The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - No.1 Herbal Medicine Expert: This Over The Counter Drug Is Quietly Killing You & They’re Lying About Medicinal Plants!

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Is the root of every illness your gut? Could 5 simple herbs replace your medicine cabinet? Natural remedy expert Simon Mills reveals the herbal medicines that doctors overlook, and the herbs, spices, and daily habits to use instead!  Simon Mills is one of the most respected herbal practitioners of our time, with nearly 5 decades of clinical experience treating patients. He created the term ‘complementary medicine’ in the 1970s, has served as a special advisor to the UK House of Lords, and currently works as an Advisor and Author at Herbal Reality. He explains:  How antibiotic resistance could kill millions and what natural remedies can do instead  The #1 hidden cause of chronic illness (that no one’s talking about) How a common kitchen spice could kill 99% of cold viruses The 8 plants that are threatening Big Pharma’s bottom line The ancient medicinal plants we’ve been lied to about, and how to use them 00:00 Intro 02:15 The Power of Medicinal Plants 05:15 Why Medicinal Plants Help Like Paracetamol Does 06:32 How Western Culture Is Getting It Wrong 11:34 Why People Should Care About Medicinal Plants 13:56 Helping 10K+ People With Plants 13:58 Patients Simon Has Helped 15:38 Case Study: Healing Through Plants 22:51 The Gut Controls Almost Everything 26:45 The Dangers of Becoming Antibiotic Resistant 32:38 Alternatives to Antibiotics 38:52 Alternatives to Cold Drugs 51:47 Vitamin D and Zinc for Infection Protection 55:37 Garlic Benefits 59:07 Remedies for Chronic Pain 1:02:12 Arthritis Relief Medicinal Plant 1:08:25 Should We Take Anti-Inflammatory Pills? 1:12:00 The Superpower of Purple Vegetables 1:16:37 Your Diet Recommendations 1:17:33 Keto Diet and Sugar 1:19:34 Keto Diet and the Menstrual Cycle Link 1:22:08 Can PCOS Symptoms Increase From Sugar? 1:23:31 Medicinal Plants to Increase Fertility 1:26:51 Healing Benefits of Echinacea, Frankincense, and Myrrh for the Upper Body 1:33:48 Water Fasting and Long Fasts 1:35:08 Cancer Prevention 1:37:13 Cardiovascular Health Improvements 1:39:00 Benefits of Turmeric Consumption 1:41:35 Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Postbiotics 1:43:24 The Shocking Benefits of Curcumin 1:50:27 Cocoa Powder Healing Benefits 1:54:44 Shocking Link Between Alzheimer’s and Green Tea 1:56:39 Cholesterol and Statins — Is There an Alternative? 2:02:04 Omeprazole 2:08:29 How to Keep Up With a Fast-Changing World You can follow Simon, here: Instagram - https://bit.ly/4mmYAOh  Herbal Reality Instagram - https://bit.ly/4fA1jRF  Herbal Reality Website - https://bit.ly/46KVgaz  You can read a selection of articles by Simon Mills, here: What is herbal medicine? - https://bit.ly/45iYvDF  Are herbs safe? - https://bit.ly/453v35U  The Diary Of A CEO: ⬜️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/  ⬜️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook  ⬜️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt  ⬜️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb  ⬜️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt  ⬜️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  Sponsors:  Shopify - https://shopify.com/bartlett   ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/DOAC and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That is the most widely prescribed drug in this country, and I believe in the US also, but the list of problems accruing from long-term use is beginning to grow and is serious, cancers, dementias. But the other thing is that once you're on it, it's rarely difficult to come off it. And that's not all. We use far too many antibiotics, and that's coming a serious health issue now, because a number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise dramatically. It's quite frightening. So are there alternatives on this table that I should also consider as a form of medicine? Oh yes. And most of these ones I'm going to be talking about have a pretty immediate effect.

Now, have a bite of this. Whoa. For almost 50 years, Dr. Simon Mills has pioneered how we think about natural medicine. earning global recognition as one of the most respected and influential herbal practitioners of our time. These things have medicinal properties. So let's start with dark chocolate in terms of long-term brain health. cardiovascular health, that's what the best medicines around. Really? Oh yes. The next one is garlic. And in some parts of the world, they use garlic

instead of penicillet. In fact, there was an old trick where if you had enough garlic, breathe on a petri dish, and you could kill various pathogens just put your breath. Wow. And then there's this. To reduce your cholesterol levels, this can really help. Whether you're eye side, this is your blood flow. Gut health. cardiovascular health. Now, this is one

of the ones to watch in terms of long-term brain health. Rosemary, we actually did a clinical trial. And or all you need to do is press it and sniff so you can see why some of this stuff already is powerful. Now we have some more to go through and this is where it gets interesting there's a lot of people listening who will want to hear this.

Coffee. Oh God. What do I need to know? So. Quick one before we get back to this episode, just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.

but secondly it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started and if you enjoy what we do here please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app here's a promise i'm going to make to you i'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as i can now and into the future we're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show thank you thank you so much back to the episode Simon Mills, you are a pioneer, by all accounts, in what is called complementary medicine, but you're also one of the most respected herbal practitioners in the world. You've been doing this for more than 50 years. I've actually never spoken to somebody that has a comprehensive understanding of herbal remedies and herbal medicine. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today. What is the mission you're on? And why do you think it's important?

I think my main mission is to do what I can to help people get stronger. I sometimes say that, you know, the world is pretty rough out there. I can't do anything about the sea and the waves, but I can help you to build a better boat that can sit better in the water. And I think people relate to that, that if they were felt a bit stronger in themselves, they would be able to cope better with what the level. life throws at them. I chose plants because people have always used plants as their primary source of

medicine. People have always grown up with plants. They've evolved along with plants. And what I aim to do is to put the old wisdoms into some scientific framework and then make it fit with conventional norms of healthcare. You were a board member of the British Herbal Medicine Association. You're the first chair of the Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine launched in Parliament by former Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home. You led a major European Commission project on herbal medicine involving over 20 centres across Europe. You were the Secretary of the European Scientific Cooperative on... Phytotherapy. I was not able to say that word. Which is the polite way of saying herbs. So it's

phytop plant therapy. I think when people think about herbal medicine and using plants as a form of medicine, they think of tribes and they think of, I don't know, sort of ancient Chinese traditions. And I think, you know, the modern Westerner thinks of pills. Yes. When they think of medicine. Yes. What is it that we've lost? Is there like a lost wisdom?

Yes. And how did that happen? And what is it we've lost? When we lived in the countryside, when we lived close to nature, that was very much around us. And in every little community, there'd be someone, usually a woman who would know their way around the plants and would help you out when you had an illness and a sickness. I'm not saying that there's a golden age, but when we moved into cities, we lost a lot. Apart from anything else, we were living on top of each other.

We had to drink each other's water. You know, there was a lot of new illnesses, sicknesses, pestilences and so on that only came in cities. And that world, the herbs couldn't cut it. So we needed stronger stuff. So they started using minerals. They started using things that were poisons. And the original physician's job was to be the only guy who could handle medicines that other people would not be safe to use. And so you got your training to use these much more powerful medicines. And it was thought that the old plant things were too soft and gentle. And so they were generally discarded. it. And then you develop these medicines into pills because often they were powders anyway. And

you know, then the pharmaceutical industry came in and branded and made proprietary materials from them. And that drifted a long way from just going down to a hedgerow, going into the garden, going into the kitchen and picking up remedies. A lot of cultures around the world still use plants as their first form of medication for a variety of different sort of illnesses and diseases, right? They do, yes. I mean, most do. I mean, if you're Inuit and northern territories in Canada and so, and Lasker, you would probably not have very many plants to choose from. But for most other people, they're surrounded by plants. That's their world. I think, you know, because I'm, what, 32 years old, so I've not really grown up with the wisdom of plants and how they can be used to treat some of the illnesses that I have. From a very young age, I'm taking cough syrup and I'm, taking paracetam or when I have a headache and all these kinds of pills and medicines, but plants were never really a part of that conversation.

And I guess that makes me think that they don't work or... That's what most people would now think. And one of the points of this conversation now is to point you to ways in which they can and to show you how you can figure that out within a minute or an hour. Most of these ones I'm going to be talking about have a pretty immediate effect. So, you know, we now think, oh, if you take a herb, it may take months before anything happens. When I see a patient, my usual request of them is, can you call me tomorrow to let me know how it's going? Because things happen so fast.

And if you're up for it, you can do a couple of taste tests, and you can see why some of this stuff really is powerful. What is it that you know from the 50 plus years of work that you've done working with plants as a form of medicine, that the average person on the street doesn't know. How close we are to having our, I think life is a miracle, as I said, in that early encounter. And we can realize the miracle within us if we just trust it. I've got a few guys to what I call health empowerment, things that you can do yourself at home just to begin to understand what's going on in here and to nourish it.

and the plants are in my world one of the most effective ways of supporting that inner miracle that we have to nourish our health to empower us I sometimes think that medicine is extraordinary I mean we now live with cancer

you used to die with it almost all the major illnesses of the past have now had treatments for but you know if you've got a chronic condition and you're still left with yourself and maybe not feeling so good in yourself. I sometimes think that a lot of medicine is a bit like fast food delivery.

We have a meal brought in because it's convenient, but that also de-skills us. You know, we've stopped learning how to cook even. You know, I remember going to New York back in the 80s and I'm surprised to find that so many apartments in New York didn't have kitchens because everyone went out to eat.

And I thought, gosh, you're losing all those skills of making food and enjoying it and sitting it down over a table. I think medicine, you know, we use far too many antibiotics. We use, you know, these PPI things called ameprosol for our acid reflux, the most widely prescribed drug in this country. And I think U.S. also mostly are necessary. We use a lot of anti-inflammatories just because it's sore, where they're asking why is it sore?

