The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 203. Barbara O’Neill: On Longevity, Gut Microbiome, Immune System, and Anti-Aging Basics
Episode Date: September 23, 2025Join my FREE 3-Day Water Fast Challenge - October 15th. It's the exact protocol I use with pro athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs to flush inflammation and kickstart autophagy. Sign up here! http://bit.ly/...4nTILPt Your immune system is either your greatest biological asset or your weakest link, and my conversation with Barbara O’Neill just revealed the secrets to strengthening it, by simply going back to the basics. The beauty of Barbara’s approach is its simplicity and accessibility. These aren’t expensive biohacks, but rather, foundational biological principles that honor how your immune system actually functions. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Barbara O’Neill’s books here: http://bit.ly/3IcxjPH Connect with Barbara O’Neill Website: http://bit.ly/3Io9PXS YouTube: http://bit.ly/48ti53j Instagram: http://bit.ly/3Kf1LZV TikTok: http://bit.ly/4nHXZ9N Facebook: http://bit.ly/4mp8bTT Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of Show 02:06 Going Back to the Basics 06:58 Good Sources of Nutrition for Infants 08:50 Possible Causes of Autism 11:35 Impact of Sanitation & Vaccination in Children’s Health 16:10 Good Absorption vs. Malabsorption 19:15 Immune System is the Ability of the Body to Heal Itself 21:45 The Theory of Immunofatigue 24:21 How to Strengthen the Immune System 33:03 Recommended Nutrition for a Stronger Immune System 39:00 Strengthening the Immune System Starts with the Gut 44:46 Vaccinations = Childhood Poisoning Program 53:37 Healing Powers of Nature and Normalcy 57:27 Sleep is the Human Superpower 59:35 The Rise of Infertility 01:02:33 Impact of the Oral Microbiome 01:08:50 Debunking the Myths on LDL & Cholesterol 01:15:31 Taking Good Care of the Brain 01:23:21 What does it mean to you to be an “Ultimate Human?” The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Did you know that they used to have in the medical journals the graphs?
And if you look at the original graphs, the infectious diseases were three quarters sometimes totally wiped out,
and then the vaccine was introduced.
I have a hard time believing that we need 79 vaccines before you're 18 years old
in order to just exist in the world.
That's a total denial that our body can heal itself, because it can.
I agree and I acknowledge that people have the symptoms,
but we have seen people heal from all the autoimmune diseases
that you might mention to me.
Some of the characteristics of the immune system
that people might not know about.
I mean, I think we're very familiar with the fact that it defends us.
Remember that there's an intermediary
between the food that you eat and you.
We don't eat to feed ourselves.
We eat to feed our gut bacteria.
And they eat to feed us.
Well, it is estimated that 70% of our immune system
is established by our gut flora.
So what destroys our gut flora is the antibiotics.
We know that the immune system is hypervigilant.
And so how do we strengthen our immune system?
That's a good question. Very good question.
It needs us to be...
Guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brecker,
where we go down the road of everything,
anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.
And today's guest, most of my audience, knows her.
She has been referred to as the grandmother of the world.
I just found out, which I think is a great title,
because I'm an enormous, enormous fan of our guest.
Welcome to the podcast, Barbara O'Neill.
thank you yes i counted a great honor to be termed the grandma of the world
why the grandma of the world coming back to basics i guess yeah you know it's interesting
right before the camera started rolling we talked about how you know on my journey into
wellness longevity anti-aging what have you um when you look at the big data blue zones uh what's
of truly extending life, it really is the basics.
It is.
I mean, the three common denominators with these in the blue zone was very active, very social,
and eating food in its natural state.
They were the three common denominator.
You know, I found that fascinating too because we want the answer to be a dogmatic diet, right?
It's either all carnivore, all keto, all paleo, all vegan, all vegetarian, all pescatarian.
But the truth is there was no continuity between the diets.
You had high carbohydrate consumption.
You had high meat consumption, high fatty fish and oils and very long life expectancies.
And I always tease the French because they screwed up the whole model
because they're smoking cigarettes and eating cheese and drinking wine and living 200 years old.
So the heck with the French.
But, you know, it's in this journey, you know, I think everyone wants it to be this special supplement.
Oh, it's NAD, that's what I'm missing.
It's red light therapy.
It's a hyperbaric chamber.
It's, you know, NMN or, you know, it's any number of things.
And I think you can make an argument for those things, you know, at different times.
But the truth is it's what continuity ran through all of the blue zones was the absence of processed foods.
That's true.
That's true.
And, you know, what you pointed out as a sense of community, sense of purpose of
purpose. You know, and I found this in my own life that, you know, nature is medicine and connection
is medicine. And I think we're the most disconnected we've ever been in history, you know,
trying to create connection through our devices. And we're totally disconnected from our
bodies. And that's probably the hardest thing that I do is teach people to begin listening.
and trusting their bodies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it sends us signals, right?
Constipation, bloating, cramping.
It speaks to us.
Yeah.
We just decide to tune it out.
You know, one of the things I've really admired about you is that, you know, I was talking
about the talk that I'm doing today at the Health Optimization Summit.
And I put this really confusing chart up on the stage in front of the audience for
reason because it looks like the super complicated myriad of transactions going on. But when you
zoom in on it, you see very, very common elements, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrients of all
kinds that when you deplete these in the human body, you know, my philosophy is you get the
expression of disease. And then we begin to think that we can treat that expression of disease
with a chemical or a synthetic or pharmaceutical.
One of the things that I really would love to touch on with you
because I just left a meeting this morning
with a very, very close friend of mine, the Mansour family,
and they've just had a new baby.
And her first questions to me were about infant formula and vaccines.
By the time this podcast airs,
and I'll hold this until the report is out,
but Bobby Kennedy is releasing a report, Maha report.
And one of these key investigations is what is the root cause of autism?
And we know it's a neuro-inflammatory condition.
We see that it's had a parabolic rise.
In the United States, it's mind-numbing.
I don't, maybe I'm not getting a statistic exactly correct,
but it was about 1 in 10,000 in the 50s and 60s.
That's wrong.
And now it's about 1 in 30s.
to. Yes, right. And shows no signs of slowing down. That's right. And interestingly, I thought
the primary driver I thought would be vaccination, but it turns out that it's infant formula
and blue light coming from screens, these artificial lights coming from screens, changing brain
physiology. But it's so hard for pregnant women that either can't breastfeed, aren't breastfeeding
either because of lifestyle challenges or because of some kind of medical challenge. And what do you
recommend for these women? Like where can they go to find good sources of nutrition for their
infants? It is very difficult. And I very much encourage women to really,
perseverate breastfeeding because it is the perfect milk and it is the best and true
often stress can can actually inhibit the milk flow but when you look at the animal kingdom
the little animal that's very close to human baby in size is goat's milk and historically
goat's milk has been given to babies for centuries and I know in Australia you can get
goats milk formula I have 25 grandchildren and you have 25 grandchildren and you have 24
grandchildren. I do. I do. That's why you're the grandmother of the world. It's not because
And don't forget the four great. Oh, you have four grades. Oh, boy. But I know that my
grandchildren that weren't breastfed or breastfed for a small while, they all went on
goat's milk. And I've had so many people testified to me. My brother had X-ma. My mother put him on
goat's milk. It all cleared up. So goat's milk, it stood the test of time.
And it's used also by some pediatricians if a baby has asthma or eczema,
which are very common allergens in the cows milk formula.
So going over to the goat's milk formula.
And do you think the raw version of goat's milk?
Well, I said yes once in Australia, and I think that's one of the reasons I'm banned in
Australia.
Yeah.
But if it is from a raw goat, it must be a healthy source, of course,
and it must be clean utensils.
all of that sort of stuff.
But not unpasteurized, non-homogenized.
Well, ideally.
Yeah.
Ideally.
I would agree with, I would actually agree with that too.
And the other point is with the autism.
Do you know there's a group of people in America about 2% autism.
And that's the Amish.
And the Amish don't vaccinate.
But I agree with your, in fact, I have learned,
if I've learned anything in my many years on this planet,
it is never to be absolute.
But in the majority of cases, it does point to the vaccines because of the neurotoxins,
the formaldehyde, the aluminium, but the blue light coming from the screens.
