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EP07 Dr Olivia Lesslar
133 Plays1 year ago
Dr Olivia Lesslar is a medical doctor practicing psychoneuroimmunology, a field which branches psychology, behavioral science, the nervous system, immune system and hormones.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
All right. Welcome back to my podcast, the Nick Taskey podcast. Today I'm joined by Dr. Olivia Lessler, someone who I've been pretty excited to talk with for a little while. Welcome today, Olivia. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Nate.
Dr. Lessler's Medical Background
00:00:14
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about yourself. So I'm a generalist medical practitioner, which means that I don't have any conventional specialty training. What I do is, um,
00:00:29
Speaker
something called psychoneuroimmunology, and that is the intersection between psychology, behavioral sciences, the nervous system, immune system, and hormones. And I use this lens with an evolutionary lens to look at complex conditions, mystery illnesses, and I tend to see patients who have kind of lost hope either in the conventional system or
00:00:54
Speaker
they know that there's more, there's better. They can go into remission or they want to optimize whatever situation they're in. Those are the kind of people who wind up finding me as a doctor. Okay. And so like very complex cases, I'm imagining people under a lot of stress. Yes. Yeah. That's my, that's my favorite. Yeah. What would a typical client for you look like?
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, okay. So it actually depends on how they find me.
Complex Conditions and Patient Perspectives
00:01:19
Speaker
So, um, I'm the medical director of functional medicine and longevity at a brain center in Sydney called Singulum Health. So that means there, I see only patients who have some sort of neuro issue, neuro psych, neuro deeja, neuro onc. Um, if patients find me through, um, Queensland allergy in Queensland,
00:01:41
Speaker
then these are patients who typically have allergies, sensitivities, food intolerances, you know, gut issues, reactive asthma. If patients find out about me through CFShealth.com, which is an online program for ME CFS, then they know that I'm a adjuncts in electro with the National Center for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases, again, ME CFS. So this is chronic fatigue syndrome, post COVID, long COVID,
00:02:11
Speaker
and post-vaccine injury. Um, if they find me through, uh, the clinic lifespan medicine in the U S or well, jevity in London, then it's going to be sort of that complex chronic condition patients who are also interested in biohacking, health optimization, DNA snip analysis. Yeah. So it depends on how they find me basically. Um, and also I have an interest in cancer.
00:02:39
Speaker
and I look after a couple of cancer patients quite closely. Very cool. That's a lot of things that you cover there.
Chronic Fatigue and Lifestyle Factors
00:02:49
Speaker
I think one of the things that sticks out for me in what I see with a lot of clients that I work with is just like that, what you describe as chronic fatigue and that continued fatigue, or just a continuous feeling of fatigue. I've noticed in a lot of people, after a certain amount of time, they just don't even realize that they're tired.
00:03:09
Speaker
They talk to their friends, the new norm, you know, I'm, I'm tired all the time. My friends are tired all the time. Um, I don't remember when I felt good. So it's now normal for me to not to just feel no, no good. Do you see that quite a lot? Yeah. Yeah, I do. And you know, the simplest test with these, with a lot of the patients that we have, you know, is, um, do they feel better when they go on holiday?
00:03:37
Speaker
do they feel better when they go on a retreat? And inevitably the answer is yes. So I'm not talking about patients who've been diagnosed with ME CFS, right? It's a whole different kettle of fish. I'm talking about patients day to day who are high flyers, they're juggling lots of different things. They've got family and they've got work and they've got responsibilities outside of the home. These are the patients who are carrying around with them an enormous weight and it makes them feel
00:04:07
Speaker
not energized on a regular basis, not getting great sleep, feeling irritable half the time and just wanting to lie down and run from the world the other half of the time. Many of them are self-medicating with alcohol or cigarettes or worse. And yeah, a lot of these patients, majority of these patients will feel better when they go on holiday. So it's stress.
00:04:34
Speaker
It's the lifestyle that we're leading. It's the non-native EMFs. It's the artificial lights. It's the shit food. It's the shit sleep. To a certain extent, it's a little bit of a no-brainer because you've been there, I've certainly been there. We just have to learn that looking after ourselves is actually something that needs to be as natural for us as brushing our teeth.
00:05:03
Speaker
Whereas now you're looking for retreats, or you're looking for supplements to plug that hole, or you're looking for something external, right? To save you from yourself. It's, you know, nobody wants to hear that they need to get better sleep and stop looking at their phones, right?
Medical Mindset and Treatment Approaches
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah. One of the concepts that's taught through the CHEP system is what we call allostatic load or physiological load. And it's like the compounding stresses in your life.
00:05:29
Speaker
you're eating a poor diet and you're getting, you know, six hours of sleep instead of eight hours of sleep and you've got relationship stress. And then, you know, like we were saying before the podcast, you're training in the morning before you're eating breakfast. And, you know, you're maybe even in a lot of people's minds, they're doing all the right things, but they don't seem to see, and I suppose it gets very complicated, but they don't see the compounding effect of all those stresses added together.
00:05:59
Speaker
Do you find that what you're doing is simplifying people's lives in the long term or are you using really complex treatments to treat complex? I don't know. So I came away from that sort of mindset of plugging all these thousands of holes in patients with thousands of supplements and you know drugs and it's just not
00:06:23
Speaker
You know, I went from being a allopathically trained doctor, and then prescribing as per the guidelines, and then moving away from that and then doing supplements instead. But it's, it's, it's, it's the mindset that has to change, right? It's the philosophy of medicine that has to change. We need to stop plugging holes, and band aiding patients. And
00:06:50
Speaker
Yes, I only see complex conditions and sometimes to get these patients out, it's quite complex, but it doesn't have to be complicated. So I always talk about the fact that, you know, you've got all these dominoes, right? You've got all these issues, all these symptoms, but really we need to just push over one or two major dominoes or what we think might be the major domino. And then we give it some time and we see what else pushes over and then
00:07:19
Speaker
what we're left with, we can push another couple of dominoes over. And that's why I don't test that much anymore either. I don't need to do a gut microbiome test to tell me that your gut microbiome is in trouble because you already came in telling me that you've got bloating and you're gassy and cramping and diarrhea one day and you've got constipation the next. I don't need a test to tell me that your gut needs help. So with my patients, I tend to do things
00:07:48
Speaker
fairly empirically, which means that we're going to clean up the diet first, sort out the sleep, see how you go, and then I might do some testing if I'm confused. But doctors and practitioners overcomplicate things sometimes. Now, as I explained to you before we started chatting,
00:08:11
Speaker
I don't see patients who haven't seen conventional doctors in the conventional systems that they're living in because we need to keep patients safe. I don't follow conventional guidelines because I'm not a conventional doctor. Patients need to have gone through that rigmarole and done everything and tested to make sure that there isn't any blaring red flags before they come see me.
00:08:38
Speaker
So a lot of the time, these patients have already had that many tests. I'm not going to add to that burden, especially financial burden, because by the time they see me, it's now the functional or integrative test, which is just mind boggling expensive. I'm not saying that you don't have to use them. There is judicious use of tests.