And why are we suppressing one of our? body's main defenses because inflammation is a defense. So these are things that you learn as you get into this world. That a lot of what we think are problems are solutions waiting for support. Because I think most people would think that is medicine and... That is a food. That's food. Yes. Well, you're right. Medicine, food. Yeah, you're quite right. That's medicine. That's a food. What I'm saying is that there's a spectrum. And we made talk about that raspberry because it's red, and we might talk about the broccoli because it's green, and there's oranges colors there. All of these colors actually have properties that

are actually quite valuable properties for our circulatory health, for our gut health, a brain health. And the more the science is looking at it, the more amazing is looking. These things have medicinal properties. So you're saying that this is medicine as well? Yes. Not just food. Be thy medicine is what old Hippocrates said 2,000 years ago, 2,000 and 1⁄2,000 years ago.

Is it the Chinese that are particularly big on herbal medicines? Yes. Almost any other, anywhere, I mean, there's only five countries in the world that are not big on herbal medicine, and I'll tell you who they are, and you can see if you can draw our own conclusions. UK is one, US is the second,

Canada is the third, Australia and New Zealand. Now, can you think of something that combines them all together? They're originally white English-speaking countries. If you go across to France, the channel here, go to any pharmacy. Most of the medicine stocks on the pharmacy are herbal. If you go to some parts of Germany, you have to sit a herbal exam to get your license. And further east in the old Soviet block where they couldn't afford the pharmaceutical industry,

they had homegrown primarily plant-based medicines much more widely. Going to Asia, it's the majority by far. And doctors and people working with plants and acupuncture in China work together without thinking about it. And many doctors use plants as their medicines. Yeah, how different, because I've never really spent a significant amount of time in China, How different is the perception of herbal medicines there than it is out on the streets of London? They don't think twice about it, is what they grew up with. They, like a lot of people, we would say regretfully, do seem to want to do more things like the West does.

So they adopt more Western habits, and as soon as you earn a bit of money, you tend to adopt more Western lifestyles and think that the herbal thing is for your parents and grandparents. So there's still that trend, even in Asia. But they start from a much broader base of experience. Why should anyone care? You know, I have ibuproofing at home. I have medicine that I can have in the cupboard. I have, you know, cough syrups if I get sick.

If I get the flu, I have some flu pills that I brought from the pharmacy. Why should anyone care about what we're going to talk about today? I suppose the answer is in my practice. So I see patients three sessions a week And these are people Almost most of them have been around the block They've had treatments for their conditions Sometimes for many years

They're often living with chronic complex conditions And they're sore, they're tired Their energy's gone You know, they've been told that We can't just keep taking the pills You know, we've done all the tests There's nothing else we can do time and time again That's when the cookie crumbles

because then you realize the ibuprofen and the quick pills ain't doing it anymore there's a bigger health need that needs somehow fixing and that's when they come to me as a practitioner

and I give them things that they can see improving their health, their sleep they're eating their whatever it is that's not their energy levels whatever it is that's not playing properly. I see myself as a fine tuning or upping the performance.

I'm not, when someone comes to me and they say I've got whatever it is, arthritis or skin disease or whatever, I will politely take all the notes down, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in where that came from. What is the misbehavior? What is the poor performance that explains why all this happened? And often you find they had pneumonia at the age of three or they had glandular fever at the age of 15 or 16, and things took a turn then, and you can see the trail, and often what I'm doing

is going backwards and fixing things that weren't fixed back a long time ago, working on digestion particularly, because that's where we work, kidney function, liver function, you know, circulation, you know, up to the brain where we're dealing in that area. So we're looking at the performance of the body, and it's only when it doesn't behave that you notice. the needs of doing it. How many patients have you seen in your career, do you think? Thousands of patients? I would say upwards of 10,000 each for an hour or so at a time to start with. So we get deep into the story and then rolling on at any one time I've got 200 running, you know, that I'm actively treating a couple hundred. And one of the range of illnesses or conditions

that those patients have had, and when you think about the most remarkable, or most interesting case studies, the most reliable case studies that you have. What are the conditions that are at the centre of those case studies? Have you got a medical encyclopedia anywhere? I'm going to write down the key ones. No, no. I mean, it's literally, I don't know if I've seen everything in the medical encyclopedia. I've seen most things.

I mean, literally everything comes in because mostly is chronic anyway when they come and see me. And it can be anything. I mean, about a quarter of my patients are living with cancer, so that's one big group. I'm not treating the cancer, I'm helping him to live better with whatever it is they're dealing with. About another, at least a third bit more, living with chronic inflammatory disease, autoimmune diseases, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, things that are more complicated than you can shake a stick out. And again, you know, we're not dealing with the end result. We're looking at what may be leading up to that

and seeing if we can improve underlying functions. But literally, anything can come by. Is there particular case studies of patients that you've worked with that stand out to you that you're most proud of or that were eureka moments in your own sort of journey? Most of my stories are like journeys. So you see little steps and you're with somebody often for a long time and you just see changes in the way that they change over the weeks and months.

So, you know, to say I've got an instant eureka moment, I've pulled together a few stories just, you know, and to come to them and, you know, just they're a motley mix. And in fact, I made notes because it's sometimes better to remind myself of the sort of things I did. because each of these patients will walk out with five or six or eight different plants and the reason I put them together is because they have a unique story. So probably the one with the most complex one and someone, all the names have changed, by the way,

someone called Heather who's 65 and she had a really severe complex condition called erythema multiformi, which is a complex skin disease that's rare. distressing, very upsetting. What we know about it is that it's linked possibly to other infections. So we actually spotted mycoplasma, pneumonia is likely implicated. She had previously had a lot of lung damage. In her youth, she had early pneumonia, and she was diagnosed with a chronic obstructive pulmonary thing, bronchi exorcist as it happened. Then she got COVID badly, and most of her trouble started after that. She also had been. had vitamin B-12 deficiency, pernicious anemia, we call it, which is an autoimmune problem.

The gut lining stops the vitamin B-12 being absorbed. Those were in her background story. The lungs, because it was the earliest and probably the main factor, were first my focus. And the second was what was lining the stomach, because most inflammatory problems start down here. So I ended up giving her something that was a combination of remedies for the gut. lining and for the lungs and almost within a week or so the itching of her skin subsided I just happened to think that was the reason I remember it because it's unusual to get such quick results and such a complex condition but it's a reminder that if you can find the right button then quite big things can happen I was lucky to find the right button and progressively

Over the ensuing few months, the skin problem disappeared to the extent that she was my dream patient. She said, I don't need your herbs anymore. That to me is my biggest reward that they can move on. They don't need help anymore. It sticks into mind because it was a hugely demanding condition that got better without, and it'd been going for a long time. They'd been going three or four years by the time she saw me.

And it resolved very quickly with what seemed to be totally irrelevant treatments, but there was a rationale for them. Karen's 37 panic attacks, major anxiety problems. Heaven knows. There's a lot of that about. It turns out that

when she was hospitalized when she was 20, with jaundice, which is a liver problem. All the processing, all the detox processes are in the liver. It's the gateway from the digestion. It handles emotions. It handles the immune system. It's an amazing organ.

It's self-correcting, by the way. So it fixes itself very quickly if you give it the right nudge. She had jaundice, so immediately a little bell goes off because at a age when that could mean long-term liver damage. hepatitis. She's ended up with very little appetite. She feels full easily, gains weight easily, and often feeling nauseous, which is definitely a sign of liver distress still. Menstru cycle's very erratic. She had early COVID, again another big hammer blow. And the COVID was before her main symptoms of panic attacks set in. So I used the,

that is an example of the way in which what goes on up here in the brain is linked with what goes on lower down in the gut. You know, an interesting point. When we were living in caves, the best place to be was in the cave because outside was dangerous. The only thing that got you out, hunger. And when we look at the way in which the cells are, the machinery inside the cell, we find that the mechanisms managing anxiety are the same as the system managing appetites and food processing.

So the idea of linking anxiety with metabolism is basic. This was an exact answer. So the mix of herbs that I gave her had nothing for the anxiety at all. It was all to do with metabolism. And so it included milk thistle, barbore, an oriental herb called buplurum artichoke leaf and an Indian remedy called Jim Nima which is called sugar destroyer

which reduces your hankering for sweet first goal was to manage her sugar cravings because that seemed to be a key part of what she was saying and to improve her liver functions this was very quick and she became more settled over several weeks and months then the next thing that happened was her mental cycles became clearly where the trouble was

and she was most likely to be distressed around the period. So we shifted to include women's remedies which were then included in the mix to help manage the hormonal ebb and flow around the menstrual cycle and three months which is the normal time for cycles to begin to turn

her cycles began to steady and so did the rest of her symptoms. Nothing to do with that. anxiety of just dealing with these core functions. So there's a couple of examples of, you know, how we approach things differently. You know, if Karen had gone to most other practitioners, she would have had something for her nerves. I do really want to talk about, you use the term women's hubs? Women's, yeah. Women's hubs. I do want to talk about that. And I do also want to talk about fertility in the menstrual cycle and things like PCOS, because I'm super interested in that,

which might surprise some people but obviously there's women in my life that struggle with those things so I do want to get on to that I think a second ago you pointed at the stomach when you said that we treat down here is that really the place to start

to understand well it's the place to start plants because that's where they go so tell me what do I need to know about this region, the stomach the gut well in order to have a sort of foundational knowledge so that we can then start talking about

ibuproofin, pain killers, fevers all these kinds of things Well, very simply, we think our intelligence is up here. You know, we've got a brain, yeah. As soon as you swallow something, until it comes out the other end, we have no control over what goes on down there. Decisions are being made as the food traverses down the tube, and there's a long tube.

