WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Germs and Modern Medicine

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

This week we discuss terrain theory versus germ theory, which Jillian did not even know was a "theory" until scrolling for this episode. Tune in to hear social media fail majorly, Jillian try her best to engage with scientific theories, and Garrett make a rare mention of his girlfriend whom he has dated almost as long as this show has been around.  

the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's in social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And today we're talking about germs. Well, not really. We're talking about terrain theory, which has to do with germs? Slash, do germs exist? They don't know. But what's the nature of them? So I will say that Garrett is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting this episode because social media is a weird place for this sort of stuff. Social media says that says a lot of stuff that I'm pretty sure contradicts each other. So it's going to be awesome to hear what you have to say about it.

Garrett, how did you hear about this? Actually, from my girlfriend's mom, we were just sitting at their dinner table talking. And I don't remember how it came up, but she was like, have you heard about terrain theory? and I was like, no, I have not. And so I went and looked it up and was like, interesting. This sounds like a podcast episode waiting to happen. And you write on you were because I will say social media isn't talking about this, but there are people on social media who are pretty adamant that this needs to be talked about.

So let's just start us off, nice and easy with what I found. First of all, I saw the name Louis Pasteur. Pasture. Pastor. He's French. I don't know how to say it. Really. Like a French person.

Yeah. So, merci. Apparently, he's the reason we have what is called germ theory. And first of all, when I saw that, I was like, how is this a theory? I thought this was just how it is. Because you don't learn anything else in school. which I can see why that may seem like a scam, that there are other theories out there of how we get sick

and we only learn one. But it was shocking to me to learn that not everybody is on board with germs in general. Well, nobody's on board with germs, but you know what I mean. So germ theory from when I can tell says that there are these harmful, I guess I'm going to call them germs, but that might not be the right word. harmful germs that will enter your body and you can catch them and when you catch them you get sick like they cause your sickness and it it basically says that like viruses are real and that they spread from person to person and that like evidence of infection which would be like any sort of

I don't know waste that is infection related is evidence that there's like some sort of alien microbe in your body that is causing you to be sick. And this is like, on social media, at least, this theory is attacked in connection to its supporting

vaccines. So these are the like groups of anti-vaxers on social media. And this is the theory that they don't like because they think that it bolsters the cause for I don't know, vaccination. And then there's terrain

theory. And terrain theory is the idea that like everything is internal, I guess, and it's not like an external coming in and causing a disease. It's like if your body internal environment is at a certain level of not good, then bacteria in your body will stop working with your body and start working against it. And so the only way to fight against sickness is to detox internally. I don't understand how that negates vaccines. That's the part that's confusing. There's actually a lot of parts that are confusing to me. They also, the people that talk about this on TikTok at least, talk about sickness like it's a good thing. Like sickness is this thing where your body I guess

detoxes itself. Interesting. Yeah, and it's like this necessary force rather than in germ theory, sickness is a bad thing that you have to get rid of. So that's like I guess the basis of that distinction. There's also within terrain theory,

there's a really, at least on social media, heavy anti-big medicine. which I think a lot of people are anti-big medicine and maybe not pro-terrain theory. But there is like this idea that medical treatments actually just suppress your detoxing and like get rid of your symptoms that are necessary for your body to do its natural detox rather than actually recovery, which people, I mean, that in its own strain is its own thing with people saying that like modern medicine only treats your symptoms and not the actual issue that you have. So I've heard that a lot and I think that's actually pretty,

pretty widely agreed upon in some ways. But I am really confused because A, everybody on social media is saying that nobody's ever seen a virus before. Like, it's never been under a microscope. And so they don't think viruses are real, which I think is interesting, because I don't know what to do about that. And they also say that like bacteria out in nature never makes anything sick, it only like detoxes. But I don't really understand the difference between detoxing and getting sick and why we have to like separate those terms. So social media has been largely unhelpful. And I actually think this is by design because I think it's a bunch of like you were saying, granola moms trying to get people to subscribe to their substack

