was looking at buying a little house with a veggie garden. I went, I can buy a little farmhouse with a veggie garden and enough space for two pigs and three sheep and you know, a dairy cow. Well, there wasn’t really enough space for them, but then, you know, the two pigs became 10 and the three sheep had twins. So they became nine and the dairy cow had a calf. And, ⁓ so I sort of outgrew my farm, but, but I fell in love with growing food, you know, having a garden, having access to really good food. ⁓ So I became a bit of an accidental farmer, really.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:10)

Well, I’ve been down to that farm, the fat pig farm down in Tasmania and it is a wonderful, it was a great experience and we had a great meal down there as well. listen, you’ve done a lot of the specials and you’ve written a lot of books and I wanted to touch on a couple of them. Cause I know fish is something that people are always recommended.

You know, it’s a top of lots of seafood and yet you did a documentary to what’s the catch and it exposed some uncomfortable truths about seafood on our plates in Australia. What was the finding that stayed with you most of all?

Matthew Evans (04:49)

Wow. You’ve got a good memory. What’s the catch? be 10 years ago now. Yeah. Okay. 12 years ago. ⁓ What stayed with me the most? There’s a few bits and pieces. I went out, I think the worst was going out on a fishing trawler in Thailand. And these were fishing boats that were fishing close into shore, which was against the law. you know, they obviously didn’t have the resources to police the boats. And we’re out on this boat and the size of the net, I couldn’t get my

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:52)

2014 I think.

Matthew Evans (05:18)

My little finger through the holes in the net. So you can imagine everything that’s bigger than the diameter of my little finger was caught in the net. And the nets went, they had mud in them, so they’d been scraping the bottom, but they were also in the top of the water column. So they were catching everything from jellyfish to tiny little crabs and everything in the net was kept. And then they would sort through it and about 1%, maybe 5 % of what they caught, they could sell as seafood and the rest. Went to these massive factories which we went to visit where they turn all of that, they call it trash fish. What a terrible name, trash fish, the abundance, the bounty of the oceans. They took everything else that wasn’t a decent size fish that you could fill it or sell and they turned it into a pelletized prawn food. And then we went to the prawn farms and saw them feeding the prawns that would end up in Australian buffets and in Australian supermarkets.

And I was mortified because it was ecological destruction. was, you know, the people who were running it were, know, some of the people on the boats were in semi-slavery. You know, was this indentured labor where they put them into poverty and into debt. And they never quite pay their debt back. So they’re sort of like stuck on the boats for years. it’s a form of modern slavery. And then the company that was making the prawn food and.

And talking about how we can’t really catch many fish anymore. There’s hardly any fish compared to 10 years ago. And said, what are you going to do? You know, she said, don’t worry. We’re getting into palm oil, you know, and being around that kind of like, my God, this industry is like sort of bad on every level from the personal to the ecological from the, you know, from the local to the global. And we are party to that when we go out and buy seafood. So I think that’s stuck with me the most.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:08)

I remember being down in Tasmania and visiting an oyster farm and one of the oyster farmers there had worked at a fish farm, which uses a lot of that by kill. think it’s called, uh, that, that for fish food. Um, I mean, it’s, uh, he made the point that he wouldn’t really like to be eating the fish from that, from that fish farm. What’s your view of farm fish?

Matthew Evans (07:35)

Oh, I actually think farmed fish, it’s a bit like, um, you can think of it as a comparable to land. So we don’t really eat wild animals very much. Uh, and there’s not enough wild animals to sort of feed humanity, the, you know, 8 billion people or whatever they’re on the planet today, um, and get sort of protein. So what we’ve chosen to do is choose some species and breed them and domesticate them. I think the problem with farmed fish is not farming fish. It’s how it’s done. So I live just near the salmon pens. went, I went for a swim last week and,

And I suddenly realized, like I live so close to the salmon pens that they’ve now found the antibiotic that they’re sort of dumping into the pens to stop a disease that happens when you have overcrowded pens and warming waters. That antibiotic has been found in oysters and shellfish. It’s been found 10 kilometers from the salmon pens. And so I’m like suddenly closing my mouth, making sure, don’t, you know, like, ⁓ hang on. I’m like, I’m dripping with this water that’s probably got antibiotic in it. And I’m like, that’s…

That’s a sign, antibiotic is a sign of if you’re just feeding it to every fish in a pen, that’s a sign of bad management. Like antibiotics, like if you imagine ass, if we are healthy and we looked after, then you know, it’s only when we’re sick that we need an antibiotic. If something goes wrong, something’s in the wrong place or it’s taking over, doing the wrong thing, we might take an antibiotic and I, you know, even humans to try to avoid them when we can, but they’re amazing, amazing products. But would you feed, feed anybody to everybody?

You know, in your city or in your town or, know, even if they’re not sick, well, no, because that’s a dumb idea. And if you had to do that, if you were doing that, would probably show that your living conditions are not very good. You haven’t looked after hygiene from the other end. You haven’t, you know, given yourself the best chance at immunity. haven’t, you know, given yourself enough distance or space or fresh air or whatever it is. And so it’s the same with the salmon pens.

They have to feed them antibiotic because they aren’t farming in a manner that looks after fish health. And then what they feed them, know, apparently is more chicken fat in a salmon than there is in a chicken, you know, because they feed them chicken fat and they feed them blood and bone and they feed them crushed up ⁓ feather meal and bone meal from chickens because they’re waste products. And I love the idea of using a waste product, but I’m not sure that I want to eat salmon that’s been fed blood and bone and chicken fat and, you know, soybeans and…

You know, a coloring agent and everything else, as well as antibiotics. Before I get it, I think that farming is, it seems to be done in a way that suggests it’s not going to be able to be done very far into the future. And I don’t, it’s done in a way that I don’t think is actually making a very healthy product for us to eat.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:12)

Yeah, I’m reminded of a mentor of mine, a hero in fact, I’m sure you know, Alan Savory, who said, don’t blame the resource, blame the way the resource is managed. And I think that kind of highlights it. I had heard that in Japan, there are alternative ways of farming that are looking a little more promising. I don’t know whether you’re familiar with

Matthew Evans (10:36)

Yeah. look, there’s ways of doing not just salmon, but also other fish. mean, salmon, problem with salmon is it’s carnivorous. It’s a pretty energetic fish. needed quite a lot of food to get a salmon. So it used to be four or five kilos of wild fish would go into a salmon to get a kilo of salmon. They’ve dropped that right down. It’s less than two kilos of wild fish to create a kilo of salmon. But what they made up the difference with, because these are energetic fish, they’re burning lots of ⁓ fuel and they need lots of food.

That’s where they’re making it up with soybeans and blood and bone and all these other sorts of things that, know, really salmon aren’t probably designed to eat. They would say they’re breaking them down into component parts and they’re designed to eat protein and they’re designed to eat calcium, whatever. you know, I would, doesn’t, you wouldn’t say similar things about land animals. You know, you’re not going to, you know, a cow is designed to eat grass. So you don’t just break it down into component parts and say, well, you know, blood and bone is a component part you know, protein is in grass. know, that’s not, that’s not what we do with, with, those animals.

And I don’t think so. So to answer your question about like, actually like farmed fishes as a concept and they’ve been farming fish in parts of China for 3000, 4,000 years. You know, it’s not unusual and they’ve been able to do it in a way that, you know, didn’t poison waterways and kept, obviously kept the fish healthy well before they had antibiotics and all these other sort of, you know, people with chemistry sets coming in.

Are we doing it that way commercially in Australia today? Well, I don’t think that we are with salmon. I think we’re doing it. It’s built down to a price, not up to a standard. I think like all of these things, always think we can do humans out our approach. will be, how can we do things better? And are they looking at how to do things better? No, I think they’re looking at how to do things cheaper.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:26)

I love that Matthew down to a price, not up to a standard. that’s a good one. Listen, public health message that we’re getting a lot is the demonization of meat. And here’s another one that you, did a program. think it was called, for the love of meat. ⁓ but you also have written about this. what does better meat actually mean when it comes to meet the meat that we eat?

Matthew Evans (12:55)

Yeah, well, I think that’s a two pronged, well, it’s a three pronged thing. so for me as a farmer, think of landscapes and are we looking after the land better? then I think a lot of people think about the animal as the animal expressing its instincts is a pig able to express its pigness and then to live a good or decent life. Because if we’re going to eat an animal, we know it has to die. But it’s not the death in that case that you obviously want a quick death and painless death.

But it’s the life of the animal that a lot of people would would consider. And then I also think it’s what’s in that meat. we are what we eat eats, I guess. so that, in the case of salmon, if you’re feeding them, you know, sort of rubbish stuff, then you’re getting that when you eat the salmon. In the case of livestock, we know that, you know, ruminants like cows, sheep and goats, they’re designed to eat living plants and have a mixture of stuff in their diet.

And we know that the meat from those animals that are fed a mixed diet has way more of the good things in it that are better for our bodies and we’re more adapted and better able to use. So when you grain feed those kinds of animals, you end up with meat that is lesser. So it’s not necessarily, it can have some stuff that’s not as good for you, but it’s certainly not doesn’t have any of the things that are really good for you.

There’s this great study out of New Zealand, I call it the One Hamburger Patty Study, where they took cattle, these were Angus cows, and they fed them, one of them on a very simple diet of just grass and clover and another one on a mixed diet, but they got to eat essentially like, you know, at a buffet, they got to go and try lots of different things over their life. they minced the, well, they killed them first, they minced those cows up and they took the meat and they fed them to, it was 40 people or something like that.

And then they measured, so they’ve measured what’s in the grass, what’s in the, in the meat, different, um, uh, biological compounds that they believed have, um, a nutritional effect. And then they, uh, looked at the humans who ate those and said, does this have any impact on you? So we’ve, we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’ve changed a bit of the diet. We’ve changed and they could measure that they changed a bit of stuff in the meat.

And after a single hamburger patty, you could measure the biological difference in the human that ate that patty, you know, and, generally in a positive trend. the good things have gone up and the bad things have gone down in the hamburger patty for the animal that had a more diverse diet, which more closely replicates the diet it would have had as a wild animal and when it’s free to choose as opposed to what we might impose on that.

And that wasn’t even looking at animals that are in feed lots, in sheds, eating just brown stuff and a lot of the stuff they were never designed to eat like grain. This was just looking at animals in the paddock. I call it the one hamburger patty study because a single hamburger patty from a different animal can change our metabolism and have a measurable result on us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:53)

Yeah. Look, reminds me of the fact that my, my wife had visited an integrative doctor for a blood test and came back with an incredibly high and concerning mercury level. And she was shocked. She was shocked. And, we could not work out where that was. And then we realized we’d been to a Japanese restaurant the night before and had all fish, Shimi, ⁓ tuna and the whole lot.

Nothing else had changed. And we were not prepared to do that kind of a test. You don’t go to a blood test after you have a Japanese meal, but that was what we came up with. So not exactly the one hamburger, but it was pretty close.

Matthew Evans (16:38)

Yeah, and it’s interesting. I’ve got a friend who’s a sushi chef and his wife had the same thing, really measured high mercury levels. so she’s eating a lot of small fish, not big fish these days, because the mercury gets taken up the food chain and concentrated up the food chain. she needs to eat small young fish, not old fish for most of time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:57)

I mean, I used to always, I was very preoccupied with mercury toxicity and I used to advise that until the microplastics issue came along and that’s a whole other story. But coming back to what you’ve, what you’ve written about and done, because another book that you’ve written recently in fact was called soil. And it argues that it’s the foundation of everything. And this is music to my ears because.

Nourishing Australia that I founded 15 years ago is all about healthy soils. Our food and our health and our future are tied to it. How badly have we damaged that foundation? And why should we all care about soil?

Matthew Evans (17:36)

Yeah, it’s an interesting one. Like I didn’t care about soil 15 years ago, you know, and I’d already been farming for a couple of years by then I was in a process of destroying soil through my farming and it was only through that process actually that I went, hang on. ⁓ What is this stuff that grows all our food? So soil’s imperiled. So in Australia, we’ve lost roughly about half our top soil since white people arrived, since colonization.

So in less than years, we’ve lost about half of our topsoil. Now topsoil is the magic bits, the very dark bit on the top of the earth. It’s very, you know, there’s this old cliche that the only reason humanity exists is because we have six inches of topsoil and the fact that occasionally rains, right? Obviously written in America or Europe, because Australia, most places doesn’t have six inches of topsoil. We have about one centimeter or less on most of Australia. And so topsoil does all the world’s growing.

So that little dark bit, that little one centimeter or six inch, whatever, dark layer on the top of the earth, that is the bit that does all the world’s growing. so to give you a context, 98, 99 % of all the calories that humans eat come from the fact we’ve got topsoil. So it’s lower if you measure protein. That’s a better, in some way, better measure, but you’re somewhere 85 % of all the that humans consume comes from the fact we’ve got topsoil. But the important thing with that is

The other 15 % comes from the oceans and rivers and actually all of topsoils run off, all the nutrient run off, the organic matter that runs off our lands, that actually provides the seafood that we eat as well because that usually exists around our continents where there is a continental shelf where it’s higher nutrient because there’s topsoil, because topsoil is always being eroded, little bit of nutrients are always washing down rivers.

But we sped that up. The loss of topsoil, so topsoil has been around since plants, say 450, 600 million years, you want to measure it a long time. it’s co-evolved, topsoil is co-evolved with plants. So they need each other. And generally, most places around the world, we’ve generally grown topsoil as there’s been more plants and more life on land. We’ve sort of grown topsoil because there’s this feedback loop of building topsoil with living plants. But for the last 200 years, we’ve managed to lose topsoil.

And so in Australia, lost half, but globally, if you think since the agricultural revolution, since we invented European style farming, we’ve abandoned about 40 % of the land that we once farmed. So you go to the land of milk and honey, the bread basket, the biblical times, and it’s a desert. We have ruined topsoil and it’s become desertified. So it gets washed or blown away, loses its nutrients and steps, and then we go, we can’t grow food anymore.

And traditionally, we’ve just moved on a bit like I did with my first farm. It’s like, I’ve ruined that bit of land. I’ll just go over here and grow something over here. We can’t do that anymore. Yeah, we’ve run, we’re running out of bits that we can go to. And yes, some people think we can go to Mars. Some very rich, powerful people think we can go to Mars. But if you think of topsoil and everything it does for us, because there’s this entire ecosystem in soil that, you know, this is biome, this has a microbial life within it.

It’s a super organism really, and it mirrors our microbiome and a lot of it is the same stuff that’s in us and that’s in soil. We’re supposed to be around soil. So what soil does for us, it’s been very hard for anything else to do. so growing food on Mars, you don’t have a biome which new plants need. You don’t have top soil which plants need. this is the only place we’ve got. If you unleashed every chemical weapon, on the planet tomorrow.

If you unleashed every nuclear weapon on the planet tomorrow, you sprayed every herbicide and pesticide, every bomb, just tried to destroy Earth tomorrow with all of human technology. We could not create anywhere as inhospitable as Mars. We still couldn’t ruin the topsoil as much as Mars already is unsuitable for growing. So you can imagine how we could damage the planet, but we still couldn’t create Mars.

So the thought that we could actually go to another planet and recreate it and grow the food we need is fanciful ⁓ and farcical, really. And it worries me that here on Earth, I play this game sometimes ⁓ where I try to compare. There was a Mars rover that was taking these really high resolution photos around, you know, Menindee and places around Mars. And for the first time, we could see what it looks like. I take and I on these farmers around Menindee, go, oh, is my place look like Mars?

So I do this game sometimes when I do public talks or I say, have a look at this photo. Is that Menindee or is that Mars? You know, you’ve got Dingo Gap, you know, oh, is that Menindee or is that Mars? Well, that’s actually Mars, you know, and a lot of people, some of the people can get them right. But, you know, oftentimes people will get them wrong because unfortunately we are turning parts of our our landscape into a place that is unable to support plants, is unable to support growth, which means unable to support humans.

So I’m very worried about the state of earth soil. I just want to give you one last thing before you probably want to ask other questions, but I find this really helpful visually, right? We lose lots of topsoil all the time and the numbers are insane. And so you need to break them down. And the way I like to break them down is into forms that I can understand.

If you imagine this for every breakfast and for every lunch for every human on the planet, there’s topsoil that’s lost, it’s washed away. So there’s soil erosion or wind erosion. And so for every meal that every human on earth eats, we lose about a bucket of topsoil, ⁓ somewhere between three and nine kilos. The highest estimates around nine, ten kilos and the lowest estimates around three kilos. So even the lowest estimate, three kilos of topsoil lost for everything. Yeah, for every meal that you, well, actually for

More because actually a of humans don’t get those three meals a day. So we’re losing crazy amounts of soil and it’s a lot of it. Some of it’s the way we design our cities. It’s the way the mines we build and some of it is the way we grow food. Actually the big impact is the way we grow food.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:59)

I mean, I had heard that it takes nature about 500 years to grow an inch of soil or, or two, two and a half centimeters of soil, which segues into something that I know we are both passionate about. And that is regenerative farming. Cause there is a way of rebuilding. Yet it risks becoming a little bit of a marketing term. How do you define it in plain language? How does it stack up at scale as well?

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Matthew Evans (25:41)

Yeah, they’re both very interesting questions that don’t have simple answers, like, how do you, defining regenerative is in my view, and there are ways they define it in terms of how you actually manage land. But my view would be simply to say, managing land in a way that builds, restores and builds ecosystem health. And so that would be from the soil up. And so how do you, build topsoil? How do you build biodiversity?

How do you build resilience? How do you build soil hold, water holding capacity? You know, all of those things. So that’s what I see as regenerative agriculture. So it’s not just saying sustainable, which would mean we’re not going backwards, but saying, can we go forwards? And what’s interesting about that? Can you scale it? I think yes, but it’s like everything, becomes sometimes harder with bigger landscapes because I think it becomes management.

It’s about human management. And so you need people on country to manage that. And so it gets more difficult to scale up. And it’s a lot easier with animals. So it’s a lot easier to move cows and sheep around and move soil fertility and increase soil fertility than it is to do it with vegetables and growing lettuce and stuff like that. So yes, it can scale. But ⁓

But what gives me hope, guess, Ron, is this idea we’re losing crazy amounts of topsoil and that we going to have to abandon land is that there are people who are building topsoil at crazy rates. So you said, 500 years to grow an inch of topsoil and some places might take a thousand years? lots of Australia takes about thousand years to get a centimeter of topsoil, right? So it’s really slow, but we can supercharge that. I’ve been on farms where they’ve grown 20 centimeters of topsoil in five years you know, sort of mad and that’s by building soil life.

It’s not changing the basic composition of the land we get has ⁓ crushed up rock and it’s got sand and silt and clay, just grades of crushed up rock. That’s kind of the dead inert bit, the rock minerals. But how we can actually build soil as opposed to dirt is by building the life within, so the organic matter.

It’s leaf litter and roots and this biology in the soil that’s making it more, ⁓ giving it better pore structure, better water holding capacity, better able to drain moisture in times of flood. ⁓ Soil that smells great, grows more food per acre. ⁓ And we have this wonderful ability to grow topsoil at rates that nature couldn’t even dream of.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:30)

And worth mentioning, think that animals play a very important part in that being well managed. And I think a lot of regenerative farmers that I’ve spoken to, and I’ve spoken to many on this podcast and in person describe themselves as soil farmers.

Matthew Evans (28:46)

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? A lovely idea that, you you see someone and they maybe have beef as one of their brands, but what they’re actually, they’ll tell you, yeah, I’m actually farming soil. it’s like, so they’re seeing where everything came from and everything’s going to is soil. And so they’re saying, well, how do I build that ⁓ resource? Because it is a resource and it’s a finite resource because

You know, there’s only so much land that we can go to. only so many places that ⁓ feel comfortable and habitable to farm. There’s only so much water. ⁓ Yeah. so, I think what’s interesting about that thing with the animals too, is that a lot of people probably don’t understand the ecosystems, know, soil co-evolved with plants and animals.

Like they’re really important in the ecosystem. So they don’t have to be domesticated animals, but you need to have micro bats or insects or something going across your land at some point, because that’s what soil wants and needs. using domesticated animals is a really good way of getting soil what it needs and to boost soil health to get what we want, which is food and fiber to feed us, clothe us and house us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:04)

Now I know, and I’m looking forward to this grounded festival that you’ve organized. I’m going to talk about that in a minute, but I just wanted to ask you one other question about another book that you’ve written. This is a great opportunity for me, Matthew. Milk. Now it takes on this original superfood, modicum. What’s the biggest lie we’ve been told about dairy? What’s your, what’s your conclusion there?

Matthew Evans (30:31)

I think the biggest lie that we’ve been told is that there are substitutes that know, because, you know, I was just reading something in the paper about the ecological footprints of different milks. it’s sort of the subtext, they don’t even address this, but the subtext is, yes, there’s something white and wet that’s called milk that comes from an animal.’ And then there’s something white and wet that comes from oats or soil.

rice or whatever it might come from. And that they’re somehow equivalent. And I think that’s the biggest lie that we’ve been told is that you can substitute one with the other. When milk is so inordinately complex and so extraordinarily bioactive and bioavailable and so remarkable in its composition that we can’t even come close to replacing it. I think, I’ll give you an example.

There’s these lab milks that they’re trying to make. So they call them, you know, dairy without the cow is how they’re sort of promoting them. And, let’s see if we can, they get some genetically modified yeast and they, they get them to produce milk proteins. So caseins is a group of milk proteins. And so they’ve got these yeasts and they’re going, we can get them to produce casein in in a fermenter, in a stainless steel fermenter, in a, in in a lab or in a factory. And so we can make milk.

And it’s like, so I was pretty interested in this because they’re talking about, you it’s not a single protein. Obviously it’s complex. They’re going to do six proteins and they’ll probably, you know, before they go commercial, maybe get 10 proteins. And I was interested in how many proteins are in milk, because if you’re going to have a substitute or replacement for milk, well, what’s in milk? And it took me like all of about 15 minutes. I’ve forgotten the numbers, but it’s something like 2,564 proteins in cow’s milk. Right. So there is no chance we can replace it. There are no chance that we can have a substitute for milk.

We could create something white and wet and it might have a lower greenhouse gas emissions and it might have a smaller footprint in terms of water use or whatever it might be and land use. But what is it doing for us? Nothing. Well, generally, actually, most of those other substitutes are potentially doing us harm because they’re what you would know, they’re classified as ultra processed foods, the stuff our body is not designed to recognize, so our bodies don’t recognize those plant milks as food.

So they’re potentially doing us harm, especially if they’ve got emulsifiers in, those barista ones are the worst. Whereas milk, even milk from a really industrial farm and a system that I don’t really love that’s been, you know, high heat treated and killed a lot of bioactive compounds, that is still a really nutritious product. So it’s the only people it’s going to do harm to are those who are the very, very few people who are allergic or have you know, intolerances to the proteins. And there are some people who can’t have the lactose, but they can still consume some of that before they have any issues. And then there are ways to get rid of the lactose, like make cheese or yogurt or, you know, take tablets or whatever. So milk is nutritional wonderland with all things that are having effect on everything from the way our DNA behaves to heart disease in a positive way. And then

You’ve got the substitutes, which are either doing nothing for you, except making your coffee lighter colored or potentially doing you harm by interfering with your gut microbiome or worse.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:58)

Yeah, well, this is an issue around meat, around milk, around any animal-based food and the words plant-based are being used to market a healthy, environmentally friendly thing that we can sell. But I think we’ve become, or they’ve become unwittingly foot soldiers for the ultra-processed food industry.

Matthew Evans (34:24)

Yeah. And I think that’s the tragedy because this idea, I love plants. just love vegetables and I love legumes and pulses and all of those things that people who don’t eat meat would enjoy. I think they’re amazing. But I think the problem is, yeah, we’re sort of demonizing animals and those kinds of things.

And we’re bolstering the ultra processed food industry. we’re saying, Oh, you know, you, shouldn’t have this or you shouldn’t have that, but don’t worry. We’ve got the quick fix for you. We’ve got the answer and yeah, unwittingly or wittingly. the great example for me, and I’m sure you’ve, because you read, so that you’ve read a couple of my books in terms of, know, whenever they say we’re doing a really good job with plant based, I just go margarine. Margarine.

No one ever says, I really enjoyed a lovely margarine crumpet. Or I had a delicious margarine croissant. Right. No one has ever said that in the history of humanity. Right. Because margarine is rubbish. And so this is a product I’ve been working on for a hundred years that originally wasn’t…

It’s grey, so they had to dye it yellow to make it look like butter. it’s a product that they’ve been working on flavor-wise, texture-wise. And after a hundred years and billions of dollars worth of investment, they still have only come up with margarine. If you’re have a plant-based, have olive oil. I love olive oil. Amazing. But you can’t… What I think they’re trying to do is say, oh, butter is so dangerous and killing us all. And never was.

It’s just that they like the idea of being able to sell that. out that the trans fats in margarine were probably killing us in the eighties. But this idea that you can create something to replace the butter and all you can come up with is margarine, which is not doing us any good for our health and it’s not doing us any good gastronomically, socially, culturally. There’s no pleasure in margarine.

And that’s, but the lie we’ve been told is that is somehow better. And you can translate that to every plant based process product out there. You know, like, you know, there’s a big difference between, you know, the, the, fava beans or, you know, broad beans and, ⁓ you know, and, and then the, those broad bean proteins that have been extracted and put into a fake hamburger patty that they, you know, they want to make look like it’s bleeding when you cut into it, you know, that’s not food.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:07)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you’re down to a price, not up to a standard kind of describes another problem. that is that so much the next to the health and environmental costs of food has been externalized. You know, like we’re not going to deal with that. That’s your problem. We’re going to give it to you cheap and tell you it’s healthy.

Matthew Evans (37:22)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah. And then it is that externalization. It’s one of those things that I’m really hopeful that some of this new accounting, like natural capital accounting and things like that, that’ll do one bit of ⁓ capturing those externalities, but the impact on the health system. So, we have this attitude and I know you’re interested in milk, you have an interest in milk, we milk a cow. I have this attitude that raw milk is no one here as dangerous as people make out. And this idea that it’s

It’s illegal for my child to have raw milk, but it’s totally legal for them to have Red Bull. I think raw milk has inherent dangers, but I think we can manage them. And I think there are benefits to be had out of it. But the idea, I guess, is that you can’t see Red Bull killing someone straight away. You can’t measure increasing bacteria straight away.

This idea that Red Bull is safe because it doesn’t have the richness of milk in terms of its complexity, its proteins and sugars and carbohydrate. Red Bull biologically, nothing can live on, right? Or Coca-Cola, take any of your soft drinks. Nothing can live on them, right? And so from a food safety point of view, they’re safe because nothing can live on them.

But as a nutritional thing that we would consume and put into our bodies, well, nothing can live on them. So this weird anomaly of like, it’s food safe to have stuff that you can’t live on. the milk’s problem is it’s too nutritious because bad things can live on it if it’s not treated well, as can meat or chicken or eggs or any of those things that are so nutrient dense.

That they, yes, they have any, yeah, there is a inbuilt risk, but that doesn’t make them unsafe. It just means you’ve got to treat them as risky and treat them sensibly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:37)

Yeah, no, think there was a whole, I think I read it in either your book or another book on raw milk, talking about why pasteurization was so important a hundred years ago, because there was so many dairies connected to so many breweries that these cows were living in a shed, living off slops, dying after two or three years. And the milk quality was so bad that it needed to be pasteurized. But, but that’s a different story. How a lot of cows are grown today.

Matthew Evans (40:07)

Yeah, yeah. that historic anomaly, you know, of when pasteurization came in, it was a great thing because at that time, yeah, there was no one that really had refrigeration. either, the milk had to travel a long way unrefrigerated or it came from these urban dairies where they were feeding the cows terrible, terrible things and the cows were terribly sick. you know, essentially just milk just became yet another vector for illness and disease.

And so, but now, yeah, we can chill the milk as it comes from the cow within about two minutes. It’s below four degrees. It can be transported in sterile containers. It can stay, you know, at a non-breeding temperature for quite a while. And yet we still have the rules based on, I guess, this fear of it as being something that could, that did kill lots of people. did, you know, especially young, people with weak immune systems.

But that’s not the food system these days. So we’ve kind of got an attitude that’s based on historic problems that no longer exist. yeah, I don’t know why I can go to a vending machine in Italy and get raw milk and I can go to a supermarket in France and get raw milk and go to a dairy farm in New Zealand and buy raw milk. was in Ireland and they had a vending machine, know, bring your own bottle, fill up with raw milk from this beautiful little dairy on a farm in Ireland.

And you don’t hear about everyone dying. It’s regulated, it’s small scale, it’s traceable, ⁓ but it’s not killing everybody. It’s just a different attitude to the product. It’s like saying, well, okay, we know this, people want this and how do we get it to them safely and manage it as opposed to what I call raw milk, the new moonshine because around us something like 3000 illegal steals in Tasmania.

So everyone knows how to get illegal home brew. But there’s very few people actually milking cows. So as soon as you start milking a cow, you get knocks on the door from all sorts of people trying to get a hold of you, the good stuff. And it shouldn’t be like that. It should just be like, okay, this is an industry that obviously people are interested in. They have beliefs in how it might help them and they may be real or imagined, but they’re to do it anyway.

So why don’t we do it in a way that’s not people selling milk out of the back of the ute in Bondi or, know, Sinclair Car Park, you know, which is where I know people are buying. I’ve got a friend who works as a barista in Melbourne and he and his mates go and buy, they meet in a McDonald’s car park and buy raw milk once a week, direct from the farmer. And so that’s fine, but I’d prefer it you got it from a refrigerated truck, you know, like

And you could buy it every day. Because I find my milk isn’t as good after three days. So if you could buy it every day, you wouldn’t be buying it once a week and storing it. It would be probably safer to have it regulated than not.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (43:15)

Now, listen, you give co-founded this grounded festival, which I’m looking forward to going to and it was first launched in, in Tasmania, your farm and went to WA and, this year it’s in, Victoria. Tell us a little bit about it. What gap are you trying to fill and what could people expect when they go there? Who have never been before.

Matthew Evans (43:36)

Yeah, I think the gap I was trying to fill was because I’m sort of in this, I sort of span between, know, because I was a restaurant critic and I’m a chef by trade and I sort of bridged that gap between the growers and the people who are eating the food. You know, I’ve written recipe books and all sorts of stuff over my time. And I was interested in this idea of how we can help growers and people interested in food systems do better.

That idea of you know, that nothing stays the same, that we can always be getting incrementally better. I that’s a really nice human trait. And with this problem with soil, you know, as one of the fundamentals, how can we look at landscapes and say, okay, I want to feed people or I want to be fed, you know, because we get lots of people coming in who aren’t growers. And how’s that system operate? And is it operating in my favor? And is there a way to, you know, if you’re a grower, how do you

I’m farming better. don’t really know what that means for each farmer, but it might be they want to use less chemicals, fewer chemicals or none. They might want to have more profit or they might want more time with their family, might want more bird life on their farm. It might be better mental health, whatever that might look like. It might be higher yields, lower inputs, whatever it is. And then we go, okay, well, let’s throw all these ideas in the air.

And I have lots of questions and I don’t have the answers. So I get in these people from around the world and around Australia and and say, okay, so tell me why if I cut all the mistletoe off my trees, I lose a third of my bird life. Because, mistletoe we think of as a plague problem, it’s killing our trees. So I get the researcher in who says, let me tell you about mistletoe, why the soil underneath it’s better, why they’re a hotspot of biodiversity, why are you going to lose a third of your bird life if you cut off the mistletoe as opposed to celebrating the fact you’ve got this amazing thing that’s supposed to be there.

And you’re like, my God, that’s amazing. Who knew? You know, so I get people with the answers and sometimes I get people with better questions. And it’s a really joyous event. We have multiple talks going at once, has that sort of writer’s philosophy idea of like, you might be interested in different things. You can scale your own learning. When you’re sick of the talk, you can go to the bar because, you may be the most interesting person you’re going to talk to is not on stage.

They might be in the, you might meet them in the line for the dunny. You know, they might be a farmer or a grower on a similar journey. might be a, you you might because we’ve got a food as medicine guy coming out of the US. might be another doctor who’s working in that. How do we nourish communities through the medical system? So there’s lots of opportunities for social interactions. We’ll have some food vans, we’ll have some live music. it’s almost learning by stealth as well. Someone said, it’s so educational. And I said, don’t say that. It doesn’t sound like any fun at all. This is supposed to be a really good time where you go away with with knowledge and tools and connections.

And we don’t do anything over Zoom. It’s all done in person. it brings together, I guess, people of a positive frame of mind who want to see how we can look after the planet better, feed ourselves, our community, our families, our better look after the planet better. And it’s just, so uplifting.

There could be people with very different…polar opposites points of view who have these beautiful, respectful conversations and come away sometimes having changed their mind about stuff because they don’t feel threatened. It’s just like, this is a cool group of people to spend a couple of days with having conversations about stuff that interests me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (47:12)

Well, I’m certainly looking forward to it and I’ve never been before. that’s coming up on the 22nd, 3rd, 4th of April.

We’re going to have links to that, listen, just finishing up now, if there was one thing the average Australian or anybody in the world could do this week and not on a farm, but in the kitchen or at the shops to honor the soil and the farmers behind their food, what do you think it would be?

Matthew Evans (47:42)

That’s a great question. Gosh, that’s such a good question. I’m going to say buy a vegetable that you’ve never bought before because every plant gives something to soil and every plant takes something from soil. but we’ll buy or buy a grain you’ve never bought before. So, so farmers grow wheat all the time, which is growing wheat all the time. It’s not good for soil. So it loves to have a mix of things grown in it. And, but if you just keep buying wheat, well, they just keep growing wheat.

But if you buy Triticale or sorghum or, you buy barley, you buy rye, that actually gets the farmer to grow something different. And when they grow something different, they change the soil and improve the soil. So it might be buying a kohlrabi that you’ve seen and never, you know, didn’t know what to do with, or it might be buying a different type of weird broccoli, or it might be, you know, just mix it up. And by doing that, you’re actually, you’re going to be doing better for your gut, you know, because the more diverse.

things we can put in ourselves is a good thing. But you’re also doing better for the soil because soil loves diversity too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:46)

That’s great note for us to finish on. And as I said, we’ll have links to the festival and your books. Thank you for everything you’re doing have done and will continue to do. look forward to meeting you in person at the grounded fest. Thanks. Well, we covered so many topics there. And as I said, Matthew has written books on or done documentaries on most of them, but the one that I’m drawing your attention to is the grounded festival. I’ll be there.

Matthew Evans (48:57)

Great, see you soon Ryan.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (49:11)

In, think it’s the 22nd and 23rd of April this year in Victoria. I’m looking forward to it, but I would also recommend many of Matthew’s books and documentaries. I’d also encourage you to leave a review for, ⁓ unstressed health podcast on Spotify or on Apple podcasts or on whatever platform you’re listening to this and also joining the unstressed health community, which you’re going to hear more about in a moment. hope this finds you well until next time. This is Dr Ron Erlich, be well.

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Leading Under Pressure: How to Master Stress & Thrive in Leadership with Dr Amar Dhall https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/1306acca-8e91-407b-adba-adf70057d15f/773041ac-0ce2-41e4-9337-ae11015b73d3/06b01bc3-8ada-4519-9564-b41a00552acc/audio.mp3SHOW NOTES 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:

• https://www.amardhall.com/

Email Address

• amar@dramardhall.com

Social Media Accounts 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 + @amar.dhall.75 * 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 + @dramardhall * 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 + @dr.amar_dhall*

00:00 – Introduction & workplace wellbeing

02:00 – What “leading under load” means

04:00 – Stress, trauma & leadership behavior

07:00 – Capability vs capacity explained

11:00 – Vertical vs horizontal development

14:00 – Autonomic nervous system basics

18:00 – Trauma as unprocessed stress

22:00 – Neurosomatic leadership explained

25:00 – Cognitive vs embodied leadership

26:50 – Leadership under stress & its impact

31:00 – Burnout cycles and healthcare crisis

35:00 – Certainty vs uncertainty in leadership

37:50 – Thrive vs survival mode

41:40 – Building collective regulation in teams

47:20 – Practical stress regulation tools

54:50 – Future of leadership & psychosocial safety

57:40 – Final insights & closing

Leading Under Pressure: How to Master Stress & Thrive in Leadership with Dr Amar Dhall Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Well, you I feel rather passionate about psychosocial safety in the workplace. In fact, I feel rather passionate about workplace wellbeing. Now I’ve been in healthcare for 45 years and I have come to the conclusion rather sadly that the healthcare industry is not perhaps the best industry to become healthy in. There is a serious conflict of interest.

And a regular listener to my podcast or reader of my book will have some, a life less stress that is, we’ll have some idea of why I say those things. in the workplace, workplace wellbeing makes so much sense. Not only is it good for our health, physical and mental, not only is it good for our family lives, but it is also a terrific return on investment. And if money talks and let’s face it, it does.

Workplace wellbeing and a return on investment need to go hand in hand and they do. Well, today we’re really getting into workplace wellbeing. My guest is Dr. Amar Dhall. Now Amar is a psychotherapist, a leadership researcher and founder of NeuroSomatic Research. Amar works with senior leaders and executive teams and what he calls leading under load, the capacity to stay clear regulated and effective in high pressure environments.

Now in a world where complexity and uncertainty are the norm, and let’s face it, they are, and they’re growing all the time, understanding your nervous system and how it impacts on you. Well, it may be the missing link between surviving leadership and truly thriving. And that is what this program is all about, thriving. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Amar Dhall.

Welcome to the show, Amar.

Dr Amar Dhall (02:01)

Hello, thank you Dr Ron, lovely to meet you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:04)

Well, I’m, you know, I’ve been in healthcare for 45 years, but, uh, in the last three or four being particularly focused on workplace wellbeing. Um, and so when I saw your focus was very much on that and, and the connection with the nervous system and how this all interacts, psycho-social safety, a major word that every employee, anybody who’s managing anybody in the workplace should be familiar with.

You use the phrase leading under load. Now, what does, what does that mean in general? And specifically, what does it mean from a nervous system perspective?

Dr Amar Dhall (02:45)

So in a, a great question leading under load really just refers to what it is to be functioning in a world that’s stressful and have stressors coming in. So that’s what it is to be alive, right? Every organism has to navigate a fairly stressful environment in one way or another. And for humans, one of those domains is then applied in the workplace where we have a whole bunch of stressors that come in, some of which I guess we’re going to expand more on as we roll through the conversation.

But that at a high level is where we’ll start.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:16)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, we, you say, we live in a very stressful world and that’s what the focus of my work over professionally and on this podcast has been unstressed is a, an appropriation of understanding stress and reducing it. But anyway, we can talk about that, but many high achievers actually normalize. fact, arguably a lot of people normalize chronic stress.

As part of success, as part of being busy, it’s almost worn as a badge of honor. How does unrecognized nervous system deregulation shape, shape leadership behavior and culture in a organization over time? How does that impact on the workplace?

Amar Dhall (04:04)

Great. Well, I think that actually it goes back to my response, or go back to what you talked about in terms of the name of your podcast, right? Understanding stress. What I would maybe add to that is that ⁓ cognitive understanding of stress is one way of looking at it. I understand, or the way that I frame it, metaphorically, if not literally, that stress, humans need to metabolize experience.

And so I would say that trauma could be understood as a ⁓ failure to metabolize experience. Right. So it could be too much, too fast, too soon, or too little, too late in terms of support. So in terms of how this would then shape leadership in the workplace, it would be about a leader having limited bandwidth or engaging in cycles of burnout.

So, you know, hard work, stress, collapse recovery, then getting back onto the mouse wheel until the next episode happens, or being reactive and not really being able to shape things in a way that feels that perhaps it could be some internal impulse to order or performance that never really fully gets to be expressed and embodied.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (05:20)

Yes. Well, I mean, the whole ⁓ area of stress is, mean, evolutionarily speaking, it’s been a very protective concept, a particular part of our nervous system that’s been able to deal with perceived real and perceived dangers. But of course, today, that model of stress is a little bit different. How do you define stress? Let’s talk about stress in general. How do you defined stress in the modern world in the modern world.

Amar Dhall (05:53)

In the modern world, well, I think definitionally, it’s kind of the same as it’s always been, but the stressors themselves that exert stress are unique. So, know, physiology, you know, in the process of adapting to what is around us or expressing what is inside, we come up against constrictions of all kinds, limitations, whether, as I said, environmental or internal.

I think stress is part of the process of existing in this world and actually express, as I said, what it is to what wants to come out and be expressed in action, the process of making that fit or responding to some stimuli or work pressure that I would frame the load as stress.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:45)

And how do you unpack that? I mean, it’s one thing to say you’re under a lot of load. You’re under a lot of stress. ⁓ we need to, ⁓ deal with that. How do you approach that? How do you deal with that? We’re in the workplace, not personally, although personally is probably as much a reflection on the workplace, but in the workplace and that, do you deal? How do you unpack modern stress?

Amar Dhall (07:09)

Well, I think that to do that, we need to understand the difference between capability and capacity. Right. And I think a lot of, a lot of people focus on trying to build their capacity to do things and stretch themselves. However, if they’re not capable, then their intention around capacity is irrelevant. So for me, what would be different about the way that I see it is I would say if you increase the ability to actually do things, the ability to metabolize stress, the ability to metabolize challenge, then the capacities actually get to express themselves in a very, very different way. Does that make sense?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:53)

Yeah. Well, I think it’s interesting to view that capability versus capacity ⁓ conundrum, if you like, because, I think, you know, we’ve done programs just recently on digital health, digital nutrition, and, ⁓ what drives some of these companies and the people that develop these products that put us under a lot of stress. The, that incentives often Trump.

Intentions, incentives, often Trump intentions. And I purposefully use that word Trump. I think it is almost like an exclamation mark to that concept really, isn’t it? It says so much more than it used to. So again, coming back to capability versus capacity, ⁓ you know, I think that’s a really interesting way of looking at, at stress in our modern world. What are we capable of?

And what is their capacity to deal with it? How do you, how do you, how do you quantify that or advise people, you know, you’re dealing with leaders, and, you’re dealing with workplace. ⁓ what, what kind of, ⁓ how’s your approach to that? When you give us a bit of insight into a miles approach to toxic load, the workplace load 101. Getting started with a month.

Amar Dhall (09:18)

So I think the, and I’ll try and make this really practical because the models that we’re talking about, clearly you and I are both deep thinkers about things. And so we can create abstract ways and frames of looking at what may be really simple from an embodied experience. So I’ll try and cover both of those in this moment. So to give the frame, I would frame the differences is, you know, often people think in terms of what I would frame as horizontal, working on the horizontal plane of doing things, a skill set, et cetera. So this is kind of moving horizontally through life. The ability to respond is about actually where someone is vertically in themselves. So to me, the ability to develop vertical verticality, and that means being able to both drop into yourself and also be able to move up high and see things, quasi objectively, right? We’re all subjective beings.

So in terms of the frame, I would say that it’s being able to blend vertical development with horizontal skill acquisition. So to make that really practical, what that looks like, the way that I would be developing vertical capability is around creating a really robust vocabulary around, for example, the autonomic nervous system and understanding how

You know, the state of the autonomic nervous system will profoundly shape the way people interpret things and make meaning of the world. So this, you know, that would be, well, that really is the tectonic plate, I think that sits underneath our embodied experience of stress and our ability to respond to it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:01)

Hmm. Yes, I like that. Also, you’ve given me two things I like now, capability and capacity, but also vertical and horizontal way of looking at things, because the vertical way of looking at it implies the importance of foundations on which you view things vertically. need good foundations for that vertical model to stay usable, healthy and be able to see things clearly. And I guess it’s that foundation that gives us greater capacity and capability.

Amar Dhall (11:39)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, the other, the other part of this is I think if we were to then talk about people in the workplace or look at people in positions of authority, what is it that got them there? And it may be that they are very skilled or they’re very capable or they, you know, they’ve scaled a mountain and now living at altitude. Along the way, they will have necessarily had to adapt and, and sacrifice and or they may have come into their working and professional life from a place of sacrifice.

I saw this when I was an academic. To get to the pointy end was a lot of work. So what is it that people had to sacrifice to get to that pointy end? Did they sacrifice their congeniality or were they intrinsically oriented towards being a little more isolated? So I think when it comes to having a conversation at the level where we’re talking about, it’s about becoming alive to what

What is the price that I have paid to get here? What have I focused on and cultivated my excellence in? But also what have I missed? And generally, unless you’re extremely fortunate in the family you were brought up in, there’s pretty much a zero. I’ve yet to meet a professional who has taught a vocabulary around the autonomic nervous system that would be in any generation remotely resembling either of ours.

Right. This is pretty new stuff. So I think the process of being curious, of being willing to learn, about being willing to ask the question, what am I not seeing in the way that I construct myself in the way that I relate with others? That is really the curiosity to follow. if you happen to follow that diligently, know, people listen to your podcast, I’ve heard a few episodes, you you’re exploring robust ideas, following the curiosity into robust ideas will produce a paradigm shift.

And this is then where people get to formulate responses that you know, feel really true for themselves and also have a really robust evidence base as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:43)

You’ve used the word, ⁓ autonomic nervous system. And I know that you and I both know what that means. And I wouldn’t really hope that my regular listeners would as well, but I think it doesn’t hurt to just go back to some basic lay down some basics here. So we are all on the same literally on the same page, because I know you’ve also coined this term, neuro somatic leadership. And I want to unpack that a little bit.

But let’s just start with the autonomic nervous system, 101 and the stress response 101 and, how that’s happening in our modern world.

Amar Dhall (14:23)

Okay, great. So the gist of it is that I would say we have three parallel intelligences working all the time and they’re interrelated, but also still fairly independent. So there’s the cognitive intelligence. So that’s the stories, the words, the thoughts, the meaning making, the interpretation of whatever’s going on. Then there’s our emotional world and that consists of internal experience, which will also have the physiological correlates but the emotional life, then I would say there’s an instinctive intelligence that operates.

And this is where I would fit the autonomic nervous system in, in the context of this conversation. So in any given situation, we are going to have a cognitive way of responding to it. We’re to have an emotional response to it, and our autonomic nervous system is going to respond to it as well.

If I was to frame how I understand the autonomic system to be working and frame it in terms of a question, it would be asking, am I safe? Right? Every organism is asking, am I safe? And the response to that question is done pre-linguistically. It’s not really thought about. The autonomic nervous system is going to have its own way of responding and it’s going to prime us in one of three ways. And this is really drawing on the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and Polyvagal Theory.

So he would say that or applying that theory, if we’re safe, if the answer to, I safe or safe enough? If the answer is yes, then the social engagement system will be activated, right? Which is one branch of the Vegas nerve in his theory. If I’m not, then there’s a spectrum of possibility that opens up. And depending on the threat level, it will either trigger the sympathetic nervous system.

So fight or flight, which essentially is either to move toward or away, right? And if it’s toward, it’s with a an intention to resolve through conflict. And if that would fail, then we would then go to a collapse overwhelm response or a freeze response. So the autonomic nervous system will create its own response. Unless there’s a little bit of training and awareness, people won’t necessarily understand to which, it’s not, one, I’m either safe and social or in fight or flight or collapsed and overwhelmed.

It’s more like all three systems, as I said, will be working, you know, at the same time, one will always be dominant. And so it’s about learning to distinguish what that is, understand like, so for example, if anyone can relate with the idea of friendly competition and competing, and then something happens and then suddenly the competition is not so friendly, right? And things get a bit serious.

So that is the social engagement system or the ventral branch of the vagus nerve being dominant in terms of its activity sympathetic nervous system, the fight flight being activated and then something happening, which then has the sympathetic nervous system come up and become the one that’s got the biggest impact on our physiology. So that’s, that’s hopefully gives a little bit of an introduction into what’s going on with the ANS.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:31)

Yes. Yes. The, well, the autonomic nervous, I think that work of Stephen Porgis and his polyvagal theory is just so interesting because so often in stressful situations, in assaults in particularly in instances like rape, why didn’t you run? Why, why, know, if you had to do, why didn’t you run?

Well, the polyvagal theory points out as you have now that we actually don’t have a fight or flight a response, but there’s a freeze response to which, which is, is really interesting. and yet within our it’s interesting too, because the physiological response, and they always talk about if I came across a saber tooth tiger, we haven’t seen many of those, but we often get that as a model, you know, then I will be caught up and I will fight or flight or freeze. ⁓ but, but in our modern world,

There are other versions of the saber tooth tiger that we confront consciously and subconsciously out there.

Amar Dhall (18:36)

Absolutely. So if I was again, going to bring it back to what we’re talking about in terms of understanding stress, I would talk about then what we’re discussing with someone’s being pushed into the realm or their nervous system is being pushed into the realm of fight, flight or collapse to some, you know, to a significant extent, let’s say, then the question would be, trauma then and traumatic stress is a failure of us to metabolize our experience.

Right. And so what this looks like in a, I use the term metabolize in ⁓ a functional way, not a literal way, but I think human beings need to metabolize stress and metabolize experience. So traumatic stress or a traumatic event then is a frustration in the body’s ability to metabolize that experience, which means, and this is the point that I wanted to make, right, which then leads to what would be classified as a frustration of or of ⁓ the completion of a response.

So what I mean by that is that in the wild, if an animal goes through something really traumatic, it may shake for a period. And in that shaking, there’s a discharge of the fight flight energy that it wasn’t able to express because maybe it did go to a collapse or was immobilized. Now for us in the modern world, where you talk about some of the ways stressors are different, we might go through a, a, cognitive way of restraining our responses, right?

When we say, I feel like punching that person, but we don’t, or we keep a ⁓ brave face. And so what we’re doing on the one hand is to maintain social cohesion and connection where we’re functioning in that system. But at the level of our physiology, that energy actually is trapped. And this is the essence of PTSD is a re-traumatized, a re-triggering of that survival energy.

And this is not drawn from the work of Dr. Peter Levine and somatic experience in which I was being fortunate enough to learn. So, you know, in a trauma resolution ⁓ paradigm, what we’re doing is we’re actually looking to titrate that energy and have it come out slowly in ways that the body can actually integrate afterwards, rather than these big swings of energy or these big swings of stress.

And what the person does is they use their brain to force themselves to regulate or they disassociate, right? Which is a type of ⁓ dorsal vagal response. it’s a collapse, type of, you know, in the category of collapse and overwhelm and tell ourselves that things are okay or go and use maybe alcohol or some way of coping, which doesn’t actually resolve. And this is the point that I, the deeper point that I wanted to make.

These strategies don’t resolve stress. They simply kick the can down the road and the bill will come to you at a later point. So to bring it back to this conversation, understanding the autonomic nervous system and creating a vocabulary around this is about supporting people to begin to catch that and understand when they’re forcibly down regulating themselves versus understanding what it would be to complete a response and work with their physiology.

and couple our mind and our brain into one. And this is then also what neurosomatic leadership is about, is reintegrating body and mind with a higher level of vocabulary and understanding so that we can metabolize stressful experiences. We can build that vertical ability of ours to respond and enjoy life really and have greater meaning and wellbeing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:23)

Yes, I love it. And I mean, I think this is well, it’s the mission of this podcast. Amara, that is to, ⁓ I mean, in order to solve a problem, I always feel it helps to know firstly, what that problem is to be able to identify it, articulate it and think about it. So if you’re going to solve a problem like stress, I think it helps to, as you nicely put it, have a vocabulary, ⁓ with which to understand what exactly is going on.

How does that differ from the traditional cognitive or mindset based leadership models?

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Amar Dhall (24:11)

Well, I think it’s like the difference between someone thinking if they read a lot of books about dancing, they’re going to jump out on the dance floor and look amazing versus someone being trained in how to dance. And what I mean by this is these are embodied skills. It’s not a cognitive understanding. Someone who thinks they can cognitively, you know, it’s like this. If someone was to say, all right, I’m going to challenge you not to go to sleep. So that’s a cognitive challenge.

There will be a period where someone can use their will and their mind and try and stay awake, but in an arm wrestle between body and mind, the body will always win. And so it’s about really understanding how we can get these two different aspects of our being working together. And so, and then that is the fundamental, is, you know, this is also why, if I think, you know, we look at this as a different example, but you know, I really think it’s analogous, which is in the GFC, right?

In the global financial crisis, the people who were making really horrible decisions were often trained at top universities and had studied a unit called ethics in some way, but weren’t actually embodying it. But they had a fantastic cognitive understanding of the concept. So this gap between cognitive understanding and embodied experience and embodied learning is maybe the difference between sort of superficial knowledge and wisdom.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:32)

I know that that’s an interesting point because I know one of my mentors in my professional journey said that if you ask your patients the right questions, they’ll often not only tell you what’s wrong with them, but they’ll tell you how to fix it. And I think one could look internally and say the same thing that if we as individuals ask ourselves the right questions, we begin that journey of being able to fix it.

But coming back to the work place because what has happened in the workplace and a lot of leaders, CEOs, boards, managers are not aware of this, but I know that in 2022, Australia, a lot of governments in Australia legislated about psycho social safety in the workplace. And when we were looking at having you on the program, you know, I know this is a major focus for you creating an atmosphere of psychosocial safety and leaders have to lead.

Ironically, are the often the most stressed and the least psychologically safe in their own heads. What happens when leaders operate in a survival mode and how does that affect the people they manage in your experience in the workplace? What are the, what is the implications of that?

Amar Dhall (26:52)

Hugely.

So what we’re talking about there, so, okay, to bring this back to what we were saying, with looking at it through a nervous system lens, one of the aspects of the sympathetic nervous system, so that anxiety or fight flight energy, which a lot of leaders have learned to focus into achievement or working or doing, one of the side effects of this is binary thinking.

So right or wrong, my way or the highway. And so they become grounded in a paradigm of right and wrong. And what we lose are the shades of gray. What we lose is the ability to look at complex problems and bring the best of ourselves and draw out the best of the people around me or around them to solve this problem. So that’s problem number one.

Problem number two, if any of your listeners or yourself think about what it is to be around someone who is unconsciously leaking stress. That’s not a great thing to be around. Right. It’s not conducive to trust. It’s not conducive to flow, know, group flow and getting into that place where we’re working as a team and we’re doing good work and we’ve got the right level of challenge. So it collapses that possibility. Third, they will inevitably burn out.

Right. And in my experience, burnout doesn’t happen once. It’s an orientation that leads people to, you know, get stressed, burnout, recover, then burnout again, then recover and be on this mouse wheel until such time as they learn to get off it, or they actually become incapable of working and showing up. So off the top of my head, I’d say that that would be a few.

Actually, the last thing I’ll say, because I think this is a really good get for leaders and CEOs is with that binary thinking, is to begin to see the problem as existing out there. So everyone else is the problem and not really being able to think from a place of radical self responsibility, you know, how have I contributed and co-created this? Because that’s a dangerous thought.

And if I’m already on edge, if I’m already stressed and I’ve got then maybe some guilt and shame that may come around my achievement and maybe not doing things perfectly, which a lot of really high performers have, then it’s results in me, know, cumulatively all of this is that I’m peering through a keyhole that a universe and a workplace where there’s a full room to be engaged with and cultivated and worked with. And all of that capability and capacity is, you know, is just squandered, I would say.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:34)

I mean, we could unpack each of those and we should unpack each of those because that’s just opened up a whole story. mean, talk about binary thinking. mean, we’re talking leadership, but we could be talking about the world population, ⁓ right and wrong, polarization being led down ⁓ algorithmic rabbit holes that give us a very binary view of the world.

I mean, this is a big problem for us all, really, isn’t it?

Amar Dhall (30:08)

Absolutely. This is why I love your work and this is why I do what I do and maybe this is why we’re having a conversation.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:14)

It is, is, it is indeed. And then, um, well, we don’t have to talk about what it’s like to be around people that are highly stressed. think everybody has an innate feeling of that, but burnout. Oh my God. When we start talking about burnout and I am in the health area, I’ve been in the health area for 45 years, particularly interested in, in the effect on health practitioners who are delivering our healthcare system.

I mean, I read a review of the AMA report, which said, between 60 and 70 % of medical practitioners are suffering from burnout characterized by the acronym DIE. Interesting acronym DIE feeling disengaged. Now, remember these are the people who you are going to see for your health problems. They are disengaged. feel ineffective. Talk about a mouse wheel and, and they feel exhausted.

And so burnout is a huge problem again, not just in leadership, not just in health practitioner, but in general, then radical self-response, know, the problems out there. It’s not in, it’s not with me. It’s out there. mean, my goodness, what, what, what four things to focus on in leadership, but in, life in general.

Amar Dhall (31:35)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, picking up on different professions, there’s a, you know, for me, my background, one of the things, one of the domains that I was in was in law. And, you know, to be a lawyer is to have an opinion and to have an opinion and be confident means you need to think that I’m right. And, and with that comes even the image of the lady justice blindfolded, right? And the idea is to convey impartiality.

But I think the corollary message is to think that, well, sight is such an importance, one of our senses, right? So if I was to cut myself off from my sight, that I would somehow produce a more just outcome, right? And I think that that’s a little hubristic. so, you know, medicine is a similar profession where there needs to be a little bit of detachment to be able to deal with the stressors of the job. But I think again, you know, what is it that I’m not thinking about? What is the cost of this? remoteness or the perspective or what’s the cost of the way that I do things and without curiosity and a bit of compassion and also then by extension, if we’re in cultures, professional cultures where these things are stigmatized, that admitting vulnerability or fragility is seen as, or maybe your advice is actually now weakened for the fact that you’re not pretending that you’re bulletproof and made of Teflon simultaneously.

We go into the world of contrivance. And I think when we do that, the space to not understand what, you know, or to be curious about why am I, you know, on this cycle of burnout and what is it that I maybe need to change my grip on. And it’s so human to be able to do this. Like, okay, I think we have to, I think if we also just look at aside, there’s the cost to the individual professionals who are going on these cycles of burnout.

And you referred to it in saying, these are the people that we’re relying on when we go to see them. So it would be so beautiful if we could really support systems that actually, don’t need to valorize vulnerability, but we need to actually hold it with compassion and support people to do their human business of being a human and to understand that when we do that, one of the things that comes is deeper emotional intelligence, greater empathy.

Right? A doctor that would be able to be with their own mental health challenges or their own burnout or whatever it is, is going to quite, I think, reasonably cultivate greater compassion when they see these same challenges in their patients.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:07)

I mean, think with the story of doctors in particular, well, not just doctors, but doctors, you know, they love certainty. I mean, they must be drawn to certainty, seeing patient after patient after patient in a busy day, uncertainty would be a challenge. And I think, but to your point about validating or acknowledging vulnerability,

I always felt as a health practitioner, when someone presented something that I didn’t know the answer to, rather than pretend what they were asking me wasn’t important or because I didn’t know it, it probably wasn’t worth knowing. I would say that was interesting and I don’t know the answer to it, but I can find out and I can get back to you on that.

And that’s really an empowering thing for a practitioner to do. And I imagine for a leader in a workplace to do to, say, I don’t have the answers to all, but let’s collaborate. Let’s talk, let’s listen and come up with a solution much easier. Actually a much healthier way of approaching the workplace, isn’t it?

Amar Dhall (35:19)

Absolutely. I did some research last year and what you’ve actually put your finger on one of the findings that emerged from that research that leaders who I call it the superhero reflex, right? The desire to project certainty meant that they would overextend. And in doing that, 80 % of the people who saw that in themselves also recognize that they were burnt out. So what you’ve just put your finger on is some of the beliefs that people have that lead them to get onto that mouse wheel, you know, the never ending mouse wheel of burnout, recovery, burnout, recovery, et cetera and you know, think it’s also worth just picking up on another really interesting point that you made around certainty and the, the kind of, what would I say?

It’s almost like a willful blindness or a detachment because life is inherently uncertain and that brings with it fear and that fear is existential and that’s actually part of the human condition but to quarantine it and think that we can push it aside doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. All it means is that we’re suppressing it and putting a lid on a pressure cooker.

And eventually that lid will get blown off and that will express in the way that it does for the person. So I think part of what we’re talking about as well is about maturity of understanding that certainty while it would feel really good, it’s also just not the nature of the world in which we live.

It’s just not the way it does.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:50)

Yeah. It’s almost like whenever we as individuals are confronted with the death of someone close, it’s this shock that we are mortal. It makes us feel vulnerable that, you know, I remember once saying to my wife when I was about 40, if I ever die. And she said, hang on, it’s not if you ever die, it’s when you die. And I was quite confronted by that thought for a split second, but, listen, there, you know, I, I.

A focus that I’ve come to realize and I’ve looked at stress from a lot of different areas is mental fitness is, is the key that underpins so much of, of our lives. And your mind can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. And there’s of course a big difference between survival mode and thrive mode in, the mindset world in the world of mindset, from your perspective, what allows the leader to move from a reactive leadership position to a more regenerative one. What, is key to making that transition?

Amar Dhall (37:56)

Well, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier around the autonomic nervous system, right? The social engagement system. Am I safe? If the answer is yes, then I can cultivate that adaptive thriving mindset. If I’m living with a chronic state of sympathetic arousal or dorsal vagal disassociation and overwhelm and just keeping it together, it’s going to be physiologically impossible for someone in that state to think themselves out of it.

And this is where they may get little tidbits or ideas that are exciting or hear something on a podcast and go, yep, this is a great idea, but it won’t stick. And it’s because the tectonic plates they’re working on, they’re building on a fault line or on a swamp. And so it’s just not going to stick. I think understanding the vocabulary around the autonomic nervous system is going to be hugely influential.

It will create the ability to shift, and then it’s uncovering the beliefs such as those, such as the one that you mentioned earlier, right? Like, am I in a position to accept vulnerability that I don’t know everything? And then the more nuanced conversation around that is, okay, well, if I am going to be vulnerable and more authentic about the way I approach my limitations, how do I still do it in a way that maintains my professional persona and maintains the status quo enough

for me to still do what I need to do.

And this is a bit more nuanced. actually I think, you know, the other point that you raised, which is relevant here as well, goes back to what you were talking about around mortality, where you’re saying, in your forties, where you had that question, this is relevant here because for me, one of the highest forms of leadership is eldership, right?

Eldership is being able to empower in a way where I don’t need to constantly be having exercising oversight and rigid control true empowerment and understanding that when I’m not there, things are going to still move forward. So I think that the cultivation of a sense of place in the world and embracing, you know, what really is going on, forming a relationship with it, cultivating an autonomic vocabulary, and then identifying the beliefs that are problematic and keep me limited. All of these things are going to help someone pivot in a really meaningful, sustainable, permanent way from a threat-based physiology and way of living through to a thriving orientation and movement.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:35)

Hmm. It’s interesting. You know, I often reflect on the pandemic, the COVID experience and there are, we’ve done many programs on aspects of it that I’m less than enthusiastic about. We need to be very vigilant about, but one of the things I think we can all agree happened, which potentially was very positive that it was an opportunity for global reflection on what was important, our work, how we work price we paid for commuting to and from work, know, working from home became legitimized.

You know, it was an opportunity for collective reflection. And now it’s interesting because you mentioned there’s stresses now, which is cost of living and AI and your safety, you know, the safety of my work and my job. How can executives teams build a collective regulation, not just individual resilience, but in these especially volatile times, uncertain times, how can we build a collective regulation?

Amar Dhall (41:43)

That’s a great question. And I think it’s actually quite simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy. just means simple. begins by, well, the organizations with whom I’ve worked and with the teams with whom I’ve worked, it begins by creating a shared vocabulary around this stuff. in one business that I worked, they will talk about the states of the nervous system and have.

They’re playful with it. So there’ll be, know, I’m feeling dorsal and then kind of slump. Right. And it’s light, but it’s also really honest. So I think learning to identify autonomic mismatch. Right. So again, if in a team, one of us is ventral, one of us is sympathetic and one of us is dorsal. Right. If that’s not understood, real connection and forming a harmonious ⁓ vibe is going to be impossible or at least extremely difficult, or we kind of accept that we’re not really going to be that well connected.

So it’s creating a real sense around how can I learn not only once I learn my own autonomic vocabulary, I’ll see it in other people. And it doesn’t need to be as overt as it is in that organization, but it’s about being compassionate and understanding and following each other and leading each other and keeping that. So that’s one thing.

So having that, creating a space and it doesn’t need to be ⁓ over sharing, but creating some kind of ritual space, like a little circle where people get to actually just share what’s alive for them. And, you know, when we do that, when I do, I do that in my own company, we do that in other businesses where I’m a partner and we support that practice in, you know, businesses where we come in and, solve problems or support them to evolve.

Just creating that space tends to win people over. And what it gives leaders and each other is an understanding of what’s actually in the room, right? Instead of just being totally focused on the tasks of what’s going on, being really effective and creating a very contained space for there to be an understanding of the human being that’s behind the human doing in the workplace is going to be really conducive.

And then the last point I would say is, and this is almost a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason, which is having a shared real sense of purpose, vision, mission, values, right? And the two parts of that one is when we all actually believe in what we’re doing, then it’s actually very easy to be held accountable because I care about, I want you to hold me accountable because I believe we’re doing something important.

Right. And so that’s one part of the vision mission values or VMV stuff. The other part is without that, the burden of culture and accountability will sit in a few individuals, which actually raises their overall level of stress and challenge. And so the third bit to put the little capstone on that is to actually have a real sense of why we’re all here and why we’re doing what we’re doing and to have that engagement.