It's about 20 feet of small intestine that has to go around, and then like another two or three feet of large intestine. It used to take about 18. hours we go through and we now because we sedentry we'd take longer but all that time intelligent decisions are being made by the digestive system what to do with this what to do with that and the lining of the gut is full of censors receptors we call them that are picking up chemical cues and responding so as the food changes as it's digested as the bile from the liver comes in, it's picking off these signalling devices

and switching on a whole series of metabolic hormonal all sorts of other functions. All controlled major choreography going on here, you know, without us even knowing about it. And then, just when you thought, this was wonderful, you had something called the microbiome. And when I was at school, and there was a long time ago when I was doing medical sciences,

oh yeah, there was the bowel flora. They help digestion, vitamin K, one or two other things, you know. They might be quite useful. Now, the microbiome runs the show. It's huge. You know, we thought we knew what the kidney did. We thought we knew what the heart did. We thought we knew what the brain did.

We know they only do it because they work with a microbiome. It's running a show. And the microbiome is the billions of bugs in our... Trillions. Trillions. We've got more of those little critters than we have of our own cells, so much more. So they are huge. They've got about 100 times as much genetic capacity as we do.

We've got more bugs in our gut than cells. Yes. So we're basically... We're walking gut. We're walking bacteria. Yeah. Yeah, there's more bacteria than there are us. I mean, it's a bit of a gobsmacking thought.

And, you know, obviously people want... I mean, the bugs will keep them there. One of the big issues of the day are antibiotics. which we know becoming a serious health issue now. You know, the World Health Organization and others say very seriously that antibiotic resistance, you know, antimicrobial resistance, as they call it, is the biggest threat we have. Soon going into a hospital and getting an operation will be a real risk

because hospital-borne infections are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. You know, we're piling them in to us, but also to the animals that we grow. a lot of them are full of antibiotics and that means that the diversity of the microbiome is being reduced. We're losing, we call that biodiversity. There's a biodiversity issue in here.

But even with the diminished flora that we have, they still pretty much run the show and a lot of the fruits and vegetables, particularly the ones with colours in them, actually feed those guys down there. and help them to perform better. There's one good reason to, as we say, eat the rainbow, just get those colours in.

But yes, as you can see, if I start talking about the gut, I'm not going to stop from the next month. On that point of antibiotics, the mechanism is that they kind of kill bacteria, right? So they're killing good bacteria as well in the process often. They have a different range depending on the antibiotic, but yes, they will be cutting a sway through your gut flora.

for sure, some more than others. I mean, the point about antibiotics, and we did a big project with this, ironically, just before COVID, when I was working with Pucka, the herb tea people, we put a campaign together to find natural approaches to managing

antibiotics or reduce the use of them. Antibiotics are useless for anything viral. They don't do anything for a virus, but unfortunately, people with viral problems will still be given antibiotics, mainly by a harassed doctor who just, you know, because they say, give me something, dog. You know, for viruses, mostly you just have to wait for the body to get rid of it. But giving an antibiotic is actually of no use at all.

You don't take my word for it. Everyone knows this. And you get NHS, you know, in this country, posters saying antibiotics are no good for viruses. Please don't ask you a doctor for them. so for many of these things coals and respiratory problems for example there are many spices I mean some of the things on that plate there

are particularly good for coals and viruses up here and so we put that all together in the package and said we can encourage people not to ask the dog for an antibiotic and use some of these home easy free or sometimes treatments

to to use instead of the antibiotics. When you say antibiotics are the most urgent health issue of the moment, I want to fully understand why you think it's so urgent because we're going to develop a resistance, which means that we're more susceptible to disease. It's already happening, and it's not me the saying.

These are the guys who look after our health care for us, like the World Health Organization, who are really getting close to panic about this issue, because already the number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise dramatically. And new antibiotics, unfortunately, there's less financial incentive to develop them because they're often handed out free in various countries so you don't get the margins back.

And the pipeline of new antibiotics is not good. So all you need to do is check on the World Health Organizing. to get the chapter and verse on that. It's actually quite frightening. I'm on the World Health Organization's site now, and I found a definition of antibiotic resistance. It's when bacteria stops responding to antibiotics and is mainly caused by overusing or misusing antibiotics.

In 2022, US doctors gave out about 236 million ant- fuck it. What? U.S. doctors gave out 236 million antibiotic prescriptions, roughly seven prescriptions for every 10 people. Studies showed that at least roughly 30% of antibiotic prescriptions in the U.S. aren't needed, especially in places like doctors' offices and emergency rooms. In 2020, about 30 million antibiotic prescriptions were given out in the UK. Children aged 0 to 14 made up 3.6 million of those.

And in 2023, the World Health Organization declared antibiotic resistance, one of the top global health threats, and estimated that it is responsible for 1.27 million global deaths in 2019 and contributed to almost 5 million deaths. That was 2019. I can tell you that the figures have risen dramatically since then. So that's what people think. And just on a personal basis, you know, you go, And you need an operation. And you know that that's going to involve exposure to hospital infections, which is one of the most serious of the ones in the average hospital. There's some of the most lethal ones there. Increasingly, that is going to be a risk that you get something that you can't treat.

You're not saying don't take antibiotics. No. I'm saying take them carefully. use them when you need them and not otherwise. And again, it's not me saying this. Most responsible doctors would wish that their patients wouldn't keep asking for them. 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 for 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, 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. 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 ulcerotocolitis 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 antibiotics. So let's put that straight away. But if you've got a cold, flu, a viral problem, particularly the airways, A, antibiotics will 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 999 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'd 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 well 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 from rootstock because 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've got a grater 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 graced 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 is tightly wrapped with lots of little furl lots of little filaments in it that's the one you go for it's got it's more aromatic and you either grate that with if 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 that's it then you add your hot water that there you're going for real one right good on you at this point a sieve is useful

why because it's going to be it's full of oh 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 in there.

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 warm? 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. Oh, this one here. 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've just swallowed and then truing a little bit up in the nasal passages are opening up the mucous cells producing mucus 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 just because it's heating

and that's simple old medicine so when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold than 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 stimulated 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. You could, if you wanted to be Tex-Mex, you can take the chilies.

That's well. Well, you know, that's a... We think of them as a much more extreme version of the heating. and, you know, remind ourselves there was only when the Europeans discovered Americas that chilies became used over here. You know, can you imagine an Italian meal without, you know, 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 chilies 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, 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. 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 cardamomone pods inside a little black seeds. Absolutely lovely taste. Do you know him? Do you know cardamom? 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 flavors, things like coffee and so on. Reminds me of, oh, I was going to say Indian food out of hydrogen. 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 cardamins. 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 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 needed 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 about it. 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 put a purposeful fault in the system

because a lot of fever comes from the gut you know they 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 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

were 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 of two 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 um 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 effective increase 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 cafea arabica 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 a 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 some of the anger out here just gets sublimated into digestion. So that was where the bit has 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,

it's 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. If you're starting a business, that means you're one person doing the workload of probably about 50 people. When I first founded this podcast, I had no idea that I was about to step into a hundred different roles that I'd never trained for, things like researching and production

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Bartlett. That's Shopify.com slash Bartlett. One dollar a month? No way. On this point of antibiotics, I've heard you talk about vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc as a potential alternative to jumping straight from it. Not straight alternative, but in improving your natural resistance, particularly to viruses and such like, then there is evidence for both vitamin D and vitamin C but also zinc as backups in subform, supplement form, that do see. to add to your resilience in the face of infections. I'm quite concerned because, you know, I've got dark skin. And in the weather that we live in here in the UK, when I am in the UK, I worry that I won't get enough vitamin D. Are these, quote unquote, supplements important, do you think?

What are the supplements that you think are imperative? None. None. Not for everybody, but there are certain situations. I think vitamin D is a good one and it's not just people with dark skin that have a vitamin D deficiency is pretty widespread

in darker countries if we can call our weather and that we know where there's not enough sun vitamin D deficiency is quite widespread and increasingly doctors do suggest you have vitamin D supplementation through the winter particularly even just having a 15 minute

outdoors with the sun will give you a fairly hefty amount do supplement Not myself No I don't I don't haven't spotted a need

But that doesn't mean That I don't recommend supplements To people Will there is a need And garlic We've got garlic That has an antibiotic role Well this is

Yeah Garlic What used to be called Russian penicillin And when After penicillin was invented They Because some parts of the world

They use garlic instead of penicillin, which was hard to come by originally. And it was used in places like the First World War to avoid some of the French foot and other problems that soldiers would get in those lousy conditions. Garlic, when talking raw now, is a very powerful prebiotic. In other words, it helps the gut flora, the good guys down here in the monocobium.

And there's evidence to show a lot of these other ones do, as well, but garlic is particularly strong. And when I'm dealing with a disrupted gut, flora, a microbiome, I will sometimes refer to raw garlic as a treatment.

But you need to do it with a little care, because you know, you don't want to lose too many friends. What's wrong with gut? Is it pungent? It's the aroma you give out afterwards, so, you know, your friends will be very polite, but they'll

rather wish you hadn't. And some people find that it does upset, you know, when they swallow. But I have a little trick, which I call the garlic intensive, which is when everything is down, the gut is in the state. You maybe got a lung infection or whatever, and there's a lot of need for, if you like, an antibiotic type of treatment. Raw garlic, what you do is, and for all sorts of reasons,

the Friday evening is the best time to do this because you've got the weekend ahead of you. You take one of those clothes. First of all, on that day, you haven't eaten so much, so you don't have so much in the way. Then you take one of these clothes, you peel it, chop it up small pieces, and swallow it with water.

You don't chew it. Just chop it up and swallow with a little bit of water and wait for half an hour just to make sure that that's okay. Your stomach's okay to go ahead. If it is, take another clove. Chop it up, swallow it. Another half a while later, take another clove.

And if you start at 6 o'clock by 10 o'clock of the evening, you've got eight cloves inside you. Eight. And what's that going to do? Well, at this point, you usually go to bed, and I would suggest you go to bed alone at this point because you're not very friendly at this point because you're oozing garlic.