You see it in the airport all the time.
Mother feeding a baby, the phone's in the other hand.
I say, mother, put the phone down and look at that beautiful baby.
Right, right.
And also the formulas, you know, the formulas are formulated in a laboratory.
tree. Right. Yeah, not the best for babies. You know, it's, I, I, I talk commonly about seed oils and
not in an attempt to attack the plant, but usually it's the distance from the plant. Oh, it's the
distance from the plant. And I have stopped calling myself a vegan because plant seed oils are
vegan, chemicals are vegan, refined sugars vegan. You're it's vegan. And I was at,
Potato chips are vegan.
I was at an event and they had a carrot cake.
It was a plant-based event, vegan.
And this white fluff was on top.
And I said, what's that?
And they said, it's vegan.
It's vegan.
And I say, I know cows milk.
I know coconut cream.
But what's that?
And then they brought out this spray can, which number one put me off.
I'm reading the ingredients, cheap seed oils, chemicals, refined sugar.
I said, I'll just have the carrot cake.
From that day, I no longer call myself a vegan.
I have plants.
Fan-based.
Yeah, you know, you ever read the back of like a nunburger?
And I mean, I'm a human biologist and a scientist,
and I can't pronounce nor even know what half of those things are.
The thickening agents, the binders, the fillers.
And if you can't pronounce it, it shouldn't be going in.
Yeah.
You know, someone said to me one time, you know,
when you're reading the back of a label,
if you don't know where to find it in the grocery store.
So it's got polysorbate 80.
I don't need to know what that is.
I just need to know if I could find it on the shelf in the grocery store.
Can I find high fructose corn syrup?
You know, can I find red dye number four?
And if you can't find it in the grocery store,
it's probably a very highly processed food.
And that actually took a lot of pressure off of me
because I thought that I would have to index this encyclopedia of chemicals
and understand them all.
Yeah, no need.
No need.
So goats milk and, you know, vaccination is such a controversial topic.
And, you know, historically, vaccines were defined, at least, by preventing the infection
and the spread.
Well, this is very interesting because I wanted to know why.
I wanted to know when it began.
And did you know that they used to have in the medical journals, no longer, the graphs?
And if you look at the original graphs, the infectious diseases were three-quarters
sometimes tightly wiped out, and then the vaccine was introduced.
So what caused this massive drop, Florence Nightingar?
And what she did was she increased hygiene, sanitation and nutrition.
In the 1950s, the sewage from London went into the Thames, and the people in London drank
that water.
And you look at pictures from that time, children sitting in gutters in sewage.
So no wonder the infectious diseases were out of control.
There's no infectious diseases anymore.
Even in the part of the population and they're getting more that do not vaccinate
because the children aren't sitting in sewage anymore.
And there's a sewage system under London so that the sewage doesn't go in the Thames anymore.
that's what stopped those diseases.
You know, it's fascinating that you say that because for years,
about 20 years, I was a mortality researcher,
and we studied mortality rates and big data on mortality.
And I did this for a large life insurance company.
So we knew the day, the date, the time, the location, and the cause of death
for hundreds of millions of lives.
And the truth is, the greatest jumps in life expectancy.
And we had the greatest expansion in life expectancy was,
clean water and sanitation.
That's right.
And once we figured out clean water and sanitation,
do you know in the 1800s,
there was a famous physician that was actually jailed
and lived the rest of his life and in the same asylum
because he noticed a correlation between hand washing and delivering babies.
That's right.
That's from Vienna.
Yeah.
I was reading that.
And Florence Nightingale, the same thing.
The doctors hated her because she made them wash their hands between operations.
operation.
Right.
I mean, and now you wouldn't think of, first of all, you would never do an
operation barehanded and you would never do an operation without.
I actually think they've gone a little bit over the top now.
Yeah, now we've been too much hand sanitizer.
When I see someone come in and wipe all the seat down in the plane before they sit in the
plane.
Yeah.
And constant, you know, hospitals now are actually starting to take some of these hand sanitizers
out.
I'm so glad to hear that because the research shows that washing your hands with soap
and water is even more
effective. And killing
everything. You know, we live in
such a microbial world.
We do. And we're in symbiosis
with a lot of these microbes. And we
should be. And so
anything that comes in with the kill
mentality, anything that
can kill a small organism
as the potential to kill a large
and that's what we are. There are 10
times more microorganisms in the
body than cells. We have
100 trillion cells. And there are
10 times more microorganisms in the gastrointestinal track than anywhere else in the body.
In fact, Gary, my lecture on these little microbes is one of my favorites.
Really?
Well, let's go down the microbe role because, you know, somebody said to me one time,
and I thought it was a fascinating statement, we don't eat to feed ourselves.
We eat to feed our gut bacteria.
And they eat to feed us.
He said, so remember that there's an intermediary between the food that you eat and you.
And this intermediary is your gut microbiome.
And so we want to be really good to our gut microbiome.
Oh, we do, we do.
In fact, what I find fascinating is that our gastrointestinal track,
which is about 10 meters long, 10 yards long.
Yeah, 30 feet.
It's a hollow tube.
Which means it's not really part of you or me.
Anything that goes in there is not part of you or me
until it gets broken down to tiny little particles
absorbed out of the gut and into the blood.
then it becomes part of you on me.
And what's responsible for that final breakdown,
I do a journey through the gastrointestinal track.
Yeah, let's do one.
Yeah.
And I say, we're going to start at the mouth and end up at the other end.
And when we get to the small intestine where we've got the little villi
coated with the microbiome, I say to people,
we have now come to the grand finale of digestion,
the area where our nutrients are actually absorbed.
into our blood.
Hey guys, I've got some exciting news from one of my favorite biohacks, Baja Gold Mineral
Salt. If you've followed me for a while, you know how obsessed I am with minerals
because hydration isn't just about water. It's about electrolytes and trace minerals
that our body needs to function at a cellular level. That's why I start every morning with
Baja Gold's unrefined mineral-rich sea salt. That is the absolute truth. Every single day
I take this stuff. It's loaded with over 30 trace minerals.
no additives, no bleach, no BS, just real salt the way nature made it.
And now Baja Gold is hitting the Walmart shells all across the country.
That's right.
You can now grab the same powerful sea salt I use every single day at your local Walmart.
This new version, same mineral punch, but even easier to use.
Perfect for everyday cooking.
And yes, it flows in a salt shaker.
Go to Baja Gold Saltco.com forward slash stores.
That's Baja Gold Saltco.com forward slash stores and you can find a location near you
or just swing by your local Walmart and see if Baja Gold has landed on the shelf.
Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast.
And what makes the difference between good absorption and malabsorption?
And there's so much data now.
I remember Dr. Perlmutter was the first one for me and my journey.
He wrote a book called Green Brain.
and he wrote another one called the gut-of-brain connection.
I assume you would agree with a lot of his research.
And it was the first time that, for me,
that someone had highlighted and connected the gut
to so many different maladies.
Oh, yes, he's excellent that.
And Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in her book,
Gut and Psychology, very similar,
although she goes just a little bit further in some area.
but the connection between the gut and the brain is closer than most people realize.
So what destroys our gut flora is the antibiotics.
You see, the antibiotics, I liken drugs to robots.
They say, get out of my way, I've got a job to do whether you need it or not.
And it just comes in with this kill mentality.
Yes, it will kill pathogenic bacteria, but it'll also kill the good guys.
And I'm not against antibiotics.
I think they should be saved as life-saving.
But I raised eight children with no antibiotics, and they're all still alive.
Right.
And my 25 grandchildren haven't had antibiotics, and they're all still alive.
In other words.
Probably thriving.
Yes.
So in other words, what, so for instance, my little grandson trance on a rusty nail.
Mm-hmm.
And they bring him to me crying.
So what's the first thing you do?