And when we get those things, all aligned, so an authentic sense of our personhood, inappropriate measured buckets, an autonomic vocabulary, and a shared sense of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, we can then really begin to function and hum as a team.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:23)

Yeah, I love it. love it. I mean, there are so many things you said there. The shared vocabulary is so important, isn’t it? I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? That we need to share a language. When we share a language, we communicate much better with each other. It’s very hard for me to communicate with somebody who’s Chinese if I don’t understand Chinese or any other language for that matter. So in the workplace,

to share a language, even though we are all speaking English, perhaps is really important. the importance of values too, I’ve learned that to be a very important part of, of managing a team as well. remember years ago going to a workshop. This would have been 20 or 30 years ago. And the first day of a four day team building exercise was to the first day was to write out a mission statement.

And at the beginning of the day, I was so dismissive of it. thought, this is so, ⁓ just a really annoying thing to do. thought we’d get into some really important things here and we spent a whole day. And by the time we finished, we had a half page document that I have used every single day of my professional career.

And anybody that joined my practice was read literally read, not the riot act but read the mission statement and every team meeting, we reread it and coming from the principle of the practice, it kind of conveyed a very consistent and valued message about what our values were. So this is, this is music to my ears. Listen, ⁓ for people listening to this and you know, I have the varying people of varying professional and personal experiences and burnout, we’ve said, is a big issue.

What would be two or three practical ways that people can begin increasing nervous system capacity in the middle of a very demanding work day?

Amar Dhall (47:24)

Okay. Great. Great question. So I’ll give this with a caveat. And the caveat is that ⁓ regulating on the fly, like I said earlier, if we go back to what is it that creates trauma, it’s not completing a response, right? So down regulating the nervous system is not the same thing as actually healthily metabolizing it. It’s kicking the can down the road a little. So I just want to caveat it with this.

There really is no shortcut to long term, healthful living, right? It’s like there’s no crash start that’s going to be the same as a healthy lifestyle. That’s just the way that it is. Right. So with that said, really like really I slow down and interiorize. And what I mean by that is to take a moment. So the belief is it’s never inappropriate to center myself. Right.

This is the belief to have. But what that looks like is take a moment, feel my feet on the ground and notice if there’s any, do a very quick scan. Is there any tension in my body that I can let go of that I’m currently holding? And then it may be, I like the physiological breath. So two breaths in through the nose to really fill the lungs and then a long, slow out breath.

And that will work every single time to down regulate the nervous system and create some space.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:51)

I mean, yeah, you’d be pleased to know we’ve done many programs on breathing. when, ⁓ that Jim was shared with me 10 or 15 years ago, ⁓ that is a powerful little tool for the toolbox, but it’s not a whole box, but go on. Yeah. caveats. like your caveats.

Amar Dhall (49:11)

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, you understand where I’m coming from, right? Is because it was true. ⁓ but you know, for me with that breath, the, the part around holding attention with, with where, where am I holding? Where am I braced? Right. Cause that’s also part of the way that that nervous system sympathetic, you know, fight flight will express is in the way muscles actually hold tension.

So, so the, the breath, if I don’t create a little more space by unlocking my breathing a little, that’s going to limit the efficacy of that breath. The other thing which I really like, and it’s not something that I learned it during the ⁓ trauma resolution training that I was doing, is to actually practice breathing in. So people often talk about breathing into their belly, but this is breathing into the back.

And so to actually try breathing into your back and just notice what changes when you do that. And that’s a really lovely practice. So breathing into the belly good, breathing into the back. So just playing with that breath. know, one hypothesis that I’ve heard around this is that, know, because the adrenals sit on top of the kidneys and sort of allow the lungs to kind of fill in that direction is just given a little mechanical, little gentle mechanical rhythmic stimulation. So that’s another.

The last little tip that I would give, and this is good for people that are maybe feeling overwhelmed. So we’ve talked about down regulating the nervous system. So that’s if I’m sympathetic dominant, right? So I’ve got a little bit of energy and I want to bring it down. can do those two breaths, the double inhale, the exhale. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, the thing to do is to actually practice really interesting the vowel sounds, the R, E, R or OO, right?

Now, when it’s done a bit slower, the sound VU, this is from somatic experiencing like a long, slow VU sound, but done in a way that will actually vibrate in the chest, resonate in the chest gives the ⁓ dorsal branch of the vagus nerves, innervates the whole torso and 80 % of the nerve fibers on that, on the vagus nerve run from body to brain. So they’re afferent, right? Afferent signaling.

So what we’ve found clinically extremely efficacious is when clients are in that freeze stuck state is for them to do three long slow voos. So big inhalation and then go voo in a way where they’re mechanically vibrating their chest. And the working hypothesis is that that’s actually giving a really gentle resonance and mechanical stimulation to the vagus nerve, which is then signaling the brain through those afferent nerve fibers that it can shift things. ⁓

And I’ll give you one more just quickly because it’s really easy. Track tension in the jaw, right? Most of the cranial nerves innovate the face. so getting stuck in the jaw and so just loosening the jaw and maybe making a different vowel sound like an R or an E that will vibrate in the back of the throat. Whereas the OO will do the chest. That will also be really helpful.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:28)

Oh, I love it. love it. mean, we’ve done so many programs on breath and, and, and, and I have often mentioned that we’ve got a whole set of lungs. using the diaphragm is a really important thing, but I love your, um, breathe into the back and this connection to the kidney because the diaphragm actually does, it’s like a tent that connects right around, uh, that that area and the back is included in that area, but we don’t focus on it often enough.

And interestingly, ancient wisdom is, always something that I’ve always been interested in. And of course, the most famous of all mantras is om and the sound must have, even if you’re not saying it, but if you are, it has a resonance thing. And I know that Stephen Porges has his own safe and sound the use of sound and vibration in his work. So it’s very interesting things you’ve mentioned there. I must say. love it.

Amar Dhall (53:29)

Yeah, no spot on. And I can’t take the credit for the breathing into the back. That’s I learned that from Cathy Kane, who is an amazing thought leader in the domain of developmental trauma. And so doing some work with her. That’s where I learned that. yeah, what you’re saying is absolutely true. Like the, VU and the or both have that O sound, right? The or, or VU kind of similar, similar vibe. So Yep. It is ancient, ancient wisdom. Absolutely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (54:00)

Now, listen, we’re just finishing up. has been a great conversation. knew it would be, I had a feeling it would be anyway. Psychosocial safety, as I said, has been legislated in Australia since 2022. And there actually are quite significant fines being issued for not complying with that. And they go to boards, CEOs, even just managers who don’t enforce it.

I’m looking ahead. How do you see, how you seeing you’re in the workplace? How are you seeing leadership now in 2026 evolving? ⁓ How are they responding to this? And are they getting a better? mean, with your work, I’m sure they are getting a better understanding of stress and how to change. But how are organizations responding out in the workplace there in your observe? How do you observe that?

Amar Dhall (54:54)

That’s a great question. I think there’s a few different ways of dealing that I’m seeing. think some, some organizations don’t see it as a real, a real thing. And so they’re going to run the gauntlet on, just business as usual and power to them. Fair enough. I think those that do it’s a, I think of trauma and wellbeing as a polarity, right? And with the polarity they, inside trauma are the seeds of well-being, right?

Whether that’s post-traumatic growth, ⁓ which is Tadeshi and Calhoun have done an enormous body of work there looking at the way ⁓ trauma seeds ⁓ long-term improvements when it’s actually metabolized in the way people see it work and function and show up in the world. So why I’m saying this in the context of psychosocial risk is, okay, psychosocial risk is the stick.

The carrot is when an organization is psychosocially safe, then we’re safe. Right? And we said safe is the foundation of connection. It’s the foundation of creativity. It’s the foundation of sustainable high performance. It’s the foundation of creative problem solving to complex problems. So I think that, you know, the ones that the organizations that get this see that their greatest ⁓ probability of success is drawing the best out of everyone.

And that means psychosocial safety, which necessarily means addressing psychosocial risk. And it just so happens that that ticks the legislative requirement. So I think we’re kind of moving inevitably in this direction of psychosocial safety. And I also can see really clearly that the companies that value it are producing a better, more engaged workforce, lower turnover, lower churn, as I said, higher quality outputs, more, you know, a more enjoyable place to work they’re actually establishing an economic basis.

Like there was a study by the CDC in 2022, which said the cost of trauma in unacknowledged, unworked with trauma and trauma is a psychosocial risk, right? In the workplace in the USA in America, sorry, in the USA and Europe was valued at 1.2 trillion US dollars per year in lost productivity.

So I think that need to have a conversation that actually fought for the people in positions of authority that recognizes, hey, you need to be safe because we are actually evolving as a species and it’s not acceptable to think that the only risks that exist are physical. And also if you want to energize the greatest chance of success for your business, then actually create a psychosocially safe environment and see what happens.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (57:41)

Well, Amar, that is a great note for us to finish on. And I want to thank you not only for all the work you are doing, which I love, but also sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Amar Dhall (57:56)

Thank you. It’s been a blast and I really appreciate what you’re doing. And I think part of the reason why we’ve had such an enjoyable conversation is we’re pulling in the same direction. So thank you for the work that you’re doing and for giving me the opportunity to come here and have a chat with you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (58:10)

Thank you.

Interestingly, mental fitness, as I said, is a major focus of my work now and will also be in the unstressed health community. Just ⁓ have done a live webinar by the time this comes out on mental fitness in a wide world. But your mind can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. And the reason I’m so enthusiastic about mental fitness is that it provides a language and structure that you can share in your workplace and in your home that that allows you to deal with the noise going on in your head.

Now, understanding your autonomic nervous system and the response is another aspect to a shared vocabulary. And how about that? Using the breath in all those different ways, using sound in those ways. Look, there was so much in that episode. I will, of course, have links to Ammar’s website and his work. I’m definitely going to be catching up with him and look forward to collaborating moving forward.

I again invite you to join that unstressed health community. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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The Oral Microbiome: A Hidden Key to Chronic Disease with Sue Rusalen00:05 – Oral microbiome impacts overall health.
02:49 – Sue joins the discussion.
03:24 – Role of dental hygienists explained.
04:15 – Hygienists are essential for prevention.
17:15 – Patient case links gum disease to heart attack.
22:20 – Oral disease is the “missing link” in healthcare.
25:40 – Bacteria connected to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and cancer.
28:00 – Gum disease raises erectile dysfunction risk.
40:33 – Microscopes reveal bacteria and parasites.
42:59 – Patients shown live images for engagement.
45:24 – Photos/videos track oral health progress.
46:50 – Lab tests identify bacteria shared by families/pets.
49:32 – Bacteria build up like garbage bins over 90 days.
52:58 – Need for comprehensive oral exams.
54:46 – Healthy gums don’t bleed; early detection is key.
1:00:21 – Sister’s cancer linked to oral bacteria.
1:06:22 – Tools: water flossers, tongue scrapers, electric brushes.
1:16:48 – Patient involvement boosts outcomes.
1:18:42 – Ron closes, stressing the importance of diagnostics.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05)

Welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, we’ve explored dental health in many aspects today and it’s something that I’ve obviously been involved with professionally for over 40 years. I’ve actually written a book about it and presented many times on it, but my guest today has offered me a more detailed perspective of something that affects each and every one of us every single day of our lives.

My guest today is Sue Rusalen and Sue is a dental hygienist, background in dental hygiene. She’s a coach. She is a practice manager, advisor. She’s a woman with a great deal of passion. And she brings a message about the oral microbiome, which I truly believe is quite exceptional. And I must say, I’d encourage you to, there’s quite a lot in today’s episode, but

Hey listen, this is going on in each and every one of our mouths and we’ve heard so much over the last 15, 20 plus years about the gut microbiome and how important it is to our immunity, to our mental health, to so much of our life, our physical and mental well-being. Well, the mouth is the beginning of the digestive tract and it’s often said that good health starts in the mouth and that is true.

But today’s episode highlights another aspect to it, and that is that it can also be a window into chronic disease. Understanding the oral microbiome can give us hints as to underlying disease that may be years away. And I’d encourage you to slowly work your way through this episode and understand the implications of that because the diverse oral microbiome. mean, as Sue points out, there are seven or 800 different species. mean, there are trillions of microbes in the mouth, literally trillions, but the oral microbiome is made up of about 800 different species and 500 of them are good, 300 of them are not so good and 11 of them are very toxic. And if you have 11, any one of those to any degree in your mouth, then this could give you a clue. And Sue shares a story about her own sister, which was very confronting and really changed her professional life. So this is an important episode and one that I hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Sue Rusalen. Welcome to the show Sue.

Sue Rusalen (02:49)

Thank you very much, Ron, for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:57)

So we’re going to be diving into the oral microbiome. Now, people hear a lot about the gut microbiome, but the oral microbiome is another very important part of that digestive system. But before we started, I thought we might just start with something really simple, because a lot of patients, a lot of people, even a lot of practitioners, aren’t really familiar with the role of a dental hygienist.

Sue Rusalen (03:24)

Dental hygienists in the dental practice take on a lot of the preventive and periodontal and gum services. So we leave the dentist to do all the things that you need a drill to use or forceps. So all of the high surgical skills are left to the dentist and the hygienist. And the scope has very much grown over time. It started with just doing the scale and cleans. It started with being able to take radiographs, x-rays.Oral health education, diet and nutrition education, all of the things that help support a patient towards long-term health. But the beauty of not having a five-year degree means that we can provide these services to the patient over a longer period of time, spend more time and not charge things out at a dentist rate. So does that help a little?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:15)

It does. And look, it reminds me because I have been in clinical practice for over 40 years, not 50, not that far off. But I know that it took me 20 years to get my head around the fact that a dental hygienist was a good idea because I always used to think, I can clean the teeth. And by the time I retired from practice, we had four hygienists in our practice. And I would describe them as the most important people on our team because they kept our patients healthy. spent more time. Most patients are used to coming in for a checkup and have five, 10 minute clean and there we are, we’re out the door. In 15 minutes, we’ve had a checkup and a clean. But hygienists take a much more thorough than that. I have to say with all due respect to dentists, they take more time. They spend more time focused on prevention. And I would have often referred to them as the most important members of my team because they kept my patients healthy. You have a focus though on the oral microbiome and tell us a little bit about that. How did that develop over the time?

Sue Rusalen (05:27)

Yeah, I agree with everything you’ve said. in fact, the business that I run these days educates dentists on how to fully utilize hygienist in their practice and make the whole experience highly profitable as well. But going through my career, it must have been about 24. It was early days here still in Adelaide for dental hygienist. So there were still a lot of dentists around that didn’t have oral dental hygienists. And these days they’re referred to quite often as an oral health therapist. So you might hear the words used interchangeably. Half of the oral health therapy degree in education is equivalent to a dental hygienist. So they have dental hygienist capabilities as well as some other skills. So I’m 24.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:16)

Those are the skills it’s worth mentioning to do fillings on well, it’s on children, well, people under the age of 20, I think, or 21 or 18. And then they can apply for adult scope where they can actually do these relatively simple fillings on adults and so free up the time. So this distinction between oral, the dental hygienist, was a cleaning, you know, focused on cleaning and prevention to oral therapists with children to oral therapists with adult scope. So there’s kind of those three layers out there. Is that right?

Sue Rusalen (07:00)

Yeah, there is those three layers and these are all great questions. Other parts of the world don’t tend to have the therapy side. The government came out in the 70s and early 70s and said we need someone who’s less expensive to train and do simple restorations on children. It’s a public health program. It works very well. And in fact, in my first year in studying, the course that I was in had two therapists in my course who were transitioning to become hygienists.

And you would think, why on earth would they do that? They’re already qualified. But hygienists have always been in such high demand in practices that, and it was in the private system, we got paid extremely well. So it was a bit of a disconnect between therapy and hygiene. Similar amount of training. The therapist could use a drill and do restorative work and we didn’t, yet we were getting paid double. And it is that old supply and demand thing. So therapists for a long time went, we want what they’ve got. And so then became this complete flood of people transitioning into dental hygiene so that they could transition out of public and work in private. Fantastic. So we had dual-rolled people. I never took on the therapy side. And I’m going to say something very controversial here. I think there are lot of political reasons why the oral health bachelors came out, because I don’t have a bachelor’s degree. I have an associate diploma in dental hygiene.

Bachelor’s degree became a three year program and they said, let’s mush them all together and just make one degree. And universities, I don’t know, they really like, it’s money first. They want to make money. They attract people that pay. And they said, if we mush this together, we can create a degree and ta-da, we have a multi-skilled auxiliary that can work in practices. I don’t believe, this is where I’m controversial, that we need another restorative clinician. I just don’t.

I also believe that the skill set of a dental hygienist with all of their perio skills and the restorative skills are extremely different. I know if you had put a drill in my hand, I would have raced off down the road and be doing restorations because I’m a creator. I love to create. I love to build things and look at them and look back at them. And the role of a hygienist can be really disappointing and hard work sometimes because you go in and you educate a person, you train them, you teach them how to clean their teeth, they do the best they can, they come back, go real mess again. And every time you see them, all of your good work sometimes has fallen apart. So it’s very much a connect, it’s developed deep personal relationships, it’s leveraging this and creating data for the practice like gathering x-rays, all of those things and treating the perio. As soon as you step into restorative work, you need a DA. So it becomes a lot more expensive to I mean.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:03)

Let me just stop you there, Sue, because you’ve used two terms that I know what you mean, but may not know. No, no. Let me just explain to the listener when Sue’s talking about perio, she’s talking about periodontal tissues like gums and periodontal tissue. And when she says a D.A., she means the dental nurse, the dental assistants. So go on. mean, I think this is an interesting discussion about about about manpower, because I know the dentists were at first, and I was one of those dentists that thought, well, I don’t need someone else to be doing what I’m doing. And in fact, it turned out I did. But then oral therapists came along and it’s a kind of protective of the marketplace, if you like. Do we need the oral therapists to do more fillings? Dentists can do that. Or why do we why do hygienists need oral therapists doing hygiene?

We can do that. So it’s kind of each protecting their own territory. But ultimately, these are people that are, I mean, I work, as I said, when we finished, actually, when I finished, I actually had four oral therapists that were trained as hygienists. And the majority of their work was actually hygiene, was actually prevention.

Sue Rusalen (11:18)

And unfortunately with, and I’ll try to remember that the audience doesn’t know my terms, I’ll absolutely pull me up if I do that. General hygiene has somehow in all of the new universities that have now spread across Australia and all of the courses are being run, there’s only two pure hygiene courses remaining. And that was the one that I did in Gillis Paines in Adelaide. And I think there’s another one in I’ll pull you up on it.

Bendigo, I stand to be corrected. But unfortunately, or fortunately, it depends on the way you look at it, young men and women are going out and getting a degree. They’re learning so much stuff and they come out thinking, I want to use my entire skill set. Wonderful. I think that’s so wonderful. But because the two skill sets are so different, I’m finding that they’re not interested in the periodontal disease side of thing, which is the hygiene side of thing.

I have a list of dentists at the moment, probably 20, waiting for dental hygienists to come and work for them. So going right back to, I mean, we can get into that discussion later, but I believe that the dental hygienist in any practice is so well-placed and particularly moving forward as time goes on to be the person to best support a dentist moving forward. Why I think that,

I’ll go back to my 24 year old story. I am sitting in a dental practice in Adelaide and I have two guys I’m working for, one of whom has never ever worked with a hygienist before. Lovely, lovely, lovely man. But he used to pump out, so popular he’d have people queued up out the door, but he’d pump out his appointments in 15 minutes. Checkup, bite wings, bit of a pick and a flick, brush a little bit more, floss a bit and out the door. And patients just loved him.

I started to see those patients in my chair and I was quietly horrified. really didn’t have the care level or the health of their gum tissue level that I was used to and I had my work cut out for me. More so than my previous job between 21 and 24 where I was the first outback hygienist. That’s another story for another day.

So there’s this guy in my chair, his name’s Alex. Alex was 36. He was an accountant and he had severe periodontal disease, which is very unusual for someone of that age. His gums were bleeding like crazy. It was really hard to work with him. He had lost a lot of bone and jawbone around his teeth. It’s part of the really severe part of periodontal disease. And he’s 36. And I guess he was

which is another indicator in the health of our bodies. I’m sure you’ve talked a million times about it. But I did everything that I had learned at hygiene school and sent him off for two months after probably four appointments of deep debridement and all of the things and all of the amazing things that we did. And after two months, I invited him to come back. And I had said in advance, I’d like to see you in two months. Alex didn’t turn up.

And I was a bit disappointed that all of my hard work was kind of…

Dr Ron Ehrlich (14:52)

Although, although given his young age and given the priority that he had already put on his oral health, it’s hardly surprising that he didn’t show up. I wanted to ask you one clinical question, though, because people may be listening this horrified that somebody loses jawbone and has infection and has this and has that. I’ll put money on the fact that he had absolutely no pain associated with any of that.

Correct.

An important point for our listener to take on, all of that could be going on, but no pain.

Sue Rusalen (15:36)

No pain, absolutely. So all of this was a surprise to him. Now I know he just didn’t turn up one day and this gum disease appeared in his mouth. had been brewing for at least a decade or more. My horror, the guy that I was working with would have been supervising that in his 15 minute appointments, I’m sure. And I tried my best not to throw my boss under a bus. But Alex, I didn’t hear from ever again.

A week later, one of his colleagues rang me and I thought, God, what have I done to him? Alex had died. Alex had a massive heart attack.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:09)

Wow, interesting. Well, we are going to talk about what are some of the local and systemic effects of gum disease, which often has no pain associated with it. But people can die without any pain also. Interesting. You’ve raised a couple of issues there. And I would say this and this is not unusual in the in the dental industry, in fact, in the medical world as well, where people build their practice around a 15 minute appointment.

I mean, many dentists would see 30 or 40 patients a day. Many doctors see more than that a day, and they feel the more patients that they can see, this is the way to run a practice in health care. And I don’t think all that many patients are familiar, or certainly not enough, are familiar with the concept of what a comprehensive oral exam is all about.

But let’s just talk about that for a minute, because that is a very important part of why a hygienist is so important. Go on, you were going to talk more about the patient that died.

Sue Rusalen (17:15)

I will get to that, promise you, because it all comes together. I knew in that instant, I had never been taught this at university or at the dental school. We were touching on things, but I knew in that moment that a young man with gum disease that severe was quite uncommon. I also knew that a heart attack at the age of 36 was quite uncommon.

And in my mind intuitively, I knew the two were connected and I have spent the rest of my entire working career pulling this together and trying to get answers. And I now have answers and I have quite an interesting story and it has everything to do with the oral microbiome. And oral microbiome is, we have a gut microbiome, we all understand that we have a gut microbiome. Charles Mayo back.

In 1915 said the greatest portal of entry to disease is through the nose and the mouth. And we have a pandemic to prove actually what occurred there. So I can tell you if you’ve got a gut microbiome, it starts at the mouth and the nose and it ends up traveling through your entire body, whether it’s, and it’s the three I’s, it’s either injury, inflammation or infection. But in our mouths every day, when you have a solid material meet a liquid material, so

cheek and saliva, tongue and saliva, tooth and saliva, any wet versus hard object, you’ll get the creation of what’s called a biofilm. In the biofilm exists trillions of bacteria and parasites, if you’re unlucky. within the parasites and the, well, within the bacteria in the mouth, there’s 800 species. There’s 500 good ones.

There’s 300 not so good ones, but there’s 11 really nasty ones. Now when you go for a checkup at your dentist, and you’re in and out 15 minutes, firstly, there’s absolutely no time to talk about things like this. Secondly, there’s no way that you can possibly even find or look at the microbiome in a patient’s mouth. It just gets pushed to the side. It’s not.

It’s not, we can’t see it. We don’t worry about it. There’s no pain. Let’s push it to one side. So there’s this silent thing that begins in our mouth that you can pick up in a four year old that will indicate whether that person down the pathway of their life will actually become unwell. And it will affect if the good bacteria and the bad bacteria get out of balance. So we call it microbiome.

We call it, when they get out of balance, it’s dysbiosis. So dysbiosis occurs in the mouth and it’s the very first sign prior to any gum disease, infection disease, anything. So how do we, the question becomes, how do we discover whether we have oral dysbiosis? If we have oral dysbiosis and we have high levels of bacteria, fungus, viruses or even parasites, we can’t forget to talk about them. They will cause those three eyes. Those little bacteria will travel into the bloodstream and burrow into the tissues, the bloodstream and all parts of our body, the brain, the heart, the gut, the liver, the whole colorectal, everything. It’ll affect everything.

And it either will occur, will create inflammation in the rest of the body because if you’ve got dysbias in your mouth, you have an inflammatory response. It will cause infection and it will float through the body and lodge on heart vessels and it will cause injury elsewhere in the body. If you look at these little bacteria under a microscope and I’ll get to that a bit later too, they…

burrow their way in, they’re so tiny, they burrow their way in and we can’t see them with their eyes at the dentist, you just can’t see them. And for decades and decades this has been forgotten about. And dentistry has been so much about the white bits, the teeth. And nobody really has connected the mouth to the rest of the body, but it’s very connected. And if we start looking at the pink.

And if we start looking at the invisible, which is almost invisible, which is the microbiome, the secrets there and the information that lies there can either lead us to a life of health or disease. so balancing your microbiome and balancing your gut microbiome should be everybody’s, as well as air, good water and good sunshine and good food and nutrition, should be everybody’s game plan.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:20)

I mean, this is a theme that we’ve championed on the program many times. And that is to say that oral health or disease is the missing link in health care because, almost like the black hole of health care because so often it’s overlooked or completely ignored, particularly by dental practitioners who are running 15 minute appointments.

And certainly, gosh, as far as medical practitioners are concerned, their idea of a comprehensive oral assessment would be to ask a patient, have you been to the dentist lately? Yes, I have. Was anything done? No, there wasn’t. And tick that box. We now have eliminated the most common disease in man, woman or child. mean, think the WHO did a report in 2022 which identified

You know, cardiovascular disease, 500 million people globally, diabetes, 500 million people, mental health, big problem, one billion people, oral health, oral diseases, three and a half billion people. And I would say that’s an underestimation because half the population don’t go to the dentist. So three and a half billion is pretty impressive on its own, but it’s still an underestimation.

You mentioned, inflammation, infection, injury, is that the process? It starts with a buildup and imbalance of dysbiosis. It develops into inflammation. It then becomes infection and eventually somewhere else in the body or even in the mouth, it leads to injury. Is that the process?

Sue Rusalen (23:59)

Yeah, I’ve listened to some, look, I’ve been in this world now for quite some time and I’ve got so many podcasts and educators that have taught me things. One of the most brilliant people I’ve listened to is a Dr. Victoria Sampson in the UK.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (24:19)

Yes, I met Victoria in Sydney a few years ago. She works with Food for the Brain. That’s the organization which I’d recommend anybody listening to this does is go on to Food for the Brain and do the cognitive function test to determine your dementia risk. But Victoria is a young dentist who is working with Patrick, who I’ve had on here. Patrick.

Gosh, the name escapes me just at the moment. But his food for the brain is one of the great public health initiatives globally. Go on, tell me about Victoria Sampson.

Sue Rusalen (24:53)

Look, she manages to tell these stories extremely well and because she’s young and she’s so intelligent and she’s got the science behind her, it’s really lovely to listen to people like her. But one of her podcasts, look, she’s got some really interesting, one of her interviews with Trevor Bartlett, Diver CEO, if anyone gets the chance to actually listen to her, she’ll speak for about an hour and a half and break this down.

to Trevor who asks his guests to speak to him as a 10 year old so that, and you will learn so much from her. So Victoria, I’ve listened to some,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:31)

Patrick Holford is the founder and CEO of Food for the brain.

Sue Rusalen (25:40)

Its important people that have, or such clever people everywhere and I just zap it up from everywhere. So with the mouth and the bacteria in the mouth, what can happen is in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, 70 % of the time there’s a bacteria found there called porphyromonas gingivalis, PG. And porphyromonas gingivalis, PG we’ll call him, sometimes I call him Pete, powerhouse Pete gets in there.

And there are things called ginger pains that actually travel through the brain and the blood brain barrier. And they are always present in Alzheimer’s patients. So I’m not going to show you, I’m not going to tell you how, but Victoria says it’s either through metastatic infection, metastatic injury or metastatic inflammation. So with the case of porphyromonous gingivalis, the pathway is an inflammatory pathway.

And so that’s the problem. With the heart, it’s injury and inflammation. So with the heart, 60 % of people have a heart attack. The bacteria found at the site of the blockages quite often, 60 % of the time, they’re of an oral origin. So we can’t overlook these things. There is another one, Fusobacterium nucleatum, which is one of those 11 nasties. I call it FN and FNA, Fusobacterium nucleatum anomalies.

You got to be good with this stuff. Thank goodness I’m Italian and I can say those big curly words. And then there’s the other fancy one of ours, the AA, the actinomyces actomycetamocometans. I don’t know who names these things, but FN is responsible for transporting cancer cells across to into the cells of the liver and are always present in colorectal cancer ovarian cancer and the list goes on preterm birth weight and the most interest diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis. We can actually link them now with specific pathogens. The most interesting one, if you have periodontal disease and you’re male, you have a 2.85 times more higher chance of erectile dysfunction.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:00)

Yes, I know that is one that I that I like to quote because, well, not the statistic. That’s great. You’ve got it. But it certainly gets men’s attention when you when you start. maybe flossing might not be a bad idea.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:36)

No, no, we’re going to talk about that.

Sue Rusalen (28:40)

Interesting flossing is not the answer but certainly gets my husband with a toothbrush in his mouth let me tell you and he’s so I’m quite funny about so in answer to your question every part of the body is affected and impacted differently by these oral pathogens but they all play a role now in dentistry we open a mouth and we look at the mouth and unless it’s doing anything wrong with the mouth then we ignore it.

But when I discovered that young Alex had had a massive heart attack, I realized my role was more than a tooth fairy. I was standing with the keys to his health and for his longevity of life. And so if you’re someone listening to this and you are interested in lifespan, it’s more than lifespan, it’s health span. Because what our goal is to get our health span almost as long as our lifespan, because what’s the point of being here for an extra 20 years if you don’t have your health? And the oral environment is so forgotten when it comes to this. And so I went on a 30 year quest to find out, and I was that pest at periodontal meetings with other doctors that was asking all the dumb questions. And I just did that forever. And it wasn’t until

I became a consultant in 2019 and I was in America when I finally found some answers.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:44)

On, well, do share some of those answers. What were some of the questions you were asking before you came up with the answers? What was the question?

Sue Rusalen (29:52)

So with Alex in mind, and honestly I don’t remember his last name, but I do remember his first

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:00)

It’s okay, we wouldn’t, we’d change the name to protect the innocent anyway.

Sue Rusalen (30:03)

So with him, I just went, well, what happened here? Surely there’s got to be a connection between what was happening in his mouth and his heart. no, no, no, no, no, no. I was told it was associative, but we couldn’t prove it was causative. So you can’t say that to your patients. And I think that’s where I felt most hindered is.

All of these things started to become very obvious to me, but I actually wasn’t allowed to say them to a patient or report that this even could possibly happen. So even when you’re sitting down with a patient with a toothbrush and you’re trying to motivate them to, you know, perhaps disrupt that biofilm a bit better and more often, and to get rid of the pathogens more frequently in their mouth, that I couldn’t actually talk about the consequences. All I could say is it might make your gums, you know, heal.

It might not, know, whatever, but we couldn’t talk about, you know, a toothbrush could save your life. And that sounds ridiculous when you say it, but I truly believe that a dentist and a dental hygienist and a toothbrush can save your life. So I’m in the US in 2019. And honestly, I had got to the point where I wanted to be as far away from dental hygiene as possible. I went into practice consulting and I wanted to help dentists just design better business, a better patient experience. And by doing that, they were actually developing much better patient compliance and acceptance. Patients were turning up and happy to pay more because their experience was better. But I hygiene is my gene. I had been pushed in the corner as a hygienist, we’d been disrespected. We had been pushed to the side, we’re not valuable. This had happened for such a long time and I just

I felt that I was on this treadmill, really boring profession where all I was doing was picking plaque off teeth. And so I wanted more. And when I created my consulting company to help dentists, I didn’t march out the door saying, we’re going to talk about microbiome and we’re not going to talk about dental hygiene. Chuck that in the bin. And I completely felt unfulfilled in my career. Why had I chosen to do this?

Why didn’t I go and do mathematical science? Why didn’t I continue with all of those things? And I think I made my fun out of traveling to Switzerland for two years and working as a hygienist with Mount Pilatus in the background. I did all of these really cool things. I studied NLP, I studied business, I studied all this other stuff. And there I was in 2019 at a seminar. And as you know it, on the very last day, some guy walks up to me, corny little guy, funny little glasses.

His name was Dr. Mike Subiak and he wouldn’t mind me talking about him this way. And he handed a book into my hand called Hygiene Superstar. And I went, yeah, here we go. Another hygiene thing. I want to be as far away from that as possible. I tucked it in. He signed it. I tucked it into my bag and I didn’t open it until I hopped on the plane back to Australia and I devoured it in two hours front to back. This guy, in Camarillo in Southern California had 11 dental hygienists working for him. They were all working on the oral systemic aspect of oral health. so, Ron, I’m going to refer to the oral systemic quite a bit, but it’s where the mouth and the body come together and the complete impact that having really decent dental hygienists and a team that can have these conversations will

impact your business. And in that moment, I realized three things. Not only will understanding this and teaching this save our patients’ lives, it will also completely reignite the career of dental hygienists because suddenly we’re excited and we’re using our degrees and our brains for more than just picking stuff off teeth. And the third thing, which was quite unexpected, but which my dentists love, is it absolutely skyrocket their practices. So you imagine having an auxiliary working for you where they do most of the work and you’ve got 11 of them. Mike doesn’t do dentistry anymore. He’s become an airway doctor. He has other GPs, but he has two shifts of practitioners working across his practice. And he has had such a major influence on me. And he’s a real ACDC fan, by the way.

And we’ve had some fun in America. But he’s got his own podcast as well. He’s a brilliant human. And once I read that book, I went, you know what? I have just found and discovered everything I was searching for. And in that moment, my life changed.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:03)

Well, mean, there he is in Southern California with 11 hygienists and the whole issue around oral microbiome systemic health. It may have been a moment for you, but for somebody who’s been observing the way the mouth impacts on general health for 45 years, I can tell you this is a conversation that’s been going on.

for a very long time. if you actually Google Scholar Periodontal Disease and Systemic Health, you’ll come up with tens of thousands of articles on this because this is a subject that has brought the dental profession into holistic health care, whether they like it or not. And many dentists aren’t particularly interested in it, but a lot are. And it’s those that are providing a service that’s great. Now, when you talk about, you’ve mentioned the oral microbiome, you’ve mentioned that there are 811, perhaps, species because 500 of them are good and 300 of them are bad and 11 of them are toxic. And you’ve mentioned porphyromas, gingivalis and PFNA and AA and all these other species. How do we detect that, the balance? How do we, Chair Side, do that?

Sue Rusalen (36:13)

That’s an absolutely great question. And it’s extremely difficult to. that was where I got exactly the same spot. So I reached out to Mike and said, I need to teach Australians this. The word holistic, everyone gets a bit scared of. They think it’s two fish slapping together. And it’s It’s just let’s look at the whole body. You you’ve heard that a times. But I think dentists are taught to look at the hard tissues. We take x-rays. We take photographs. We…

We palpate, we touch with our hands. Our eyes can’t see these little things. You can look at a mouth that relatively looks extremely healthy-ish, like mostly healthy, but their microbiome can be horrific. Now, it can be horrific and not impacting the mouth per se, but it can be impacting the entire body. So the mouth doesn’t always leave clues. So how do we test it?

What I found and Mike referred me to some people who actually taught the microbiome and microbiology in the US and I brought their program to Australia and I redesigned it, packaged it up and I now have it in 60 practices across Australia. We’ll get and more coming, but we’ll get to that. But it all started and the diagnosis, the assessment, the screening all starts with the use of a microscope. And

You mentioned the history of dentistry. And we’ve always had the engineers versus the healers. We’ve had the people. Dentistry has gone down a very strong engineering path. The healers, the gurus starting with the mayors and there was a Paul Kyes in there that was just absolutely astounding. He, he

He took the work of microbiologists from previously and he did a lot of work in decay and then he flipped over to Perio and he started all of this work. This is not new stuff. This has been hanging around for a very long time and all we’re doing is rejuvenating it. So we go into a patient’s mouth and included in less than 30 seconds in an appointment, I’ll take a very small sample from under the gum of a little bit of biofilm. For want of another word,

You might say plaque. It’s actually not plaque. It’s a little bit. It’s underneath the plaque. You scrape it off the tooth. We always go under the gum because that’s where the bad guys live. They love hanging out where there’s no oxygen. And those pathogens, the 300 nasty and the 11, including the 300, they live in areas where there’s no oxygen. the anaerobic bacteria is quite visible on a microscope slide if you know what you’re looking for.

So we use a special mounting medium. We plop the sample on it and honestly, it’s less than a pinhead, less than a pinhead. We seal it, we put it under a very specific microscope that we’ve had built just for this purpose. We use liquid that’s been built just for this purpose to keep it alive. It’s a phase contrast microscope and we teach our practitioners what to start searching for. And we search for different shapes of bacteria.

Cocci, rods, gliding rods, spinning rods. We look for white blood cells. We don’t want white blood cells because they’re only there if they’re fighting infection. We look for spirochetes. Spirochetes are the curly ones. Spirochetes, there’s 57 nasty different types of spirochetes. Some are Lyme disease, some are sexually transmitted disease. They’re not the ones that live in the mouth, but we don’t want spirochetes, they’re nasty.

They’re the inflammatory and infection-creating ones. So we can see them on a slide and we look for parasites, so single-cell protozoa. They’re all big fancy names and we see red blood cells and we see skin cells and we see plaque and all that stuff. But if I can…

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:33)

This is all from the sample that’s been taken. Yep. Right. Right. Okay. I love this. This is good.

Sue Rusalen (40:35)

Less than a pinhead. So we look for morphology, which is shape. So I’m looking for the straight ones, the short ones, the squiggly ones. I can tell what they are at a hundred heartbeats. All sorts of cool stuff going on in there. Then we look for motility. So morphology is shape. Motility is how fast are they moving? the nastier, except for the amoeba, they’re slow. And we look for load.

If we just have one lonely little spirochete floating around, not good. We don’t even want them there. But sometimes I see them in clusters and they’re like radiating like sun rays and they’re munching on a white blood cell and they’re just coming out. And you can see this in real time. Now, the really nasty stuff we see, which has been long forgotten and not discussed in dental school at all, are parasites. And there’s amoebic parasites.

And then there’s something called trichomonas. Now, trichomonas are tiny little things with a tail on them and they wiggle around really fast. And they come from cats. And the other trichomonas, I have to be careful how I say this on a podcast, the name for the trichomonas is Trichomonas vaginalis. And it comes from down there. Or it loves hanging out down there.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:08)

Well you can say vagina on this program. can we pray? we can. Don’t worry. My listeners are really, they’re pretty good about that I’m pretty sure.

Sue Rusalen (42:18)

Have a little bit a meltdown sometimes when I’m talking about it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:19)

Okay, okay. Wow, that’s so interesting. know all of this. Now this is so fascinating because I’m presuming this is all happening chair side on a screen and the hygienist is sharing this information and their knowledge with the patient. it’s also always so abstract, isn’t it? What goes on in the mouth? yes. can’t see. And I know in our practice, we do use high definition photos and people suddenly get an understanding of what is actually going on in there. But this is taking it to a whole new level, really where the rubber meets the road to say this is where disease is actually happening.

Sue Rusalen (42:59)

So this is intra oral camera photography on steroids because you’re going on a visual aspect and you’re going 100x on that. So there was a Dr. Bob Barclay that had a movement and over 10,000 members in the US who was the preventive king of dentistry in the 1970s. He passed away in an airline crash. But Bob coined something called co-diagnosis.

And we adopt that theory and I have all along so I sit with a little card I sit alongside my patient we look at this big screen together I don’t put it on a screen that big I blow it up to king-size television size, right and I will Allow them to feel a little bit uncomfortable because I want this to land Because when you get a patient engaged and they truly understand what’s going on there

You’ve got a patient for life and you’ve got a partner who will work with you to get their disease back to zero. If we don’t get that engagement and that message across, we can’t do it on our own.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:24)

Yeah, because I’m assuming that image is taken stored as a slide, literally as a photo. that when the patient come, a video, even better, a video. And so when the patient comes back a few weeks later, I’ve been really good with my hygiene. I’ve been terrific. And you do that again and they can visualize the difference. That is a learning experience that is worth their weight in gold.

Sue Rusalen (45:33)

We saw the video.

Sue Rusalen (45:34)

So anything we teach them, anything they do, anything we do, anything we do together needs to have an impact. So we can actually bring this back to not a despotic slide. It’s completely visceral when they see it. But I need everyone to understand, dentists, and I’ve got a few people out there that think this is all crazy. It is not just, aren’t we crazy? It is not just a patient motivator.

It’s a screening and assessment. And then people will say, but don’t you do just the same treatment? No, we don’t. But we tailor it to what we’re finding. That’s the first thing. And more so because if it’s a parasite involved, we have to go down a very different pathway of therapy than if it’s just dysbiosis. So you have to know that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (46:49)

Let’s go on, yeah. I want to ask you what that difference is.

Sue Rusalen (46:50)

Yeah, I will. I’ll you that second. The second step is if we’re not getting health or we’re dealing with someone who’s very high risk, I prefer then to actually take a another sample, either a saliva sample spit in a tube, or we use little paper like points to poke under the gum send them off to the laboratory and I get back a report which tells me exactly what bugs we’re dealing with. And we can see how many PG per mole there are how much FN there is, how much, and I know exactly what bacteria we’re dealing with. And the amount of times that I see families that have got the whole lot or identical patterns, parents, petners, partners, parents, partners, pets, mothers, lovers, dogs. These are communicable.

They transfer from your pet to your mouth. They transfer from your new boyfriend into yours and then onto his new girlfriend and whoever he’s, you know, whatever. This is how it lands. It doesn’t mean don’t kiss anyone ever again. What it means is, what it means is you’re going to come across, we’re human, we’re going to come across this. But what we need to learn is when those bacteria come in, the bad guys,

We have to learn to keep them at very, low levels of dysbiosis in order to remain healthy. And all we’re aiming for is not zero bacteria. That’s impossible. We just want to get the bad guys down and so that we get balance.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (48:28)

Yeah, so you mentioned a couple of things there that I want to just backtrack a little bit on, because you’ve mentioned and people may have missed it, the importance or the virulence of anaerobic bacteria or microorganisms, organisms that don’t need oxygen. And this gets to the very point about the difference between early colonizers and late colonizers, isn’t it? And how late is the late colonizer where we start to get the 11 really toxic bacteria, know, microbes that are causing damage. So when we brush our teeth, as soon as we finish brushing our teeth, the early colonizers start forming again. I mean, it’s a it’s a process that goes on pretty quickly. Because we brush our teeth twice a day, not such a big deal. But if we miss a part of we have a deep pocket that we can’t get to then we get late colonizers. is late? Where do we draw the line between early and late?

Sue Rusalen (49:32)

You’re asking beautiful questions, but I have to backtrack all the time, Okay, so I’m going to use a metaphor. If you’ve got a garbage, like a green garbage can out in the sun, and it’s got some food scraps in the bottom, and the garbos have been, and they’ve collected it then put it back on it, and they’ve left the lid open, that bit of filth in the bottom is going to feed probably

probably some flies will come and lay maggots. Then cockroaches might turn up or worms. Then the birds might come in because they want to eat. The lid’s still open. The birds come in, they go, we like it in there because we’ve got some food down there. And then, I don’t know, a local raccoon might come along, like this is if you’re in America, like using the raccoon. But it builds and builds and builds till you’ve got big species that are then interested. It’s like that old, the old mother, you know, the little.

There was an old lady who lived in it and it gets eaten by a bigger species all along. Eventually you’ve got a garbage can that is full of really big animals. It’s the same thing with our gum pockets, okay? So the early colonizers on their own don’t do a lot of damage, but they act as a bridge species and they create like a structure that the other species can build onto. So at about day 90.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (51:05)

You’ve got three months.

Sue Rusalen (51:07)

Yep, three months. You’ve got the bad guys there. And then if you’re not disrupting frequently enough, it can happen faster. And so there’s a really, it’s really important that we tailor whatever we do to you, because if you’re a great oral health cleaner and you’ve got a good immune system and you don’t have a lot of stress and you’re not a smoker and blah, blah, we can, can mitre or tide it or stretch your appointments out because you don’t get that building up as quickly. So if you’re the person that has their little rubbish bin and it’s a free for all, within 30, 40, 60, 80, 90 days, it’s chockers and we’re back to the start again. So colonizing the bacteria happens like it’s the growth of a city. You know, the little buildings and the big buildings and the skyscrapers are coming and all of sudden we’ve got this structure. If it’s not disrupted properly at that point, it will just fumigate and that’s when all of the periodontal collagen breakdown or the gum disease, the bone, because each of these species eats the byproduct of the previous species or it eats and is very interested in the whole environment. the body sends along the white blood cells because the white blood cells are going, we’re out to fight these people.

But spirochetes, amoeba, they love white blood cells and they go in and suck out the nucleus. It’s their food source. And so as this builds, the byproduct of all of the previous ones and the body’s natural first line of defense come along to help, but they become the food source. Then it starts to break down the collagen fibers in the gum. And this is when it starts to cause damage elsewhere in the body. So how are we going so far?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (52:58)

Well, we’re going well. And I think this is a good point in which to remind people why a comprehensive oral exam, which measures the crevice around a tooth and which can’t be done in a 15 minute checkup and click quick clean, which is exactly where we started from, which says why hygienists are so important because they measure points around each tooth to see whether you’ve got a deep garbage bin there or a shallow gut to take this metaphor a little bit further. If if if the bin you’ve got there is just the depth of a lid, the lid itself, then you haven’t got a real problem because it’s so easy to keep that clean. But if you’ve got a really a wheelie bin there around every tooth, then you’ve got a problem. Then you’ve got a problem. So this is again why comprehensive oral exams are important.

And I think also worth reminding our listener that pain is not involved, very rarely involved in any of this. So keep going. Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got this these early and late colonizers and these kind of destructions. And I love this microbiome screen that you’re doing involving in co-diagnosis. You know, when you say co-diagnosis, you’re meaning you and the patient are looking at things, educating themselves understanding what is actually going on around each pocket. I can see now, Sue, why my good friend, Dr. Jalal Khan, who’s been a guest on my podcast on several occasions, was so keen for me to talk to you because I do like this. This is a very important aspect of modern dentistry. Go on.

Sue Rusalen (54:46)

It is an important aspect and it does go, I will tell a bit of a personal story here before we go back to the comprehensive exam. And I tell these stories because they really make things land. So, so, so how, so how we actually, as a dental hygienist, tell if our patients have a gum disease, we look for inflamed gums. We looked for a little bit of bleeding when we poke them. And there’s always a bit of a joke, well, no wonder they bleed, you just poke them.

but healthy tissues in the mouth shouldn’t bleed if you just gently poke them. If you’ve got those little quicks around your finger and you notice how inflamed they get when you peel off of it, that’s really painful. But gums get inflamed and infected too, but a healthy gum is so tight and it forms a cuff around the tooth, a very tight cuff, and there’s a little space between the tooth and the gum of about one to three millimeters, which is considered acceptable.

That is very easy to keep clean. So when you have a healthy mouth, it’s easier to keep healthy. Now, little pathogens will burrow down in there and they will start to do all of the magic that we were just in the destruction that we were just talking about. And it goes through a bit of a process where we get some inflammation and then there’s some bleeding and then we have some collagen breakdown in the gum fibers. And then we have something called clinical attachment loss where we can actually see it.

Prior to that, we can’t see it. Clinical attachment loss and then bone loss and then gum pockets or the big garbage bins where the bone is actually in a way is quite late in the process. And so we’re trained as dental clinicians not to find gum disease and still it’s very, very late. And I get quite upset about that because if I can show someone right at the start that there’s a problem, I have a huge chance of stopping it down the track.

Because once you’ve got those big garbage bins around your teeth, we’re going to do a little bit of work to get you healthy again and get you back to the tight pockets. And that’s where gum therapy comes in. But the preventive therapy, we can step in and turn things around really fast. Now, the story I wanted to tell is there’s plenty of mouths. I can hold them side by side. One will be completely dysbiotic and the other one will be healthy. So I’m one of four girls.

And when I say girls, I know I’m 58, but I’m a full woman. I still call myself a girl when I’m around my sisters. And my younger sister, Alison, in 2023, she had been my patient as a dental hygienist since the age that she was 19. So we’re only a year and a half apart. And I had been her dental hygienist. She was a nurse, a high-end nurse. She didn’t drink alcohol. But at the age, and she had come to the the dentist her entire life and had seen me regularly and I was always maintaining her teeth. But what I wasn’t doing and I didn’t pay attention to was the fact that she had a very dysbiotic bifurmino mouth. And I didn’t know that until quite late. So in 2023, she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. that’s, sorry, it was actually something called cholangiocarcinoma, which is a disease of cancer of the bile duct.

And that’s what we were talking about with that FN, Fusobacterium nucleonin before. He’s the little bugger that actually exacerbates cancer. So she’s in full-blown cancer therapy. was terminal by the time, stage four terminal by the time she was actually diagnosed. Again, no pain until the very end, right? And certainly nothing wrong with her teeth. But because I’m knee deep or neck deep in all of this, said, hey, Ali, can I just take a saliva sample and see what’s hanging around in your mouth? And there it was. PG and FN were off the chart. And the amount of clinical science that’s actually proven and shown that this little nasty bacteria is responsible for a lot of this, there it was sitting right there. And so I sent this to her oncologist, who knew exactly what to do, but it was too late.

The thing is, even though as a dental hygienist, I had been trained to check for pockets, bone loss, calculus, all of those things. She had none of that. But I’m now who was packed with FUSA bacterium nucleatum. Furious me as a dental hygienist and an oral health care worker that we’re not trained to do this and check for. So as much as I’ve got my little instruments where I can go around and poke it, poke the gum and find out if there’s disease.

There you go, a periodontal probe with little lines on it that tell you how deep that little garbage bin has got. So archaic, I believe, when it comes, it’s just a confirmation you’ve got disease there. Yes. There’s lots of stuff going on, but we could have found this had I known about it 20 or 30 years ago. It has been brewing in her body for a very long time and a simple either antibiotics

Or a naturopathic process can get rid of Fusobactyum nucleatum. And maybe on another day, or I should get you to interview Professor Emily Stein from Stanford University. And she’s actually developed a prebiotic, which will kill off and stop FN and caries. It’s a huge conversation.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:00:21)

You know, yeah, go on. I mean, I what I was going to say, Sue was, mean, that’s a very personal story. And I can just imagine how you reflect on that now. But in this modern world where we are exposed to so much stress and that’s what this program is about, unstress health, we I have clinically, professionally, personally defined stress as anything that can promote chronic inflammation and compromise immune function.

That’s what I define a stress as. And there are many in our modern world areas of stress. And dental stress is a very common one, the most common one, I would argue. And you would agree, I know, I think. But it’s not the only one.

Sue Rusalen (1:01:08)

No, and I would, I would absolutely 100 % agree to that, but poor Alison passed away in January 24. And she had, thank you. And she had been under a huge amount of pressure and bullying at work. She was a very high nurse to the point where she said, I’m just not going to fight this. I’m going to go and work somewhere else. She had to have five mRNA vaccines to keep her job. She needed a job because she was a single mom.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:01:40)

Well, let’s not let’s let’s let’s not go down. Well, we could go down that path because.

Sue Rusalen (1:01:41)

We don’t have to, but the thing is the Fusobacterium Pliatum, she had the perfect storm. And she was going to the same doctor over and over and she said, I’ve got a bit of a pain here and I’ve got to be, and you know, we found it all by accident. By the time we found it, as you know, any pancreatic or bile duct just comes very late, but it was the perfect storm. The thing about the oral bacteria, A, we could have found it earlier had I been better trained, more proliferative, whatever or if our clinicians had been better trained and I’m on a mission to do that.

Secondly, the transference of the cancer cells into the liver are facilitated and really helped along by FN. So if we didn’t have the FN, so of course I went and tested myself and they’re swimming everywhere. I’ve got them everywhere. Mothers, lovers, dogs, parents, partners, pets, family units share these things. Do family units share?

The same diseases or do they share the same oral microbiome and do we all end up with these crazy diseases, not just because of our DNA, but because of the bacteria that we share. The end of the day, just find out what it is.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:02:49)

Well, Sue, I mean, the other thing to be said there, and we’ve done my program with one of my favorite, one of my mentors is Bruce Lipton, who wrote a wonderful book called The Biology of Belief. And thoughts are things. They are called neurotransmitters which attach on to cell membranes and cause our genes to express themselves in a positive or a negative thing. So when in a negative way. So when you say she was under huge emotional stress, bullying, etc, etc.

She was under those neurotransmitters were compromising her health. Then you mentioned she had five mRNA vaccines and this may shock some of my listeners. Others may be very familiar with it, but there is research which is emerging showing that mRNA vaccines, gene therapy, not vaccines really, gene therapies, turbocharged cancers. So you’ve got a perfect storm here of dental stress, of emotional stress, and of this turbocharged experimental gene therapy. So don’t be too hard on yourself, but I get your passion. I’m picking up on your passion.

Sue Rusalen (1:04:09)

I did, when Alison passed away, mean, poor girls, all born, know, very close family. You know, we’re not girls in each other’s pockets, but we’re certainly, you we don’t even share fingernail tips. not that, we’re kind of those practical women. But when she passed away, I dived under a doona, and probably for six to eight months, and I thought, I don’t want to do this anymore. But last October, I came out and I went, F it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:04:32)

Yeah, yeah. Well, good on you because I, you know, I think you are actually putting something on the agenda, which I can really which which puts science to what is really happening in people’s mouths. And I love this code diagnosis model you’ve got. love this code diagnosis model you’ve got because patients need to be actively involved. They’re not passive. They’re not victims. They do have a great deal of they can do to empower them to better health. Listen, you’ve talked about, you know, patients are familiar with cleaning and flossing and brushing and good. What are some of the other lifestyle factors that can affect positively or negatively the, you know, the oral microbiome?

Sue Rusalen (1:05:19)

Great question. And I did, I did previously talk about parasites too. So they fall into a slightly different category than, so let’s talk about the mouth and just bacteria first. You need to disrupt the pathogens all the time, as often as possible. So brushing twice a day. Look, flossing has been shown, particularly in the hands of a inexperienced user not to be so good.

It has to be curled around the tooth, wrapped deeply into that garbage tin. Or you could call them like, they’re like a gum gutter. So you imagine the gutters on your house and some people they have a shallow gutter, good. Deep gutters, really hard to get down there. So people when they floss, they just ping it in and out and they don’t. So flossing. So there’s something, we use water picks. So a water pick or a water flosser is something that you can use, please use it in the shower because it makes a terrible mess. Put it in your mouth, close your lips together and squirt all around those little gum gutters in between. So when I’m showering and I’ve just got the water rolling down my back, that’s what I use.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:06:22)

There are some really neat, there are some really neat little mobile ones now. They used to be very bulky and they used to be very awkward. And you’re right. If you don’t close your mouth, you can make a terrible mess of the bathroom and the mirror. But but the mobile little handheld ones, a bit like electric toothbrush are really good on. Yeah, I like that. Use that in the shower. I mentioned that to my wife.

Sue Rusalen (1:06:44)

So absolutely, yes, and it’s great for cleaning grout. So if you’re in there and you’re really bored, you’re gonna get in there. And I always say to my friends, just be careful where you point it because you could do yourself an injury. So just make sure it stays in, because it’s quite powerful. It’s amazing. Tongue scrapers, people, tongue scrapers. The tongue is like this squishy velour thing that bacteria just loves consoles, they hang around that. And I’m not suggesting you should, you know your tonsils that’ll make an even bigger mess of your body.

Yeah, but tonsil stones and bacteria like they just hang out there and then you, don’t know if you’ve ever smelt someone with really bad, you know, tonsil stones or whatever. It’s not pretty. So tongue scraping every day. It’s like, it’s like a lot of third world countries have this like Indians tongue scraper. It’s part of the Ayurvedic way of doing things. People in Fiji do, but I don’t know what happened in our society. We just don’t do it. Get yourself a tongue scraper. The copper ones are really good.

You stick your tongue out, you scrape it down, and the stuff that comes off is amazing. So tongue scrapers, water picks, electric toothbrushes are far better than a manual toothbrush simply because they’re in the hands of people that aren’t trained most of the time. If I’m brushing your teeth, it’s going to be amazing. But sorry, guys, I haven’t got time every morning to come and brush everyone’s teeth, let alone my own. So they’re three of the big things. Interproximal brushes little tiny little brushes that look like a toothpick or toothpicks, but the ones with the little bottle brush on the end are brilliant. If they fit, if they don’t fit, you’re going to have to use like a floss, but learn how to use the floss. And then the very next question becomes what mouthwash do I use? And I am look, very, simply hydrogen peroxide in water. And I’m talking home bleach in a little bit of, you know, water is brilliant, but people get a bit funny about that. Don’t over concentrate it cause you end up with like, you’ve got to balance the good and bad bacteria. So can actually do some sodium bicarbonate and salt is amazing.

And I’ll get to that parasites cause that actually works super, super well. So mouthwash, my favorite mouthwash is ozonated water. Now ozonated water, H2O3 is 99.99 % bactericidal, virucidal, fungicidal. You can’t buy it at a chemist anywhere because it only has a 20 to 40 minute lifespan once you generate it. So I have a little flask at home where I press a button. The flasks aren’t cheap, but you can use them to clean your fruit and your chopping board and they’ve just been approved to use in childcare centres to you know instead of those horrible wipes we I think every household should have one so you’ve got your own oscillator.

A little flask, I should have brought it over here. It’s a silver cylinder flask. It’s tiny. It’s got a little pyrolytic plate in the bottom. You pop water into it from the tap. You press the button. Three minutes later, you’ve got three parts per million fluoride. Fluoride, not fluoride. Let’s get that out of the conversation. You’ve got three parts per million ozonated water, H2O3. And it…creates tiny little bubbles, you smell it and it smells like a fresh rain, you rinse for it for less than a minute and it’s just amazing how it can clean out and freshen the mouth and then it reverts simply back to water. So fungicidal, varicidal, bactericidal.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:10:28)

Sue, what do you think of oil pulling? Coconut oil?

Sue Rusalen (1:10:31)

Look, coconut oil has, and this is not a study, this is more anecdotal for me. I do a lot of retreats in Bali and I love looking after myself and I’m not great, but I still love a wine and you know, whatever. But I think coconut pulling has some anti-inflammatory agents in it and anti-disinfectant agents in it, definitely. But good coconut pulling can take 10 to 20 minutes.

If you’ve got 10 to 20 minutes to do, my God, makes a lot of commitment. And if you’ve got time to do that, there’s just much easier ways to do it. There’s much, much easier ways to do it. so I wouldn’t say no to people, but swishing with ozinated water for a minute versus coconut pulling. If you can just poke in between your teeth with the interproximal brushes, scrape your tongue.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:11:28)

It’s quite a commitment. It’s quite a commitment.

Sue Rusalen (1:11:35))

Because it’s not just your teeth that need cleaning. It’s that little gum gutter that needs cleaning. It’s all those little spaces. It’s your tongue. It’s your, it’s everything because the biofilm will stick to everything. And all you’re doing is disrupting it and you’re breaking down the structure back to the early colonizers. And then you’re back to start. You’re going to miss stuff. And that’s what the dentist is for. I did touch on salt and bicarb soda. So when you’re dealing with a parasite,

Parasites do a lot of damage in people’s mouths and we never check from and hardly anyone was told about this at university.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:12:10)

That’s true.

Sue Rusalen (1:12:11)

They are nasty and they’re prevalent. And under the microscope, we’re finding maybe one in three people have a parasite living in their mouth. I don’t know what sort of parasite. cannot be found on this salivary diagnostic. just can’t. But you see them on the slide, coming across the slide. Now they get into your gut. They’re going to. They alter your microbiome. They then affect all of the really good stuff happening in your gut.

And I’ll have patients that have an amoebic infection that are also depressed, that also have gut issues that have, they don’t know why. And we’re doing a lot of, I can’t call it research, but we’re doing a lot of observation of our clients and how their health is improving when we get rid of the amoebic infection. The easiest way to get rid of an amoebic infection is to pulverize salt and bicarbonate of soda one part to seven and you pulverize

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:13:19)

Salt to two, one part to seven, one part salt to seven parts bicarb.

Sue Rusalen (1:13:19)

I can actually drop, I’ll drop all the instructions here. So two weeks on a little bit of water and hydrogen peroxide, followed by, it’s called Torrens powder. Do you know, I’m a bit reluctant to tell you exactly which one’s which, because on the spot now, I I’m gonna tell you the wrong thing. I’ll drop it to you and you pulverize it in like a blender or a thermomix or something and you make this powder, right? It’s very fine.

That’s okay, that’s okay.

And you pack it into your gums every day. I sound like a nut when I say this because my dental hygiene colleagues would go, we never taught that at university. But the salt causes the amoeba to explode almost straight away. And I don’t want to treat a patient until they’ve done their home disinfection. If I find an amoeba, I send them home for a month to get their bacterial load down because otherwise, and you’ve probably heard of this Ron, you get something called the Herxheimer effect, which is where, which is where the body goes into almost a flu like state for between one and seven days because of the release of toxins that are coming out of their body as we’re killing them. But salt and bicarbicidal absolutely kill amoeba. then once that has settled, cause I don’t want to get in there with an instrument and start squirting it around and having aerosols and spray around the room.

because the patient’s going to get sick and we’re going to get sick. When I actually looked at my own microbiome and I’d been treating patients for 35 years and my gums were as healthy as I thought, my oral microbiome was horrific. still have. Yeah, it was. And I was actually screaming going, my God, what’s wrong? Am I dying? I couldn’t believe the spirochetes that I could see. I thought, how is it that I’ve lived a lifetime in this profession and my mouth looks like that?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:15:19)

been very confronting for you.

Sue Rusalen (1:15:21)

And I had no gum disease, but I turned it around in less than two weeks. And it’s been healthy ever since. And then I found the Fusobactyum nucleatum. So I knocked that out with a bit of antibiotic. I could have gone the naturopathic way, but I was in a world of pain with my sister at that point. And I just went, I’ll just deal with her and I’ll deal with me later. But you do see this living in clusters. So the salt, the…

The mouthwash, the bi-carb, all of those things are so, useful. And we’re having such great, there’s a guy called Mark Bonner. He’s a dentist. He’s a French Canadian dentist who created something called the Bonner technique. And we’re incorporating that into all of our education these days. There’s multiple, what you call it? Scientific articles that he’s co-authored that show this. He’s a microscope user too.

So I don’t just send people off to the lab straight away and go and get a lab test because I wanna know if there’s single-cell amoebas or trichomonas there because they need, they absolutely need the salt therapy. You can get a product called Perio Mix, which you can buy online from Eric Davies, Davies Dental, and that is essentially Torrance powder. So.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:16:48)

Yes, I do know Eric and I’ve known him for many years. I’m not surprised to see him with something like that. But that’s really useful. Sue, Sue, you’ve given us so much to think about. And this is from somebody this is from somebody who’s been in the oral health, dental stress space for all of my professional career. And I love what you’re doing. I love your message. I love the fact that you can quantify it and include a patient in that journey.

Look, we will have links to your site and what you’re doing. And I congratulate you on it. I love your passion. I think that passion is important in taking things like this forward. So listen, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom and such thought provoking ideas. And you’ve given us so many things for patients, people, listeners to take.

This oral health thing a little more seriously than perhaps they have in the past. So thank you so much for joining us.

Sue Rusalen (1:17:52)

I am really glad that Dr. Jalal put my name forward to speak to about this. We’re getting some amazing results and really try and look everyone for a dentist that’s got a microscope. There’s only 60 in Australia and you know what we’re finding and the turnaround we’re having is amazing. The health that we’re achieving, the conversations we’re having. And I’ve just bought a dental practice in New South Wales and I’m building it as our flagship store practice. It’s in Nara of all places. So you’ll find me down there at Amazing Dental. I fly in and out every month because I live in South Australia, but I’m on an absolute mission to make this as accessible to the public as possible. So thank you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (1:18:42)

Well kind of head spinning really even for me as a dentist who has been in practice, holistic dental practice for over 40 years. Having a microscope in the dental practice is really important. I know many years ago, over 20 years ago, we decided that we would take as a part of a comprehensive oral exam. And if you’re wondering what a comprehensive oral exam is, I would encourage you to do my Mastering Oral Health course, which if you’re an unstressed member, you get free. But looking at module one and understanding what a comprehensive oral exam is, is really important.