The aroma of garlic is coming out of all your pores. Incidentally, it's also coming out of your lungs. And, you know, there was an old trick where you used to be able to, if you had enough garlic, breathe on a petri dish in a laboratory with various pathogens, and you could kill them just by your breath. You know, the oil of garlic is a powerful antiseptic. But what is doing in the lower digestion is it seems the good guys down there quite like it. it. But the bad guys, you know, in the old days we had garlic was, you know, against the

devil. And it looks as though the bad guys down there don't like garlic. So just doing that over a weekend can make a big difference to your good, the good guys in the microbiome. And if you've got a low-level gut or lung infection, that can be really helpful. But that's, you know, something you can do at home, but you don't want to do that too often. In fact, I would suggest that one garlic intents is probably enough for most people. So prebiotic effects, it has an anti-microbial properties. Is it good for pain? Called it Russian penicillin, is it?

Yeah. Well, it depends where the pain's coming from. But if your pain is a cough or a chest infection, yes, particularly good for chest infection. Some people do use it for arthritic problems. It will depend on what's causing the arthritis. You know, it's very hard for me to say one of these things will do it for everybody. It won't. It will do in certain situations. And what we learn when we're dealing with plants is that you're the boss, you find out for yourself.

All people like me do is say, well, give this a try, this is worth trying, this is valuable. Why don't you give it a go? How do you think about chronic pain? There's so many people living with a variety of different types of chronic pain. It affects 51.6 million people, I believe, just in the US alone. And the most common forms of chronic pain are conditions such as arthritis or migraines or lower back pain or other types of nerve damage. Roughly 75 to 85% of Americans will experience some form of back pain during their lives. When I think about this big array of plants that are in front of me and other plants, what is the first place to go in your mind if you're dealing with chronic pain?

It depends again and where it is. but let's take joints and back, you know, where you've got a joint that's causing, and it's because it's inflamed. Yeah. So when you have an inflammation, you additis to the name of the plant. So this is arthritis,

because it's inflammation of the joint. You have cystitis, which is the bladder, you have bronchitis, if it's the lungs, gastritis it's the stomach. So itis tells us there's an inflammation. And mostly, with arthritis is an inflammation and briefly it's because there's junk being dumped on the joint

the joints have got very poor circulation by design because you know there's surfaces being pressed against each other and so the tissue in the joint is cartilage gristle in if you're eating it which is designed to survive with very poor circulation because you know when you've got two things pressing it. There's not much room for blood than there. So if there is metabolic waste, let's call it junk in the system, it's more likely to

come out in these places where there's poor circulation. Sometimes things are a bit like a U-Bend under a basin. You know, if there's any stuff in the sink it's going to come to deposit there. So I think of joints is a bit like a u-bend. So the first thing that people did

with a joint pain, an inflammation of the joint was to help to clean the joint, bring more blood into the area. And that's what the inflammation is doing. It hurts like Billy Ho, but what it's doing is bringing more blood in by brute force to do what others are saying. But if you were to put on a mustard plaster or a K-N plaster, a K-N-paper plaster, which you simply put on on the outside, And you can buy these in pharmacies and so on.

It's called capsicum. It's a standard prescription dressing for a pain. What it does is it brings the blood in directly. And that means the inflammation doesn't have to do it. And the inflammation is sore. What you're doing isn't. So by definition, you're reducing the pain level. That's an example of using plants in a creative.

way, which people always did. They used to do that back in the day. Oh, yes. Yeah, I mean, if you go to North America, the native populations would regularly use KN as their salve for bad joints. In Europe, it was mostly mustard. We're talking to the yellow mustard, the one that's strong, uses a plaster over a joint.

And if you've got arthritis in your fingers, and this is something anyone can do with, you know, suffering the pain here, use a mustard bath, put your fingers into a dilute, warm solution of mustard. And it's amazing how quickly they ease up. Or you could put a plaster on a hip or whatever. People always did this. Have you seen this work in your practice? Oh yes. And I often recommend it to patients and they keep reporting back. It really makes a difference. I think I worry about lower back pain because I spend so long sitting down and... I've got low back paint too.

And I didn't use herbs very much for that. What did you do? Well, there was a long story, but there was a very good West African combo called Oc Bissar, which I saw back in the day when I had really bad back. And the music got so into me that I loosened up and began to jive and dance around and realise that my back had gone,

and it stayed gone for decades. It's just unlocked and not. So that wasn't any herb, that wasn't any plant. Dancing. Dancing. I mean, letting the music get into you. What's the difference? Well, you know, when you feel the music running through, you know,

you're just moving in with the beat, you know, that loosens up a lot of knots. You know, I don't just do plants. I talk about breathing. I talk about exercises that you can do for yourself. And sometimes when you've got a joint, pain, it's all about, it's locked, and you can find ways of loosening that joint. Ibe-proofin.

Yes. People reach for this all the time. I mean, I was looking at some of the search trend data by ibuprofen, and it is absolutely exploding. Yes. That's the search graph, ibuprofen. It is, but it's one of the most widely used drugs in this country. It's obviously because it works, and it's based on a plant substance called salicylic acid, which gave us aspirin.

And we still use the basic molecule to create what we call non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or n-sades, an ibuprofen. It's one of the most widely used of those. and basically they cut the inflammatory process, just cut it, and so the inflammation just diminishes. Which is good, right? Well, if it gets rid of the pain, it is, but there's always a follow-up question,

why was that inflammation necessary? Because inflammation is a defence. It's one of my most powerful defences we have in the body. and whenever someone is saying I'm on a I need ibuprofen my next question is what can we do to reduce the need for the inflammation so when I was talking about the arthritis I was saying this junk shall we say being dumped on the joint can we help to relieve that

can we go upstream and reduce some of the metabolic strain people eat sometimes the wrong food and sometimes increases arthritis you can improve your arthritis by switching to more plants very often but there are other things that we can give that seem to help reduce some of those pressures but the pain might be somewhere else it might be linked to a full-blown disease you know and in that case

using anti-inflammatories is the only thing you can do but if there is a way in which we can help reduce the need for that inflammation in the first place I would much prefer to do that than just suppress a natural defence. We tend to think of inflammation as the enemy. We do, and I think we're wrong. We think of it as the disease itself.

We are wrong. It's the consequence of a problem, and inflammation itself is a healthy response. It's when we bring out, you know, sometimes you use military language here, and there's a bunch of white blood cells that I liken to Marines, You know, these are guys who, when they're working well, they just go in and do the job.

They don't sort of figure it out. They don't ask questions. They just go and do the job. We've got a whole bunch of white blood cells that are a bit like that. They just, we call neutrophils, there's various others of that group. And they just go in and whack them. Inflammation is bringing those guys out faster and harder. So we're bringing in more of the Marines, if you like, to finish the job.

What's wrong with that? You know, that's what we want to do. It happens to be sore. Then if they don't do the job and the junk or the problem keeps piling in, then the Marines become the problem. And then we use the ibuprofen to shut them up. But as I said, there's always a question, you know, why are we, what's the consequence of stopping this internal cleansing process?

that is so important. So inflammation is not the enemy. Inflammation is the defence measure that can sometimes overstay its welcome. I had an injury in my ankle a couple of months back because I pulled some of the ligaments down there and my ankle swelled up. And I was getting conflicting information from people

about the inflammation because I had this big football game coming up for this charity match called Socorate at Old Trafford. And I had one of my physios telling me, to apply the ice thing and take anti-inflammatories and I had another one telling me something else about the inflammation, but actually I didn't want to combat the inflammation because it was doing its job. And so it's quite difficult to navigate whether one should let inflammation stay or if I should be taking anti-inflammatories or I'd be proven. Well, if you've got a match to, you know, sometimes need something just to get your match fit

or match acceptable. But if it's a short term, we call it. acute inflammation, then overwhelmingly the advice is don't suppress it because in the short term, and you know, we get a cut, get a bit of dirt, it gets swollen, maybe a bit of pus and so on, and after a while it sorts itself out. That's this miracle I talked about earlier. The body heals itself all the time. That's inflammation doing his job properly, cleaning out. The Marines go in, clear all the stuff out, back to their barracks, back to normal. That's great. It's only if, as I said, the junk keep piling in, the job doesn't get finished. We call that chronic inflammation. That's when you sometimes need a bit of help.

And chronic inflammation is often caused by something further upstream, right? So you try and think about what's causing it upstream? Exactly so. And what tends to be the perpetrator upstream? The gut is where most of these things begin, because when you think about it, that's, where we take most foreign material. Almost all of it has to be dealt with by the gut. So that's where most of our immune system is.

You know, we talk about the immune system, but, you know, the majority of the immune system is a few millimeters away from the lining of the gut because that's where the action is. That's where all the foreign stuff is. So if there's a disruption there, that's the first place to begin because it's usually the best place to begin.

And if we add what we talked about, the microbiome, as they're not, other big factor, then there's plenty to work be done with down there. So if it's a chronic inflammation, I will spend a lot of time looking at what might be going on down there. And what's the typical suggestion if it is a gut-related problem? Well, the first thing to do is to get the best food you can down there, which is mostly plant-based. I mean, the reception to that. But if we're looking at restoring your good health down here, the gut does seem to like plants at this point. So we talk about having a wide range of plants. You know, the current advice from one or two

people is that you would aim to have 30 different types of plant per week, you know, just to get the diversity because we don't know which one you need. So I don't give as much difference as you can. And, you know, there have... You know, people think you can't afford to eat healthily. All I would suggest is that you go and travel to somewhere like India or anywhere in Asia where they eat pretty much a lot of plants, mostly plants, for pennies. You know, you can make a healthy meal if you know how to cook

by just mixing some of these simple, the dahls and the root vegetables and the other vegetables easily mixed together. a few spices in there absolutely delicious and your gut and your microbiome will be jumping with glee You talk about eating your rainbow

Yes What does that mean? It means as many colours as you can fit in Literally Because each colour Is produced by a constituent of plants Many of them we call Polyphenols

Which we know Have a range of effects on all sorts of mainly on the microbiome again because they're all in different ways prebiotic they all help good guys prosper down there but then after the microbiome has processed them

which is interesting the microbiome is critical for processing polyphenols they don't get absorbed unless the microbiome breaks them up already so the benefits of the colours depend on the good guys down here When they get into the blood, they start doing all sorts of wonderful things

to the lining of the blood vessels, for example, up into the brain where we've got a what we call blood-brain barrier, which is actually a very exciting interface. The polyphenols, the colours, all have well-established mechanisms that improve the health all around the body. So simple, if you've got a child who used to say eat your greens, now say, eat your rainbow, the more different colours, the better. I wonder if that's why they put so many in artificial dyes in junk food.