00:09:02
Speaker
and judicious use of supplements. But we shouldn't be overcomplicating things for patients who are already probably overwhelmed.
Critique of Conventional Medicine Practices
00:09:11
Speaker
It's funny, a lot of what I have seen is people who've seen things or seen professionals or practitioners who claim to be a part of the more natural or holistic side of things. And they'll go and see a naturopath who will give them 50 different supplements. And Ashwagandha for cortisol levels,
00:09:30
Speaker
the standard things for adrenal fatigue and have more minerals and have your sodium and all of these things. And they run at least functional medicine tests and it's really an allopathic approach still. It's no different to going to a regular doctor and having them prescribe you a pharmaceutical. I mean, to me, these people are probably profiting more themselves from the sale of these so-called natural supplements.
00:09:59
Speaker
Again, they're bandating what they're doing to their clients because they're not learning how to live the way that I think you were trying to teach them to live from what you described as through that evolutionary lens. Yeah. So, you know, patients, of course, we hold them a little bit in the beginning, right? So the adaptogens may be helpful, and we know that most patients are potassium insufficient and de-insufficient, but
00:10:28
Speaker
you know, I would rather, if your D is low, I'd rather you got onto the sun, right? Then for me to give you an 600,000 international unit injection, or, you know, load you up with 10, 20,000 international units of vitamin D a day. Like in some cases, absolutely. You know, you've got certain types of cancer patients, for example, or whatever. But when you're not talking to the patient holistically about the fact that you're doing something in the short term to sort of plug a hole whilst
00:10:58
Speaker
they are working on the things that they need to work on, then you're doing them a disservice. So I recently came on as chief medical officer of a CBD plant-based company called Atlas.com. And the philosophy of Atlas is something that I really talked through with the founder about, and that is this. Nothing is a panacea, generally speaking.
00:11:26
Speaker
And CBD can be very helpful, but it's not a panacea. In other words, CBD can be helpful for patients with their pain, with their sleep, with their anxiety. But what we're doing is we're opening up the space to allow them to give them a breather to do the work that they need to do. If you start with CBD for sleep and then you stay on CBD for sleep and you're on CBD for sleep 10 years later, you haven't done the work that you need to do.
00:11:55
Speaker
It's very expensive for any patient to be relying on something external that can, should be looked at internally. Define that there's pushback or that you need to develop a lot of trust or rapport with new clients when
00:12:16
Speaker
they've come through this rigmarole of testing and seeing so many people who are the best in their field or should be the best in their field. And then they come to you and you're saying, well, are you sleeping properly? Are you doing A, B, and C? And you're taking them right back to basics. Is that like shocking for people sometimes, do you think? Or scary at the same time? I'm really lucky because the majority of my patients
00:12:44
Speaker
you know, they're self selected. So they are looking for me, right, knowing how I practice. So I'm really lucky like that. The only time I've kind of ever really had a little bit of difficulty with patients is funnily enough when they're referred to me by allopathic specialists. Because as you kind of pointed out, they're used to that allopathic world and treatment models. And so when they're looking when they come see me that they think that I have some sort of magic
00:13:13
Speaker
pill or something that's not available on the PBS. So, otherwise I have actually spoken to the two, three major specialists that refer to me. And I've basically said to them, they need to, they need to explain to their patients, you know, the kind of practice that I run because I'm not interested in taking patients' money when they're not ready for me. You know, so this is about financial consent as well.
00:13:42
Speaker
But that's why my intake form and on my website, I really go through about how I practice medicine. You know, the fact that they have to have been cleared as per local guidelines, they must have a GP, that, you know, they got to do the work.
Discussion on Allopathic vs. Holistic Medicine
00:14:01
Speaker
Um, and generally speaking, look, yeah, I, I, I'm interested in complex chronic conditions and mystery illnesses, but I do say to patients as well, if I can't figure out what's wrong within three consults, then I'm not the doctor for you right now. So to refer them out or tell them to, to, you know, continue their journey elsewhere. And then if they're still in strife in 12 months to come back to me, because by then my knowledge base would have increased because I go to that many conferences, right. Then I would have continually, you know, continuously formulated my.
00:14:30
Speaker
medical philosophies and paradigms. Do you think that the general paradigm in medicine is changing or is it becoming more allopathic? No, so I would have thought so, to be honest with you, Nick, because I guess maybe it's my fault. I'm hanging out with other doctors like me. And so you get a little bit of an echo chamber. You go to these conferences where everybody's kind of agitating towards the same goals.
00:15:00
Speaker
respect for evolutionary past, respect for regenerative agriculture, respect for natural processes, respect for nasal breathing as opposed to mouth breathing, you know, that kind of stuff. And then I do go for some conventional conferences. I recently got back from the United European Gastroenterology Week in Copenhagen. And I mean, I think back now, I haven't been to a conventional conference in six months.
00:15:30
Speaker
And this one was shocking, shocking. So I feel that, you know, when we don't use the full breadth of tools available to us in health and wellness for our patients that we do our patients at disservice. And sometimes we may accidentally do harm by omission. In this case, I was in a gastro conference and it feels like
00:16:02
Speaker
I'm being very glib now. It feels as if we're actively going out there and slitting patients' throats. There were case presentations for reflux, for example, and honestly, they're jumping straight from patient presents with reflux. What do you do? Oh, PPI's for six months. What are you talking about? When I was going through medical school, it was a step up approach.
00:16:28
Speaker
We're talking about alginates and, you know, cookies and all those other rubbish that you can buy from over the counter, right? But then after that, you've got these H2 blockers. And I know the whole Renitidine story with the NMDA was a big problem. I know that, but there are other H2 blockers that we can, anyway. And then you step up to PPIs, right? And certainly not for six months. I'm sure maybe it was just,
00:16:57
Speaker
just the seminar presentation that I went to, you know, but there are 11,000 doctors at this conference. Wow. Yeah. And I mean, I, yeah, I, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Like, I want to cry. Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
Can you explain for people who are listening who may not understand why taking a proton pump inhibitor or even something like quickies might be something you don't want
Proton Pump Inhibitors and Stomach Health
00:17:26
Speaker
to do? I've had friends who, you know, I've just seen them buying quickies over and over again and, you know, every year, I've watched what they eat and then all of a sudden they're like, we've got heartburn again. And they're like, go over to the night owl or the 7-Eleven and get some quickies. And then, you know, months down the line, you'll hear them say,
00:17:45
Speaker
I suppose, I assume that eventually they show up with malnutrition or they're just gassy all the time when you're around them and the problem is it gets worse and worse. It's this idea that the body's broken to begin with. Oh God, don't even get me started on this idea. You know what I mean? This is true. And the quickies is there as that
00:18:15
Speaker
That's the healing, the healing force of the body is the quickies. You know what I mean? I, so to back to my original question, like why would someone not want to take a proton pump in here?