and to follow them on social media. And so they're only given you little pieces that don't really make too much sense. And then they're like, but if you follow me or you pay for my program or you join my Facebook group, whatever it may be, I'll give you all the information and you'll understand it. So it's really confusing. And I personally not convinced yet because a lot of stuff doesn't make sense. Like there are animals that get sick, but they were talking about how in nature, nothing gets sick, which is like not true. So I don't know. Help me out, Garrett. First of all, for those of you who are tuning in right now, I want to apologize. We're talking about terrain theory on the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. But terrain theory is

really confusing, and I don't really know what's going on. So Garrett's going to come and save the day. Okay. Well, I think it's really important that we make a distinction between terrain theory, and terrain theorists, because there's a lot of terrain theorists, people on social media that espoused the tenets of terrain theory and sort of have made it their own. It sounds like that's a lot of what you're getting on social media, is people that say, okay, this is what I take terrain theory to mean, and here's how I think it applies to our health. Drain theory is an actual scientific theory that was developed by a scientist, a contemporary of Louis Pasteur. His name was Antony Beecham. I'm probably saying that wrong, but another French guy.

And it's actually kind of a dramatic story as to how Pasteur's theory you wound up winning out. Basically, their theories came up around the same time, but Pasteur was super famous. He was very well-known scientist and kind of used his popularity to crush terrain theory and say, like, to make it disreputable and say this is obviously stupid. And there's actually some people, this is kind of disputed as to whether or not this is true. But there's some evidence to suggest that Pasteur at the end of his life actually said, I was wrong. So take that for what you will. It is not confirmed that he said that, but there is some indication that he kind of changed his mind.

So who's this other guy and what did he come up with? So Beecham, French scientist, he studied fermentation and studied microbes his entire life. So super smart guy, super knowledgeable guy. A lot of times other scientists want to look at this theory because it's not germ theory as like kind of a quack pseudoscience theory. But it's grounded in some pretty legitimate evidence. And here's the thing about theories. You mentioned how we're only taught one in school, taught germ theory. And that's because germ theory has a pretty good track record when it encounters reality.

That's what a theory is supposed to do. We go, we run a bunch of tests, and we come up with what we think is a rule that sort of explains a lot of different things. And then we have to be able to go out into the world and observe it to be true. Like gravity, right? We have all these tests that show that gravity exists. And if you go out into reality and gravity doesn't work like one time, we have to rethink our theory.

So germ theory has worked pretty well, but it can't claim complete validity. And that is sort of why terrain theory can be brought up and we can look at. it and say, well, maybe this is a better option or perhaps a synthesis of the two is something we need to look at. Okay, so what exactly terrain theory says? It says that it is not specific microorganisms that make you sick. So you don't get the COVID-19 bug and then get sick. It says that the terrain of your body, so your microbiome and essentially your health, all these

various factors and all the biochemical process going on in your body are what comprise your health. And if those are out of balance or something is damaged, that is what will make you sick. The microorganism gets into your body and because of poor terrain becomes a problem. And let's say in the case of a virus, right, inhabits a weak or unhealthy host cell and causes it to produce lots more viruses and get you really, really sick and have all of these symptoms. So on one level- So does terrain theory believe that viruses exist? Oh, yes. He wouldn't have, so that's the thing is where I wanted to make the distinction between terrain theorists and terrain theory. There are a lot of terrain theorists that use it to say that germs aren't real, that there's no

such thing as these microorganisms that make us sick. And that's like obviously not true. We can look under a microscope and see a lot of these, like you can look at E. coli under a microscope and know that, okay, this has made people sick. But what the terrain theory holds is that it's not a one-to-one ratio. You don't get the bug and then get sick. The bug is in you and is probably benign. It's probably fine, but due to poor terrain, poor health, which can mean a lot of things, that's what makes you sick.