You clean him up, just common sense.
then I grated a potato and I wrapped it in a little parcel put it on the bottom of his foot
put a little bit of plastic on it wrapped it wrapped his foot it put in a sock and he went off
very very happy and that grated potato went on his foot every night overnight for three days
and what did the potato do is the enzymes what the potato does is as a drawer so it kept that wound
open till it healed from the inside out whereas if a scabbard formed and it had
healed without healing on the outside, not the inside, then you've got an environment where
tetanus can grow. And if there's an element of a horse organism in the soil, wow, we've got the
perfect environment for tetanus. So what I did was that potato, that just kept it open. It kept
it draining and it reduced all inflammation and it healed from the inside out. That young boy,
I think he's 17 tomorrow. Yeah. And this is when he was three. He has not had any
vaccines at all. No vaccines at all. And you, so you believe in the natural infection and you
well what I believe in is this incredible body with its inbuilt ability to heal itself. It's called
the immune system. And do you know our front line of defense is our hydrochloric acid? Further down,
our next line of defense is those microorganisms because they break down, they absorb, they nourish
and they protect the inside environment, the blood.
So that's the next line.
But if something happens to get into the blood,
then we've got our internal army,
which is our five different white blood cells.
And the neutrophils, they make up about 65%.
They engulf, shoot hydrochloric acid into the pathogen and kill it.
And then they actually die in the process.
And if there's too much in an area,
then it'll come out through the skin.
as pus, because that's what pus is.
But if it can be dealt with in the blood, then the monocytes come along.
They're the cleanup team.
And then there's the lymphocytes.
They're always looking around saying, hey, neutrophils, we need you over here.
It's an amazing system.
So that's another one of my favorite lectures is the immune system.
Yeah.
I mean, I actually was asked this question two days ago on a podcast.
It was a fascinating question.
And he said, if you put the top 50, PhDs, MDs, you know, researchers in the world, in a room on longevity and anti-aging, whatever you kind of call it, wellness, bio-optimization, he said, what one theory would you think they would all agree on?
And I was like, wow, that's a really good question.
And I said, we probably would agree on the theory of immuno-fatigue, a slow, progressive, overwhelming of the immune system as a broad definition for aging because we know when we're young, the immune system spends a vast majority of its time policing ourselves, autophagy, cellular senescence.
And as we get older, it's distracted.
from glyphosate, paraquot, mold spores,
mycotoxins, heavy metals, parasites, viruses, you name it, right?
We're slowly inoculating ourselves with all of these unnecessary chemicals and compounds.
And the immune system is over here dealing with inflammation and cytokines and histamine storm
and then CTC circulating tumor cells slips by or something that would have otherwise been a walk in the park.
Being dealt with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's fascinating to me that if you took a strand of DNA from nearly every human being,
that only about 60% of that DNA would be human, the vast majority, and not the vast majority,
but the portion of that DNA is viral.
And the immune system is capable of silencing these viruses.
It is.
But every once in a while, you know, you had mono in eighth grade and you get up steam bar as an adult,
you know, chicken box as a child.
You get shingles as an adult.
So I want to cover, I'm going to come back to the microbiome, but since we're on the immune system,
I want to talk about some of the characteristics of the immune system that people might not know about.
I mean, I think we're very familiar with the fact that it defends us, but it also polices us.
It does, it does.
And the lymphocytes, they're made in the lymph nodes, whereas all the other white blood cells are made in the bone marrow.
and they are ever looking around.
And that's why we give our body the right conditions.
We've got a police system.
We've got a protective system that can deal with all that.
And so how do we strengthen our immune system?
That's a good question.
Very good question.
It needs us to be well hydrated.
And that's water.
And it needs us to go to bed.
ideally a couple of hours before midnight because that's when our batteries, our body,
our immune system, our cells revive and recharge healing accelerates at twice the rate in
those two hours and about one or two after midnight.
And that's where many people are missing out.
And nourishment.
It's like asking my sons, a lot of them are tradesmen builders, to do an extension on my
house, but I've just got the cheapest building materials.
Even though they're good tradesmen, how can they build without proper building material?
Same with our body.
We need to give nourishment, ideally in organic foods, high fibers, great proteins, great fats.
Hopefully fat phobia is out of most people's minds today.
Oh, I thought high fat caused cardiovascular disease.
Oh, no, that's been proven wrong.
But probably one of my favorite, and I do it wherever I can is that.
coal dunk every morning.
Really? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Is she really a cold plunger?
Really? Your staff's behind the camera going, yeah, she really does it.
She doesn't. In fact, I call it my drug of choice. I love that hormetic stress.
Jacqueline's excuses, she's holding my clothes and's taking the photos.
Yeah, my staff comes up with excuses to Malia in the background there.
But I call it my drug of choice. I actually have three cold plunges of my house.
I have one on the balcony so I can do it.
do it. It's on rise. I have two in right off of my master bedroom.
But what that does is that gives a shock to the body. And that shock goes to the right into
the bone marrow to boost the immune system. That's what quick cold does. You see, we're warm
blood of creatures. So of course we don't like the cold. One lady said, Barbara, you say we should
end every hot shower with cold.
And you also tell us that we're to listen to our bodies.
My body says, don't do it.
No, that's your brain that says don't do it.
That's your feelings.
But your reason, intellect and judgment says, no, this is good.
But I say, yeah, but how do you feel after it?
And I remember Jack and I, we're in Maryland.
We found a leg and it had a little jetty so I could dive in.
And this morning it was white with frost on.
the ground. So I dived in, swam around, came out, yes, got by nice warm woolen clothes on. So I've
got instant warm. And as I'm walking away, I feel like I've had an injection of power. Now, I'm
sure you can identify with that because the body's reaction is, whoa. Yeah. It's like,
because we're warm-blooded creatures, when we do that cold plunge, the body says, move. Yeah.
It's cold.
Yeah.
So we access that cold shot.
Right.
Whereas, remember the sad story of the Titanic, most of them died because in that freezing
cold water, their body just stopped.
Mm-hmm.
It just stopped.
Mm-hmm.
They put their head down and slept.
That just stopped.
Right.
And so the body knows that cold is potentially a killer.
Mm-hmm.
And so when we get that quick cold, there's, there's this reaction.
Yes.
there's this reaction. And so that's what the hydrotherapist uses, is that reaction.
Yeah. You know, like I say, I call it my drug of choice. I have a little saying that aging is the
aggressive pursuit of comfort. You know, because the more aggressively we pursue comfort,
we're creatures of comfort. You know, we regulate our body or air temperature. We regulate our lighting,
you know, temperatures in our car. So you walk into my room in the Pullman. I've actually found a way
that I open this window and open that window, and that's cool.
I've got fresh air coming in.
I'd rather have fresh air and put my willy jumper on
than to be in this stuffy, stifling, warm environment.
So back to the immune system because, you know,
if you look at the category of autoimmune disease, right,
where we essentially assume that somebody woke up on morning
and the immune system just went haywire.
for no reason.
And the body just started eating itself.
It does make no sense to me.
It makes no sense to me either.
I'm glad you say that because I don't believe we just woke up one morning and it's
attacking the colon.
You have Crohn's and it's attacking the lachrymal gland.
You have chrykins and it's attacking the thyroid and now you have Hashimoto.
Now, my husband doesn't like it when I say this.
He's my biggest critique and it's good.
If I pass him, I'll pass anyone.
Yeah.
I don't believe in autoimmune diseases.
He said that's a very challenging statement and maybe I want it to be.
I agree and I acknowledge that people have the symptoms,
but we have seen people heal from all the autoimmune diseases
that you might mention to me.
So how can it be an autoimmune disease?
And also what if this entire category of diseases is idiopathic, right?
It's of unknown origin.
So if we don't know the origin, how are we certain of the disease?
Here's a good one, fibromyalgia.
Google that fibromyalgia.
No known cause, no known cure.
Yeah.
Chronic fatigue syndrome, no known cause, no known cure.
And I think that the same is true with the vast majority of autoimmune disease.
And lately I've been fascinated with this because we know that the immune system is hypervigilant.
And it's actually the special forces, right?
It is. It's the, yeah, it's the elite team.
Yeah, yeah. If it was in the U.S. it'd be Sealed Team 6, right?
So, you know, what, first of all, the immune system has to be called to a location.
It doesn't show up for no reason.
That's right.
Lymphocytes are the calling guys.
And so something called it.
And usually it's there because it's after something.
Well, maybe it's a heavy metal.
Maybe it's a mold spore.
Maybe it's a mycotoxin.