00:18:26
Speaker
Okay, so actually, this is a really complex condition, issue, solution and answer. So we can sort of scratch the surface on it, but I could spend an entire hour just talking about proton pump inhibitors and the natural function of the stomach, right? So we know that generally speaking, humans have a very acidic stomach,
00:18:53
Speaker
And the reason being is because we sort of, from an evolutionary perspective, have a scavengers.
00:19:00
Speaker
stomach, right? We would have to wait around until the tiger left, and then we would be able to feast on the muscle meat of the zebra that's been left fermenting in the heat for a few hours, right? So there were a lot of bugs. And if we let these bugs get through, more than likely, we may get, you know, issues, right? So this sort of microbial pathogen
00:19:25
Speaker
pathogenesis led to us having these defense mechanisms to make sure that they didn't invade us and then cause, you know. And that kind of reminds me, you know, a great way to also get a fungal or a parasite infection, right? Like a skin rash that you then have to go and meditate with, you know, and over the counter. Yeah. It's the stuff around with the pH of the different organs in your system, right? Okay. So our stomach is meant to be acidic. Now, if you get reflux, what does that mean? Are you producing too much acid?
00:19:54
Speaker
are you, is your lower esophageal sphincter not tight enough? And so the acid is spilling into your esophagus and that's why you're feeling it. And so then you have to even answer that question in the first place. So then if you're
00:20:12
Speaker
acid from the stomach is going into the esophagus or the gullet, then why is it? Is it a sphincter problem or is it a pressure problem? So people who snore, for example, people who the differentials on pressure between the abdominal cavity and the thoracic cavity is different, they will actually pull acid from the stomach into the gullet. That's why how you sleep is really important too. That's why nose breathing is really important. That's why if you have
00:20:39
Speaker
floppy larynx and you're snoring, you need to sort that out too. And even that is a whole hour all in itself. If you have a low sphincter tone of your esophagus, of the lower esophageal sphincter, then what are some things that we're looking at? We know that melatonin and calcium increases the tone of the lower esophageal sphincter, which is why people who have poor sleep have got worse reflux the next day.
00:21:07
Speaker
So, oh my God, sleep may be important for reflux symptoms.
00:21:12
Speaker
If you're eating something that your body is not happy about because you've activated threat detection networks, including transient receptor potential ion channels, which I do research on, then your body will increase how much acid it's producing because it's afraid. It's afraid of the shitty food you put through your mouth that your body doesn't recognize that signaling all these dangerous signals because dietary advanced glycation end products actually binds onto TLR, toll-like receptors.
00:21:42
Speaker
tall like receptor four and actually signals danger. There are laments. So you put this food in your mouth, then it goes into your stomach. Your body's trying to protect you. That's why it's producing more acid, right? So instead of telling the body to shut the F up, right? And you take a quick ease. Why don't you stop telling it? Why don't you stop giving the danger signals and start eating properly or at least eat in a parasympathetic state? Because I have definitely seen patients eating shit food.
00:22:10
Speaker
But because they eat in a parasympathetic state, they do okay. Or some of them do, right? Or some of them can do okay. And I have seen patients eat the best food in a sympathetic state, you know, orthorexic, like, Oh, my God, how many calories is this? And how many proteins? You know, is it organic? Is it this? Is it gluten free? Oh, my God, I can't eat here. This is, you know, and I've seen them do do poorly. So as you can see, it's really complex and complicated.
00:22:34
Speaker
Now, when we're using PPIs, first of all, the original data on PPIs was used post-operatively for like X number of weeks, I think two weeks or maybe even six weeks.
00:22:44
Speaker
We have signals now correlation data to show that, you know, extensive use of PPIs can actually decrease like vitamin B12 absorption, iron absorption, because you need an acidic environment to absorb iron in the first place, right? You do all sorts of things to your gut microbiome by fiddling around with the pH and, uh, PPI use proton pump, proton pump inhibitor use has been linked with dementia.
00:23:12
Speaker
Now I'm not going to come out swinging about it because I'm going to get shut down, but at least know about the research that's up and coming about these sorts of things so that you can make informed decisions and like stop using band-aids where lifestyle choices and smarter choices can actually help you instead. And then, you know, lastly, proton pump inhibitors H.
00:23:37
Speaker
H plus blockers. I mean, your mitochondria is full of proton pumps. So possibly causing damage to your mitochondria over the long term is, you know, it's within the realms of possible, right? It's kind of scary what you can really buy over the counter. And it seems to me that, you know, the active ingredients in a lot of things that you can purchase over the counter are only increasing. Oh, yeah. I mean, look,
00:24:07
Speaker
The number of times I've spoken to a conventional doctor and they'll go, oh, what's the evidence for that? Or you can't go from first principles on something or whatever they think that it is that functional medicine or integrative doctors do. But how many medications that are prescribed by a conventional doctor, we don't know how they work.
00:24:30
Speaker
And we don't know how they interact with each other either. Oh, yeah, absolutely. As if that you're going to find, you know, the number of patients now in a conventional setting who are on more than four, five, six, seven medications, right? You show me a paper which shows all these six medications, even four medications in the same patients in the long term longitudinal studies. No.
00:24:53
Speaker
There is no such thing, right? So you're going from first principles on that respect. The other thing about these medications, we don't know how paracetamol works. We don't know how 5ASA works that we give to our arthritis patients, for example. We don't know how these medications work, but we use them. If you don't know how something works, then you cannot predict what it may or may not do in your system.
00:25:21
Speaker
In other words, if you have a rise of, I don't know, autism or autoimmunity or whatever it is, it's not linked because you don't know how it works, right? So it's, and I brought up autoimmunity and autism and I just wanted to say very clearly that these are very complex conditions.
Autoimmune Diseases and Diagnostic Skepticism
00:25:44
Speaker
And I don't believe there is just the one driver for any of these sorts of things. But anyway,
00:25:50
Speaker
Yes. Like, you know, the train was late this morning coming into the office. I'm enjoying your, um, I think the, I think perhaps like the worst part about, you know, as you talk about the increase of autoimmune disease or, or things like autism is just the, the blanket reply that it's better diagnostics. Like doctors are now a bit better at diagnosing conditions and
00:26:20
Speaker
Nobody believes that. Nobody believes that. If I talk to my grandparents and I've got through my grandparents' still life, they didn't know what autism was. Maybe they knew one person in their life who had autism. Maybe they knew one person in their life who had autoimmune disease. I watched a few interviews with Robert Kennedy and he's
00:26:45
Speaker
obviously making waves in the US and I like a lot of what he said, but he said something similar and he's like, you know, look at his, I don't know how many kids, he's got something like seven kids and he's like, look, five of my seven kids have allergies to like, to, to foods that people never had allergies to in the past, like peanut intolerance and these things that are, that are like, how, why, why are these things increasing and why are,
00:27:13
Speaker
what should be the most intelligent people in the world, the most scientific people in the world, happy to just say that it's just better diagnostics like the technology is. So it's advancing so rapidly that now we, you know, it's so good. Well, look, you know, I had dinner with one of these super intelligent
00:27:36
Speaker
professor, neuro gastroenterologist in Copenhagen when I was there. And I brought up some of this stuff, right? Because he knows it's not better testing. He knows that most people know that, right? It's Yeah, what I was going to say is these people are, are super intelligent people. I'm not saying that they're not. I'm asking why they, why they got the blinders on. Right. And, and for whatever reason, I think actually it's this,
00:28:06
Speaker
lack of curiosity. I've seen it because this is not my, uh, it's not the first professor that I spent time with. Right. And when you talk about the rise of this, that and the other, the answer, which is delivered eloquently as if look at how, if you look at how modest I am and willing to say this, they go, we don't know why. And then they kind of dot, dot, dot. And then they launch it to something else. It's like,
00:28:37
Speaker
Actually, yeah, we may not know 100%. Why? Because these are multifactorial. But if you refuse to look at some of the factors, which are blatantly obvious, you're never going to get the answer, right? Because for some reason, these people are just chasing that one miracle molecule.