But this adds another aspect to that comprehensive oral exam. And now when we did comprehensive oral exams in our practice 20 years ago, we took high definition photos because when you lie back and open your mouth and your dentist or hygienist explain something to you, it’s very hard to visualize. But when you see it, a high definition photo of what is actually going on, you become part of the journey of discovery and diagnosis. You become an active member, well, an active part of the diagnosis and treatment, which I know you are because you’re there, but when you can see it, you can understand it and you know what is going on. Well, the oral microbiome, just as the gut microbiome,

You can’t really take photos of the gut microbiome quite as easily as you can in the mouth. But what Sue’s talking about is taking a very small sample, putting it on a little microscope slide, looking at it under a microscope and projecting that image onto a TV screen and recording, say, one, 30 seconds or one minute of your oral microbiome in action. And then off you go and you clean your teeth or your teeth are cleaned.

And you come back a week later and you see the difference. And when you realize through the reports that are available in this approach to the links between, as Sue pointed out, with her own sister and the tragic case of her dying through colorectal cancer, and she was a highly motivated patient, this takes holistic dentistry to another level. And if I was 10 or 15 years younger, and looking at my dental practice, this would be something that I would just incorporate into it as a matter of course, because what defines the difference in a practice? What makes you as a practitioner different from all the other practices around? Well, this is important and it’s a win-win, a win for the patient, a win for the profession and a win for public health. So we’ll have links to Sue’s website and some of the things that she’s talking about. I hope this finds you well.

Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich, be well. Visit unstresshealth.com today.

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.

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From Burnout to Breakthrough: Resilience & High-Performance Psychology with Dr. Hayley Perlus 00:00 Intro: Burnout & performance psychology. * 01:15 Haley’s ski story → passion for psychology. * 05:40 Burnout = exhaustion, detachment, low performance. * 10:00 Recovery is essential, not optional. * 12:45 Mindset drives resilience & performance. * 22:00 Tool: swap “but” with “the truth is.” * 26:30 Champions embrace pressure & responsibility. * 33:40 Leaders must model recovery at work * 38:50 Life as sprints: stress + short recovery. * 45:10* Biggest challenge = confusion; find clarity & commit.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05:93)

Welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we’re going to dive into something that affects so many of us, burnout, but also explore this world of performance psychology with rising demands in both our personal and professional lives. The pressure to perform can feel relentless. And my guest today is Dr Haley Perlus, and she is an internationally recognized performance psychologist. She’s an author.

She’s been featured on Oprah and ESPN and is a leading voice in mental resilience. Now, together, we’re going to explore what high-performance strategies mean to overcome burnout and sustain wellness. This is a conversation that’s particularly relevant for business leaders, for health professionals, for sporting people. In fact, as I often say, we are all the executives of our own lives, and we are all performing. So, performance psychology is something that is relevant to each and every one of us. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Haley Perlus. Welcome to the show, Haley.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:01:14)

Thanks, Dr. Ehrlich.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:01:19)

Dr. is fine, or Ron is fine, please let’s not be too formal here. The whole subject of burnout and resilience in the workplace for individuals and the workplace is something that we’ve explored on this podcast often. But I’m intrigued to know what led you into the field of performance psychology and mental resilience. mean, was there a defining moment or how did you end up where you are now?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:01:41)

There is a defining moment and it was when I was 12. My first experience was stress and performance psychology. I grew up in Canada and I was a competitive ski racer and a decent one at that. And I was asked to go and compete and represent Canada at the world championships for my age group. And long story short, just before I was about to go and compete, my coach pulled out a hundred Canadian dollar bill placed in front of placed it in front of my face and told me that he had bet on me to win.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:02:18)

No pressure there.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:02:19)

No pressure. And then he basically sent me on my way. And in that moment, I now know that I was at an emotional and a mental fork in the road. On one hand, fear, anger, frustration, worry. How could a coach bet on their athlete and then tell them right before she’s about to compete? What if he’s wrong? What if I make a mistake? On the flip side, though, I can feel passion, challenge, competent, excited. If my coach believes in me so much that he’s willing to bet on me, why shouldn’t I believe in myself? Now, I can’t tell you, that

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03:00)

This will go through your mind as a 12 year old. If you did, you’re impressive, even more impressive.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:03:03)

Right. was going to say, can’t tell you that at 12 years old, I stood there and I said, okay, Haley, you were at an emotional and a mental fork in the road. But I do remember thinking if my coach has high expectations, doesn’t that mean I’m doing something right? And so I did go down that race. did win, which was wonderful. My coach congratulated me, kept the money for himself. But right then and there, he said, it’s amazing what your performance will be like when you get your head straight.

And that was the tip off to this thing called performance psychology and how our minds impact, how we regulate our emotions, how we work through stress. And so I went home at 12 years old and I told my parents I wanted to be a sports psychologist when I grew up.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03:49)

Fantastic. mean, you know, we’ve spoken to quite a few organizational psychologists and we’ve spoken to many psychologists, but I love that. You know, that really got my attention performance psychology and I wanted to explore it a little more. And I mean, you’ve used it in in your sport. You’ve used it in sport, but it has relevance to each and every one of us, whatever we’re doing.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:04:16)

Absolutely. To be honest, I only thought that I would work in sports until I became an adult. And going through all the trials and tribulations, both at work and beyond work, I very quickly realized that this is not just for athletes. And a lot of sports psychology is based on what we’ve learned in industrial psychology and organizational psychology. So there is a great deal of overlap and learning.

So it’s really just how you apply the tools so that someone can actually use them, right? How to apply them so someone can implement them. That’s my main focus. Let’s just do it in a way where someone can use it so that it actually works for them.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:04:57)

Hmm. I mean, it’s a theme that we follow on this podcast often. And that is the while you may not be able to change the people around you or events in the world, the thing you have most at your disposal is how you think about things. And that is a really powerful tool we we all need to, you know, start using more of. But this is what this is all about. I know people talk a lot about burnout, too.

And it’s a term that’s bandied around a lot. I think it often gets confused with stress. From your perspective, and I know you deal with this a lot, what exactly is burnout from your perspective? And how do you differentiate it from stress or exhaustion?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:05:41)

So my education taught me and what I like to think about burnout is characterized by three things. So the first is emotional and physical exhaustion, as you mentioned. But if that’s all we have, then we’re not burned out. We’re just tired. And that’s actually a good thing. you know, that’s a good thing, but emotional and mental, but not physical.

The physical exhaustion comes later. And a great example would be, you if anybody’s listening or watching right now, if they’ve ever thought, because I know I have, I want to exercise after work today, but I’m too tired, right? We’re not really physically tired, because if you’re doing what I’m doing right now, we’re sitting, recovering, resting all day. But the truth is we’re emotionally and mentally exhausted. So we tell ourselves that we’re too tired to move our bodies.

We then don’t move our bodies, we atrophy, and then the physical exhaustion kicks in because we’re not moving, we’re not using our body. But burnout, from a psychological and emotional standpoint, it starts just there. The second characteristic of burnout is depersonalization. So a person, a community, a project, and a company that you once felt really connected to, there was that intrinsic motivation that I call heart motivation.

You once wanted to contribute, you wanted to belong, you wanted to make a difference. That’s now being overpowered and you just don’t feel that connection anymore. So now it’s all about, I just got to get the results. I just have to get that trophy. I have to just finish the job and, and reach the, the end, but there’s no sense of belonging and wanting to contribute from an intrinsic perspective, so depersonalization.

And then the third characteristic is low, big word here, perceived performance. So even though you may be checking off all the boxes and everyone around you is saying that you’re doing a good job, you don’t believe, you don’t feel like you’re doing a good job. Put those three together, emotional, mental exhaustion, depersonalization and low perceived performance. Now you’re on the spectrum of burnout and it can vary, you know, from a from just dipping your toe into burnout to having severe burnout.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:08:03)

And what does the statistics say how common this is? Because it feels like it’s becoming very common. What’s the science telling us?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:08:15)

Yes, the term is being used a lot. so I believe we all are maybe experiencing at some point burnout because it’s just being talked about a lot. But here’s what I know in the world in which, not the sport world, the more of the corporate everyday life world.

I don’t really know the statistic on how many of us are truly experiencing burnout, but I do know the primary correlation or causation of burnout. And it’s not what we might think. A lot of us think it’s because of these excessive stressors. You know, these stressors that are either acute, a illness in the family or a death in the family, going through a divorce, a new baby, building a new home, a new job. So all of these like…temporary, really acute, they’re acute, they’re severe, they’re excessive. Or you could have chronic excessive stress, which is, here’s the difference between acute and chronic. Chronic is actually the buildup of normal stressors without adequate recovery. And that is the main cause of burnout in the daily lives that you and I lead.

It’s the wash, rinse and repeat without adequate recovery. It’s not the excessive stressors. We’re actually quite capable of having those survival instincts and taking care of business when we have the energy to do it. But it’s the chronic excessive stress, which is the accumulation of just the normal stressors in our lives without adequate recovery. And that is the main cause of burnout.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:10:00)

Mm It’s music to my ears to hear you say that because we kind of view on unstress health, our daily cycle of challenges, mindset and importantly, recovery. And I don’t think people actually focus on that recovery part. Take it seriously enough.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:10:18)

To me, so in the world of sports, recovery is a mandatory component of your performance routine. And often we think, well, recovery is something that we need time for. So when I have the time, I’ll recover. Or we think of recovery as a reward. Let me get all of these things accomplished, and then I’ll reward myself with recovery. Professional athletes do not look at recovery as something that they have to wait for the right time or if they have time or and it’s not a reward, it is a mandatory component. And I look at recovery as I look like drinking water. I drink water. We all drink water so that we never need water. We need to recover so that we never need recovery. We’re always staying on top of things so that we never get dehydrated. We never get de-energized.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:11:13)

Hmm. And I think the metaphor is an interesting one because listening to your body is an important thing. mean, we know we hear eight liters a day or whatever the sum is. But if we drink when we’re thirsty, our body is telling us. And similarly, when we focus on recovery, when we need to not ignore it. But coming back to I’m actually interested, how do you in your professional life is most of it in sport? Is it? is what’s the proportion of sport to corporate to individual? How do you divide your professional time up?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:11:51)

Yeah, ask me every day because it’s different. Okay, know, today… Yes, yes. Today was more sport oriented and I was in my private practice today. Last week, I was at a sport event doing some speaking and being on some panels with experts. The week before that, I was on the road delivering a six hour presentation to a corporate company on resilience.

That makes for a full day.

So just ask me every day and the answer might change, but that’s what I love about what I do. And that’s something that prevents me from experiencing burnout is one, I recover, which is really the primary treatment and prevention of burnout. But variety is also a nice key. And you don’t have to have variety in everything, but variety does keep things new, exciting, different.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:12:48)

Coming back to performance psychology in action, how does performance psychology give us tools to better understand and manage our day and also prevent burnout?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:12:59)

So performance psychologies, in my humble opinion, starts with your mindset, psychology. And every story that we tell ourselves, every thought that we have influences an emotion. Now our emotions then subsequently create different stories and other thoughts, but our thoughts impact our emotions. Those emotions alter our…biology or chemistry, muscle tension, heart rate, skin conductance, neurons and hormones and chemicals. And then that influences our behavior, especially stress behavior. So if we can get the story right, I call it optimal energy flow. If we can get the story right, a story that’s going to help us, propel us to movement, propel us to…

In my humble opinion, it’s not always positive thinking, because I don’t know that that’s always possible, because sometimes things just are really bad. But if we can get ourselves to think productively, productive thinking, that’ll increase more of the pleasant emotions or the emotions that will serve us, which then gets our body right, which then propels us to take positive behavior, which helps us to work through our stressors.

And cope with our stress, work through our stressors, even perceive the stress as good, embrace it, which is really what I do. So when I’m working at the high performance levels, it’s all about how to embrace the stress, how to embrace pressure as a performance enhancer. And that starts with the story.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:14:41)

Hmm. Yes, and it’s interesting, isn’t it? The two people literally sitting side by side doing what appears to be the same thing. The difference in how they approach that, how they see it, how they respond to it is their is their attitude, their their whole approach mentally to what they’re doing, isn’t it?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:15:03)

Right. Yeah, it’s their story. It’s their thought around that stressor. And then depending on your story, that stressor, in order for you to experience stress, you need to have a stimulus and then you need to have a stress response. And there are people that the stimulus is there, but they don’t have a stress response, therefore they don’t experience stress. Traffic is a perfect example. There are some people that have a high stress response to traffic. And then there are other people who they

Traffic is, it’s indifferent, like they’re indifferent about it. They don’t have a response. Therefore they don’t experience stress around traffic. I’m sure they experience stress in other ways.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:15:45)

Yes, I mean, resilience, mental resilience is another thing I know you talk a lot about. What does resilience really mean in a high performance context?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:15:53)

So when you fall down, you get back up. But I believe you get back up with intention. And so I always add that on. It’s the bounce back with intention. And something I learned in sports, and we can apply it to our lives. The best athlete, the athlete that stands on top of the podium at the end of the day is not the perfect athlete. It’s the athlete that best recovered. When a mistake was made, they quickly reset.

And the faster they reset and were able to just move on to the next moment, they gave themselves the greatest advantage. That’s resilience. So in the world in which you and I live, we can strive to be perfect, but resilience is when we do make a mistake, when something doesn’t go our way. Okay, how are we going to best recover? How are we going to best reset with intention, making that move forward? and I always like to use our strengths.

Yes. So an exercise that I do with everyone in my private practice is I ask you, when you are at your best, what describes you? Three words. What are your fundamental strengths? And you can look at it in a life domain. So at work or at home, if you’re a parent, if you’re a wellness enthusiast, you can look at it in those terms, or you can just ask yourself in the broad scheme of things as a human being.

What are my three best characters? And that’s what I’ve learned from my mentors. And then those become your fundamental strengths. So when I’m approached with a stressor or when a stressor comes to me, I’m going to expose myself to that stressor leading with one of my strengths.

And then that moves me away from a state of anxiety and it moves me more to a place of, let’s say arousal or challenge. And that’s energy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:18:00)

I love this strength based focus and we’ve done quite a few programs on that. And I know there are varying ways of assessing your strengths. You know, you talk about, well, give it to me off the top of your head. You may not really go very deeply there, but there are different analysis out there. I mean, I know of the via strengths analysis and the, what is it, the Gallup Clifton strengths analysis.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:18:23)

Or the the book the strength finder

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:18:28)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you find those tools helpful, useful?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:18:31)

In my practice, I don’t use those and it’s not because I don’t find them useful. just, I like to offer the opportunity for people that I work with to tell their story. So I shared my story about how my coach put pressure on me and then I was either going to think, no, or I was going to think, yeah. And then I’ll share that story and then ask people, whether it’s my private practice or in my public speaking event, what’s your.

I call it a personal podium moment. What is your personal podium moment when you were approached by a stressor that you could not control and you found yourself looking at it as a challenge, giving you confidence, getting excited instead of anger, fear, frustration, worry. And then when they can tell you a story, now they suddenly armed themselves. They grounded themselves in a place of confidence. And then what did you do in that moment? And then they get to pull out some real details about what makes them their best self.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:19:33)

Hmm. I’d love to certainly explore those, I wondered if we might just, what are some early warning signs that things aren’t working out well for you? That you need to watch out for before burnout actually takes hold?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:19:49)

A really good way to create some awareness is from the emotional perspective.

There are, the education that I have is that there’s four categories. There’s an emotional quadrant. So there’s really four categories of emotion. And it’s the, the, the two spectrums are really stress, high stress, low stress. In other words, energy out or energy in, and then you either feel that in a pleasant way or an unpleasant way. So for example, a high stress, you know, pleasant would be that challenge, excitement, passion. And then on the other side, high stress but unpleasant would be that fear, worry, frustration. Now that fear, worry, frustration is not all bad. I don’t know about you, Ron, but sometimes I consider myself to be a pro crasinator because I need to feel a little bit of worry. I need to feel a little bit of fear to ignite me, to get me motivated, to heighten my concentration.

But that’s not where I’m going to be my best self. And it’s also the quickest way to burn out if I live in those high unpleasant emotions. So if you assess, if you were to look at yourself and you may separate your life, work and beyond, or you just may generally look at it, when I’m exposing myself to the stressors of life, if I’m living more in that high unpleasant, fear, worry, frustration, anger, anxiety, if I’m living more there, compared to living it challenged, excited, passionate, aligned, that’s a clue that burnout is around the corner. Because those unpleasant emotions use up a lot more energy and much faster than the pleasant emotions. So that’s a clue.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:21:44)

Hmm. Yeah, the and I mean, this keeping that high performance going for individuals to adopt. What what are some of those strategies that we can we can implement to to make sure we’re thinking positively like that? You know, that’s easier said than done for a lot of people.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:22:03)

Well, let me just give one specific tool and, you know, in the time that we have, cause obviously, you know, mindset is a, is a big topic. This is a great way to catch yourself. If you ever find yourself saying, want fill in the blank. So I’ll use the example I said before, which is I want to exercise after work, but I’m too tired. So if you find yourself saying, I want fill in the blank, but.

That but is a sign that you have a mental block. Because whatever follows that but is typically how you’re going to justify why you’re not going to follow through on your intentions and stay where you are. We have a lot of, we’ve got big buts. We’ve got these buts. So that’s a really quick way to start catching yourself thinking, perhaps not in a productive way. And then how do you reframe it?

Remember these words, the truth is, and I would even throw in there the productive truth. So if we use our exercise example, the truth is, Haley, I’ve been sitting all day, physically rested. So the truth is, as I’m physically recovered, I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted. And the truth is, the best way to recover my emotions and mind is to move my body.

And the truth is something is better than nothing. The truth is I’ve never regretted exercise. And the truth is, and the truth is, and the truth is, and the truth is. And you start reworking your thoughts. You start retelling your stories. You eliminate the buts by replacing them with the truth is that serves you, the productive truth. And that’s one really great way to start improving your mindset, so that it supports you creating emotions and a body and then executing that behavior.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:24:07)

It’s interesting, isn’t it, I don’t want to do a commercial here, but just do it is a really, it’s a powerful thing to have going in your head, isn’t it? Just do it when you’re wondering whether you should or shouldn’t just do it.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:24:23)

Yeah, but that but but getting getting that done just doing it is the hard part. So I do feel that we need a little bit more of a slogan. I do feel that we need something that’s going to tip us off. Something, you know, for so for me, I’ll be real honest. I this is the work that I teach and I do not want to be a hypocrite. I want to walk the walk.

And often when I’m finding myself saying, I want, but the truth is, Haley, you get to share this story that you actually didn’t want to do it and you did it. You get to share this with your students. You get to walk the walk. You get to not be a hypocrite. And so you have to find. I don’t want us to think a lot, but I do want us. We have to come up with that one nugget that’s going to really help us to just do it.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:26:30)

I’m interested because you’re working with sports people and you know, I know at the very elite level, all of these sportsmen, think what separates them is really their attitude. What do you think, what have you noticed in sportsmen that you kind of meet somebody and you think, now there is a champion. What is it about a champion that makes them a champion?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:27:00)

They show up even if they don’t want to.

And they of course love it when things are perfect, when the weather is just right and the competition is just right and they slept just right. I mean they will embrace those moments, but they also say when it’s imperfect, great, this is where I’m going to gain a competitive advantage because everyone else is going to complain about the imperfect conditions and I’m going to make my move.

They also embrace the pressure. They, I call it, and I borrow it from one of my favorite movies called The Replacements. It was a football movie. Winners want the ball. They want the responsibility. Not, they don’t want to lose. Who wants to lose? Nobody wants to fail. But they’re also not focusing on that. I want the ball. I want the responsibility. I’ve earned this pressure and I want to make the most I can with it. These are the things that separates. And so when you say, Ron, that it’s about attitude, it absolutely is. athletes train their bodies countless, countless hours, weeks, months, years, decades, train their bodies. And one unhelpful story can totally cut them off at the neck.

And then we call it choking, their performance just suffers. But on the flip side, if they have a clean mind, a very clear mind, then they don’t have to think so much. They can just do it. And then their body takes over and their bodies get to do what they’ve been training it to do. So the best of the best know what the mind is capable of and they use it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:28:55)

Yeah, because it always intrigues me, particularly when you’re watching a tennis game or a golf game. You know, these people are all scratch golfers, which means they can hit a great ball or they’re great tennis players. But you can almost see the mental game that’s going on there. And, you know, I imagine having a performance psychologist sitting on the sideline there, which you can have eye contact with and just know is that that do you do deal with sports people on that level?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:29:28)

I do, but I don’t always get to be there in person. So what we do do, interestingly enough, is we record our sessions so that these athletes have them as a resource. And when something really great comes up in that session, I’ll take a little bit of a clip. I’ll take a 10 second, 30 second clip of my voice or their voice, and then I text it to them. And so they have that for themselves, a little bit of a, because I don’t always get to be you know, on the court with every athlete that I work with. But yeah, those moments, those, because it’s all, they wouldn’t be coming to me if it was all habit. So we have to build these habits. And so at first we have to push ourselves to remember to do these things. And so those, if I can’t be there in person to remind them little audio clues or, you know, attentional pieces we use.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:30:19)

What’s an example of some tools that you’ve given sports people to, you know, improve their, for them to think about at the time that they’re in this critical moment of the game of the sport?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:30:31)

One of the, I’ll just, just last week, I’ll just mention, she’s a, she’s female soccer player. And in our discussion, she said, I know how to play soccer. Soccer is the easy part. And I took that clip and I sent it to her because in the heat of the moment, she sometimes doubts. But very comfortably sitting across from me, was able to like, soccer is the easy part. So I needed her to remember that. And in her voice, and then that is what we call an attentional cue to- Attentional cue. Yeah, it’s those attentional cues to remind her of that, to remind her to shift. And then she today, we were actually talking and.

She wrote, not scared on her arm. She goes, I don’t want to write fearless because fearless to her was a little bit cheesy and over and overplayed. So she just wrote, not scared. I know how to play this game. And the last two weeks she’s had her best two games ever played.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:31:37)

Self-doubt is something that haunts us in our lives. mean, it can push us to greater things, but I imagine in sport, self-doubt, as you say, is a real problem to overcome, isn’t it?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:31:52)

You anxiety. So it’s an interesting thing. So there’s anxiety and then there’s excitement. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who’s the founder of FlowState, called it arousal. So there’s anxiety and then there’s arousal. And the way I look at it is the difference is confidence or doubt. Anxiety and doubt work together. Arousal and confidence work together.

So one of the best ways to move you from an anxious feeling to more of a challenge, excitement feeling is confidence. And these doubts, and I’ll be honest with you, sometimes I tell the people that I’m working with, just say to yourself, it’s just your thinking. And you don’t have to believe everything you think. Like, let’s say,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:32:42)

Yeah, fake it until you make it.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:32:44)

Well, it’s not even that. It’s, well, kind of, but I’m not, I don’t even know that I believe in faking it till you make it, but I’ll use myself as an example. If I’m delivering a new keynote and it’s for a new company and I want to make a good impression, I want to do a good job, and then a little bit of doubt creeps in, will I do a good job? What if I don’t deliver what they want me to? And then I immediately pause and I say, Haley, it’s just your thinking.

They chose you for a reason. You’ve had numerous phone calls with them. You know your participants. You know the examples. They’ve seen you before in other presentations. So I’m not really faking it. I’m just putting a stop. I’m like, it’s a pattern interrupt. Haley, it’s just your thinking. And you don’t have to believe everything you think because over here, there’s ample evidence to support that you’re in the right place and you belong to be here and they want you here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:33:40)

I like that pattern interrupt. I’ve got to do more pattern interrupting in my life. It’s interesting also that you’re doing a lot of work in the corporate space because a lot of interesting things are happening in Australia in the corporate space. I think they’re happening internationally about managing, mitigating psychosocial risk within the workplace. mean, we’re focused on workplace physical, but now it’s recognized that psychosocial risk is an important part of the workplace and leadership is an important part of that. do you, how have you found, you know, the corporate world’s commitment to performance psychology and psychosocial risk?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:34:25)

I believe we’re planting some really good seeds. We need to improve our follow through.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:34:38)

Well, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:34:39)

However, those, I mean, we are planting the seeds and the first piece is awareness. So let’s continue the conversation. Let’s start looking at it. And it’s contagious. We now just have to live up to, you know, one example that I can think of is that there are, going back to burnout, this idea of wash, rinse and repeat, back to back emails, back to back meetings without adequate recovery.

There are many organizations that are identifying that, understanding that, and then putting measures into place. They’re taking on their calendars, their software that schedules. They’re not allowing for 60-minute meetings. They’re moving these 60-minute meetings to 50-minute meetings so that you have 10 minutes in between. But the people on the meeting aren’t adhering to it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:35:35)

Okay, that’s interesting.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:35:36)

So we’re starting there. The seeds are planted. Certain protocols are being implemented from an organizational level. And now we really have to follow through. And why aren’t we following through? Well, some people will feel guilty if they take 10 minutes recovery. Some people say, well, my, you know, that didn’t happen in the last meeting. So it’s okay if I go over, there’s all these different, buts, right? They want to adhere, but and all these reasons why they feel they can’t. So that’s the piece that we need to start really working at and changing the story so that the implementation will be there. We cannot follow through without the right story. Even if the organization has put certain boundaries in place, the people need to follow them and a story is going to help people follow through.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:36:36)

I mean, that is the challenge, isn’t it, to get leadership buy-in more than just lip service? mean, what do you think the key is to getting leadership buy-in?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:36:44)

Walk the walk. put so much pressure on myself and I believe it’s good pressure and I don’t shy away with it. I want to embrace it. I put a lot of pressure on myself to adhere to schedules. I put a lot of pressure on myself to, if I’m the one leading the call, there is no way that that call is going over. No way. That is one of my primary goals. And so I truly believe that we have to…

Whoever is the leader on a specific call needs to do that. leaders, we don’t, we don’t necessarily have to verbally say, give you permission, but directs employees need to have permission to go and take a 10 minute break. And so if a leader’s not doing it, the employee is never going to do it because they’re not going to believe that they can. So we have to, we have to put things in place and then we have to walk the walk.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:40)

Yeah, I mean, one of the paradoxes is that leaders are being asked to and given responsibility to manage stress and burnout in psychosocial risk in the workplace. And yet they’re the ones that will benefit most from it.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:37:55)

Very true. Very true. And then I actually see some great leaders will send an email. And I understand, because I do this myself, sometimes leaders will, it’s on the top of your mind. You had a moment, and so you send an email, maybe after work hours. But in that email, you say, I’m just sending this for, but I do not expect you to answer it until Monday. And then employees don’t listen. They think, well, it was sent to me, therefore I have to reply. Well, no, it was clearly written that you do not need to reply. So there’s just this work around. And some people will look at me and say, well, the leader shouldn’t send the email. I don’t know. It was clearly communicated to you that do not feel pressure. So we have to also listen. I get both sides, but there has to be an open communication, so that we can actually feel that psychological safety we’re talking about.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:38:54)

What do you think? We talked initially about recovery and let’s just focus on that for a moment. mean, what are some of the keys to building recovery into your life, into your everyday practice?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:39:07)

So let’s start again with a story. So a great story to adapt is that we are sprinters. We are not marathon runners. The story that life is a marathon, if we look at a marathon runner, they have two objectives. One is to obviously finish the marathon, but the second objective, as fast as they can, they wanna finish it. But the second intention is to conserve energy so that they can finish it in the first place.

Sprinters, they have one goal to get to the other side as fast as they can, effectively, efficiently, high performance. It is not about conserving energy. So I want us to look at life as a sprinter, where we go in for a meeting all out, because we know we’re going to have some recovery afterwards. And again, if you look at a marathon runner, after they run a marathon, they take two weeks off. And then when they come back,

Yes. And then when they come back, they don’t just go back into a marathon, they gradually warm themselves up. We can’t do that in the world in which we live. We can’t go all out in a project and then when it’s done, take two weeks off. And then when we come back to work, we’re just going to do a couple of meetings today and we’ll just gradually work our way up. So the story of a marathoner doesn’t work, but a sprinter, a sprinter in the Olympics goes and has a sprint.

Some of them collapse on the floor afterwards. Some of them don’t, but they have a very quick recovery bout because they have to go and run another sprint the next day. But they’re energized because it was all out. Then they recovered. Then it was all out. Then they recovered all out, recover. And that’s the kind of life that we want to lead. We stress, we recover. We stress, we recover and we recover in short. That’s why I said bouts. Their recovery pauses.

Where we go wrong as we think about recovery as our evenings, as our weekends, when we take holiday. Recovery bouts are 30 minutes, 15 minutes, five minutes. Even if you have less than one minute, something will always be better than nothing. And there’s two ways to recover. There is stillness, meditation, deep breathing, the brilliance of boredom. But then there’s also active recovery, which is taking yourself out of one task, and putting yourself into another task as long as that other task creates calm and peace while you’re doing it. So a lot of people will say, well, when I take a recovery break, I go and fold the laundry and then I feel calm and peace. No, you just crossed something else on the list, which allowed you to feel calm and from an achievement. But if folding laundry, is actually calming to you in the moment, then yeah, that’s active recovery.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:42:05)

Mm hmm. Yeah, just do it. Just just break it up and do it. Build it into your day. Because I do think I mean, people trivialise sleep. They kind of don’t take it as seriously as they should. And I think that’s an important part of recovery. But these other built into the day recovery events are really quite an important part. Performance psychology. What excites you most about the future?

Performance psychology. mean, it’s a whole area that I must admit I haven’t I haven’t had a performance psychologist on before. But what what do you think? What’s the role in the healthier workplace, healthier communities? What do you see as that moving forward?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:42:48)

Yeah, my personal enjoyment is this pressure and stress piece. And it’s helping us embrace that pressure. And one of my favorite things to do in a presentation when I’m talking about resilience and stress, show of hands, how many of you have volunteered for the role that you’re in, like volunteered for the promotion, volunteered to lead a project? And all many hands obviously go up. How many of you volunteered to be married?

How many of you volunteered to have children, volunteered to purchase a home? In other words, how many of you have asked for stress in your life and the pressure that comes with it? And then the question is why? And you get answers like that’s excitement, that’s growth, that’s, you know, full engagement, that’s fulfillment. And that’s what life’s all about. But we can’t do it if we’re just, well, recovery is good, but if we’re just recovering all day, every day.

That actually leads to some health implications too, because atrophy, we become complacent, we become depressed. We’re not necessarily living a healthy life. So there’s this balance between stress and recovery that I’m super interested in. I want us to recover intentionally, and I want us to learn how to embrace this stress, embrace this pressure. And now we’re going to realize our true potential and live a very fulfilled life with not just performance, but overall health and well-being. My two mentors who created a performance business recently, I was just with them probably six months ago, and they said, we thought we were in the business of performance, but we realized we’re actually in the business of health because you can’t optimize your performance without first optimizing your health. And the stress recover piece is the is one of the greatest health pieces to then allow us to perform our best.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:44:52)

Yeah. Listen, just want to finish up because taking a step back from your role as a performance psychologist, we’re all on a health journey as individuals in this modern world. What do you think the biggest challenge is for us as individuals on that journey?

Dr Haley Perlus (00:45:11)

Confusion.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:45:12)

Okay, go on.

Dr Haley Perlus (00:45:16)

There’s so much information, some real backed up by science, mean, this is what I love about you and your podcast. You’re looking for the real data and research and science. That’s why you have so many doctors. I love how it’s all not only about governed protocols, it’s just the truth. But there’s so much information. Some is true, some isn’t. And so we get really confused and then the confused mind says, no, mean, nutrition is a great example. There are so many different, the banana is great. No, the banana is not healthy. There’s so much confusing information that we end up just kind of throwing our arms up in the air and giving up and going back to our old habits. If we were able to, of course, do your due diligence, but then find a protocol that was created by someone you’ve learned to trust. So you’ve listened to them a lot, you’ve read a lot, you’ve gone and seen them, someone you trust. But then the second piece is that it also fits your lifestyle. You know, it’s one thing if you’re gonna follow a nutrition regiment, but you’re on the road all the time and you’re eating out all the time, it’s not plausible for you. There is other alternatives. You have to find a protocol that you trust and then also one that you can do given the life you lead.

And then the idea, in my humble opinion, is to tune everything else out and give this a real, what do they say, a good old college try, like really go out there and commit to it and give yourself the opportunity for it to succeed. Give yourself the opportunity for you to succeed. Too often, I think the confusion and the not allowing it, not being patient, we all just want the quick result. So the combination of the confusion and not really letting the protocol do its work. I think are the biggest barriers that we have to health.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:47:17)

Well, that’s a great message and a note for us to finish on because it’s one of our reasons for being from confusion to clarity, from information to knowledge. That’s one of my favorite bylines. But thank you, Haley, so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us. Well, this whole idea of performance psychology, I love the idea of it. And Haley has some great initiatives there and

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:47:34)

My pleasure, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:47:35)

Great ways of looking at things. mean, it’s one of the things that unstress health is very focused on, and that is this daily cycle of challenges, the mindset with which we approach those challenges and the decisions we make about recovery. And in unstress health, I view the some of the challenges. I mean, we have many challenges in life, social, financial work, etc. But I think we can all agree that one of the biggest challenges is health. And if we get that right, a lot more will follow on. And that is why when we talk about challenges and unstressed health, we explore the five stresses, emotional, environmental, postural, nutritional, and yes, dental stress, which will not be a surprise to any regular listener of this podcast or for that matter, anybody with a mouth who is interested in their health and never fully connected the two. When we talk about mindset, we talk about is yours a survivor, a thrive mindset?

A growth mindset is important and how we think about things is the key. In fact, thoughts are things and those thoughts cause our bodies to produce neurotransmitters that are either stressful or empowering and mindset is important. And then we focus on recovery. And when we talk about recovery and unstressed health, we’re talking about the five pillars, sleep, breathe, nourish, movement and thought. And underpending all of those is mental fitness.

Your mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy and that’s a big focus too. So look, we’ll have links to Hayley’s website and some of the work that she’s doing. I’d encourage you to join the unstressed health community. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Erhlich. Be well.

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SHOW NOTES Guest: Allan Savory****

Allan Savory, co-founder & president of the Savory Institute.

Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment (Third Edition) (2016) by Allan Savory & Jody Butterfield — “Textbook” covering the foundations and “why” of holistic management.

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Allan Savory & Dr Ron Ehrlich: Holistic Management & The Fate of Civilisations 00:05 – Introduction: The Future of civilization depends on holistic thinking. * 00:04–08 –Holism: Nature works as interconnected wholes; synergy > competition. * 00:12–14 – Reductionist Management: Narrow decision-making causes global issues. * 00:14–21 – Global Challenges: Desertification & climate change driven by poor management, not livestock/fossil fuels. * 00:18–23 – Soil Loss: U.S. loses soil equal to a 116-mile train daily; ~75 billion tons lost globally each year. * 00:26–33 – Livestock Role: Essential for healthy grasslands and reversing desertification. * 00:42–46 – Holistic Management: Decisions guided by long-term values and environment. * 00:46–52 – Organizations*: Resist change, protect themselves, often lack common sense.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05.294)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Now today’s subject is a big one, but in all honesty, I don’t believe I’m overstating the case. The fate of civilization. And even more specifically the fate of our own individual health. It all depends on a word we all need to become a lot more familiar with. It’s largely what this program is all about. It’s certainly what my book is about.

It’s the way our bodies work, it’s the way the world works, and you already know the two are inseparable. That word is holistic. Now my guest today is Allan Savory. Allan is an ecologist, a livestock farmer, an environmentalist. He’s president and co-founder of the Savory Institute, which facilitates education programs and supports the realization that we all depend on the enduring returns from the land.

From the very soil we grow our food in and on. Hence, the title of this podcast, The Fate of Civilizations, because you and I and all the generations that follow us will depend on those enduring returns of the land. That is, the nutrient-dense food we need to be healthy. Allan has developed and championed holistic management with a particular focus on agriculture.

His is a way of thinking when managing resources and as he points out it’s not a resource like animals or fossil fuels that of themselves cause the problem, it’s the way resources are managed, that is the real problem. The thing I have found so interesting in the 10 or 12 years I’ve been aware of Allan Savory’s message is the similarity and the relevance of what he talks about, a holistic way to manage resources, to the issues facing us as individuals as we try to manage our own health, arguably our biggest resource. Also, the difference between the holistic or a holistic view of the world and health and a reductionist view. Allan refers to the importance of holistic context, the importance of a mission statement. And I want to share an example of one of those mission statements with you at the end of the interview.

Also listen out for the shocking statistic in what is actually the biggest export, not just in the USA, but globally. And it’s a resource that isn’t even factored into any management system. And yet it’s the very resource we and future generations need to survive. The topic of what goes on on the land is a recurring theme on this podcast series in the first season in our second episode.

I spoke to the world’s most famous regenerative farmer Joel Saliton in an episode called This Ain’t Normal, But It Could Be, or rather It Should Be. And in episode 8 with Charles Massey inviting you to join the revolution, the issue of managing our land, of regenerative agriculture. It’s inseparable from the other topics we cover. As we explore health, wellness and disease from a nutritional and environmental perspective, and importantly, looking at food from soil to plate. At the risk of stating the obvious, we need healthy soils for healthy food. Look, there’s so much in this episode. Allan is certainly a hero of mine and an inspiration. And I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Allan Savory.

Welcome to the show, Allan.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03.440)

Well, thank you, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:03.50)

Allan, you I know have written a book called Holistic Management and the word holistic conjures up all sorts of ideas for people, surprisingly. I wonder whether you might share with our listener what you define as holistic.

Allan Savory (00:04.10)

I go back to Smuts who coined the word, had to go back to Greek because there was nothing in English and he explains that in his book in 1926 when he wrote the book Holism and Evolution and I never met Smuts, I saw him but I understand that Einstein said there were two constructs that he believed would have a major impact on the future of humanity and one was obviously his own theory of relativity, but the other was Smuts’ concept of holism. So I just go back and credit Smuts. I don’t have any theory or anything really as his. And in what Smuts said was that this cliche isn’t right. You know, the sum of the parts, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There are no parts in nature. You have no parts in your body. You are a health professional and you don’t have a single part in your body, that’s a mechanical concept. Your whole body is made up of cells, blood cells, sinew bones, etc. Whole cells, whole atoms, whole molecules, whole cells, whole organs, ultimately a whole human, and you function as a whole. And every step up that way, and you can go right into the universe, beyond a human. Everything in nature functions in whole with no boundaries and no parts, those mechanical concepts. So for example, you know it, if you feel emotionally upset, you don’t feel it in your brain, you feel it in your gut, right through your body, you just feel emotionally drained and you’re not feeling it in your brain. Now, if I was to say to any of your listeners,

Alright, you are a human being, you’re made up of all these atoms, molecules, whole cells, etc. functioning on electrical currents and more that we don’t understand. Now what is the next hole in nature beyond you and me, or any other human? people automatically say, well, my children or my family, and it’s not. Surprisingly, it’s not, because we can’t even talk to each other now.

You can’t even listen to me and process it in your brain without your connection to plants and the energy that you’re getting from sunlight through plants or animals who have eaten those plants. So you’re eating animals that have eaten plants or you’re eating plants and your connection is closer to them than to your family. And then if you look at the tree, you’d have the same story. The tree is made up of atoms, molecules, cells, flown cells wood cells, bark cells, etc.

And the next hole in nature outside of that tree is not the seedlings and the other trees in the forests, it’s its connection to the soil and all the microorganisms and the life in the soil and so on. And so this is how nature is. We don’t have competition in nature, that’s another human construct we’ve brought into it.

What we have is rather a massive amount of synergy. So even when you’re looking at a population of creatures, whatever they are, plants or animals or anything, that population is never in isolation. It’s part of a community and that community as a whole and there’s greater synergy in that community than there is competition. So I think you get the idea.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:07:55)

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, you know, I read a book about evolution and I’d never considered evolution theory to be a political construct either, but the theory, the idea of the survival of the fittest is one that fits very well into our kind of Western approach to things, because I know in Russia, for example, synergy is a really important concept in the evolutionary process. And so this idea of synergy versus well, what’s the alternative to holism? I mean,

I know you’ve used the term, what’s the alternative view? Well, how are most of us thinking about things?

Allan Savory (00:08:31)

Many people do think fairly holistically and I think we would be arrogant if we said we were the first in history to see our connection to nature, the soil and everything. There are stories in North America of Native Americans trying to think seven generations ahead because they see this connection. So how we think varies with different cultures.

Certainly in cities now and in Silicon Valley, etc., we’re massively disconnected from it all. But the more you get into rural communities, farmers, etc., they’re pretty connected and they think that way. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t help us because what matters is that humans are, whether they think they are or not, every day they are managing. They’re managing their lives, their families, their businesses. And management really means you’re taking actions to improve your life. Almost every action we take is ultimately to try to improve our lives. And it’s in that management that we are reductionist. And all cultures, as far as I can ascertain, have always managed in a reductionist manner. that needs explaining. If I was to say to you, Ron, I’m going to light a fire, you would have no idea whether I should or I shouldn’t because I could burn the place down. You would have to ask me what is my reason? What is the context of my wanting to light a fire as a management action? And when you knew the context, you could decide if it was wise or not. Now, humans have a context or a reason for every action we take. And if you think about it, it is always to meet a need. So we’re buying clothing or a car or anything to meet a need, a desire, or it’s to solve a problem. So to make a profit, run your business, buy a car, get an education, it doesn’t matter what you look at.

Your management actions are meeting a need or a desire in some way, or you’re solving a problem. And then when you look at governments, they are almost entirely forming policies to solve problems or prevent problems. Now, if you think about society and our families and all that we deal with, it involves a web of social, cultural, economic, and environmental complexity that we just cannot avoid. It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s the nature of how the world functions in holes and patterns as Smuts outlined. When you take a management action, you are dealing with a web of complexity, social, economic, etc. Now, what happens to us and has happened to all humans, all tool-using animals in fact, is when we take a management action, that reason, desire, whatever, we have taken that web of complexity, social, cultural, economic complexity, environmental complexity, we’ve reduced it to a need, a desire we want to meet, or a problem we’re trying to solve. That’s why the only name that fits the universal management by humans is reductionist management. So I use the term reductionist.

Dr Ron ehrlich (00:12:26)

Yes. I know your area of interest, well your area of interest is leadership and management really, but you focus very much on the environmental issues and mine is health and yet there is so much overlap. Mean the terminology, the way you’re describing this has so much relevance. As you say, it’s a very holistic way of looking at things.

Allan Savory (00:12:51)

Yeah, the connection between what you’re doing with health and what I’m talking about is, as you say, it’s total. It’s the health of any human being, and I’m not a medical person at all, but just using my common sense and my own experience in life. I don’t fare well when I’m stressed, so if I’m emotionally or physically stressed, that brings on problems. Diet is critical.

I am what I eat virtually. And then of course the air you breathe and everything else. So these are critical. And when you look at that diet, we co-evolved with microorganisms and plants and animals over millions of years from slime originally going back a billion or so years. And our whole system increasingly we’re learning that even the bacteria in our gut can control our moods and all sorts of things. So as technology advances and we gain more knowledge, I think we’re finding that we’re totally tied to the soil.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:14:07)

Yeah. Now having defined a holism and I love that and I’ve got to go back and read this Smuts book, Holism Evolution. Having defined that and reductionism, what do you, what in your assessment are some of the challenges we face in our world because of this reductionist approach? You’ve mentioned environmentally, social, political, cultural. You know, what are some of the challenges you’re seeing?

Allan Savory (00:14:30)

Well, the biggest one is culminating in global desertification and climate change. So there are many, many problems, ultimately that’s where they’re ending. And so you have the massive desertification of Australia that began 50,000 years ago when aboriginals arrived and started replacing animals with fire. So that’s a global problem.

That’s what we’ve got to solve, otherwise we’re not going to survive as a species. The world will go on, but without us. Now, why I concentrate so much on management is because that’s what is causing the problem. So if we look at all the issues facing us, it doesn’t matter whether you look at conflicts, the mass immigration to Europe that’s changing the political face of Europe.

Whatever you look at these things that are happening as I say are culminating in global desertification and climate change. Now if you take our best minds in the world, top scientists etc and look at what they blame the two things that are blamed most for what is happening is livestock they are blamed for global desertification, methane etc etc.

And all the conflicts and floods and droughts that leads to. And then the other thing that is blamed is coal and oil. Now, if we sit and say, all right, we’re not brilliant scientists, we’re not Nobel laureates, we’re just ordinary people, let’s just use our common sense. You would realize that livestock are a resource and we’ll need them for another 10,000 years for wool, hair, leather, meat, milk, cheese, whatever. And when you think of coal and oil, these are just fossil resources that we’ll need to make aspirin or furniture or whatever for thousands of years. And our common sense tells us that no resource can cause a problem. How can a resource cause a problem? So when we look at that and say, well, what is causing all the ill health in the world that we are experiencing?

The violence and floods and all these things, what is causing it? You just come to management. It is management that chooses to run livestock as we have with various grazing systems and pastoralists herding them, mob grazing as some people call it, for thousands of years that created the great deserts of antiquity. And then when we look at the coal and oil, fossil resources, it’s management that causes them fossil fuels and burns them at a rapid rate contributing to climate changing. clearly, I believe unarguably, management is what we need to be looking at.

Dr ron Ehrlich (00:17:42)

Now I do want to get into management because this is such an important message that I know that you’re very passionate and such an important message to share. But I just wanted to come back to desertification because I know you mentioned this term and I know it rolls off the tongue very easily, but a lot of people may not be familiar with the extent of the problem and the impact that this kind of approach is having on something as precious as our soils, for example. So just explain or expand for our listener a little bit about the extent of this problem.

Allan Savory (00:18:15)

Okay, desertification, it’s an, as you say, just a glib word, an unfortunate word, it really is just describing the extreme form of land degradation when land eventually becomes desert with sand dunes, etc., as you have in parts of the world. Now you have natural deserts where there’s no rain like the Namib and there are a couple of natural deserts like that but most of the deserts we’re seeing in America, Australia, all over the world are man-made. Now, what is happening there is this is only occurring in about two-thirds of the world’s land. About one-third of the world’s land, no matter what you do, no matter how badly you manage, it does not turn into desert. Now, that one-third of the world that’s like that, is a lot of England, Europe, East and West Coast of America, coastal areas of Australia, etc. tropical forests. These are the areas where it’s humid almost every day of the year. There aren’t long periods of extreme dryness because of the precipitation or the altitude or the proximity to oceans. So that’s about a third of the world and that’s why England never turns to desert no matter how badly they manage it or New Zealand for that matter right now two-thirds of the world which is most of Australia, most of Africa right across North Africa up into China etc. that is seasonal rainfall and so the rain can be high it can be a thousand millimeters of rain but it all falls in four or five months and then there’s six seven eight months of no rain or can be low rainfall. can be 50-25mm of rain, but again it falls in one or two months and then you get 10 months of no rain. So these areas of seasonal rainfall or humidity, those are the areas that cover most of the world’s land and they are turning into desert no matter what humans do.

So I listened to one speaker once, a woman gave a very nice talk in California and she showed a picture of the Earth from space and she just said if you had looked at Earth from space over the last 10-15,000 years you would describe humans as a desert-making species.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:20:57)

Yes, but they live mainly in those humid areas and that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? It’s easy to easy problem to ignore.

Allan Savory (00:21:02)

It is easy because most of our universities and big capitals, know, whether you look at Brussels or Paris or, you know, Moscow or London or Washington, they’re in the humid areas and people just do not get it that the seasonal areas are turning to desert.

Dr ron Ehrlich (00:21:23)

Yep, and at the risk of stating the obvious, Alan, why does that matter?

Allan Savory (00:21:25)

Well it medicine because of all the symptoms when land begins to degrade like that then you read experience poverty violence social breakdown usually abuse of women and children blaming of minorities these are all common symptoms drops and floods increased dramatically and the genuine dry years and genuine high rainfall years become catastrophic floods and droughts. leads to war, violence, as I mentioned, the mass emigration to cities as we’ve experienced in America and Europe is now experiencing with this flood of refugees from North Africa. Basically, they’re fleeing from desertification and it leads to war and it leads to climate change.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:22:18)

Yeah.Now I did hear you in a recent talk and I’m going to have links to this talk because I really think people should hear this in more detail but I heard you talk about the USA to put this into perspective that people get a feeling for because you mentioned we’re connected with the soil we need the plants we need the animals we need the food to keep us going. You mentioned in one of your talks that the biggest export in America at the moment was represented

Go on, share with our listener. think it was you. You used the analogy of a train. This shocked me and I know about it.

Allan Savory (00:22:57)

I got the figures, I was quoting figures I got from the Soil Conservation Service when I came to America about 35 years ago. And I often ask Americans what is the biggest export of America and people will name various things and I say no, no, no. And then they say what is it? And I say it’s just dead eroding soil. The figures I got from the Soil Conservation Service that I say was years ago was that it was the equivalent of a train load of rail cars filled with soil 116 miles long leaving the country every day.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:23:35)

Wow, I mean,I that just blew me away when I heard it. 116 miles long worth of soil every day and that was 30 or so years ago.

Allan Savory (00:23:45)

Yes, but the global figure is even worse. That’s the American one, which is pretty average. If you look at globally, it’s over 75. I think it’s I’ve quoted it in my book. I’m relying on memory here. I think it’s like 75 billion tons of soil erosion. And that’s mostly from the croplands. It’s ignoring the desertifying land, which is greater. And if we look at the published figures of soil erosion global figures, to to get humans to grasp it, I brought it down to food, equating it to food. And the amount of soil, dead eroding soil, is actually 20 times as high as the amount of food we need for every human alive today.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:24:32)

Wow. Wow. That’s just it’s just well, it bears repeating over and over again. The other thing that I heard you say, it’s and people do also think that farming organic farming being nurturing of the soil is some kind of a new concept. It’s not really a new age philosophy as it’s been going on for a while.

Allan Savory (00:24:52)

Well, it’s been going on for over 10,000 years. know, so people today are rightly wanting to move to organic, sustainable permaculture, various types of agriculture that are all better practices because they’re based on the biological sciences. And they’re talking as that as the ideal and sustainable. And I always remind them and I say, well, look, I agree 100 % that we’ve got to go to organic, sustainable, regenerative agriculture, grass-fed animals, factory-fed, everything that we talk about and want. But that is exactly what we had for 10,000 years. Every farm was organic. We hadn’t yet discovered coal and oil or exploited them for all the chemicals and machinery of today.

All livestock was grass-fed until really recently after Second World War and yet that organic so-called sustainable agriculture led to more than 20 civilizations failing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:26:06)

Yes, that’s intriguing. And that was because of management. Yes. So historically, while we have been following organic farming, historically with bad management, even with organic farming, we can fail. And history has shown that.

the management, which was reductionist.

Allan Savory (00:26:25)

Well, yes, 10,000 years of history and many civilizations.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:26:30)

Now one thing that you mentioned also was that in Australia for example the indigenous people replaced animals with fire and this is something that a lot of people that is counterintuitive about your argument only counterintuitive because we’ve been indoctrinated to it but livestock rather than being part of the problem are actually part of the solution can you explain that to our listener?

Allan Savory (00:26:53)

Yeah, they’re not part of the solution. The solution is impossible without them. So it goes deeper than you’re saying. Yes. You see, look at it this way. Humans have to use a tool. You and I, Ron, can’t even drink water now without using technology. If I wanted you to drink water, how would you do it if I said you can’t use technology? You would have to go to the nearest river or spring and drink with your hands and your mouth. Even to drink water you’re using a cup, tap, pipe, boil, dam, something. We cannot make furniture, we cannot do anything with all the creativity in the world, with all the labor in the world, with all the money in the world. You cannot do a single thing until you pick up a tool. All right, so we’re a tool using animal. Our first tool was technology. That was simple sticks and stones.

And could chip the stones and sharpen the sticks and we could not change our environment. And we had that for nearly a million years. And like any other tool using animal, we could not change our environment. Then we got a second tool and we learned how to use and make fire. Then we could melt the stones and go into the copper, the bronze, the iron age and make all the technology we have today that you and i can be speaking around the world on a computer all the clothes you wearing right now even though i can’t see you i can tell you where you could not have made without fire almost everything we do became possible because of fire and our technology advancing to the computers and rocketry and space exploration and everything we have today so we’ve had two tools now.

You then understand why people keep promoting fire. So in Australia, it’s very common, it’s written by so many people that the Aborigines were wonderful experts of the use of fire to mold their landscape and everything. And that’s absolutely correct. But it was a deteriorating landscape because you have the work of Tim Flannery in Australia and when he wrote that excellent book of his, the future eaters in that book of his he describes how the mangroves increased enormously around the coast of Australia after humans started killing all the animals and replacing them with fire that’s when the desertification of Australia began when you killed off I don’t know the exact thing but it’s between eighty and ninety percent of the genera of animals species replace them with fire.

So for 99 % of human existence, we only had two tools, technology and fire. So that’s why people keep defending fire. Now, the only other tools we’ve ever had was to rest the land, use it positively as a tool and rest the land. And we began doing that as far as I can make out, somewhere in the last 10,000 years probably began with crop farmers rotating their crops to let rest the soil or it may have begun with pastoralists moving their animals to rest the land. And so we had a third tool. Apart from that, all we’ve had is the use of small organisms to make cheese and wine, et cetera, increasingly to use for medical products, et cetera. And now the world is turning increasingly to using technology to plant trees, shrubs or grasses to try to deal with desertification and climate change. But again, it’s using technology to plant the plants which should be growing on their own, they shouldn’t need planting. So with that limited toolbox, you can see that it is simply impossible to stop Australia turning to desert increasingly and continuing to do so or the bulk of the world because technology cannot reverse desertification no matter what you do. technology even imaginable in science fiction could do what is required. Fire causes desertification, it’s rapid oxidation and burning up vegetation which exposes soil. Resting the land from disturbance of large animals etc. leads to desertification. It was the killing off of the animals, the many, many genera of animals in Australia that led to Australia beginning to desertify. And again, Tim Flannery has good evidence on that with the pollen record. As he points out, the pollen record of Australia indicates that most of the country, of the continent, was a fire. And now, as we know, most of Australia is a fire-dependent vegetation.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:32:25)

Yeah, I think within two or three thousand years of human habitation, the of habitation, the megafauna, that is animals over the 50 kilos, kilograms, was basically eliminated. Yeah. Yeah.

Allan Savory (00:32:37)

You killed 85 % or more of the general in Australia. I forget the exact figure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:32:47)

Yeah, yeah. So we have this limited toolbox.

Allan Savory (00:32:48)

Yeah, and that’s why I keep saying we’ve got to stop vilifying livestock and start vilifying management. If we want to survive and if you want healthy humans.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:33:07)

Yes. Well, it’s a recurring theme, but go on, explain to our listener how and why they are the key to this management process. Because we so much of the opposite, don’t we? mean, we are bombarded by these other messages, but this is lessons from the past. Let’s learn.

Allan Savory (00:33:22)

Yes, you’re bombarded today, literally hundreds of celebrities are putting their celebrity status and their money behind the vegetarian vegan movement. So they’re doing great harm to humanity because without livestock for practical purposes, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, donkeys, horses, water buffalo, etc. Without livestock, you cannot stop desertification.

Now let me explain that. The reason these seasonal rainfall areas desertify is because in those the grass plants provide the main soil cover. So in the bulk of the world with seasonal rainfall, grass plants provide most of the soil stability and cover. Even though there’ll be trees there, could be a deserter’s forest, could be a savanna, whatever.

Now grasses co-evolved with animals removing the top. So if you look at trees, they’re either evergreen or they shed their leaves. They shed their leaves. They drop their own leaves onto the ground at the end of the season to decay and cycle again. Now if you look at grasses, grasses grow green during the growing period and then they change color like the leaves of trees and they go brown and then darker and darker and no grass plant can shed its leaves. They co-evolved with animals that graze the leaves. So if you take the animals away and the grass plant can’t shed its leaf, what happens is that in sunlight those leaves start to go grey and more more dark grey until almost black and it kills the plant.

I live in a thatch-roofed home in Africa and we put this dead grass on the roof to make the roof out of thatch. If you look at the outside of the roof after one year it is grey. After 10-15 years it’s dark, dark grey, almost black. If you come inside where it’s not in sunlight it’s still exactly the same colour it was when we cut it. It’s still yellow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:35:49)

Yeah. Now, one of the things that I think people, again, it’s worth repeating because I think this, the key here, as I understand it, in preserving soil is to maintain coverage. And for example, if you planted wheat in a square metre of land, the stalks cover the ground, but there’s an awful lot of uncovered ground.

Absolutely.

Around those stalks isn’t there? mean what would you say 70 % at least over that one metre.

Allan Savory (00:36:27)

Yeah, usually it’s more, you know, wheat is a grass. All our grain crops are grasses. And when you look at grass plants, whether they’re crops or wild grasses, the basal area of the stalk or the bunch, the amount of ground that covers is relatively small. So even in very healthy, good grassland, the basal cover of the plants.

I find is usually about four or five percent of the ground, that’s all. Sometimes it’ll be higher to nine percent, maybe ten if it’s exceptional, or if it’s a runner grass then it’ll be higher, but the bunched or rec grasses it’s usually well under ten percent.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:09)

Is that why we need diversity?

Allan Savory (00:37:09)

Well, no, that’s why you need animals.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:11)

Okay, they come in and they shave the top off.

Allan Savory (00:37:15)

If you can picture the plants with their basal area covering say 10 % of the ground you’ve got 90 % of the ground uncovered what covers that and the answer is dead plant material that the animals trample to the

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:37:36)

And ground and their own excrement.

Allan Savory (00:37:37)

Yes, but mostly the litter. So the animals are trampling the litter down. They’re freeing the plant to grow fresh again and not to oxidize and kill the plant. And they’re providing soil cover. And they also lead to a tighter basal cover. So the spacing between the plants, when I was at university, we were taught that the spacing between them was wide because they were competing with each other for water and nutrients and they couldn’t grow close. Well that’s what we were taught. But nothing competes in nature, it’s synergy. And as I started to study it for myself and not just go with what I was taught, I began to find that the spacing between the plants was a function of animal behavior. That if we had no animals on the ground, the spacing became wider and wider. If we had some animals on the ground but but what I call partial rest, they’re just wandering around closely, the spacing would remain wide. If we brought animals onto the land bunched and herding, the plant spacing would become very close.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:38:48)

You are from Zimbabwe, that’s where you’ve lived all your life and the lessons you’ve learnt are actually lessons again from the past. The modelling is there in nature. Can you please share that with our listener what that actually was?

Allan Savory (00:39:02)

Yeah, you’re right. It was all staring us in the face. I often feel stupid, Ron, with how long it took me to learn. But you know, you’re really having to unlearn and then learn. And so I was like everybody, blocked by what I was taught. And when I was in the field tracking game, tracking people for long period in an unfortunate civil war, day after day, tracking on different types of country. I was observing a tremendous lot and then having long nights lying in the bush thinking about it. Why was the tracking easy today? Why was it difficult yesterday? We were on the same type of soil. But the management was different. Yesterday we were in a national park tracking on Kalahari soils. Today we were tracking people through farms on a Kalahari soil but with herding cattle.

And the day before that the tracking was terribly difficult. We were in a communal area with tribal people with cattle all over the place. So I began to see there were enormous differences in the ability to track animals on the same type of soil in the same climate, depending on the management of that land. But still I feel like a dumb idiot that it took me so long to put it together until finally I could understand it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:40:30)

What was the revelation? mean, what was the lesson you learned from all these different, you unlearned, but then you learned? What was the lesson you learned?

Allan Savory (00:40:33)

The lesson I learned was that the health of the land was totally dependent on the behavior of the animals. That where the animals were bunched and herding and moving, we had closer plant spacing, more soil cover, stable soil, wider variety of species, et cetera. Where animals were spread wide as in Australia with fencing and water points and paddocks and spread, you start to get plants spreading, wider space between plants, more bare ground, fewer species of plants, species start to die out, all of the problems of desertification. So I began to see literally that the behavior of herding large grazing animals controlled the health of the whole environment in seasonal rainfall.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:41:31)

Yeah, yeah, what an aha moment. Yeah. mean, having having seen these huge herds that must cross the Serengeti and the plains of Africa, you know, that we kind of see on the David Attenborough shows, these actually, this is actually informs how we should be managing livestock.

Allan Savory (00:41:51)

Absolutely. That bunching is the key to it. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, again, one of my earliest observations was where we had the most elephants, the most buffalo, know, herds of African buffalo that literally I couldn’t count them. I would just say, well, I think there’s 4,000 just looking around me from horizon to horizon, which is solid black with buffalo. How the hell do you count them when you’re on foot? you know the but my goodness the land was healthy and those were on the move all the time

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:42:32)

Yeah, now if taking a step back now because we talked about the key to the problem being management, not animals. If management is the cause of the problem, what is it about management that needs to change?

Allan Savory (00:42:43)

The management needs to change from reductionist to holistic. right? Now all that means is two things. It means instead of making all our actions to meet a need, a desire, or to solve a problem with the context being the need, the desire, or the problem, what we need to do is to have the people who are doing the management in any situation from family to a nation and governance develop a holistic context, a new concept entirely which just describes, because management is about improving our lives, so let’s describe how do we want our lives to be based on our culture, our values, etc. And so the people who are managing really spell out deeply how they want their lives to be.

And then we tie that to our life supporting environment. So whatever the land is, whatever the environment is, even if you’re not managing the environment, everything you eat is coming from it, everything you throw out is going back to it. So we describe the environment not as it is today, deteriorating, et cetera, but in the healthy state, it will have to be two or 300 years from now for our descendants to be living a life like we want. And that becomes the context. And we do not compromise. When we’re doing that, there is no compromise. We just keep talking until we have total agreement on how we want our lives to be and what will sustain those lives. Now with that as the reason or context for our actions, we proceed to manage just as we do today but in that context. when we use it, making our management decisions, we’re using all of the science we have, the expert opinion, the laws, regulations, compromise, expediency, friends advice, everything as you do today. And when we’re close to the decision, the management decision, we just check that it is in context. It’s in line with that, that reason that we have.

And we have seven little questions that people learn to use to just quickly check that it’s in context. So that’s really all there is to it there and that sounds difficult but it’s quicker and easier than normal decision making. You can make decisions far quicker, less conflict, far more agreement and then the only other thing is I mentioned the tools.

Earlier we’ve got technology, we’ve got fire, we’ve got resting the environment, and then we’ve got technology plus planting trees. None of those is going to address climate change on its own. So we add to the tools livestock. And two ways, just looking at what they do with their mouths and what they do with their behavior. So we add a tool to the toolbox.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:46:02)

Yes, I look at just the simplicity of it. It’s basically and then we go on to make decisions about our needs, desires and wants, but always in that holistic context. Absolutely. Yeah, brilliant. I just love that because it actually is. And I know I you say that it’s it’s simple, but it’s absolutely so profound. And Allan, there was another thing I remember when we spoke years ago, there was another thing you said that I just has stuck with me since and that is that there is a problem with big organizations. Can you share that with our listeners?

Allan Savory (00:46:37)

If we’re going to manage to save our cities, our lives and everything, we do it at two levels. One is in the family, on the farm. Every one of your listeners is managing their own life. But then we are also managing through organizations. So policies are very seldom, other than in the home, policies are not formed by individuals. They’re formed by organizations or institutions, governments big environmental organizations. So we have to have organizations, we need them and they do what they’re designed to do generally efficiently. That’s why we have organizations. Now, if you study systems science, are what they call wicked problems with complex systems. Human organizations are complex systems, self-renewing, etc.

And they have wicked problems. Now there are three wicked problems and wicked doesn’t mean amoral, it just means they’re extremely difficult, almost impossible to solve. There three wicked problems of human organizations that if we don’t attend to them will be our downfall, I believe. Now those wicked problems, the first is that when we form organizations they reflect the prevailing views of the society in which they formed. And so if you go into any university, government agency, whatever, big environmental organization, society believes in technology. So you will find organizations have the latest software, the latest computers, the latest cell phones, the latest, you name it, they’ve got it. They lead the way.

Now, when it comes to something that is outside of society’s view counterintuitive paradigm shifting as they call it like Galileo or like a nice semil vice who discovered bacteria before we knew they existed when something new truly new or holistic management comes up then organizations do the reverse they lead the ridicule and rejection and they literally do not change until public opinion changes. it doesn’t matter how many trillions of dollars are wasted, it doesn’t matter how much evidence is produced, how much data is produced, it doesn’t matter how many lives are lost, organizations cannot change until the public shifts significantly. And that’s never changed since Galileo. So you saw how he got persecuted. If you look at the Semmelweis, whom you would know about as a health person.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:49:40)

Yes, he had the ridiculous concept that you should wash your hands. And he ended up in a in mental institution because for 10 years he was being ridiculed by the authorities. But do go on.

Allan Savory (00:49:46)

And I’ve had 50 years of ridicule by everybody you can name universities, governments, organizations, ridicule, opposition and thank God I was insane at the beginning so I’ve never ended in the middle. I was saved. Alright so that’s a wicked problem that we cannot overcome other than through what you’re doing. Podcasts, interviews, getting information out to the public changes.

And that’s why the Ted talk I gave that went to now approaching 5 million people did more than 50 years of fighting authorities to get common sense into society. So that’s one wicked problem. The second one is if organizations do something wrong and they’re criticized or feel criticized, it’s very, very rare for an organization to say, screwed up, we’re wrong, we’re sorry. It just almost doesn’t happen. What happens is they circle the wagons and they protect the organization, even if it means going against their mission in life. So if you look at the Catholic Church, there’s a wonderful organization, a very old organization, full of brilliant and good people, and they have known about pedophile priests for hundreds of years.