Maybe it is a bacteria.
virus, some other kind of pathogen that's in an area where it shouldn't be.
And so the immune system properly calls it there.
I always use the analogy that if somebody robbed the bank down the street and ran into
our VRBO or Airbnb here, barricaded themselves in here, the police would bust down
the door to get to the perpetrator.
And the immune system will bust down doors to go after pathogens.
Right?
it goes after perpetrators.
And so how do people go about strengthening the immune system?
Because I think it's this sort of nebulous, we all know we have one, we don't know how to
cater to it.
It is.
In fact, when I give my class on the immune system, I say to people, if someone asked you
what your immune system was, what would you say?
And I think a lot of people that don't really know.
So when I speak on it, I start with the skin.
It's the front line of defense and then the gut
and then into the blood where I think what most people
recognises the immune system is the white blood cells
and I agree that there's a reason
and Newton's third law of motion we must remember Sir Isaac Newton
that to every action there's always an equal
and an opposite reaction. We must discover why
And it could be mentally, it could be emotional, it could be spiritual, it could be physical,
there could be a whole lot of things.
And I like to see myself as a private investigator.
I like investigating why these things are so.
So how do I find out?
I talk to the person.
I get their history.
And if they say, I had a four, what was that for?
What was hurt?
What did you do?
What was that, you know, I want to know because there's,
always a reason.
And so if they're on this journey where they feel they have a weakened immune system,
I get colds all the time, I get flus very often.
I have a lot of congestion, you know, runny nose.
I have block sinuses.
I have the signs and symptoms that, you know, my immune system is doing its job, but it's
not doing it well, right?
Where did they start?
What are great things for the immune system?
What I'd like to suggest is that the immune system's doing its job.
But why is it doing all that?
So when I look at respiratory stuffy nose, tinnitus, sinus,
post-nazal drip, they call it coughing up mucus, why, why?
So that excess mucus has been produced for a reason,
and maybe it's irritated with mycotoxys.
Maybe it's irritated with chemicals.
maybe an allergy to certain foods
and the most common allergens are dairy
and the milk in the supermarket is very different
to the milk coming out of Lulabelle the cow
on an organic farm.
Lulabelle.
Lulabell sounds like a cow's name.
And people say, what milk do you drink?
I say, I'm wind, I ate food.
Okay, next one is wheat and Pellmutter.
In his book, he talks about
the hybridization of the wheat and how it's changed the starch structure,
the gluten and the protein structure.
So the body, in some compromised individuals, it reacts to that
and it can react with this excess mucus.
Dr. William Davis in his book, Wheat Belly,
he gives a very good background to what they did to the wheat.
And this is genetically modified, heavily sprayed.
Yeah, the glyphosate's come in as well.
well. And also oats. And then, of course, now I'm in the UK, isn't that touching something
very holy? Yeah, yeah. The oats. Well, oats are very high in lectins. And when lectins get
into the blood, they increase inflammation. Now, if the gut flora is healthy, it will disown the
lectins, but there's so many unhealthy gut flora's because of antibiotics, because of many
medication slaughter that gut flora and peanuts are commonly contaminated with mold and the fifth
one is refined sugar it's like kerosene to a fire yeah so if someone has excess mucus all the time
I say stop the five allergens there's lots of alternatives today to those five
go through the five again so we've got dairy wheat oats peanuts refined sugar
now it can take at least two months before you see a result because you can
can have a slice of bread it'll be out of your body in 24 hours but the effect can remain
sometimes for even more than two months so i say write a note on the calendar fill your cupboard
don't do it until your cupboard's well stocked right and you know the alternatives that you can do
but we've seen many people able to clear up all of these congestion things by just stopping that
because uh there's a reason why there's excess because there's a reason why there's uh this there's
excess clogging up in the sinus there's a there's a whole lot of reason so it's
investigating i think that's a great that's a great point and you know when we talk about the
immune system we have to talk about the microbiome right because the vast majority of our immune
system is right here in our gut well it is estimated that 70% of our immune system is
established by our gut flora but what i find interesting is i think most people are familiar with
probiotic, probiotic foods, sourcrow, keffa, miso, kombucha.
Cam choy.
Yeah, I eat a lot of kimchi.
I got it in the fridge in there.
Yeah, so they're great at boosting your gut flora.
But what I find interesting as well is what feeds the gut flora is fiber.
The prebiotics.
They're the prebiotics.
So you can have 10 different apples and each apple will feed a different microorganism.
So I suggest people have at least seven different fibers in their meal.
Wow.
And of course the fibers coming from your plant foods.
And I was at an Andalusa at a homeschool camp.
And I was teaching them about prebiotics and probiotics.
Where's endlouza?
Northern part of southern Spain.
Okay.
And in the morning I said, okay, kids, how many did you have this morning?
Yeah.
And one little boy said, 20.
And I looked at his father and his father went.
Yeah.
So he must have had a raspberry and a blackberry and a blueberry.
Right.
He must have.
Good for him.
And a sunflower seed and a sesame seed and a flex.
You know, but just to show them if they can have more variety in their fiber,
they will have more variety in their microbiome.
Now, as a plant-blaced lady, I push for.
legumes for protein. And then the complaint comes back, bloating. So I say, are they well
soaked? Are they well rinsed? Are they well cooked? Yes. So I give the story of my husband,
when we married 28 years ago, he said, I can have red lentils, not brown lentils. So immediately
I go, uh-huh, brown lentils. So what I did was I gave him a teaspoon. A week later,
two teaspoons. A week later, three teaspoons. And now he can eat brown lentils.
So what I did was I was feeding the microbiome for brown lentil,
little by little by little.
And allowing that flora to expand.
Because a lot of people I find are so absolute, can't eat this, can't eat that.
Well, let's look at the way you're preparing it.
Well, bring it back.
One lady said even a teaspoon, I said, well, try three lentils.
Right.
And a week later, try four.
Right.
A week later, try five.
And slowly rebuild that gut microbiome.
So the gut microbiome is directly linked to the strength of our immune system.
So any discussion about strengthening the immune system has to start in the gut.
So if people are listening to this podcast and they want to go on this journey and they believe food is medicine, which I think we all do, then adding more prebiotic fibers, things like kimchi, sourcrow.
fermented veggies. My gut feels the best when I do that. I do eat grass-fed meats and I usually
eat them with fermented vegetables. I notice that when I don't eat the grass-fed or wild-caught
versions of fish and I don't eat the fermented vegetables, even my gut starts to go awry. But if I stay
in that zone, that it helps tremendously.
Now, what you're doing, Gary, is you're listening.
And that's what I find very hard to teach people to do.
Listen.
So I can advise that your body will tell you what you can and can't do.
And a lot of people are challenged by that.
I say, your body can tell you what no man can tell you.
Your body can tell you what no test can tell you.
just listen
so when we're listening to our bodies
do you recommend that
that everyone migrate to a plant-based diet
or do you find that there's any role
for wildcaught fish
grass-fed meats, pasture raised?
Well the healthiest couple
that attended our health retreat in Australia
were organic dairy farmers,
organic meat farmers.
They ate all organic.
How did they get your
tag of the healthiest couple.
I want to...
My wife and I would like to apply for that.
Well, they're in their late 60s,
and they have nothing wrong with them.
And if you've ever tried water fasting,
you know it can be powerful,
boosting energy, lowering inflammation,
and even supporting detox.
But most people jump in unprepared,
and within hours, they're hungry, tired, and frustrated.
Thinking fasting just isn't for them.
That's why I created this free, three-day,
Water Fasting Challenge. From October 15th through the 17th, I'll guide you through every step of the way.
Answer all your questions and give you the tools, mindset, and motivation to succeed so you can
finally experience the benefits of fasting without the struggle. Sign up now using the link below
and join me on this transformative journey. Let's make this your easiest and most successful
fast yet. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. They're supposed to be on five
pharmaceuticals, Barbara.
They're incredibly.
No SSRI.
No thyroid.
Shame on them.
There was nothing wrong with them.
In fact, other guests looked at them and said, what are you doing here?
And they said, yeah, you should be on the stage.
They said, where else can we get such good food?
And such great accommodation.
No chemicals in this retreat.