Holistic Approach to Chronic Conditions
00:28:54
Speaker
Drugs. I mean, Christ's sake, like it's just, we've been bashing this horse for Alzheimer's, for example, for
00:29:02
Speaker
decades has gotten us nowhere. You have someone like Dale Bredesen come out left of field. He's a professor. He has his own lab. He's talking about the fact that it's just, you know, Alzheimer's is like a house with 36 holes in the roof. And when it rains, you're not going to be able to plug all those 36 holes. And that's what these drugs are trying to do. They're trying to plug one, two, maybe three holes and think that the house won't flood. Like
00:29:29
Speaker
That's why Dale would talk about diet. He'll talk about nutrients. He'll talk about heavy metals. He'll talk about mold. He'll talk, you know, complex chronic conditions need a lens like that because they're, whoopsie daisies, complex. So it's this natural curiosity, which I have seen beaten out of many doctors.
00:29:51
Speaker
I don't know why they're like that. I've, I've had patients, you know, not necessarily my patients, but I've certainly had patients who have done remarkably well, uh, with whatever autoimmunity or cancer or, you know, remission from stage four terminal lung cancer. Right. Do you think that any conventional doctor has asked my patient what she did to go into remission?
00:30:21
Speaker
with her terminal lung cancer. And her stories for everyone to see on Instagram, right? It's not Kate's time. So to be fair, Kate started off as a patient three or four years ago. Now she's one of my best friends. But the story is the same. The oncologist will see that she's gone into remission. The 10 brain meds that she had gone, they don't ask.
00:30:48
Speaker
It's craziness, the radiologist asked because the radiologist had never seen anything like it and he messaged me personally. Yeah, it's almost as though, and I've heard this talked about before, is that it's easier to say miracle remission than to say that this person did something to cause their remission. You know, it's let's deny everything that can't be seen, but let's also
00:31:16
Speaker
for the stuff that we can't explain, say that it was a miracle. It's like, it's just nonsensical. And not to say that there isn't such a thing as miracle remission. But in this case, you've obviously or she's obviously done the work to put ourselves in the position that he's in. Yep, she's done the work. She's gone to Hope for Cancer. I was an innocent bystander.
00:31:36
Speaker
who was just cheering her on and with her in Mexico because I'm not her treating doctor. And she did the work, absolutely. And it's not just supplements. It's how you think, how you feel, how you breathe.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, okay, when you have a terminal patient who goes to Hope for Cancer, they throw the kitchen sink at you. I mean, it's everything. And that's because it's so late in the piece by the time these patients get there. You kind of have to do that. Now, from a conventional doctor's perspective, I can see why that's distasteful. By that stage, it gets expensive when you're doing everything. And you don't know what works because you're doing everything.
00:32:27
Speaker
But if our medical system opened its mind just a little bit and brought pharmaceutical companies to heal the way they should as a fantastic servant and not as a master,
00:32:45
Speaker
then we would open up that research space to be able to see why certain things do certain things.
Pharmaceutical Influence and Alternative Research
00:32:50
Speaker
Like there is already researchers to like some of the off-label drug use, right? If you Google whatever cancer you have and metformin or aspirin or beta blockers or
00:33:04
Speaker
or whatever it is, there's some research there. But it gets ignored because it doesn't get picked up by the government regulatory bodies and it doesn't get included in guidelines. And I know that yes, we need to be talking about longer term studies and this and the other, I get that. But for patients who choose CHOOSE for themselves to go to places where these things are used to a certain, you know, safely,
00:33:34
Speaker
within protocols that have been used by hundreds, if not thousands of patients, then that's their body and their bloody choice. Okay. Nick. It kind of reminds me of, you know, the, the, the horseyworm situation that happened a couple of years ago where, you know, that was a, which is, which is like an award-winning like pharmaceutical drug, right? Like, like,
00:34:02
Speaker
And then all of a sudden it's like, that's a veterinary drug. And it's like, whoa. Yeah, it's a horse drug. I mean, it's so cheap, so cheap with decades of use, relatively safe. And it's just, were there some papers that came out to show that it was beneficial? Yes. But everybody knows, well, I hope everybody knows about the fact that you can't
00:34:28
Speaker
So the emergency use authorization, the EUA, the government cannot push through an EUA unless there is nothing else that can be used in the arsenal you already have. So they had to say that these things didn't work to be able to do an EUA.
00:34:44
Speaker
Right? So, you're not fooling anybody, right? I'm just so sick of this pandemic government, all this like bullshit that's driven by some, you know, big pharma agenda.
Pandemic Management and Psychoneuroimmunology
00:34:56
Speaker
I feel like the biggest conspiracy theorist now. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, three years ago, I was the first person that said you have to respect authority. I mean, look, Asian, female, grub, Catholic, that's a triple whammy right now.
00:35:13
Speaker
Like something comes up in the news about some other disaster in the world. I'm like, did that really happen? Like, you know, what are they trying to hide? I'm the same way. Exactly. Yeah. I think I picked you on the, on the right night. We had to change this a couple of times, but I'm glad I caught you tonight. I'm enjoying this conversation so far. Um, as, as far as, as psychoneuroimmunology goes, there are some
00:35:42
Speaker
who I consider to be some very famous people in that field, like guys like Joe Dispenza. There's another name that's evading my mind at the moment. Bruce Lipton. Bruce Lipton is the person, yeah. And it's almost like a melding of Eastern and Western medicine. Would you describe it that way?
00:36:06
Speaker
Um, I hadn't up till now. I mean, it's true. Yeah. But you know, my, one of the, my missions I feel is to put the hard science into the soft science, right?
00:36:21
Speaker
That's why things like mind body medicine, meditation, you know, forgiveness and compassion therapy or whatever it is. That's why these things don't really get a look in, in like hardcore medical circles, because doctors relegate that to the domain of non doctors, right? Psychologists. It's just, it's ridiculous because psychologists, counselors, you know, trauma specialists, they,
00:36:52
Speaker
They do some seriously miraculous and inverted commas work. And if you have no respect for the mind, then you'll never be able to help your patients in that holistic way that their soul is craving. And I
00:37:12
Speaker
have lots of respect for, you know, Eastern medicine, you know, my father is, he's a vet, but he used to be like the past president of what is now the Australian Veterinary Association, for example. Sorry, acupuncture association. And yeah, he was one of the first doctors or he was the first doctor, a vet in Australia to use acupuncture and race horses. So we have all the news clippings from that and all that. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool.
