The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Most Replayed Moment: The Antibiotic Alternative Big Pharma Doesn't Want You To Know!

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Simon Mills is one of the UK’s leading medical herbalists and a pioneer of modern herbal medicine. In this moment, Simon explains why antibiotics aren’t always the answer - and what traditional medicine has used for centuries instead. From the hidden risks of overusing antibiotics, to simple natural remedies you can make at home using plants, he reveals a completely different way of thinking about treatment. Listen to the full episode here: Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/RDxRs9U9m1b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/goByfXY9m1b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Simon Mills: https://www.herbalreality.com/writer/simon-mills/

One of the most successful conversations we've had this year on the show was with a guy called Chris Kona who talks about ways to make money on the side. And it got me thinking because our show sponsor is Airbnb, a brand I love, I've used all over the world for the last decade or so. And this is an unbelievable, untapped opportunity to make some money on the side if you currently are a homeowner. Let me explain. So many of us go traveling. We go on holiday to see in-laws or to go on ski trips or whatever it might be. And our home sits there, usually actually cost us. us money because of bills, what most people don't realize is that you can put that house on

Airbnb very simply and very easily. If this sounds interesting to you and you currently don't list your property when you go away, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com.ca.ca. slash host. That's Airbnb.combe.combe.com slash host. So there's sort of three things that I've been able to ascertain as risks of misuse or overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics which is the impact on the gut microbiome that you're contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance and that's the main things.

I guess even with the diseases you get, you'll be slower to heal because you're less if you've got that resistance. That is one of the things that we do see particularly those who are long-term ill, you know, that they lose some of the healing capacity. And that's so much of the work I do is to aim to put some of that right. And there's links to colorectal cancers? Yeah.

But that's it because we're talking about the microbiome, you see. So those are the cancers in the lower gut. And we know that the microbiome is a major factor in how well the gut is. So things like Crohn's and ulcerotocelitis and cancer of the bowel, very closely linked to the state of the microbiome. Okay. So are there alternatives on this table or in the world of plants to antibiotics that I should maybe also consider instead of just jumping straight to antibiotics for everything that I experience?

Yes. If you've got a serious gut or other infection, you may need the antibiotic. So let's put that straight away. but if you've got a cold flu virus a viral problem particularly the airways you a antibiotics won't have no use at all and b as we just said they just add to the risk of more because every time you take an antibiotic you're growing a small population of that of the species of bacteria that's affected who are resistant to that is natural selection You know, you have a thousand little bacteria that's a small amount by their terms,

and you kill 99 of them. The one that survives will then become two in 20 minutes and four in 40 minutes and suddenly become a new population. And, you know, I duck that bullet. And so that group of bacteria will already be resistant. So we're creating resistance every time we use an antibody. So let's try and doing something else, shall we? So let's say you've got a cold. You're feeling the cold.

It's got a good name, by the way. So cold is one of the things you feel when you've got a cold. And that's interesting because in former times, we didn't have tests, we didn't have laboratories, we didn't have paramedics, we didn't have people poking things in you. All we could know is what it felt like. And when you've got a cold, you often feel cold.

and you feel chills and you want to wrap up and you want hot water or you want to have a hot bath. All that in the old language meant that you were cold and what you needed to do was to heat up. Now, you take this fella, this is ginger. It's grown widely around the world in its original Asian form. It was made extinct around the time of the Romans.

So popular was it. And ever since, all the ginger scents, of this species has got it going from rootstock as it no longer seeds itself. So this has been the most valuable natural commodity ever in its dried form worth more than its weight in gold. And, you know, the reason why all those Europeans ended up in Asia running India and the Dutch and Indonesia and so on,

it's because that's where these things came from. That's where the spices came from. And so we decided, you know, like good capitalists to go and control the business. So ginger became very popular over here because we don't have nothing like it over here. The nearest thing we got is horse radish, which I promise you is no substitute for this.

So how do we use this? We've got a knob of ginger here about the size of your thumb. That's about a good dose. You grate it fresh ginger into a mug. Can you do that for me? I don't know. We've got a grate it for you. So we've got here a piece of ginger, as I say, about the size of your thumb.

The thumb's a good measure because it's your measure. So if you're a small person, you'll have a small thumb. But I'm a bigger person, so I'm going to use. And you literally, it's making a bit of a mess here, but you're doing this at home, you don't mind a bit of mess. So you're literally grating and grates nicely, isn't it, into a mug. And let's say that was the whole thumb. I don't want to take up too much time on this.

And then the one thing that works brilliantly with ginger is cinnamon. Now, this is cinnamon you buy in any shop. It comes in different forms. There's one from China called Cassia, which looks like one big curled bark. If you look at this one, you'll see that it's tightly wrapped with lots of little filaments in it. That's the one you go for.

It's more aromatic. And you either grate that with a few. You've got a spice mill, or you take a teaspoon of it. Let's say there's a teaspoonful, and you put that in your mug. So that's ginger and cinnamon. Ginger and cinnamon, that's it. Then you add your hot water. You're going for real one, right?

No, for the real one. Good on you. At this point, a sieve is useful. Why? What for? Because it's going to be, it's full of. Oh, bits. Bits.