Beautiful linen sheets with feather quills.
Yeah.
Steam bath by the creek every afternoon doing cold plunges.
Oh, love it.
I said, where else can we, this is the best holiday.
But that said, I ate plants.
I ate plants because that does very well with me.
But I give you that story to acknowledge that some people, if they choose to do that and it works well, go for it.
But at our retreat, we just do plants.
No, I do well on plants too.
I prefer meats.
I'm pretty judicious about the meats that I eat.
but I do notice that when I eat, I don't eat nitrites, I don't eat any pork,
but I notice that when I, when I marginally gravitate from that, my body does signal.
Yes, it does.
It does speak.
Do you know, also when your body's working well, and why would it be working well?
Purely because we give our body the right conditions.
It's designed to heal, it will heal, it will function and be maintained when we give it the right
conditions. That's what I'll be talking on tomorrow afternoon, keeping it very simple. And when
your body is working well, it tells you quickly. In fact, I can tell when it's in my mouth.
Yeah, the coating on your tongue kind of. It just says to me, I had a Brazil nut the other day
and immediately I thought this is not good, so I just very politely remove it.
Yeah. That's really good to tune. I mean, I think the one big takeaway,
so far is just tune in to your body.
Tune into your body.
Start listening.
And when I was in Peru last year, another woman spoke at this convention I was at.
She was a young woman.
She would have been 40.
She said, I grew up in Peru, but I went to New York.
I got my degree.
I was a high flyer.
See, I have a big company.
And I got sicker and sicker and sick because she's just eating junk.
So she went back to Peru.
And her mother took her to a healer.
And the healer said, how do you feel when you're doing?
eat that food. She said, I don't know.
And she said that she almost felt embarrassed that she had said that she didn't know how
she felt. And I think, Gary, that would be the same with many people today. How do you
feel after that meal? I don't know. Listen. That's a good point. Listen, do you feel fantastic?
Do you feel like you're ready to climb a mountain now or do you feel, oh.
Now, you know, I want to just go back and touch on the vaccines for a moment.
It's such a controversial topic.
And I don't know why it's so controversial.
You know, one of the things that I really like that Bobby Kennedy is trying to do in the U.S.
is not to ban vaccines, but to say, shouldn't we be curious about the same level of rigorous research that we apply to other compounds?
why would we just not apply them through vaccines?
Forget all of the other political nonsense that goes on, you know,
vaccine indemnities and no responsibility for harm
and that these companies don't have fiduciaries to the patient.
They have fiduciaries to investors,
which I think is part of the reason why the whole system is lopsided.
It's pretty bad.
Yeah.
But you really think in today's day and age
that an infant porn today can survive
and live a long, healthy, happy life without any vaccinations?
They will live a long, healthy, happy life because they don't have them.
And if a parent says to me, should I vaccinate, I say to them,
I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'll tell you what I would do.
I would go to the pharmacist and I would get a printout of what's in the vaccines.
Or Google Dr. Sherry Tenpenny.
Jerry. Ten penny.
Ten penny.
And she, she's an American doctor who's really stood up and blown the whistle on how
dangerous the vaccines are.
And she goes into great detail in what is every single vaccine.
And, you know, aborted cow fetuses.
Anyway, it's, it's pretty nasty.
That's beside the neurotoxins.
she doesn't call it the childhood vaccination program she calls it the childhood poisoning program
so if you really want to know what's in them you can search her out and have a look
she's just saying what it is and she's a medical doctor and she was confronted when
she started to see children being damaged by the vaccines but if the person's still unsure i say
well take a piece of paper to the person who will administer the vaccine and ask them to sign
that they will be accountable if the child has any side effect, no parent would vaccinate
if they did those two things because the vaccines are not safe. They're far from safe. And when you
realize that historically, it was Florence Nightingale, increasing hygiene, sanitation and
nutrition that stopped these childhood infectious diseases. Yeah. And you know, I have a hard
time believing that we need 79 vaccines before you're 18 years old in order to just
exist in the world.
That's a total denial that our body can heal itself because it can.
It was created to heal.
It's been doing it for a long, long time.
And I have faith in this body and its ability to heal.
So that's why when I got COVID, a double-vaxed man brought it to our retreat.
Yeah.
A double-vacced.
Yes, yes.
Anyway.
I thought you were not supposed to get COVID or spread COVID.
Michael got it first.
And we live way out in the bush.
We're now from the town on 450 acres.
So when I got it, the first 24 hours I had a terrible migraine, so I just went to bed.
And the next 48 hours, I had a high fever.
I never take my temperature.
I know I've got a fever.
And people say, what did you do?
I said, nothing.
Because I live in a body that can heal.
I laid my body on nature's operating table.
It's called bed.
I slept a lot.
And when I got a little bit too hot, I would douse myself with water.
Water puts the fire out.
And I drank a lot of water.
And I had not a hot shower, not a cold, a teepid shower.
If I was near the creek, I would have just dived in, but it was a five-minute walk.
And when you got a fever, you don't want to walk.
You were crampy, so you didn't do that.
You don't want to walk.
And on the fourth day, I opened my eyes.
I felt great.
I had no fever.
See, I love fevers because what they do is they give an incredible boost to your immune system.
And they also kill off harmful pathogens.
See, God put fevers in the body for a purpose.
Yes, I agree.
I say to mothers, my child's got a fever, I say, that's wonderful.
Yeah, his immune system's working.
And it'll be working even better after that fever,
because that fever reaches right into the bone marrow where our immune system is made.
But just keep that baby well hydrated.
And if they're, as long as they're taking in fluids, then just let them ride it out.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I think that if we, I said this before the podcast.
But if we would get back to what God gave us, less of what man makes us, just as a general rule of thumb, you know, whole food diet, mobility, you know, exercise, purpose, connection, nature.
You know, I have this home in Miami, which we live in this condo in Miami, and it's got every biohacking device you can imagine.
So I don't have a watch problem or a car problem. I have a biohacking problem.
And it's a real problem.
Like if there was a biohacking rehab, I would probably check myself in.
So hyperbaric chambers and red light and PMF.
But we also have a one-bedroom log cabin in Colorado off the grid.
And a solar-fed electricity, glacier-fed spring water, well in septic.
I drink the water right out of the well.
And I'll wake up there and I put on this 20-pound rucksack.
And I have this three-and-a-half-mile loop in the woods.
when I get back from that loop, I feel like I took a limitless bill.
Like I won the lottery.
And I say it all the time.
And I hope you dive into the Cold Creek after that.
I do.
I bought, since I don't have a cold plunge, I bought a $165 cattle trough from tractor supply.
It's an aluminum.
It's an aluminum cattle trough.
And the water comes out of the glacier about 43, 44 degrees.
And so I fill it with the glacier water.
and then I just jump right in there
and I look out at the meadow.
But don't you think it's the most wonderful feeling
when you are so hot and sweaty
to dive into that coal punch?
It's just incredible.
And then I go, my wife hates this part,
but then I go back in the house
and I'm like Captain Chattie
because I think it's all the dopamine
and noraphyn and I want to just talk to somebody
and she's the only one available.
So I just eat her face.
You know what I say to people?
I say, forget the coffee.
Yeah.
Oh, no, you don't eat any coffee.
I call it my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer.
I totally agree.
I totally agree.
And you get addicted to it because you feel so good.
Yeah, yeah.
We never want to leave there.
And it's always just reminds me that, you know, it's just back to those.
So nice you've got that place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's definitely our happy place.
We spent almost three months there this summer.
And sometimes when I go back to Miami, it almost seems a little surreal, you know, concrete jungle.
I remember actually one time I was, I took my family on a 10-day.
extreme vacation to Costa Rica.
So we went to Costa Rica and every day we did something else.
We canyaneer, we did whitewater rafting, we did ziplining, we did all this stuff.
And I literally woke up in the jungle, this place called the Pecori Lodge.
Beautiful, by the way, if you ever go to Costa Rica.
And but I had an event that evening in Miami.
So I took like a 4.30 a.m. shuttle to the airport.
I flew to Miami.
I got off.
It was at a nightclub called.
called Live a nightclub in Miami.
So I woke up in the jungle.
And then afternoon I walked into this nightclub
that was set up for this lecture.