00:37:41
Speaker
but I'm not trained in Ayurvedic medicine or in traditional Chinese medicine. And we are getting better and better in allopathic, in the Western world, where I did my medical training to show why those mind-body practices work. And so it's just a matter of someone, and I'm not the only one, but someone to join the dots
00:38:11
Speaker
between research in behavioral sciences, research in psychology, research in psychotherapy, research in molecular medicine, research in evolution, anthropological, the clues are all there. It's all there. We just have to open our minds to the fact that not every problem is because of genetics and not every solution is a drug.
00:38:39
Speaker
It's interesting.
Mind-Body Connection in Health
00:38:41
Speaker
I think the more you look, the more you find. When I started out as a PT, I was interested in things like back pain. That was one of the things that was talked about at the first check course I went to.
00:38:57
Speaker
One of the things they really hammered on was the mental and emotional side of back pain, even in the cause of back pain. And one of the thoughts that we referenced was by, I believe he was an orthopedic surgeon and his name was- John Sarno. John Sarno, yeah, yeah, yeah. Healing back pain. Healing back pain. And John Sarno, I think he probably had an epiphany himself when he came to that realization that most of his clients were, we talked about
00:39:26
Speaker
doctors telling people that suffers in their head. And he wasn't telling them that it was in their head, but what he was saying was that their back pain was driven by mental and emotional issues. And, you know, funnily enough, a lot of or a large percentage of those people were suffering from or had issues with like financial problems. And
00:39:48
Speaker
you know, relationship problems and all of these things that in Eastern medicine relate to the lumbar spine. And when you see, you know, where most, you know, most back issues around that L3, L4 area, which is again, heavily related to those mental and emotional topics. And it's just amazing, you know, the, like I said, the more you look, the more you'll find. And I think as time progresses,
00:40:19
Speaker
you'll find, we will find that more of these well-known people in these fields who actually get results, we'll start to point these things out. Yeah. So that is absolutely true, like with a lot of my lower back pain patients.
00:40:34
Speaker
especially if they're concierge patients, so I know them very, very well. I've been with them for years, and they'll say this too. It's like their back pain is worse when they're stressed, their back pain is worse when they don't have good sleep, their back pain is worse when they're fighting with their spouse. But my job is to explain the why.
00:40:55
Speaker
Right? Because you can't keep, we can't keep saying, okay, your back pain is worse because you're, you know, you've got emotional stress. Patients will sort of go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they don't, they don't really buy into it because it doesn't make biochemical sense. Yeah, well, living in a Western world where we, and I'm the same, I don't want to be told by someone, you know, you've got
00:41:17
Speaker
relationship issues. So that's why you're back serving like, okay, like, explain why. Exactly. So how do we explain why, right? Yeah, we're obviously going to get better and better at this, the more we know, but, and I think that you may have heard me talk about it on another podcast before, but if you, if you realize that
00:41:46
Speaker
humans from an evolutionary perspective are meant to be forward moving locomotively, right? And when your system, when your eight senses are not particularly happy, and so your eight senses are vision, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, vestibular, proprioception and interoception, right?
00:42:16
Speaker
If you're stressed out, your body doesn't know the difference as to why you have a spike in cortisol and adrenaline, because you've lost your khakis or you fought with your wife, but what your ancient brain thinks is, oh my God, is there a saber-toothed tiger? Is there something wrong? And so your body needs to actually
00:42:42
Speaker
take stock of all the things around it, because it needs to really get a grip on vestibular and proprioception, because only when you get a grip on that, will you be able to appropriately run and appropriately fight where necessary. So. It's kind of funny too, that, you know, speaking of adrenaline and cortisol, those glands are in that area as well. So from a mechanical perspective, you can say,
00:43:09
Speaker
you know, look, and on the other side of that, you've got the hip flexors, right? The psoas and, you know, almost spatially, those glands are tied in with the psoas. And so you're seeing, again, these things are almost so, they're hidden in plain sight. They're hidden in plain sight, right? And so when your body is afraid, the first thing that your body does when it's afraid is it takes stock.
00:43:38
Speaker
the nerves that innovate the soles of your feet, L4, L5, S1, basically. And so your body actually tightens things in the area because it's trying to slow you down a little bit as it's taking stock, right? The other thing is that your brain is very metaphorical. Your mind is very metaphorical. So we actually
00:44:03
Speaker
find that patients, their brain, when it's running metaphorical programs, especially when the ancient brains involved, so cerebellum brainstem, as opposed to prefrontal cortex, the metaphors that your brain run include things like your lower back, your spine is your stability, right? And when you don't feel like you, that you're supported emotionally, family, friends, work,
00:44:31
Speaker
the support structure of your body is going to tighten up to bolster that because your mind runs these metaphorical programs, right? If you don't give enough support, your body will give you more support. I'm going to go down a woo rabbit hole here, but that's where we start talking about the chakra system, right? I'm not, I know the chakra system enough, but I don't know it. Don't know it. Yeah. Okay. So I,
00:45:02
Speaker
I won't claim to know it intimately, but it is very interesting to me. One of the head practitioners at the Czech Institute is like an osteopath. His name is Matthew Walden, and he did a Surundul presentation once where he talked about, you know, there's cave paintings in India that are the same as in China, where they've drawn the same system.
00:45:28
Speaker
And it's like, well, this is before people had boats to, this was before internet, this was before telephones, this was before people had boats that they could travel between these countries and communicate with each other. And so how are these people coming to these illustrations and these drawings and these same descriptions? Yeah, I find that to be a fascinating topic. And you're touching on that, perhaps with less
00:45:59
Speaker
less knowledge with the words that I'm using, but the way you're describing them is in the same way. So, you know, whatever it is, let's just say that even if it was, you know, plus SIBO to be talking to patients about sorting out their emotional issues and to help with their back pain, that's the whole point about treating the patient as a whole.
00:46:25
Speaker
And in fact, we get taught in medical school that a good bedside manner goes a long way to helping patients heal. So yeah, talking to patients about their emotional pain is going to be part of the solution. And I don't understand doctors who push back on that. We were talking before the podcast,
00:46:55
Speaker
or before we started recording, about a topic that I'm interested in.
Societal Pressures and Women's Health
00:47:01
Speaker
And that's something called archetypes. And, you know, Carl Jung was someone who probably popularized them. I don't know if he discovered them, but there's a doctor who's quite well known now called Carolyn Mace or Carolyn Miss, who has- Oh yeah, she wrote the book Anatomy of the Spirit. That's like- She did, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's also written a book on archetypes.