Well, I wish they wouldn't. To try and trick our brains into thinking it's, I don't know. No, there's nothing quite like the original. In terms of fruit, what are your favourite fruits to sort of recommend people to eat and why? Probably the, if you wanted to have a top list, the darker, the colour the better. So we talk about purples, and I'm pleased to see. that your team has found a purple carrot there. And we remind ourselves that most vegetables were purple once upon a time.

If you think of maize, you know, the sweet corn and the maize that you grow in the Americas, that mostly was originally purple. And we bred the purple out because it didn't look so appetizing. And we're probably purple deficient. I think we could do with more purple in our lives because the purple and blue color or isosomical anthocyanids. These are types of polyphenol, and they're particularly powerful,

particularly with the blood supply. We're talking about things like eyesight and brain health and circulatory health, blood pressure control, and all those sort of things, can be improved just by having more purple than our lives. So we've got beetroot, that'll do. We've got the berries, red grapes are probably more.

We've got the red grapes here. We've got the red grapes. Yeah, there's got more of these than they're yellow, the grapes do. So I would start with the reds and purples. You said you think we're purple deficient? Yeah. I mean, just think of something interesting to say, but it's probably something in that.

And in terms of vegetables, what are your favourite go-to vegetables that you'd recommend? I start with the roots, the root vegetables, the carrots, the beet roots, the parsonips, The various other root vegetables out there, not all of which are people's favourites, but they have fibre sort of starch in them, which is particularly prebiotic. And some of the most powerful prebiotics are the root vegetables. So those are definitely worth having.

The greens, obviously, and broccoli. And interestingly, I've found a purple one, which is easily enough to get. So, you know, you can get the purple or the green. obviously there's a value in the purple there but any broccoli, any of the cabbage family is full of all sorts of other ingredients that have their own benefits in all sorts of ways

metabolism, gut, hormonal blood supply so greens, roots and the big one in most people's lives are the grains, you know, wheat for example, but cereals, lentils, dahl, peas and beans, all of these have their own benefits, particularly for the microbiome. Again, I don't know exactly what even I need,

let alone what anyone else needs. So the best thing to do is to have as much diversity as possible. What is your diet? It's a mix. Are you meat? Do you eat meat? Yeah. I just have a broad range of what most humans have eat.

which is a mixture of things. I do, obviously, many of my patients are vegans and you can live quite well with them. You have to add a few extra things just to cover your back on a few areas, but you can live perfectly well at least when you're grown up, an adult, on a plant-only diet.

But, you know, who am I to say that an Inuit in the Arctic who never sees any vegetable ever and only lives on, traditionally, only lives on seal and whale meat and blubber, is any less healthy than someone in Thailand who lives only on rice and vegetables? You know, we're all, we can cope with all sorts of variety of foods. There isn't one food for everybody. I think we were discussing before, we started recording that I'm currently on a ketosis diet,

the keto diet. Keto diet, yes. Which basically means that I'm extremely low carb in my diet. Yes. Basically consuming no sugar. What do you think of the keto diet? What's been your experience with it? They can be, and I think you're one of those,

that would get a lot of benefit from it. Because, I mean, sugars are, you know, they're in a lot of vegetable material, and of course, unfortunately, we have sugar now as an added to our diets. They tend to slow down various parts of your metabolism. They tend to make metabolism a bit more like hard work. And so if you take those out and some of the more sugar-producing carbs, then you're freeing up a lot of energy.

So a lot of people on keto diets find that, you know, they're sharper. That's probably what you do. But there are potential downsides. Interestingly, you know, and the first thought was, well, that can't be very good for your microbiome because they rely on vegetable material to a large part. but when we've looked at the microbiome of keto after keto diets it's not as it's actually there's some good guys that reemerge with a keto diet so it's a mixed bag the only thing is

is that when you don't have as many plants in your diet then there's slightly more strain on things like liver and kidney function so someone who's taking keto for a long term is always a good idea to check that they're okay and some of the more long term concerns have been around kidney, because if there's a lot more of the animal-based material in food, then that can be more hard work for the kidney. So it's always worth checking that those functions are doing well. But I come back to the point, there is no one-size-fits-all. We are omnivores. We're designed to eat almost anything. My girlfriend, she's doing keto as well, and she noticed that her menstrual cycle became more regular.

which she was like shocked by it and she's really done a lot of A-B testing over the last couple of years and whenever she's in a ketogenic diet very low-car, very low-sugar diet for six weeks she was shocked that she could predict the day when her period would come

and outside of that sometimes it's really varying Well there's a very good point about keto one of the most effective things that keto does is it reduces insulin resistance, which is something that most of us suffer as we get older and larger, as we get through our life. Insulin is the hormone that packs sugar away into the tissues and into the liver.

And thank God because if we didn't have insulin, we would have diabetes. Insulin resistance is growing, and that leads to diabetes increasingly. and so diabetes is in most parts of the world now is becoming another big health issue and it's mainly because we have too many carbs, too many sugar in the diet because whenever we eat sugar, particularly sugar, there's more work for the insulin to do

so it gets more likely to get run down and tired. When you're on a keto diet, it's been observed that you get more insulin sensitive. So in other words, insulin works better. So you can reverse early stages, of diabetes by switching to a keto, for example. Now, interestingly, many menstrual problems are linked to insulin resistance, and there's something called PCOS, which affects quite a lot of women now, in which the ovaries basically produce more hormone-producing cysts, polycystic

ovary syndrome, and that is increasingly linked with insulin resistance. So it affects people who are more likely to be in the pre-diabetic phase or putting on weight and that sort of thing. The insulin resistance itself switches the hormone balance and the mental cycle is a wonderful choreography. I mean, when you think about it, you know, all around the world is a pretty predictable cycle and it runs itself. But if there's something like insulin resistant getting in the way, then that can disrupt. the hormone. So someone like your girlfriend might find that switching to a keto diet abolishes or reduces that disruptor. Yeah, I was just reading some stats on that. I said 80% of women with

PCOS have some degree of insulin resistance, even those who aren't overweight. And my girlfriend does have PCOS, which she's talked about publicly before. So it's no surprise that when she comes off. She takes sugar out of her diet. Her menstrual cycle seems to fall back in line. And I think there's also links to insulin resistance, PCOS, and I guess ovulation infertility. Yes. It is so. I think, I mean, the modern woman and the modern man, for that matter, has a whole string of burdens to carry because we have too much sugar. I mean, when you think about it, you know, sugar only emerge as a common ingredient, you know, 140 years ago, 150 years ago. Up till that time, only very rich people could afford it.

Then we had the industrial sugar production and a lot of slaves over in America's reducing vast amounts of cane sugar. That is a modern phenomenon, and our bodies were designed to deal with the amount of sugar that we now feed it. And it does put a strain on the system, and insulin is one of the guys caught in the mix. So if you're trying to have kids, which we are now, I guess you want to remove the... If that's the factor, I would be looking at reducing your sugar and take it the very least, yeah. I mean, we spent...

I spend a lot of time with women who are having difficulty conceiving. And, you know, I think I have about 13 herb babies, you know, in other words, babies who were born with women who were having challenges getting pregnant. And that was mainly, I think because we were stabilising the mental cycle

and making the fertile phase a bit more productive. And what do you say to those women? What do you prescribe, I guess? I do. I mean, that's my business. I will be prescribing, so you see there's some bottles there. These are the sort of things that we use in the practice. So I've got a couple here that just, you know,

the sense, the smell sense. So this is fennel, which we all think we know. But these are very strong extractions that only practitioners use. So these are practitioner-owned supplies. And when you smell it, you realize that they are strong. So a teaspoon of that is a really powerful. Now, if you really want to realize the power of herbs, This is a remedy called echinacea, and a lot of people know about echinacea, and it's a major supplement.

This is a root extraction from a variety of a species of echinacea called angustifolia. And I'm just going to put a little bit in there. I'm going to test it myself before I give it to you, so I'm not poisoning you. So you just take a little... Did I put it on my skin or I want to put it on? Or did you want me to shop that? Just lick it. Whoa.

Wow. Hmm. So these are the sort of things, this is just a particularly striking example, of the sort of things that we use in the practice. And so some of the women that come to me, for example, with fertility or menstrual problems, will go out with a mix of herbs grown like this from a, about 100 or so different plants that I have on the shelves. And they are often, as I said earlier,

remedies developed by women. And incidentally, North America is a prime site for some really powerful women's remedies. And interestingly, when you look at them, you find they contain plants equivalent of steroids. They're not steroids, but they seem to interact. rack with our own hormone mechanism. And some of them were particularly good at re-timing the menstrual cycle

and the one or two that were particularly warned women should not take unless they wish to be pregnant. It's so effective, were they? What's that doing to your tongue? I mean it's still right on the edge of my tongue, it's like it's more, so basically for anyone that can't see what we're doing because you're listening on audio, you put a little drop of this solution. Echinacea.