And then let's say this is a nice Japanese green tea mug, but let's say this is your mug. And we'll pour a little bit. You see all the stuff that you leave behind. Oh, yeah. Ah, okay. And if you don't mind sharing a mug. So what's in here?

This is... Just ginger and cinnamon. Just ginger and cinnamon. It's fairly weak. Oh, it is nice, though. It's nice, isn't it? It is nice. Now, can you feel it warming already?

Yes, straight away. Yeah. It's really nice. Yeah. Now, you see, what's happening there is that you... I mean, ginger is an example of a group of remedies, which includes turmeric, by the way, and that's other root. The other root there, that's turmeric. It's normally seeing a yellow powder.

We might talk about that later. And black pepper and chilies. We've got a chili here. which when you take them, you think you're burning your mouth, aren't you? The interesting thing is that there's no burning. You can actually have full madras-level chili, and no harm will be done to your lining because there's no burning going on.

What you're doing is you're stimulating the pain fibres. So you've got pain fibres all the way through the lining of the mouth. When you take a hot thing like ginger, it's stimulating the pain fibres. And immediately there's a what we call a reflex response, which opens up the blood vessels. It's called hyperemia, more blood. And the vessels lining these mucosa, the ones that you just swallowed and then truing a little bit up in the nasal passages, are opening up. The mucous cells producing mucous will loosen up, and you get more. runny mucus, which is helping to flush through the grot on the mucosa.

And the main thing you feel is the warmth. And if you're dealing with something down here in the lungs, you'll actually start bringing up more gunk up the airways. There's a natural escalator that the body uses to get stuff out of the lungs. That's stimulated. And the mixture of cinnamon and ginger was created, I think, in heaven. I mean, I think there's such a natural compliment and anybody can do that

and the point about it is that it's warming and in the old days that was the key thing it didn't matter if you had a headache or a joint pain or a menstrual cramp if you wanted to put a hot water bottle on it or heat it up then that was a cold problem and putting a heating medicine

would begin to make difference so you can use the same thing if you have a headache and you want to put a hot pack on it if you've got a menstrual cramp and you want to put a hot water bottle on it if you've got a joint pan and you want to put a heating

liniment on it you can use the same thing ginger just because it's heating and that's simple old medicine so when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold, then cinnamon and ginger are good.

Well, only if it responds to heat. Now, if you want to put an ice pack on, I mean, the old doctors, when someone came with a migraine, would say, tell me, would you prefer a hot pack or an ice pack for your migraine? And migraine suffers generally split 70, 30, preferring heat to 70, but a third of people with migraines

actually want a cold pack. you don't use ginger for that. You use cooling remedies, which we might come on to later. Okay. My girlfriend, she drinks ginger tea all the time, almost every day. Yeah, she likes the heat. She likes the heat. Yeah.

She drinks it before bed as well. You can help with sleep if that's the way it goes. I mean, people are different. And there are some people who can't take ginger at all because their stomach object. or because it, you know, literally heats up too much, they get simulated by it. But that's where the individuality comes in. Okay, so any condition where I might be looking for heat, ginger and cinnamon.

First place to go. First place to go. Yeah. If you wanted to be Tex-Mex, you can take the chilies. As well. Well, you know, that's a, we think of them as a much more extreme version of the heating. and remind ourselves there was only when

the Europeans discovered Americas that chilies became used over here. Can you imagine an Italian meal without tomatoes and chilies? But in the old days there were none of those because they all came from America.

But yeah, chilies were the American equivalent of ginger used for the same purpose. So if someone comes to you and they say Simon, when should I use Chili's as a form of medication? What would you say?

First of all, I don't know yet. And, you know, if I'm dealing with someone at a distance, you know, online or on the phone or something and they say, you know, what should I try? I said, the first thing to do is you figure it out. You can start with herbal teas. You aren't, don't, are you? I'm going to drop it into the...

I'm going to drop it into here. Is that a bad idea? Yeah, yeah, no, go for it. but you'll certainly should notice that should be quite a hot one. I will suggest that they start with herbal teas because herbal teas are a very low dose, but they'll allow you to figure out what suits you. And you can divide, as I'm hinting at earlier,

old medicines were often divided into those that were more warming that we would now call stimulating circulation and more cooling, which we would now translate as stimulating digestion. and depending on which of those you prefer, would really give me a clue. So if you were looking at warming remedies, it could be ginger tea, it could be fennel tea. You know, that's a warming remedy,

or it could be cinnamon or any of the spices. Cardamon is one of my favorites, by the way. I use cardamon. This is the cardamond pods inside a little black seeds. Absolutely lovely taste. Do you know, do you know, cardamom? Have you tried it?

Not really, no. Oh, have a bite of that. Do I just bite the seed? Yeah, just bite into it. You don't, just get a hint of the taste. In many parts of the Mideast, cardamond is one of the main flavours, things like coffee and so on. Reminds me of, oh, I was going to say Indian food,

that I've had it. Yes, they used a lot in India. And in China, it's a convalescent tonic, so they use it when people are building up their digestion after being ill for a long time. They will often use cardamon. It's one of my favorite remedies for that when people really run low. Their digestion isn't functioning.