00:47:24
Speaker
I was saying to you, I'm seeing, and I'm sure you've seen the same thing, is more and more women being diagnosed with conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome and fibromyalgia. All of these chronic fatigue symptoms are also related to the reproductive organs. What I was saying to you was,
00:47:46
Speaker
What I like to do with some of these clients is say to them, you know, what's in the zeitgeist of our society at the moment or the way you're being taught to think is that, you know, you as a female need to go out and in essence act in the same way that a man does, even though you might not be biologically designed to do that. And so you may be archetypal drawn to
00:48:15
Speaker
being a mother, being a housewife or a homemaker, but all that's driven into you from the time that you're at school to the time that you decide to go to university is that doing that is somehow less than having another occupation. So you're the type of girl who wakes up in the morning and has two coffees before you go to CrossFit at 5am and then you go and study all day and you're a high achiever and a professionist and you get these great results.
00:48:45
Speaker
what that results in after a certain amount of time is this burnout and a diagnosis with a condition like PCOS or endometriosis. I don't know if you've seen something like that, but do you have any thoughts on that? So as I was saying to you, you know, archetypes are, you know, I certainly buy into this notion of archetypes for sure, right? And the archetype that you were talking about with the women, that's the caregiver archetype, right?
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So, but I don't necessarily think that that doesn't mean that women are able to do, you know, the things that would be considered outside of the archetype. I think it's... I don't really prefer that by any means. I think it's more about us listening to our bodies. Yes. When it's time to stop, it's time to stop. And if you want to go beyond that,
00:49:43
Speaker
then there are ways that you can train yourself for more resilience. So in a physical capacity, Wim Hof is the number one person that you'd use, right? I would die if I went to base camp in shorts, but he can do it. And he didn't, he wasn't born like that, right? It wasn't as if he went through puberty and then he was like, oh, I can now do this. No, he worked at it, right? He's trained his body to be able to,
00:50:12
Speaker
push through to accept more to be, and I'm sure, I don't know him personally, but I'm sure that part of it is about training his mind as well, you know, about doing things slightly differently because this particular part didn't work, so he's going to try something else. I mean, that's the whole point of, um, um,
00:50:38
Speaker
like self, self progression and, you know, studies in these sorts of things. So yes, do I see women extraordinarily disproportionately represented in autoimmunity and in, you know, burnout and these sorts of things? Yeah, absolutely. Part of it is
00:51:02
Speaker
they're not being supported enough by the village. Village, I mean, obviously us, society, where it's not that the women necessarily want to have it all, have the home and have the work and whatever. It's like, we put pressures on people. We put pressures on women to do this, right? Women have no choice if they want to have a family and children. They're kind of the ones that have to bear children, right? Like, you know,
00:51:32
Speaker
And that's a huge burden on physiology, right? I want to clarify before we continue for any female listeners. I'm not saying that women should not pursue what they're interested in. What I'm saying is that female physiology is more sensitive. And like Olivia said, it's about learning to listen, right?
00:51:55
Speaker
And we don't, the medical fraternities at fault for this, I don't think that we understand enough about nutrition to guide women appropriately leading up to conception and what to do when they're breastfeeding, right? So we're telling you, you have to build a whole new person and you take one extra, you take one pill a day in the form of an elevate or some rubbish thing like that over the counter. And a lot of croc.
00:52:25
Speaker
Right. I mean, you look at indigenous cultures and what, you know, I'm a, I'm a huge Western A price fan. Yeah. You look at what indigenous cultures do and you look at how much goes into book to making a new person. Right. And it is far greater than an elevate tablet. Trust me on this one. Right. Another great doctor to read up on with regards to maternal nutrition is Oscar Saralac. Now Oscar is a Byron Bay
00:52:55
Speaker
doctor who's written a fantastic book called Postnatal Depletion about how many of the drivers of this so-called postnatal depression actually finds its roots in
00:53:09
Speaker
know, it's multifactorial, but finds its roots in not enough nutritional care, burning through the stores that you do have, and of course, not enough support from the village, right? You're meant to be doing all this on your own when usually it would be several people helping you to wetness your baby. So I also
00:53:30
Speaker
see things with Professor Pete Smith, who I do work with in Queensland at Queensland Allergy.
Genetic Sensitivity and Modern Environments
00:53:36
Speaker
We know that a lot of these women who wind up with these autoimmunity and the autoimmunity and these sensitivities, part of it is because women or rather sensitive people, emotionally sensitive people actually come from a long lineage of people who have heightened smell and taste.
00:53:57
Speaker
And the heightened smell and taste was an advantage to them from a genetic perspective, epigenetic perspective, because these were the people who were traditionally have been like the herbalist or the village doctor, the witch doctor or whatever it is. And they needed to be able to go out into the forest and smell two mushrooms that looked exactly the same and can tell you whether one's going to kill you and one's going to help you. And so these people tend to have an increased density of these transient receptor potential ion channels in their nasal pharynx.
00:54:27
Speaker
also in their oropharynx. And so they're the patients where when they're stressed, these threat detection networks upregulate. And all of a sudden, they're getting migraines from perfumes, and they're having multiple chemical sensitivities. And they're getting migraines headaches from when the weather changes, because this is all
00:54:50
Speaker
activation of these particular threat detection networks. Back in the day, it was their special gift, right? Now it's a problem because we're living in a toxic chemical suit. You know, speaking about the zeitgeist of society and, you know, maybe getting back to what we were talking about before, you know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a female friend of mine today, and we were talking about
00:55:20
Speaker
you know, the way men are perceived in, or at least, I guess perceived, and we were talking about TV shows, and you know, there's, you think of any TV show where there's a family, and speaking about how women are probably not cared for by the community, and think of like The Simpsons, Homer's like this, just this guy who gets drunk and Marge holds the family together, think about modern families, same thing, like this dad who's a no-ho-bar,
00:55:48
Speaker
The mom holds the family together. Everybody loves Raymond, same story. Like he's just hopeless. Like he doesn't know what's going on. He's like offensive. He has, he's not in touch with what his wife is having to go through in the household. And so I think that's a representation of like where society's at is like, you know, back to what I was saying, women are burnt out and probably men are in a way too, but there's like this disconnection and no one's really
00:56:19
Speaker
bringing the two together. Yeah, it's funny. Those, you know, those, those, um, caricatures of the men as being this hopeless person and it's the wife that has to do everything, you know, sometimes, you know, you, I can imagine that it may have started partly as an observation of society, but partly as a, as a, a comedy tool, right? Hilarious. The problem with that is that because we see this day in, day out, day in, it's normalized. And so when,
00:56:50
Speaker
Let me give you an example. It's hilarious. I went with a partner skiing. This is a few years ago in France with a whole bunch of people. Now, I didn't know these people, right? They were his friends. And we had this big house. And anyway, we got in after skiing and him and I, we had a bath. We ran a bath and we had this bath. Now, we didn't realize that
00:57:17
Speaker
the rest of the that we've gone through the hot water. But what I found really interesting is that I was the person that was chastised by the group for it and not him, right? Because as a woman, I should know better and this, you know, it was that kind of feel. And
00:57:44
Speaker
I didn't even think about it then, but I realize it now because we're so conditioned that it's a woman who's meant to be holding everything together and to be thinking about it. Yeah, caring about everyone else and the man takes no responsibility because he's hopeless and doesn't care.