Echinacea on my finger. and I licked it off my finger and at first I was like there was this sort of taste journey which was interesting, it kind of tastes like Maggie seasoning some kind of food seasoning I'm now 60 seconds later and I can still, it's like but more intense

It's a bit like fireworks thing on. Yeah it's like fireworks going off in my mouth and all it was was a little lick of it It's getting spicy a little bit What we use that for is for infections or problems of the mouth and the throat particularly What's it doing

well you know you have to use a bit of unscientific language here but remember i talked about the marines you know the guys who do all the battling for us a lot of them hang out their barracks are in the throat you know we've got tonsils we got adenoids we've got the glands that run down our neck here that sometimes get swelled up you know if we've got an infection in this area yeah you have to take something to take the taste way it sometimes gets in the way of talking as well and i was hesitating before giving it to you didn't want to stop you in your step Yes, but what's that tingling, cut of, as I said, a rather confusing story short. Those are constituents that almost seem to talk directly to those white blood cells

and make them more active. And so echinacea, in that form particularly, works primarily on the front line, shall we call it, of our immune system, these battlers that sit up there. and so often that's where you want to start the job and you might have an infection somewhere else in the body but if you can work up here with these guys you can kick off all sorts of benefits and as you've just discovered it doesn't take long

no ma'am so who should be thinking about echinacea certainly if you've got an upper respiratory problem and you do need to get that tingle if you want to get that particular effect I mean you can have echinacea in other forms pills and tablets and so on and there are some which don't have that tingle factor they've got

other elements to it but for the tingle factor it's anything to do with an infection that has a link to what's going on up here and that could be for lower down in the gut as well because all you know a gut begins up here as well but it could be a sinus problem it could

be an middle ear problem it could be a throat problem it could be a gum problem you know we've got all sorts of gum problems and all sorts of problems we have with mouth, we've got a microbiome up here as well. This can, with one or two other things, some of the plants we use in this form contain resins. An example is frankincenses. We've got some tablets there. These ones? Yeah. Otherwise known as Boswilia. And this just comes in a, you know, in the form of tablets. And they just look like any other tablets, except they're

sort of greeny, yellow colour, because that's just ground up resin. What's resin? Resin, we know about that because it's the sort of thing you get out of pine trees, you know, that very tacky stuff. All we need to do is remember the Bible story. There were three gifts that the baby Jesus got, didn't he, for his birthday from those wise men. One was gold, fair enough.

The other two were resins, mer and frankincense. this is the frankincense I use myr in a liquid form and you almost like you're lining the mouth with this resin you know

it's when you put some mur on the mouth you definitely feel the mucosa firing up and it was most widely used medicine and the reason why it was so valued in those days

by the three wise men is because MIR was, first of all, they had to bring it out of Africa, which is where he comes from. Remember the Queen of Sheba, who married Solomon, you know, in the old Bible story, Queen of Sheba had the trade routes

of East Africa sorted, so Solomon married wisely by marrying the Queen of Sheba because she had the monopoly on Mer, particularly and on frankincense. And those in echinacea, maybe with a licorice to help it work well, are amazing at reducing infections in this area and the mouth and the throat and the sinuses and the areas around. It completely blows my mind that most people will lock their front door before they leave the house, but they'll sit in a coffee shop, connect to the public Wi-Fi, and log into their bank without a second thought. Every time you go online in a shop, in an airport or a hotel, you're trusting the Wi-Fi is safe, but often it's not, which makes your online data vulnerable, because all it takes is one person with the wrong intentions to steal everything, your passwords, your private messages, even your identity. So let's talk about ExpressVPN, our sponsor. It stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure privacy tunnel between all of your devices and the internet in just one tap. That tunnel also keeps your online

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Do you think that things like water fasts, people are doing a lot of these sort of water fasts and these sort of seven-day prolonged fasts are effective medicines? My usual answer when I'm faced with a question and what someone needed to answer from is to think back a bit, what did humans evolve to do? And when we were hunter-gatherers, which, you know, was three or four hundred thousand, years we were hunter-gatherers and what we're doing now is a tiny but we evolved to eat intermittently you know when you're a hunter-gatherer there are times when you're not eating at all especially off-season and you get very hungry and then you eat a lot and you have a big feast so i think our

systems were designed to be intermittent fasting and fasting is probably part of our gene makeup you know that's what we were in a sense meant to do so the fundamental principle of fasting is probably right on. The issue is that sometimes if your metabolism, your digestion, your hormones or other functions are not at prime place, fasting, particularly if it's extended, can actually be damaging. So you do need a bit of advice if you're going down that route just to make sure it's okay for you.

And at the start of the conversation you referenced that you deal with a lot of cancer patients. I think you said one third. About a third, my quarter, maybe a quarter to a third, yeah. Living with cancer. Living with cancer. Which is something that's relatively new, remember, because, I mean, that is a testament to what modern medicine has done. Because when I started out all those decades ago,

most people died with cancer, were increasingly getting people living with cancer for extended periods of time. And, you know, the cancer is not. I mean, there are things we can do to help, and there is evidence to show that we can help reduce the risk at least, and if not, sometimes the virulence of cancer, but mostly what we're doing is helping people to function better while they've been through chemo or various other treatments, while they're still recovering from the cancer and its effects, and it could be digestion,

it could be things like sleep, it could be, you know, all sorts of other things that we can do to help. So there's the preventative element, which is doing things within your sort of lifestyle choices, your diet to reduce the likelihood you'll get cancer. But then once you have it, there's ways you can use herbs and other sort of remedies to better deal with life, life generally. When you think about cancer prevention, is it, do you think that one of the most powerful things we can do is to focus on what we're putting inside our bodies? Yes. And, you know, we've learned about cigarettes a long time ago. And there are other foods that have got a higher risk of cancer.

We talk about, you know, processed meats, for example, that's increasingly being seen as a cancer risk. But I suggest that the main risk in cancer is just poor diets generally, too much fat, too much carbs, too much sugar, all at once, usually. And that strains the body in a way it wasn't meant. And there is evidence to show that by correcting poor diet, you can prevent cancer increasingly. That's accepted. I'm pretty sure that the cardiovascular diseases are the single biggest killer still.

Cardiovascular in the West we're talking about. So developed countries, catching up, I'm afraid, in other parts of the world where they adopt more Western lifestyles. But that's a combination of food and poor level of exercise that we're putting our finger on there. There's also cardiovascular disease is another form of long-term inflammation. And increasingly, that's been understood. You know, it's not just fat or cholesterol or blood pressure. It's an inflammatory mechanism going on that's causing the harm.

And that's increasingly accepted by cardiologists and such. So if I'm trying to reduce my chances of having some kind of heart-related issue, are there any herbs or any products here that you think are better, beneficial. Mostly it's the food when we're talking about long-term cardiovascular health. We have plants that we use to manage cardiovascular problems. I mean, the classic that a lot of people know about is the hawthorn or the mayflower. But the hawthorn, particularly the flower and the leaf, used to be a regular home remedy

that people used to use and drink as a tea for all sorts of reasons. managing fevers and all sorts of things like that. But we can now see regular hawthorn consumption, hawthorn leaf consumption, as a preventative for some of the problems of cardiovascular. Just as an example. I would use spices as my main go-to to help to fend off cardiovascular problems because they all have vascular benefits.

Spices as in... The ginger, the cinnamon we talked about. but here's turmeric and this is something we don't usually see but if you can see there's in fact if you cut that

with your knife there I've just cut it open yeah you'll see it's bright yeah it's bright orange that's the curcumin that people use as a supplement

I've got curcumin at home I was advised to use that when I pulled the ligaments to my ankle yes it's an anti-inflammatory isn't it you can see a little bit

why I don't like using anti-inflammatory because I like inflammation as a friend. So what I prefer to talk about is they modulate or support or manage inflammation. But turmeric is an extraordinary remedy. And here's an interesting story. We talk about we need curcumin from turmeric and you'll get a supplement saying, you know, my turmeric has got more curcumin than yours and it's more available. The interesting point is that curcumin is not absorbed by,

to the body at all, about one or two percent maybe. The rest stays stubbornly in the gut. And there's a very good reason for that because in any high dose, curcumin is toxic. So there's a good reason for it staying in the gut. But there's a lot of work on making more bioavailable, getting the levels up in the blood. And if you add pepper, you might get from one or two percent to two to three percent, you know, but it's still small beer compared with the amounts of turmeric that we take, the amounts of curcumin that we take in an ordinary curry. So what's going on? And what is going on is that curcumin in turmeric is one of the best remedies we have for microbiome. There's a conversation going on. The turmeric is encouraging

the good guys. The good guys are breaking turmeric and curcumin down into more available materials, which are active, it belongs in the gut and its inflammatory modulating effects come mostly from the products of the microbiome working on the curcumin and moving through the body that away. So it's a wonderful lesson in that the medicine actually relies, in this case, almost entirely on a good microbiome. an effect that is reduced, by the way, if you have a lot of antibiotics.

Okay, so my microbiome is really the processing centre for many of these things. And if I have a bad gut microbiome because I've been eating the wrong foods and I haven't had diversity of plants, then even if I take some of these herbs that are good for me, I won't be able to process them properly anyway. Not as well as you might. Yes, that is true. We talk about the, we've got probiotics,

is the yogurts and the kimpis and the kaffirs and so on, which are actually living organisms. They have to get through the stomach, by the way, which is quite a hard deal because the stomach's job is to sterilise foods, but some of them will get through. Those are the probiotics. The prebiotics are what we've been talking about here,

the foods that will encourage the good guys in the microbiome. We've got a new kid on the block called postbiotics, which is now an industrial term used for killed, bacteria, which is then given as a medicine, but technically a post-biotic is anything that the bacteria produce. And we're learning that more and more of what we eat, particularly from the plant side, is converted by the microbiome into medicines. And all those polyphenols and the colourings and so on are in that group. So a lot of the benefits of polyphenols are post-biotic benefits. There was a study done in 2007 that showed, I can't even say it.