And they have not protected children, not protected the innocents, they protected the priests and the church. And only with modern times information getting out enough are they now beginning to smack the priests on the wrist.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:51:40)

Hmm, yes.

Allan Savory (00:51:41)

All organizations are like that and that’s why I don’t criticize them because they can’t change until the public does and if you criticize them they just circle the wagons.

I’m in the third wicked problem which we’re going to have to address at some time if we’re have healthy humans and cities and everything else. that the matter how sensible the people you can put the best people in the world in an organization the way we can communicate with each other and where do we speak up where do we have the moral courage to speak up or not where do we have fearful of losing our position or offending somebody. We communicate as humans and what comes out of an organization very, very commonly lacks common sense and humanity. And if you want an example of that, it would be ask anybody, for instance, in America, anybody, a child, a gardener, fishermen, does it make sense for America to produce fossil fuels to grow corn? to produce fuel and everybody would laugh and just say that’s stupid and that’s inhumane well America’s doing it and thousands of highly intelligent scientists are going along with it almost nobody is protesting

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:52:59)

Yeah, yeah. Look, I know, and that’s exactly when I heard you say that years ago, I just thought, wow, there it is. The change has to come from the ground up, literally from the ground up, but also metaphorically from you and me and all the people listening to this. I just wanted to finish, Alan, and just ask you this question, taking a step back, and you may, actually have identified some of these things, but what do you think the biggest challenge that people face on their health journey through life in our modern world today. What’s your, what do you think that biggest challenge might be?

Allan Savory (00:53:31)

You’re talking about individuals.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:53:34)

Yes, yes, the listener.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:52:37)

You know, I think that goes for me as well. It’s just having the determination or the self-discipline to keep yourself healthy, to keep watching your diet and being conscious of what you eat, being conscious of the need for good sleep and conscious for the… We get out of balance. And I do at times and I have to pull myself together and say, get back in control of your life.

And maybe it’s just self-discipline, I don’t know. I really don’t know, right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:54:09)

I think that’s a great answer because I think everybody, everybody, and that even includes me, can relate to that. Allan, thank you so much. I just love everything that you have to say and I have for many years and I wanted to share that with our listeners. So thank you for joining us today.

Allan Savory (00:54:24)

Well, thank you, Ron, for what you’re doing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:54:32)

Just love that response of Alan’s. The biggest challenge for us on our health journey through life is the determination or self-discipline to keep yourself healthy. And I also really loved his quoting Einstein’s observation that the two major things in our world were his own discovery of relativity, and that was every atom in the universe is both energy and matter. And we’ve talked about that in our electromagnetic radiation episodes earlier on in this season with Lynn McLean, but we’ll cover that in more detail in future episodes. But the second key was to think holistically. I also love the simplicity of his holistic management message and yet how profound it is. What is the holistic context for making decisions in managing resources? What’s the mission statement?

Over 20 years ago in our dental practice, my partners, my brother, Dr. Josh Ehrlich, and Dr. Craig Wilson attended a workshop where we spent the first day writing a mission statement. Now, we initially felt dismissive of the exercise, thinking, do we really need to be doing this sort of thing? Is it really that important? But in the end, we produced a half page mission statement, just four or five sentences, which we all agree to this day is the most important document we have in our practice.

It’s our holistic context, which to this very day guides us and informs every decision we make and every person who works with us in our practice. The other thing I found amazing, soil erosion. A 116 mile long train of soil in the USA is lost every day. 30 years ago that was, or a more recent and global estimate, is that 36 billion tonnes of soil a year is lost. The equivalent…

And this was an interesting analogy of 20 times the tonnage of food produced per year to feed the soil. So not a great return on investment and particularly when it’s difficult to renew this resource. The observation also about big organisations and wicked problems was a huge aha moment for me when I first heard that years ago. The change has to come from the ground up. Big organisations are just slow to take on new concepts lack common sense and humanity.

So let me share with you a generic holistic context that Allan has used introducing people to his idea of what holistic means. And I quote, we want stable families living peaceful lives in prosperity and physical security while free to pursue our own spiritual or religious beliefs, adequate nutritious food and clean water enjoying good education and health in balanced lives with time for family, friends, and community, and leisure for culture and other pursuits, all to be ensured for many generations to come on a foundation of regenerating soils and biologically diverse communities on Earth’s land and in her rivers, lakes, and oceans.” Unquote.

Imagine if every government policy or commercial decision was made with that kind of a mission statement, the guiding, overriding principle. Now, wouldn’t you feel excited about the future of our civilization? So what’s your holistic management plan? What’s your mission statement for the decisions you make? Remember, we’re all connected, so we’re all affected. Now, if you’ve just joined this podcast, go back and listen to our first episode the mission statement. outlines what it is all about and some of the subjects that we cover. So with that in mind, until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich, be well.

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner.

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In discussions surrounding mental health, the role of Metabolic processes often goes overlooked, yet it is crucial to understand how our bodies’ Metabolic health affects our well-being. Maintaining a strong Metabolic function can significantly impact our mental and emotional health.

Official site: https://accordmh.com/our-team/matt-bernstein/

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Metabolic Psychiatry & The Ketogenic Connection: Dr. Matt Bernstein on Food, Mental Health & Resilience – A Metabolic Perspective* 00:00:05 – Introduction * 00:02:03 – Personal Journey * 00:07:28 – PANS/PANDAS & Lyme * 00:11:22 – Psychiatry’s Gaps * 00:15:07 – Alternative Approaches * 00:18:04 – Metabolic Psychiatry * 00:24:50 – Inflammation & Insulin Resistance * 00:26:55 – Ketosis vs. Ketoacidosis * 00:29:16 – Practical Ketogenic Diet * 00:33:14 – Seven Mechanisms of Ketones on Brain Health * 00:41:22 – Circadian Alignment * 00:43:42 – Mind-Body Practices * 00:47:24 – Ellenhorn & Accord Programs * 00:51:47 – First Steps for Self-Help * 00:55:30 – Medication Withdrawal * 00:57:18 – Biggest Modern Challenge

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Hello welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we’re diving into a fascinating and important conversation about the connection between what we eat, how our bodies function, and how our minds feel. mean, mental health is a huge and growing problem, conservatively affecting over a billion people in the world. But, you know, this is a question of degree.

My guest today is Dr. Matt Bernstein. And Matt is a psychiatrist and educator and the CEO of Accord, which is a groundbreaking residential program that’s pioneered a more humane, effective, and holistic approach to mental health treatment. Now, Matt has a unique perspective. Not only does he draw on some cutting-edge research in nutrition and psychiatry, and those two terms have not often been connected but how exciting to see that actually happening. But through his own personal experience with his own family, he’s drawn on that to shape his work. He’s passionate about showing how food can be medicine, how dietary interventions, like a ketogenic diet, can help treat conditions like depression, anxiety, even severe and even more severe mental illnesses. In fact, as he talks about in this episode, treats a whole lot more than that.

So today we’re going to be exploring how metabolism, and that’s a word that’s come up a lot, metabolism, metabolic health, mitochondrial function, and mental health are connected. This science behind ketones and brain health and what practical steps we can take to better support our mental wellbeing through not just nutrition, but circadian harmony, exercise, and mindfulness experience. So sit back and enjoy this episode, I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Matt Bernstein. Welcome to the show,

Understanding how to optimize our Metabolic state is essential for mental health. Emphasizing the importance of Metabolic health, we can improve our resilience against stress and anxiety.

By paying attention to our Metabolic health, we can make informed choices that positively influence our mental state. Focusing on Metabolic health allows us to engage in practices that promote recovery.

Understanding metabolic processes is crucial for improving mental health and resilience.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Thanks for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Matt, as I was saying before we came on, when I got the invitation, you the suggestion of you joining me, I jumped at it because this whole idea of food is medicine and particularly this approach to mental health is so important and so lacking, I believe. But I’m interested to know your own personal journey. What inspired you to connect nutrition and mental health, because psychiatrists are not renowned for looking at diet?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, that’s very true. It’s sort of, you know, there’s a lot of versions of this story, some long, some medium, some short. I guess I’ll start, and we’ll see if we want to get deeper into it. But, you know, I was always an open-minded psychiatrist, always focused on trying to get people to their best level of functioning as opposed to just reducing symptoms, which is really what the field of psychiatry is geared towards. All the randomized trials are all about lowering symptoms on a rating scale, which is not what people really care about. People care about can they get back to their life? Can they get back to working, having relationships, living independently, whatever their issues are in their life. So I always had a little bit of a beef with my field. And then two of my three sons got very sick about eight years ago with a very severe neuropsychiatric condition.

It looked very psychiatric at first, but then we started noticing all these physical symptoms and eventually they got diagnosed with PANS, which is the new term for pandas. So it’s essentially an autoimmune encephalitis after an infection. And it took years to sort of get to figure out what was going on and how to start treating them. And they got this very, you know, out of, out of mainstream medicine type of treatment which eventually worked for them. But when they were doing standard of care psychiatric treatment, they got much worse. So yeah, so we have three boys and at the time they were 14 and 12. We have twins who are 14. So one of the twins and the younger one both got sick right at the same time, which is also very unusual. know, these, you know, happy, you know, well adjusted kids doing well in school and sports and music and friends and then old were they at the time overnight they literally couldn’t go to school with severe OCD. It was really devastating. So that really opened my mind that mainstream medicine, my own profession, couldn’t help my kids at all. And so, you know, it also really emphasized this connection between the mind and the body, the brain and the body, which psychiatry doesn’t do a very good job of either. We’re just focused on anything up in the brain and fiddling with neurotransmitters, not really thinking about how it’s all connected to the whole person. And my kids’ situation really emphasized that, you they had an infection from Lyme disease, a tick bite, you know, so this became a systemic problem and eventually mostly manifested in brain symptoms. How many of my other, I’m sitting there thinking, you how many of my other patients have some medical, you know,

Autoimmune or infectious or exposure to toxins, all kinds of things that can happen that can eventually lead to a brain problem. And meanwhile, as you my training told me just, you know, figure out what the symptoms are, give the right pill for those symptoms and watch the symptoms go down. But I knew already that that doesn’t work in many of the people that we try it on doesn’t really produce satisfying outcomes. And there’s lots of side effects with these psychiatric medications.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Mmm.

Dr Matt Bernstein

So yeah, that was sort of the beginning of like opening my mind to, you know, alternative approaches to all of us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Well, already what you’ve said is is the subject from the rest of our podcast almost because there’s so much to ask you about there. We’ve done so many programs where I mean, presume how long had you been a psychiatrist until that point in time?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Oh, think, you know, I’d already been in practice for, you know, about, you know, 15 or 16 years at that point.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Hmm. Because one of our observations regularly from various perspectives on this podcast is that often the epiphany for a health practitioner comes when they or one of their family are faced with a situation that they’ve been dealing with with their patients for many years. But suddenly it takes on a different perspective and opens their mind to alternatives. We’ve we’ve done so many stories on this map. This is another perspective on.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Absolutely. Yeah, I’m not surprised. I mean, that’s what what you learn when you get in the world of, you know, not the not mainstream medicine anymore. Most people have their own story, how they got to thinking about things differently, either their own illness or a family member.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

And you’ve mentioned two things there. One is PANDAS, P-A-N-D-A-S or PANS. the second one being the trigger being LIME, which is a controversial diagnosis in many practitioners lives. Tell us, just back up a little bit here and give us the PANS, PANDAS 101 story, what that actually was?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah. So what that means, PANDAS was the original concept. Specifically after a streptococcal infection, kids would get an autoimmune reaction and the immune system would start attacking a part of the brain called the basal ganglia that’s involved in obsessive compulsive disorder and other movement symptoms. And so there was this picture that included acute onset of OCD symptoms in a kid after a strep infection that would tip off that this is likely pandas. And then the concept sort of got expanded to not just include streptococcal infections, but other infections. And that’s what PANS is now called. So, you know, pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome. So essentially any abrupt onset, severe neuropsychiatric condition in a child, people should be thinking about whether there was a recent infection or maybe even a chronic infection like Lyme.

That all of a sudden why is this, you well, just a kid getting very sick psychiatrically, there’s no particular reason for that. And with my kids, there was no inciting traumatic event or anything like that. And there were two of them at the same time. So it really made us start thinking there’s something environmental here most likely, or, you know, maybe there’s something that my wife and I were doing that we didn’t realize. My wife’s a psychologist. We actually took ourselves to see a psychologist to say, are we doing this somehow?

We spent an hour with him and he said, absolutely not, you’re not doing this. It didn’t take him long to figure that out. And we didn’t really think so, but we just wanted to be thorough and be sure that it wasn’t something that we were doing in our household that was causing all of this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Wow. What a couple the two of you are, psychiatrist and psychologist. I mean, yeah. And to have them two children, two children display symptoms of OCD. my goodness. I mean, this must have been, was it literally, what was it a slow onset over weeks and months?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Literally within a couple of days, know, kind of onset. I mean, from being happy, well adjusted, you know, doing great in school and doing everything to literally not being able to go to school within a week or two. I mean, it was in retrospect, we could see of some signs, you know, maybe before that, but incredibly subtle. I mean, it really, when it happened, it happened very fast.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

And the other trigger that you mentioned, which a lot of people who aren’t in the health area and haven’t been exposed to it is the lime. Yeah. And can you just give us a quick one? Because this is a big topic, too, and a very controversial. Yeah. Can you give us a lime 101 overview?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Sure. I mean, Lyme is the term that people use for an infection from the specific spirochete called Borrelia burgdorferi, sort of a mouthful, but it’s a little microorganism that lives in ticks. And so you get a tick bite. This is pretty endemic around the entire United States now, but really around many parts of the world. The tick, you know, transmits this infection.

And then it can create this bullseye rash on the skin can create sort of a fever and an acute illness. But then this is the controversial part. It can become chronic. That’s certainly what happened to our kids and what happens to a lot of people. If you ask some academic infectious disease doctors, they’re going to say Lyme disease cannot become chronic. Either you get very, very sick and you get to a doctor or your body takes care of it and that’s the end of it. And they may prescribe couple of weeks of an antibiotic and say that’s the end of it. But there are, you know, there’s an international line and associated diseases society, you know, hundreds of practitioners who think differently about this disease is one of the biggest controversies in modern medicine, I would say, you know, it’s a huge controversy. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yes. And one of the triggers for controversies in medicine, making a big broad statement here is that if a doctor doesn’t know the answer to something, then it doesn’t exist. Is that a fair statement? Do you think I’m being unkind there?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, this is a big problem. I think it’s not universally true, but unfortunately it’s more common than we would like it to be. I think, you know, especially, you know, in, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a common thing in younger doctors, I think even more because, you know, you know, we go through all this training, you know, in, least in the United States, four years of undergrad, four years of medical school.

than somewhere between three and seven years of residency or even longer than fellowships. I mean, it’s an incredible amount of learning. These are really bright people who are working extremely hard and they feel like they do understand a lot and they’ve learned a lot. But I think what they don’t appreciate is that no one understands the mysteries of the human body. Biology is infinitely complicated. And…

There’s so much that no one knows. It’s not a fault of theirs that they don’t know. No one knows the answers to many medical situations because we just don’t know enough yet. And we may never know enough. It’s very complicated stuff. So yes, I think it’s unfortunately truer than we would like it to be that people think, doctors think, if I didn’t hear about this in school, then you must be making this up.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yeah, yeah. And I can understand the need for certainty. You know, we all want certainty, but I often I mean, I’ve been a clinician for over 40 years and I often say I only wish I knew as much as I thought I did 10 years after I graduated. the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. And I think that’s exciting. It’s why I have a podcast and invite people like you on here to educate me, Matt. But the other thing is, and I’m interested to know just laying down a bit of foundation here for how psychiatry works because the DSM-5, the diagnostic and statistics manual, which defines a lot of illnesses. And you mentioned, you know, the typical approach is one of neuro, looking at the neurotransmitters. Are there any blood tests which we can do to establish a deficiency in some neurotransmitters or an imbalance in neurotransmitters? No. Which, you know, justifies the prescription of these neurotoxic drugs or neuropsychiatric drugs.

Dr Matt Bernstein

No, we cannot there. I mean, in general psychiatry, we can only do blood tests that are about ruling out medical illness. There’s no test to say, this makes the diagnosis of whether it be depression or bipolar or OCD. There’s no blood tests in psychiatry. There’s no biomarkers in psychiatry. And that’s actually one of the interesting things about doing this type of work that I’m doing now. I feel it much more, you know, connected to my medical training because i’m needing to do lots of blood tests checking biomarkers about metabolism because that’s really you know where i’m working which will get to but not it’s much more medically focused now that i’m doing this nutritional work then when i’m prescribing medications it’s that’s me

Dr Ron Ehrlich

I think medicine, you know, when we when we go through my background is dentistry. But when we went through and we studied biochemistry, we kind of, oh, thank goodness we passed that exam. We won’t have to worry about that ever again.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

And that just happens to be the way the body works. Tell me with the pants coming back to your two sons in this journey you were on. What was the traditional approach to this problem? What were the experts telling you you needed to do?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Did do those treatments for a while. I’m connected and my wife is too to very good mental health professionals in the Boston area. There’s wonderful hospitals around here, some of the best in the world. And so we were seeing great people who were prescribing psychiatric medications to them and they were getting worse in front of our eyes. And seemingly, each medication they were on would, sometimes it would be obvious it would be making them worse, but even the ones where it wasn’t obvious, we would realize, this one’s making them worse too. And so, you we eventually found someone who understood pandas and said, no, this is often the case and it’s an inflammatory brain condition. These medications will often make it worse. don’t, you know, their brains aren’t gonna react the way they typically do. And that was really helpful because we, you know, we realized we should be taking them off these medications and figuring out different approaches. And that’s exactly what we ended up doing. They did not take psychiatric medications after that initial number of months where things were getting worse, we ended up taking them off all those medications.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

So tell us what helped.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Well, we ended up finding an environmental medicine doctor who did very aggressive treatment for Lyme with antibiotics, actually intravenous antibiotics and many other supportive treatments for the body to detoxify and support the immune system with nutrients. So intravenous nutrients, hyperbaric oxygen and many other things that, you know,

I don’t necessarily need to go into all of them, really it was a very intensive program for that period when they got the most benefit over the course of a year, they were doing intensive amounts of treatment all at the same time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Well, so this this process was a year long and and that and now they are.

Dr Matt Bernstein

It was multi years long, actually. I mean, you know, and you know, they both got to the point of recovery. One of them is still just, you know, positive trajectory in college. And the other one, you know, had a recovery, but then got COVID and sort of had a real problem with that. And then I think really now is suffering more from, you know, sort of typical post-traumatic stress disorder from getting well, doing all that treatment and then getting sick again. And that was a real blow to him. you know, thinking that the world is very unsafe because, any infection could cause him to get sick again. So, he’s unfortunately still sort of working his way through all of that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

But this push, this connection between metabolism and health in general is something that is happening in medicine. But mental health is really what is so exciting to hear you talk about this. Tell us about the connection between metabolism and mental health, metabolic psychiatry.

Research shows that enhancing our Metabolic function can lead to significant improvements in mental health outcomes.

Exploring the metabolic link between diet and mental health can lead to transformative changes.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, it is really exciting. And so the story for that, you know, in terms of how metabolism and brain health are connected really goes back to a little over a hundred years ago at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where a neurologist gave a child with epilepsy a ketogenic diet. And if people don’t know what that is, ketogenic diet is a way of eating that’s really the opposite of the standard American diet where we’re eating mostly carbohydrates, a little bit of protein and very little fat. This flips it on its head and you’re eating very high amounts of fat, moderate amounts of protein and very tiny amounts of carbohydrates. And that causes the body to produce these things called ketone bodies, which are another source of fuel for the cells. And in particular, they’re very, very good for the brain. And so they came up with, he came up with that diet as Dr. Wilder,

And he called it a starvation mimicking diet because we make ketones when we haven’t eaten for a couple of days. It’s one of our evolutionary adaptations to survive during periods of less food. And not only do we survive when the ketones start being made, when we haven’t had food, those ketones fuel the brain in a way that is much better than glucose fueling the brain. And so he had great success with this person, this child who had epilepsy.

Incorporating a Metabolic approach into treatment plans can provide substantial benefits for individuals struggling with mental health disorders.

Incorporating Metabolic strategies into our daily routines can lead to transformative benefits, enhancing our overall mental health and stability.

The role of a ketogenic diet in enhancing metabolic health is a key focus in modern psychiatry.

It became the standard of treatment for epilepsy for a couple of decades until the medication stress came online and people got enamored with medications and they sort of gave up on this diet. But then it got revived again in the epilepsy world in the 1980s. This film producer in Hollywood had a son with very bad epilepsy and they were going around to all the doctors, all the neurologists all over the world and couldn’t get any help with many different medication trials, sometimes three or four medications at once, which is what happens with these kids. Also what happens in psychiatry, when one medication doesn’t work, we just keep adding more and more and more eventually, they found a ketogenic diet for him. He was put on it, had a complete resolution of his seizures, able to come off all the seizure medications, seizures still didn’t come back. And then he didn’t have to, he, like a lot of these kids, idn’t even have to stay on the diet indefinitely after a period of time. His seizures were just gone. Even if he went off the ketogenic diet, his brain was healed literally. and we don’t have many things in medicine that can heal the brain. The brain is, you know, once it, you know, neurons die, it’s very hard to re you know, they don’t re know, regenerate themselves very easily. and so, you know, awesome. You know, we used to think that, you know, loss of neurons, make complete loss of function forever. We now know that there is some plasticity and that’s not completely true, but in terms of actual treatments that cure a brain disease to the point where you don’t even need the treatment anymore, that’s incredibly uncommon in neurology and psychiatry. Yet this is exactly what has been shown in epilepsy. And there’s 12 randomized trials in pediatric and adult epilepsy showing that the ketogenic diet works even when the medications don’t.

Furthermore, understanding the relationship between a Metabolic approach and mental health may unlock new treatment avenues for various disorders.

To understand the therapeutic effects of a ketogenic diet, we must consider how it influences our Metabolic pathways.

So that’s, you know, that’s sort of the background. And then there started, you know, case reports started coming out about 10 years ago in the psychiatric world of people with severe treatment-resistant mental illness who would get complete resolution from a ketogenic diet. And that’s now been followed up with some case series, bigger studies, some pilot trials, and now there are randomized controlled trials going on in the mental health world as well.

By exploring the Metabolic connections in our diet, we may uncover new pathways to healing and wellness.

Metabolic strategies are showing promise in treating various mental health conditions

The implications of Metabolic health extend beyond the physical realm, offering profound insights into mental wellness.

.

For conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, but I could keep going. Mean, the diagnoses that this works on, it seems almost funny that you could say it works for all these things, but we can add onto that list, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, migraine headaches, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease.

This approach underscores the importance of metabolic health in psychiatric treatment.

All of these conditions have now, there’s evidence now that ketogenic diets have some benefit in all of those different conditions. And yeah, so, and even things like anorexia, which you would say, you’re going to do a restrictive diet in anorexia. Well, there’s a nice case series. And now there’s actually two big trials going on in anorexia with ketogenic diets.

Prioritizing Metabolic health not only aids physical wellness but also serves as a foundation for mental clarity and emotional balance.

By focusing on Metabolic factors, we can truly revolutionize our approach to treating mental health conditions.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Hmm. I mean, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because when people hear this commonality of approach, as in a ketogenic diet, they think, come on, right, it’s going to cloutude everything. But actually, the way it manifests itself is perhaps the genetic component, right? It manifests itself differently, right in different people, right? But there’s a commonality to it. And that commonality is common through almost every disease. And that’s inflammation, isn’t it?

Integrating metabolic approaches into mental health care can yield significant benefits.

Dr Matt Bernstein

By focusing on metabolic health, we can better understand and address mental health disorders.

Yeah, it’s it. I mean, we think inflammation is a big part of this. It’s not just inflammation, though. I mean, it’s also insulin resistance in the brain that’s been shown in all these different conditions. And that goes directly to how this diet works. And also mitochondrial dysfunction has also been shown in all these disorders. And it’s also one of the ways in which ketogenic diets help health is through improving mitochondrial health. So the mechanisms make sense. And I think, you know, what’s really doesn’t make sense is our dividing all these illnesses into these different categories when in reality that’s not based on any biology. That’s just based on observation of symptoms. Even the American Psychiatric Association who writes the DSM, they’ve been admitting since 1980 when the DSM-3 came out that we’re not really looking for causes of these conditions. We’re only just listing symptoms and similarities here. And so even the people who write the diagnosis say,

Understanding Metabolic imbalances is key to unlocking better mental health strategies.

We’re not saying anything about cause here. And the reality is, know, underlying cause of all these are those things we just described. Insulin resistance in the brain, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, oxidative stress, microbiome gut brain access dysfunction. You know, these are common causes for all these brain conditions.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Interesting too, isn’t it? Because so many medical practitioners, people in fact, in general, have been brought up to think glucose is our only form of fuel. And whenever you talk about ketones, the doctor, most doctors who, or people in the profession who aren’t aware would immediately jump to the ketoacidosis as a major, yes, well, mean, that’s really dangerous, particularly if you’ve got diabetes, you know, you’ll chance the difference, but I think it’s worth us just mentioning the difference between ketosis. Yes. And ketoacidosis.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Implementing a ketogenic diet fosters metabolic shifts that support mental well-being.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so ketosis is a completely normal physiologic condition that we’re in fact, we’re all born as babies in ketosis. It’s the most natural metabolic state that we can have and as long as a baby is only having mother’s milk, the baby will stay in ketosis. So mother’s milk is ketogenic. And like I said, it’s a survival mechanism that we developed over the course of millennia if not millions of years to survive. And it allows us to be energetic and quick thinking and smart, even if we haven’t had food for days. And if you’re on a glucose metabolism, since agriculture, we’re all in this glucose metabolism, the last 10,000 years or so, which is a very short amount of time compared to our evolutionary history. If people don’t eat, they get irritable and hungry or hangry. You certainly wouldn’t survive out in the wild if that was the case.

So this is our natural metabolic state actually ketosis, whereas ketoacidosis is a pathological condition that happens to people with diabetes. And it means their blood sugar is very high and their ketones start going high at the same time. And they develop a metabolic acidosis, which is very dangerous. It’s life threatening. That would never happen to a non-diabetic who’s not taking diabetes medications.

So and by the way, ketogenic diets also reverse type two diabetes. We didn’t mention that, overwhelming evidence that all type two diabetics can completely reverse their disease with a ketogenic diet but there’s one.

Metabolic insights are reshaping the landscape of mental health treatment.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

And that incidentally, Matt, we’ve done several stories with health practitioners who had for 20 or 30 years said to their patients type two diabetes was irreversible until they themselves got type two diabetes. And then they explored, hang on, maybe there’s something I can do. What ketogenic diet? And they’re born again. Epiphany. Amazing.

Dr Matt Bernstein

But thinking about how much proof there is in epilepsy and type 2 diabetes, do you think if someone, certainly in the US, I’m assuming it’s the same where you are, gets one of those diagnoses and goes to their primary care doctor or general practitioner, do you think that they’re, or endocrinologists or neurologists, are they going to mention the dietary, complete reversal of this disease through diet? No.

It does not get mentioned. Maybe one in 100 it might get mentioned, but essentially the doctors assume that no one’s gonna wanna do this challenging diet and therefore they’re not gonna mention it. Instead, they’ll just say, these are the medications that you need to take and it’d be good to exercise and watch your food intake, but they don’t give any detail about that. And that’s sort of the end of the conversation and this potential cure never comes up essentially.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Understanding metabolic factors can lead to more effective psychiatric interventions

It is essential to recognize the Metabolic influences that shape our psychological experiences.

Recognizing the role of Metabolic factors in our health can help us make better lifestyle choices that support mental well-being.

Understanding the importance of Metabolic health contributes to a holistic approach towards mental and physical wellness.

Yeah, in fact, it goes deeper than that, because in Australia, we had the Australian Diabetes Diabetes Association celebrate its 75th anniversary and put out a 10 point plan for living life with diabetes. I realized the key question there, the key word there was with right. And step number one was include carbohydrates in every meal and eat a low fat diet. Now, now that has changed in recent years in Australia, I have to say.

But when we’re talking about a ketogenic diet, mean, let’s paint the picture. Let’s lay the foundations because people do hear about low carb and low carb means different things to different people.What does how do we get into a ketogenic diet? How do we approach that?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, well, I mean, there’s different ways to do it depending on how you know, sort of like how much you like to measure things and calculate things versus if you’d like to just eyeball and get the feel of it. So I’ll just do the feel of it part first and you know, we can get into the numbers and measurements. But essentially, you’re avoiding any food with simple carbohydrates. So anything with simple sugars, processed flour, so no bread, no pasta you know, no rice, even, you know, starchy vegetables are not your friend. So things like potatoes or sweet potatoes, even carrots have a decent amount of carbohydrates. You to, want a lot of those in terms of fruits. Most of them are also not a great idea. You can have some berries, but generally not. We want people eating a lot of non-starchy vegetables for sure. A certain amount of protein per day. I favor animal protein.

It’s got a lot of benefits over plant protein. That would be around 1 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of weight per day. So not a huge amount of protein, but not low protein, sort of moderate protein. And then the rest of the calories need to be made up of fats. And we try to get people to eat a variety of different fats. Monounsaturated fats, everyone agrees on are healthy. And that’s things like olive oil and avocados and..nuts and seeds and things like that. Some amount of saturated fat, it has a good role here as well. They’re stable. There’s actually good evidence that saturated fat is good for the brain. And then, you know, I think polyunsaturated fats or PUFAs are controversial these days, especially if they’re coming in a form of refined seed oils. We want people to avoid those. But there’s plenty of polyunsaturated fats in whole foods.

They’re not refined oils and those can be very healthy as well. You want people to get a good amount of omega-3s and all of that as well. So, you know, essentially you’re eating some amount of protein, you’re avoiding all those carbohydrates except for vegetables and you’re eating a good amount of fat with everything. And so you have to get your pleasure from food from the fats, essentially. And you can make delicious food this way but you have to sort of know what you’re doing.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yeah. Yeah. You can use the word saturated fats with impunity on this program. OK, Matt, I noticed a slight hesitation there. Don’t worry. You’re in good company here. Yeah. We and actually we champion, you know, from healthy animals come healthy facts. Absolutely. So so ethically, there’s an issue here, too. Yes. But we’re on the same page, I think. Yeah.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

There are seven, is it true there’s seven mechanisms of how ketones improve brain health?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah. Well, I like, I like to think of it at these in these seven mechanisms. I don’t know if everyone thinks of it exactly. Okay. I mentioned a few of them already. So the brain insulin resistance is a huge issue. And, know, the key point there is that glucose needs insulin to get into brain cells to be used for fuel. So brains can literally be bathed in glucose. Someone could have just had a high carbohydrate meal drawn to that their glucose in their blood and in their brain is very high, but their brain cells are literally starving for energy if they have brain insulin resistance. Ketones bypass that brain insulin resistance because they don’t need insulin to get into the cells. So you’re essentially taking what, you know, one fuel, you know, car, like, you know, a gas car and turning it into a hybrid car, you know, and you always have a battery that’s on as long as you’re eating ketogenic food. So that’s the first mechanism.

The second one is the mitochondria. This is also probably one of the most important ones. so ketones are a signaling molecule to tell ourselves to make more mitochondria and to recycle the old non-functioning mitochondria and make new ones out of the old ones. So they sort of break it down for parts and use the parts and make a new mitochondria. So mitochondria are the energy factories in the cell, but they do a lot more than that.

you know, they’re involved in the release of neurotransmitters and gene expression and resolution of inflammation. They can even decide if the cell is going to live or die. They’re the first step in apoptosis, which is cell death essentially. So mitochondria are very important part of this story and they’re getting a huge boost from ketones. Next is that reduction of inflammation that we talked about, which is a huge factor in almost all psychiatric conditions, every brain condition, and really almost every chronic illness is inflammation. And ketogenic diets are incredibly anti inflammatory. So that’s three.

The fourth one is lowering oxidative stress, which I’m sure you’ve talked about many times as well. People try to use antioxidant foods, but the reality is that a ketogenic diet is create creating much less oxidative stress because the mitochondria are burning fat instead of burning glucose which creates much less oxidative stress in the burning of the fuel itself. So that’s a huge factor. We’ll talk a little bit about neurotransmitters. know that ketogenic diets increase GABA and lower glutamate. And this is very helpful, we know for epilepsy, but also for the psychiatric conditions. Things like benzodiazepines, those medications that..immediately make people feel relaxed, well that’s working on GABA. So we want more GABA. That’s good for recovery from anxiety, recovery from depression, and we want less glutamate. Glutamate is excitatory and it causes this excitotoxicity if there’s too much glutamate and many of the psychiatric conditions, especially bipolar, there’s very good evidence that very high levels of glutamate in those excitatory states and that all the medications that treat bipolar also lower glutamate.

Ketogenic diet does that naturally and effortlessly as well. Six mechanism is increase in brain derived neurotropic factor, which we can also increase through exercise, but ketogenic diets do that on its own. BDNF as it’s called is sort of like miracle grow for the brain. The neurons all have these projections to other neurons. Each neuron might connect to thousands of other neurons.

BDNF causes more of those connections. The more connections we have, the more flexible the brain is, the better mental health is, the better that person can learn and adapt to any situation, essentially. And then the last mechanism is this microbiome gut-brain axis. So we know how connected the gut and the brain are now through many different ways, through neurons, through hormones, through neurotransmitters, and it’s mediated by the microbiome.

And we know that one of the mechanisms by which ketogenic diets work for seizures is the microbiome, that brain access, there’s been some really good experiments about that. And so I added in as a presumptive on psychiatry too, because there’s so much evidence about that access in psychiatry. I’m pretty convinced that the ketogenic diet is working through that mechanism as well. Although I can’t say that that one has as much evidence as some of the other ones.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

I love it. What a great seven step thing that is. Mean, a wonderful way of understanding it. must have that Mike, the last one must have been quite a challenge when, you know, you were going through all that antibiotic intravenous therapy and stuff like that. Not to mention all the antibiotics we’ve all been exposed to through our lives.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, I mean, the one, I mean, actually the one benefit of intravenous antibiotics over oral antibiotics is that it does save the microbiome a little bit more because you’re not sending those bacteria killing chemicals right into the gut. Instead, they’re going to the bloodstream and going and doing their thing where they should, you know, in the brain or in various other places where that infection might be hiding. They don’t have to go through the gut to get there. And there is..

That’s one of the benefits of intravenous. yes, mean, even still, there’s lots of need for trying to take care of the gut, trying to take care of that microbiome with many different probiotics. Probiotics are really useful, especially once one has taken antibiotics. There’s some studies showing probiotics can independently help with mental health, but they’re not very strong on their own to do that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

The other thing that I love about your emphasis here, and it’s something that anybody following any health discussion will be aware of, is this focus on mitochondria.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

That has been a aha moment for the health world in the last 10 or 15 years.

Dr Matt Bernstein

And I would say that the ketogenic diet is the surest way to improve the health of your mitochondria outside of exercise. know, exercise itself is, you know, the most important thing for mitochondria. But outside of that, the ketogenic diet, would say, is number two in terms of improving my…

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yeah. Well, I’d throw one other one out there that I think is gaining a lot of attention. And that is circadian harmony, like our relationship, our relation. If this is about my what goes on in the mitochondria is not a carbohydrate transport chain or a protein transport chain or a fat. It’s an electron transport chain. So our relationship with electrons from the sun and from the devices we’re we’re exposing ourselves to now is another big challenge. Where do you stand on that?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean it’s one of the pillars of the treatment that I Endorse at this program accord that I started, you know, the four pillars essentially are the ketogenic diet exercise Mind-body program of some kind that someone has lots of options, but they need to choose some mind-body practice and do it and Circadian rhythm alignment those are the four things and we do all of that at once and we have tremendous outcomes and results with people who are coming in with very severe mental health conditions.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Hmm. Which is, when we think about the sad food pyramid American and Australian diet. Yeah. And then we talk about ketogenesis when we combine that with another very popular public health initiative, which is stay out of the sun. Right. It’s really dangerous. What does circadian alignment or, you know, mean in in in the accord and Elhorn? What does that mean?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Well, I mean, to me, it means we need to be in tune with the sun. You know, as you you mentioned, you know, the the sun is, you know, we evolved with this sun in particular, we all get very powerful biological cues from the sun, especially from blue light. And so what I want people to do just, you know, behaviorally is I want them to get up at the same time every day. I want them to

As soon as they can get outside and get natural sunlight right away. I want them to be outside at least two or three other times during the day for a nice walk in the sun and getting exposure so that that again will tune that clock that’s in their brain, their suprachiasmatic nucleus is holding this clock. And what tunes the clock? It’s the different wavelengths of sunlight that you’re getting at different times of the day.

We want them eating at regular times as well, which is the probably second most powerful way to attune the circadian clock. And then we need to avoid blue light in those few hours before bed. And that means either not using your devices or if you are going to use your devices, you can wear these, you know, very powerful blue light blocking glasses that are basically red lenses and everything looks red. Or you can, you know, there’s a setting on the on the iPhone at least that you can really remove all the blue light and your phone looks completely red. It’s not the night shift thing because that’s basically if it looks normal, you haven’t removed the blue light. If you really remove the blue light, whatever you’re looking at should look pretty red. And so that’s a big difference from how most people are living as you mentioned. We’re all living indoors. We’re not getting sun and we’re looking at screens all day. So the sun does a lot for us, but mostly it’s about tuning our circadian clock and getting, it’s essentially these nutrients into us that our mitochondria use for creating energy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

And you mentioned also them. I love those four steps. mean, pretty basic, really, isn’t it? It’s what I love about this is so much of it is achievable, accessible. It’s not expensive. And it’s yet so powerful when you talk about mind, body practices. mean, people probably know, as I know, I do. I should be meditating 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night. But what are some other mind, body practices that you would encourage your patients to have.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Well, you know, like I said, there’s a lot of options here. You know, anything that calms the nervous system to get us into that deep rest state, our mitochondria react to that. They respond to that deep rest state. They feel safe. And we need to make our mitochondria feel safe for them to do their job, essentially. And so that can be breathing practices of various kinds. Breathing is one of the most accessible things I find for almost anyone to be able to calm their nervous system down.

And so usually I start people on some breathing practices. If they’re doing well with breathing, we might try to add some mindfulness meditation. We have a couple of devices that we use. One of them is called the heart math device. You may have heard of that one. Yes. They have a lot of research on that. And it’s nice because some people like to have a little bit of feedback for how they’re doing meditation and breathing to see what’s going on in with their physiology. And it helps encourage them to keep going. So the heart math is a great way to do that. There’s another one called the muse, which is a more of a headband that people wear also gives you like a neurofeedback and telling you sort of what’s going on with your brainwave. So some people like using the devices, some people like doing it on their own, we do meditation groups, or, you know, relaxation groups, in any case, we were getting people interested in this idea. And, and we have people wearing continuous glucose monitors as well. So here’s an interesting thing that happens sometimes. So people, you this has happened more than a handful of times. People will come up to us and say, what’s going on? My glucose is spiking up to 150 and I swear I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t eat any carbohydrates. What is happening? And we very, very well, first question, are you anxious? Oh yes. I’m like nearly having a panic attack right now.

And it doesn’t matter about what, but it’s the anxiety that will spike their blood sugar. So just sympathetic arousal causing an increase of cortisol and adrenaline will release a bunch of glucose into the bloodstream. And so we’ll have them, you know, we’ll sit them down and say, let’s breathe. You know, we’ll do a breathing practice five minutes later, the glucose is down below a hundred. And that, and that person will always appreciate the importance of their my body practice from that point forward because you can see physiologically exactly what’s going on when you’re wearing that glucose monitor.

And it’s just another reminder of how connected the brain and the body and the metabolism, it’s all one system in the end.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yup Yup. Well, I love everything you’ve presented here. And, know, you’ve been on this amazing professional and personal journey that’s brought you to two initiatives that you’ve got here, the Accord group and the Elhorn group. Can you tell us a little bit about these two facilities that you’re associated with?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Sure, Sure, Ellenhorn has been around for much longer. Ellenhorn’s been, we’re having our 20th anniversary later this year. And it’s a program that’s considered what’s called a PACT team, P-A-C-T, stands for Program and Assertive Community Treatment. And essentially what that, it was invented to when the states were closing the state hospitals in the US, and I’m assuming in Australia as well, there were these big state hospitals that used to essentially warehouse people for many decades. They started off actually with a good intention. They were considered good treatment. They would have people work on the farm and they would take care of them as almost like a family atmosphere. But eventually they became these horrible institutions where people were on high doses of medications and essentially chemical straight jackets and terrible care. And eventually the states decided they wanted to close all these, but they needed

They needed to discharge everyone. What would they do? And so they created these pack teams, which are essentially a whole team of clinicians, a doctor, a nurse, and social workers, and rehabilitation counselors. And they would all work together, but they would work with these people in the outpatient setting. So it was a way to really provide high level of care for people with a serious illness out in the community. And they showed that they could keep people out of the hospital and have more independent success living on their own.

Working relationships, all those things. But then they found out it was just as expensive as the state hospital. So the states didn’t want to keep doing it. And so Ellen horn is a private version of that essentially, where we’re getting people back to living their lives who had been hospitalized multiple times and really having a hard time with their illness. And the focus is on the psychosocial rehabilitation, essentially using the connection to work and relationships and independence as sort of the medicine in many ways. So we have a team around people and do whatever it takes to get them back out in the world and living their life again, often reducing psychiatric medication, and trying to get them to do some of the principles that I’ve been describing in the last couple years as well with the metabolic and exercise and all of that. Accord is really just, you know, just focus on the metabolic treatment, essentially. So we have people come for a month to three months to a house outside of Boston and they get that whole, those four pillars that I talked about with diet, exercise, and mindfulness and circadian rhythm alignment all at the same time with lots of measurements with ketone measurements and continuous glucose monitors and lab work. And we even have a machine that measures body composition. And we’re measuring all these mental health rating scales and seeing incredible improvements in just this

short period of time. And the goal is to teach everyone how to do this, all this stuff so that they can keep going with all of it when they get back home. So we have a lot of teaching of metabolism and how to construct the diet. have a dietitian on staff and a chef who’s making delicious food. And the chef is teaching people how to cook because you really can’t sustain a healthy ketogenic diet. If you can’t cook, you’re not going to able to order all this food in a restaurant or by takeout, you you really need to be able to some food. And many people don’t know how to cook these days. So we are teaching people how to cook and how to cook delicious ketogenic food and all the other things they need to know to be able to sustain all this when they get back home.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Fantastic, fantastic. Listen, if people were struggling just with listening to this, struggling with mental health, you’ve given us so much to think about what would be the first steps that you would suggest for them to do if they were just wanting to help themselves.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yeah, well, it depends on what they’re struggling with. mean, let’s say it’s someone who’s having some, you know, some mild to moderate depression and some anxiety, maybe a little insomnia, I think some version of what I’m describing, you know, it’d be hard to do all of that all on one’s own, you know, when they’re already struggling, but maybe start with diet, because I think that’s, you know, in some ways, the most powerful, you know, try to remove some of the ultra processed food, get rid of the extra sugars and you know, these processed oils, eat a whole foods diet. And then, you next step might be lower carbohydrates. You know, can you start removing the bread and rice and pasta and starchy vegetables? And then, you know, add in some exercise. You might add in, you know, with a lot of my outpatients before I started Accord, trying to do this as user friendly as possible. Sometimes I would have people do some time restricted eating. And that’s another way to jumpstart metabolism have the body start making some ketones. I’ve sometimes used this product called MCT oil. Do you know about that?

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yes, share it with our listeners.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yes, medium change triglyceride oil is derived from coconut oil. Essentially, it’s a refined coconut oil and it’s tasteless and odorless, but it’s very, very ketogenic. So that oil goes directly from the gut through the portal vein to the liver. And as long as someone hasn’t had a big carbohydrate meal recently with a lot of insulin on board, the liver will turn almost all of those MCT molecules into ketones.

And so it’s a way to get some ketones. So if someone, let’s say stops eating at 8pm, they wake up and I tell them, let’s, let’s try to fast until noon. Let’s try to do a 16 hour fast here. But you know, when you wake up, have coffee with MCT oil and maybe a little bit of heavy cream in there. And that will keep your hunger away until, until noon and you can have some lunch. And invariably people will come back and say, what was that? You know, that was amazing that felt really good. And it’s because their body started making some ketones from the MCT oil. And that usually gets people’s attention. And then we can sort of start going from there. Okay, well, let’s now lower the carbohydrates a little more. You know, let’s add an exercise component. Let’s start getting those ketone levels up. Let’s start measuring the ketones at that point. So you know, one can sort of gradually move themselves into this. And you know, as long as they’re not taking heavy duty medications, for mental health or diabetes or high blood pressure, it’s a pretty safe thing to do. If they are taking medications like that, they should work with their medical professional to help them because the ketogenic diet is actually so effective at lowering blood sugar, lowering blood pressure that if someone’s taking those types of medications, they could actually lower their blood sugar or blood pressure too much if they go into it, if they’re in a ketogenic diet. Their underlying condition is going to get better.

And so they won’t need to be on such high doses of those medications essentially. And many people will be able to get off their diabetes medications or their blood pressure medications. And same with psychiatric medications. mean, often we will need to lower the doses of those, but again, that has to be done in concert with a medical professional.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Yes, I know we’ve done a wonderful program which we might really release in this one with Dr. Mark Horowitz, who was talking about titrating off antidepressants. And that is much easier said than done, even if one follows the recommended protocols. Well, that you experience to.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Yes, absolutely. Mean, Dr. Horowitz is amazing for the work he’s done. You know, the recommendations, unfortunately, haven’t caught up to his work. most, you know, doctors are still out there, you know, tapering people off these medications very quickly, and not appreciating how much of a withdrawal syndrome there is. And it’s not just from antidepressants. Every single psychiatric medication has a withdrawal syndrome.

And that’s also not appreciated by many of the psychiatrists out in the world. And, you know, it wasn’t appreciated by me as well when I was a younger doctor too. We would take people off of, you know, they were on a, let’s say a mood stabilizing medication and we want to switch them to a different one. We would just take them off the one and put them on the other one and not even think about the withdrawal syndrome they were having from the first one. But absolutely that there’s good data that there’s withdrawal syndromes for all of them. And I’ve seen it now in

Once you’re paying attention, you see it when people are coming off and you need to go very, very slowly, similar to what Dr. Horowitz recommends. You know, they’re often talking about, you know, 10 % reductions per month, uh, which means, you know, that’s parabolic. So, you know, each time you’re reducing, you’re reducing by even less for many people. They do need that slow of a titration. Not everyone. Um, I definitely have people come off quicker than that, uh, who tolerate it. Fine. It seems to be individual thing that some people are more sensitive to these withdrawal symptoms than others but but you know they really do exist with all these medications.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

When we say quicker, some people might take eight weeks to 12 weeks and others might take one to two years. Would that be a fair range?

Dr Matt Bernstein

That is a fair range, although I have seen people come off even quicker than that without problems, but it depends on how long they’ve been on the medication. I mean, if someone’s been on it for, you know, 15 or 20 years, the quickest it would absolutely be would be two or three months to come off, but usually lot much longer than that. Whereas if someone’s only been on the medication for let’s say six months or a year, you may be able to come off in a month without a problem.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Matt, it’s been so good talking to you and what you’re doing is so exciting. I wondered if we might just finish now. I want to take a step back from your role as a psychiatrist and leading these initiatives because we are all individuals on a health journey through this modern world. What do you think the biggest challenge is for us as individuals on that journey?

Dr Matt Bernstein

Well, I I do resonate with how hard it is to take care of one’s health in our modern world. You know, I sympathize with people who say, well, I just can’t, I don’t have the energy to, you know, to do all those things that, you know, that I’ve been talking about today or that other people might be talking about. I’m struggling just to, you know, pay my bills and get to work and take care of my other responsibilities. I just can’t do all those things. So I do resonate with that. And I think there’s a reality to how hard it is you know our food system makes it very very hard to do you know to eat in any kind of healthy way let alone what I’m talking about which is even you know even more challenging. But I think the message that I would give people is that if you go through some effort you can create energy literally to do more that you can just turn the corner and just put some effort into doing the right thing and some of these things don’t take a lot of time or effort you know.

Integrating practices that support our Metabolic health can create a positive ripple effect in our lives, enhancing both physical and mental health.

Getting up and getting sunlight in the morning is not that hard. You can just, you whatever you were going to do anyway in the morning, you’re going to read the paper or your phone or whatever, just go outside and do it when you first wake up. You know, take a walk when you first wake up, you know, that doesn’t, that’s not that hard. And so if you start doing some of these little things, you start getting some benefits, you’re creating energy to do more of these things. And eventually, you know, you become, you know, a really healthy person if you keep taking step by step.

By integrating Metabolic insights into our daily practices, we can elevate our mental resilience and overall health.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

Well, listen, what a great note for us to finish on and what a great message for us to finish on. And I want to thank you not only for all the work you are doing and the initiatives you are taking, but for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today. So thank you so much.

Dr Matt Bernstein

Understanding the Metabolic processes at work can empower us to take charge of our mental health journey.

It’s really been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich

What a great episode. What a great discussion. How inspiring, how exciting to see a psychiatrist literally turn the world of psychiatry on its on its head and coming up with such a holistic approach. I loved his seven steps. Brain insulin control, mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation. I mean, we’ve talked about inflammation in so many different ways.

It’s the common denominator in all diseases, both physical and mental. The reduction of oxidative stress. He talked about GABA, G-A-B-A, and glutamate. And brain-derived neurotropic factor. Brain-derived neurotropic factor, yes, BDNF, and of course, the gut-brain connection, which we’ve talked about many times. Now, I love also the fact that not only is it diet, not only is it exercise,

Not only is it mindfulness, but it is also about circadian alignment. And we need to take that seriously too. Look, we’ll have connections to Accord, which is Matt’s great initiative and his website. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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The Truth About Root Canal Treatments: Myths, Facts & What Really Matters00:00:05 – Intro & topic overview (root canals)

00:02:44 – What a root canal is & why it’s needed

00:04:20 – Infections can exist without pain

00:05:13 – How 3D X-rays improve diagnosis

00:08:21 – Nuance in deciding treatment

00:10:39 – Why starting treatment matters

00:13:51 – Skill, tools & training affect success

00:21:40 – Importance of magnification/microscopes

00:24:24 – Cleaning canals & killing bacteria

00:27:38 – You can’t get 100% sterile

00:31:48 – How root canal success is measured

00:35:21 – Risks & benefits of keeping a “dead tooth”

00:39:44 – Alternatives: extraction, implants, bridges

00:46:38 – Why a “perfect” root canal can still hurt

00:48:20 – The “97% cancer patients” myth

00:54:02 – Cancer patient case study

00:57:33 – Importance of comprehensive oral exams

01:00:06 – Final takeaway: avoid extremes, value skill

Dr Ron Ehrlich(00:00:05)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, we’ve covered many dental topics in the 600 plus episodes that I have done, podcast episode, and I’ve had many guests on to talk about oral health from many different perspectives, be it periodontal health, be it toxicity, be it cardiologist Dr. Thomas Levy, who has very strong views about the importance of a comprehensive oral exam, a point that I totally agree with him on.

And today we are going to be covering a contentious issue, root canal treatments. What is a root canal treatment? Should you be having a root canal treatment? What are the consequences of having one or not having one? I’ve often said in my 40 plus years of practice that I wish I was more dogmatic because it would be much easier to just to say to a patient, all root canals are bad, all root canals must come out. Well, that’s really simply not the case.

And by guest today is Dr. Lewis Ehrlich. Lewis was, I guess, last week talking about evidence-based medicine. And it was for a very good reason that we started with that to lay down the foundations of this week’s episode on root canal treatments. And well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. I think it’s an important episode. It is the truth about root canal treatments and spoiler alert here, the answer to should you have a root canal treatment or not.

Here’s the spoiler alert. It depends and it depends on quite a lot and that’s what this episode is about I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Lewis Ehrlich. Welcome back to the show again Lewis.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich

Good to be back Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:01:48)

Lew, last episode we talked about evidence-based medicine and that is hopefully the foundation or at least evidence-informed Medicine is the basis on which a lot of clinical

work and decisions are made. Today I wanted to touch on a topic that people will have heard a lot about. The most of what they will have heard if they’ve been following the story at all is very negative and that is the root canal issue to do or not to do a root canal treatment. Headlines that people will often read is ‘97 % of cancer patients have this treatment’ or root canals are bad, blah blah blah blah blah. So I wanted to really explore this treatment a little bit and for those listeners that may not be familiar with what we’re actually talking about, what is a root canal treatment?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:02:44)

Okay, so essentially within a tooth, there is a nerve and that has a blood supply which keeps it alive, has its own immune system. And when it gets damaged, either through tooth decay, which is where bacteria eat away at the tooth, softening the tooth structure and creating what people would know as a whole, or they, you know, grind their teeth a lot or…

Hit their tooth on the side of a pool or what have you. There’s a traumatic reason that the nerve, the blood supply within the tooth can die off. You can get an infection of that tooth where you get a, if you take an x-ray, you’ll see a little round black area at the tip of the root. And that’s where the bone, is usually really, really solid and strong becomes soft and mushy on the on the back of you know bacteria eating away at the bone so they get into the canal system the root canal system and make their way up the tip of the root and start eating away at the bone which is obviously an immune stressor so not good for your system you want to be you want your immune system to go and fight other things other more important things in the body and so if it’s distracted by an infection in the jawbone as a result of trauma or tooth decay, then you need to do something about it to support your immune system.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:04:20)

Now, people would often say that sounds incredibly painful. It doesn’t necessarily need to be that, which makes it even more insidious in a way. Pain isn’t always associated with these things.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:04:30)

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we can find a infection within a tooth and a patient will often go, I’m not in any pain whatsoever. And this is often the case, right? So using pain as a barometer of whether something is wrong or right, or if you’re in health or not in health is not great because they’ll often…be in a chronic state. So it can be either chronic or acute. Acute is when you’re in agony, you’ve got a full-blown toothache, you can’t sleep, it’s sensitive to hot, cold, a chronic state. It can just be sitting there and you’ve got no idea that that’s there at all. But nonetheless, it’s still an immune stress.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05:13)

Now you mentioned this shadow at the tip of a root which is picked up with X-rays and I know that we have sat in an office many times over the last 10, 15 more years and looked at 3D X-rays. What difference has 3D X-rays made to the ability to diagnose these kind of conditions?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:05:36)

Yeah, it’s been massive. If we think about diagnostic interventions, whenever you do a diagnostic test, for example, a three-dimensional X-ray, you want to make sure that that diagnostic test gives you the ability to make that patient better. So there’s a range of diagnostic tests in medicine and dentistry, which are all the rage. They can come with a lot of excitement, but they actually don’t mean that you can do anything about it. Right. So…you, you, the good thing about the three-dimensional scan is that if I know, if I send a patient off and it comes back that there’s an infection that we didn’t know about, I know that through either doing a root canal or extracting the tooth, I can make that patient’s health far better. So whenever we think about diagnostic testing, we always want to make sure that our, our intervention that follows up that doesn’t over-medicalize them for no reason, that we can actually improve their outcomes, their health outcomes long-term, which is one of the best things about three-dimensional scans. And the accuracy is just far better than the traditional two-dimensional scans. So we’re far more likely to get accurate results, but also often infections can actually hide behind routes that we can’t see on a two-dimensional image and so we’re able to identify far far far more infections but equally analyzing existing root canals. So a lot of people get concerned about you know whether root canals are affecting their health and I know we’ll get on to that in this conversation but if I was to have a root canal I would be very very

I’d be putting my mind at ease knowing that I have access to three-dimensional scanning to assess whether or not they’re still healthy and in a good state as opposed to 20 years ago when they weren’t available. And you really could have an infection on an existing root canal or an existing tooth without a root canal and have no idea that that was there.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:07:56)

Yeah, I mean, the ability to not only pick up the area of infection, which as you said is typically a shadow in a bone where there was healthy bone, there’s now pus or granulation tissue, but also to really get a good three-dimensional image of the anatomy of the tooth you’re actually dealing with or having to treat really makes a difference.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:08:21)

Yeah, correct. And I think this, I know I mentioned in the last podcast we recorded the importance of nuance. You know, a lot of people will come in saying they’ll just be really, really, really dogmatic on the fact that they’ve heard root canals about, they don’t want to even go near a root canal. And they don’t even want you to, to start a root canal.

So just to give people some context, what I mean by this is that if you identify on a three-dimensional scan that you have that granulation tissue or pus in the bone that’s eating away at the bone, making it soft and mushy as opposed to hard and honeycomb like, then that’s a current infective process. So I have patients that won’t even let me start the root canal to minimize and shrink that infection down because they’ve heard that root canals are bad.

Now I can tell you hand on heart that you are going to be infinitely worse off if you do not start to shrink that infection via either an extraction or starting the first stage of a root canal because remember it’s a multi, usually a multi-step process weeks apart. So it can be two to three appointments weeks apart to let the medicine that we put down the canals actually take effect and shrink the infection. I have patients that are so dogmatic that they won’t let me start a root canal because they’ve heard root canals are bad and they’d rather have that chronic infection, that granulation tissue, that bacteria eating away at the bone and that immune stress rather than actually starting the root canal. So I think that…

People need to realize that even if you don’t want to complete a root canal, you know, if you decide that you go off and research or it doesn’t feel right and you’re with well within your rights to do that, to have it removed, you should at least start it because it’s going to be way better than, you know, the current, the state that you’re in when we find out that information, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:10:39)

I think you may, I mean, you mentioned it, but our listener may not have picked up on it, that when the nerve and blood vessel in a tooth is dead, dying, you actually not only have, you have gangrenous tissue inside that tooth. So you’ve got gangrene in that tooth. And by not at least opening the tooth up to get that gangrene out of the tooth, nevermind whether you decide to proceed right to the end and we’re going to talk about what’s involved there. You’re saying no, no, no, I’ve heard root canals are bad, but I want to leave the gangrene in the tooth and the infection in the root rather than have any treatment at all.

I mean, when you put it like that, you’d have to go, really? But anyway, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:11:22)

So let’s play a little scenario here, You come in to see me. You’re concerned that you’re having a little bit of pain on the lower right-hand side molar. I take an x-ray. There’s an infection at the tip of the root like we described, right?

In order to start the healing process of that tooth, to get that gangrenous tissue out, like you mentioned, we have to go into the tooth and start cleaning it out, flushing it, cleaning it, putting medicine down there to shrink the infection. We have patients that come in that refuse that because of the reputation around root canals and some of the information that’s out there.

But what I would stress to people, just to be really clear, and I wasn’t sure if I was 100 % clear, is that you’re far better off doing that first step and making a decision because you’ve got really aggressive bacteria in your jawbone creating an infection, creating an inflammatory immune response on the body, and then you can decide what you want to do thereafter.

What that procedure, that initial procedure will start to help your immune system overcome this immune stress that it is under. So that’s an important thing to realize, you know, because you can’t, you can’t walk around so dogmatic that you would rather have a, an infection eating away at your jawbone rather than actually doing something about it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:13:13)

I think it’s worth just mentioning at this point because some people may be thinking, these guys are just lining us up for how great the root canal is. No, we’re not. We’re very well aware of some of the problems, even with a superbly done root canal treatment. But I think it’s fair to say that of all the techniques in dentistry, and there are many finicky techniques in dentistry, I would rate doing a technically excellent, and we’re going to cover what that means.

A technically excellent root canal treatment is perhaps one of the most challenging techniques a dentist will ever undertake. Would you agree with?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:13:51)

Yeah, it’s highly technique sensitive. You have to be extremely skilful. You have to use modern techniques. You have to be up to date with the latest materials to get the best result. You have to be patient. You have to use three-dimensional technology, which is obviously what we do at our clinic. But this technique sensitivity raises a really interesting point, Ron, because people can say all root canals are bad, right? No, will hand on heart say that a poorly done root canal is not good for your health. It’s just not. Like it’s not gonna shrink the infection down to the same extent as an excellent one. There may be missed canal, so there’s…

A certain number of canals within a tooth. And if you miss one canal out of the four that are present, for example, there’s obviously going to be bacteria living within those canals that aren’t good for your health and will result in a failed root canal. So what I would say to people is that if you’re saying all root canals are bad, you’re comparing a root canal done in the democratic Republic of the Congo with no three-dimensional scans, with somebody who hasn’t done extra root canal training, you’re comparing that root canal with somebody that is a specialist that does it under microscope, that uses 3D technology, that uses the latest materials, medicaments, up to date with all the studies, the research, et cetera. You can’t compare those two things. You just can’t.

It’s like comparing somebody that’s the best heart surgeon in the world doing your stent, putting a stent in to make sure that the blood flow keeps going to keep you alive with somebody that is a GP having a go at it. You know, you can’t, they’re apples and oranges. So I think that people as a general rule, just throwing the baby out with the bathwater and saying all root canals are the same. That is not true.

So somebody that does a fruit canal up the road could be far better than somebody that does one down the road in the same city, you know?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:16:22)

Yes, I was going to say, let’s not be unfair to people in the Democratic Republic because that could happen from one end of Sydney to the other or literally in the same building. But, I know, this is a technically sensitive, very sensitive technique. I would argue again that it’s the most challenging to do really well. And yet any dentist can have a crack at doing a root canal treatment.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:16:32)

Yeah, 100%.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:16:38)

And if the criteria is a patient comes in in pain and that patient, that dentist gets them out of pain to a patient, that dentist has done a great job and getting him out of pain is certainly a great relief. But have they completed the root canal treatment to its technically excellent level? And that is what we’re going to talk about now. What and and let me put a cave it on a cave it on this at the beginning.

Both you and I are very aware of the complexity and structure of a tooth. Not only are there many different canals, but the dentinal tubules are a technical challenge which has been considered and is considered in this process. So let’s just start from that point of view and talk about how do you do root canal treatment really well?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:17:46)

You do a really good root canal with good preparation, good planning. So that starts with, like I said, a three-dimensional scan. You need to assess the anatomy of the tooth. Is there curved roots? How many canals are there? Is there strange anatomy that doesn’t allow you to get to the tip of the root? You know, there might be little branches right down the end of a root, which can make it really difficult to clean to its full extent.

Then there’s technical training. Have you gone off and done additional training in root canal therapy? You know, is it a, is it a short course or is it a, is it a postgraduate, you know, degree where it’s, it’s really rigorous and hard to get through and, know, the latest and greatest.

Evidence is being used on techniques, etc. So I know that Dr. Craig Wilson at our clinic has done postgraduate study in in in root canal therapy and you know, the standards that he sets is very high and it’s the same with, you know, when it comes to say placing dental implants, you can go to a general dentist can go to a short course on the weekend. And after two days start placing implants and then there’s people that are

that have gone off and done postgraduate studies and done it for two, three, four, five years and understand the real nitty gritty nuance of what it takes to do a successful implant. So I think that skill level is important, but having said that, there’s a few things to realize with what results in a great outcome for a patient.

Unfortunately, as practitioner, we can only really control one aspect of that. I can only control the extent to which I do it to a high standard. So I can worry about the technique, but I can’t control the amount of infection, the type of bacteria that are present when that patient turns up. I can’t control how that patient’s immune system will respond to the treatment. Right.

So when one of them fails, like I’ve seen patients that go and have it done with a specialist, it’s done impeccably on a three-dimensional scan, it looks perfect, but it’s failed. It hasn’t worked. They’re still in pain. There’s still residual infection. They’ve needed to have the root canal, the tooth removed. That’s because we can’t control every aspect. We can’t control the host response.

And so this is why we say that the chances are normally on your side, that it’ll still be in your, in your mouth in working function at, you know, 90, 95 % after 10 years, but you can still fall within that small percentage that, that it doesn’t work out for. So that’s important to know the host response is something that we cannot control.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:21:03)

And that’s something that needs to be monitored throughout a patient’s life, obviously, and respected and respected. I think that’s important too, just because it looks good and it’s been good. You know, the patient’s immune response and medical history at the time changes things. But coming back to the technique itself, I know that microscopy, using a microscope makes a big difference. Talk to us a little bit about the levels of microscopy that are employed in you know, in root canal treatment and why that’s important.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:21:40)

Yeah, so just to give people context, when you’re trying to find the canals of the tooth, they’re so small, they’re teeny tiny. So if you looked at these canals through a naked eye, you could, with no magnification, you could really struggle to find them. They’re very difficult to pick up. So magnification is hugely important to get a good result because if you don’t…find them, you can’t clean them. And then if you can’t clean them, the bacteria stays there and then you get a root canal that will fail. So yeah, I mean, when I do dentistry, I use magnification as a, as a bare minimum. My, my magnification level is 5.7 times magnification. So when I do a filling, I’m wearing something that’s five, I can see the tooth in 5 seven times the size so your tooth looks 5.7 times the size.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:22:35)

And just to be clear, these are little magnifying glasses that are glued onto the lenses of your own glasses. They’re called loops, but it goes way beyond that, doesn’t it?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:22:46)

Yeah. So there’s different levels of magnification. You can get these loops, these magnification glasses at 1.5 times, two times. You can go all the way up to like seven, nine times on, on glasses themselves, but then there’s also microscope. So root canal therapy done on the microscope is obviously advantageous because, know, for example, our microscopes at the clinic can go up to 19 times.