00:58:01
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, exactly. And it's hilarity ensues, right? When he does all these sorts of things. So yeah, I think I think part of it is this representation also breeds this normalization. And that's a big problem. And when we have our eyes open to it, brilliant. We just have a responsibility then to support the women or support anybody really, who has been chained by these by these characters.
00:58:31
Speaker
Do you see more, I suppose we already said you see more and more of these chronic fatigue-like conditions, but is that again another case of people just getting back to basics and doing the foundational work and over time regaining energy and rebuilding the battery?
Chronic Fatigue Management Success
00:58:51
Speaker
Is that what you see for the most part? For the most part, yes. There are always exceptions.
00:59:00
Speaker
you know, if you know these some of these complex chronic condition, ME CFS patients, you know that many of them have tried everything. Right. And so, you know, I want to pay due respect to these patients. In
00:59:21
Speaker
In some part, of course, it possibly is a failure of immune system, nervous system, hormones to clear viruses, and then to have, you know, like a Lyme kind of picture or a tick-borne illness kind of biotoxin picture. But for the most part, yeah, patients need to go back to basics. And in CFShealth.com, which is the online program that I'm the
00:59:50
Speaker
medical doctor for we have had, I'm surprised to be honest with you when I first started them, right? I'm surprised with how much how much success they do have in something that from an allopathic perspective is considered incurable. Right? Once you have CFS, your your best you can do is manage it. But I have seen patients with remarkable stories coming out of CFS health.com and out of a lot of these different programs, right?
01:00:20
Speaker
The Gupta program is another one, for example, safe and sound program. There are loads of them. And it's about, you know, really sort of getting that sleep right, that nutrition, the circadian rhythms, self forgiveness, and so on and so forth. Now these sound very, very soft. Why would this make a difference, right?
01:00:49
Speaker
makes a difference because when your nervous system, and for some patients, right, for many patients, when your nervous system is shot, when your nervous system is saying that it's had enough, when the body says no, right? You say take more than, take more than I can. It will, it will, if you're not going to rest, it's going to force you to, it will force you into the cave where it's safe, right?
01:01:14
Speaker
And so that will be fatigue, depression like symptoms, sickness like behaviors and so on and so forth. When the body feels safer and it feels safer when you give it safety signals, and those are that regular sleep, that sunlight exposure and regular nutrient dense food, when you give it enough safety signaling, it might start coming out of hibernation.
01:01:40
Speaker
Right? Now, this is, of course, an oversimplification of a very complicated, huge world of disease, which has been lumped together as just ME CFS. But actually, there's lots of different types of ME CFS. I personally am quite taken by the cell danger response theory by Robert Navio. Then of course, there's the hibernation theory, which is kind of what I just discussed a little bit. But because there are
01:02:09
Speaker
options to try, then if you have the bandwidth for then, you know, consider trying that, right?
Philosophy of Natural Healing
01:02:21
Speaker
We, it does also boil down to philosophy of medicine, right? And generally speaking, my philosophy is, given the right environment, and the right tools, your body heals itself.
01:02:37
Speaker
One of the first things that I try to encourage people to do when they're suffering from chronic fatigue or those sort of symptoms is to eliminate coffee or to at least reduce their intake of coffee. I suppose that's probably quite a common approach now, but do you see coffee or caffeine having a big impact on the nervous system of
01:03:03
Speaker
It's basically making you more sympathetic, right? That's the intention of it. That's why coffee makes you feel good. But for someone who's already overly sympathetic or fight or flight, do you seek a big problem with caffeine with people like that? Yeah, absolutely. All artificial stimulants should be looked at with a more critical eye. One of the approaches that I saw taken with
01:03:32
Speaker
Two girls who I knew who had fibromyalgia was, they were prescribed. It was the smart drug that Dave Asprey is famous for. It's very common in the military now. Keeps you awake. Like Ritalin or something? No. If it comes to me, I'll tell you, but it's
01:03:59
Speaker
It's in my brain, but I just can't remember what it's called at the moment. But yeah, essentially something that would make them feel like they were awake, but resulted, I think, as soon as you stop taking it in just like a massive, you know, take one step forward and five steps back. Right. So what's the question? So I guess what I'm saying is, for those kinds of people, the first approach that I
01:04:28
Speaker
that I see. And the question was really about caffeine, but just becoming less sympathetic and doing less things that... There is no free lunch, right? It doesn't matter what it is. There is no free lunch. You either pay the price now... But definitely it was the drug. But definitely, okay. You either pay the price now or you pay the price later with interest. So to be fair, I've sometimes done that. I've sometimes...
01:04:58
Speaker
paid the price later with interest, but you have to go in with your eyes open. That's it. That's a full consent, right? Right. Exactly. Look, this is not about what's right and what's wrong, right? It's what your goals are and what you're willing to sacrifice for that.
Empowerment and Personal Health Choices
01:05:13
Speaker
So some people, if you say to them, if you don't stop smoking, you may get a cancer, a lung cancer, right? And they choose to smoke.
01:05:23
Speaker
that's neither here nor there. At some point, they may suffer the consequence of that. But that was a choice. Right? So I'm the last person, I'm the last doctor to tell my patients to stop smoking or to give up their, you know, shitty food or whatever it is. Because if you're
01:05:41
Speaker
smoking or eating shitty food or, you know, having other destructive behaviors. We need to talk about the why you're doing that fast, as opposed to just pulling these things away from these patients, you know, and then they lose, they lose confidence in speaking to you at a level that's compassionate. So these band-aids, band-aids are really helpful, right, to stem the bleeding.
01:06:09
Speaker
if at some point you talk about why you're bleeding in the first place. That's my philosophy on this. Yeah, well, it's like that's their form of life support and you're suddenly taking it away. So, yeah, and especially when what they're using is really to bolster them mentally and emotionally. If you take away what's bolstering them mentally, emotionally, then of course they're going to crash and not want to follow through with
01:06:38
Speaker
you know, getting to what the actual root cause of it is. Right. So, you know, if you're doing, uh, modafinil melatonin, modafinil melatonin, um, to get through life, then, okay, what, why do you, why are you cycling like that? And why do you need those things? Right? Those are the kinds of questions to ask first. Um, if people in inverted commas know what they're doing and understand that there might be a price, price to pay. Well, that is what it is. Right. So, you know, like I live in, I live in London now.