Curcumin. That shows curcumin upregulates anti-oxidant defences and down-regulates oxidative stress. Yeah. There was a study done in 2016, which is a meta-analysis of random control trials found curcuminum comparable to I.Brufen in terms of pain relief. Answers your earlier question, doesn't it? and there's a lot of lots of studies that show that it's effective

for people that have things like arthritis and joint pains yeah that was leaving the best to last yeah there's a lot of work on kirkamin and turmeric as I said a lot of people get confused because they think it only works

if you absorb it into the blood and I'm saying that actually you don't what you do is you work with a microbiome to make it useful And there's early pre-clinical studies taking place around the impact it can have with cancers. And there's promising but early studies showing the impact that curcumin that comes from tumour it can have on brain health. Yes, well, that's definitely a big story. But just on the, when you say pre-clinical, that usually means that it does mean laboratory.

So that's a test tubes and B, rats and other animals. None of those tell us what happens when we put it in a human. for an human. So all the pre-clinical study will do is point to a possible effect. And time again, pharmaceutical companies will tell you this. You know, a promising pre-clinical lead doesn't lead to a medicine because it turns out to be atoxic or doesn't agree with humans. So we take pre-clinical evidence with caution.

And personally, I'm mostly interested in human studies because that's the only thing that makes any sense. But you mentioned brain health. because here's one of the big gaps we have, don't we? Because we've got a lot of brain health issues right now. Dementia is still going in the wrong direction. It's a very distressing thing if you have any in your family. And increasingly there's people saying,

what can we do to prevent this? And Alzheimer's is all about there being the wrong sort of protein and deposits in the brain. but increasingly the focus is switching on to the blood supply to the brain what we call the vascular effects on the brain and there's something we used to call the blood brain barrier which you probably heard of which is seen to be the place where the barrier that stops a lot of stuff entering the brain and potentially upsetting it

we now know this blood brain barrier is a very dynamic interesting interface between the brains, tissue, and the rest of us is now called the neurovascular unit, NVU. And it is so exciting. And the more we look at it so far, the more we find that the things that help the neurovascular unit, the blood-brain barrier, are plants. And we have green tea. And, you know, we can, if you really want to help. Our brain health, regular drinking of green tea, you know, has been shown to be really useful. Not that, rather than a supplement, by the way, is the drink that you have.

I'll put it in here. Right, so we can make it. So as you make of that, can you explain to me why green tea is a good idea? Because it contains a number of, again, polyphenols. And polyphenols are those? These colours. These colours, yeah. In this case, it's green, obviously.

And Memo Green tea is just the smoked, unprocessed part of the tea leaf. It's a plant called Camellia, Senesis. So this is a nice Japanese teapot. That's the sort of thing you'd have green tea in. And these are the mugs, but we've filled these off already with ginger and cinnamon. So let's leave it for a moment. But while it's sitting there for a while, there are a number of these polyphenols in green tea

that seem to be particularly effective in modulating that barrier we talked about, the neurovascular unit between the brain and the rest of us. And there's all sorts of reasons why regular consumption of green tea seems to be linked to less of this sort of trouble. What sort of trouble? The dementia-type problems, cognitive decline as you get older. do they find that in cultures where they drink a lot of green tea they have less dementia yeah but that doesn't mean there's a cause and effect so you need a few other things to

establish that what we're finding is that other plants have very likely powerful effects in this area and I mentioned the rosemary now all you need to do to appreciate rosemary is to press it and sniff oh that smells so good hmm really nice that's not just nice because what you're doing there is they're inhaling volatile oils, the things that give the smell. And when you're inhaling, they're literally going into your brain, because part of the brain actually reaches the outside world. It's called the olfactory lobe, and it's right at the top of the nose here. And when you inhale something, it literally moves into the brain. And from there into the limbic system. Remember there's a line in a Shakespeare play called Hamlet, Ophelia.

the young lady says, Rosemary, that's for remembrance, because everyone knew that this improved cognitive functions. And when I was in working on our campus in Maryland, we actually did a clinical trial with Rosemary in people with struggling with their crosswords, you know, as they get older, and found that although it wasn't a conclusive study,

there were pointers to it improving cognitive or performance in those people. And there's been other studies since that really, that reinforce that. I would say that Rosemary is one of the ones to watch in terms of long-term brain health. There's another remedy called Ginko that a lot of people know about which there's used as a prescription medicine in Europe

for cardiovascular problems, and that's been shown to be likely useful and using the same sort of mechanisms as we've seen here and with the green tea. I'll check it here. Yeah, that looks all right. you see it's more yellow than green and this is flavoured with a little bit of mint

to make it a little more agreeable sometimes people find green tea is not their favourite taste green tea is rich in polyphenols which are linked to benefits ranging from heart and brain health to fat loss and cancer prevention it's got a nice minty flavour Yeah. You can live with that, couldn't you?

Yeah. Yeah. My girlfriend, again, she's all over this stuff. She's always bloody right. Well, you know that. We'll learn that lesson a long time ago. I know, right? Like, I say it all the time on this podcast,

but she's always like two, three years ahead of what then someone really, really smart comes and tells me. And I spend those two or three years in denial. I'm like, what the fuck is she like doing it over there? Don't get me started on cacao. If you start talking to me about cacao, I'm going to leave. No, no, no, no, no. She's been telling me that.

I'm going to nail this because there's a lot of people listening who will want to hear this. Cocoa, chocolate, dark chocolate, is a medicine, end of. One of the best medicines around is 50 grams or 100 grams of 75% or more dark chocolate. Do you know what? I've just realised my girlfriend,

she's going to live till she's 150, because she eats 90% or something, 80% dark chocolate. She drinks green tea all day. She has the ginger and cinnamon drinks all day. She eats the full rainbow. She should be stepping in for you. I know, I know exactly.

No, Coco, seriously, brain health as well, cardiovascular health. I mean, they do studies where they've put Coco into volunteers that mean students usually. you know, so young kids and they were able to show changes in the blood flow within minutes, certainly within an hour of eating cocoa.

Beneficial changes in your blood flow. They call it the heart medicine. Yeah, heart circulation, brain. So she's, my girlfriend's very spiritual. She runs a business called Bali Breathwork. Hashtag I have to say that. But in her business, one of the things she does at the very start,

the session with women all over the world that come to her retreats is she makes cacao for them and you notice instantly how people change when they've had a hot cup of cacao it's all and she says it like almost brings out their heart and i guess that's because of the circulation reasons it is but it also of course we know it contains a few other beneficial stimulating things and sort of similar to the effects with coffee which incidentally as i've already said is a medicine as well but cocoa and chocolate does have a uplifting effect, which is why we love it so. And we have to be clear here. We're not talking about hot chocolate that comes from a packet or something necessarily.

We would like it to be as dark as possible. Okay. The less sugar, the less fat. So we talk about 75% cocoa solids, you know, so it's dark chocolate. And it tastes a bit more medicinal, doesn't it? It's not as sweet. But I'm saying to many of my patients, take 50 grams a day.

It's a medicine. Damn. She was right. My fridge is full of dark chocolate. I tend to avoid it, but the drawer of my fridge has all of her dark chocolate in, and she likes it 90%. If she can get it 90%, she'll take it.

Yeah, 90% is quite bitter now. Yeah. I was in Peru, and I went to a chocolate-making lesson, and that chocolate-making lesson changed my life. And it changed my life, because I didn't realize how much sugar goes into chocolate, but specifically white chocolate.

Oh, my God. They said, they gave me this big beaker, which was, you know, this big, like a foot high and a foot wide. And they were like, right, pour the sugar in. So I poured some in. They were like, they're like, laugh at me. They were like, no, fill it like 70% with this white sugar. And I was like, there's no way.

I poured about 60 or 70% white sugar into this massive tube. And they were like, okay, now put a little bit of this in a little bit, this, little bit of oil, whatever. And I couldn't believe that it's literally, like, the white chocolate is like literally all sugar. Then milk chocolate was like 50% sugar. And then when we did, when we made the dark chocolate, it was a tiny amount, like a tiny, tiny amount. And from that day onwards, white chocolates left my life. This is once upon a time, and a few years back when the Europeans Union, I think before we joined it, said that we shouldn't call our dairy milk chocolate at all.

Chocolate-flavored candy is what they described it as. Literally, yeah. So we've got some green tea here. Yeah. And you're talking to me about the association between green tea and Alzheimer's, which is really exciting. Yes. There's quite a lot of work being done now on these.

They're obviously looking for medications as well, but so far most of the data coming in and relates to plant-based materials. so it suggests that there's other reasons why having plants and again spices come back into the mix seem to be helpful for brain health I'm having a look at the green tea there was a study done in 2008 which supports how it improved cognitive function

memory attention accuracy and long-term consumption is associated with lower risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease according to the journal of nutritional biochemistry in 2011. It's nice to have somebody else just say what you said. Yeah, but it's exactly. I didn't realize that I had no idea. I had no idea.

All those times I turned it down when she offered it to me. Go and say sorry. I've literally, literally, I've got a, wow, heart health, brain function, fat burning and metabolism, cancer prevention, early evidence, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity. get an oral health? What about matcha?

I'm a big investor in the biggest matcha company in Europe. It's probably more beneficial than the basic green tea because it's more, shall we say, pure. It's finer quality. So the chances are that matcha will do more than we've just said the green tea will do. But there's evidence lack of a lot of these things. We need more evidence.

But it would point to matter. of being particularly helpful. We haven't talked much about cholesterol. No, you haven't brought it up. Cholesterol is a type of fat made in your liver, which channels in your blood and can be found. What is, for anyone that doesn't know cholesterol, what it is and why is, if it's a good or bad thing,

what do I need to know about cholesterol? And is there anything in front of us here that can help keep my cholesterol in a healthy state? I did think a doctor did actually tell me at one point that I had high cholesterol. a couple of years ago because of my diet at the time. The keto, of course, will tend to... Well, it's interesting, again, keto you think would push up your cholesterol levels, but actually there's a mixture of effects.