And I go, this is all bullshit.
It just felt, it felt so surreal.
Like I wanted to go back to the jungle.
And you're on another planet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it just, I mean, the car's going by
and the beeping and the honking in the lights
and the concrete jungle.
It just, it felt so surreal.
Like that felt.
odd, not the, and it only took me 10 days, not the jungle I'd come out of. But so many people are on
this healing journey, if you will, in this search for, I call it the search for normalcy.
Yeah. I think that's where most addiction begins is the search for normalcy, not the search for
high. And so in the search for normalcy, in the search for being optimally healthy, we talk about
the gut microbiome and the immune system, what are just some practical tips that you could give
to working mothers who have to wake up in the morning, get a kid to school, take care of
their husband, maybe even have a career during the day, they're coming home, and can't go out
and forest bathe, you know, four or five things would you say, turn your bathtub into a cold
plunge, would you say?
Well, that's where I was.
So I was pregnant or breastfeeding non-stop 14 years.
Clearly because of the number of grandchildren you have.
Yes, yes.
And I'm in a rainforest.
Good factory.
And I'm homeschooling my children and I've got no electricity.
So how I did it was I planned my day.
I planned my day.
So mothers, please go to bed early.
I used to breastfeed my babies to sleep and I usually stay to sleep with them.
Yeah.
And that allowed me to get up early.
When you can access, in fact, I read in one book, they're called The Hours of Goal,
that early morning when it's quiet.
Because just picture, I had to light the fire to cook my breakfast.
Wow.
But early morning, I could go to get bed early because I went to bed early.
A lot of mothers, when the kids go to sleep, then they do their work.
No, no, no, no.
You access those hours before midnight.
That's great advice.
The old saying is an hour before midnight is worth two after.
I've heard that.
Yeah.
Yep, and the science shows that to be correct.
Okay.
So you go to bed early, then you can get up early.
And often you've got an hour or two there.
What you do then compared to what you would do before midnight,
you get twice as much done.
So those early nights also keep hydrated.
Go to bed with a glass of water next to your bed.
I see you've got the Baja salt there with all of its minerals,
little bit of salt and the glass of water.
So they're too absolutely vital and exercise.
And mothers say, but I'm busy all day, yeah, but get outside, get on that trampoline with the kids.
Get a bike and ride the bike.
Put the baby in the backpack, but movement.
And food is very important.
So what's great for working mothers is a slow cooker.
Slow cooker.
You can put the millet or you can put the rice or you can put the lentils in the slow cooker overnight.
And that's how the Scottish always got away with it.
eating oats is they'd soak them all day and put them on the fuel stove overnight and that
actually disarms the lectins.
Ah, it does.
So cooking actually.
Yep.
One lady told me, she said, I use a slow cooker overnight for the millet and I use, and as soon as
as I've washed it, I put the lentils in there for lunch.
She said, my slow cook is always going.
Really?
That's a great idea.
So slow cooker, getting to bed early.
I mean, I've often heard sleep as being called our superpower.
It is.
The human superpower.
What's so important about sleep?
What's going on during sleep that's so important?
Well, I give people God's perfect mathematical form.
Eight hours to work, eight hours to play, eight hours to sleep.
Work, play, and sleep all very important.
Most people overdo the work bit.
Not enough play.
I see that you play and your whitewater raft.
and that's very important and the sleep so especially the hours before midnight there's a book called
why we sleep by dr matthew walker is that the blonde one that i yeah yeah i've seen him on joe rogan yeah
he's really good he goes right into all the processes that happen in the night there's a cleaning
process there's cleaning up any little calcified plaques on our on our front part of our brain
and you'll find that people that have regular late nights,
that's a contributing factor to Alzheimer's.
I don't know anyone that wants to get that.
That's enough to get us to bed early.
In fact, if Margaret Thatcher had known that,
I think she would have gone to bed early.
Yeah.
But also what's happening in the night is a processing system happens
or a filing system of all the day's events.
And if we don't go to bed in those early hours,
then our short range memory unit isn't totally emptied,
ready for the next day's memories.
So that's another process.
Yeah.
But also our invention, our creativity,
that's happening, especially in the early hours of the morning.
So the cleanup is happening more before midnight,
the filing before midnight.
and after midnight, then it's more the processing, it's more the inventions, the dreaming.
Learn memory.
And consolidation of what we've learned.
And he's got incredible figures in there because, as I think he works in Oxford,
he had the opportunity to test out on quite a few of his students.
Some slept for eight hours, some slept for six.
and the difference in what the eight-hour sleepers retained compared to the six-hour sleeper.
Wow.
And now I know one podcast it gives where he gets everyone's attention is men are more virile if they have more sleep.
Since you start talking about that, yeah, you got everyone's attention.
So it's so funny because, you know, when you look at virality, you know, sperm counts,
at least in the United States are going down by a percent.
every year, and infertility is rising by the divergence of these.
It's very scary.
In fact, a good friend of my wife's, just before I walked into this podcast, did a post
about her finally getting pregnant.
And her journey was mind-numbing, the IVF, the blood filters, the, you know, she flew
all over the world, 200 doctors visits.
And eventually what she found was not catering to her mitochondria.
She did a mitochondrial program and I actually want to delve into it.
And this mitochondrial repair, which a lot of that was related to sleep, this mitochondrial repair.
And pink, she got pregnant.
I think the body knows when you're in this constant sympathetic state.
of stress, right? And we know too now that, you know, people say, well, how is stress
related to disease or pathology or autoimmune? Well, it's directly related to our immune system.
Are you ready? Are you ready for the explanation? Yes, this is what I'm excited for this
explanation. It's absolutely so. And I'm so glad that you talked about the sympathetic compared
to the parasympathetic and what one thing that really affects that is breath. So I love the
verse in the Bible, it's Genesis 2, verse 7. It says, God form man from the dust of the ground and
breathe into his nostrils. Got that? Not mouth to mouth. Breathe into his nostrils, the breath
of life. He became a living soul. Nose is for breathing. Mouth is for eating, drinking,
speaking, singing, kissing, but nose. The nose alone is for breathing. Now when you breathe
through your nose with your abdominal muscles, you stimulate your parasympathetic nervous
system and your parasympathetic nervous system is your peaceful, calming nervous system. But when
you're breathing mouth, my chest, that stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic
nervous system is your fight and your flight. So that has a direct effect. But also before
midnight healing accelerates so lack of sleep has a direct effect not only in the functioning of our brain
but also the functioning of our body the healing of our body our immune system it's all connected
so in medicine today the heads usually cut off yes so you've got psychiatrist and they never talk about
the body then you've got body but they never talk about the mind and another thing's cut off is the
teeth. Oh, yeah. And well, we could spend a few hours on that one. Yeah, you know, I have to say
that it's not that I wasn't a believer, I just was unaware of the impact of the oral microbiome
and things like root canals. I actually have a very good friend. I'm actually doing Dr. Dom today,
who's one of the great biologic dentists of our time. He trained a physician named Dr. Gandhi
Jigar Gandhi, Jigar Gandhi.
And I bit down on something one day and I cracked one of my teeth.
And I was like, I'm the dentist and I hate the dentist.
And so I text my friend Dr. Gandhi and he said, take a picture of it.
So I took a picture.
And I sent it to him.
And he said, just from this picture of my cracked tooth, you could tell I had a root canal.
And he said, let me ask you something.
Does your left, you have any issues with your left anterior shoulder?
Yeah, that's really weird because I thought I had like a minor bicep tear.
And it always bothers me in the gym right there.
And, and then he said, do you ever get left lower lobe lung pain?
I go, well, now you're starting to freak me out because whenever I do hits cardio,
I get a catch right here.
And I always thought that it was just by diaphragm, you know, just like a runner's cramp.
and then I kid you not he said does your left toe ever go numb I go I'm getting goosebumps
actually telling you this because I go okay now you have substantially freaked me out I've never told
anyone my wife's always teased me because I would tap my foot on the ground or sometimes I would
actually take my shoe off and itch my left toe and he said yeah that's your 19th tooth meridian it's
you had a root canal there and you've got a cavitation probably an infection there I go how do you
know all that for the picture of my tooth. So I went up and saw him. And, you know, sure enough,
he did the cone beam x-ray. I had a big cavitation right in there. And he went in,
fixed it, red light, packed it with plate rich fibrin, capped it. 48 hours later to this day,
I have had to have that pain. So I became an evangelist for the oral microbiome. I went way down
the rabbit hole. I went and sought out Dr. Dom met him.