So to find little canals, to look at the anatomy closely, to look for little root fractures that might make it fail, that you might not see, you know, just correct. unless it’s really, really obvious, you know, this makes, you know, your, your root canal far more likely to be successful. I suppose what I also stress to people is and won’t show up on an X-ray.

You can’t compare, like a lot of negative data on root canals was done using very, very old techniques, often done with no magnification, no, no modern medicaments and vibration that we use to get them into the little nooks and crannies into the, in the, in the root canal system. So again, you can’t compare apples to oranges. Like if somebody’s doing it under 19 times magnification, it’s very different to somebody that’s doing it with the naked eye.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:24:24)

And part of what the technique does is because these canals are so fine, very hard to get medicaments into them. So what you’re actually doing is increasing the diameter of the canal so that you can get antiseptics down. What kind of antiseptics are used to try and address the issue of the anatomy of the tooth being full of dentinal tubules? How do we get that stuff into where there is bacteria?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:24:57)

Yeah. So when you first go into it, when you first look and find, look for and find canals that they’re tiny, like you said, and so you have to shape them clean and shape them. So you are widening the canals to allow medicaments to get to where you need them to go, which is down at the end of the route more often than not. and so you widen them, you put sodium hyperchlorite down there, which is obviously bacterial cytotoxic, so it kills the bacteria that are causing the issue. And we use vibrating techniques to get them into these little tubules and little accessory canals, which branch off the main canals, which is what you can see on an x-ray. You can just see the main canal, but there’s a whole 3D anatomy there. And so there’s things called…like endoactivators, there’s little lasers that vibrate and get all this, all these medicaments into these canals where little bacteria can hide to minimize the amount of bacteria that’s in the tooth so that you can help yourself, the host, overcome this infection. But there’s this notion that, you know, because it’s not sterile, completely sterile, that that is a problem and it can be for some hosts that don’t respond well. But I always stress to people that you can never really get anything 100 % sterile. So at any particular point, your skin isn’t sterile. It’s got bacteria, viruses, fungi all over it. When we do a filling even, there’s no way of knowing that we’ve got 100 % of the bacteria that have caused that decay to happen, that hole to happen that we’ve removed.

100 % of that, but we need to facilitate an environment whereby we’ve got the majority of it that our immune, our host response, can actually overcome the remaining bacteria to win the battle. Right. So I think that that’s important. This notion of a hundred percent sterility can never be achieved, but when you have a knee surgery, it’s never a hundred percent sterile. When you have a filling done, it’s never a hundred percent sterile.

When you have a hip replacement, it’s never a hundred percent sterile, but we don’t implode because we have an advanced immune system that can deal with, you know, the parts that are left behind. We’re trying to assist the host to get an outcome.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:27:38)

Yes, which comes back to what we were saying initially about leaving gangrenous tissue and infection in the tip of the root that the body can’t get to is creating a situation that you just you’re just leaving it there and allowing it to fester. But the whole anatomy you were mentioning, the the medicaments sodium, hypochlorite, which I think is Milton’s, isn’t that Milton’s solution?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:28:05)

Yeah, I mean, so it is called as a brand name called that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:28:12)

Yeah, let’s not get down. And but the other one is doing it all in one go is not something that I know there’s this kind of, you can do root canals all in one go. What are your thoughts about that?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:28:25)

I know that there’s a lot of endodontists that do that, but they spend a lot of time cleaning it. Like they might spend hours doing the one. So they’re really getting the medicaments in there and cleaning it really well. I mean, the downside of doing that is obviously I’d like to preface this by the fact, by saying that I’m not an endodontist and obviously an endodontist would know more about this. But yeah, the…I won’t, okay.

I guess the negative is that the body needs time to heal. So having a duration of a couple of weeks between appointments can be beneficial to minimize the amount of infection that’s, that’s in that area. So that’s why we tend to space things out when we, when we do them. but yeah, you can do them.

Some endodontists do them all in one go, but it depends on why the canal has occurred. So if you’ve got a huge hole, decay has gotten into, you know, spread to the nerve and it’s set up a really, really inflammatory response, they’re in a lot of discomfort. That’s very different to somebody that doesn’t have any disease per se, they’ve just had a trauma, you know. So if you’ve smacked your front tooth really hard and it’s an acute blow and there’s not bacterial invasion that’s caused that infection. It’s the trauma itself that’s caused the blood supply to die. That might be one that’s more suitable to doing it in one go because there’s not actually a bacterial reason for it, if that makes sense.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:30:11) (Promptional)

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:31:24)

Yeah. How do we, but now I know we’re going to say, and we’re going to cover this too, that we constantly need to take a patient’s immune function and medical history in place. So resting that aside for one moment, how do we judge a technically excellent root canal? How is success measured in the traditional sense of the word ‘success’?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:31:48)

A patient that’s no longer in pain, if they started in pain, that’s one. You want patients to have quality of life. Number two is that you have done the workup with a three-dimensional scan to work out how many canals are present in the root anatomy, and you’re able during the procedure to find those canals that are present and to clean them down to the length of the root to increase the chances of minimizing the amount of bacteria left behind. If there is a large infection at the tip of the root or a small infection at the tip of the root, that bone that has been destroyed in that area has regenerated. So people need to remember that if you have something that shows on an x-ray to have affected the amount of bone and there’s an infection at the tip of the root and that has now filled in with bone again, then something positive has happened. You know, it’s like, if you want like, the human body is an adaptive, like adaptive machine, right? It’s amazing adaptation.

So if you want to get a stronger chest, or biceps and you lift heavy weights and it gets bigger and you’re now stronger in all the tests, then that’s a positive thing if that’s what you wanted to achieve. In the same sense that if you have a root canal and you’ve got, never thought I’d compare weightlifting to root canals, but here we are. If you have a root canal that has an infection at the tip of the root and you do a really, really, nice, successful root canal and that bone starts to regenerate in that spot. How can one argue that that that something positive has not occurred there? You’ve gone from something infected mushy, you know, filled with granulation tissue, and you’ve reformed bone like that wouldn’t happen unless the environment in which to do so was there for the body to regenerate, right?

So that’s where something positive has happened. So that bony fill in so that dark circle that’s now honeycomb in appearance and looks normal, that’s also the sign of a successful root canal. And then, and then like another one is that it’s really well sealed. So it’s one thing to finish it. It’s another thing to seal it well. one of the, well, a couple of the reasons why root canals fail is that there is bacterial ingress into the root canal system because it hasn’t been sealed well, for example, with a crown which is a cover that sits over the tooth and provides strength to reduce the risk of fracture, but to reduce the risk of bacterial ingress into the root canal system, which can result in reinfection. So that’s also a sign of success is how well the root canal is sealed.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:35:03)

Yes, because you mentioned something there that when a root canal is done, the tooth itself is weaker for sure and subjected to a lot of pressure in the mouth. So putting a cap or a crown over the tooth and sealing that off is important. What do you say to people who say, I don’t want something dead that’s in my body?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:35:21)

It is a nuanced discussion. I can understand that point of view. But we have to think about this. Like in it to give to give context. What what are teeth there for? This is always a conversation I have. What are teeth there for? They’re they’re there to help you masticate chew your food so that you can get nutrients from your food as much as possible to prepare for digestion so that your body can absorb nutrients and you can maintain your immune system, right? Without eating well, chewing well, we aren’t healthy, right? So yes, it is true that you do have something dead in your mouth, but then you have to weigh up whether or not losing that tooth is going to be a net negative for you.

Because if you can’t chew, you won’t live as long. We know that. You can’t get the nutrients from your food, but equally, a lot of people don’t realize is that if you extract a tooth, you can also affect the balance of the jaw. It can affect your pain levels in terms of TMJ and your muscles and mastication around your jaw can become tighter on one side, or you can favor one side that you’re not chewing on and that can stress the jaw out as well.

But a lot of people don’t realize is that when you chew, you actually have a pumping mechanism of blood flow into the brain. So we know that if you can chew well, you are less likely to get cognitive decline. So we know that we know that those that have dentures that, you know, have have an inability to chew well, they have far higher levels of dementia. Right. So

You have to look at this holistically, which is why we’re Sydney Holistic Dental Center. It’s not as simple as root canal’s bad, extract, no replacement because anything foreign or dead is bad. So if you don’t want to have something dead in your mouth, by all means extract it. But you have to know what the disadvantages of such a decision is. You are not going to have the same amount of chewing force. Your bite is not going to be as balanced.

And you will not get the same amount of blood flow into your brain, increasing your risk of cognitive decline. So everything besides your own natural healthy tooth is a compromise. It’s a decision, a triaging of what you’re willing to compromise on. If you don’t want a dead tooth, but you’re willing to go through, you know, not having the ability to chew as well, by all means, but you just need the information to make that decision. And then, you know.

The other thing as well is you can also monitor that dead tooth. We have the ability to monitor it now, far better than we ever did with three-dimensional scans. So people that are sitting on the fence that elect to have a root canal, and yes, it is something dead, but if it’s done to a good standard and it heals the infection, we know that something positive has happened, and we know that your ability to chew and reduce your risk of cognitive decline and all those sorts of negatives is reduced.

And you can just follow it up with CBCTs, three-dimensional scans every couple of years to see if anything’s changed. And if it has changed, you can extract it and you can look at placing an implant or doing a bridge.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:38:57)

Yeah, which is, I know, something that we’d often discussed, and that was that it’s so tempting to be dogmatic. It really is appealing. There’s something appealing about, no, all root canals are bad. I don’t do root canals. I remove root canals. I’ve often felt that I almost wished I’d always been a lot more dogmatic because it’s a much easier conversation to have than this more nuanced one. And not only have you eliminated the most technically challenging thing from your practice, which is a big relief to you, but you’ve introduced another aspect of dentistry, which is, a lot, with all due respect, a lot more straightforward and a lot more lucrative. What are the alternatives to root canal treatment?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:39:44)

Yeah, I think just before I mentioned that Ron, I would like to add that, you know, I think when people hear the word holistic, they’ll come in and they’ll go, do you guys do root canals here? How can you be holistic? Or they say, do you place titanium implants here? That’s not holistic. Or they’ll say, you like?

You guys are a completely anti-fluoride, aren’t you? You know, and our definition of holistic is not being dogmatic. You know, I’ve seen some really negative results of people, holistic dentists being too dogmatic. So for example, I’ve got a patient who has had six root canals removed, right? Because the dentist said that all root canals, no matter what state that they are in, notwithstanding what I just mentioned about cognitive decline risk of the, the inability to chew have had six teeth removed, right? And then they haven’t replaced them with dental implants because that’s a foreign body, which is a no-no according to this particular holistic dentists, right? So I’ve seen 40, 50 year olds in dentures that can’t chew very well and they haven’t been able to eat really nutrient dense, hard foods for years. And then you think, well, have you really done that patient a service? I don’t know that you have, you know, each their own and people can make whatever decisions they make. But I think, you know, you’re going to be infinitely better by restoring what nature gave you having the ability to chew than saying all root canals need to be removed. You can’t do implants. You can’t do anything. You know, I don’t know that that’s necessarily best practice and best for quality of life. So what, what our definition of holistic dentistry is, is who am I, who have I got in the chair? What’s their circumstances, medical history wise, you know, goals, where they want to go, etc.

And what solutions can I provide them that are tailored to their particular circumstances rather than going, I don’t have to think, I don’t have to be nuanced. I’ll just take out all root canals. you know, it’s not based on individual circumstances. So we pride ourselves on, you know, making sure that we tailor things. Like for example, a lot of people go, you know, do you ever recommend a fluoride toothpaste? Because you’re holistic, clearly you don’t and I’m like, well, no, like I do, because there are certain circumstances where that’s important. So for example, I’ve got a patient that has had radiation to his, he’s had oral cancer, he’s had radiation to his mouth. He has no saliva whatsoever. None. he, every time I see him, because he doesn’t have the saliva to neutralize the acid that he gets from chewing and drinking and living his life, mouth breathing, whatever he might be doing.

Then he comes in every single time it has tooth decay. Now, if I say to him, I’m anti-topical fluoride, am I doing him a service? I’ve got him on the highest level of fluoride toothpaste and we’ve been managing to arrest that process from getting worse for a period of time. But then I’ve got another patient that is 45 years old, has used a natural toothpaste his whole life, his diet’s impeccable, he’s healthy. And then I’ve, you know, he said, should I use a fluoride toothpaste? And I said, absolutely not. You’ve been using a natural toothpaste for the last 20 years. You’ve never had a hole. Your teeth are perfect. So you need to tailor your treatment to the person in front of you rather than being dogmatic and taking the nuance out of decision-making just to, just to add to your point there, Ron, I thought I’d give a…Cup.

Dr RonEhrlich (00:44:06)

No, no, good. And I mean, this is what patient centered means. I mean, it’s about the patient who’s sitting in the chair being the center of what’s being done to them, not just because you like or don’t like something. It’s what’s appropriate for them. No, the alternatives then are extract the tooth and do nothing, which you’ve identified problems, extract the tooth and do an implant.

Well, by putting an implant in, by the way, an implant is dead too. So that’s worth noting. An implant is dead, very much more lucrative. I mean, it’s actually easier. No, it is easier to extract a tooth, put an implant in and the crown on top of it. And it’s more lucrative than trying to restore a tooth endodontically. I think that needs to be said. Let’s call the spade a spade. And the third alternative is to do a denture, a removable appliance which is very challenging because you have to remove that after every meal. And if you don’t periodontally a gum wise, you are compromising your health. So there’s so much to consider here in that it’s also worth mentioning Lou and I think we’ve had many patients like this who have had a technically perfect root canal done. I mean, the 3D X-ray looks magnificent. They have got a beautiful restoration on top but they’re sitting there telling us that the tooth feels uncomfortable. Why? Why would that tooth be uncomfortable? They’ve been told by their endodontist it’s perfect. They’ve been told by their dentist the crown is perfect. They can’t be in pain. Lou, why are they in pain?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:45:50)

A few reasons, one other alternative before we move on there Ron is obviously a bridge. That’s where you have to do a crown preparation on either side of the gap. You have to remove a little bit of tooth structure either side, and then it sits over the top and that’s another option which doesn’t involve implant surgery. The disadvantage of that is that you have to remove tooth structure on teeth that don’t necessarily need tooth structure removing. That’s another pro and con is that you’re obviously the pro is that you avoid surgery. The con is that you have to remove, remove some tooth structure. And if something goes wrong with either tooth on that side, it can be problematic for the bridge.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:46:38)

And and Lew, the other pro to that scenario is if the teeth on either side of the tooth that’s been extracted need crowns on them anyway. Yeah. Why not do a bridge? So then you then you’re actually ticking two boxes at the same time. But go on. Yes. Why is the patient who’s had this technically superb dentistry done still in pain?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:46:56)

Yeah, so there could be some microscopic crack within the tooth that hasn’t been identified, which is extremely difficult to see on an x-ray or visually. So that could be one reason. There might just be a host response that hasn’t gone well. Like I mentioned to you, you can do a technically perfect root canal. You can do all the right things, but the host, the immune system of the host hasn’t responded well. And they can still be pain, but also there might be an issue with the way that their teeth meet, AKA their bite. It might be that the crown is too high. This is what we talk about in, it’s called occlusion, the way the teeth meet. It may be that there is a high spot, a traumatic spot where they’re biting into and sometimes a small adjustment to make the bite more balanced, the way the teeth meet more balanced, and then the pain can go away. So there are a few of the reasons. They might be clenching and grinding their teeth at nighttime and traumatizing the periodontal ligament, which contains nerve endings, blood vessels that can be crushed over nighttime when you clench and grind. So they might be needing a nighttime appliance to protect their teeth from further wear and tear. So there’s a few reasons.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:48:20)

I know there’s something that patients, know, which is pretty disturbing, which patients are exposed to when they read an article which says ‘97 % of cancer patients have this dental procedure, root canal treatment’. I mean, I know I was looking at a website many years ago, mercola.com. And I think we both have looked at the website and I think there are many things on that site that I think are fantastic. But then I read this and saw this article which said ‘97 % of all root canal treatments have this procedure done’ and then had 10 references. And I went and looked up all 10 of those references. And this goes back to the study, the episode we did last week on evidence-based medicine and not one of the studies said that. I read every part of every article and not one of them said that. What’s your experience with this kind of issue?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:49:15)

Yeah, I think, look, as a general rule, like when you see a headline like that, it certainly is attention grabbing. But it’s not really rigorous science, like just to throw a number like that out, because you could drive 97 % of cancer patients drank water, you know, like it’s, it doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, there’s this correlation doesn’t mean causation.

And like we’ve been mentioning in this chat, Ron, there’s so much nuance to what a good root canal is. you’re basically saying that 97 % of, if you’re saying 97 % of cancer patients have a root canal, it’s like, well, what type of root canal? Is it done well? Is it not done well? Is it a successful root canal by the…by the criteria that we’ve already discussed, all those sorts of things. I’ve had a look at some data on root canal and cancer. There’s not a lot of studies on it at all. And one that keeps kind of being mentioned on social media or on some of these websites is one that was done in a lab and they looked at they looked at changes in cell characteristics, almost like stiffness of cells. So remember it’s done in a lab, not on humans. And they found that it just changes the stiffness of a particular cancer cell. So this specific bacteria that are commonly found in root canals, know, root canal, sorry, in infections in the jawbone.

can cause the structural stiffness change in cells that were treated in a lab, so not in somebody’s mouth, obviously. And then they found that their recommendation, so it’s actually interesting, their recommendation was increased oral hygiene because they’re just bacteria that you find in the mouth anyway. So nothing to do with root canals yet they’re being used to demonized root canal. And if at the end of the paper, it says, this speaks to the importance of root canal therapy. Okay, so doing root canal therapy was a solution to this problem. Right. And the oral hygiene is important because the bacteria that were in these infections have the have the ability to change the structure of certain cancer cells in a petri dish, right. So then they’re saying

The solution is to do a good root canal to actually reduce the amount of these bacteria present, right? Because that’s what it does.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:52:22)

This was an article that’s used to justify.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:52:26)

The link between cancer and root canal. So the paper actually is flawed because it’s obviously, you know, basically looking at a specific metric, which is, okay, does it change the characteristics of cells? Okay, so just because a cancer cell becomes stiffer, what does that mean clinically? It doesn’t address that in the paper. Right. So

Then the paper says, this speaks to the importance of a good root canal therapy, because a good root canal therapy will minimize the amount of those bacteria. And it also said it speaks to the importance of impeccable oral hygiene, because those bacteria are present in the mouth anyway.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:53:19)

Right. Yes, it’s interesting because when you do and I’ve done this for the course that I give called Mastering Oral Health, which is for health practitioners and patients, there’s a plug for a course. But but, know, when I looked at the incidence of of infection at the tip of a root, which is coming back to the diagnosis, I found the incidence of periapical periodontitis, which is the name of that periapical being the tip of the root and infection is really high, even in root canal filled tooth. And this speaks to the importance of how well it is done. Coming back to what we’ve been discussing anyway.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:54:02)

Yeah. And I think that, you know, if you, if you’ve got, like, for example, yesterday, I had a patient with stage four pancreatic cancer. She’s got a break in her treatment. I sent her for a three dimensional scan, right? It showed she had two root canals, one on the top left molar that had a chronic infection at the tip of the root, even after a well done root canal. Okay. So that’s a problem for her immune system.

And I recommended she not try to save that tooth. I recommended her to have that removed because of her clinical specific situation, not dogma. The fact that she has pancreatic cancer means that she needs all the help that she can get to minimize the immune stress on her body. So she had a break in her treatment. I removed the tooth yesterday. There was so much granulation tissue in the bone, right?

So it was just mushy at the end, I cleaned all that out, I put some PRF in there to help with the healing. So platelet rich fibrin. So I drew blood from the patient, I spun it in the centrifuge, all her growth factors come to the surface of this, this tube, and then I pack it in to help with the with the healing and the regeneration of the bone. So again, a very holistic technique using your own body to help with the healing one of the many advancements we’ve got at the clinic, but on the lower right-hand side, there was a root canal with no signs of any infection on the three-dimensional scan. The patient didn’t want to have that tooth removed. And I was fine with that because there weren’t any signs that there was a problem. Now, what’s interesting is that in her last PET scan, so this is where they inject the glucose, and then they take a…

Scan of the body to see where those, where those, where it kind of lights up on the scan. The doctor, the treating oncologist had no idea that there was a tooth issue, but yet on the PET scan, the doctor identified the top left-hand side on the PET scan as potentially being a problem because it was showing up as a certain color.

Whereas the lower right-hand side did not show a single bit on the PET scan. So yesterday I extracted the tooth. The patient will be infinitely better off with that and it will support her journey to try and gain back her health from pancreatic cancer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:56:43)

And just to be clear, that patient was unaware of that infection, had no pain in that infection in that tooth, had had it done technically well, but still had infection there. And you chose, because of her medical, current medical history, to remove that tooth and do everything you did.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:57:06)

Yes, but one step before that, Ron, I identified the fact that she was diagnosed with this issue and I knew she had root canals. And I said, I think that this warrants doing a three dimensional scan. And then the result of that is that we found the infection that has now been dealt with and she’ll be better off.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:57:33)

Which interestingly, amazingly, the oncologist had picked up in the PET scan that something was happening up on that top left hand side. And this speaks to a much bigger story. And I think probably a good story, you know, as we’re coming towards the end of this episode, that if you have a complex medical history, if you’ve been diagnosed with heart disease, cancer, any one of 100 autoimmune conditions, diabetes, I mean anything really, any medical condition, the importance of having a comprehensive oral exam. I mean, I can’t overstate the importance of that. And that includes if you’ve had complex dental work done, having a 3D x-ray done.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:58:21.)

Yeah, I just think, you know, this is not a criticism of other practices because there’s amazing dentists all over Australia. But I just think that spending time with patients that have complex, well, anyone, but particularly those that have complex medical history is important because if you’re doing a checkup, clean x-rays in 15 minutes.

If somebody’s got pancreatic cancer, you’re not going to be able to be thorough enough and spend the time with patients to identify what investigation, further investigations need to be done in order to make sure that they’re actually not having any additional immune stress from the oral cavity. And in her particular case, that’s what we did, you know? So it’s important to take time with people.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:59:16)

Yes. And that, I think we would refer to that as a comprehensive oral exam, which typically as a new patient, you would spend, how long would you spend just doing a comprehensive exam on a patient that you’ve just met?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:59:31)

Yeah, one hour, one hour. Yeah, no, no treatment, no cleans, no nothing, just just diagnosis and conversation and you know, going over things in great detail.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:59:49)

Lew, we’ve covered some territory here today. I mean, it’s a very contentious issue. It’s an issue that I know we in our practice have grappled with and considered all of the alternatives for many, many years. And I know you guys are doing that still to this day with a whole lot of new technology. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (01:00:06)

No worries Ron, pleasure.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:00:12)

Thanks, Lew.

Well, as I said, it depends. It depends on quite a lot. It depends on the technical ability of the practitioner doing it, because as I mentioned, it is without a doubt, I believe, well, in my opinion, one of the most technically challenging things to do in a technically challenging profession like dentistry. mean, when we talk about specialties and we talk about skin specialist, nose and throat specialists, dentists, heart specialists, lung specialists, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, in dentistry, we get even more specialized and you don’t get more specialized than focusing on the root canal of a tooth. That is a very, very minute and intricate work and it requires careful approach. So it depends. It depends on the skill of the practitioner.

It depends on the preparation before the treatment. depends on whether you’re using 3D X-rays to do your assessment, whether you’re using microscopes to see the minutiae, which if you miss is going to result in a failure. It depends on whether you can get the medicaments down throughout the tooth. And yes, dentists are very aware of the challenges that tooth anatomy has, not just in branches of canals, but in the structure of the tooth. And it is about a balance as well.

You never get anything sterile, 100 % sterile. It is about restoring a balance to put the immune system in control. So it also depends on your immune system. It depends on your long-term immune system. It depends on how well the crown is, the tooth is crowned and supported and sealed. It depends on a whole lot more.

So I will have a download brochure for you to look at and maybe share with your own dentist, but it is reminds me of that bumper sticker that I was once, Petria King actually shared with me. And that was ‘my karma just ran over your dogma’.

And it is so easy to be dogmatic and say all root canals are fine. You have no problem with that. I don’t believe that’s true. And it’s equally dogmatic to say, you know, no root canals, you should have every root canal out. You’ve just eliminated the most technically challenging thing in dentistry and replaced it with one of the most lucrative and straightforward things to do in most cases, which is the placing of an implant. Not always straightforward, I know, but it’s a lot easier to do than a root canal treatment.

So we’ll have links to the website if you’re looking to have a comprehensive oral exam, which I believe you should look to have, would suggest you have that. I would also encourage you to look at the course, Mastering Oral Health, and I’ll have a promotion code that you can use. It’ll be in the show notes. You can use to get 50 % off that course. It’s a five-module course called Mastering Oral Health, the Clinician’s Guide, and it deals with everything from what a comprehensive oral exam is, what periodontal, what the…implications of periodontal disease are to every disease, about also about toxicity of mercury, the root canal issue in more detail, about airways, about sleep, about breathe, about chronic headaches and neck aches, all part of mastering oral health. So I’ll have a special promotion code for you in the show notes. I hope this finds you well. The other thing I might say is that if you join the unstressed health community, you actually get that course included in the membership.

There’s an even bigger giveaway. Hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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Chapters:00:00 Understanding Evidence-Based Medicine
11:41 Biases in Research and Their Impact
19:41 Evaluating Research Quality
28:19 Reproducibility and Its Challenges
28:47 Evidence-Based Marketing: Relative vs Absolute Risk
32:16 New Chapter
42:02 Towards a Patient-Centred Model
44:54 The Nuances of Bias in Medicine
45:30 Relative Vs Absolute Risk and the ‘Number-Needed-to-Treat’
46:38 Taking Control of Your Health

Takeaways:Evidence-based medicine is often misinterpreted and oversimplified.
Understanding the difference between relative and absolute risk is crucial for making informed decisions.
Biases in research can significantly affect outcomes and interpretations.
Industry funding plays a significant role in shaping medical research.
Not all published studies are of high quality or rigor.
Patients should take an active role in their health decisions.
The importance of critical thinking in evaluating medical literature.
Many biases can influence research results.
A double-blind randomised controlled trial is considered the gold standard.
Patient-centred care is essential for better health outcomes.

Navigating Evidence-Based Medicine: Myths and Realities________________________________

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:02.222)
Hello and welcome to Unstressed Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today’s subject is evidence-based medicine. And that term is one that you will often hear prefacing any health advice that you get. Yes, this advice is evidence-based. And your doctor will say to you, yes, this treatment is evidence-based. And the public health officials will say, this evidence is, this treatment, a policy is evidence-based.

And to the uninitiated, that would seem very reassuring, but to anybody that’s taken a slightly deeper dive into that term, you will know that it is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. Another aspect to it is when doctors, when you ask your medical practitioner for X, Y or Z, and they say, there’s no evidence to support that, which implies that they have read all the evidence that there is.

And anybody who has taken a deeper dive into that will know that that is just simply not possible. It would be better for that practitioner to simply be honest and say, I’m not aware of any evidence to support that. And that would be an honest answer. But evidence-based medicine is an issue. And one of the most cited medical health practitioners in the world, Professor John Ioannidis from Stanford University, has alerted us to the fact that there is difficulty in distinguishing between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based marketing.

And that is very much the topic of today. What is evidence-based medicine? What are some of the challenges, some of the biases, some of the pitfalls, and what can we do about it? How can we approach it? But in order to solve a problem, it always helps to know whether there is a problem, what that problem is.

And this is a story, particularly for a busy health practitioner that is very easy to miss, but once you hear it, very difficult to ignore.

My guest today is Dr. Lewis Ehrlich. Now, Lewis is the principal of the Sydney Holistic Dental Centre, a practice that I founded over 40 years ago with my brother, Dr. Joshua Ehrlich. He is co-principal there with Dr. Yin Yin Teoh and Dr. Craig Wilson.

And it is a patient-centered practice and it has dealt with the issues of evidence-based for our entire professional life. And we’ve kept a very open mind about it.

Now, this is actually a two-part podcast because in this first part, I talked to Lewis about evidence-based medicine. The reason I do is not only because he is a dentist in a holistic practice.

But some four or five years ago or three or four years ago when the pandemic arose and there was a whole deal of great deal of controversy about what evidence was, Lewis decided to do a degree at Oxford University, the home of evidence-based medicine. This is where the fathers, if you like, of the Cochrane collaboration, which was put together to give some weight, to give some meat behind what evidence-based really was about.

The heads of the Department of Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford were his teachers and I was so impressed with him undertaking such a study that I wanted to get him on to share his insights and all that he has learnt along the way.

I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Lewis Ehrlich

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:03.16)
Welcome back to the show, Lewis.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (03:05.233)
Thanks, Uncle Ron. Good to be back on.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (03:07.502)
You can just call me Ron for this podcast. Listen, you know, we have we’re talking today about evidence based medicine and it’s a word that or an expression that many doctors use and it gives them peace of mind, I guess, and many patients listen to and feel reassured by. But I think we both know that it’s not everything that it’s cracked up to be.

We’re going to cover some of those challenges. wondered if we might just start with what exactly is evidence-based medicine? How was it originally conceived?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (03:41.766)
Yeah, evidence-based medicine is basically giving a framework for making clinical decisions. you know, making them based on evidence that’s there or not there, and that’s an important distinction. The purpose of evidence-based medicine is to actually make sure that you’re doing decisions in your practice that are actually based on evidence. And it’s important to realize that it’s flung about as a term, but a lot of people don’t actually know what that means.

And I can speak from personal experience because in dental school and in my bachelor of science degree, and I’ve studied for now 21 years, I still, even after all those years, I still didn’t really know how to analyze scientific literature. And I think a lot of people speaking to people at Oxford, they actually don’t know too much about it. Medical doctors that I was there with, was there with neurosurgeons, oncologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, you name it, everyone was in the classroom.

And we all asked the question to each other, how much work did you do in medicine or in dentistry or in any other field that they were involved in on analyzing rigorously the data that was presented? And it wasn’t very much at all, you know? So then the term evidence-based medicine or there’s no evidence to support that or there is evidence to support that is…

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (05:37.704)
is flung about a lot with health practitioners. And I think there’s a bit of a issue throwing terms out like that because it’s one thing to say that, but it’s another thing to actually understand how to critique studies, which a lot of people aren’t armed with and I was one of those people. So that’s why I went and did it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (06:03.598)
Yes, well, we’re going to dive into a bit more of the detail and answer some of those challenges because it is a word that’s bandied around. It’s almost like a doctor. Once the doctor says, this is evidence based, they feel justified to continue. another common term is, well, there’s no evidence to support. And that would suggest that they have read all the evidence that there is there. And I think we both know that it takes around 600 hours a wee to keep up with all of the evidence. So that’s not a real statement in and of itself. But you chose and you’ve acknowledged the fact that you’ve been in practice, you’ve been studying now for over 20 years and you weren’t well placed to understand what it actually meant. Before we dive into it, tell us a bit about what you did and why you did it.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (06:57.148)
Yeah, so I recognize that a lot of scientific research studies that you would read, I actually didn’t have any skillset specifically to go and read it and go, is this good data? Is this accurate data? Are the findings relevant? Can you throw them out? Is the statistics solid? Is it just basically good research?

at the end of the day, it’s like, if somebody brings you a dental product, for example, and they say this is the latest and greatest and you should adopt it because you know, x, y, z, you actually have to know whether or not that’s true. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a cardiologist, a dentist. If you don’t have the skill set, you can’t, you can’t analyze it and you can’t pass that on to your patients. So I feel more confident in my practice now that having gained these skills that I can actually question what I do, you know, to a level that I would assume is higher than most. And therefore I can get better health outcomes based on knowing what to analyze.

So I think that it’s a good thing for practitioners to do. But even within that, there’s still huge flaws within the evidence-based system as well. And I thought that Oxford, one of the reasons why I chose Oxford was that that was the birthplace of evidence-based medicine. And the theme through all my professors was that they weren’t afraid to rip studies to shreds and say, you know, this is this is not great evidence. This is this is good evidence. And even if it meant that it didn’t hold the university in necessarily good stead, you know, so they were willing to critique themselves to a really high standard. And they kind of knew what they were there for. They knew that they trying to advance science as opposed to. You know.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (09:17.828)
allowing industry influence or, you the reputation of the university to be maintained at a really high level. I thought that they were really thorough, as unbiased as possible. And it was just a really brilliant experience on that front. And speaking of bias, I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. There’s a catalog of bias that the University of Oxford have established as about, it’s an ongoing document and they’ve got about 48 different types of biases that can be found within scientific research. So at the University of Oxford, they’ve found 48 biases that can sway data and sway the evidence and the results of evidence. So for example,

One is all’s well bias, all’s well bias. So that’s where positive outcomes are more likely to be published as opposed to negative outcomes. So if it’s positive, they’ll bias it towards being published and more data comes out on that particular topic because people love to read positive….positive results as opposed to negative results.

We know in research that negative results are less likely to be published. So there’s one such bias. And then there’s another one called hot stuff bias, which is where the latest and greatest fad is always sort of published in positive terms. And there’s just almost this raft of research on the newest, coolest thing. It might be

microbiome testing, it might be some sort of new, new, amazing tests that establishes whether you can pick up a disease early or not, you know, this is like hot stuff in the media. So they’re more likely to get, get a lot of airtime and almost sway data in the studies to make sure that that’s pumped out and in accordance with what’s come before it.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (11:37.96)
So there’s 48 different types of biases that they’ve established. And I think that that shows that they’re ahead of the game where you can read a paper, use the catalog of bias, that they’ve got examples. And when I’m reading a paper, I would actually just go through and go, that’s bias in that sense, that’s bias in that sense, that’s bias in that sense. And therefore I’m less likely to…

to really trust that evidence if a lot of those biases were found in those papers.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:13.678)
I mean, another bias must be who’s paying for the research. That’s a big bias. In terms of health care, medicine, what percentage of research is funded by the pharmaceutical industry?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (12:29.986)
in well the TGA for example that’s the Australian equivalent of the FDA

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:36.152)
That’s the Therapeutic Goods Association as opposed to the Food and Drug Administration in America. Yeah.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (12:42.512)
Yeah, 96 % of funding comes from industry. So that’s a huge, huge number. But, I think that would surprise people, but I think to play devil’s advocate to that, there’s two things to mention. Obviously it’s not good that the tentacles of, you know, private enterprise have entered science.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (12:51.778)
Yes.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (13:10.108)
Right. So that’s a huge problem. But on the flip side, you have to realize that performing studies is extremely expensive and a lot of universities don’t have the backing to constantly pump out the amount of research that’s necessary to keep up the pace with medical science and all its advances. So there, there are industry sponsored studies that we’ve read that are quite solid, you know, but they’ve we’ve needed a private enterprise to actually provide the resources to conduct studies. So what I’m saying is you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in the sense that yes, there’s huge influence, which is a problem that you need to recognize.

But on the flip side to that, you sometimes need industry money in order to conduct the studies to…get the information out there and get advancements out there. So for example, for a study to make its way into recommendations, that can take up to 17 years. So you can read medical guidelines on how to eat a healthy diet or what to do for heart health.

Now we can, that’s a minefield in and of itself because we can analyze diets and what’s heart healthy and all these sorts of things. The cows come home. But the point I’m trying to make is that it takes 17 years for that to become recommendations. So in order to speed up the pace at which recommendations are actually delivered to patients with the latest and greatest, you actually need to be conducting a lot of studies. So to play a

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (15:12.104)
a sort of balanced argument here. It’s a problem that 96 % of industry funding of the TGA is there. But equally, you need some sort of pumping in of financial resources to get studies out that can speed up science and advancement. So there’s studies that I’ve read where I’m like, okay, that industry influence, you can see it, clear as day and it’s a problem and it’s bias and you can tell that they’re trying to get out positive information so that they make money for their shareholders. But equally I’ve read studies that have been sponsored by industry that have said, actually this doesn’t work. This isn’t good. So what I would say to people is that there’s nuance and not to say, okay, because there’s industry sponsor of this study, we need to just throw it out.

Okay, because you still have to analyze what’s within the paper and you can tear it to shreds and find that actually it’s a solid paper that can be used. So I think there’s nuance that people need to understand because we’re very black and white in today’s society. We’re very polarized. And so I would exercise caution with that because there are some reasons why they’re involved, which can be positive.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:27.298)
Yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (16:37.422)
Yeah. Well, I admire your, you know, that nuance and clearly having done the course and being exposed to the reality to hear you speak in such nuanced terms is very reassuring. However, I would just add that if somebody, a pharmaceutical industry is funding a university to do studies and one of the 48 biases or two of the 48 biases are…all’s well. If they funded 20 of those studies and 15 of them were negative but five were positive, it’s very likely that the 15 that were negative may not find their way into the literature as much as quickly as the five that were positive, particularly if they added another bias, hot stuff to that, then you’ve got a double bias there, is an incentive. And the university would know, hey, look, we got, we got a positive result here and we’re to get more funding. So we’re really on a little bit of a something here. Let’s, let’s continue this relationship. And even better if the regulatory body is funded by the industry, that’s a really neat way of speeding approvals up. Isn’t it?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (17:59.1)
Yeah, 100%. So you’re correct. The data does show that positive studies are far more likely to be published, like I said earlier. And it is a little bit of a concern when you’ve got the people that are meant to be looking out for, you know, these drug companies that they’re doing the right thing, they’re pumping in so much money into the people that are meant to be guiding that. That’s a massive

Dr Ron Ehrlich (18:08.27)
Hmm.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (18:29.138)
That’s a massive conflict of interest. But also that’s another reason why I was really happy with Oxford is that they’re one of the leading universities that are getting actually out a conflict of interest database where, know, back in the day, it was very easy to kind of hide your, conflicts of interest, but they’re, really trying to aim for as much transparency as possible. And they’ve created a database where you can actually analyze the extent to which there is conflict of interest in studies. So you have to actually put it into a database now. So that’s driven in a large part due to Oxford.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (19:12.162)
What another thing that I think is worth mentioning because you mentioned, you know, 21 years of studying, you weren’t really well equipped to do it. You were in a cohort of students at Oxford that recovered almost every medical specialty, cardiologists, psychiatrists, doctors, dentists, whatever. I think it’s fair to say that doctors who who look at the literature will typically tick two boxes. Number one, if it’s published, in a referee journal, that to them is good enough and that constitutes evidence-based as far as they’re concerned. Or if they want to be really thorough, they’ll read the abstract. And that would account for probably 95 % of practitioners’ approach to evidence-based medicine. But an article in a referee journal involves much more than that. Can you just run us through, you know, a typical article in a research? What are they published? What’s wrong with just looking at an abstract or knowing that it’s published in a journal? Do I need to know any more than that?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (20:25.66)
Yeah. So I think the, the, the first point you raised there on is that you, there’s a difference between reference based medicine and evidence based medicine. a lot of look practice. have to, I have to again show nuance here. So as a health practitioner, we all know how under the pump we are. Okay. And there’s an absolute mountain of evidence. Right. So people need to spend time with their family. They need to see you know, all these different, all these different patients have to treat all these, you know, people day to day.

And so then to go and trawl through the research without a skillset to do so, like I mentioned, it’s really difficult. So are many people going to put in that effort? And the answer is likely no. So that’s, that’s obviously a problem for patient outcomes, but understandable, we’ve all been there. It’s not like I’m you know, 24 seven either. So you have to give people a little bit of a pass on that front, you know? so the, the difference between reference based medicine and evidence based medicine is that if I have, this also speaks to bias. If I have an idea of what I want to say or do or promote,

Dr Ron Ehrlich (21:34.627)
sure.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (21:52.668)
then I’m going to troll the evidence and I’m going to find a reference that supports my point of view. That is not the way to do science and practice your particular health profession. What it should be is here’s the question I want answered. I’m going to go through the research, analyze the research to a really high standard with the skillset that I’ve acquired, and I will then make an informed decision, an evidenced informed decision rather than, and you see it all over social media, what I’m talking about. This is my point of view. I’ve found a way of thinking I am going to find a reference, a result in an abstract, not in a paper, not gonna go to the lengths of reading the actual paper.

I’m going to find an abstract that supports my argument. I’m going to put up a social media post. I’m going to tell all my patients, I’m going to tell all my family, I’m going to, that’s the way a lot of people operate. And I think it’s problematic because it creates this immense division in society and it gets rid of the nuance within it. So, you know, like I’ve been to many doctors that say there’s no evidence to support that or that’s not right or

The science is clear on that. And then the flip side to that is that people don’t even look at evidence. The other side of the fence is just like, this is what I believe. This is what I know. And you get headstrong patients that come in and go, I don’t care how much study you’ve done. I don’t care how much experience you have. This is what I believe. And each to their own, no problem but they’re two sides to the spectrum. And so I suppose to answer the next part of your question is yes, there’s different journals that have what we call a higher impact factor. know, Cochrane Review, British Medical Journal, these are the New England Journal of Medicine. These ones are a higher impact. There’s more rigor.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (24:17.936)
more peer reviewing, et cetera. Now that’s not to say that there’s not issues with them. You know, just because it’s published in the New England Journal of Medicine doesn’t mean a paper hasn’t ever been retracted. know, so, you know, there’s, there’s several, there’s several examples of those that we discussed in our course where, you know, the New England Journal of Medicine was heavily criticized in, certain aspects, on certain topics, on certain science that we’d read.in class and tear it apart. So just because it’s a high impact journal doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s without flaws. But it means that it’s been more rigorously looked at by people that are hopefully as unbiased as possible as possible. But this notion that you can just read a paper and say, it’s in this high impact journal.

therefore I’m going to read the abstract and tell everybody as if it’s gospel is not necessarily the smart thing to do because even those papers need to be rigorously studied. Study design and the amount of people that have been in it. What were the results? What are the statistical analyses? Have people

Dr Ron Ehrlich (25:31.694)
But

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (25:45.434)
manipulated the statistics within it. How many studies were compiled in a systematic review? What were the quality of those studies? What were the conflicts of interest within those studies? There’s a million different things you can look at within a paper. And so this is why it’s frustrating when I hear there’s no evidence to support that. That’s a classic one.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (26:12.866)
Yes.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (26:14.556)
you know, that you’ll hear from a practitioner. Because it’s impossible to troll through all the research and to even within the ones that are published, there are still many ways in which you can critique that and say that it’s not necessarily accurate. But there are some times where we actually need to use what’s available to guide our clinical decisions as well.

So again, nuance, know, sometimes things aren’t studied as, as, as rigorously or as I suppose the amount of papers on a particular topic aren’t there for certain topics. You know, everything that’s ever been discovered once was not discovered. And so there’s a point at which, you know, there’s not a lot of data on things. And so you have to build on evidence over time, which is why you’ll hear at the end of it, more studies are needed, which is good.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (27:14.424)
Hmm. I mean, often within a paper and the, course, the reason people go through and just read the abstract is it’s usually one or two paragraphs and it’s quick and easy and easy to read because an article is typically starts with a hypothesis or a discussion about what they’re trying to do in this study. Then it goes through the methodology of, know, we used a thousand patients, we randomized control, we did this, we did that.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (27:27.581)
Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (27:43.266)
And then the next one is about statistics, what we found, the results and how we analyzed them. And here is the conclusion. And the conclusion often informs the abstract. That’s a typical study, but even within a study, the results, the statistics could say one thing and it’s not unusual for a conclusion to draw a different conclusion than what their own results showed. That happens too, doesn’t it?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (27:48.285)
Yep.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (28:13.702)
Yeah, it does. And it’s a minefield with statistics as well, because statistics are basically an analysis on whether or something is more likely to be true or not. Like, like almost like something didn’t happen by chance, you know, that that brings sort of rigor and strength to it to a paper. But even within that, there are really brilliant people out there that can bend statistics to find a result that they want to there’s

Dr Ron Ehrlich (28:45.548)
Hmm. So sort of deliver an all-wells, all-well result so they can keep getting funding to keep the machine of research going.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (28:57.458)
correct or the flip side to that is that the statistics is poor due to mistakes and then somebody who’s really good at analyzing statistics actually goes, that’s really incorrect statistical analysis and he’s the true result. So it can be deliberate or it can be mistakes or it can be completely accurate. That’s also true.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (29:27.25)
But it’s interesting, one of the really fascinating parts of reading a bit of research is does the abstract actually match the actual paper? Because there’s sometimes where the title of the paper will say, this is what we’re looking for. The abstract will say something different to what’s in the paper as well.

So, you know, there’s this whole thing called a Pico, which is population intervention, a comparator, and then an outcome. So they have to match, the abstract has to match what’s in the paper in that Pico, right? So oftentimes we had ones in class where those didn’t match up at all. You would read the title, the abstract, and then in the first paragraph, they started talking about something completely different.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:13.343)
No.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (30:25.98)
So then you throw that paper away, you don’t even bother, right? So that everything has to match. So yeah, I mean, it’s a real, I think it’s one of those topics that you could study for your whole life and you would never like truly master it. It’s extremely complex and nuanced, but.people love simplicity. And I think that that buts heads because people want to know for sure that something is true or not. And the reality is that there’s a huge amount of gray area within science, which is kind of a good thing because it keeps people curious to find out answers, if their heart’s in the right place, which is good.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (31:13.998)
Reproducibility is another important part of research, isn’t it? And there is a little bit of a problem with reproducibility in the healthcare industry, isn’t there?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (31:24.808)
Yeah, so nature, speaking of high impact journals, nature is a high impact journal, very well respected. They came up with a paper that showed so reproducibility is essentially, you know, the ability to reproduce results. So therefore you build confidence to know that those results are actually more likely to be true than not. And so nature, nature does study and show that 70 % of scientists couldn’t reproduce the study results of other scientists in their analysis and 50 % of scientists couldn’t reproduce the results of their own research when done again.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:12.92)
Jesus. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this comes back to, I mean, it’s great. I know there is a guy, a professor at Stanford University, John Ioannidis, who I’d love to get on as a guest. I’m gonna, that’s my next thing after you, Lew. Well, just to put this in perspective for our listener, when you write an article in a scientific journal and it gets referenced, that’s called a citation.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (32:25.81)
Yeah.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (32:31.334)
I’d love to listen to that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (32:42.158)
And if you get a couple of hundred or even a couple of thousand citations, you are doing very well. 10,000 citations is amazing. John A. and Edie’s has been cited over 200,000 times and he alerted us many, the medical health community many years ago to the fact that there is a very difficult to tell the difference between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based marketing. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (33:11.964)
Yeah, I think it comes back to a little bit of the tentacles of industry getting into science and then swaying results. I think that if you want to promote a new medical product, a new pharmaceutical, a new supplement even, you know, because let’s not forget the nutraceutical industry is not immune to bias as well, even though it’s considered more quote unquote natural.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (33:43.0)
so there’s, yeah, again, it’s, it’s one of those things where there’s huge amounts of biases, positive results and more likely to be published than negative ones. But like I also said, there are some good studies, you know, on industry as well. So, I mean, look, I think that you could definitely find huge amounts of papers that are evidence-based marketing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:57.826)
Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (34:09.048)
Yeah, I think I know we’ve been talking about this within our family and Annie, my wife, who works at University of Technology Sydney, and she prefers the term evidence informed, which is, I think, alludes more to your nuanced approach. There are some, what do, I mean, a lot of practitioners are not gonna go off and do a one year program at Oxford.
that you’ve done or 18 month program at Oxford that you’ve done on evidence based medicine. What are some red flags that practitioners and patients should look out for when evaluating these kind of things? What would you suggest? Knowing what you know now and knowing that a lot of practitioners aren’t going to do what you’ve done.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (34:54.524)
Yeah, so I think that the first thing to say is that there’s a there’s a huge amount of resources out there that don’t necessarily mean you have to go off and study, you know, for multiple years doing this this sort of course. So I mean, just there’s so many podcasts, for example, at the moment where they’re actually doing really great interviews that are showing you how to. analyze data. So I know, like, for example, Peter, it’s here is a, you know, has a big podcast called the drive. He’s got he’s had one back in 2023, where he sits down with somebody and they actually go through how to analyze research at a high level. So you could, you know, that’s an that’s an hour and a half or two hour podcasts, it can give you an idea. There’s so many sub stack people to follow. I

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:49.79)
Who are you following?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (35:51.784)
I follow Dr. Vinay Prasad. He’s an American oncologist that really understands how to dig into the data and simplify it for people. Very statistically sound as well. The head of Oxford Evidence-Based Medicine is a guy called Carl Hennegan and he has a

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:55.426)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:05.762)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (36:20.314)
subset called trust the evidence and they just go through examples of you know studies or topics that say one thing and they might say something different and they show you how to actually get to that point so that can give you a more sort of nuanced balanced approach as opposed to taking something as gospel so there are a few

But yeah, just in terms of paper analysis itself, you know, you’re obviously looking at sample size, you’re looking at study design, you’re looking at whether or not the statistics are sound, that’s another topic. You know, the quality of research put into a systematic review, like even within a study, you still have to go and look at the studies within the studies that they’ve quoted. So that can be a bit of a minefield as well. How much bias is in it? You know, like all that catalog of bias that I talked about earlier, you can go and see if there’s signs of those things popping up in a paper, a whole range of things. But I think that those…resources that I mentioned are actually a really good thing for health practitioners to go and listen to and subscribe to and just show an interest in because you’ll get better health outcomes and provide better advice.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:47.374)
We’ll have links to those in our show notes. Just coming back to the quality of a research, because this is another issue within evidence-based medicine that we’ve come to the point where a double-blind randomized control trial is seen as the gold standard for medical research. I mean, it might be worth reminding our listener of what a double-blind randomized control trial is, firstly.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (38:07.666)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (38:14.557)
Mm.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:15.118)
But in fact, let’s do that. What is, I mean, is that true? What are the levels of standards of research from randomized control to observational longitude? And I don’t even know what some of those mean. Can you just give us a little bit of a short 101?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (38:31.504)
Yeah. So like a, there’s just a pyramid of a hierarchy of evidence, essentially. So, you know, systematic review meta analysis is a compilation of whole range of studies. And then they’re the really rigorous ones are placed into the studies themselves, the study itself, and only the ones that are really rigorous get included. And then they do a full statistical analysis.

that’s what a meta meta analysis is. It’s the statistical side of things, but a systematic review is a compilation of the, the really rigorous papers that have made it into that to form a totality of evidence that suggests that a result is true or not. So that’s like the gold standard. Obviously a randomized control trial is a single study. So a systematic review is a compilation of, of all those studies.

Then the next level is obviously randomized control, double blinds. So you’ve got two groups compared to each other. One’s blinded, they don’t know that they’re getting an intervention versus another group that get a placebo, for example. And then the results are analyzed and…and recommendations based off that and then you get into observational studies, you know, where you…

Dr Ron Ehrlich (39:57.452)
And the double blind, is referencing the fact that not only is the patient blinded to what they’re receiving, but so is the practitioner. Is that right? Is blind as well. So that’s the double.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (40:07.046)
Yeah, the researcher is blinded as well. So there’s no bias and influence that could be, you know, they might not, if the researcher’s not blinded, they could, you know, potentially change things to guide people, guide the results to what they want. So it’s obviously far better if both the person and the researcher is blinded, because it’s more likely to minimize bias.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:36.428)
And just to remind our listener too about placebo, placebo typically would be something totally inert that wouldn’t elicit any kind of reaction at all. So you can’t get it. It’s not like you give the same, a different drug as the placebo, like you’re doing antidepressants, you’re giving the new antidepressant to one patient and an old antidepressant to another patient. That’s not a placebo. A placebo would be a sugar pill.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (40:44.125)
Yeah.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (41:04.326)
A sugar pill. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:05.806)
or something that’s not going to have any effect at all.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (41:08.614)
Yeah, like say you want to, like just off the top of my head, say you wanted to treat PTSD on military veterans and you give someone, you know, medical grade MDMA and you give somebody else a sugar pill. And that’s obviously going to build a lot of rigor into the data because you’re not comparing, you know, like for like.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:33.514)
Yeah, and the same would be true, say, I know this is a contentious issue, but vaccinations too. If you were trying to show that a vaccine was effective and safe, you would compare that vaccine to a sugar pill or a salt injection that had no effect at all. That would be a gold standard to establish the safety of a vaccine. that be that’d be right? Yeah, yeah, we could spend a whole hour talking about.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (41:56.144)
Yeah, correct.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:01.944)
Now, Lew I know there’s another aspect that is often used in the world of evidence-based marketing, and that is the difference between a relative and absolute risk. Like, I know that, for example, statins reduce the risk of heart attack or heart disease by 36%. And that’s really impressive. Who wouldn’t do something like that?

And we need to understand the difference between relative and absolute risk. Can you just explain that one to us?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:36.9)
Yeah, so really important because a lot of the the articles in the media will often use relative risk and people go, wow, that’s an amazing result. So for example, if you took a a new Alzheimer’s drug, and it reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s by 50%, you would read that in an article and go, wow, 50%. That’s huge. What a reduction. But if you use absolute risk, and you found that the actual risk went from one and a thousand, you know, got to two and a thousand, the difference is 50%. So the absolute risk is tiny, you know, one and a thousand to two and a thousand.

But the relative risk of that is 50%. You’d go, my God, this is incredible. But the reality is that it barely moves the needle, right? And we know that even you know, Alzheimer’s drugs, cancer drugs, COVID vaccines, often what’s reported in the media is actually relative risk, which often inflates their efficacy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (01:50.956)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that that is so often used in the in selling of a drug because to a busy practitioner, you know, if you can reduce the risk of dementia by 50 percent, who wouldn’t do that?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (02:06.753)
Yeah, credit to Oxford as well on that because in class we went through about 10 newspaper articles in class together with all the health practitioners in the one classroom and we analysed what the newspaper article said. We pulled up the paper that it was based on and what we found is almost exclusively that it was never nearly as effective as what was written.
in the media. So that’s just something for people to keep in mind.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:39.554)
The other one that I have heard now Ross Walker has talked about on this program before as well is number needed to treat. What tell her can you explain that one to us?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (02:50.945)
Number needed to treat, yeah, so basically, how would I put this in real simple terms? So basically the amount of people you need to treat to get the result that you need. So, you know, if you give somebody a…a drug, one person a drug and you get a great result, that’s obviously a good number needed to treat.

But if you have to give people 100,000, you have to give 100,000 people this particular drug and then you get a result, the number needed to treat is obviously huge and therefore the drug isn’t that effective. So that’s how.

you would explain that. So the number needed to treat, if I gave you Ron a drug and said, this will reduce your risk of heart disease significantly. And it did do that after one, but if I gave it to a hundred thousand people and none of them worked until the hundred thousandth person, then obviously you need to treat a lot of people to get the result. So not as effective.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (42:00.832)
What about, look, I mean, there’s a lot of issues here. And I love the fact that you having studied as much as you have, have taken this very nuanced approach. You know, I’m very proud of you, Lew. It’s not the way I would approach things. then, you know, you’re more mature about this than I am, clearly. Look, I also know that the practice that we are part of, you are part of, you’re now the principal of,
talks about a patient-centered approach. If the current model of evidence-based medicine is compromised, and I think you can be as nuanced as you like, it is compromised. What does a more trustworthy patient-centered model look like? How do we get there? What do you think?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (42:50.95)
Yeah, I’ve been asked this a few times. It’s a really tricky one. I think one thing is to definitely educate as many people to a deeper level that are health practitioners. I think it has to be more deeply taught in their degree because

you have to be able to analyze things at a deeper level because the waters are getting so murky, you know, in terms of influence, buyers, study design, et cetera. Particularly, I suppose, you know, with AI coming as well, it’s going to just be, the research will just be coming out left, right and center. I think that we need to reduce the amount of industry influence in.research and try and build more philanthropic.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (43:52.392)
resource availability. There’s a lot of hugely wealthy people that could do some really amazing things by just letting universities conduct their own studies and try and minimize the amount of bias that’s within it. I think I’d love to see more negative results come out on things.

But I think that at the moment, like 96 % of TGA funding coming from industry, like 4 % is not, it’s not 50-50, it’s hugely skewed. So like I said, there are advantages of having industry, but we just need to get more neutral, unbiased funding as opposed to the funding being given by people that need to.get a result so that they can keep shareholders happy. think, you know, non-for-profit is idealistic, but also helps science a lot, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (45:02.552)
Yeah. Lew I want to thank you for joining us today, sharing your knowledge and wisdom. I know we’re going to get you back very soon. In fact, in next week’s episode, we’re going to talk about a very contentious and controversial issue in dentistry on root canal treatments. And I think this was a good introduction to that next episode. I’ll have links to a lot of the resources you’ve suggested, but thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (45:32.562)
Thanks, Ron. Appreciate it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:00.654)
Well, it’s complicated, isn’t it? It’s nuanced. I love the fact that Lewis, having studied all of that, has kept a very open mind and realizes and explains how nuanced it is. There are over 48, there are 48 different categories of bias that can influence a work, how it’s funded. Is it all all’s well? Is it a, does it have…

Is it hot stuff that will make the news? Will it continue the funding to be channeled into research, et cetera, et cetera? And look at the end of the day, this is a story that I’ve been following since my very early days in dentistry when I was parroting what I had been taught. And in that particular case at university, what I’d been taught was that…

Mercury is locked into a silver amalgam filling. 50 % of it is mercury, but don’t worry, it’s locked in. And that’s what I was taught. But actually that is not true. And fluoride, water fluoridation is a great thing. And we could talk about that. I’ve done other topics on that. And if you’ve read my book, you’ll know my position on that, but it’s nuanced. The same goes for a whole range of things. So I’ve been following this story for a long time. Now it’s interesting that

Lewis mentioned some of the referee journals and the Cochrane collaboration because one of those referee journals that he mentioned, the New England Journal of Medicine, some 20 odd years ago, the editors started to write editorials which were somewhat critical of big pharma’s influence on health care. And she was dismissed from that journal and then went on to write a book called The Truth About Drug Companies and How They Deceive Us.

the head of the founder, one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration, Danish physician, Professor Peter Gotzsche he’s a physician, an epidemiologist, a researcher. He was one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration and 10 years ago published a book called Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare.

And if you’re following the food story about how public health policies set about the food pyramids and about the low-fat diet and the demonization of animal products. One needs to know look no further than big food for the influence there and the influence they have on all levels of health care. So this is a very very big story and I think it’s important to understand the nuances and the challenges involved and where does that leave us as a listener, as a member of the public?

Well you have to take control of your own health, and stick to some very basic things. I believe that as the world we live in becomes increasingly more complicated, so many of the solutions are remarkably simple, they’re cheap, they’re accessible, they’re sustainable, and what’s more, they are effective. That’s for the vast majority. Now, if you are then diagnosed with a condition, well, you need to take a step back and take stock and do some exploring that yourself and go to trusted sources.

And that’s what I hope this podcast is about. That’s what I hope. That’s what I know. Unstressed health is about. And I invite you to join that community until next time. And we will be getting Dr. Lewis back next week to talk about another very contentious issue. Root canal treatments. Now, if you have had any, you will may or may not be familiar with it, but it is a contentious issue.
Again, it’s nuanced and I’ll invite you to join me for that until next time.

This is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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00:00 – Introduction & welcome01:44 – Dr Ben Javid’s journey into holistic dentistry09:27 – Dental meridians & systemic health16:03 – Building Smile Body: A dental-medical centre23:26 – Advanced diagnostics: CBCT, EAV, Oligoscan29:27 – Hyperbaric, IV ozone & red light therapy45:22 – Children’s health: jaw growth, ADHD, and sleep53:00 – Sleep medicine & overlooked root causes59:17 – Meridians, parasites & quantum healing1:08:09 – Mercury fillings & SMART removal protocols1:16:10 – Final reflections: mindset, gratitude & healing The Mouth-Body Connection: Unlocking Health with Dr Ben JavidDr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Unstress Health, my name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we’re exploring a topic that truly sits at the intersection of dentistry, medicine, whole body wellness. My guest is Dr Ben Javid. And Ben is a holistic dentist, a wellness expert, and the co-founder, together with his brother Shawn Javid, of SmileBody, a groundbreaking holistic dental and medical well-being centre. California. Now we’re going to dive into how oral health is not just about teeth and gum, something that regular listeners would be well aware of, but a powerful gateway to systemic health and longevity and even the prevention of many chronic diseases. Now as I often said, if you are not including on a comprehensive oral exam into at least once in your life, particularly if been diagnosed with a preventable chronic degenerative. Disease, which would include heart disease, cancer, any one of 100 autoimmune conditions, diabetes, even mental health issues, even erectile dysfunction, fertility, you name it. The common denominator is chronic inflammation, and that is where oral diseases fit in, but it’s also a conversation about sleeping and breathing. It’s also a conversation about meridians that run through the whole body. So sit back and get ready to think about what oral health really means in whole body health. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Ben Javid. Welcome to the show, Ben.

Dr Ben Javid [00:01:44] Dr. Ron, it’s wonderful to be on this show. Thank you for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:01:50] Ben, when I got the invitation to have you guys on the show, and I’m talking about you and your brother, Shawn, who’s not with us, but I couldn’t help but be attracted to it because my brother and I have worked together in this holistic dental or biological, as you call it in America, space for over 40 years. So this was an immediate, you know, I must talk to you guys. I’m intrigued. By your journey, because when you graduated from dental school, I’m pretty sure biological or holistic dentistry wasn’t high on the curriculum. What was the journey for you? What prompted you to make this transition?

Dr Ben Javid [00:02:33] Well, first of all, before I answer that question, Ron, I want to thank you for, you know, putting out a show like this and spreading information that is actually helping people get healthier mentally, physically and spiritually actually in every way. So you know it’s a wonderful thing that you’re doing that’s touching people in many ways. That’s what we try to do at our level. Now, with wisdom. You know, with biological holistic dentistry, you know, it’s a mindset, you know, and it’s not something you go and learn in a course like doing veneers or dental implants, as you know. Uh, it is something that you have to live by, you live by it. In fact, you lived by it before you actually practise it in your practise. I mean, that’s how I think about it. And for me, uh, everything that I’ve done in my life has led me to this. You know? It’s not just one thing. So what I mean by that is, for example, how I grew up in our home. You know, my dad and we’re always against prescription meds, you know, we never really utilise prescription med very much, it was more about what you’re eating, eating healthy. So eating the right way, take care of your body and then you’re relying on meds for just everything, whether it’s a headache or a pain or you know shoulder ache or back or something more serious. But, so that over time evolved after I went to dental school, you know, some of the things that I graduated in 2002, and you know we still learned how to put in mercury fillings. That was the, you now, the standard of care at that time still. And it didn’t really make sense to me that much because it’s more than 50% mercury, but you gotta do it, you gotta pass the boards, do those mercury fillings and pack it in and do everything that we had to do to go through the training and get our licence. That’s when I stopped doing mercury fillers after I got my licence. It didn’t make sense me at all during school or after school. But but one thing I did graduate with was a hunger for more. I didn’t feel like my education was finished. I felt like there has to be more than what I’ve learned in school and not in what I felt very confident in my education. I felt, like, you know, you know, I the school trained me to be a outstanding dentist. Of course, you keep learning and never ends. But personally… My philosophy was to keep growing in every way I can and that resulted in learning more about you know personal growth and nutrition everything from spiritual growth like Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and other those kind of meditation and what’s possible there quantum physics and also uh you know the the world of like Tony Robbins and and learning your your own potential and and and so so for me that was and and very i was very hungry for that and and my brother luckily uh was in line with that as well he’s seven years older he he had he was a dentist before i went to dental school so but you know a lot of revision was aligned And at the time, back then, really, like you mentioned, there wasn’t really much about holistic dentistry. There was practitioners out there, but it’s not something I even knew about. What I did like is the artistic ability to make smiles. And so I got into cosmetic dentistry at the times. And so it was someone you can touch people’s lives and change their smile and make them help feel confident about themselves and so on and so forth. So we got into cosmetic dentistry and we were doing a lot of cosmetic dentisty and it was great. And then there was a recession and things changed and we started doing more and more surgeries and implants. And then more and more services of different kinds and sedation dentistry and and you know every we got into orthodontics a little bit and and so It got a diplomat in sleep medicine At one point treating sleep apnea and so, you know, you you kept evolving at one point I did extra training right after dental school for root canals In fact, so I did I did a lot of root can also my time too because I wanted to do it at the highest level so I did root canals and I did, you know, all the mean stay of dental. But as I kept growing personally, I had to start questioning, you know, what we’re doing. You know, because if you’re doing everything like you did in Dental school, it’s very easy. You know you just, that’s all there is to it. But if you’re in the mindset of growth, you realise that… You know, everything they taught in dental school is not necessarily the truth or the way it is in the real world. So this evolution was not a light switch. It’s a gradual evolution. And of course, at one point we learned about, you know IOAMT and the safe removal of mercury. And we’re like, Well, you know, I was excited to learn that. And then. And then obviously fluoride and and then root canals and then uh and and that was mind-blowing uh learning more about root canals through lectures through iomt and then you start realising there is you can get trainings done with other dentists that are like-minded and So it just kept evolving. Uh, and because of our passion about personal health and nutrition, and like I said, and just this concept of really believing in the human body, uh, and it’s natural intelligence and not interfering with it as much that was just the mainstay throughout this whole process, I believe in the human body evolve to where you are right now, and it’s not ending right now, it’s constantly evolving. And just two weeks ago, sorry, it’s a long-winded answer, but.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:21] No, no, it’s good. It’s good music to my ears been music plays to two weeks ago

Dr Ben Javid [00:09:27] Two weeks ago, my brother and I, we did some training with an amazing doctor in St. Louis on the meridians and assessing the meridians and looking for blockages in the meridians and learned so much about how parasites are, for example, a big part of. Uh your health and uh and you know we knew somewhat about it but learned a lot more but his he’s a medical doctor his perspective was right up there with parasites was your mouth and uh he’s the big advocate of biological dentistry or holistic dentistry uh and getting rid of sources of toxicities. That are causing health issues, but also blockages in the meridians, which actually are the same. And these blockages and meridions are causing major health issues both systemically by the blood vessels and lymph and everything else, but also on these meridients. So it never ends, to my point, I’m just, it’s just a constant. Growth and that’s what I think holistic or biological dentistry has to be. It’s someone that is interested in constantly growing and questioning and questioning and growing and if you are that person this is the right place for you I think.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:50] I think that’s a wonderful answer. You say long winded, I say music to my ears, Ben, because I have often, the elevator pitch for what a holistic dentist is for me is it’s a dentist with attitude, and that attitude is exactly as you articulated, a recognition of how much there is to learn and an excitement about learning it. I find it really intriguing that more of our colleagues don’t enthusiastically embrace this, particularly in a time when there are so many choices for patients. And the question I think a lot of health practitioners should be asking is, what defines the difference? Why would people come to see you when they probably pass a hundred dentists on their way to your practise? And many of your patients would have no doubt about that. But a lot of dentists, you know, are not as busy or as engaged as perhaps they should be.