So it's not a done deal that it will raise your cholesterol. This cholesterol is part of a range of fats the body has. Most of the fats that are in the body come from the food, and they come in as heavy fats, so we say. and what the digestion does is to strip down the heaviness and it becomes more what we call high density lipocyte HDLs and my tongue is twisting around it

and cholesterol is sort of in the middle of that as one of the elements within that spectrum of fats what cholesterol is actually a secreted by the liver for very good reasons it's health with all sorts of things. It's the basis of some of our hormones. There's all sorts of reasons why we need cholesterol. I sometimes have referred to in the past as the tiger and the tank

that it sort of helps to fire up some of our get up and go. And if we were physically active during the day, working on the land or whatever, you need a certain amount of cholesterol to motor. We're sitting in chairs, and the cholesterol becomes increasing a problem. We have a high fat diet that tends to put in more of it, and the point is that many of us

our cholesterol levels increasingly rise and that is a risk factor, as we know, for cardiovascular disease. Which we said was still one of the biggest killer. So cholesterol is up there as a risk factor and so the usual thing that a doctor will do is to hand do something a statin basically that will reduce your cholesterol levels.

They also know that there's more pushback on that prescription than almost anything else because the word is out that statins can do the statutes or the other in fear with your muscle strength and all the rest of it give you little aches and pains you know most people

have statins that has a problem but the impact of statins is still modest in terms of the overall scheme of things you know the numbers of people's lives that saves is probably fairly minimal so probably the better conversation is to have what can we do

to re contextualize the cholesterol so that it becomes more like it should be a good thing rather than a risk. And the first thing is to have a more, apart from the keto, have the more vegetable-based, plant-based diet because that in itself will tend to mop up and reduce cholesterol. Exercise becomes important because by physical activity, we can manage it better. And then when we come in with the work I do is to look at high cholesterol as potentially a sign of liver distress.

And, you know, we like working with the liver. And there's a number of remedies that we use to help reduce cholesterol levels, mainly by getting more out through the bile and so on. So there's not a straight answer to your question. You know, the statin sounds like a simple pill that fixes it. The reality is that we need to look at a much one. wider range of things. You're a fan of artichokes for cholesterol?

Yes. You must have read my mind. The artichoke leaf is the one we're talking about, which is used in France a lot for basically fat liver-related problems a lot. I use it a lot in the practice. It's a juice, actually, just as a suppressed juice. Yes, it's one of them. Dandelion root is another old familiar,

which seems to be helpful here, mostly by his, as I said, flushing stuff through the bile. And there is a range of other things that we use. One of the things that many people are concerned about when they're thinking about changing their diet is just the cost of it. They think it's super expensive to buy all these fresh fruit and veg and, you know. Is that the case? Is that a barrier to entry to the stuff we've talked about today at all?

My usual answer, that is eat Asian because it's a, said if you can make a meal with vegetables and spices and things like lentils and so on beans for very cheaply it's just that we got out of the habit or we haven't got into the habit of doing that slightly slow cooking we will buy our indian meals sometimes from places that put a more fat in than they might so some of the meals we buy that are Asian are a bit too fatty but if you make it yourself at home, which means learning how to cook, but you can eat very cheaply. What is the most important thing that we didn't talk about,

that we should have talked about? Well, I suppose I didn't mention much about the omeprosol, because that... I've never heard of this before. Ameprosol. Yeah, I've never heard of it. They are increasingly a minority. Ameprosol is the most widely prescribed drug in this country,

and I believe in the US also, and it's for acid reflux. It's what the Americans call GERD and what we call Gord, because we spell esophagus differently. So we spell esophagus with an OE, and Americans spell it with an E. So it's either GERD or Gord, depending on which country you're in. And that means gastroesophageal reflux disease, Gord. And acid reflux is a real issue with, a lot of people, and they find that when they go to a doctor, the doctor will routinely

prescribe ameprosol or something like it. And Gord is actually diagnosed as a condition which is made better by ameprosol. I mean, it's literally, it's a disease that is diagnosed by the treatment. And what ameprosol does is shuts down the acid production in the stomach, so you don't get as much damage by reflux. The problem is, is that the acid's doing a job. It's sterilizing your food, which is important, isn't it? It's also helping to break it down so that it becomes not an immune threat. If you have a blood transfusion or something, the wrong blood, you get a problem.

We're eating for our stuff all the time. We rely on the stomach and the juices to make it safe. So the acid is there to protect us. When we're getting acid reflux, actually it's not because you've got too much acid, it's because you're refluxing it. It's going back up into the gullot, the esophagus. But ameprosol will put an end to that.

The problem with amepros, two problems. First is that the list of problems accruing from long-term ameprosol use is beginning to grow and is serious cancers, dementias, sorts of things are beginning to be downstream problems associated with long-term ameprosol use. But the other thing is that once you're on it, it's really difficult to come off it. And you get a famous rebound effect. So you come off the ameprosol and while you get much more trouble, so the only thing to do is to tell you more ameprosol. And people find it

really hard to come off it. So you have to do a lot of hard work to wean people off and do it in sorts of different ways. So what do we do instead? Well, one simple thing to do, and anyone can do this, and you don't need to go very far, is to use what we call the raft principle. So there are some plants that have got a lot of mucus in them, mucilage.

The classic example from North America is Sipri Elm. It's a sort of powder that looks like you make polyfiller to fill a crack with. You know, it's a white powder. When it's mixed with water, it forms this paste, this mucus stuff you want to have it as a tablet because you don't want to swallow that stuff but when it's in the stomach it produces this

mucous layer you don't need to go to slippery elm there is a product here in this country or gaviscon which is essentially seaweed gum with I don't have shares in it by the way but it's seaweed gum with some minerals in there and they advertise it when you see the television ads as the raft so what they're doing is you're putting a layer of mucus on top of your food so you

have it after you've had your last mouth or you have a bit there and then as the food pushes up back into the gullet you've got this nice mucous coating a raft to stop it and back up cover it that carbohydrate is it's what it is gets digested within a couple of hours end off no problem it's not even a medicine it's just a physical barrier so you can could have gavisconi, could have supremi, could have anavera. There's a number of other mucusi-type plants that people use. And that can, without any other complication at all, be one step. And I use it regularly when I'm weaning people off ameprosol,

and I will use the raft principle to help prevent some of the harm you get with reflux. The simple example. You're very fond of these plants. they are living organisms, aren't they? Are you concerned about how we treat them? I'm concerned about the world that they come from because, of course, increasingly we have to produce these industrially, which sometimes mean in monoculture, what it usually means, a monoculture form.

So they're growing in rows and rows, and they put weed killers down to get other plants out of the way. and so they become less natural. And we talked about the polyphenols. You know, Pucker, the company I worked for, was all organic. And we were able to show that a plant that grows organically that doesn't have pesticides needs to fight his own battles more. Because if you've got a pesticide, you don't need to worry about so much, you know,

the pests and the attackers. So a plant that's grown in wild or organically without chemicals has more polyphenols because the polyphenols are part of the plant's defence mechanism. So the more you can buy or... I mean, that's where foraging comes in. You know, my colleague, Devon, is a forager and he can walk for a hedger and show you

you can make a whole meal out of plows that people just walk past because people used to do that. So that's real wild eating, which must be one of the best ways of eating but the more close to nature you can get your plants the better we have to live with what we've got

and most plants are grown without that but they're still better than having them not having them at all Simon thank you we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for

the question left for you is our world is changing fast how do you keep up I think the world is, we all know, getting pretty scary out there, isn't it? There is a truth, which is you and the people around you are actually the only things that matter day to day, aren't they, of closest, dearest, the ones that we have invested most. one of the reasons that I'm increasingly happy to spend my time working in the practice in Exeter rather than chasing around the world is because as the world gets more frightening, the more you realize that it's the connections you make with each other.

You put back to back, if you like, you know, face the world out there, back to back. And I think it's reconnecting with those who are closest to you. That is the best antidote I know. And that also includes reconnecting with the nature and the world around it. So that would be my answer. And who is that in your life? Who are those people? I have family.

I have now 10 grandchildren between us, Rachel and myself. Congratulations. And so the electronic calendar comes into his own. to keep track of all that. So, yes, we've got a no spread around the globe. So it's a widespread thing, but we've got people close by, and obviously you're closest and nearest to the ones that matter. Simon, thank you so much for doing what you do.

I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your work. I've never had a conversation with someone that knows so much about plants and herbs in my life, so I'm so excited to learn more. And you have changed my opinion on so much. many things. I can't wait to go and tell my girlfriend that she's right about everything. I'll slip her. She can slip me the tenor. I highly recommend people go and check out your website and go to your Herba, which takes place once a month. I'm sure there's going to be lots of people getting in touch with you to try and come and see you in person as well, which is fantastic.

Is there anything else that if my listeners want to take a step forward from here in this direction and understand more about herbs. I've got your books here, which I'm going to link below. There's the Herb Hour on your website. Is there anything else that we should be aware of? As I said, the website does link to this wonderful resource. I mean, I contribute to the herbal reality one, which is where you're going to find almost anything you want to know

about using plants. So that's, I'll stop there, but you can step through my website to get there because you'll find a few other things on the way. There is resources out there, and it's increasingly reliable. These are not trimmed up, you know, for a TikTok video

they're well thought through based on a lot of human experience so there is stuff out there if you're looking for it thank you you're very much leading the charge to bring us all back to being human beings and I'm a big big fan of that and it's a journey on one myself

so thank you so much for doing the work that you do and being a champion for nature and all its forms and I really really hope that I really hope that more people more podcasters host you so that you can get the message out there thank you

This has always burned my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favour? If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week.

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