And so many of these root canals, you know, dentistry.
I know, I know.
You think you can leave dead tissue in the body.
That's right.
That's right.
No area of medicine thinks that.
We have, I have had so many stories of people and root canals, yeah.
So what is your advice or your thesis on the oral microbiome and dental?
You said we could spend a whole podcast on it, but let's just spend.
spend a few minutes on it and just highlight the importance of it and what people can do to care for
it. Well, one very simple thing that you can do every day is oil pulling. That's putting the
coconut oil in the mouth and swishing. And when it hits them... But they say you've got to do it
20 minutes, Barbara. That's so long. No, forget it. Forget it. I can't do for 20 minutes.
Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that because I'm like, okay. Ten minutes is enough. Okay.
Yeah, I, you're like me, but we haven't got time for something. I don't have time for this
nonsense. No, so you know what I do. When I get back from, you know, running up and
down hills and plunging in the creek, I'll have some water, then I'll put it in while I
prepare breakfast.
I can't just sit there and swish.
But what that does is it pulls waste out of the tongue, it pulls waste out of the glands
under the tongue, it pulls waste out of the blood vessels under the tongue, but it also
nourishes the gums, you know, and they often get forgotten, and it gives a better microbiome
in the mouth, and then you release it out.
and when you release it out, you're releasing the waste that it's all pulled out.
So the oil pulling is really good.
But also, when you clean your teeth, use a toothpaste that doesn't have sugar,
that doesn't have fluoride, and you can get some great ones now.
Yeah, hydroxyapatate.
Often xylitol, because that's also a little bit antipatogenic.
So it's just keeping that great.
micro biome in your mouth, that's very important. And of course, our teeth, they're bathed by
fluid from the outside and fluid from the inside. And it's what we eat and what we drink
and how we live that influences those fluids that are bathing and strengthening the teeth.
You know, I've sensed that encounter with Dr. Gandhi every day. I don't do the oil pulling
as often as I should. When I'm home, I do it. But I floss every night. I tongue,
scrape every morning. I've dropped the fluoride toothpaste, so I use a hydroxyapitite toothpaste,
and I can see night and day difference. My teeth don't hurt. My gums aren't sensitive when I
brush them anymore. So I think it all begins here, right? It does. I went, I've got a friend
you might know, I'm Dr. Goran. He's in Harley Street, and he saw my teeth last year, and he said,
oh, there's one on the side. There's just a little bit of, I don't know whether I'd call it
decay, you know, in the side of the tooth.
He just looked at me again.
He said, oh, hasn't changed.
You know, that's an indication that my nutritional status is good.
Yeah, because you're blocking that pathology from continuing.
I'm not taking anything in that's chemical.
I don't let any harmful things go into my body.
But it's also exercise.
It's also early nights.
It's also keeping well hydrated.
You're not afraid of the sun probably.
No, I'm not.
Yeah.
I mean, we've been talked to fear of the sun.
I saw an interesting graph of the parabolic rise in skin cancer,
superimposable with the parabolic use of sunscreen.
Absolutely.
Ian Wisshardt, he's an author that talks about that.
Yeah.
He even claims that sunscreens are causing basal cell carcinomas.
Yeah, because of the inflammatory process.
And because of the vitamin D deficiency.
Yeah.
I mean, that's arguably, I would say maybe vitamin D and maybe zinc,
but probably from what I've read,
the two greatest nutrient deficiencies in the human body.
And when you think about when God made us,
he made us with the ability to make one vitamin.
And we only make vitamin D3.
We don't make any other vitamins.
I mean, without eating and drinking, ingesting.
You know, we make it from sunlight and cholesterol.
That's right.
And we've also vilified cholesterol.
And we, yeah, if only we had another few hours,
we could go to cholesterol,
but we haven't got time to go there.
Well, let's touch on it really quick
before we wind the podcast out.
How can we do that?
I use Whoop every single day.
You guys see me post my sleep scores all the time.
What gets measured and tracked is what you can improve.
You'll start to notice what happens
when you eat too close to bedtime.
If you have alcohol,
what makes your sleep deeper,
what prolongs your sleep,
how you improve your REM sleep.
You can even start to track metrics
like heart rate variability,
respiratory rate, and your actual pulse rate.
These are all indications of how well you're recovering during sleep.
I always say that people don't really have a sleep hygiene or a good sleep routine,
and WOOP will help you develop one and prove that it's working.
Ready to unlock the best version of yourself?
Try Woop for one month on us and start the journey towards a healthier you.
Head to join Woop.com forward slash ultimate.
That's join WH-O-O-O-P dot com forward slash ultimate to get stuff.
started. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I think the first thing we could do
is maybe dispel the myth that LDL cholesterol on its own is the marker for cardiovascular
disease. We found, I can tell you what the big data says, that there was no correlation
between elevated levels of LDL cholesterol on its own and cardiovascular disease. Now, it became
a marker when you had elevated triglycerides and you had presence of lipolittle A,
like OBB and some of these other things.
But cholesterol is a construction material.
Oh, it absolutely is.
And I love what Dr. Malcolm Kendrick said in his book,
The Great Cholesterol Con.
He said for the first time,
normal levels of a normal vital body substance
is being caused a disease.
So then the question is,
well, what causes heart disease?
Do you know, it's exactly the same as when I cut my hand,
the blood clots, and you damage the arterial wall,
the blood clots.
and it starts to clot and if it keeps getting damaged the clots keep coming and so what's damaging it
all environmental poisons we're exposed to the cheap seed oils i say to people walk straight
past them don't touch them they get into the blood they damage the tissues mycotoxins damage the
tissues mercury damages those little endothelian cells now lining the endothelium is a little
hairy layer called the glyco calyx and that protects the endothelium and when people are on high sugar
high carbohydrate diet it actually kills and knocks off the glycolus so you see there's all
of that yeah that's what's causing heart disease yeah and you know cholesterol is one of those things
that gets called to the site of inflammation or damage doesn't just well the other thing is when they
have tested those plucks, they find fat in there, a cholesterol type of fat. But when you realize
that the membrane around every red blood cell is 50% fat, and what's the clot made out of?
Platelets and dead red blood cells. So they test it and they see the fat, but it's actually
the structure of the membrane around the red blood cell. I'm reading a book called
The Clot Thicken's by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick.
The clot thickens.
I'm going to read that.
And he, oh, he's.
So these are, so red blood cells, which do have a phospholipid bilayer, right?
This makes sense to me.
Have a phospholipid bilayer.
Get called to the site of injury to create a clot.
Let's just call it that for a moment.
And then after the hemoglobin is extracted,
you have the phospholipid bilayer fat that is now creating this sticky.
And they're pointing to cholesterol.
And that brings us.
to nitric oxide, which only is released when we nose breath, and nitric oxide is a vasodilator.
But nitric oxide also stimulates new endothelium cells.
And the glycalis, the glyco calyx, that's that little furry lining on the endothelium,
it releases nitric oxide.
So when the high sugar diet has knocked off all the glycolexus, you've actually lost your
nitric oxide from there.
Nitric oxide is also released in nose breathing.
So everyone's all clogged up because they're on the high wheat,
high sugar diet.
So they're breathing with their mouth.
So they're not getting nitric oxide there.
That's one of the reasons why I'll mouth tape sometimes at night.
That's a great idea.
And I actually do notice my sleep scores improve.
And I've noticed that you didn't die.
That's a great observation.
Which is the, yeah,
It's the key feature of a healer, so is observation.
So you notice that I was alive.
Well, that's what people think.
They think they're going to die if they tape their mouth up.
Uh-huh.
They do.
Well, you will if your nose is all congested.
His excellent book, Breath, James Nestar, he, it's a fantastic read.
And I love the way he quotes many other scientists, researchers, doctors who've come to the same
conclusion.
He presents his case, which I really like.
And he shows that the more we nose breathe, the more the little canals open up.