Dr Ben Javid [00:11:55] Well, I think at the end of the day, you know, dentists like us are following our passion. We’re not just going through the motions. We’re doing it. Our why is different, right? Our reason for doing this is not just the numbers and you know the production and and making sure the collections are correct, and… It’s a business at the end of the day, and that’s all important, but really at this point in my career, you know, it’s the passion behind what we’re doing is much, much deeper. In fact, you know we built. Our facility last year after practising for so many years. I mean, Shawn, my brother, is over 30 years in dentistry and I started in 2002 as I was saying, so quite a few years. And we had a very successful practise, but we realised there has to be more to it than just practising biological dentistry in our space. And our vision was to create a facility where we can collaborate with other like-minded professionals. That’s why we term the smile/body, mouth and body together. Because as you know, as you preach, it’s the mouth body connection is vast. Not just in meridians we were just talking about, but blood vessels and so on and so forth and nerves. But the impact on your health is so profound that what happens in the mouth happens here. I call it the gateway. To your health but then vice versa and if you’re working with like-minded professionals from the medical side, nurses, naturopaths, integrative doctors we can help a lot more people I feel and this concept where a current medical system where there’s a specialist for the mouth let’s say us right there were the dentists there is a specialist for their ears there’s specialist for the eyes there’s the health specialist for the skin there’s specialists for the heart And they just look at that. They’re not looking at anything else, that has to end. I don’t believe in that. And we have to not work in silos. We have to be working collaboratively. I’m a big advocate of working with naturopaths, like I said, and other people that are open minded, understand the connection of the body, where, you know, we can make a bigger impact. And right now we’re doing a lot of that. We work with different doctors from around the country. And we do a us in and we do, we, we. A lot of times, patients are not geographically close to us. In fact, more than 50% of our patients fly to us or come from a distance because of this approach. And so, again, it’s exciting and it’s something that you have to be passionate about. And when we were building this facility, and I can tell you more about the facility, it was really not about us anymore. It was about something that has to happen. We felt the need that this is a something that has to happen regardless. It’s not about me. It is not about one person It’s on my vision and as we were going through this process, it was Almost a spiritual experience because one I had to evolve. It was an evolution experience for me and two So many people came into our lives that that without that this project would not have happened You know, so, you know, you’re doing something right and you’re part of something good. And you’re on the right track when there’s alignment happening. So, so when that’s happening, you, you again, it’s, it, it it’s a deep why. And we felt that, you it’s it’s needed for many ways, or, you know, whether it’s Australia or here in the United States, people are sick. You know people are are sick and they’re overmedicated, overfed. And we are, you know, we have to do our part to make sure that we can create a better model.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:03] I mean, I think what a wonderful place to be for you with 20 and 30 years of experience between you and your brother and for you as brothers to be on this journey together and stepping in after all that time into this new space. Very exciting time. I think you must have observed many, many times that the that when you’re dealing with patients with complex. Chronic preventable chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diabetes, etc. How often oral health is the missing link? Just totally overlooked and yet such an important part of the issue. Is that an observation you have made in your time?

Dr Ben Javid [00:16:48] You know, I’ve made that observation. I see it every day and I’m still learning that it’s a bigger and bigger impact than I even realised. Even with this training I went to with this doctor that’s medical doctor, even more so reinforced how much of an impact the mouth has on the body and it just reinforces it more and more to the point where I realise you know it’s just if you the mouth and I hope you know actually I don’t realise I hope the more and people on the medical side realise that if you are treating a patient and if you’re not working with a… Biological or holistic dentists hand in hand to make sure that they evaluate the mouth to just check for sources of toxicities or some of that come in from the mouth then you’re really missing the book you’re not going to get the results that you want and this is what I usually speak on when we I do wellness and longevity conferences and it’s because I want to make sure that other practitioners are actually. Realising that if we all again collaborate like what we’re doing in small body I want it to be done everywhere. The goal is we have to change, we have evolve and this collaboration model is I feel the future and if we don’t all start thinking that way and treating the body in that way then it’s not we’re gonna get more of the same which is a lot of unhealthy people.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:39] Well, I think for many health practitioners not talking about dentists here, although you might include some dentists in this, too, for many health practitioners, the way they do an oral health assessment is they will say to their patient who’s suffering from stage four cancer or heart disease or autoimmune conditions, have you been to the dentist lately? And the patient will say yes. Anything happen? No, all good. And that is the full extent of an oral health. Assessment, let’s just dive in a little bit here as to what constitutes a comprehensive oral exam in your practise.

Dr Ben Javid [00:19:21] It’s a long process. I have to tell you. One of the things that’s important for us is to utilise current technology, you know. And when I say current technology yes, conbeam CT scans are a big part of what we do. And for your listeners, I’m pretty sure because you’re a holistic dentist, this has come up in the past.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:50] Let’s just assume it hasn’t. It has, but let’s explain to our listener what that actually means.

Dr Ben Javid [00:19:58] Well, a Cone Beam CT scan is pretty much a 3D image of the jaw and head and neck area, I should say. And this 3D kind of like a CT scan that you go to a hospital, you can see it in slices from every angle. Now, it’s similar in that way with one of those big machines that you go into a hospital, but what’s important is that you get a fraction of the radiation. Similar, the amount of radiation you get is comparable to a full series of dental x-rays and actually it’s even being reduced more so. The new Cone Beam CT scan that we were just about to purchase right now, and we’ve had like three iterations over the many years that we’ve been doing this. The newest one is about 50% less radiation than the one before that’s from the same company. And ours is not even that old. So it’s exciting because we’re getting more and more efficient. In that field. Now, as far as radiation, even the Nomads that, you know, you can get much less radiation for regular diagonal x-rays as well. But the point is we do our cone beam CT scan, that’s important, and we do the regular checkup x-ray, but of course, again, we use some better technology to reduce that radiation. Beyond digital. There are these technologies. The Nomad has become the name that’s popular but these x-ray units that you’re actually in the room with the patient. You’re not going and hiding behind a wall. It’s like a little gun that you shoot and whether the dental assistant or a dental hygienist or wherever the professional is, they’re taking these x-rays. So there’s a series of diagnostics that are done. In our office, we have a There’s other diagnostics that we like besides the x-rays. There is something called, obviously, an ITERO where we can digital scan of the jaw. We get a 3D model of the jaw that shows, you can, it shows the bite and the bite forces in different areas, helps you with seeing certain cavities.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:08] So, Ben, this would give you, I mean, some people may be familiar with having moulds taken of their mouth where a gooey substance is put in the mouth and it’s not very comfortable. But now the very thing you’re describing is something a little bit like a tiny camera which goes around the mouth and scans it and gives you a 3D image that a model

Dr Ben Javid [00:22:33] Thank you for that clarification.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:34] Of the mouth. So I think people may have missed it. I knew what you were talking about, but I think the exquisite nature of it is quite remarkable to give you a 3D image within a minute or two of the entire mouth allowing you to assess it. Yes, so go on. We’ve got 3D x-rays.

Dr Ben Javid [00:22:55] We, to your point now, we don’t have to really take those goopy impressions really anymore because we get these digital images and so with these digital images we can see a whole new perspective and the patient can see specifically a whole new perspective. There are other diagnostics that we can do. We’re actually adding a machine for an EAV machine that we we can check the meridians. That is something that we’re adding soon because of this. Training that we just went to there’s no now

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:23:26] Now Ben, Ben, technology, a terminology here, E-A-V is electroacupuncture, is that what I’m hearing here?

Dr Ben Javid [00:23:35] Yeah, it’s pretty much a machine that uses electrical stimulus to see if there’s blockages on, see I’m going too fast Ron, thank you. That’s okay. It checks on your hands and feet because those are end points on meridians and you can check and see if there’s a blockages on your meridions. And there’s actually a meridian points for your mouth on your hands as well but you can check to see where there’s blockages in your meridians and as we were talking about earlier these blockages and meridians are many times a source of health issues. There’s another technology called Oligascan. Oligoscan is an interesting thing that uses light to assess your tissues. For mineral deficiencies and heavy metal toxicity. So, because we like to make sure, obviously that’s super important for us in the medical and in the dental industry. Heavy metal toxicity is a big thing. A lot of mercury fillings out there. So that’s another thing that we can do. And so we put all this information together. We get an image of what’s happening for the patient. Of course… We’re spending a lot of time explaining and educating. Now most, I should say most, almost all, 99% of our patients that come to us are generally very educated. They have come to find us, to find a doctor that is like-minded, that wants someone, they want someone that is not gonna be pushing fluoride. Once this wants them to get, you know, assess the root canals and get their metal, these metal mercury fillings out of their mouth safely. They already on board with the idea that they don’t want any metal in their body. They’re already on-board with, you know, they don’t really want root canals in their body. There. So I’m not really necessarily going there and explaining that from scratch. I might. Give them more detailed information about why I think this way or the reasoning behind it so they understand it better. And then we put a plan together and tell them how we do it in our office because we have a lot of protocols to make sure that everything’s done correctly. But our patients are pretty educated. They are coming to us pretty knowledgeable. We just like to expand that knowledge and I like to tell patients we want them to be their own health advocate. In other words, we’re not here to tell you what to do. We’re actually here to support you in your health journey. There’s a difference. We’re not mainstream medicine to tell patients, you got to take this medication, take this shot, take these in order to be healthy or in order to get well. For us, it’s a matter of removing sources of toxicities, Remove sources of interferences so your body can actually heal itself and that is up to you if this is the journey you want to be on. It’s not up to me. And if it is, then we’re a great fit. We’re gonna support you and we’re gonna have a journey together and we are here to support. But if someone is not in line with that mentality, I don’t care, it doesn’t work. We’re not the right dentist for everyone. But if they are looking for us, people come to us, like I mentioned to you earlier, from all around the country. And so we’re very blessed to be able to help people now with the help of COVID. Telemedicine became a bigger thing. So, you know, patients from that doctors refer to us from other states, they will go get a Cone Beam CT scan. And because that’s a very basic. Way where we can assess the mouth. With the Cone Beam CT scan, we can see a lot. We can see sources of the main toxicities that are maybe getting them sick. Now these doctors want their patients to get well. They see the benefit of collaborating with a biological dentist. Then what we do is assess their Cone Beam-CT scan together and review with the patient. And if they choose, they can fly in, do a week stay where we have strict protocols with our centre for preparing their body for healing and help their body to heal after treatment too. There’s protocols that we have that we haven’t gone into on our medical side, like hyperbaric treatment, IV therapies of different kinds and red light therapies, photobiomodulation, a lot of things that we do that can help the patient in that process that right now is still not at all part of the mainstream dentists or part of typical holistic or biological dentists that we’re trying to push down with one.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:50] Now, you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you’ve set up this new centre, which I’m seeing behind you is called Smile Body. Go on, just turn a little bit so we can see that there it is. Smile Body, but I’m just interested. You’ve mentioned a few things there, which are you’ve obviously got your dental practise there, but you’ve also got other things you’ve briefly mentioned other things to support immune function during this time of healing. Just and you’ve touched on it, but I’d like us to just go back a little bit here. You mentioned hyperbaric, you mentioned this. What have you got? Tell us a bit about the vision of the centre.

Dr Ben Javid [00:29:27] Well, you know, we realise, like I was mentioning, there is a lot of technology that we can utilise to our benefit that can help patients on this journey, this health journey that we’re talking about. Whether we’re taking about health optimisation from wherever you are in your health journey. Or in case of when we’re doing actual surgeries or then these are, and a lot of times we have to do surgeries for these patients because we’re removing infected teeth, treating cavitations or otherwise. So we are there to help recover, help the body actually recover. And there’s a lot technologies that can help with that. Now on the medical side, I mentioned hyperbaric oxygen Now this is something that You know, at this point, a lot of people know about it’s in hospitals, usually used for wound care in hospitals or people that were diving accidents. That’s what it was known for a lot of times to help in this oxygenation of the blood. It actually helps oxygenate. The plasma not you know when your blood you have you have your blood platelets right where your haemoglobin has space for oxygen has four sites for oxygen molecules when those four sites are full that’s it right now in that blood goes through your veins and oxygening throughout your whole body that number one new the body is oxygen now with hyperbaric oxygen you are now oxygening the space in between the blood. Platelets and so you’re actually oxygenating the plasma at a high level. So that every part of that blood, that red blood is now more oxygenated. So that liquidy part of the blood can get into areas that the actual oxygen haemoglobin and platelets cannot get to. So you’re now oxygenating, so if they have areas that are having a hard time healing, Then right now mainstream medicine is using hyperbaric oxygen to help those areas heal. They dramatically heal much faster, but it’s used for, it can be used for so many other things as well. Besides that any time we do oral surgery that will help that surgical site heal much faster it can help your Brain fogs and brain fog even eyesight and I mean again oxygen number one near the body at every level The body needs this oxygen and a lot of times we’re deficient. We’re deficient on proper oxygenation So I think red oxygen is useful for a lot a lot that but as far as our protocol surgical protocol It’s a big part of it Another thing is our IV centre. Now our IV Centre, there’s different kinds of IVs that can be done. The typical IVs that people know about is like vitamin C and maybe vitamin B12 and maybe glutathione. And of course there’s like NAD people know about now it’s a boost. NAD is going to be good for longevity and you know these things you know people know Meyers cocktails of different kinds and you they help boost your natural ability for your body to heal and recover then you’re feeling sick but there’s a little a lot of more in our IV centre on ozone for example ozone that you’re I’m sure well familiar with is O3 instead of O2 It’s charged oxygen, and this is what’s found in our ozone layer. Now again I know for the you know about this but for the benefit

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:11] No, no, don’t it now. Now, Ben, you’re just not talking to me. If we were having a cup of coffee, then I’d appreciate I appreciate you acknowledging my knowledge. But let’s not let’s not assume all these things, because, you know, keep going. Keep going. This is fine. I mean, the hyperbaric chamber that you’re talking about is is a chamber.

Dr Ben Javid [00:33:31] Yeah, so I’m still chamber

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:32] hard shell chamber that under a pressure or atmosphere is delivering that oxygen, the IV or the intravenous protocols that you’re talking about you were just mentioning. So no, don’t assume, don’t

Dr Ben Javid [00:33:48] Okay, so the hyperbaric, you go in it for an hour and you’re just, you hang out in there under that pressure and it just does wonders. You feel more clear-minded when you come out, you see a little bit better and there’s different kinds of protocols you can do that for different purposes. The IV, we mentioned, again, there is ozone IVs and for the benefit of people that don’t know what ozone is like we were saying that’s where we left off. The ozone charge oxygen is something that’s you know been around for a long time utilised in surgery rooms back before really the chemicals were used to clean surgery rooms ozone was used to clean surgery room for in preparation for surgeries. It’s a great way to kill bacteria, viruses, parasites, Now, so it’s something that we use in our office throughout. On the dental side, we use it in our water systems. We ozonate our water, so we get a cleaning. We use ozonated water. For surgeries, we want to clean the bone. We use ozone water to clean a bone. We can utilise it on small, small cavities to ozonatate that surface cavity maybe. It can actually. Eradicate some of that bacteria that’s causing that on contact. Actually it’s a stronger killer of bacteria than any antibiotic and so it has a lot of benefits. It also has anti-inflammatory, increases circulation in an area. We can inject it in an area where there was an abscess. So a lot of benefits, but in the IV room in particular we can use this machine actually from Germany. There’s a few different machines on the market now that this one is called a Zosman. There is another called Ebu or Ebu 02. These machines, what they do is they, you can take a little bit of the blood out, you ozonate it, you know, as you run ozone through it, and then that’s put back into the body. And this has many effects. Now, detoxing, anti-inflammatory effects. People that have been exposed to mould, for example, and it has a lot of ways it can help clean the blood and oxygenate it at the same time. Again, having oxygen is a good thing. So ozone breaks down into oxygen, O3 breaks down to O2. Um, and, uh, and so that’s another one, another machine that we do in our, in our IV, uh from Germany also is called the Weber, Weber and the laser, which uses different wavelengths of light from red, infrared, ultraviolet, green, blue, um, to actually, uh on inside the blood vessel and, and it’s, so it puts that light against the actual blood as it’s passing through, and you get the benefits of that wavelength of light. And light being the really light and sound, really, I would say the future of medicine and also a lot of ancient technology comes from sound and light. So we want to utilise this newer technology that we’re talking about, but also AI. And when I say AI, I don’t mean artificial intelligence, I mean ancient intelligence. Interesting. Nice one, Ben. I love that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:37:22] It’s a theme that I feel really passionate about because we’ve got so much to learn from AI as in ancestral information. Go on.

Dr Ben Javid [00:37:35] And we’ve put a blind eye to it, you know why? And whether you’re talking about Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, these are thousands of thousands of years old. And if you go even farther back, it’s amazing, right? What we can learn. But. We’re ignoring it and obviously the pharmaceutical industry has taken over the medical field and we’re just narrow-minded looking for answers in a pill. And of course not our solution, people up our alley as far as me and you Ron, we want to help the body, yes, but if we can use sound and light. Something called photobiomodulation which is about using light to help your body heal and red light therapy like for example we or we have an amazing red and infrared infrared light bed in our office that patients can utilise. So there is these technologies that are new but at the same time it’s ancient technology. And using sound and light is not new. It’s something that’s known to heal.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:58] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q and A’s on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health advisory panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the unstress health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. And when you say sound, I mean, we’ve done a programme on shockwave. Is that what you’re talking about, that kind of technology? What is when you’re talking about sound, explain that one a little bit more to me.

Dr Ben Javid [00:40:23] In our office, you know, we don’t necessarily use the shockwave or I know what you’re talking about, but I’m saying as far as sound has is known to have healing potential. And that’s also light. Now. But in our office, you know, we’re not really utilising those different shockwaves or sound or ultrasound or low-frequency ultrasound. There’s these technologies that can be utilised for healing, for even body sculpting. There’s this different technologies that we’ve actually thought about incorporating. But it’s We know 100% that your body resonates. It’s actually a electronic system of sound and vibration. So your body is not just a car where you’re going to change the carburetor or change the wheels when they worn down. It’s a system that is mainly vibration and light. And sound. That’s really where building blocks are, right? If you go down to the quantum level, there is not really any kind of mass. We’re all empty space and we’re just potential frequencies. So everything that’s in us is just energy and potential frequencies that So what we do right now is, I’m glad, is that this industry where we’re in, and more and more people are looking at is how we can actually heal in more ways than one, which is the only way that has been accepted for quite a while now. From back when Rockefeller got into the medical world, and created the pharmaceutical industry and took over the medical schools and created this dogma and this was the the way it was going to be and that permeated throughout the whole world and where you are and and where I am across the world so yeah this is this is uh our so for now I feel like we are embarking on on something special the next chapter of humanity I feel is very exciting because this philosophy that we’re talking about isn’t fringe, it’s actually more and more accepted. And it’s something that we know to be true, because there’s scientific proof behind it. Now, people like Joe Dispenza that you might know, I’m sure. Or Jack Kruse. What was that? Or Jack Kruse .

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:20] Yeah, yeah, you’re familiar with. But but what you’re talking about is, is this ancient energy which has brought us after four and a half billion years to this point, you know, and that is the quantum, the quantum world that we all live in. Exactly.

Dr Ben Javid [00:43:37] So much we realise that our ability to heal ourselves as far as utilising meditation and our own natural ability to heel and just our own belief and mentality can be so healing by itself. Again, mind, body, spirit is such a big component of health and healing. So getting back to the clinic, to answer your question, we felt that we have to these technologies. Rely on the medical team our nurse our nurses. I should say our MD medical director naturopaths To collaborate with them. We even have an esthetician. That’s Like-minded for the skin, which is the biggest organ of the body So we feel like that’s a big component of your health One of the biggest components of the microflora besides your gut and your mouth is the skin So your skin has a this vast amount of microflora. So these If you want to get healthy from on the skin, then you get that beauty that you’re looking for. Well, you know what? Why not have a esthetician on board? And then another big component for us was the children. So we created a paediatric component to this office too. We have a holistic paediatric dentist on the team and we have a whole clinic. It’s a 7,000 square foot space. It’s big. So we have, we have a paediatric component because that’s, you know, I’d love to discuss kids more with you because that a big, big component and getting them early and addressing their jaw development in airway is super important.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:22] Well, we’ve you’d be pleased to know we’ve done a programme called Quantum Kids. And and one of my mentors, which is a young dentist. I consider him to be my mentor who reintroduced me to quantum biology. You know, I’ve been on this holistic journey for 40 something years and probably five or just over five years ago. I met him and he kind of said, well, hang on, don’t forget about the quantum world. And I thought. What the hell? How did I miss that? You know, and that’s been a whole very exciting learning experience and empowering too, because it’s so available. I mean, the sun doesn’t get much easier than that. The earth doesn’t get much easy than that and harnessing that kind of energy. Is very inspiring. So this is music to my ears, Ben, and what a wonderful facility. Yes, let’s talk about kids because that’s where it all starts, isn’t it? Really.

Dr Ben Javid [00:46:22] Yeah. And unfortunately, it’s like you said, it all starts the level of unhealth or health that we have in our countries. It starts with the kids. Number one, what we’re feeding the kids, right. And ourselves, but also, you know, how they’re developing, which is related now. Obviously, we know that from the work of Weston A. Price that nutrition is so important for your development, and in the world of Weston A. Price being a dentist in the 30s, and a researcher, that he discovered that when he went to endogenous villages that were not exposed to westernised culture, that did not eat the crap that we eat in our world, the processed foods and sugars and all the crap, that’s out there. That’s not really food. They did great. They were healthy. Their jaws developed beautifully. There was no cavities. Their teeth were straight. Horrible hygiene. They didn’t brush their teeth, but it didn’t matter. They had all the teeth and they were beautiful, healthy people. So that’s why I always tell people it’s not just about hygiene. Hygiene’s great, but about everything else that you do That’s what really matters. So what we realise is that this environment that we live in is creating sick children and what’s happening is the diet number one but and with and then other things that we do like thumb sucking and pacifiers things like that are deforming page these kids mouths now all this the diet these other things. That we do with like thumb-sucking and pacifier. Are deforming our jaws and these kids at these very young ages and also causing inflammation throughout the body with the tonsils and the adenoids. So this combination of the deformed jaw for kids, for adults, that’s a big deal for kids. I would say even in some ways, a bigger deal, even though for adults it’s, it’s probably one of the number one killers that it’s over under diagnosed as far as under being under diagnosed. But for, again, for, for kids jaw development is super important because when their airway is not expanded or jaw is not extended, there’s not enough room. Their teeth are crowded. They’re getting cavities. They can’t breathe at night when they sleep. They get a specific look. It’s a tired look, mouth open, jaw open, jaw protruded, what we call a class two bite where the lower jaw is behind it because it’s always open. Their jaws develop incorrectly. We have the maxillary palate narrowed with a high roof into the nasal passage way. These kids can’t breathe from their nose and then they’re inflamed and they’re adenoids back there. Is blocking the airway and the tonsils blocking their way. They can’t breathe. So what happens when you can’t breath? You’re not getting oxygen during a critical time. You’re asleep. So when you’re sleeping, these kids are sleeping at night and they’re not breathing well. They’re not getting enough oxygen. A very important hormone is not being released growth hormone. So if there’s not enough growth hormone being released for these kids from four, five, six, seven, eight years old during that critical time. Their mental and physical growth is stunted. And they get behavioural issues like ADD, ADHD, and they can’t focus in class. So and then what do they do? Medicate them. Let’s medicate these kids because they can sit still. So for us, obviously, we wanna not medicate kids. We wanna get to the root cause of the problem. And for us our holistic paediatric dentist not only focuses on prevention of cavities and treating those cavities in an environment where, you know, the child feels comfortable and safe and maybe enjoyable with cartoons and all that kind of stuff. And, but all that’s fine. But let’s look at their development. Let’s look and make sure that the developing right if because so many so many kids who were just having a meeting with our paediatric dentist yesterday, Shawn, my brother, and her. About arch development and so many, there’s so much deficiency in their maxillary arch in their arch development. And, and it’s overlooked and it is overlooked and these kids are suffering. So if we address this at a young age and get their jaw to develop, not only are they’re going to be mentally and physically growing. Not only are the nest likely to need races and be years and years of races. What we call this, what we call first phase orthodontics and expansion. All that sets them up so that they can have a adult life that is actually healthier and aligned with on being on a journey of actually health instead of sickness and living in a life where, you know, they’re disadvantaged, they are literally, it’s a big disadvantage.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:43] I mean you’d be pleased to know that we also did a programme with a paediatric respiratory specialist who shared a statistic that was a real aha moment for me and he said 50% of kids that are diagnosed with ADHD attention deficit have an undiagnosed sleep disordered breathing condition.

Dr Ben Javid [00:52:05] This is it. This is what I’m talking about. There’s countless studies on this, Ron. If you go on PubMed and you do search sleep apnea and ADHD, please, someone go do that right now. And if you do that, you’ll see studies and studies and study and studies. And then all these poor kids are being put on meds. And they’re not. I had one of my assistants of she’s been my assistant for probably eight, nine years. She’s, she’s, you know, she was talking about her child and behavioural issues and they want to put them on meds and he’s having a hard time in class and all these things. And I said, have you done a sleep study? No, no one ever brought that up. No one ever bought it up. So lo and behold, obviously he has sleep apnea. They address the sleep apnea, he’s growing, he is mentally, physically growing, his behaviour has changed, she is just in tears of how much of a difference this was impacting him so much in their lives and they were sending him to speech pathologists and all these things but not ever addressing the glaring fact that he can’t breathe.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:17] Yeah, yeah. I mean, you’ve you mentioned also that part of a holistic biological approach to dentistry is also about sleep medicine. You got very involved with that. And I have, too. That’s certainly over the last 20 years become a very big part of holistic dentistry. It often surprises me. I’m sure it does you, too, when you’re taking a history that a person’s been on antidepressants for 20 or 30 years. In your next question. Have you ever had a sleep study done and the answer so often is no Has that been your observation?

Dr Ben Javid [00:53:53] Well, there’s so many things that we are taking medications for in our countries that we should do a sleep study for right away. You mentioned antidepressants, which is one of the number one medications that are prescribed. High blood pressure medication, which was one of, you know, top 10, right? All these are going to be top 10. If you had a stroke, right, you’re going to take medication that’s thin in the or something like this these are all highly medicated prescriptions. And another one, in the world of dentistry, if you grind your teeth, you grind your teeth you should get a sleep study. And dentists are not even looking at that at all. And they are just giving them this plastic appliance to wear at night, which does one thing, it keeps from the teeth from rubbing on each other and it protects the teeth, which is great. But is not addressing the root cause. So a lot of our world is addressing symptoms of the world of medicine. Now, our world, I guess, like you can say, Ron, you and I, we wanna address not just symptoms but root cause, so if when we see a patient come in the door… I mean, so many people, we have to talk to them about their sleep and they’re actually surprised a lot of times why I’m talking about their sleep. Yeah. When I see these kinds of meds that we’re talking about or another one, erectile dysfunction. You know, that’s an important common medication people are taking, right? Viagra. So erectile is function also highly correlated with sleep apnea. So again, oxygen again, when it’s the number one need of the body, it affects you in every level. You know, it’s sad, but true. And it’s something that when you look at these things, and again, us holistic minded practitioners, we want to look for root cause. So when we see a patient, that is, you know, has all the signs. We in our office, we do we do a sleep study. And we want to assess and see what’s happening out there. Today, I probably recommended maybe four sleep studies out of my patients. So it’s something that a lot of times it can save a life. Not just the tooth, but you can actually save a For these adults so many times patient piece these people that are fall asleep at night and don’t wake up the next day It’s really very commonly sleep apnea and they had a heart attack because the heart is pumping There’s not enough oxygen getting in to the heart And it gives out after some time So increased chance of a heart attacked by 23 times So these are these this is real and and for us that as you can see I get super passionate about this because it’s so important to be addressing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:00] Well, you know, this comes back to when we started this conversation about you commenting that you’re living it, that you take it seriously in your own life. And I often feel that, you know, I’m surprised that their doctors, their specialist, their specialists, all the people I’ve seen haven’t suggested, say, a sleep study or going to see the dentist. This is often a reflexion of the practitioners own life, You know, if they don’t take sleep… Seriously in their life, they will not be recommending it to their patients. If they don’t take their oral health seriously in their life than they won’t be recommending to their patients. One other thing, yeah, go on. Did you want to comment on that? Because I do think.

Dr Ben Javid [00:57:46] No, I’m just going to say the sad truth is that most people in the medical doctors and our dentists, we don’t know the first thing about sleep apnea from school. It’s literally nothing. Medical doctors, at one point after we had a diplomat, we actually were training MDs to screen their patients. Start looking for it. Don’t just wait for them to ask you for it, if you’re not looking for it, you’re just giving a prescription for something that they don’t need. So yes, it’s mind-boggling that something so important is so overlooked in the medical field completely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:25] Yeah, and often people are surprised that they’re sitting in a dental practise. And this is the first time that someone has even raised this issue with them. You talked about the mouth as being the gateway to health. Well, it’s certainly the gateway to the respiratory tract, and it’s the gateway to the digestive tract. So if you think sleeping, breathing and eating are important, then we’re in the right spot. I noticed your, um… You’re very excited. You’ve learned recently about meridians and we’ve talked about AI, ancient intelligence, because Chinese and Indian, you know, talk about energy flow through a body in meridian. Tell us a little bit about this journey that you’re now excited about as well and the Meridians that, you know, tell us about Meridians.

Dr Ben Javid [00:59:17] I can say I expanded my knowledge recently on meridians. We know 100%. I mean if you go throughout my office right now, many of the exam rooms have a big poster of the dental meridian chart. And so it’s something that… I’ve been talking to patients about extensively because I understood that, and I’m a big fan of, for example, acupuncture. When I’ve had herniations in my neck and my back, so once in a while it gets aggravated, the muscles tense up. So I go to the acupuncturist and he puts the needles, but it isn’t just put it Your back or your neck, he actually puts it on your hands and your feet also because that’s how we can get some of the energy flowing in the right way on these meridians. And these meridian are energy lines, again, known for thousands of years in many ancient traditions, to that when there is energy blockages in those energy lines. There is health issues that arise along that energy line. Now, there’s different meridians, like the very, probably the most common one is gallbladder meridian that goes from your feet all the way up your side and all the around your head and if there’s a blockage in your in your gallbladder meridian and actually you can have everything any kind of issues from a problem in your feet to brain fog to pain on your side right here because it zigzags right here on the side of your of your body to you know to you can’t it’s hard having a hard time to focus or even even hearing in your ears is ringing, a lot of that has to be is a blockage in your gallbladder So it’s a very common one and it’s, a lot of times, again, not even considered because, again, with our world of Westernised medicine, when I say our world, as opposed to Chinese medicine, we’re in between, but the Westernised Medicine, if you have a pain on your side, they look at that area. But Chinese medicine doesn’t look where the pain is, they look at the whole body. And for us, holistic practises, this resonates because we also like to look at the whole. We don’t want to look at the mouth when there’s a mouth problem. If there’s bleeding gums, we’re not going to just say floss more. We’re going to say well What’s your diet like, what’s your oral microflora like, what’s some mineral deficiencies like, let’s see what your vitamin D levels are. If you have a lot of cavities, let’s look at your vitamin D levels. So we’re looking at your whole systemic health and with meridians, this is also looking at the whole body. Now, one of the things that I learned a lot from this one course with Simon Yu was a little more about parasites because what he shared about is one of mainstays of blockages and is the mouth for him, which is… Heavy metals, infected root canals, and of course something else called cavitations. These are sources of toxicities and dead tissue in the jaw or metals that are causing a block in the meridians. But also for him parasites. For him it’s a big part of what he does is is de-worm. Why are we humans not getting de-wormed where other animals are getting de-wormed. But humans are not and guess what we have them too and that’s causing many health issues from cancers to autoimmune disorders to these blockages in these meridians like the gallbladder meridian and and these and when you address this you heal you get better when you address the blockages. In your mouth you heal, you get So It’s amazing, again, AI, ancient technology, the intelligence that we want to actually embrace and actually to improve health on many levels so more than just fixing a tooth for function and that’s what the dentist’s job has been uh traditionally is fixing a teeth for function getting a patient out of pain and if you’re really ambitious maybe make it prettier but that’s it stop there that’s your zone you’re not allowed to look at overall health but really Again, if you have the right mindset, you can be the quarterback. You can be a quarterback for these patients that usually see their dentist more than their medical doctor. You can the quarterback to help guide these patients in the nice tradition for their on this health journey by looking at them holistically and see it from that angle.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:04:30] And I think it’s worth saying, Ben, that you still do. You still do, yes, I think that’s right. That’s right, I guess. Worth reminding our listener to that, even as a holistic dentist, you still to fix teeth.

Dr Ben Javid [01:04:48] Oh, absolutely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:04:50] Because, you know, do you guys still do fillings? Do you do crowd? I go, no, no. I used to say, you know, I had some patients have a very far out idea of holistic dentistry. And I would joke with them and say, no I never pick up a drill. I just put my hands on the patients and they it cures them. It just does that. And people go, really? And I go and no, that’s a terrible joke. We still do dentistry, you know, we still do basic dentistry we just do it with an attitude.

Dr Ben Javid [01:05:19] Well, we do with an attitude, and that attitude is we want to be very choosy on what materials we use. You know, we don’t want to just put in any material in the mouth that the person’s given us in the dental world, the vendor, we were choosing whether it’s obviously we avoid the metals that we talked about, but even the composite resin fillings, most of them have a lot of BPA and so we had to choose wisely which materials we’re using. We want to use porcelain whenever possible so that it’s more biocompatible even for dental implants. We’re placing ceramic implants as opposed to the titanium implants. When we do our surgeries, we utilise something called PRF, platelet-rich fibrin, which is a great way to help utilise your own body’s potential for healing by using your own blood after it’s been centrifuged and get growth factors from your own life. So yes, we do a lot of what mainstream dentistry does. It’s I would say more thoughtful. We actually think more deeply about what we’re doing. Is this makes sense? You know, is this the right way to handle this situation? Can we be less invasive? Can we avoid doing a full coverage crown? By and shave away healthy parts of the tooth. For me, I want to be conservative, save healthy parts of a tooth and do a partial crown. And avoid the typical crowns and aggressive dentistry that’s done that a lot of times leads to the nerve dying. And then a cascade event that leads to a nerve dying and a root canal and then ultimately tooth loss. So it’s for us do less, less is more. But also if you are going to do something, use the materials wisely, use right materials So at least not impacting the body in a negative way.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:07:17] Now, you had to mention, and I think our listener may have missed it too, I mean, you mentioned this silver mercury amalgam fillings, which are, you know, they used to be called silver fillings. But hey, guess what? Half of the material is mercury. Who would have thought? But, you know. Removing it is is a challenge. And one could argue you’re almost better off leaving it in than removing it carelessly. And you mentioned the IAOMT, the International what is that, oral medicine and toxicology, something like that. They have what’s called the smart protocols. Just remind our listener, because I think it’s worth reminding them to be a little bit cautious about the removal. And this is true for the dentist as well as the patient. What do you what do you what did you learn from them? What was the lessons from them.

Dr Ben Javid [01:08:09] Well, number one, all metals are toxic to the body. There’s no place for any metal in the body, and mercury happens to be the most toxic. And these mercury amalgam fillings have more mercury than any other ingredient. In fact, more than 50% mercury. And they taught us in dental school that this is an amalgamation of multiple metals. That’s why they call it amalgam. And when you put them together, it makes it so that the mercury is not released into the body Oh, great. Thank you very much. Let’s go play with it and put it in the mouth. But the reality, we know 100 percent. This is not up for debate that mercury is being released by these fillings on a daily level for if you have a mercury, amalgam, silver, whatever you want to call it filling in your mouth. And how is it being released from just any surface tension? Meaning if you brush, if you if you floss that area, if eat or grind your teeth, anything you’re doing when you rub that mercury amalgam filling, there is actually if you go to the YouTube, I’m sure you’ve seen it is a smoking tooth. It shows with the right fluorescence that this how much of this very toxic material is being released, except there’s no order. There’s no taste that you can’t tell it’s happening. You’re just inhaling it and it’s going into your body. Now, when it goes into your body… It gets trapped. That’s why they call it heavy metals and the heavy metals means you can’t get it out but your body in its natural intelligence absorbs it and stores it in tissues. It stores it in usually fatty tissues but that bucket gets full after some time and overflows and it goes into organs. As it goes into organs, it’ll go into maybe kidneys, liver, but also the brain. As mercury being a major neurotoxin. What we see is neurological issues, you know? The Mad Hatter, we knew from well before all this that if you have a lot of mercury toxicity, you go mad. So this is not something new. In fact, back when they introduced mercury fillings in the 1800s, people already knew it was bad. People already knew, they’re like, what the hell? We don’t wanna put mercury in people’s mouths. And the ADA or American Dental Association of that time. It was called something else. I can’t remember, but they said, no, we’re not going to put this toxic material in people’s mouths. But of course with the system as we have it, they took down that system, that, um, Academy and they said no more of that. We’re going to create the American dental association and we’ll put dentists in charge that accept this. And now there’s mercury fillings. Uh, and it’s been that way for, since the 1800s. Of course, we are still treating it horribly in this country, where we are placing it in kids and pregnant women and adults of all kinds. A lot of other countries have actually outlawed these mercury amalgam fillings. And many parts of Europe have outlawded. Actually, I think all of Europe as of 2025 has outlawed it. And Russia outlaw it in the 70s, actually late 70s they outlaw this material. But still in the United States and in Australia we’re still placing it and it’s to the risk of not just the patient but the dentist team when removing this mercury material like you said it’s better to leave it. I always tell people do not take out your mercury fillings unless you do it with someone that’s qualified and trained to do it correctly because the amount of mercury toxicity that is released from that drilling process You know, the drilling process releasing the vapour and microscopic particles of these mercury is tremendous. A lot of people actually get sick after this process when they did it incorrectly. So it’s better to wait and do it the right way. And what’s interesting in our country, we are not allowed to have this material go down the drain. We have an amalgam separator which means that we can’t let it go out of the drain because it’s toxic for the environment, but we can put it in the mouth and we can drill it out and we inhale it. So it’s interesting how they have these regulations that we all have to have this amalgams separator and it’s not allowed to go down the drain, but, we can still drill it and inhale it and the poor souls, these poor, like me and you at one point We were drilling mercury fillings all the time. Unsafely. And we were exposed every single day to this mercury. So it’s unfortunate. At this point, we know way better. But still, this has not changed. So hopefully, we will see it in our countries too. And this material will be outlawed because there’s better options.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:13:15] No, no, the irony is in our country that as you say, it is against the law for environmental reasons to put the leftover material into the garbage, the toilet or down the sink. It’s too dangerous for that. The only safe place according to our NIH, it’s called the NH and MRC, or our TGA, which is your FDA. The only safe place, according to the authorities, to store this toxic material is in a human being, which defies logic, defies logic, but it’s sobering. The other interesting thing, Ben, is that I don’t know whether you’re aware of this, but if people Google the 47 worst jobs for your health, this is the U.S. Department of Labor. And I can imagine if a dentist is listening to this. Who doesn’t agree with this, they’ll be going, oh, these guys are this is such a load of BS, you know, this is rubbish. Well, the US Department of Labor do a study of nine hundred and fifty jobs, the worst jobs for your health and dentists, dental hygienists and dental nurses come up in the top five of nine hundred and 50 jobs. So, you, know, hey, take it seriously. It’s affecting our health or dental health as well as patient health as

Dr Ben Javid [01:14:39] It’s a tough job, right? It’s physically, mentally, and not to mention toxic. So it’s a it’s no joke. And a lot of times people ask, why do you think dentists have a high suicide rate? You get that a lot. It’s, it’s a very tough job. And it’s very toxic. And you really have to. Handle a lot, and it’s no joke, it’s not for everyone.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:15:10] No, no. And the sobering part of that study in the US Department of Labor is they use five criteria, exposure to toxins, exposure to microbes, exposure to radiation and being seated. And dentists come up in the top five, but they don’t even factor in stress into that. So add stress to that. And it’s a wonder we’re still alive talking to each other as we are now. Ben, but there we are. Listen, so good to catch up with you and talk to you about some of the exciting things. We’ve done a lot of programmes on oral health, it’s a passion of mine, it’s the missing link in dentistry. I wonder if I might ask you this final question because we’re all on a health journey in this modern world as individuals, so taking a step back from your role as a holistic dentist and putting your individual hat on. What do you think the biggest challenge is for us as individuals on that journey in this modern world?

Dr Ben Javid [01:16:10] The biggest challenge as far as being healthy, what’s our biggest challenge of being healthy?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:16:16] Yeah, as individuals.

Dr Ben Javid [01:16:17] Well, you know, I think… The health mindset is number one. I mean, number one, I think it starts up here. The head, right? We said the mouth is the gateway, but if you go a little higher up, it’s a mindset. Now, number 1, it is this journey of actually questioning and wanting more answers and just listening and following. I think that’s number one. If you just listen and follow, you’re never gonna be healthy. If you want to just have someone tell you what to do, that’s not gonna be a solution. If anything, we learned that from COVID. But number two, I think a lot of times, as you might know, certain people are not in the mindset of being healthy because they have a mentality of, that is not healthy. For example, they are a victim to their situation. They’re a victim to circumstances and they’re never going to be healthy. So whether it, whether they diet or exercise or, or eat right, they’re not going to healthy because they’re always a victim to every situation. So I think if you have the right mindset of, of, no no matter where you are. In your life or what you’ve been through being present in where you are and looking in the in the direction of where you want to be. I think that mindset has to be there. If you’re focused on what is and what has happened or what could you know, and you know being afraid of all the different possibilities of what could be then you are living in a mindset of disease. So you so number one, it’s I believe it’s a mindset. So if you’re in the right mindset, living in the right vibration, right? If you could say living in that mindset of health and healing mentality. So no matter what is happening in your life, you are focused on health and longevity and feeling well and looking and in that direction. You’ll get there. Now, if you if you constantly looking at your disease or health issues or issues that have happened in the past. Well, you’re going to stay there. You’re never going to grow. And at times, as health care providers, we can’t help everyone. We’re not going to, unless they are ready to take that, go on to that next chapter of actual health, we’re not gonna be able to help them. That’s why it’s great when someone is already there and they come find us and we’re here to support them on their journey. That’s what I always say is we’re supporting them on they’re journey, they’re the drivers on their journeys. So that means that they’re headed in that journey anyway, we’re going to support. So I think the biggest part is that number one is what happens between the ears and how you think about your life and every day if you’re in, if you taking the very important, it’s vitamin, vitamin G. Do you know what that is? Go on. Vitamin G, gratitude. If you’re living in a state of gratitude, that is probably the most important vitamin you can take. And what you’re doing then is you’re aligning your energy with that full potential. When you’re in a scene of gratitude you’re now vibrationally aligned with health. You’re vibrationally align with all the wonderful positive potential out there in this universe. But if you’re not in that state, I don’t care who is your doctor, who is what medicine you’re taking or what even common treatment modalities or detoxes or any kind of heavy metal detox you can do or IV protocol or hyperbarics or all these other technologies and biohacks that are out there. If you’re not in a mindset of healing, actually true healing. You’re not gonna be aligned with that potential.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:20:26] Well, Ben, that’s a great note for us to finish on. It’s been such a pleasure to talk to you. I am grateful for your time and your contribution and your journey. And thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Ben Javid [01:20:41] No, it’s a pleasure. As you can see, I’m passionate about it. I like to… You know like I said I like to speak at longevity conferences on these topics as you can tell like you keep going on them and it’s exciting I feel like this is what I’m drawn to do and I’m called to do. And I do our different little videos on our social media platforms as well. It’s MySmileBody, it’s our social media handle and obviously our website is also MySmileBody.com so we are passionate to get this kind of information out there so that people can learn and grow and heal themselves a lot of times with some help. Thank you. Ron, thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:21:33] Well, I love that. I love that I feel so enthused and empowered and really it’s a real eye opener for me. And I love Ben’s use of the term AI. No, not artificial intelligence, ancient intelligence. And I have often said that we have so much to learn from the ancient wisdom of our forefathers. And I also loved his vitamin G, which is gratitude. Which is one of the most powerful vitamins we all have access to and should all practise regularly. We will of course have links to Smile Body, their clinic, and I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well. Feeling stressed, overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstresse health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness. From self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together, let’s not just survive, but thrive. Expert-led courses, curated podcasts, like-minded community and support and much more. Visit unstresshealth.com. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioners. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.

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Dr Julie Sladden – Australians for Science & Freedom Website
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Brownstone Institute
Prof John Ioannidis
Prof Scott Atlas – Global Liberty Institute
The Real Anthony Fauci Book

00:00 – Introduction & Episode Overview02:00 – Why Dr Julie Sladden wrote “The Reckoning That Never Came”05:45 – Julie’s cancer diagnosis and transformation in medical practice10:58 – How her journey shaped her view on pandemic policies15:25 – Pre-pandemic health plans vs. COVID response18:59 – The Great Barrington Declaration explained28:16 – Vaccine mandates and ethical failures in public health36:37 – Lessons from Sweden’s approach39:00 – What future health leaders need: Courage & integrity48:28 – Hope for the future: Health sovereignty and community empowerment52:40 – Closing thoughts The Reckoning That Never Came: Dr Julie Sladden on COVID, Corruption & CourageDr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Unstressed Health, my name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we are exploring the pandemic, and I think… Although it doesn’t seem to find its way into very much discussion. Either in governmental… In public health. In professional. Organisations or even in the media, it seems to have been brushed under the carpet. It is a subject that I think we could all describe as a collective trauma. Certainly an opportunity for global reflexion. And I think we have a great deal to learn from it. Both positive and sadly a great deal of negatives. My guest today is Dr. Julie Sladden. Now, Julie is a former medical practitioner. She’s now a health advocate. And she is a courageous voice for transparency in health care. Something I think is that is sadly, sadly like. Julie has been outspoken about the need for genuine reckoning. Following the COVID pandemic, highlighting the profound failures. In public health policy. Leadership and institutional trust. Drawing on her recent piece, which she wrote. Are called the reckoning that never came will explore the societal. Economic? And personal impacts of the pandemic policies. The erosion of trust. In healthcare authorities and why honest conversations are critical. For each and every one of us and also for a national healing and reform. This is an issue. Sadly, I think which is very relevant in Australia, but not really being addressed in Australia. But it is definitely a conversation that’s happening. In the United States. We touch on some of that today. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had. With Dr. Julie Sladden. Welcome to the show, Julie.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:01:57] Thank you, it’s great to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:00] Julie, I read your article that was called The Reckoning That Never Came. And I was reflecting on that and that’s why I invited you on. I wanted to talk about this issue as we reflect back on the pandemic. I mean, what what motivated you to call for a pandemic reckoning? And how has your view evolved over the past three years?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:02:23] Well, it’s a good question, it was actually… A topic that I first wrote about over three years ago now. When I first started. Writing in the wake of the pandemic. And it was just coming up on the 2022 election. And I realised that one of my great fears was that. We wouldn’t. Talk about what happened. Because I’d noticed that. Both of the major parties in their debate. Had, or in the debates that they had, hadn’t mentioned the pandemic at all. And I thought. How can they not? This is 2022, so we’re still very much in the… The throes of everything that was going on, I thought how can they not be talking about the biggest thing that has affected people? Including health and physical policy and social cohesion. How can they not be talking about it? And I was just… And I thought, wow, what if they never talk about it? And that kind of thought. Didn’t even really. They’re entertaining, but… I did, I wrote about it and so I wrote about what should be in a pandemic reckoning. You know, that was my kind of like, this is what you guys should be talking about. And it was all of the things, I guess, that should ever be included in a royal commission, if there ever was one as well. So here we are, alarmingly, three years later. And it’s still. Not really happened. I mean, we’ve had. Um… Some various senate inquiries into you know developing terms of reference for a royal commission and we’ve had You know, evaluations of the labour government’s COVID inquiry, which was very much the inquiry that you have when you don’t really want to have an inquiry. Um, but. Nothing really that’s answered. The questions that. Or address the issues that have been. Ongoing since then and They do that at their peril because the people haven’t forgotten and it’s not just that. You know, the people in Victoria who were locked down terribly and had their businesses decimated. It’s all of Australia. You don’t need to go that far to see. Just the carnage, and it’s fiscal, it’s social, it… Educational. Um… The health system and you know every every problem that we had has been made worse and if we don’t actually name up the elephant in the room Then what?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:51] I mean, it is I mean I have been following the story of. Corporate capture in health care. For almost 40 years, and it’s something that’s been, it’s not new, although to many it is new. And even I… Was shocked. By the level of capture because that’s really what it was, it wasn’t following any kind of plan and the collective trauma we all experience. At various levels was extraordinary. I’m intrigued though, Julie, because your background is medicine. You are a doctor, you have been a doctor. Tell me about your journey as a doctor. I mean, have you been? Have you been, how would you describe the way you practised medicine up until that point in the pandemic?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:05:41] Yeah, well that is a story in and of itself.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:45] I’m intrigued by those stories, Julie, because they’re transformational. For many practitioners, but sadly not as many as there should be.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:05:53] Yeah, and I think… I’ve always said, you know, one of the best educational experiences I had in medicine was being a patient myself. And I think it was that experience that really positioned me to see that. Some of the things that were. Being done as part of the pandemic response were counterintuitive. And weren’t really setting people up. To be healthy. Which is what made me look into it further. We’ve had a lot of terms bandied around in the last few years. You know conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, misinformation. Blah blah blah, call it what you will, but… You have to be prepared to ask questions. When I was practising medicine, you know, as we entered the pandemic, I’d very much. Um, was practising in a way that, you know, I… Being forced to ask questions about the education that I had. The way that we were being trained. And that was simply because I’d actually been forced to go and find my own answers. And it started. I mean, I’ve always been very fit, very healthy. I’ve loved the outdoor lifestyle. I’ve you know never smoked Never been overweight Love sport I love eating healthy and so you can imagine my surprise. When I developed breast cancer at the age of 39 with no family history. That what they’ve followed was a a series of unfortunate events. That, um, forced me down a path of actually looking at what is health, what is real health. And, you know, without. Boring your listeners too much. I mean I had had a few health adventures along the way. Already. Um, you know, had a blood clot when I was pregnant. I had a grumbling autoimmune condition that nobody really seemed to know what it was but that was okay because I just managed it with. And anti-inflammatories. Carried on and didn’t really pay it much attention. And then this cancer diagnosis, which just came out of the blue, which is really, you know, when you say the word cancer, I mean, everyone, like you feel a bit ill. And I certainly do, I thought, what is going on? And that was back in 2013. That I had that diagnosis. Went through all the… The, you know, that I had surgery, fortunately I was able to avoid. Chemo and radiation. Or the plans changed many, many, many times and. Uh, alright. After about 12 months, you know, following all of this, I was actually… Getting sicker. Not from cancer because essentially I was cured but my autoimmune disease had taken on a whole new life to the point where I was on about. About a dozen drugs. Um… As well as being in an enforced menopause. I developed a… A minimal trauma stress fracture because then I became osteoporotic. Well, osteopenic, I didn’t quite make it to osteoporosis. And I had Terrible, terrible pain. And I just remember one day thinking… This is ridiculous. I’m getting sicker. And Like, I shouldn’t be, like, if I look, if I extrapolate down this path, by this time I was 42, I thought… All I can see is… Like this is getting worse and I’m going to end up on more drugs to manage the side effects from the other drugs. And, um… I had a family member who… You know, it was knowledgeable in gut health. So I spoke to them. Not it was just an off the cuff kind of conversation they said oh maybe you should go and have a look over here and go and read up about that. And I’d always been interested in nutrition and things. That really did set me off. On a path of reading and learning and discovering some very knowledgeable people out there who’ve been looking at health. From what I would call now a real holistic point of view, not just symptom, diagnosis, you know, drug. Which is the way that I do.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:15] Because what you were experiencing, Julie, was standard of care. I think that’s worth mentioning. To our listener that You weren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary, in fact quite the opposite. You are experiencing what is considered in modern medicine. Standard of camp. And I presume the person who knew a little about nutrition wasn’t a doctor. OK, just laying down some foundations here, because I do think it’s interesting to. Talk and I’ve spoken to many doctors over the years on this programme. About the transformational experience their own diagnosis had on their practise of medicine. It’s not an uncommon story.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:10:58] It’s true, I think there has to be a catalyst event to make you go looking. A little bit further afield. And it’s not as if you’re looking in weird and wonderful places. Sometimes it’s just actually… Researching. Papers that, you know, look at. You know, what do we know about the gut microbiome or… You know, what do we know about vitamin D? I mean vitamin D was something that I had. Incredible deficiency in you know my vitamin D was in my boots when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I know that that was one of the things. Contributed to my immune system not working very well. So it was almost like… And what followed was about sort of a six or seven year period of… Getting myself. Back to a reasonable level of health. No longer on any. Medications. And a completely different way of living, but it was like doing another whole medical degree. And I did lots and lots of courses. They did a 12-month nutrition course. They did some of the training through ACNHM, the Australian College of Nutrition and Environmental Medicine. They did great courses there.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:04] Julie, I’m the past immediate past president, so yeah, I know.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:12:07] Yeah, I know, I recognise you from somewhere. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:10] So it’s good to hear you put a plug in for ACNEM, the Australasian College of Nutritional Environmental Medicine, but do go on.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:12:17] Yeah, and I just really pieced together my own sort of Choose Your Own Adventure training which was tailored to My- health problems and by doing so I kind of found, learned a lot of things that would help other people along the way. So my medical career as it was has always been a bit of a choose your own adventure because my husband’s a doctor as well. When you’re in a two-doctor family and you’ve got kids, you often find that one of you is a little bit more kind of, you know. What’s the word? Flexible than the other. And so I’ve worked in our general practise a number of times. Spent eight years in emergency medicine, which is where I was. When I was diagnosed. But when I return to medicine after that period of ill health, I… Is back in general practise. And I started collecting patients who… Well, I started getting patients who… Similar problems to me. And then I would tell their friends and then soon enough. You know, it’s like cool. GPs who don’t have the time to Practise in that way. Would be sending their patients to me. And so when the pandemic arrived, I was essentially doing nutrition and gut health. And doing longer consultations. You know, my patients would come and see me and we’d just, you know. Work out what was happening in their life, and get them back to some kind of even keel. It was very rewarding, it was very hard. Because you’re dealing with helping people change. Habits of a lifetime. Um, but usually by the time they got to me, they. So I figured it was that way or… No other way. So that’s… Really what? Um… Primed me, as it were, to see. Some of the responses that we were doing in the pandemic. I actually was telling a friend about this recently. I said, you know, I remember what I was doing, where I was. When I all of a sudden realised everything that they’re saying to the public. Is actually setting them up. To suppress their immune systems and that’s not what we need right now. You know what I mean? Stay home, stay frightened, stay indoors, don’t exercise. Binge watch Netflix, drink alcohol and junk food. And separate you from all your loved ones. I mean talk about you want to You want a way of destroying the immune system. That’s a pretty good start And, uh, That was pretty much when I sort of started. Looking into it a bit more and asking a few more questions.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:45] It’s interesting because you talked about your trauma of diagnosis. And what a transformational experience it was. And very few people could argue with the fact that the pandemic. Was a collective trauma for us all. And you raised some critical questions about why pre pandemic plans were abandoned. You know, in your view, I mean, we don’t seem to have learned a great deal from this trauma. In your view, what were some of the most damaging deviations from those pre-pandemic plans? And why weren’t they, and in fact, why aren’t they being debated openly today?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:15:25] Well, that’s the… $50 million question isn’t it really?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:28] I would say, actually, it’s the hundred billion dollar question, but yes, closer to the truth. That’s a little more accurate, but it’s a hundred billion dollar question and answer. But no, really, there were plans in place, pre-pandemic plans in place, they were abandoned, really. What were some of the plans that were there that would not follow?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:15:50] Well, I looked into this in, it was around about 2021, I think, and I thought, surely there are some pandemic plans, and sure enough there were. They’ve been recently refreshed as of August 2019, so they’re… So I feel like, you know… Hot off the press. And as I mentioned, nothing about mass lockdowns of healthy people. There were staged responses and ways of isolating cases. And things, but not this mass lockdown of people. It was very much more graded and systematic. It didn’t talk about mass vaccination of healthy populations. It talked more about the focused protection of at-risk groups. You know, contact tracing and things like that, some of which we saw. But it was such a deviation from… What we actually saw to what was written in the plan was just such a deviation. There’s no way the two things. You know, could exist together in the same room and it was… Very much. Closer our plans. We’re very much closer to what was espoused in… The Great Barrington Declaration, which some of your viewers may be. Familiar with. Professor Bhattacharya.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:58] Yeah, just to remind us, I mean, that was something we have spoken about. But I think it’s worth reminding our listener. About the Great Barrington Declaration.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:17:08] Yeah, so that was, I think… Put out in October 2020. And it was. By three very well-respected. Epidemiologists. Suneetra Gupta, who I believe is from Oxford. Yes. Professor J. Bhattacharya. He’s a professor from Stanford, and he also has a… He had a chair in economics as well as being a medical doctor. Epidemiologist and Martin Kuhldorf. And from have it, I believe. And there are a lot of people also in the background I’ve since learned a little bit more. About that, you know, Scott Atlas, I think, you know, was very much involved, you know, around all that at that time and Geoffrey Tucker who now… Who runs Brownstone Institute. A lot of good articles on there. They really wanted to, they noticed that everything that was being said was actually not what the literature had been saying, the pandemic literature which we had for 100 years. Um, was not. Being followed. And they also had, by that stage, done some studies. John Ioannidis and Co. And I think Professor Bhattacharya was one of the authors on that paper. I actually did some studies in the American population. In spring 2020, so very early on. By April. April, May 2020, they knew that. It was out in the community. Viruses in the community and the. Uh, case. Was the infection fatality rate was somewhere around 0. 0.2% like it was. Really low.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:50] Yes, which to put it another way was you had a 99.8% chance of success, chance of not not dying.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:18:59] And what that study also showed was who was at risk and those who were at risk. With an elderly. And those with multiple co-borbidities. So they got together. Around the table and said look. This consensus of mass lockdowns of healthy people is not what we should be doing, we should do. Focus protection on those that are at risk, so the elderly and the multiple. Those with multiple comorbidities like diabetes and things like that. And we should be letting… The rest of the the populations get on with their life because we know. The research shows that… The cost. Of lockdowns. Kills people. You know, the cost of locking healthy people up kills people, and preferentially it’s the poor and the vulnerable and the children. And I remember I actually had the opportunity to interview Professor Bhattacharya and he said you know, the day they went into lockdown in India. You know, you said there were a million people. Basically. It was responsible for a million deaths, that lockdown. And it just blew my mind. That, you know, there’s no talk about the number of deaths that happened because of the mass lockdowns. And the schooling and education as well. The children who go through lockdown or are locked out of school, they never fully recover. Those educational years back. And we’re now starting to see… That filter through our education system now. Where I had a teacher say to me the other day. Julie, have you interviewed? Anyone, any of the kindergarten teachers right now. And I said no. And they said, well, you should, because the children that are now entering kindergarten. Are the 2020 babies. And. They’re seeing some. Um, very alarming. Things so that’s a TBC. Conversation that that is going to have to happen and this is where I’m talking about there are so many downstream effects of the things that we did. You know, economically. You know we’ve got this inflation now I don’t know how COVID is not a part of that conversation because what was done. Was basically to set us up for this inflation. That we now have. We have the healthcare system. Which has been never fully, hasn’t fully recovered from the mandates. And then of course, you know, the vaccinations that some people left their work. Workplaces because of that. We all know, I’m sure, your watchers probably are aware that, you know, people have been injured by those, some of those are not able to go back to work or… Are struggling and have reduced capacity. I know people like that in the healthcare industry. So that’s another, you know, four way that we’re sort of struggling through. And so by not going back and looking at. You know, what we actually did versus. What we should have been doing based on, you know, the evidence, which is, like I said, what the… Great Barrington Declaration espoused. Focus protection and let healthy people get on with their lives. Just like to say, about a million people have signed that document now, including Noble Prize. Winning laureates and tens of thousands of doctors and researchers and scientists. I mean that was the… Real consensus. That was silenced, that was censored. From the mainstream media and we’re still not talking about it. But if we don’t talk about it, not only… Are we set to repeat it? But there’s absolutely no way that we can even begin to approach. Has happened. And how to dig ourselves out of this mess.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:50] I mean, I’m amazed that, you know, the pre-pandemic plan, which as you said had been updated. As late. As August 2019. Presumably the very people that made the public health declarations during the pandemic. Were involved in. That planning. I must be right because who else would be involved in a pre-pandemic planning? Than chief medical officers and public health and epidemiologists and economists. They were all involved. Well, I just cannot understand. What happened? That changed everything.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:23:31] I think. You know, that’s. Very much a specific conversation that needs to. Happen as well. Because. That’s a question that just hasn’t been answered. It hasn’t even been discussed. So, you know, tell me, I often wonder, did somebody get a memo that the rest of us didn’t get? You know, when was the decision made that we’re not going to follow? The pandemic plan. We’re going to do this other thing. Um, and some people, you know, hypothesise, Oh, well, we’ve, we followed China because China was locking people down, said they’re on top of it, and so we all followed their lead. I don’t think so. Um… We’ve never before seen the world. All be so cool. I mean, so many different countries in the world are all doing the same thing. It just Without wanting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you know You just think, was there a memo that we all missed that was being used to? I don’t go, but the question definitely needs to be addressed. And it’s one of those. Parts, components of the reckoning. Why do we? Diverge from it. And I think I looked up the pandemic plan. A little while ago. And they haven’t rewritten it yet, so I’m kind of like, well, what’s gonna be the next? Um, iteration of that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:52] Hi, Dr. Ron here and I want to invite you to join our unstress health community. Now like this podcast, it’s independent of industry. And focuses on taking a holistic approach. To human health. And to the health of the planet, the two… Are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&A’s. On specific topics with special guests. Including Many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to. With some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders but with membership We have our Unstress Lab podcast series. Where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes. Which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. Join the Unstress Health Community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel… Click on the link below or just visit on unstressHealth.com to see what’s on offer. Join Now! I look forward to connecting with you. Well, I think the word conspiracy theory doesn’t really Do it justice, I think if you use the words business model. It seems to make a lot more sense. Erosion of trust was an issue. I know there was an article in the American Medical Journal. Which said, prior to. 2020. Prior to the pandemic, trust in physicians and hospitals was at about 70 percent. And now the number is at 40%. And I think that is probably. The case more in America than in Australia. I think the conversations have gone on more in America than they have. Here in Australia, would you agree with that?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:26:45] I would agree with that and I think I saw the same article. And while the longer that this lack of open conversation happens… The less chance we have of rebuilding that trust. You can’t have trust without transparency. There’s been very little transparency, they can’t expect to build back trust without answering some of the hard questions and that collective trauma that people have gone through. Through to not even have You know, grievances add. You know, we’ve seeing, you know, people who’ve been terribly injured by the vaccine and you know, still. We have this, oh, there’s nothing to see here. You know, safe and effective. And I think. That’s not the most. True iteration of the conversation that should be happening right now. They’re blaming the drop-off in vaccination rates in general. Um, and. You know, obviously the flu vaccine and. And getting your COVID booster is being heavily promoted at the moment and they’re not getting a lot of uptake. And I think that pretty much tells you the barometer of where the people are at right now. They’re voting with their feet. So these are those unanswered questions, and this also, I think, really demonstrates a lack of trust that’s there. I know people who now say they… They wouldn’t go and see a GP or they wouldn t go to a hospital, you know, because they just don t trust the system anymore. We have a real problem and we have to have those conversations if we want to build. The trust back.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:16] Mmm, no, no. I- Completely agree. I mean you highlighted that the mandates and the tension between personal autonomy. And public health mandates. You talked about that. How should we as a society balance out those kind of individual rights with collective responsibilities? Moving forward because, you know, I guess we live in a community. We want to have our personal freedoms. I mean, this was one extreme example of having almost all personal freedoms removed. There’s gotta be a balance there somewhere, hasn’t there?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:28:54] And look, the best point I can think of is one that was given to me by Professor Bhattacharya, and he said, Represent a failure of public health. You said if you’ve got to mandate people to have a vaccine. Then public health has failed. It should be so good. And so. Safe and so effective and so open and it’s, you know, people’s that they’re actually lining up to have it. And, you know, I’ve been called an anti-vaxxer. I’ve had more vaccines than most people and then some because I’ve travelled quite extensively as well. And, you know, where treatments work and, um, you know, a therapeutic intervention works. You know, I’m the first person to put myself there too. You know, so I’m not. Weighing down the health system, you know, so and that’s why I take responsibility for my own health as well because I see that as my duty so that I’m not. You know, taking up unnecessary resources. Anyone of any, you know, responsibility will do that. So. When they mandated it, I think there was this line that was crossed. That they really didn’t consider. The adverse effects of actually mandating because there was that. There was a breach of trust that K-I-E-M from that and it went from being we’re all in this together. To uh you know it’s you’re you’re either in this or you’re out and they’re ostracising then of people who decided they couldn’t give informed consent to the vaccine. They were then essentially like, you know, some of them gave up their jobs in order to do that. That were also ostracised by members of the community. And also socially. Politically. Some of the most appalling displays of professionalism, I’ve… Ever seen in my life. Was watching some representatives of doctors’ organisations. On the news basically saying, you know, if you don’t have it. You know, you’re making your life very difficult for yourself. And some really coercive speech. That. I just… You know, and I did, I’ve done training in medical education and my area of interest was professionalism and ethics and informed consent. And I remember watching this and just feel a colour drain out of my face thinking. Like the whole population is being. Coerced. Uh, and it was, yeah. Yeah, it was just appalling and… So there’s a collective trauma that stemmed. From all of that as well, and it’s not as if there’s no evidence about this. There’s actually a paper that I sourced I think it was from 2019 or or thereabouts, which basically said mandate. Vaccines with care. And it was talking about the childhood schedule. And the risks of. You know, mandating versus, you know the carrot and stick approach type thing. And you know it said there’s a line whereby once you start to force people make the percentage of people who, you know, sort of… You know, on the fence about it. You try and push them too much. And they’ll go the other way. And we saw that happen. On mass . Now as far as the responsibility to the community. I have a real problem with that argument in that. It’s flawed from the position of the assumption that the vaccine. Prevented transmission.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:29] Which they knew it didn’t.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:32:31] They knew it didn’t. They knew before it was mandated that it didn t. And I’ve got the emails to prove it. You know, the emails were forward, so they had that conversation. And… That’s the problem. You have to understand a little bit about. Bureaucratic processes, you need to understand a bit about medicine, you need to want to say, you know, they’ve never really… Invented a respiratory vaccine at least that’s Been able to stop- transmission, you know, when you have a vaccine. It prevents the person, it helps the person. It’s for the person’s protection. Um… And so that was never really. The basis for you know, for getting vaccinated in the past. So this really big push to get vaccinated to save grandma, you know. Was just. One that we’ve never seen before.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:26] Yeah. And to isolate the person who wasn’t vaccinated and say you’re potentially threatening our community, we’re in fact. If the vaccine was effective. It was they that were taking the risk. Themselves. They weren’t, you know, you’re fine. You’ve been vaccinated. What are you worried about? You’re vaccinated. You’re safe, aren’t you? I’m the one that’s going to take the risk.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:33:52] Exactly. And I remember when I decided. That I wasn’t going to have the vaccine. And I thought, well, you know. I can do telehealth walls, it turned out our mandates. In Tasmania or so. Stringent that you couldn’t even do telehealth. So you couldn’t provide any health service.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:13] You could not even provide a health service online unless you were vaccinated.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:34:18] It’s completely illogical. So it really. Punitive. And I remember saying to somebody you know, don’t worry, if I get COVID, I’ll just… You know, take myself off to a ruin somewhere, I promise not to burn the health there. The hospital system. You know, by that time we kind of… In 2021 we knew. Things that would help. We knew who was at risk. I knew I was healthy and I was at more risk. Because given my personal medical history. Um… You know from having the the jab than I was from the virus. I think, and this is the thing, everybody needs to make the correct decision for them. You know, we’ve never before seen… People recommending that children be vaccinated with something that we don’t have. Medium to long term safety data on. Pregnant women We don’t have medium to long-term safety data in order to protect. The population that’s at risk, the older population. It’s almost like the people who we should have been protecting were being used as a shield. Like I said, there were so many things that just got thrown out the window. Aye. Really made me despair of what the medical profession and the… The bureaucrats and political class were doing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:33] I noticed that you’ve used the term media outlets and I no longer use the term news outlets. Particularly since the pandemic. It really was. Such a coordinated… A response between… Government, professional organisations. And media all singing to the same tune. And any question about safety of a pharmaceutical product. Which vaccines are. Was considered to be anti-vax. You know, if I was concerned about. A pharmaceutical product, would I then be deemed to be anti-pharma? Well, probably I would, but… You know, it was it was so coordinated, wasn’t it? I’m looking at Sweden was an interesting point in case, wasn’t it because people. Often cite that and cite it in a way that I don’t think they’ve looked at the statistics. What lessons could we learn from Sweden who didn’t lock down? Did they? I don’t think they did lock down. What were some of the lessons we learnt from them?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:36:37] Well, interesting case because I don’t believe they had their own pandemic plans. I believe they followed the UK’s pandemic plans, which the UK themselves didn’t follow. And they, you know, went for it. They basically let people… You know, choose. Their movements. They didn’t do mass lockdowns. I think one of the things that they… Didn’t do so well. They sent elderly people. Got COVID back to their nursing homes and so I think I ended up with a little… You know spike there in the older population. So they possibly could have handled that a bit better. I’d just like to say I haven’t looked closely at their data, so this is more commentary. That other people have provided. As far as long-term effects from the lockdowns. And mandates and things like that. They’re not suffering from those. They also don’t have the economic. Hangover. That the rest of us all have. As well because the lockdowns had. Devastating effects on our economy. You know, just from the point of view of, you know businesses and it was fine. Well, fine, I use that term relatively as well for the laptop class, you know, those who could just do their job. At home. Whilst cooking dinner and homeschooling their children as well. Whereas, you know, the bricks and mortar people who… Like especially in hospitality. You know, they were decimated, retail was decimated. You know, money was printed to keep people at home, never before a week. You know, printed money to… Keep people at home. You know, we wonder why we’ve got a cost of living crisis. Right now.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:15] You mentioned the appointment of Jay Bhattacharya, who, as you said, is this. Professor of Epidemiology and Economics at Stanford. You also mentioned John Ioannidis from Stanford and it’s worth. Noting that he’s the most cited author in history. In fact, I think if you get an article published and you get a hundred or two hundred or a thousand citations, you’re doing really well. He’s had two hundred thousand. So, you know, he’s he’s well regarded. But he’s now the head of the National Institute of Health in America. What qualities do you think future health leaders have to have to restore? If you know, faith, trust. And integrity in our organisation. I mean. What do you think needs to happen?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:39:00] Well, I think, you know, Professor Bhattacharya is, is probably a… A very good example of what we need to have. In our Policy Our Health Bureaucrats, Our Health Leaders now. I mean he has basically earned his stripes as it were. The hard way and by speaking up. You know, I remember him saying, if I can’t as a Stanford tenured professor… Speak up than who can. He saw it as his duty. But it wasn’t without cost, you know, he was… Persecuted heat. Was taken through the mill. By his own university, I believe. And just suffered some terrible, you know attacks on his credibility. And… You know, to see him rise to be. Head of the NIH now just… It really is probably one of the most encouraging things that I have seen in the last five years. And what do we need from our our health leaders? We need integrity. We need honesty, we need people. Who are actually prepared. To Say the hard thing, to ask the hard question. And I know that in his speech to… The Senate when he was having… What do they call this the session where they basically grill them?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:25] Yes, yes.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:40:26] You know and he talked about you know freedom of speech and freedom of scientific discourse we need to be able to do that and that was what Suffered tremendously during that period. And, uh. Some Scott Atlas as well who I spoke with and you know he talks He’s actually helped to set up a organisation called the Global. Liberty Institute and they are training up. You know, young leaders, many of them are already sort of bird… You know, sort of blooming leaders. But the younger generation to be able to. Work in these spaces and what are the questions that they ask them? Is what have you done to show courage? So we need courageous leaders. We need… People who are actually prepared. To sacrifice. They’re, you know… Their careers. Their reputation. To do what’s right. At the end. It alarms me even to have to say that because it sounds so… Poetic and like it’s out of a movie, but it literally is as Simple as that, we need people who are not scared. To risk everything, to say what’s right and to do what’s And I’ve been greatly encouraged over the last few years because No, I’ve. I’ve met some amazing Australians. Um… In the health professions and in the medical profession, even the health. Kind of helped to restore my trust that there are people out there. Many of them were just silence. Um, but I’ve been very courageous. You know, my story is just like, like these compared to some of them. What people have gone through. But we have a lot of courageous people out there and they’re the people that we need to be putting in the areas of leadership.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:15] Well, speaking of those in areas of leadership, we did a programme. In 2022, which was about two years after the pandemic started. And the Australian government put on a forum for early treatment. Now, you were in emergency, and I think… It’s good to get, you know, if there’s a problem, get in for the first 24 to 48 hours. If there’s a medical emergency. So I think we could agree that 22 months. Is not what we would consider early treatment. But the only treatment that was discussed was newly patented drugs. And this was Brendan Murphy, head of the health department. Paul Kelly, the chief medical officer, Michael Kidd. Skerrett, John Skerritt, the head of the TGA. These were all. Our leaders in the public health field who I believe Many of them are still our leaders. In the public health field. Would it be unfair to say we just need a big broom to sweep out? The Rubbish?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:43:14] Wouldn’t mind a broom to sweep