You know, if you have a giant hole in your stomach lining and then a bacteria gets in there, it's going to cause problems, right? That's just a really a poignant example, but it's kind of what I'm getting at here. a little bit more about why maybe germ theory we could cause call it into question a little bit. The most notable recent example is that with COVID-19, about 35% of people

that had the germ didn't get sick. So that's a pretty good example of a theory encountering reality and kind of falling on its face a little bit. Because if germ theory is 100% true, if it's 100% right, then every person that had the COVID-19 bug would experience symptoms. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. More sense than what I was seeing. So, but, and there's a lot of other examples that are similar. People can test positive for all kinds of bugs and diseases and express no symptoms whatsoever. It's really a function of, is the bug, whatever it is, microorganism, a virus, fungi, bacteria, etc., causing enough damage in the body to make the body, produce some kind of response, right? Typically, your symptoms when you're sick, not always, but typically the symptoms that you feel when you're sick are your body's response to the disease to try to get rid of it. So you have a bacteria, right? Your body raises the temperature in hopes

that the hotter environment will kill the bacteria. That's why you get a fever when you're sick. But the problem with modern medicine is that a lot of times they look to suppress these symptoms and your body doesn't actually get rid of all the germs. You feel better, you feel different, but it's almost like, you know, if I break my arm and then just take enough pain medication to where I don't feel my broken arm, my arm's not better, right?

It just doesn't feel bad anymore. So that's become, because of Pastor's theory, that's sort of become the philosophy of the modern medical establishment is, okay, let's treat what we can see, let's get rid of these microorganisms and stamp down the body's symptoms, and that's what it means for people to be not sick. In some cases, you have to do that. When somebody is dying from a symptom, like let's say they have a stomach bug and they are losing so much fluid that they are dehydrating and they are dying, you need to get rid of that symptom. They need to be able to keep fluid down,

right? They need to be able to get hydrated. So that's an example where that kind of thinking of, okay, we need to treat this symptom is a good thing. But in many cases, what we wind up doing is worsening people's health by the treatments that we give them. Not always, but a really, really notable example that there's a bunch of new research to show is that oftentimes when a virus, or a bacteria rather, is caught, somebody gets really sick. The first response is give them an antibiotic. Antibiotics kill the virus. They also tend to kill just about everything else in your digestive system. So if you intake an antibiotic, not only are you killing all of the virus or all of the bacteria in you, but you're killing all the good bacteria.

You're killing all of the things in your gut microbiome that are keeping you healthy. You're essentially flattening your terrain. It's like throwing a bomb into your terrain and just kind of exploding everything and hoping that makes it better. So I'm curious because a lot of the threat on social media is the bad bacteria. doesn't exist. Like viruses don't exist. It's not that these things are inherently bad and make you sick.

It's that your body isn't receiving it the way that it's supposed to. Does bad bacteria in germ theory does bad bacteria exist? And in terrain theory, it doesn't? Or is that like another example of like social, of theorists versus theory? Sure. I think this is a classic example of what we see on this show. a lot, which is just social media, sort of struggling with the nuance of a situation. So in germ theory, bad bacteria does exist, right?

There are certain diseases, certain strains, viruses, things like that that cause specific diseases. In terrain theory, Beecha didn't say that these things don't exist, right? He studied microorganisms. That was, he knew they were there. He studied the processes that they caused in the body and in the world. But what he theorized, which is different from what Pestor said, is that, you know, those like an E. coli bacteria doesn't cause disease necessarily. E. coli causes disease when it comes

in contact with a body that's not properly prepared to handle it. So it's it's not so much it's it's like two puzzle pieces fitting together right. It's not one thing to being thrown at the other and making the body sick. It's that when they fit together illness is caused. But on its own, the bacteria would be would be harmless. Can you explain why terrain theory disproves vaccination in general? Because I am like not connecting those dots at all and I don't know why. Sure. Well, okay, so here's a, here's a mark in the favor of germ theory in terms of vaccination that it's pretty hard to square any denial of vaccination with a couple of things, namely the success of the smallpox vaccine. We don't