So the more we mouth breathe, the more they close.
I mean, that's kind of true with every physiologic process in the body.
The body has a way of ignoring things that we don't use.
If you put a cast on your ankle, it's atrophies.
You don't use it.
You'll lose it.
Same with the brain.
Yeah, very true.
So final thing I want to touch on is the brain.
And, you know, there's, I think some of the greatest fear, especially,
in the older population is Alzheimer's, dementia, neurodegenerative decline,
neurocognitive decline, whatever you want to call that.
Obviously, living a lifestyle of whole foods, movement, sunlight, grounding, breathwork,
those things are, they really are medicine.
But if somebody particularly wants to care for their brain,
they're noticing that family history of cognitive decline,
or neurodegenerative disorders.
They're noticing the brain fog sort of start to creep in.
It's getting increasingly more disruptive to their daily life.
What, if anything, can they do specifically for the brain?
Well, I always want to know the course.
And I'm a Bible student.
There's no mention of Alzheimer's in the Bible.
The Bible spans thousands of years.
In fact, you look at 150 years ago, it was quite rare.
So we've got to look at what's happening, what has happened.
And a lot of the time it is damage, damage to the cells, what causes the damage.
Mercury is a big one.
We've got to get it out of the teeth, out of the fish, and also out of the flu vaccine.
I heard that Robert Kennedy Jr. recently took it out of the flu vaccine.
That was good news.
Do you know, it's just little by little by little.
And I mentioned earlier, a lack of sleep.
Margaret Thatcher boasted she only needed five-hour sleep a night.
Ronald Reagan boasted.
He only needed five hours sleep a night.
And I'm sure it wasn't 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
1 a.m. to 6 a.m.
Yes.
And they both ended the last 20 years of their life with severe dementia.
I'm not saying it is just lack of sleep.
That's one of the factors.
And in every case, it can be different factors.
So we've got to get to bed early.
Hydration.
We saw one lady come with dementia.
She wouldn't even look at you.
She's just looking through your.
Yeah.
We found out she hadn't, wasn't drinking water,
hadn't been open to bowels for six days.
Oh my God.
We got the bowels moving.
We got a hydrated within 48 hours.
There was no sign of dementia.
So can you see there's water?
There's good salts, which is the best way to hydrate.
You actually turn me on to that.
I saw a lecture you did where you put Celtic salt right on the tongue.
I think that's my most famous lecture.
Is it?
Yeah, yeah.
That was a good one.
And I went deep down the rabbit hole and saw,
And you're right.
We've been lied to about salt too.
And you know what?
Everyone loved about that, by the way, it's easy to do.
Right.
Anyone can do that.
No, that bag of salt will cost you, I don't know, $10 and it'll probably last you a year.
It'll last you a long time.
I've got a store that I'll travel with.
I'll give you that one before you leave.
It's great salt.
There's also, so can you see in every case, it can be slightly different.
But there are some fundamentals.
There is.
And I love the saying, I read.
in an old book, many might be well if only they thought so.
That's a great one.
It's so true.
So if someone thinks they're going to get dementia, they probably will.
The Bible says that too, so a man thinketh he shall become.
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
And a lady said to me one day, I can't sleep, I can't sleep, I can't sleep.
I said, don't say that anymore.
She said, why not?
I said, because every cell in your body's listening.
And it says, looks like we can't sleep.
Yeah. And so when you lay down to sleep, you go, this is something I don't do well.
Yeah. And they all say, oh, yeah, we're listening. So what I say is, just I'm going to try.
I'm going to get there. Like my daughter Emma, she said, Mom, I'm going to grow up in a minute.
She was five. Yeah. You took her another 10 years. It's actually your words have an effect on your mind.
You know, it reminds me a funny story just popped in my mind. Years ago, I had a friend named Mark Goodman. He had this home
on an island, Yuseppa Island,
and all the kids and I used to go out there
and we were participating in this fishing tournament one day.
So all the kids had those little ones of you,
the line you unwrap and we had chicken down
and we're catching fish on the pier.
It's all lined with families and kids.
And this little girl, she was probably 10 years old,
she falls into the water and she starts thrashing around
and she starts screaming.
And all the parents from,
the other, you know, peer all jump in and they're all making their way over to her.
And my partner is right next to her.
And I know he's not doing anything.
And he just yells at her.
He goes, stand up.
And she stood up.
And it was like less than wastey water because I was coming down the pier.
And now, and he was just so calm.
And he let her thrash for a second.
And he said, stand up.
And then she just stood up.
And it was like literally blow her waist.
So by the time all the parents who are now soaking wet.
and all their clothes, you know, and all the moms, the hats flying off, had made their way over
to her.
She was just standing up.
So sometimes the solution's right in front of us.
You know, it often very much is.
So really, we're going to tick the boxes.
Yeah.
We're going to tick the boxes now.
Keep that body moving.
Keep that colon.
Yeah.
Have the, and if you're well hydrated and you're eating lots of plants, it will.
And relax.
Laugh more.
Do you know, children laugh 125 times a day?
Probably adults, maybe 10.
You know, my daughter-in-law told me this, that her little grandson, Sunny, the guy that
stood on the trusty now, he called her in one night and said, Mom, she's put him to bed.
He said, what is it?
He said, I've found a new laugh.
She said, what is it?
And he went, that's so good.
You know, we should laugh more.
I agree.
member of the bruiseum social yeah sense of community and purpose barbara you're amazing
um where can my audience find you if they want to know more about you i'm about to make an official
statement official barbara o'neill doc barbara official barbara o'neill dot combe this is official do you have a book
i have a couple of books i was going to say you really need a book and i'm going to read them all i've got a book on
mycotoxins. You do. I'm so happy to hear you talk about mycotts. Oh, mold and
mycotoxins. Because that's an area many people don't know about it. Because of the
ignorance, I've written a book on it and it's called self-heal by design. Do you talk about
detoxing from mold and mycotoxin? The true role of microorganisms and disease. And that was my first
book. I think I wrote that in about 2016. Now, my most recent book that was published last year is
called sustain me. And sustain me is an acronym for the basic laws of health.
Sustain me is a handbook on natural therapies. I have a chapter on hydrotherapy, a chapter
on pulses. I started the head. I look at ears. Are their eyes? Eyes, ears, respiratory. I go
into the stomach, bones. So it's like a handbook on natural remedies. And my husband has written
a book called The Assassination of Barbara O'Neill. Wow.
will be a good one.
Now, as you can say, I have not been assassinated.
Yes, I would say we should change the title maybe to the unsuccessful assassination.
But I said to Michael, I said to Michael, that's a bit strong.
He said, no, it's good.
No, it'll get attention.
And it's basically a book of why I was banned and what the Australian government did to.
Fantastic.
Well, we're going to go in for just a few minutes into my VIP group.
I have a VIP community.
These are the real community that I saw.
serve. I spend a lot of time with them. We do one-on-ones and live coaching and I'm trying to build
an army of like-minded people. So folks can become a VIP by just going to my website,
ultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP, because they're the only ones that I let know who's coming
on the podcast and then they get to ask some questions. So they got a couple of questions for you.
But I wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. There's no right or
wrong answer to this question. What does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? What it means to me
to be an ultimate human is I want to be able to help others get the most out of their life.
And I'm a very shy, quiet lady. I was living in a rainforest with all my children, never dreaming
what God had planned for me. But I am married to a man who said to me, I hate health lectures,
but yours makes sense.
And he really has been the one that has pushed me forward
and pushed me forward.
And the most wonderful thing for me is I'm walking along the street
and some, like last night, waiting for the Uber and a young man,
he looked like he was 25.
He said, are you this lady here?
He had me on this.
I said, I am.
He said, you saved my life.
Oh.
He said, I can't believe that I'm a.
He said, thank you.
thank you that's why i do it that's why i do it and i believe that we are here for each other i agree
absolutely for each other and if i can make a difference in only one person's life well you've made
a difference in a lot um and that that happens to me too and it is chicken soup for the soul when it does
it is some people say you must be sick of this i said never
Well, guys, it's it's VIP time.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast.
Look forward to seeing you guys all in the VIP community.
Until next time, that's just a sense.