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:18] I mean, you talk about, I mean Jay Bhattacharya is a good example of. Of a highly qualified person who displayed courage, who is now put in a position of authority. Are we seeing anything like that happening in Australia?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:43:31] No we’re not and that that really concerns me. I mean you really do have to look at Um, what’s happening in the U S you know, Trump has been a big disrupter. I mean, I think pretty much both sides will agree. On that, but what we’ve seen is some really thoughtful appointment. Of people, especially in the health. Human Services space, you know, and with Robert Kennedy Jr. Dr. Marty Makary who’s the head of the FDA now, and… Professor Bhattacharya at the head of the NIH. The thing that encourages me is that what happens in the US tends to philtre down. To Australia, so as far as information flow, I think we’re going to see a lot of information. Flowing our way that the mainstream media. Will not be able to ignore. This year.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:23] Hmm

Dr Julie Sladden [00:44:24] We’ll see

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:25] We’ll see, we’ll see.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:44:28] But as far as seeing a similar Um… Move as a cleaning out of the bureaucracy within the health political spaces. I’m not seeing that. I’m just seeing it. Almost like a digging in and we’ve also got the revolving door of you know, people who move up to the high echelons of. The political bureaucracy, they then kind of go off and get a nice high paying job in. You know, one of the. Pharmaceutical companies or you know, Medicines Australia or… I’m heading up. m-RNA stuff, you don’t have to look too far to see what’s happening.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:06] No, we we did a programme with. A professor of paediatrics who I at the time when people were advocating for children to have vaccines. And I knew that they were very low risk. I mean, talk about. Almost zero risk of dying from COVID said, how can you justify? Using a experimental vaccine. On my grandchildren, you know, on my five, six, seven, eight-year-olds, and he said How will we know it works if we don’t try? I saw that. What a statement, what a statement.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:45:40] Unbelievable.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:41] It’s just, it is quite frightening. Look, a couple of things, quick questions I wanted to ask you if you had to pick one word for the Australia’s pandemic response. What would one or two words be that comes to mind for you?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:45:58] Atrocious. Devastating.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:04] No, that’s that’s pretty good. Have you read a book or an article or is there a particular figure? Who influenced your thinking most during the pandemic?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:46:14] I read The Real Anthony Fauci pretty early on.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:19] Yes, I did too.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:46:20] Yeah, and that was… Because it was so well researched and so well referenced. So that’s it for your watches. It’s a book by Robert Kennedy Jr. And it does really open your eyes to a lot more. I mean, I thought I was pretty sort of aware of some of the things that were going on, but. A lot more wear after that. So that really did. Deeper my knowledge about the breadth and depth of some of the Corruption that’s been going on And Now that, you know, now that we’re sort of all looking. At things a little bit more closely, you don’t have to go very far to see the similar patterns emerging in different areas of. Know, the pharmaceutical industry and then you know, the way things are being regulated. Vested interests and that pattern as well. Definitely that book, The Real Anthony Fauci, was a good one. Seeing so many good books come out. Um… Dr. Clare Craig’s book (Expired: Covid the untold story). The name escapes me now. Her book was very good. Ramesh Thakur, he’s written… Um, a very A very good one, Our Enemy, the Government:

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:32] It is interesting with that Fauci book and. You know, people have very polarised views of Robert Kennedy Jr. And in my experience. If they have never read or listened to anything that he’s ever said. They feel he’s some kind of a nutter. And to anybody that has bothered to listen or read anything that he’s written. You can’t help but be impressed. And obviously… Professor, President Biden was impressed because he gave. Anthony Fauci, a presidential pardon. In advance, dating back to 2014. So I guess RFK mustn’t have been. Too far off the mark. If President Biden was feeling strong enough to do that. That’s being a little bit, hopefully a little bit positive, Julie, if we can be. What’s your biggest hope for the Australian health care system in the next few years?

Dr Julie Sladden [00:48:28] Well, that’s a good question. I do like to be hopeful too because I think there’s always hope and I think we you know we have That’s the best way. To go forwards and not… And by going forwards, I don’t mean forgetting the past, but I’m learning from it. And if the government aren’t going to be responsible for the reckoning, I think the people will. Will do that themselves in their own ways, all the way from community. Groups and, you know, families, they’ll find their way of… Doing the reckoning. What would I like to see in terms of health? I call COVID very much a great reveal. And it was a great reveal in so many ways about how. People had outsourced their healthcare to the government. You know, that we allowed the political class to stand on, you know get up on TV every single day and tell us to how as a population, how to manage our health. Without there being any real sort of public health messaging. And I think. It has woken a lot of people up. About what is really helpful. Where does your health come from? What things do you need to do to stay healthy? And so I’ve seen pockets of, you know, like. Highly motivated groups. You know, get together and actually start to… Talk about, you know, ways that they can. Live that is sort of. Taking responsibility for their own health. By doing just the positive lifestyle. You know, measures or growing their own food. You know being less reliant on you know, having to, oh, you know. Reliable, if something goes wrong, I’ll just go to my, you know, doctor or I’ll just go into my hospital, and sure. That’s part of the healthcare system, but… It shouldn’t be your first port of And so I think we’ve seen an explosion in people sort of really looking into. You know, gut health, we’ve seen an explosion of people looking into. You know, good nutrition, growing their own food, which means they’re getting outside, they’re being more active and just being more. Self-sufficient in general. And really, you know, realising what the important things in life are. People who were used to. Basically just running on empty all the time, you know, they all had an enforced break. Now if there was one positive thing that came out of people being locked down. This is me, so really scraping the.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:50:50] No, no, I think I know where you’re going and I agree with you, go on.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:50:54] They were forced to actually stop. And be at home and have a good excuse for being at home and realising that they couldn’t keep doing what they were doing the way that they were doing it. So. Is for some people it’s actually been a reset in their values. Or discovering that, you know, or if they’ve gone through the horrible trauma of… Not being able to be with a loved one. You know, it’s through. Like a death, you know. I know that happened a lot of times or weddings and or a birth. You know, that they’re really valuing those times and those interactions because you know, we’re human beings. We are designed to be together, you know, living community. And to love and support one another and that is such an important part of health and I think people really realised that. And some people are living their lives differently now. So I’d like to see. In health, you know, when I talk about the health system. I would like to see. Greater movement from the people about towards what is real health because when we look at what it is that you know, the government provides and that’s a part of what the government’s role is. To provide. Sick care services. And may they be. Just those, may it be inefficient. Sick care service while we actually, you know, as far as the Australian population. Have a more healthy population because we’ve learned how to do those things better. That’s what I’d like to see.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:22] Well, I think that’s a great note for us to finish on, Julie. And I want to thank you for your courage and your. You know, the things that you’re doing, advocating for change. Which we both agree is just so necessary. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Julie Sladden [00:52:37] Thank you so much for having me, Ron. It’s been a pleasure to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:40] Well, it’s a confronting subject. It’s confronting if you actually choose to. Explore beyond the mainstream media, which could be the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Guardian. The ABC News, SBS or any of the other news outlets here in Australia. Now Julie had mentioned the name Scott Atlas a few times there. And I thought I’d just share with you that Scott Atlas is a medical practitioner. Well, he’s actually a health policy researcher. He’s the Robert Weston Senior Fellow in Health Policy. At the Hoover Institute, I think that is in Stanford. And he was… He was President Trump’s… Advisor very early on. He didn’t last very long there. Because he was a voice of reason, which was quickly. Shuttled out of the White House by the real Anthony. Fauci? Interesting, wasn’t it, that he received a pardon from President Biden? There were actually no charges laid, but. Biden probably read Robert F. Kennedy’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci and felt. COMPELLED! To provide him with a pardon. Dating back to 2014 when he when he started. Against American policy. Research in the Wuhan virus for gain of function. Research was outlawed in America, so Fauci moved it to Wuhan. But anyway, Scott Atlas. Is quoted as saying the pandemic response was the most. Unethical. The most tragic. Breakdown of leadership in our lifetime. And oddly, It remains the elephant in the room. In many cases, people don’t want to talk about it. And I couldn’t agree more with that, and I believe in Australia. Somewhere between 80 to 90 per cent of the population still fall into that category. They would review the… Wonderful way the lockdowns worked, how many lives we saved and what a wonderful innovation it was to have mRNA vaccine. Sped it through the approval rating of the approval process. The fact that there are some serious problems with it. Wouldn’t have eluded too many people. In my audience, but in the mainstream audienceit would. The virus he went on to say the virus. Didn’t cause the lockdown, human beings decided to impose it. And they fail to stop deaths or transmission. So, look, there was so much to learn from that. I mean, Julie, I. Compliment her for being such an outspoken advocate for. Transparency in health care is something that is sadly needed. And as I said, I think we need. A very big broom to to Get rid of the rubbish. That is heading up so many of our public health institutions. I hope this finds you well. In fact, I would encourage you to join the Unstress Health Community. But that’s a message you’re about to hear anyway. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Feeling stressed? Overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstressed health community and transform stress into strength. To build mental fitness. From self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together… Let’s not just survive. But thrive. Expert led courses, curated podcasts. Like-minded community and support and much more. Visit UnstressHealth.com dot com This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care. By a qualified medical practitioner if you or any other person As a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions experiences and conclusions

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Dr Anne Truong
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Ian Kerner: Sex Scripts & She Comes First
Dr. Rob King – Men’s Health 101
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00:00 – Introduction to Dr. Anne Truong01:34 – Why a woman doctor focuses on men’s sexual health06:02 – Erectile dysfunction: A warning sign of health issues09:55 – Prostate cancer & ED: The misunderstood link14:08 – The 6 Systems to Get Hard explained24:29 – The universal health formula: diet, stress, sleep, exercise28:29 – Shockwave therapy demystified33:47 – Stem cell therapy: How it works for ED40:10 – The dark side of Viagra45:15 – Can ED from prostate surgery be reversed? Sexual Health & ED Reversal: Dr. Anne Truong’s 6-System Approach to Get HardDr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Erlich. Well, today we are diving into a topic that affects so many men. And for that matter, it affects so of their partners as well. And yet often it remains hidden, never discussed. And that is the topic of sexual health. Now, my guest is Dr Anne Truong. And Anne is a pioneer in this field with over 25 years. Of experience in anti-ageing and regenerative medicine. And she shares her own personal experience with her and her husband. She’s helping men reclaim their vitality through cutting edge treatments and holistic approaches. Now, there’s a common theme that runs through so many of our programmes. And it’s interesting to hear how the solutions may sound also remarkably similar. Although there are some real cutting edge stuff here that you need to pay attention to now She is the creator of and here’s a catchy title if there ever was one The Six Systems to Get Hard and the host of Sexual Health for Men podcast now Dr. Anne is breaking taboos and empowering men to take control of their wellness journey and get ready for this fascinating conversation that challenges conventional thinking and offers some real solutions. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Anne Truong. Welcome to the show end.

Dr Anne Truong [00:01:34] Thank you for having me here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:01:37] And I’m always intrigued to hear about a practitioner’s personal journey into their area of specialty. And this area of speciality, of course, is something that is of interest to at least half of our listeners, if not all. Let’s just, could you just share with us, what drew you into this specialty of men’s sexual health?

Dr Anne Truong [00:02:01] Right, right. So, like, why would a woman like me, not a man, talk about men’s sexual health? Well, I not only talk about man’s sexual, but women’s sexual as well, but I focus more on men. And the reason why is actually for selfish reasons. It’s for self-interest. So, I, you know, in my mid-40s, I was noticing that, you know, I had some sexual issues as well. And so was my husband. And my husband also had some heart issues and he had to have a procedure and had to be on a heart medication. So when you have heart medication, it affects your sexual function and that is also contraindicated to even take any type of ED medication. And since being a doctor and I have backgrounds in doing acupuncture, Um, and, and from doing acupuncture, I know that I, um, I know the, I’ve learned how the body can heal itself and how the body is really one, uh, organ rather than separate, uh organ. And I wanted to find a natural solution for, uh uh, uh sexual dysfunction, particularly ED. Uh, so that’s when I deep dive into it. And at that time I was already doing. Stem cell therapy for pain. So I am a board certified medical doctor, treated over 37,000 patients for pain, and one of the things that I use is using your own stem cell to treat and reverse the condition. So, but with that knowledge, I dive deep into how to restore sexual function and did a lot of research, and I, as well as my husband, were my own first patient. And that’s how we explore and redefine or get heart system that we are using now. And I have found that your sexual function really just needs to be reawakened and boosted for it to start working. And oftentimes, it’s down to the basic things that we take for granted that is pivotal. To sexual function. So my interest in this is, again, it was self-interest and then it became a passion because I feel that, you know, sexual health is such an integral part of our health and it’s integral part who we are, but yet it’s shameful, it’s dirty, it is a taboo. Is, you know, we talk in the closet, we don’t talk openly, and it’s even prohibitive to even talk about the sexual organ name on social media, but yet we see movies that are sexually explicit all the time, but if I say the word penis on social media oh my god you know my video is banned and it’s like you know I get, I get a warning from social media. So, you know, it’s such an integral part of who we are. And it’s really, if they weren’t for sexual activity, we wouldn’t be here, right? And so it is, we won’t be there. And so I wanted to really my passion is to raise awareness of sexual health. And alternative to treatment for sexual dysfunction besides just medication. And to bring it to the forefront, like what we are doing now with mental health, that is not shameful, it is not dirty, and it’s not weak if you have it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:02] Yes, and it’s always interesting, isn’t it, as a health practitioner, to motivate your own personal journey, you know, because we’re not just practitioners, we are individuals on a journey through life. And when something comes up that challenges us, particularly health-wise, and we happen to be health practitioners, it can certainly drive our interest even deeper and further. And it’s interesting to, I mean, that’s why I was so looking forward to talking to you because I do believe, as you’ve said, it’s a taboo. But, you know, to put it into perspective, and you mentioned heart medication affecting sexual health, and one can only imagine the effect that so many other medications have on sexual health. I’m thinking particularly antidepressants and the ubiquitous nature of those. I mean, how big a problem is… Sexual dysfunction, you know people not being as healthy in their sex lives as they would hope or like

Dr Anne Truong [00:07:04] Well, it’s very common, more common than we think. And there was a large study that was done in 1994, that was a long time ago, that shows that 50% of men over 50 have ED. It’s very, very common. The reason why it’s common, and that rises as you get older, 60% have ED when they’re 60 and 70% have when they’re 70 as well. And so the reason why that ED is so common is because ED is affected by common condition as you get older. When you get old, you have high blood pressure, you have high cholesterol, you get diabetes, you gain weight, you become more stressed, you don’t sleep as well. So all these factors accumulate as you get older and ED is really defined as decreased blood flow. You’re not getting enough blood flow to the penis and therefore you’re not able to get a functional erection. And all those conditions that I mentioned, high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol, or being overweight, stressed, and not sleeping well, all of that compound that it happened to happen when we get older. And then also as we get older, we also tend to make less testosterone or hormone, which also affects the erection as well too. So there’s a lot of factors that plays a role as you get older, but they’re all reversible. They’re all reverseable, except for maybe testosterone. Now you can increase your testosterone innately or by diet and exercise, but sometimes you may need a little bit more supplement to kind of get it to a range that is optimal for you. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, we all know a reversible medical condition through changing in your diet and your exercise. So it’s more common because we tend to have more common ageing disease, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:22] Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to talking about that. But also another one that throws us into this area is prostate cancer, too, isn’t it? Which is, well, there’s a whole controversy around whether people die from a prostate cancer or with prostate cancer. You know, yeah, the difference. And of course, people who get a diagnosis may be pushed towards surgery, which creates a whole range of other issues. Um, that’s a big problem too, isn’t it?

Dr Anne Truong [00:09:55] Yes, it’s, you know, let’s be clear. Testosterone replacement therapy does not contribute to prostate cancer, right? It actually is helpful for cardiac condition and it’s also helpful for erectile erection as well. Now, benign prosthetic hypertrophy, you it’s a large prostate that is not cancer, actually increases… It’s the same number as incidence of ED. So by the time you’re 50, 50% of men have enlarged prostate and 60% of the men will have enlarge prostate. Now enlarge prostates itself does not contribute to cancer. It just happened to be there. And some men have prostate cancer will have a very low PSA number. That’s a normal PSA number. And so that’s why it’s a little concerning when you have a higher PSA number that it may be prostate cancer, but you have to watch. We see a higher incidence of prostate cancer and prostate cancer is really, the prostate is really more affected by the DHT, which is the inflammatory metabolite. Testosterone, DHT is dihydrotestosterone, and that is what makes the prostate inflamed, and that a hormone that is kind of a bad hormone, that is a precursor from testosterone, and that hormone actually increases with… A poor diet and sedentary activity. And so that’s kind of correlate with, you know, what I said about sexual health maintenance as well. So with prostate cancer, it is a mixed bag, you’re right. Do people die with it or from it? Because men that gets it are also older. They’re also frail and they undergo surgery. And then, or they undergo treatment, which then 99.9% of them, the sequela prostate surgery is ED. And so they end up having ED, and then they have to deal with that and have the stress of that on top of the cancer and everything else. So you kind of wonder, and I don’t think the verdict is out there. I don’ think it causes death, I think, because the. Prostate cancer, in most of the form, it’s slow growing versus fast growing. And oftentimes it affects men that are in their 70s and 80s as well too. So it’s more controversial than we think.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:06] Yes. And I’ve, I mean, I think the, um, the other thing about it is that, uh, if your sexual health, if you’re, if your sex life was one way before you had prostate cancer, um after, you know, like, you, it’s not going to get better after it, is it? Like, so it’s good to get yourself optimally sexually healthy. That’s almost an oxymoron, isn’t it? Because You know, all the things you’ve mentioned here about sleep, about blood pressure, about diabetes, about putting on weight, about this, about that. I mean, it’s obvious that we do need a holistic approach to this problem, which is why I’m so intrigued into your you the fact that you’ve developed this this and this is a very catchy title and the six systems to get hard protocol. And I’m intrigued by this systematic approach not just the name but what it involves. Could you walk us through these systems, how they work together to improve sexual function?

Dr Anne Truong [00:14:08] Yes, yes. So actually, that name came from a friend. We were sitting on a bus together and we were going to an outing and he’d go, why don’t you just name it to get hard to them? Because that’s the end result. That’s what happened. You know, and I said, You know what, you’re so right. Cause I was debating on how to name it. And he said, you know, think about it. It’s to get hard. I’m like, okay. So anyway, that’s how we got the name. So I thought it was a good story. And it came out from really looking at the whole sexual health. But I don’t have to explain what it is, does it? When I say the title, everybody knows what it means. Exactly. So. Um so uh and the reason why i said that is because it doesn’t have prohibitive words if i say the word sex if i stay the word sexual health if i said the word erection it will be banned everywhere i have to use words that are not banned uh so i have too tread very carefully what words i use or else it’ll be banned and so the word heart doesn’t get banned the word ed doesn’t not banned. But if I say the word erection, it will be banned everywhere, right? Because in the social media world, nobody gets an erection, right? You can’t talk about that, right. So, but anyway, aside from it, the sixth system, it comes from really the knowledge of thinking of your body as a whole. It’s an interconnected system. It’s no organ, it works in isolation. And that the first thing I wanna say is that your erection starts in the brain. All right. Your erection starts in the brain. It doesn’t start in your penis. How do you get an erection? It starts in their brain. If it doesn’t happen in the bring, nothing’s gonna happen below the belt at all. And that’s how I came up with it. When I came, when I learned about that, I was like, God, that makes so much sense because we have, so the response starts in a brain. That’s how we have arousal, desire, right? That starts in the brain. That starts in the brain, and what feeds the brain the information is our five senses. It’s our eyes, what we see, what smell, what eat, the taste, what hear, sound, and what we touch. At the five senses, I even call it fantasy, your ideas in your mind, your fantasy, the six system. But that all feed into the mid-brain area where you know, you start to stimulate arousal. And that’s where the, so that’s just the number one is the brain, is where you focus on stimulating the, stimulating the senses would then go to the brain area to stimulate the, that, that mixed with emotion. Because your psychological state, your emotional state gets all blend in with the sensory input as well. Meaning if you’re depressed or you’re anxious, then that can mix in and may dampen the signal. But if you relax, you’re enjoying the moment, then that gets carried through to the next step. So your emotional state almost act as a filter for the stimulus that gets sent in. And so like that, all the five senses and even your thought, it goes through the filter of your emotional states. That’s the emotion. That’s a second. System. And the third system is your hormones, all right, because that filter to the emotion and then the hormones gets released in the hypothalamus and the brain that releases all these hormones and chemicals that initiate the process of the nerve. So that goes to the hormones that initiate to the nerve, the nerves in the back of your brain right here, it goes down the nerve. In the the chain that called the parasympathetic nerve that goes down which then increases your so the nerve is the third one and the so what’s that we said the brain the emotion the hormone I’m sorry that the nerve it’s the fourth one which then it goes to the nerve right it goes through the nerve and the nerve go to the heart which then increases your heart rate, which then increases. Uh, which then increases more blood to flow down. So the fifth system is the blood vessel is the blood vessel and the heart. And then, uh, the sixth system is the, uh the penis muscle. So that’s a six system because, uh it could, you have to increase your heart rate. Your heart rate, uh will, uh we’ll pump out the blood that goes through the blood vessel, the blood vessels open. And therefore the penis muscle has to be in a relax. In order for it to get more blood flow to create a functional erection. And what’s interesting when I first got into it, it was the opposite because when we exercise, our, like when we do like a bicep curl, our muscle has to be contracted in order to do the curl, right? And it has to relax when you’re relaxed state. But the penis muscle or the corpus calvinosum is a smooth muscle. It has to be relaxed in order for it to get an erection. And when it’s not in an erected state or a flaccid state, then it’s actually contracted. So when you’re not, you don’t have an erections, the penis muscle is actually contracted, it is not relaxed. So it needs to be relax in order for it expand to take in all the blood flow and in order to create an erection. That’s the reason why that if you’re not right up here, if you are stressed, and if you anxious in your mind, your penis muscle not gonna be relaxed. It’s not gonna relax and it’s not going to get an erection. All right? And I’m talking to the men, how often do you feel that when, you know, you’re distracted, you’re still thinking about work or there’s some things that worry you or whatever, and you’re in the heat of the moment and the erection is just not as good as it used to be. Right? Because the penis muscle is not fully relaxed. So when it’s not fully relaxed, it’s going to accommodate the blood flow that it needs. And therefore, it’s now going to be able to expand. When it’s expanding, it is not going to be able keep that firm erection to be a functional erection. And to all men, you know, when that happened, men think there’s something wrong with them. When it’s not, maybe you just had a tiring day. Maybe you just distract on a stressful day, you know, and, and you just need to be in a better state here. So that’s why I said that the brain is a larger sexual organ. If the brain, your emotional state is not in a right state, nothing going to get filtered through. And so that’s why when we work with men with sexual dysfunction, we go through each of those systems and to check it. One, is he using his five senses? How is his emotional state? Is he depressed? Is he distracted? Is his stress? And then the next part is we measure the hormone level. We do blood work, we do bloodwork to look at your testosterone, look at FSH, LH level, look at your prolactin level, all right? We also look at you thyroid as well. And then the next phase is that for the nerve, we can actually find out whether you’re inflammatory. They will look at inflammatory factors as well, and then for the blood vessel, we look at nitric oxide level, which can be measured from the saliva, and we also look at… Uh, uh, endothelial dysfunction, blood work as well. And we can also measure blood flow to the penis with, with the penile Doppler ultrasound. And that’s how we can see how the muscle is working. We can see the blood flow is working, uh down there. And, um, and we, the, and that’s one of the reasons why we use shockwave, uh therapy, shockwave therapy uses sound wave, sound wave energy. Uh to the penis to stimulate more uh blood flow and uh that that’s what our main treatment is with your own steps out which are the platelets in your blood uh we inject that into the penis to again increase blood flow uh and also it will it help with the flexibility or relaxation of the muscle we’re also now doing Botox to Botox the same Botox that goes to the face for wrinkles now. Inject it into the penis because remember what I said earlier in order for you to get an erection the muscles got to be relaxed so sometimes the muscles not relax so now we’re injecting botox in there to help it relax as well too and uh but all that it’s really boosts more blood flow to the penis but in the end he has you know the man still has to work on his diet and his exercise routine. And sleep and stress management because he doesn’t do that then internally his body is still going to be in inflammatory state and that if he wants the treatment to last longer he needs to work on that. The treatment is really to boost, to give it a boost but in order for it to continue longer term, he need to have, he needs to work on the four pillars. Of sexual health, which is diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:29] Well, isn’t that a common theme? I mean, I could be doing a programme on cancer, autoimmune conditions, mental health, you name it. I could do a programme on any of those diseases and this will be a familiar story. You know, what? This again? What? It’s back to diet, stress, sleep and exercise. Surely it can’t be as simple as that. Um but it is and how it manifests itself is is our genetic predisposition you’ve mentioned i mean it’s so interesting to hear you put the brain up there as the the main sexual organ because i think often it’s said that men think through their penises but actually uh you know um there there we go the brain and given the ubiquitous nature of mental health of stress of hormone disrupting chemicals. Of chronic inflammation, I mean, it’s a wonder that any of us have a normal sex life.

Dr Anne Truong [00:25:27] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Yeah, there’s a lot of factors in our environment and in our diet and in lifestyle that predispose us to have sexual dysfunction. That’s why, it’s like that study was done in 1994 that shows that 50% of men over 50 have ED, but that doesn’t account into our processed food, our lifestyle now. Uh, internet and then COVID. So I think that number is a lot higher. And like you said, you know, I, in my forties, I had sexual dysfunction and, uh, so was, uh my husband who and we’re both in, uh good health and we don’t, I don’t take prescription medication, but it was all hormonal. But the good part is, you know the good Yes, once you get older, you’re predisposed to it. But the good part is you don’t have to accept it. It is reversible. There are things that you can do to maintain sexual longevity. And I wanna stress that it’s not about sex because when you have good sexual health, that means good general health. That means longevity. That means quality of life. We’re not just talking about sex here. We’re talking about quality of live, living longer, being more active. Because studies have shown that people that have more sexual intercourse, like three times or more in a week, live longer, they have less cancer, they have less heart disease, less dementia, better quality of life, better relationship. And so that’s what we all want, right? We all want quality of as we get older. And so, but again, how do you prevent that? How do you treat that? Back to the basic and the most simplest stuff that is in front of us, but we like to chase shiny object, right? We want to get this device, we want to this and that thinking, oh, this pill is going to take care of it when it’s really down to diet, to exercise. And stress reduction, because I can guarantee you, we have more sexual dysfunction now in 2025 than we did in 1925.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:51] Yes, yes, I’ve no doubt about that. But when you when you outline those six systems and you put you break that apart, well, I mean, as like I said, when you put it like that, it’s a wonder anybody’s having sex at the moment. But but it’s interesting. You’ve mentioned a few things there. Shockwave therapy is an interesting one because we did a programme on that a few months back. And and it was interesting. Just tell us a little bit more about shockwave therapy and how it’s used, how often it’s needed to be used. You know, is it a regular ongoing thing? What’s the story with shockwave?

Dr Anne Truong [00:28:29] Right, so it’s really shockwave therapy. It’s called shockwave because when the energy hit the tissue, it feels like a shock, but it really harnesses the power of sound wave technology. It’s the power sound wave, and it goes through either a magnet or it goes to water from the machine that transfer that energy into kind of like a laser beam, right? And that energy is like a laser beam and it can penetrate. As far down as nine inches. That’s the focus shockwave. It’s called low intensity shockwave therapy or focus. Focus shockwave, which is the one that’s been researched the most to be effective for ED. There’s another machine shockwave called radio shockwave that’s more acoustic. That’s more using acoustic shockwave it’s really more in using more mechanical shockwave not the energy or sound. So that’s radio. They’re two separate shockwave, but they’re often used interchangeably. But the one that has been researched the most is the focus. The radio is really more mechanical shock to the tissue. So what I’m gonna be talking about is focus shockwave. So it harnesses the energy. Of down weight and either go to a magnet or go to water and then it transfers that energy and it goes as deep as like nine inches and when that energy is transferred to a tissue like either you can use it on the knee, you can it on shoulder, you could use it on the penis but it all does the same thing. What it does is decrease inflammation and it actually will increase mitochondria. Increases ATP and it actually on the end point what it does is that it increases cellular mechanism for healing and angiogenesis. Angiogenosis is the ability to make more blood vessels for healing because you need blood to heal. Blood is the river of life. If you don’t have blood, you’re not going to be able to function. You want healing, you need blood. So all the end point of what chocolate does. Is to bring in more blood flow or condition that we call angiogenesis. I can go deep dive into it more but it’s really increasing ATP. It increases a lot even a lot of cellular action as well and so you it takes about um about uh 20 minutes to do but again you can do that on the shoulder for shoulder pain you can get that on your penis you can give that on on the woman uh vulva area in the end it’s about restoring blood flow again and the treatment takes about uh twenty twenty five minutes and uh the recommended frequency it’s about once a week for six weeks or twice a week for three weeks. In some instances, it may need to go as far as 12 sessions instead of six sessions. So the more severe the condition is, you do more treatment and the milder is you do less. And it’s a treatment that is done in the medical office and it’s not invasive, it’s on the skin, it’s non-invasive, there’s no injection. Um it’s almost like taking a massage or kind of like going up and down the treatment area and it feels and it doesn’t make any noise the focus it makes a little like chick chick chick chick it’s like a little tick tick tick sound uh and it really it very is very very tolerable it’s non-painful and it’s not an injection or anything like that and you come you come in and you can leave and you could do resume your usual activity but it’s been very powerful It is one of our main pool that we use to restore sexual health, along with using the stem cells and the Botox that I talk about. But we also use the shockwave therapy to help with pain as well. Very good with rotator cuff pain. It’s very good with hip pain, blowback pain, neck pain, and knee and ankles. Yeah, and you just have to know the anatomy and you have to the source of the pain. To target that machine. So it’s a very powerful, useful machine.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:04] Interesting. It’s interesting you mentioned it, because it was something I was intrigued about after our programme with a chiropractor called Adam Gavine, who talked to us about shockwave therapy. I think Dave Asprey, who’s a well-known character in America, has been very instrumental in introducing it. The other one you’ve mentioned is, you’ve mention it a few times, stem cell, and I know people hear this. And think, wow, this is cutting edge medicine, and it probably is, but I wondered if you might just share with us some of the basics as you’ve just done so nicely for shockwave therapy about stem cells. How does that work? Yeah, tell us about stem cell.

Dr Anne Truong [00:33:47] Yeah. So the stem cell, our body has them cells that are in abundance. And we have the healing ability to heal ourselves. Like for instance, if you cut yourself, you cut the finger, what happened? The blood goes into that cut. And then the platelets are the one that create the clot. And that over time, over time that cut becomes a scar. And over time the scar disappears. That’s your own body stem cell working that is on automatic. So what we do is that we know that the platelets are the ones that create the clot and are the one that start calling all the other cells in the body to come and initiate the repair response or the healing response. So the stem cell that we use for restore sexual function are the platelet. The platelets are cells that your body make in the bone marrow that comprises about 1% of all your blood. So we have five litres as our blood. It comprises 1% of that. And those cells are the ones that create the clot. But it also sends messages to the other cells in the body saying, hey, come here. There’s an area of injury. Let’s heal this, right? Show how we harvest a stem cell. Is that we would do like a venipuncture, like the same thing you would go to the lab and get your blood work drawn to evaluate for like your blood sugar or your cholesterol level. It’s the same things, but we take a larger volume. We would take out either 60 millilitre or 240 millilater of volume, depending on the patient condition. And then we would centrifuge and process that down and just get the platelets alone. We don’t get the red blood cell or the white blood cell. We just get the platelets alone and that is delivered to either the penis or into the knee or into ancle or the hip. And how it does is that the platelet, again, they stimulate repair. But one of the things it does also is decrease inflammation. It decrease the inflammation of the area and assimilate other cells to come to the area. To repair. And what’s the end point? Increased blood flow. So it increases blood flow and increases blood by three months. And the end-point is again, increased blood flow, that’s the end point. And that’s how our tissue repair, our tissue repair because we need blood to bring the nutrients for the cell to start repairing and for the cell to live. We need those nutrients. So platelets call the different messengers to come in, to lay down the groundwork for more blood vessels and more blood flow. So that’s how the stem cell work. And it’s autologous because it comes from your own body. So therefore there’s no side effect because it’s your own cell from your body which then is delivered to an injured area, all right? So I have to take the, your cell. That you have and put a lot of it into an area to stimulate a healing. Like I said, it works great on the penis because one of the main function is to increase blood flow, but it also work in the knee. It work in acules, it work in ancle as well too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:37:31] Now I think our listener may have slightly missed it because you said it very quickly about taking your own blood and centrifuging it, spinning it so that we can pick out those platelets. That’s the beauty of that kind of therapy. How often is that needing to be repeated or is it an ongoing treatment that every Six months or twelve months, one.

Dr Anne Truong [00:37:52] Uh well for ed for ed it’s actually um it’s interesting for ed uh the more severe uh you uh you have ed when i say severity it’s like is it hasn’t been 10 years 15 years 20 years i saw a patient that had 30 years of ed well the longer you have ad of course the condition is more severe right as time goes on so uh it but if you just started having ed maybe a year or less than five years, it only takes one treatment. So the frequency of treatment depends on the severity of the ED. So if a man has an ED that is over 10 years, then it’s pretty moderate to severe versus a man that has ED from one to five years. So the treatment will be once for a mild case. And then if he continue with his lifestyle modifications, such as diet and exercise, then he doesn’t need another treatment. And if severe, then usually, you know, he will have one treatment and then two more treatments for the whole entire year. And then, if he continues with his diet and exercise regimen and be consistent about, then he may not need another treatmen at all. But it all depends upon what he does after. I mean, I can do the treatment to boost blood flow, but he has to work on his, on the foundation, which is his body, his, you know, his what’s going on in his body in order for the effect to last. So that’s what, that’s why diet exercise is pivotal to making the treatment last longer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:43] Now, we’ve talked a little bit about the effect that some medications can have on erectile function or dysfunction, but of course, Viagra is a medication that a lot of people will have heard about and many people will be using. What is your thoughts about Viaggra? What’s the pluses and minuses of this drug, of using this kind of intervention?

Dr Anne Truong [00:40:10] Right, right. So how, first of all, how Viagra work is that it, it, when you take it, it increases cyclic GMP and cyclic, GMP increases nitric oxide. So the bottom line is that increases nitrous oxide. When nitric oxides increase, it increases blood flow and that’s how it helps with erection. But it doesn’t just work on the penis alone. It also increases blood flow everywhere else too. So that’s one of the side effects of. Viagra is blue vision like dizziness and vision changes and also low blood pressure because it opens up blood vessel. You tend to have a lower blood pressure and then sometimes you tend to pass out. That’s how you get dizzy. That’s why you get the headache as well. So if you have high blood pressure, then the effect compound, right? The effect compound when you take Viaggra, And so that’s what causes the common side effects is dizziness, headache, the blue vision, and also heartburn. You get the heartburn from it as well. Men tolerate it, but some men cannot tolerate it so they cannot take the Viagra. So that’s the side effect of that, but that’s short-term, but the long-term side effect of Viaggra is a visual. Vision loss as well as hearing loss. There’s two studies that came out that looked at a long-term use of Viagra is that vision loss and hearing loss, permanent loss, as well. And so, but I see Viagras as more as a temporising measure. It’s almost like putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound. Because when you take Viagra, you’re just treating the symptoms when you’re not able to get an erection, but you’re treating the cause of why you need to have, why you have ED in the first place. Is it because you’re blood, I mean, because you are not exercising? Is it you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, you are overweight, you’re now sleeping well, maybe you’re stressed, you know, as well too. Those are the factors that need to be considered. So before a man take Viagra, he needs to kind of look at what’s his diet, what’s he eating? What’s his exercise routine? Is he sleeping? How’s his stress level, right? And so, but when you take Viago, you don’t worry about any of that. The most men that take Viagea think that, oh, you know, I help with my erection. I don’t need to do anything. When it’s farthest from the truth, because when you Take Viagga and you have an erection, you’re just ignoring the cause of the problem. You’re just putting a Band-Aid on an infected wound. And over time… The Viagra is not going to work anymore. Why is that? Because it’s not going work anymore because the disease, the problem why you have ED in the first place, which is compromised blood flow has gotten worse. Like your diabetes has gotten worst or your blood pressure has gotten worth. It has gotten words. And therefore you no longer have enough blood flow down there for it to be functional, even with Viagras, because you’re just putting a bandaid on an infected wound and the wounds get worse and worse over time. And so where are you gonna be after that? So you just know that studies have shown, research has shown that 67 of men that has ED, seven to 10 years down the road will have a heart attack. All right, will have heart attack, so it predisposed you. So ED is really a warning sign of a cardiovascular disease. There’s a warning sign that, hey, your body is saying, hey, you know, I’m not getting enough flow down in the penis here. Let’s have a look at what’s going on in the body. Fix this. You don’t fix this, then the blood flow compromise will progress to the heart. And the reason why the penis is affected first when you have blood flow compromised is because the penis artery is one to two millimetres. It’s very, very small, the size of like an ant. That’s how the diameter of the blood vessel. But the heart blood vessel is three to four millimetre and the brain blood vessel six to eight millimetre. So what I’m trying to say is that effect the penis first because it’s the smallest blood vessel, but then you don’t do something about it, it’s gonna progress to your heart. All right, and.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:50] And what about when we’re coming back to prostate cancer, because a lot of men do find themselves being treated for prostate cancer by surgery, which invariably can cause varying degrees of nerve damage. I know they talk about nerve sparing, but a lot nerves are damaged. Is that reversible?

Dr Anne Truong [00:45:15] Well, that’s a good question. Kind of yes, and it depends on the man. I have seen patients that had prostate removed and had ED because the reason why is because the nerve that goes to the penis that help with erection, it just goes right on top of the prostate. It just wraps around the prostate, go to the penis. So when you remove the prostate that nerve is stuck to the throat on top there. So it’s gonna be affected. It’s either going to be cut or it’s either gonna be damaged because it’s right on top of the prostate So it’s not It’s it’s just there right? It’s just kind of like you have to cut through the abdominal muscle to get inside to your stuff of it Right. It’s there. So that that’s why 99 percent of people have Uh ed after the surgery so having said that I have seen men that have prostate removed that uh started doing like the four pillars I talk about, which are diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management, and intermittent fasting, and penile pumping, I have seen them reverse. I’ve seen them have erection again, even after prostate surgery. So that tells me, now that’s the minority, because a lot of times men that get prostate surgery are older. Uh uh they’re older and they become kind of despondent and also um they’re not as sexually active because their wife or partner is also older and she’s probably like not interested in sexual activity either so it’s not uh you know something that the man really wants to uh uh uh to get back so it really depends on the person but yes there are structural damage It is more of a challenging case to get back to treat, to get back to an erection. But I’ve seen it done. I’ve see some of my patients that has had the treatment. And I have two patients that had prostate removed and didn’t get the stem cell. They did not come to my office. They just undergo my group coaching programme. Which is diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction, and penis pumping, and intermittent fasting. But then again, they were in their 50s, and they’re able to get their erection back again, within about three months. And so it is good news, and that’s why I keep telling men is to keep working at it, and you never know where You never know where, what’s going to happen because I truly believe that, you know, even though you have ED, if you keep working at it, it’s amazing power of how you can heal over time with just diet and exercise. You know, I have a friend who’s a doctor, she’s a neurologist, and she has multiple sclerosis and she was in a wheelchair, paralysed, could not walk, but is in a wheelchair for about five years. She changed her diet. Change her mindset, and she was able to walk again. This isn’t Terry Wahls, is it? Yes. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:48] Yes, well, I had Terry on as a guest and she’s a very inspiring story and and it’s it’s a it’s an amazing story. And again, a practitioner going through a personal experience having an epiphany, which has had flow on effects to thousands, I think, of patients because of her own experience. And you’ve given us so much today to think about. You’ve raised this taboo story to a level that’s, you know, that’s why I was so looking forward to talking to you. You’ve got a podcast, which is Sexual Health for Men podcast, which we’ll obviously have links to in our show notes. And you mentioned some courses and stuff. I want to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Dr Anne Truong [00:49:37] Well, thank you for having me here. And for the listeners that want to find out more information about how to restore sexual health again, check out my YouTube channel, Truong Rehabilitation Centre, or just type in my name, Ann Truong, and the channel will come up. And that’s where I share everything. I put everything out there. I’m very transparent what we do, the treatment, because ultimately I want you. To restore your sexual health yourself. Ultimately, I don’t want you to come to my office. I don’ want you the see me. I want you, to have the knowledge and the power and the stuff that you need to do to restore you sexual health. It can be done. It just need consistency and focus to do it. We have seen thousands of our listeners have seen improvement, which just. Minor adjustment of just their diet, of just like stop drinking sodas and stop eating donuts every day. You know, just a little minor adjustment like that and they’re seeing morning wood and they’re see a firmer erection. So just to give you a view or something, we have a good morning wood smoothie, which It’s full of anti-oxidant, full of… Fruit and vegetable that are high in nitric oxide that if they take every day, along with instituting intermittent fasting of 12 hours, they will see results. So they can go, so you can go to the URL, goodmorningwoodsmoothie.com and be able to download that smoothie recipe to use every day. Try it every day for 30 days. And just add in intermittent fasting, just stop eating after 8 p.m. And then you can eat again at 8 a.m., which is 12 hours. And we have seen a lot of our listeners seeing results. And the smoothie just involved really the spinach, arugula, blueberry, and beets, and all that all blend in to just the smoothie that you drink every day. So I’m honoured to be on the show. And I hope that the listener find value in our episode.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:05] Thank you so much. Well, if you ever needed another reason for taking control of your own health and focusing on nutrition and focusing on exercise and focusing, on sleep and rest, reducing stress, which is really what this Unstress Health podcast and membership and platform is all about. Well, here’s another reason now as well, sexual health. Now, we’ve done various programmes on sexual health before. We did one with sex therapist Ian Kerner in that wonderful programme. She comes first, which would accompany this one very nicely. We’ve also done a great programme with Dr. Rob King, a men’s health specialist here in Australia. And a member of our advisory panel. And of course, we have some great resources which we will share in the show notes that are connected with Dr. Anne’s YouTube channel and the great resources she is only too happy to share with you. So I hope this finds you well until next time. This is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be Well.

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00:00 – Introduction to Dr Jenny Brockis01:41 – Health reform and the roots of lifestyle medicine05:00 – Workplace stress and chronic disease10:31 – Philosophy of holistic, preventive healthcare11:10 – The Natural Advantage: why nature matters14:22 – Forest bathing and science of nature’s effect on stress18:52 – Biophilic design and urban health21:10 – The sun: friend or foe? Vitamin D and mental health26:28 – Nutrition, the Mediterranean diet, and diabetes reversal32:12 – Gender differences in heart health34:30 – Final thoughts on consistent daily habits for long-term wellness The Natural Advantage: Reconnecting with Nature for Mental Clarity & ResilienceDr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we are going to explore connecting with nature. And what a powerful tool. It is, how accessible it is how cheap it is and most importantly how effective it is. My guest today is Dr Jenny Brockis. Now Jenny is a medical practitioner and a lifestyle medicine physician. She connects to what matters, simplifying the complex. And getting the most out of life and work. She’s a speaker, she’s a trainer. And an author, she’s written four or I think five books and we talk about Many of them in this podcast forever curious, she is. Passionate about people performance. And about being practical. Her purpose. Is to inspire positive change that makes work. Work better. For everyone. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Jenny Brockis. Welcome to the show Jenny.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:01:03] Thank you for having me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:01:05] Jenny, there’s so much we want to talk about today and I think… We kind of have a lot in common philosophically anyway. I was really struck by… The fact that you describe yourself as being. Cautiously optimistic. And at the same time a fierce advocate for health reform. And sometimes when I think about health reform, optimism isn’t really the word that I’d use. But I love it. Tell me why you are cautiously optimistic. Or maybe, and also I know fierce health reform. Tell me what you think the problem is and what we need fixing.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:01:41] So I’ve been working in the… Health and wellbeing space. Since 2009. Helping people at work to Do work better. But also to feel. Better about themselves and to manage their stress more effectively, et cetera, et cetera. And At first it felt like I was… A lonely figure on top of a mountain shouting into the wind. Not making much difference to anybody in particular. And then in 2014, I think it was. I fell over lifestyle medicine. Which. Has actually been in Australia for over 20 years. Became sort of. Create it as a… Society. 10 years ago. And I thought, these people… Are talking the same language as I talk. They’re talking about going back to the basics of. What keeps us well. What can we do to prevent illness and disease? And I thought. This is music to my ears. And coming from. Medical practise. Because I worked as a GP for many years. Where you’re very much reactive. You’re responding to illness. And you’re putting the Band-Aid on. Hoping it doesn’t fall off before they get home. But knowing that… In a short time, they’re likely to come back and need another Band-Aid. My optimism is that. I sense that there’s a growing desire. Within. The health profession itself. And I’m not talking just about doctors. I’m talking about all the allied health. Practitioners. Who see that the existing healthcare system. Is. No longer fit for purpose. It was fine when it was designed, but it doesn’t fit what is needed today. And I think the other aspect is that. Our clients, our patients themselves. Are looking for. A different way of applying health. They wanted to have more autonomy in their choices and their decisions. They want to drive. What they need to do. To stay well, not just for today, but for the next 20, 30 years. So I am cautiously optimistic. Because I sense the wind of change. But anything to do with change within the healthcare system. As we know is notoriously slow. And we can keep banging our drum. Singing loudly from the rooftops. What do you trust? Takes time. So I think we just have to adopt the long-term approach. And know that politicians never work. Like that, they always want the short term gains that make themselves look good. And there’s chip away at it because I think the the undercurrent of desire for change. From the health profession. And from our clients is what’s going to bring it about.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:28] Hmm. Yeah, no, no. I tried to share that. I actually, when you put it like that, I share the optimism because If I think the optimism for health care reform. Is going to come from the healthcare industry. I’m filled with dread. I paradoxically. But consumer led. Yes. And I think there’s another interesting area which I think you’re involved in too, and that is the workplace. Very much so. As the place. Where I think There’s a confluence of interest. And, as you know… That not only does good health make sense, but it also makes dollars, which is ultimately what speaks. So this is an area, but I’m intrigued to know too. Jenny and I have I’m getting this right is that you, you know, you came into this area in 2009. But I’m guessing you were a doctor for a few years before then.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:05:20] Absolutely. Yeah It was great, I mean I trained in the UK, I migrated to Australia with my husband because he was headhunted by… A company here. And I’d always had the idea of setting up my own general practise, which in the UK would be almost impossible to achieve. But I was able to do that here. It was magic, absolutely magic. And I was able to practise medicine in the way that I thought. It ought to be practised. Patient-centred. Giving people the time that they need. To be fully heard. And understood and making sure that it was a journey we undertook together to get them. But I did become increasingly. Frustrated. You know, the push to always see more people more quickly. The fact that we were never getting to the nitty-gritty of what was leading people to become unwell. And I also developed the realisation, as you’ve just alluded, that. Much of the illness that we were seeing was coming from this place we call work. Um, people were stressed to the max. Bye. Unrealistic deadlines, taking on too much. Being driven to do more than was actually humanly possible. And suffering the consequences of chronic disease. As I’m sure you’re only too aware. And your audience are. We live in an era of chronic disease and so much of it is preventable. And I think. You’re right, in that the workplace. Has been overlooked. As a potential conduit of. Change. But over the last. Five, ten years, there’s been this real drive. Employers, HR professionals, the same. What can we do? To enhance health and wellbeing in our staff, because they get. They actually do get that. A happy, healthy… Person at work is going to be more productive, more effective and likely to stay at that particular workplace for longer. Makes sense. So that’s.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:20] I know you’re in Western Australia, I’m in Eastern Australia for our overseas listeners, and I know in our Eastern states… That has actually been legislated very strongly. The you you have to legally now employers must. Minimise mitigate Um, the psycho social risks in the same way that they would have to. Mitigate the physical risks of employing someone and There are fines now, so I believe there’s never been a better time. To be an HR person because all the things you’ve ever. Told your employer. Needed to be done now have to be But it’s interesting about the workplace, because we were talking about this just before we started that. Talk about a workplace that breeds ill health. And pressure. Healthcare professionals are some of the worst.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:08:11] Unfortunately, you’re quite right, Ron, and erm… I-I-I really- I’m so concerned about what we are doing to some of our youngest and brightest. Who are- Entering. Healthcare as a chosen profession. And yet… The system. Grinds them down. Often before they’ve even had a chance to graduate and get out and practise what they’ve they’ve learnt. So I think. There’s much to do in our own house first. Because I strongly believe that. Unless we are well in ourselves, how can we possibly… Help other people. A health practitioner always comes from that place of service. We always want to make sure. That we are doing our utmost to help the other person. But if they see us. I was tired. Stressed. Overwhelmed. They’re going to be thinking, well, that person clearly doesn’t take much care of themselves. Why should I listen to anything they’ve got to say?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:11] Hmm, hmm. Yeah, I think philosophically, too, I mean, one of the things I’ve observed is a holistic. Health practitioner and knowing many integrative doctors. Is the thing that integrative doctors and allopathic prescription based doctors. Have in common is They want the best for their patients. Both groups want the best for the patients. But I think there’s a philosophical difference. If you’re unwell as a health practitioner. You are into just managing health, managing the symptoms of yourself. And therefore of your patients. Whereas if you are feeling good, and know you can feel good as a practitioner, you want to impart that to your patients.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:09:51] Exactly right. And I think this is where… The fundamental shift in mindset. Needs to take place so that more of the allopathic practitioners… See? What’s possible? Because at the moment, I’m hearing… All the obstacles, all the reasons why. It’s just not practical, why? It just can’t happen. And I’m saying. Oh yes it can! Because. It is already here. Practitioners are already doing things differently. So that they are. Really embracing and enjoying their lives and their work. And imparting. What they have. To their patients. So it’s a win-win for everybody.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:31] Yeah, yeah, I know it. Couldn’t agree more music to my ears. Listen, you’ve written a book. You’ve written the book called… The natural advantage. And it takes a holistic approach. And one of the words that I love, and I’m going to say very slowly. It’s a holistic approach that includes all the biopsychosocial environmental factors. Like time in nature. And I love, I, you know, when you break the down Actually, when you put hyphens between each one of those. It makes total sense, but when you say it too quickly. It’s not, but go on, let’s break it down a little bit. Tell us about The natural advance.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:11:10] So I wrote The Natural Advantage because… I came to the realisation, and I think COVID played a part in this. We are so caught up in the busyness of everything. We’ve forgotten just how important it is. To get outside. Even for a short period of time. Busy lives, we don’t. Take the time to think. Let’s go down the park. Let’s cook a footy round the field with the kids or anything like that. And… I was struck by the research. Clearly demonstrated that we are missing out. On the best medication the planet has to offer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:51] I think that is a statement that should be in capital letters on every house. Oh, every, every go on music to my ears, keep going.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:12:01] So… You know, we have a situation where one in seven Australian adults is taking a prescribed antidepressant. Some of those people can’t get off their antidepressants for whatever reason, and that’s a different subject in its own. On its own.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:15] We’ve covered it. We’ve covered it, Jenny. Oh, have you? Good. We have. We have, we’ve covered it big time on this. Go on. But go on, yes.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:12:22] And Intuitively, I think people understand that. Getting outside for a walk or a run or something where you’ve got a green… Outlook or Blue Outlook. Fundamentally makes us feel better. But I wanted to. Drill into the science. And reveal. Why that is so, because I think sometimes… We need the scientific proof. It’s all. Very nice to have that feeling. Oh, this is great! But if you understand… Why we have- We’re feeling great. And how important. Difference it makes to our health. Then it gives us Every reason. To get outside more. So the book is really to encourage each and every one of us. Even if we’ve only got a couple of minutes every day. Just step outside. Feel the air on your skin. Sunshine. And just enjoy what nature has to offer us. So in the book, I approach it from. The elements. Water. I’m. And all these sort of benefits to. Health it provides in terms of mental health, emotional health, cognitive health. Immune health. Social health. That very long word that I shared with you. Which was a bit tongue-in-cheek when I did, I have to confess. Yes, I’m sure it was. It really encapsulates that it’s not just one thing. That being outside helps us with. Everything. And it almost seems too simple. And it is simple. But let’s. Uh… Not forget that sometimes it’s the simple things. That can have the biggest impact. On how we are. As human beings.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:07] Hmm. Well, let’s break down a little bit of the song. I mean, apart from… Feeling good and you know we’ve been told to do that. I mean, there’s actually a biology. There’s actually of physiology. There’s a biochemistry. Absolutely. There behind it. Yes, which tell us a little bit about.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:14:22] Well, I think that dates back to the 1980s. When the Japanese… First introduced Shinrinryoku, or forest bathing, to the world. Well, they introduced it to the businessman actually in Japan. Because they recognise that. The work ethic there. Was actually creating a high level of stress and in many instances. Leading to heart disease. So it was believed that… Bye. Taking these dressed businessmen out into the woods. And letting them. Just roam around on their own for a little while. Would make a difference. And so the scientists went out. Measure their blood pressure, their heart rate, their heart-rate variability. Cortisol levels, et cetera. And found. Yes, indeed. It does make a significant difference and did help to not only lower stress. So mentally they felt better, but it also. Made a significant difference to. They’re physiological. Health as well. So that was the first part. And then I think the other study which blew my mind. Was Ulrich. Back in 1984. And again, it’s not recent studies. I mean, this has been around for a while. Where he showed that. Patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. If they were allocated a room on a ward. Where there was a window overlooking a green space. Versusa room and a ward. With a window overlooking. A brick wall? There was a marked difference in their recovery. In terms of. Speed of recovery. In terms of. The amount of pain medication required. During that time. And also what the nurses reported. To the patient’s demeanour. During their time in hospital, so people got better, faster. They spent shorter times in hospital. And they felt better too. Win win win win. And so that really intrigued me is to. Really? Good looking outside a window, really? Bring about all that change and then of course we’ve had beyond Ulrich who who talks about stress reduction. We’ve had the Caplans. Who’ve introduced. Their theory about attention restoration and that. Today, you know. Busy lives where we spend so much time indoors looking at a screen. Mentally exhausted. Going outside. Just. Again, you get a physiological response. You activate the parasympathetic system. So you feel. That’s better. But also it starts to restore attention because you’re adopting a softer. What they call a fascinational gaze as you look around you. Broadens your perspective. It’s interesting, it sharpens your focus. While also providing you clarity in your thinking. I like that. I like that very much. Yeah, lovely.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:22] Well, I’m sure there’s more! More.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:17:23] Oh there’s plenty more.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:25] Okay, go on. Go on. I love it. Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our unstress health community. Now like this podcast, it’s independent of industry. And focuses on taking a holistic approach. To human health. And to the health of the planet, the two… Are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&As. On specific topics with special guests. Including… Many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders. But with membership? We have out unstressed. Podcast series. Where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes. Which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. Join the unstress health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel… Click on the link below or just visit UnstressHealth.com to see what’s on offer. Join Now! I look forward to connecting with you. So, Forest bathing, Ulrich and… Looking out of looking out to nature and Kaplan’s attention. Restoration. Which, yeah, I mean, keep on going. This is good.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:18:52] I think the other thing is that it was realised that while getting out into nature is. The best. It’s the real deal. We can. Do other things if we don’t have the ability to get outside. And this is something I think is really important. There are those of us who live. In situations where. You might not physically be able to get outside. Or you might live at the top of a tower block. And you’ve got very limited access to anything green around you. This is where. What is called biophilic design. Comes to play. Now biophilia was a term. Introduced initially by Eric Fromm, and then made popular by E.O. Wilson. Which is really describing our innate. Affiliation. To nature. And it’s stronger in some of us than others. Some people are like. Oh, don’t give me that nature stuff. All those wriggly stuff don’t like. Other people realise that, yeah. It is important for us and our well-being. For me, it’s about. Health equity. And how can we enable? Everybody. To have better access to green spaces. This is where. Urban planners. Come to play by providing you know, good urban design with lots of parks and trees and shrubs so that people can Get access to Greenree. Easily? Um. Workplaces can introduce. Biophilic design into the workplace. Those beautiful living walls that you sometimes see that are covered in ferns and mosses. That invites you to sort of reach out and touch. And. Simply living plants interspersed around the place can make a big difference to how we feel. Being shown to boost productivity as well. So workplaces like that, of course. Haha So. No, simple things like. Putting a nice picture on the wall. Something natural. Painting your room. Sage green. A similar natural colour or having access to something that’s tactile, something you can touch, it could be a wooden ornament or something like that or polished stone. All these things. Induce that sense of. Calmness and and feeling good.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:21:10] Now, one of the things, one of the probably, I think. Well. I don’t want to give too much away, but what a public health message. That I always think is an interesting one is to stay out of the sun. The demonization of the sun.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:21:26] What’s your view of this? I think we’ve got to get the balance right. I think we’ve done a fantastic job. With the Slip Slop Slap campaign. To minimise the harm excess sun. Can do to our skin. We nobody wants to see. Skin cancers or premature ageing. And things like that. However… We’ve probably taken it a bit too far because some people are now so scared of the sun. They don’t go out. Or… When they do go out, they’re covered from. Head to toe. And there’s no ability for their skin. To access any beautiful. Natural sunlight, which of course we need. In order to. Manufactured vitamin D in our skin. So, I- I think we’ve just got to get smarter in understanding that. Sunlight gives us life. I mean, if there was no sunlight here, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation today. We will have long perished. You know, understanding that sunlight is so important for. Certain aspects of our health. Mental health. So many people, I mean, I was brought up in the UK. And a lot of people in those. Latitudes. Suffer from seasonal affective disorder. Where you’ve got low grey skies. It’s always a bit miserable. It’s a bit rainy and it’s like. We need that natural sunlight to give ourselves a natural boost. When we go outside, even for 10 minutes or so. We get a nice little top up. To our serotonin levels, which, of course, we naturally produce mostly in our gut. But it just gives us that little bit of a boost. I feel better now. So that’s the reason behind that. We need, we need, um… Sunlight, of course, for vitamin D, which is so important for so many different biochemical processes. In the body beyond. Bone health. Um. But also for our cognition as well. So I think. It’s about. Educating people to understand that, yeah, it’s not a good idea to go out. Two o’clock in the afternoon and some bake for a couple of hours. Wearing yours. Incy wincy tindy wincy. Polka dot bikini. But to get the balance right and understand that getting out into natural light, especially the early morning sunlight is really good for us. You don’t need sunscreen at that time. You get the benefit of that. Early night especially. Resetting our circadian clock, so we actually. And hearts are asleep. Patterns as well. And also we give ourselves a chance to manufacture a little bit more vitamin D.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:03] Hmm, hmm. Yeah, look, it’s so interesting to hear you focus on this natural advantage. Because again, bringing us back to our geography. You’re in Western Australia where… Although, during COVID… The state was literally cut off from the rest of the world, but Life went on normally, did it not? I mean, you were just basically doing. Going out doing whatever you wanted to do, whereas in the West, in the East, or were you, is that, am I romanticising you?