have smallpox anymore. So it seems that this bug that caused people to have smallpox when given to other people and their immune system learned to fight it, it got rid of smallpox. Polio is another example. It's pretty hard to look at the complete eradication, almost in polio's case, of a disease and say, well, germs and viruses must not exist and vaccines must not work or be real. Because in that case, they absolutely did. They absolutely did. But a lot of people that are against vaccination, the data that they're pulling on is that most vaccines for common diseases, let's say flu vaccine is kind of as right for the picking here to talk about this, it's not always very effective. In fact, it's less than 50% effective most years. So they have to make a new flu vaccine every

year because the flu changes. In most years, if they can get over 40% effectiveness, they're calling it good. Like, that's successful. So that calls into question, like, okay, again, if virus causes disease and giving a weakened form of the virus causes the body to prepare itself against the disease, and that only, and doing that only works 40% of the time, that calls, again, it's the idea that if your theory doesn't work every time it encounters reality, then it's not 100% right. You can't say that it's completely infallible. Just like, you know, if gravity works 40% of the time, you got to look at it and say, okay, well, we have to rethink the way we think about gravitation. Same idea. Now, to completely deny the efficacy of vaccines, again, it's a nuanced question. Not

every vaccine is for one kind of disease. Vaccines are for a lot of different kinds of diseases. And your body responds to all those different diseases differently. And especially with the flu, that changes every year. So completely denying the use or the benefit of vaccines is kind of a slippery slope, but so is saying vaccines are always good. Vaccines help me. The cool thing about your body is that it sort of vaccinates yourself if you're going out into the world, living life and getting exposed to germs and things like that.

So, you know, this would just kind of be offering my own opinion here. But if you're living a life where you are routinely exposing yourself to all kinds of microbes from a young age, because from a young age, your immune system is super flexible and can do all kinds of crazy stuff because kids' bodies are like insanely good at adapting to all kinds of things. If you're exposed to a lot when you're young, and even if it makes you sick a lot when you're young, you wind up building a really strong immune system, and it may just be that vaccinating is not that necessary. Because essentially all you'd be doing in your adult life,

getting a vaccine is, like, at the very best, like giving yourself protection you already have with something that was engineered in a lab, and who knows what else it might be doing to you. And at worst, you're just, like, you might make yourself sick for a couple of days because it's a weakened form of the disease. Like, you know, it might make you feel bad.

I know in the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, lots of people, they got it. And then they got COVID for like two days. And so it was a little bit weird to think like, okay, let's get this shot so that we don't get COVID. And the shot gives you COVID. The logic of that is a little bit strange. Now, of course, people will say, oh, it's a milder case. It's not as severe as it could have been. But again, it's a game of chance. Nobody knows what disease they're going to get. Nobody knows how their body's going to respond. And so to say, I'm going to get this vaccine because it will definitely prevent me from having XYZ illness. is a little bit silly, and it's also a little bit silly to say I should never get a vaccine

because I'm immune to everything in germs are not real. So again, nuance is important. Understanding your own health is important. You know, if you're at risk for, if you have a lot of risk factors for certain kinds of diseases, it might make more sense for you to get a vaccine. If you don't have a lot of risk factors for diseases, your body is probably in good shape and you probably don't have to worry too much about its ability to fight off most things you're going to encounter in the world. So it sounds like once again, the truth is somewhere in the middle of these two things. Like both have not proven that they're 100% accurate, right?

Like there's somewhere in the middle where we can find things. Yes. So, okay, that makes sense. Social media doesn't say that, but who can expect it to? Do you feel like you're ready to give this one a grade, Garrett? I think so. Okay. three, two, one, D minus.

Yeah, F. It's like pretty bad. I don't feel like I understood any of it really. I just kind of, the one plus I felt was the explanation. Like the fact that I learned in the first place that it's germ theory and not germ fact. You know what I mean? That was a good distinction to know. And I'm glad that they didn't tell you.

it was definitely fact. And no facts on in the social mediators. I shouldn't say that. But for me, typically no. Thank you so much to everybody who tuned into our episode of the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 1.1.7 FM this week. I'm Jillian Parks. And I'm Yuriwisbee.

And we'll talk to you next week.