01:07:07
Speaker
Is London a healthy, safe city to be living in, you know, for weeks, months, years on end? No. But, you know, I've made that choice to do that. Yeah. So anyway, it goes down. It does boil down to choice, choice, choice, choice, choice, choice, choice. You know, it's funny that you said that because I think that
01:07:33
Speaker
You know, I've had an interest in the biohacking side of things and listened to a lot of like Ben Greenfield and Dave Asprey and those sort of guys. And I think it was Ben Greenfield who first kind of brought my attention to it. And he said, you know, he said, there's so many of these people who do all the right things and you know, the blue zone was very popular and you know, these people living in blue zones and they're doing all the right thing. And then you have these outliers who are
01:08:02
Speaker
smoking well into their 90s or their hundreds and they're drinking every day. They're basically enjoying themselves with their crutches or with their little addictions. Essentially, what it came down to was
01:08:21
Speaker
These people are enjoying their lives more than everyone else is. They're not fretting and stressing about whether everything, every little thing they're doing is right. They've probably got 90% of it right, but having a cigarette is giving them more than it's taking away from them because potentially they're
01:08:41
Speaker
while they're having that cigarette, they're in a parasympathetic state and, you know, they're, they're boosting their bagel tone and they're probably interacting with people and listening to their favorite music at the same time, you know? And it's like, it's like, imagine if we could get to the point where we could enjoy ourselves like that. But, you know, weaving baskets. Yeah. You know, like,
01:09:07
Speaker
I've been the kind of person who's got stuck in the idea of perfectionism at times and then, you know, I keep coming back to that idea of, you know, do all the right things but when, you know, if you can get to the point where you basically want to enjoy your life, right? And I think the real problem with what most people run into is that they're unconscious of the bad things.
01:09:35
Speaker
everything in their life is detrimental. And so, you know, while you may enjoy your life and while the enjoyment of interacting with people and smoking your cigarette may have great benefit to you, you know, it's the lack of sleep and eating the seagulls every day and the over-exercising and the over-consumption of everything, everything, everything that's really the main detractor.
01:10:02
Speaker
Yeah. Well, again, everything is so complex that we can only try the best that we can with what we have. Full stop. Yeah.
Simple Biohacking and Diet Awareness
01:10:16
Speaker
Yeah. Before we wrap up, I know you mentioned that you have an interest in biohacking and that's part of what you practice. Are you attending biohacking conferences and are you doing a lot of the latest and greatest stuff? No.
01:10:32
Speaker
So I love going to conferences and I do attend a lot of the biohacking conferences and I'm known in the biohacking circles, but I like to keep things a little bit more simple.
01:10:53
Speaker
In other words, I'm not buying the latest tech every time it comes out, because I did go through a phase like that. And, you know, that that gets, it gets dangerous. And also, I don't really like this idea of externalizing your salvation. You know, it's because the number of patients who come to see me where they've got FOMO, FOMO will kill you, right? So I've had to embody that with my patients as well, where you
01:11:24
Speaker
at some point have to realize that your salvation comes from within. It's your mind, it's your heart, it's your community, it's how you think about things, it's the people you surround yourself with, you know, what you put in your mouth, like it's fun to play in the biohacking circles and to try, you know, rapamycin and like I did a
01:11:45
Speaker
I did the Lancet, Senna, Lycis protocol, which was the Satinib and Quisitin. You know, X like thousands of dollars to do this protocol. And it's fun if you have the time and the money and the energy.
01:12:01
Speaker
But I don't, I don't beat myself up that I don't have my auto ring and that I don't have a Apple watch or Garmin watch. Um, that I've don't have a, um, you know, a red light device strapped to my head, you know, every day when I need, uh, when I need to get on top of something because of jet lag, because of whatever.
01:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, I got my methylene blue and I'm going on a red light bed for sure. But otherwise I don't beat myself up on that kind of stuff. One of the things that I've heard pointed out and that I've seen with people that I've worked with is I like that you put it in externalizing salvation. And another side to that is that people put their consciousness in the device. And so instead of
01:12:53
Speaker
starting to notice how they feel. Like instead of saying, you know, how do I feel when I wake up in the morning? The first thing they do is look at their voice. And so my ordering said that I got a 95 sleep score. And so I'm going to like go and like smash it in the juice. 300 kilos today. And even though I slept for six hours and I drank six beers before I went into bed, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:21
Speaker
I think that's another thing. We could talk for hours, but with the latest and greatest diets and keto this and carnivore diets, these things work for people and they work for a period of time for a lot of people. But if you're not feeling what you're doing and you're not paying attention to the symptoms, I guess that starts with the foundation of
01:13:43
Speaker
potentially knowing the way that you should feel, or at least having an idea of that. But if you're just reading and you're just externalizing and saying, this study said this, and this book said that, and this doctor said this, then you're never actually learning anything about yourself. And you're never progressing. You've got to go from diet to diet to actually... And people could go like that for their whole life before they learn anything about themselves.
01:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why, you know, when I have some sick patients come through, and we know we have to do something differently. I still have this patient with where honestly, it's never happened before. But with this patient, because of his attitudes, we could either have experimented with vegan or carnivore. And they're so different, obviously. Yeah. And I said,
01:14:35
Speaker
The important thing here is that you're going to learn a little bit more about how you react and therefore you'll learn about yourself, right? Because at the end of the day, to a greater, a lesser, a greater extent, you know, it's not necessarily what you eat, which determines how you feel. It's how you feel about the food and how you're feeling at the time that you eat it, you know, that kind of stuff, which is why there are brands like Nerva,
01:15:02
Speaker
or curable, which talk about the fact that IBS is not because of the food that you're eating. Yeah, actually, they're to, you know, they're right to a certain extent. So, you know, with with this guy said that we've got time to play with right about why you're feeling the way you feel. And so we're gonna do an experiment. Oh, that's an ideal client.
01:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, anyway, you know, how many patients, how many people do you know, anecdotally online, either you know them personally or you've seen them, they do wonderfully on vegan.
01:15:36
Speaker
Absolutely. There are definitely people who do well on vegan. Would I recommend vegan for myself and my children? No. But there are definitely people who do well. Are there people who do shit on carnivore? Yes. Are there people who do miraculously, including some of my autoimmune patients on carnivore? Yes. There is no one diet just to suit them all. I think we just need to make sure that
01:15:59
Speaker
And we do the basics and that is every one of these diets doesn't matter. It's keto, you know, paleo, whatever it is can agree on. And that is less ultra-processed foods, less shit. And then just what else works for you, right? I'm so, I'm so agnostic about that. I like it. I think that's where everyone ultimately, hopefully will end up.
01:16:26
Speaker
I know you've got to go pretty soon and I mean I could like wrap the brain and talk to you for another hour probably but I really appreciate your time and so thank you for joining me today.
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:16:37
Speaker
Where can people find you if they want to have a look and see what you're about or even to work with you?
01:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, so the best place to go to is my website. So it's www.drolivialesa.com. So that gives you an idea of, you know, how I practice medicine, my philosophy in medicine, some of the podcasts I've done, of course, hope to upload yours when that's published.
01:17:07
Speaker
And where I am for networking purposes as well. So for example, on Sunday, I'm going to be in Scotland for, you know, whatever, five days doing an investor delegation around Scotland. And, you know, I'm traveling a lot for conferences. And so I always like to catch up with people when I'm wherever I am. And it also gives you an idea of, you know, the fees and the different clinics that I work with, because I don't have my own clinic. So, you know, whether you're based in the UK or in
01:17:37
Speaker
or in Australia or what your particular issues are, my website is the best place for all that. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining me. Thank you, Nick.