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:24:32] It was certainly easier here than over race and particularly in Melbourne. Um, but we were constrained for, for part of the time, you know, we weren’t allowed to sort of go out unless it was. Essential. You’re like, you have to go buy food. But we were given sort of… Permission to go out for an hour of exercise every day.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:50] Oh, really? I didn’t even know you had that. Yes, we did. OK. Isn’t that odd, though? I mean, here we are talking about. The the benefits of the natural advantage to our immune function and mental health. And one of the biggest public health messages was. Lock down and don’t go outside.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:25:10] And that did so much damage to so many people. So much damage, especially in terms of loneliness. And even now. We’re seeing the aftermath of that. And this was predicted at the time. Particularly in our younger generations, we tend to think of loneliness as… Something that only affects older people. Not true. Yes. And I think, you know, our urban environments contribute greatly to that. And if you’re not allowed out as well. You can’t interact with people and… We’re social creatures. We need that. Face-to-face interaction, even if it’s just walking the dog and you… Cross paths with somebody else and you lock eyes and. Maybe give them a smile and say. Good morning, or whatever it is you say. Yeah, we need that we really do need that

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:57] It’s a really I mean, without being too controversial, I think it’s a shocking reflexion on public health officials. But that’s another story. Listen, you’ve you’ve written a couple of other books. Brain fit, brain smart, thriving mind. And smarter, sharper thinking. And you talk about. 12 keys. To improving mental health. Um, I guess we’ve covered a couple of them. Well, what would be those 12? You know, what is some other things that we haven’t spoken on?

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:26:28] I guess some of the other things are first, healthy nutrition. Healthy nutrition is a passion of mine. We… We’ve made. Eating such a complicated business. For a variety of reasons. Through all the marketing, through all the… Advertising that we get inundated with every day. And I think it’s led to so much confusion. People don’t know what’s true, what isn’t true. What’s right, what’s not right. And so. I think they just give up, just do their own thing. But I think it’s very clear that the research does show that. Following. A more natural diet, a healthier… Diet which is whole food based. With minimal processing, locally sourced. Has got to be. The best way. The Mediterranean Star-Love. Eating. Has been the most researched. Pattern of eating. It’s not to say it’s the be-all and end-all, but it’s certainly up there. Indicating that. Following the first rules of eating more fruit and veg. Eating some lean protein. Um. Extra virgin olive oil. Seeds and nuts, fruits and berries, all those sort of things. Make a positive difference to our mood. As well as our mental health and I always stress this when I’m talking about. How to improve mental wellbeing. In the workplace. And I say, well, What are you doing? What are your eating at lunch? If you do stop for lunch, because there’s so many people don’t. And it’s often. Grab something on the go. Often not aware of what you’re eating, putting in your mouth, got no recollection of what it was or what it tasted like. And I think. If we just give ourselves a little bit more space to think, well, what am I actually putting into my body? And how is this going to support me? To feel better. To function better. Is absolutely vital.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:22] Yes, well that natural diet, that Mediterranean diet, well, you know, there are so many different diets for people to choose from really, aren’t there? But we’ve just recently, we’ve did… Towards the end of this year, we’ve done quite a few programmes. As we have over the years. On a low carb approach. To… To eating and I would say that that is underpinning. A lot of problems that we see in in our society too. Diabetes, insulin resistance seems to Bad for whatever you’ve got, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune, mental health.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:28:59] Definitely. Yes, definitely. And it’s really interesting. To see that research come out. And to see so many. Practitioners now offering. Diabetes. Reversal. Programmes using diet. Cheers. It’s achievable. And, of course. When people understand the power. Changing your diet does for you. I think people really sort of start to take it on board. And that’s how the message starts to. Ripple out and we get. No, societal. Change in attitudes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:42] We’ve done so many programmes with doctors who had been telling their patients all their professional careers. That type two diabetes was irreversible. Until they themselves got it. Explored a low-carb approach. Well. This is true. I explored a low-carb approach and turned not only their health around… But then went on to turn around the health of so many of their patients. Which brings us back to what we were talking about at the very beginning, wasn’t it?

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:30:09] It was indeed. And I think it’s true. I mean, we get taught. To think in a certain way. I mean, I went through medical school. And I was taught this is the way it is. This is what you have to diagnose, this is how you manage things. Go forth! And be a good doctor. Um. The practise, of course, is always somewhat different. And you start to realise that we’re not all the same. You can’t. Apply. A one size fits all blanket approach. Because we’re different. It’s like. The difference between men and women. Hate to belabour a point, but… A small difference.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:50] There is. Yes, you could. Well, be careful. Be careful. You could get cancelled for saying something. As controversial as that.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:30:58] Well, I think it goes back to understanding that. You know, a lot of the information I was taught was based on. Research that has been done on men only.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:08] Mm, yes. Because women are too difficult to do research on.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:31:11] Well, that’s right, because we have awkward things like periods. Yes! Did I mention that word?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:17] Yeah, but that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, most of the research has been done on men. For that reason.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:31:21] And particularly in the area of heart health. Ah. And heart disease is a major. Issue for women, particularly once they’ve been through menopause. And most women are totally unaware of that. That they are at increased risk. They don’t know the difference in symptomatology of what to look for in themselves. Because we’ve all been taught the classic. Somebody having a heart attack is somebody. Who’s middle-aged, male, clutching their chests and going… And falling backwards. And that’s not necessarily true. If you’re a woman. I think we’ve just got to realise that…

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:02] Let’s treat. Well, what would be some of the symptoms? That a woman should look out for, you know, if they were having a heart attack. That are different from that stereotype.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:32:12] I think the thing is to recognise if there’s been a change in your level of fatigue. So many people are tired all the time. But if you suddenly get excessively tired. And you’re a bit short of breath, and you think you can… What’s going on? Am I going down with something? Am I getting a virus? That could be an indication. It could be feeling a bit nauseous. Eating something. Don’t know. They can be very vague, they can get pain. In the chest or elsewhere. But it’s vague symptoms that they just put down to, oh, I’ve just been doing too much, I need to step back a bit. Rather than thinking. This is not. Me, this is not normal. Perhaps I should just go and check it, get it checked out. Because the other thing is. Women don’t always show the same changes in bloods. Blood work. If they’re having a heart attack. So they don’t get the rise in tropinine levels. To the same degree as men do. So. The treating physician would be saying, well, you don’t seem to have been having a heart attack, you’re okay. Um, so we know that women get diagnosed late. Or misdiagnosed. They are less likely to get admitted to coronary care units. And their outcomes aren’t as good because they’re not receiving the same level of treatment. Their partners might take. So it’s interesting, isn’t it? It is changing. Because. We’re now aware. People present differently. I mean, I guess the classic is appendicitis. We were always taught that can mimic anything. Which is true. And I think we just have to be aware that in a number of… Ailments, we tend to get given. The classic view of something. But we have to have that. Flexibility in our. This isn’t quite fit, what else could it be?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:00] Mmm, yeah. Listen, um, you know, we’ll of course have links to your website and all your books and and they’re wonderful things and I wonder if we might just finish with this one question. Taking a step back from your role as a doctor, as an author, as a speaker. Because we are all on a health journey. Through this modern world. As individuals? What do you think the biggest challenge? For us as individuals. On that journey.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:34:30] I think the biggest challenge is to recognise that… It’s what we do consistently on a daily basis that is going to determine how. Not just how long we live, but how well we live. We owe it to ourselves, to our partners, and to our families. To really put in place those choices that we can make. That they’re going to optimise. Our health and well-being. And not wait at all. We think we’re getting older to start. This is something that we need to be. Encouraging our children to get involved with. So they are a better place because we’re seeing this rise in chronic disease. In our younger generations. They are going to live shorter lives and. The Baby Boomers. And. We need to do something to address that and ask. Why is this happening? What can we do differently? And the key to it is to if we’re living in a way. That doesn’t serve us, that is actually contributing. To our risk of becoming unwell because. We’re living with. Too much stress in our system. Which promotes. More information. Which promotes. Potential for. Other disease and illnesses, then. We’ve got to go back to the beginning and say, okay. What can I be doing differently? To prevent them.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:52] Well, that’s a great note for us to finish on and a great message to impart. To our listener Jenny. Thank you so much for. Joining us today, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us and The wonderful books that you’ve written, which we’ll of course have links to. Thank you so much.

Dr Jenny Brockis [00:36:05] Well, thank you, Ron. It’s been an absolute delight to be with you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:09] Well, there it is. It’s accessible, it’s cheap. So. Out there for us, we’ve… Evolved with it. Nature. And while we might congratulate ourselves on being. Modern and sophisticated and all of that. We’re still walking around with our palaeolithic, in fact. Pre-palaeolithic bodies and minds. And we really need to reconnect with. That has made us what we are today. And so we will have links to Jenny’s site and her books. I think that is, there are some great messages there, which certainly resonate. With what we talk about on unstressed health. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be Well. Feeling stressed? Overwhelmed It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstress health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness. From self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together… Let’s not just survive. But thrive. Expert-led courses, curated podcasts. Like-minded community and support and much more. Visit UnstressHealth.com dot com This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner if you or any other person As a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Join Dr. Ron Ehrlich as he welcomes back Dr. Denise Quinlan, a leader in sustainable well-being and resilience. Discover the crucial role leaders play in fostering a healthy workplace, the importance of psychological safety, and strategies to combat burnout. A must-listen for anyone looking to create a positive and productive work environment.

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Explore Dr Tabitha Healely's journey from medical oncologist to life coach, addressing burnout and stress in healthcare professionals.

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In this episode, I'm really excited to welcome back Elizabeth Mucci, Elizabeth is a scientist, nutritionist, herbalist, and she has a master's degree in reproductive medicine. I'm thrilled to welcome her back. With more than 20 years of expertise as a clinician and educator, Elizabeth has assisted countless people from all over the world with a variety of unsolved health issues, including helping them start children, manage chronic illnesses, reduce weight, and achieve hormonal balance. Prior to enrolling in Elizabeth's fertility programme, the vast majority of her patients had been dealing with extremely difficult fertility problems that may have led to multiple miscarriages, traumatic experiences, and repeated IVF failures, which have a significant negative impact not only financially but also emotionally.

The combination of Elizabeth's education in science, nutrition, herbal medicine and reproductive medicine, along with her collaborative work with a number of Sydney's top fertility specialists, have provided her with a unique perspective on hormonal and reproductive health. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Elizabeth Mucci.

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In this episode. we'll be looking at the electromagnetic radiation that surrounds us today, including EMF radiation and electromagnetic fields.My guests today are from Spectral Design, a company that focuses completely on this subject. Kara Kieley and Marco Simeoni, a Building Biologist and Electrician, established Spectral Design in 2019. Having first-hand experience with chronic illness relating to environmental hazards lead to a passion for low EMF environments for optimal health, chronic illness prevention & recovery. Kara and Marco are dedicated to creating low EMF environments optimal for health, chronic illness prevention, and healing. Join me as we delve a little bit more deeply into this subject. I hope you enjoy this conversation I have with Kara and Marco.

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Hello and welcome to another Unstress. Today, Dr Olivia Lesslar, a returning guest, joins us in this episode. A true trailblazer in the world of medicine, who's redefining healthcare with her compassionate approach and cutting-edge expertise.

With a heart full of empathy and a mind brimming with knowledge, Dr Lesslar is on a mission to make a lasting impact on patient care. Her dedication to holistic healing and patient well-being is truly inspiring.

Holding degrees from prestigious institutions and backed by years of experience, Olivia is your go-to source for all things health and wellness. From sharing insightful medical tips to debunking myths, she's here to empower YOU to take charge of your health journey.

Stay tuned as we dive into the world of medicine through Dr Lesslar's compassionate lens.

Join us in welcoming her to our online community and get ready to embark on a journey of knowledge, healing, and heartfelt connection.

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Prof Gigi Foster is a renowned academic and an Economics and Social Sciences expert. With a passion for understanding the complexities of human behaviour and how it impacts society, she has made significant contributions to our understanding of various economic and social phenomena. Her research delves into decision-making, behavioural economics, inequality, education, and more. Through her work, Prof Foster provides valuable insights that have the potential to shape policies and improve lives.

In addition to her scholarly pursuits, Prof Gigi Foster is a captivating communicator. She's known for her ability to break down complex concepts in an engaging and relatable manner, making her a favourite among students and a sought-after speaker at conferences and events. Her influence extends beyond the academic realm as well. Her thought-provoking ideas and willingness to engage with broader audiences have garnered a substantial following on social media, where she shares her expertise and perspectives.

You'll often find her participating in insightful interviews, podcasts, and panel discussions, shedding light on crucial economic and social issues that impact our daily lives. So, if you're eager to expand your understanding of economics, human behaviour, and society, be sure to listen to this episode! Her wisdom and knowledge are bound to leave you inspired and enlightened.

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This is your annual heart health checkup with the great Dr. Ross Walker.

Ross is currently Australia's foremost integrative cardiologist. He's way ahead of the game. He's published books and has a regular Sunday night top-rating show, Healthy Living on 2GB, where he covers a wide range of themes, much as we do today. I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Ross Walker.

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Our guest today is Carol Cooke. Carol is a Paralympic gold medalist 🥇, author 📚, and advocate for change. From overcoming a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis to excelling in rowing and cycling, she proves that resilience knows no bounds. With 9 world titles under her belt and a mission to raise awareness and funds for MS, Carol inspires us to embrace challenges and believe in our own potential. 💪🌟

Along the way, Carol was bestowed the honour of being named a ‘Member in the General Division (AM) of the Order of Australia for her Gold medal and her Philanthropic work and has written 2 books, Finding Your Inner Gold (2016) and The Force Within (2021).

Carol believes that “nothing is impossible if we dare to face our fears and believe in ourselves” and believes “the greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

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Professor Kylie O’Brien PhD is an Adjunct Professor at Torrens University. She has a strong academic career in the fields of Chinese medicine, integrative medicine, and, since 2018, in medicinal cannabis. She has worked for the Victorian Department of Human Services, and held senior leadership roles in the university and private education sector. An internationally recognised expert in Chinese medicine and integrative medicine, she has published extensively, including a book on integrative oncology (US: Springer, 2017). Kylie’s second book, with co-author Dr Philip Blair, O’Brien K, Blair P, Medicinal Cannabis and CBD in Mental Healthcare, Springer, 2021, has been published (Springer). She is a member of the Australian government’s Tertiary Education and Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) Expert Panel and a previous  TGA Advisory Committee for Complementary Medicines member.

Kylie has been leading doctor education on medicinal cannabis in Australia since 2018. Her courses were the first to receive RACGP Category 1 CPD accreditation. She also set up the pathway via the National Institute of Integrative Medicine Ethics Committee for doctors to apply to become authorised prescribers of medicinal cannabis under the TGA’s Authorised Prescriber Scheme.

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Brenda Rogers is a women’s wellbeing practitioner and wisdom coach, and a passionate wellness advocate for women in leadership and those struggling with anxiety and hormonal imbalances. She brings a background in clinical naturopathy, life coaching and yoga teaching to her powerful and transformative programs and events that support women through health challenges and life transitions. She advocates that women can fulfil their sacred purpose and have a balanced lifestyle when they reconnect to their inner wisdom and feminine power.

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Mike Hagan is a workplace consultant who specialises in Human Resources; Health, Safety & Wellbeing and Corporate Compliance with over twenty-five years' management experience in both the public and private sectors.   Mike is a passionate mental health advocate who has a track record of implementing holistic mental health and wellbeing strategies within organisations, designed to remove the prejudice and stigma associated with mental illness in the workplace and develop workplace cultures where 'It’s OK not to be OK'.  His career path has provided Mike with a comprehensive overview of the legal, economic and moral responsibilities that are prerequisites in enabling business leaders to meet their obligations to provide a duty of care to their employees in relation to psychological safety as well as physical safety, whilst not forgetting to look after their own health and wellbeing in the process.

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In this episode, we sit down with renowned clinical psychologist and compassion expert Prof Paul Gilbert to explore the transformative power of compassion-focused therapy (CFT). Prof Gilbert shares insights from his decades of research and experience developing compassion-focused interventions, including practical tips for cultivating compassion and self-compassion in your own life. We also discuss the latest research on the benefits of compassion-focused approaches for mental health and well-being, and how compassion can help us navigate the challenges of difficult emotions and relationships. Whether you're a mental health professional or simply interested in learning more about the science of compassion, this conversation is sure to leave you feeling inspired and empowered to bring more compassion into your own life and the lives of others.

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Nicola is an experienced media executive, producer and writer working across digital, audio, print and live events.Before working as an independent producer, Nicola was Executive Producer and Managing Editor for BuzzFeed Australia. She was a commissioning editor and supervising producer for ABC TV Arts' video & web slate and also developed the content strategy for ABC iview’s pilot VOD Arts channel. Nicola has worked for new media organisations, broadcasters and publishers in Australia and the UK, including Frieze, ABC, BuzzFeed and McHugh Media.  In 2018, Nicola founded Pipi Films, a company that produced the acclaimed audio documentaries ‘Debutante’, a 2020 Walkley Award Finalist, and ‘A Carnivore’s Crisis with Rachel Khoo’. Scribe published her first work of non-fiction ‘FARM: the making of a climate activist’ in August 2022.

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In this episode, we are going to cover the fundamentals of life, quantum biology. My guest today is Dr Jalal Khan.Dr Jalal Khan is the principal dentist of The Dental Station and Founder and CEO of The Dental Truck. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Dentistry in 2011. Since then, he has held several positions in various areas of the dental industry, including private practise, clinical educator, and consulting dentist at Our Lady of Consolation Aged Care Residence.Dr Jalal loves dentistry because it combines biology, science, and art. The integration of modern technologies means dentists can provide groundbreaking aesthetic dental treatments to a top standard. Dr Jalal regularly attends continuing professional education to remain up to date with the latest developments.Join me as we unlock the secrets of quantum biology.

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Today we are going to continue our exploration of burnout, the difference between burnout and chronic stress, and a whole range of different things. My guest today is Dr Sharon Grossman.Sharon has worked as a psychotherapist for over 20 years and is the author of excellent books. The name of her podcast is "Decode Your Burnout." This podcast is incredibly valuable in so many ways. Stay tuned!

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Today we will be exploring sunlight, vitamin D, health, and diseases and my guest is William B. Grant.William has worked at the level of senior research scientists in the fields of optical and laser remote sensing of the atmosphere and atmospheric sciences at SRI International, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the NASA Langley Research Center. This career included doing pioneering laser remote sensing instrument development, while the latter half included participating on many NASA-led airborne atmospheric chemistry field missions to the far corners of the world, as well as writing a number of papers on the observations.Author or coauthor of over 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited 2 books of reprints, and contributed half a dozen chapters to other books. Elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1992.He is currently the Director at SUNARC, an entity devoted to research, education, and advocacy relating to the prevention of chronic disease through changes in diet and lifestyle.

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Clark Gaither MD is a board-certified family physician in private practice in Goldsboro, NC. He has been in the full-time practice of medicine for the past 24 years. Now, like many in health care, but actually not an uncommon story, Clarke confronted burnout, and it changed his life. I won't spoil it for you, but his website, Dr Burnout, gives you a little bit of a clue. His focus is clearly on burnout with a mission and a focus, summarised in his book, where he asks the question, "Feeling burnt out lately? Reignite is the name of the book. Transformed from burnout to on fire and find new meaning in your career and life."

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We are back! In our first episode of the season, we will discuss regenerative techniques, why they are crucial, what happens on the farm, what we eat, and everything that occurs in between.

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Hello, and welcome to the last episode of the Summer Series. Today is a big and important episode. My guest today is Professor Fred Provenza.Fred is currently a Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University. For the last 30 years, Fred and his research group have produced groundbreaking research that has laid the foundations for what is now known as Behavior-based Management of Landscapes. You don't have to be out on the land. Your landscape goes on in your own house. That work has inspired researchers in many diverse disciplines, including ecology, human and animal nutrition and biopsychology, animal welfare, landscape restoration, sociology, eco-development, and much more. He has recently released a fabulous book called, Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom. I hope you enjoy the conversation I had with Professor Fred Provenza.

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Belinda Fettke is the wife of Gary Fettke, an Orthopaedic Surgeon practicing in Launceston, Tasmania, who has come under scrutiny for his research into the influence of Seventh-day Adventism and Cereal companies impact on creating dietary guidelines. In our conversation, Belinda and I discuss the origin of public health messages, the rise of veganism in the west from a sustainability discourse and take a broader lens to explore the origins of health food branding in the 21st century.

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ARCHIVE | Jason Bawden-Smith: Mitochondria HQ: Nature’s Solutions Introduction Now today’s episode is going to challenge you. We are always talking about food and exercise and sleep and it’s very important. However, well, I’m not going to spoil it. My guest today is Jason Bawden-Smith and Jason’s background as you’ll hear is environmental science. He’s […]

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Unstress Summer Series. Today, we're going to step back and explore humanity and what led us to this point in time, as well as the purpose of existence and some of the existential crises that we are currently experiencing. And who better to talk to about that than Jeremy Lent?Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.In our conversation, we explore his award-winning books, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning and The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. We also talk about sedentism, worldview, and so much more.

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My guest today is Professor Frédéric Leroy. Working in bio-engineering Sciences and Applied Biological Science, Frédéric's research in the field of food science and (bio)technology is astounding.Frédéric's work primarily deals with many ecological aspects and functional roles of bacterial communities in (fermented) foods, with a focus on the role of animal products in the diet.In our conversation, we discussed the politics behind nutrition, the EAT-Lancet Diet, the great reset, World Economic Forum, regenerative agriculture, and so much more.

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Terry is an internationally acclaimed teacher and has worked in research, extension and property management in both government and private sectors for almost 55 years.In his research era, Terry published over 40 papers and made several world-first discoveries in the 1980s in the fields of bull fertility, ruminant nutrition and pasture ecology. Terry co-founded RCS over 35 years ago which has set the benchmark for capacity building in rural and regional Australia. He is responsible for the introduction of the GrazingforProfit™ School into Australia which now has over 8,000 graduates and has changed grazing, livestock and business management nationally. Terry has chaired the Australian Beef Expo, has sat on numerous advisory committees and has been nominated for many awards.

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Charles Massy is an Australian fifth-generation farmer, a scientist, an author, an advocate, and a leading pioneer in the regenerative agriculture movement.Charles is among the scientists who believe we have entered a new geological epoch, the life-threatening Anthropocene, where human impact has permanently altered the Earth’s geology and sustaining systems, causing ecological destruction and extinction of species.His contribution to the regenerative agriculture movement has been widely praised and he is one of Australia’s most important voices making an impact in farming communities.

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Download Transcript ARCHIVE | Joel Salatin: This Ain’t Normal… But It Could Be Introduction So, the average person is still under this delusion that food should be someone else’s responsibility until they’re actually ready to eat it. “The magical, marvellous thing about food on our plate is the sustenance we absorb, has a story to […]

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Charlie started his Regenerative Farming journey 15 years ago. Previously he and his family had been farming conventionally on their 5,000-hectare property “Hanaminno” for over 35 years, in an industrial high input/ high output farming business model, heavily reliant on pesticides, herbicides and man-made fertilisers.After a series of epiphanies and through education Charlie found the Regenerative Agriculture movement, a movement which reflected his instinctive connection to the land and his ethos of producing quality food for his family and the world.Today, Hanaminno is managed using organic, biodynamic and holistic grazing principles.Charlie Arnott joins me to discuss one of the most important topics relating to the health of our planet and our own health - regenerative agriculture. We discuss holistic land management and the important role it plays in our environment. We know that nutrient-dense food is important for our health, but so too is the way it is grown.

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Reflection has been a theme this week, not just on dentistry's past, present, and future, but also on how dentistry has evolved. But as all of you listening to this have done at some point in your lives, I thought I would take a step back and consider how things have changed over the past 45 years and share that with you.

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Today we are going to talk about the innovations in Dentistry, and my guest is Dr David Penn. After earning his dentistry degree from Sydney University, Dr David Penn opened a practise in Sydney's eastern suburbs. He had extensive training from two of the top aesthetic dentists in the world in the United States. He founded Southern Cross Dental Laboratories in 1983, and it has since developed into one of the world's top-tier, cutting-edge dental laboratories.In addition to his work as an educator and lecturer, Dr Penn gives a lot of talks on facial and cosmetic orthodontics. He has trained more than 1000 post-graduate students in the use of Invisalign, and in January 2015, he wrote and received accreditation for a distinctive post-graduate certificate in Aesthetic Orthodontics.A number of innovative dental appliances and equipment, including the Atlas Cabriolet orthodontic retainer, the Penn Composite Stent, and a series of accelerated orthodontic devices, were created by him as well. In 2015, the NSW Department of Innovation awarded one of these devices a significant grant. Dr Penn won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the services sector in 2011.

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Dr Swami Shankardev Saraswati is a western medical doctor, Yoga Acharya (authority), Yoga Therapist, psychotherapist, author, teacher, and Jyotish astrologer. He uses western mind-body medicine, including medicine, herbs, and supplements, combined with Eastern systems of healing and self-development.Dr Swami Shankardev Saraswati’s psychological practice combines Western and Eastern psychotherapy methods, including yoga philosophy, meditation, and other methods of awakening consciousness. The primary aims of therapy are to become more self-aware, autonomous, resilient, empathic, capable of intimacy, and able to journey into the deeper self to discover the hidden strengths, skills and abilities dormant in the unconscious (psyche).

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Jocelyn Brewer: Why It’s Time to Rethink Your Digital Habits Introduction Well, today we explore the world of technology and its impact on our health — physical and mental. I’m very pleased to welcome back Jocelyn Brewer. Jocelyn has been on the podcast before, but after the last year or two of our immersion in […]

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David E McCarty MD FAASM attended medical school at Duke University, and completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine in Boston, at Massachusetts General Hospital. He began his career practising primary care, but after a handful of years in practice, he followed his own white rabbit into a whole new world called Sleep Medicine.Dr McCarty learned the art from the great Dr Andrew Chesson (world-class physician, and past president of the AASM). While at LSU, Dr McCarty won some teaching awards, published a few papers, and it’s also where he developed the Five Finger Approach, which has remained the cornerstone of his teaching about patient-centred problem-solving, to this day, and is featured as the pinnacle for orienteering around the Isle.In addition to patient care and academic endeavours, Dr McCarty has had plenty of experience as a public speaker at regional and national meetings throughout his career.He retired from the practice of clinical medicine in 2021, to devote his energy to patient education.

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Download Transcript A Simple Patient-Centered Approach to Improving Your SleepWe visited this week to sleep again, as we do often. And I personally do not believe, and I know a lot about sleep, but I don’t believe you can talk about it often enough because it’s like tapping a hoop along. You’ve got to keep […]

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Rosemary Clancy has been a Clinical Psychologist in Sydney for 20+ years treating sleep, mood, anxiety and substance use disorders. She completed a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology at Adelaide University, then worked as a Clinical Psychologist with SWSAHS, and since 2008 has been Snr Clinical Psychologist at The Sydney Clinic, Bronte. From 2014 she has been the specialist sleep psychologist at Sydney Sleep Centre, and the Director of letsleephappen.com.au

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Rosalba Courtney has a PhD in dysfunctional breathing and breathing therapy and has been published widely in the scientific literature. Rosalba believes breathing combined with movement, mind-body techniques, and other health practices can heal the mind and body and has developed a system called Integrative Breathing Therapy based on models and tools from her PhD.Rosalba offers online and face-to-face programs for individuals and groups. These programs include Breath Mind Body, Functional Breathing Retraining, Healthy Breathing Healthy Child and Altitude Power Breathing. In addition, she sees private patients at the Breath and Body Clinic in Avalon and Genbiome in Edgecliff, Sydney.

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Robert Little was born with a congenital kidney problem. Robert has been lucky, thanks to organ donation and transplant surgery. There are 24ish million people in Australia, and 8 million are organ donors. It is through organisations such as ShareLife that this life-saving treatment is possible. Tune in to hear this patient's story and complete a quiz at the end.

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Connection and corporate capture are amongst our biggest health challenges but what can we do and how can we respond?

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Daniel Baden is a well-known and respected Naturopath and Homoeopath within the Australian and international complementary therapies industry and community. Beginning his journey as a clinician, Daniel has assumed many roles over the years including; consultant to and member of industry regulatory committees, providing technical support to practitioners, assisting various groups in research projects, lecturer, author and co-founder BioMedica Nutraceuticals.A highly experienced presenter, Daniel has been involved in natural health education since 1990. His extensive experience and interest in ongoing practitioner education, ensure his seminars are an empowering and worthwhile experience for all attendees. His focus has always been on embracing the principles of holism in everyday practice.

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Welcome to another episode of Healthy Bite. We previously spoke with Dr Mike Mew about preventing crooked teeth and their effects on breathing, sleeping, posture, etc.In this episode, Mike's father, Professor John Mew, a legend in the field of dentistry, particularly orthodontics, joins us. Join me as we explore the relationship between your mouth, orthotropics, and mewing as the secret to healthy breathing and sleeping.

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Dr Mike Mew is a lecturer and a lead clinician at the London School of Facial Orthotropics. Mike is causing a revolution in health care and is pushing for a debate on what is causing crooked teeth in not just the orthodontic profession but the health profession as well.

Mike uses the Orthotropic System to address the underlying conditions that lead to crooked teeth and affect sleep apnea, snoring, and jaw problems. He's researching to improve these systems using modern technology and innovative applications. His vision is a fully integrated bio-feedback system that assists children and adults in improving their health. In addition, Mike aims to change a section of modern medicine by making it evidence-based.

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Sam is an Urban Agro-ecologist and Regenerative Educator. His role as Education & Community Manager at Pocket City Farms, in the densely populated City of Sydney, is to teach people the importance and achievability of Urban Agricultural practices.

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Farming sits at the heart of human and planetary health, it is through awareness, education and support that Farmers Footprint Australia is looking to help support Australia’s transition to regenerative farming.

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In honour of this week’s focus on regenerative agriculture and the chat with Blair Beattie from Farmer’s Footprint Australia, I am posting a throwback episode with David Leon from Farmer's Footprint in the United States. Like in Australia, Farmers Footprint is an organisation focused on accelerating the universal adoption of regenerative land management for the health of people and the planet (as the two are inextricably linked). In this episode, David Leon, the CEO joins me to discuss the importance of their mission, how they are doing it and how we can get involved.

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Farmer’s Footprint is a national not-for-profit organisation giving voice to Australia’s regenerative food story. It promotes the widespread use of regenerative agriculture to improve soil, human, and environmental health.

My guest today is the Managing Director or CEO of Farmer's Footprint Australia, which just started a few months ago, Blair Beattie. It's a wonderful conversation. At the end of the conversation, I'll share with you the really fantastic short six-minute video that Farmer's Footprint has produced. And it is a truly inspiring video with many guests, many farmers on there that have been guests on this podcast.

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What is a progressive movement approach to exercise? Could vegetables be a problem in your diet? What role do fruit and white rice play in a carnivore diet? What is the ideal sleep position?

We answer all these questions and more.

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Have your ever felt overwhelmed by exercise? What is good exercise? What are the benefits of exercise? Perhaps you don’t know what type of exercise there is? Or where should you begin? 

My guest today, Aaron McKenzie from Origin of Energy, brings a simple and achievable message of regenerative health. Aaron has trained people from elite athletes to the elderly. I have trained with him over the years, and he introduced me to functional movement, which informs every workout I do.

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There is so much hope in nature. We need to nurture it more, get off our devices and connect with the world around us

Enabling Nature, Restoring Hope 🌳

Soil is integral to farming; we need it for food, animals, and human life. But did you know that it takes nature 500 years to grow 1 inch or 2.5cm of soil on a well-managed regenerative farm, that can occur in 3 to 5 years?

One reason the 21st century should be the century of the revered farmer. Over the last few years, I have been honoured to have such legends as Tony Rinaudo, Terry McCosker, RCS Team, Farmer's Footprint, Charlie Arnott, Charles Massey, and so many more.

A continual theme is rather than an adversarial relationship with nature; we need to have a supportive one. As Allan Savory said, “don’t blame the resource; blame how it’s managed”

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Tony Rinaudo is World Vision's Natural Resources Management Specialist, better known as "The Forest Maker".

He is an environmental hero, having made a positive impact on food security, environmental sustainability and resilience for thousands of vulnerable communities around the world.

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I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr Felix Liao, the Airway Mouth Doctor. Why is the tongue the “six-foot tiger”, and the mouth the “three-foot cage”? Tune in to find out more.

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How do you know if you’re experiencing burnout? Are you aware of the connection between our immune systems and emotions? If you want to know more about these topics, then this is the episode for you.

Today we welcome a returning guest, Dr Suzy Green. Suzy is a clinical psychologist, founder of the Positivity Institute and on a mission to reduce the impact of mental health in our workplace, in our schools, and in our communities to “create a flourishing world”.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:04] Well, I don’t think it matters how many times you actually talk about breathing. And I know a reasonable amount about breathing. I’ve written about breathing. I’m doing a very intensive course still on breathing to learn more about it from the wonderful Dr Rosalba Courtney, who we’ve had as a […]

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Patrick McKeown is the Founder and Director of the Training and Education Institute, the Buteyko Clinic International. Throughout his childhood and into his twenties, he suffered from severe asthma, breathing problems, poor concentration and disturbed sleep but Buteyko Breathing Technique changed this.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to another Healthy Bite. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their Elders – past, present and emerging. [00:00:18][13.0] Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:19] Well, this week […]

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Dr Dave McCarty attended medical school at Duke University and completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dave began his career practising primary health care, but after a handful of years in practise, he followed in his own words, "My own white rabbit into a whole new world called sleep medicine". Enjoy!

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Download Transcript Tension Headaches, “Rest & Digest” and Tinnitus Now, this week we continued our chats with the integrative doctors and specialists. If you thought that integrative, holistic doctors were just the domain of general practitioners, well, there are many specialists that I’ve connected with and spoken to, and I found them incredibly inspiring.  This […]

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Every time I speak to somebody about breathing, I learn something new. And as the world we live in becomes increasingly more complex, the theme of this podcast is that many of the solutions to enjoying good health are remarkably simple, cheap, accessible, and, most importantly, effective. And what can be more accessible than focussing on breathing?

Dr Jim Bartley is an ear nose and throat specialist with more than 30 years of experience. He is an honorary associate professor in surgery at the University of Auckland. He’s based in New Zealand. He’s written over 60 articles in refereed journals, he’s contributed chapters to 17 books and wrote two books himself. “Breathing Matters” and “Healing Headaches”.

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Why do we breathe? How often? How much? Should we breathe through our nose or mouth? How important is this?

Hello and welcome to another Healthy Bite, although this week it is also an Unstress episode. I spoke to Dr Theodore Belfor, a true pioneer in the dental world about epigenetic orthodontics and the role of breath.

Today, I wanted to stitch in and replay for you a very important episode that we did with James Nestor, who authored the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. James’ personal story was the case study that Theodore shared with us. I hope you enjoy this week’s episode.

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Dr Theodore Belfor joins us to talk about epigenetic orthodontics. Sleep and breathing are foundational pillars of health. But what role does the head, the face, the jaw, the airway and the posture play? Well, you will never look at faces the same way again after this conversation.

Can you grow bone once you are classified as a non-growing adult? Using the example of his work with James Nestor, Ted shows us it’s just about creating the right conditions. Ted says that straightening teeth for a pretty smile is 100 years out of date. So why should we straighten our teeth? Tune in to learn more.

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On today’s Healthy Bite, I reflect on my conversation with Jessica Pin, her experience with labiaplasty, societal ideas around “normal”, the role of social media, the lack of medical education around female anatomy (which is shocking) and the importance of really listening to our patients.

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Have you ever heard of labiaplasty? What is it and what does it involve?

In this day and age, the demand for cosmetic surgery is enormous and expanding, and social media has a significant influence on people’s decisions to get cosmetic surgery.

Today, I speak with Jessica Pin. Jessica had labiaplasty when she was 18 and believes that the doctor performed a clitoral hood reduction without her consent, cutting the dorsal nerves of her clitoris.

In this episode, we discussed her personal experience with labiaplasty, how little to no information the internet and textbooks have about the female reproductive anatomy, and so much more.

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Download Transcript The Art of Branding a Condition… But We Could Do BetterThis week, we touched on what we dived into, COVID again. And this time, we have the opportunity of speaking to someone who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 40 years, supervised hundreds if not thousands of clinical trials, worked for […]

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In this episode, we are diving into the world of COVID-19, vaccines, public health messages, and science in medicine. Today, I sit with Dr Phillip Altman.

Phillip has a Bachelor of Pharmacy (Hons), a Bachelor and Masters of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy.  He works as a clinical trial and regulatory affairs pharmaceutical industry consultant with more than 40 years of experience in designing, managing and reporting clinical trials.  Dr Altman has dealt extensively with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration throughout his career. 

Dr Altman has worked for and consulted with, most of the international pharmaceuticals represented in Australia.   He was fundamental in the establishment of the Australian Regulatory and Clinical Scientists Association (ARCS), which is a peak educational forum for more than 2000 clinical and regulatory scientists working within the Australian pharmaceutical industry.  He has a Life Membership of this Association.

It’s quite an in-depth discussion and when I met Phillip a few weeks ago, I was looking forward to meeting him because he has an incredible history in the world of pharmaceuticals.

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Do you or any of your family have asthma? Well if so, this week’s episode is for you. This week on the Unstress, I spoke to Roger Price. He brought to mind two terms, which I will discuss in this Healthy Bite.

Come learn more about asthma, why nasal breathing is important, and how our management structure is a great economic model but a poor health model.

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Why is breathing through the nose so important? What is the difference between bronchoconstriction and asthma? Today, Roger Price, joins us.

Roger Price is a Functional Medicine and Integrative Health Educator. He has more than 60 years of experience in multiple areas of the health profession, giving him a broad and well-rounded view of the entire field.

Widely regarded as ‘The Father of Airway in Dentistry’, having been the first person to introduce this concept more than 20 years ago, he is credited with being the mentor of many of the more well-known and reputable individuals in today’s world of Dental Sleep Medicine.

In this fascinating conversation, we discuss breathing well; the importance of nose breathing, carbon dioxide levels and the role of nitric oxide.

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What is the primary function of the thyroid? What effect does iodine or fluoride have on the thyroid? These are some of the interesting things that Dr David Brownstein and I discussed in the podcast and which I will be pondering on today.

15 years ago, I encountered a holistic and integrative medical practitioner when I read his book about Iodine, and this week I am delighted to have him as a guest. Join me as I talk about some of the highlights of our conversation.

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This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr David Brownstein, a world leader in holistic medicine. David is a board-certified family physician who utilizes the best conventional and alternative therapies. He is the medical director of the Centre for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, Michigan in the United States. He's lectured internationally to physicians and others about his success with using natural hormones and nutritional therapies in his practise. He's written 16 books, all of which are very accessible to patients.

Join me as David and I discussed Thyroid 101, iodine and its importance, the difference between salts, viruses, and so much more.

All of these topics were also in his books. For more on Dr David Brownstein’s website and to get his books, please visit: https://www.centerforholisticmedicine.com/

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This week on the Unstress, we welcome back Prof Grant Schofield. I always like to touch base with professors of public health and Grant is usually really generous with his time, and I am always quite interested to hear what he has to say.

Join me as I explore the very interesting and significant subjects Grant and I discussed such as the pandemic and how it’s being handled, intermittent fasting, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - of which I pondered on and related my personal experience of going through the same therapy years ago - and more.

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When it comes to matters about public health, who better to talk to than a professor of public health? Let’s welcome our returning guest, Prof Grant Schofield.

Grant is a Professor of Public Health at Auckland University of Technology and director of the university's Human Potential Centre (HPC) located at the Millennium Campus in Auckland, New Zealand. His research and teaching are focused on the well-being and prevention of chronic diseases. He is especially interested in significantly lowering the risk of death and disability from obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. He lives by the motto "be the best you can be.”

This episode covered many topics, including exercise, low carb diet, intermittent fasting, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and much more.

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My conversation with Professor Dave Singh earlier this week was a wonderful experience. Dave is not only a dentist and orthodontist but also a published author and a lecturer at Stanford University. When I first met Dave, which was probably ten years ago, he suggested that I read a book, The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, and I'm very grateful for that. It's an excellent book that everyone should read.

In this Healthy Bite, come along as I discuss some of the important takeaways from my conversation with Dave, including the significance of craniofacial development, the significance of nasal breathing, the importance of epigenetics, and a great deal more.

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Have you ever heard of the term craniofacial development? Does it relate to how well we breathe and sleep? How about cleft lip and palate? Well, today we are going to be exploring these fascinating topics. My guest today is Professor Dave Singh.

Professor Dave Singh is a US citizen who was born, educated and trained in England, UK. He holds three doctorates, including Doctor of Dental Medicine; a Ph.D. in cleft palate development, and a third Doctorate in Orthodontics. Dr Singh was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioModeling Solutions, Inc.

He has published over 200 articles in the peer-reviewed medical, dental and orthodontic literature, has published 7 books/chapters, and is currently finishing his new book entitled “Pneumopedics and craniofacial epigenetics.”

Join me in this episode as we tackle craniofacial development, cleft lip and palate, epigenetics, the importance of nitric oxide, and so much more.

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This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Natalie West whose focus is on nutrition and its connection to mental health. 

Talking with Natalie dovetailed into so many other podcasts specifically Julia Rucklidge and Dr Pran Yoganathan, also with Prof Pete Smith, Olivia Leslar, and many more. 

Join me as we look back and connect this week’s episode to some other episodes we’ve done on the program on mental and gut health.

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What do people eat on a carnivore diet? Is it really all meat and zero carb? Tune in as this is just one of the many interesting topics we will cover today.

My guest for this week’s Unstress is Natalie West. Natalie is a Clinical Psychotherapist with over 16 years of experience. She specialises in Self-Image conflict and Nutritional Psychology for treating the mental and physical Root Causes Health problems. Natalie's focus is on nutrition and its connection to mental health.

In this fascinating conversation, we explore how food affects mental health, the carnivore diet, self-image, gut, and so much more.

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I am extremely honoured to be a part of Orthomolecular News Service, and lately, Dr Richard Cheng and I had a fascinating talk regarding brain development, which I have shared with you this week on the Unstress.

Join me today as I go through my conversation with Richard and cover important issues including brain development, Robin Dunbar's Human Evolution, regenerative agriculture, tuberculosis bacteria, nutrient-dense diet, and so much more!

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Today's episode is a little different in that it started out as an invitation for me to be interviewed and turned into a chat that I thought you might enjoy.

Let’s all welcome back Dr Richard Cheng. Last year we had a conversation about the benefits of Vitamin C and the American & Chinese approaches to the pandemic. It was a great episode.

This week, join us as Richard and I tackle evolution, brain size, orthomolecular medicine, and so much more. It was a worthwhile conversation to share with you.

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In this world of globalisation, inequality and the disenfranchising of local indigenous communities in the process, this kind highlights a theme that I am really passionate about how important local communities are and how much we can learn from the First Nations people.

In this Healthy Bite, I want to share the Uluru Statement of the Heart with you. And as we celebrate World Localisation Day, I hope we take this opportunity to reflect and remind ourselves of the importance of connection - may it be from people or land.

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In honour of World Localisation Day, we're publishing a special Unstress podcast with Helena Norberg-Hodge, a returning guest.

Helena is one of my favourite people and someone who inspires me much. Her organisation, Local Futures, has been around for nearly four decades.

Join us as we discuss a very inspirational movement. What's going on in our local neighbourhood, how we connect with people and food, how supply chains become short, and how we may enhance not just our personal lives, but also the lives of our communities and the planet's health.

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The Australian Government COVID Treatment Forum was conducted on April 7th, 26 months after the epidemic began, and the government has decided that now is the time to focus on high-risk patients and early treatment.

Although the discussion is open to the public on the website health.gov.au, I was able to pull the highlights for a special Unstress edition we released last Tuesday.

On this Healthy Bite, let us explore the meaning of The Great Reset and revisit now-former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s speech at the World Economic Forum held last January 2020.

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Today’s Unstress is a special edition. We’re actually going to be cutting in and out of a very special forum that was held in early April 2022, sponsored by the Australian Government’s Health Department, or coordinated also with the National Health and Medical Research Council, the NHMRC, and the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Chair of that, and the Chair of the ATAGI - a group that administers immunisations.

We are going to be focussed on key opinion leaders and product champions in action today and see how evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests and failed regulations.

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Today, I'd want to relate my own experience with allergies and how a holistic approach helped me overcome them. 

I also want to share with you some of the highlights of my interview with Prof Pete Smith, how psychotherapy helped me with allergies, the five-pillar model, some of the excellent psychotherapists we had in the Unstress program, and so much more.

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Allergies. What an exciting topic. What should we know about it? Today, we are going to be exploring the world of allergies with one of Australia’s leading allergists.

My guest today is Professor Pete Smith. Pete commenced his medical studies at the University of Tasmania and specialised in paediatrics in Adelaide before completing his PhD in molecular immunology.  Pete has a clinic on the Gold Coast in Queensland in Southport. He takes holistic to a whole other level and it’s a real treat to hear him piece it all together. He's also a Professor in Clinical Medicine at Griffith University and Bond University and an active member of the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.

Pete and I talked about allergies, asthma, his holistic approach to healthcare, why nasal breathing is so important, and so much more.

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Download Transcript A Lesson in Holistic HealthcareWell, this week, we had the pleasure of talking to Dr Sandeep Gupta. And Sandeep is practising in southern Queensland south on the Sunshine Coast. He is a holistic, integrative medical practitioner, and I just so enjoyed talking to him.  We covered so many interesting topics, and I really felt […]

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We've noted before that chronic inflammation is the common denominator among all diseases. Today, we'll dig deeper into that topic, taking it to a level that impacts a wide spectrum of disease states: cardiovascular disease. We touch on one, but we also go into great detail about early COVID prevention and treatment. Chronic inflammation is the key, regardless of the condition. And today's guest is a prominent expert in this field in Australia.

My guest today is Dr Sandeep Gupta. Sandeep graduated from University of Queensland in 1999. Since then he has served in a range of public and private hospitals as a cardiology, medical and anesthetic registrar.

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Did you know that with regenerative agriculture, instead of 500 years, we can grow soil one or two inches and a half centimetres in three to five years? Regenerative Agriculture is a theme we explore on the podcast recently.

This week was an opportunity to reconnect with Christos. His ideas are quite fascinating, and I admire how he incorporates natural materials and takes a holistic approach to it.

Join me as we review the 5 cycles of regenerative agriculture by Charles Massey, the difference between set stocking and regenerative agriculture, and so much more.

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In this Unstress episode, we welcome back Dr Christos Miliotis. 

Dr Christos has been exploring strategies to draw down greenhouse gases from the sky to soil for 17 years, with a particular focus on the role of microbes in building the soil carbon sponge and drawing in more water vapour from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil.

In this fascinating discussion, Christo sheds light on the importance of soil bacteria and the diverse organisms that reside within them.

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This week on the Unstress, we talked about Building Biology. It is a science that studies the health hazards of the built environment, and something I believe we should all be engaged in.

In this week’s Healthy Bite, I get to reflect and discuss all the different stressors that affect our health, and recognizing the 'whole' person and environment in disease prevention and cure may be the key to some diagnoses.

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What exactly is Building Biology? And how can you use it to improve your health and well-being at home?

Today, we will learn everything about Building Biology from Nicole Bijlsma. Nicole Bijlsma is a woman driven by a passion to help the environment. Nicole, a former naturopath and acupuncturist with 15 years of clinical expertise, switched careers to become a building biologist after discovering a clear association between many of her patients' illnesses and health concerns in their homes. Nicole is the best-selling author of Healthy Home, Healthy Family. She is also the founder of and the head of the Australian College of Environmental Studies.

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This week, we revisited medical science, which I believe should be at the top of our agenda because it affects each and every one of our lives in ways that we could never have anticipated earlier.

Join me in this episode as I read an article: The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine and as well as share my thoughts on it.

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Today, we are going to be continuing with the theme can we “trust the science?”.

It is a wonderful privilege to be able to interview one of these professionals who, for many of you, will require no further introduction. My guest today is Prof David Healy. I have known him because of the wonderful book he has written, Pharmageddon. Prof David Healy is a psychiatrist, scientist, psychopharmacologist, and author. David’s main areas of research are clinical trials in psychopharmacology, the history of psychopharmacology, and the impact of both trials and psychotropic drugs on our culture.

Tune in as we explore numerous topics that we should all be aware of, and it speaks of not just how medicine is practised, how chronic disease is approached, but also how this pandemic is confronted.

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This week's Healthy Bite is a real treat that broadens our understanding of speech pathology. Nikki is a treasure of knowledge; we talked about Laryngology 101, paresis, silent reflux, and so much more and it episode reminded me how interrelated the body is.

Join me as we discuss the highlights of our conversation, including consuming liquid while eating, what to drink to prevent reflux, and how The Breather Fit helped me with my specific silent reflux condition.

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Have you ever heard of silent reflux? In this week’s episode, we are going to talk about this and a whole lot of other things.

My guest today is Nikki Martin. Nikki is a skilled Speech Pathologist with 22 years of experience. She has an immense experience in Voice and Swallowing problems, with an exceptionally high client success rate. I had the pleasure of being referred to her for my own issue around silent reflux. And I was just blown away by Nikki’s holistic approach to this.

Join me in this conversation as Nikki and I discuss laryngology, paresis, silent reflux, and so much more.

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My interview with Dr Traill Dowie took much longer than normal since we lost track of time chatting face to face and became absorbed in so many fascinating discussions covering a wide range of issues. I also had the opportunity to recognise how well this episode fits in with the other episodes I've done for the past months and years.

This Healthy Bite allows me to reflect and share my thoughts on the things we discussed, as well as the high points of our conversation, and so much more.

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Today's episode is a little different because I had the pleasure of catching up with my guest in my own home studio and we did the interview face to face, which reminded me of what I believe we've all learned as a result of this pandemic. And that is, while we have access to online communication, nothing beats talking and looking at people's faces and examining body language and facial expressions and experiencing that connection with someone, which I had the pleasure of doing today.

My guest is Dr Traill Dowie who is the Chair of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) Panel for Trauma Standards & Practice, he is also the Head of Faculty at Ikon Institute Australia, and is a practising psychotherapist, supervisor and public speaker.

He holds dual PhDs, receiving a PhD in Psychiatry from Monash University and a PhD in Philosophy from The University of Melbourne. He is also co-director of the Mind Medicine Institute, and I recently had the pleasure of talking to his co-director, integrative psychologist, Nigel Denning. So these two episodes really do dovetail with each other really well.

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Download Transcript Sleep and Anxiety? The Sleeping Child Now, this week’s episode was called The Sleeping Child, and we talked with paediatric respiratory and sleep medicine physician and specialist Dr Jim Papadopoulos. I’ve had the privilege of referring patients to Jim for over 10 almost 15 years, and he has always been terrific come in […]

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Do you know that there is a specialist who can help you with your sleep problems, too? We've talked a lot about getting adequate sleep, but I don't think we've covered everything there is to know about it.

Today, we are talking to one of Australia's leading experts in this field. It's Dr Jim Papadopoulos. Jim is a Paediatric, Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Physician. He is widely known for his work with sleep studies in children, and in particular, children with special needs, orthodontic problems, and gastrointestinal issues.

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Lessons from the past is a theme I’ve been exploring for quite a while now. How these lessons inform our future is a really exciting concept. In this Healthy Bite, let’s talk about Tyson Yunkaporta’s book, Sand Talk. Through the eyes of an Indigenous person, he attempts to convey a picture of the modern world to his readers.

I also recommend two other books that you could read about Indigenous culture. Listen to the full episode to find out!

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How much more could we discover if we listened more intently and made a deeper connection with the land from an indigenous perspective?

My guest today is Tyson Yunkaporta. Tyson is an academic, an art critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledge at Deakin University in Melbourne.

We explored indigenous economics, systems reform, colonization, accountability, healing, ritual, and a variety of other topics with one another. A must listen!

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As you know in our previous Healthy Bite episodes, we have identified many “Ps” on how we approach this pandemic. Well, I have another P that I think is a great addition to this list. This week, I had Dr Ross Walker as a guest to give us the annual healthy heart checkup we all need.

Join me in this Healthy Bite as I talk about the leading cause of death globally, how much do we need a coronary calcium score and insulin resistance. Let’s also touch on the pandemic, vaccines, and so much more.

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When should you go to the doctor for a heart checkup? Today, it’s time for our annual check-up with a cardiologist, (and my good friend) Dr Ross Walker.

Dr Ross Walker is an Integrative Cardiologist practicing in Sydney, Australia. A prolific communicator with his own radio show “Healthy Living” airing Sunday nights on 2GB Sydney, Ross offers a wealth of information.

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Sadly, in our health system, whether we’re talking about chronic disease management, whether we’re talking about mental health, physical health, whether we are talking even about the pandemic I have identified this list of Ps that seem to drive our approach in many of our approaches to health in our system. Join me in this Healthy Bite as I talk about immune function, the Ps affecting our approach in this pandemic, and the highlights of my conversation with Dr Olivia Lesslar.

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Throughout the pandemic, there has been a question that has been on many of our minds, “does natural immunity still exist?” That’s the topic for this week’s episode. In my conversation with Dr Olivia Lesslar, we discuss the importance of nutrition in developing immunity to disease, what can be done nutritionally, the importance of sleep, the importance of light therapy and so much more.

Dr Olivia Lesslar is a functional medicine practitioner with an interest in complex chronic conditions. She is a concierge medical consultant at LifeSpan Medicine USA.

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In this Healthy Bite, we are going to focus on personalised medicine. If you listen to your body, look back and review your family history, and we do get this report card in every single day, which gives us a clue as to how healthy we are, how our digestive system is doing, whether we are in good balance with our microbiome. Tune in as we also discuss the highlights of my conversation with Gerald Quigley.

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Have you ever heard of ubiquinol? Would you ever use it? If you’ve ever considered using it or are unsure if it’s for you, then this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. In this episode, we are continuing our journey through biochemistry. Understanding how our body works means realising that it’s not just medication that will help us get better (if we’re unwell), but knowing that the body has a natural ability to heal itself.

My guest today is Gerald Quigley. Gerald is a practising Community Pharmacist. and accredited Herbalist, well known for his unique view of health from a holistic perspective where we discuss the use of ubiquinol AKA CoQ10 and so much more.

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Hello and welcome to Healthy Bite. In this week's episode, I spoke to science writer Dr Todd Penberthy, and we covered quite a range of topics. He's had some amazing mentors in his life. He alerted me to Vitamin B3, the legendary doctor Abram Hoffer, who is the Father of Integrative Psychiatry and the work of a South African doctor called Dr Shankar Chetty. And Todd is very passionate about his science. I've had the pleasure of connecting with him through my association with the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. Join me as I discuss some highlights of my conversation with Todd Penberthy.

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Hello and welcome to another Unstress. The science in medicine is our topic today, and my guest is Todd Penberthy. Todd has a PhD in Research and Scientific Research. He's a science writer, his subjects of interest include Diabetes, Oncology, Integrative Psychiatry, which is what we touch on in this podcast. We talked a lot about the power of a particular nutrient, I won’t spoil it for you. We talked about one of the legends in Integrative Psychiatry and author of Molecular Medicine, Dr Abram Hoffer, multiple sclerosis, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Todd Penberthy.

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Hello and welcome to another Healthy Bite. Now this week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Admiral Chris Barrie. Chris was the Chief of the Defence Force from 1998 to the year 2002. It was such a great discussion. We talked about PTSD. Chris shared with me, which was rather surprising, that every Australian is affected to some degree by this condition because so many people suffer from it. And it's not just returned servicemen that are the issue, it is people who have traumatic experiences in their life. We also talked about his not for profit organization, Fearless Outreach.

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Hello and welcome to Unstress. Now, this week's episode is about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and we are going to learn what a huge and growing problem this is. Something that affects almost every Australian in one way or another. 

My guest for today is Admiral Chris Barrie. Admiral Barrie retired from over 41 years of active service in the Royal Australian Navy, and as the Chief of the Defence Force(CDF) in July 2002. Since retirement from the military, he has concentrated his work on strategic leadership issues as a consultant, teacher and mentor.

He is the chairman of a charity (Fearless Outreach) committed to helping the one million Australians who suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder and focusing attention on the disorder, which impacts more individuals than you might imagine. I hope you enjoy the conversation I had with Admiral Chris Barrie AC.

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Welcome to another Unstress Summer Series. In this episode, Grant Hilliard joins me to discuss being an ethical omnivore. Grant is the co-author of the wonderful book 'The Ethical Omnivore' and co-owner of a fantastic butcher in Sydney - Feather and Bone. Grant champions regenerative agriculture and whole animal consumption throughout his work. In this episode, we discuss honouring the whole animal throughout their life, which also means how they are managed. ⁠

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Hello and welcome to another Summer Series. Today we are going to be talking about Sleep Wrecked Kids: Helping Parents Raise Happy, Healthy Kids, One Sleep At A Time. We’re going to be talking about myofunctional therapy, which is a term some of you may not be familiar with. But after this podcast, you will be and you’ll realize its relevance to each and every one of you.

My guest today is Sharon Moore, speech pathologist, oral myologist, and author of Sleep Wrecked Kids. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Sharon Moore.

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Welcome to another episode of the Summer Series. Today, we are going to talk about a very interesting subject. The secret to living a healthier life is breathing well for as long as you can, and there is a difference between breathing and breathing well. We dip into our archives this week to bring you a series on the importance of breath.

Todays' episode, Dr Rosalba Courtney, joins us to explore life in the breath and some tips for breathing. What does it mean to breathe well? Why is this so important? Why is it important to breathe through your nose? What impact it have on your body?

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Welcome to another episode of Summer Series. Today, we are going to explore a key deficiency. Now, we’ve often talked about the importance of soils and one of the biggest deficiencies in soils are magnesium, selenium, and zinc. And magnesium, as you will hear, is a critically important element to so many functions within the body, over a thousand functions within the body.

My guest today is Dr. Carolyn Dean. She’s a medical doctor and a naturopath. What a great combination. She’s the author of over 35 books, including the best-selling book, The Magnesium Miracle, which we talk a lot about today. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Carolyn Dean.

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Welcome to another episode of Unstress Summer Series. Well, today we are going to explore two themes, actually, one about being hooked on devices and programmes and our modern world, and the other is how to become “indistractable.”

Do you have trouble focusing or working without distraction? Well if so, this week’s episode is for you. I spoke with Nir Eyal. Nir writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He is the best-selling author of Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

In our conversation, we explore behavioural design, what distraction means, and how to become 'Indistractable' - a term he coined which means to be living with personal integrity, being honest with yourself.

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Hello and welcome to another Unstress Summer Series. In today’s episode, I am talking about "the elephant in the room". The confusing and often contradictory public health messages. How these are crafted and why. The science in medicine and who or what informs that. Is that always evidence-based? And the positive opportunities out of this pandemic. As I honestly believe we could emerge from this pandemic reflecting on our entire approach to health care and emerge a healthier society, individuals, and a society and a planet.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Summer Series. Well, today we’re going to explore Digital Nutrition, digital superfoods, and how to deal with the digital world we find ourselves in. My guest today is Jocelyn Brewer. Jocelyn is a registered psychologist who is changing the way we think about how we use digital technology. Her philosophy of “digital nutrition” aims to optimise your wellbeing and improve your digital literacy online and advocates tips for better cyber-psychological health.

In this fascinating conversation, we explore the benefits and challenges of digital technology, the effect of screen time on teenagers, the ‘digital disinhibition effect”, digital nutrition, and digital superfoods and uncover some practical advice for developing better digital health.

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Welcome to another episode of the Summer Series. This week, Dr Howard Hindin joins me to talk about "GASP" or airway health as a hidden path to wellness, the yin and yang of heart rate variability, and his 4 pillars of health.

A graduate of New York University College of Dentistry, Dr. Howard Hindin is trained in all aspects of general dentistry, with an early emphasis on surgery and endodontia. Since the 1990s, his practice has also focused on cosmetic dentistry, temporomandibular joint disorders, and craniofacial pain.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Summer Series. Today, we are going to explore immune function with Dr Michael Gonzalez. Michael is a professor at the Nutritional Program School of Public Health, University of Puerto Rico. In our talk, we discuss ways to optimize immune function best, the influence of vitamin C on cancer treatment, and explore the long-term complexities involved in undertaking diets ranging from low carb, veganism, and carnivorism.

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Unstress Summer Series. Today, I want to turn our focus on regenerative agriculture. In line with this, I'd like to look back and share my conversation from September last year with Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Have you heard the expression “Think globally, act locally”? Today, we are going to explore both terms: Globalisation and Localisation.

My guest today is author and filmmaker, Helena Norberg-Hodge, a pioneer of the local economy movement. She is the founder and director of Local Futures.

In this podcast, Helena and I sat down for a chat concerning localisation, globalisation, the film The Economics of Happiness, neoliberalism, and industrial agriculture.