It was appeared in one or two of these stories I've got here because I prefer that to most of the other spices when I need warming, as I said before, but also sustaining and nourishing. So you ask them, do you prefer teas that are warming or would you like something more cooling? Now, one of the most cooling remedies that people know about is this, which is mint. That spear mint, the best one is peppermint.

It's got a lovely smell, isn't it? That has always been thought of as cooling. And it's a simple test. Would you prefer ginger or peppermint tea? And already you're beginning to narrow things down a bit. The main cooling remedy, throughout history from the very beginning. And in every part of the world,

you'll find them saying exactly the same thing. The main cooling remedies, so-called, are the bitters. And they taste rarely bitter. When you say cooling, you mean I feel hot, so I want something to cool me down. And there's certain conditions where I will feel, I'll feel hot. Fever. Fever.

And they were often used to fever, manage fever. and what happened. You remember when we were young, we were told, if you've had a big meal, don't go swimming. You weren't told that. I can't swim, so. No, there you go. But that was one of the things that, you know,

some of us in my generation, at least, were always remembered we were told, you know, if you've got a big meal, it's not a good idea to go swim because the blood's moving into the digestion and you won't get many as much as you want where you need it in the limbs. And that's, you know, it's true.

When you are digesting a lot of blood investment, shall we call it, is going into the digestive system because there's a lot of work needed to break down this food, turn it into something useful. It is an investment. You put a lot in, get much more out. But what it means is that digestion is all about, I'm just being a bit loose here with a language,

but it's not a bad language. It's like bringing blood into the core. When you've got a fever, the blood's all charging around and your body temperature is going up, which is great because fever actually is a defence measure. You know, when our body temperature rises by a couple of degrees are white blood cells, the ones that are doing the legwork two or three times as active. So fever is what the body uses when it needs to bring out the big guys, bring out the fight. There's a slight design problem.

It's almost as though, you know, the creator's, put a purposeful fault in the system because a lot of fever comes from the gut. You know, you get gut infections. You know, that's one of the main places. And at that moment, all the blood's going out here, and you want more of it going in, more digestion, if you like. So when you take a bitter, when you're taking a bitter, you're actually triggering taste buds up here.

A bitter. A bitter. Something that tastes bitter. Are there any plants that are bitter? Yeah, a bitter plant. plants are very common and were highly valued in the old world. In our times, probably the most bitter plant that people used in European terms was something called wormwood.

Now, you may not be familiar with that word, but the French for wormwood is vermouth. And you think of the use of a drink before a meal. The idea was they used to call it an aperitif, something that stimulated your appetite. So they would use bitters to improve your appetite. And a low level of wormwood would be one of them, dandelion and burdock, up to other bitters, which we now have as a soft drink, you know, particularly in America. And we know that bitters do switch on the appetite. So we sometimes use them when appetite is poor.

And, you know, there's all sorts of reasons why you've got a low appetite, but bitters can rarely help, particularly if you're recovering from an illness, they can help with getting the digestion juices flowing and the appetite up. Because they bring blood to the digestive system. Well, they do all sorts of things, actually. When you switch on these receptors in the mouth, these taste buds, they are hardwired and they produce hormones down here in the stomach

that switch on all sorts of things, an effect of increased digestive activity, which involves more blood coming into the area. So, yes, let's imagine you're living in some part of, you know, the desert area in the Middle East. You know, you're eating a sheep or something that hasn't seen a refrigerator, and it's a bit dodgy, you know. And you think, after a meal, you turn to something easily available in that part of the world. It's a plant called Caféararabica, we call it coffee.

You ground the coffee into a sludge at the bottom, pour a bit of hot water, and drink that straight, that's bitter. So if you ever had an espresso without sugar, that's a bitter. Okay? And that was used as the digestive. In other words, after you're eating, it would help cope with some pretty rough food. So bitters were always seen to be good for your digestion and appetite. And in fever, that actually meant lowering your body temperature.

And we can see that happening, you know, it means that you're some of the anger out here just gets sublimated into digestion. So that was where the bitters got their cooling reputation. And we can now laugh at this is all medieval nonsense. But the point that I keep coming back to when I'm seeing patients, I start with that blank sheet of paper, is because the only test of what these do to you is to take it. And as you notice with your ginger and cinnamon, you don't need long.

you've got it there straight up and you know if I give a bitter to somebody and you know someone is really bitter they will know within an hour or so what effect is having what you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode if you want to listen to that full episode

I've linked it down below check the description thank you one of the most successful conversations we've had this year on the show was with a guy called Chris Conner who talks about ways to make money on the side. And it got me thinking because our show sponsor is Airbnb, a brand I love, I've used all over the world for the last decade or so. And this is an unbelievable,

untapped opportunity to make some money on the side if you currently are a homeowner. Let me explain. So many of us go traveling, we go on holiday to see in-laws or to go on ski trips or whatever it might be. And our home sits there, usually actually costing us money because of bills. what most people don't realize is that you can put that house on Airbnb very simply and very easily. If this sounds interesting to you and you currently don't list your property when you go away, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca.combe.combe.com slash host.