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0:00 that is the most widely prescribed drug in this country and I believe in the US also. But the list of problems acrewing from long-term use is beginning to grow and is serious cancers, dementias. But the other thing is is that once you're on it, it's really difficult to come off it. And that's not all. We use far too many antibiotics and that's coming a serious health issue now because the number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise dramatically. It's quite frightening. So, are there alternatives on this table that I should also consider as a form of medicine? Oh, yes. And most of these ones I'm going to be talking about have a pretty immediate effect. Now, have a bite of this. Wa. For almost 50 years, Dr. Simon Mills has pioneered how we think about natural medicine, earning global recognition as
0:46 one of the most respected and influential herbal practitioners of our time. These things have medicinal properties. So, let's start with dark chocolate. In terms of long-term brain health and cardiovascular health, it's one of the best medicines around. Really? Oh, yes. The next one is garlic. And in some parts of the world, they use garlic instead of penicellin. In fact, there was an old trick where if you had enough garlic, breathe on a petri dish and you could kill various pathogens just by your breath. Wow. And then there's this to reduce your cholesterol levels. This can really help with your eyesight. This is your blood flow, gut health, cardiovascular health. Now, this is one of the ones to watch in terms of long-term brain health. Rosemary, we actually did a clinical trial on this, and all you need to do is press it and sniff. So, you can see why some of this stuff already is powerful.
1:32 Now, we have more to go through. And this is where it gets interesting. There's a lot of people listening who will want to hear this coffee. Oh god, what do I need to know? So, I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show in the trajectory it's on. So, please do double check if you've subscribed and uh thank you so much because a strange way you are you're part of our history and you're on this journey with us and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you Simon Mills. You are a pioneer by all
2:18 accounts in what is called complimentary medicine, but you're also one of the most respected herbal practitioners in the world. You've been doing this for more than 50 years. I've actually never spoken to somebody that has a comprehensive understanding of herbal remedies and herbal medicine. So, I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today. What is the what is the mission you're on and why do you think it's important? I think my main mission is to do what I can to help people get stronger. I sometimes say that, you know, the world is pretty rough out there. I can't do anything about the sea and the waves, but I can help you to build a better boat that can sit better in the water. And I think people relate to that that
3:03 if they were felt a bit stronger in themselves, they would be able to cope better with what life throws at them. I chose plants because people have always used plants as their primary source of medicine. People have always grown up with plants. They've evolved along with plants. And what I aim to do is to put the old wisdoms into some scientific framework and then make it fit with conventional norms of healthcare. You were a board member of the British Herbal Medicine Association. You're the first chair of the Council for Complimentary Alternative Medicine launched in Parliament by former Prime Minister Alec Douglas Hol. You led a major European Commission project on
3:49 herbal medicine involving over 20 centers across Europe. You're the secretary of the European Scientific Cooperative on Phytootherapy. I was not able to say that word which is the which is the polite way of saying herbs. Okay. So, it's phyto plant therapy. Well, I think when people think about herbal medicine and using plants as a form of medicine, they think of tribes and they think of I don't know sort of ancient Chinese traditions. And I think you know the modern westerner thinks of pills. Yes. when they think of medicine. Yes. What What is it that we've lost? Is there like a lost wisdom? Yes. And how did that happen? And what what is it we've lost? When we lived in the countryside, when
4:35 we lived close to nature, that was very much around us. And and in every little community, there'd be someone, usually a woman, who would know their way around the plants and would, you know, help you out when you had a illness and a sickness. I'm not saying that there's a golden age, but when we moved into cities, we lost a lot apart from anything else. We were living on top of each other. We had to drink each other's water. You know, there was a lot of new illnesses, sicknesses, pestilences, and so on that only came in cities. In that world, the herbs couldn't cut it. So, we needed stronger stuff. So, they started using minerals. They started using things that were poisons. And the original physician's job was to be the only guy who could handle medicines that other people would not be
5:20 safe to use. And so you got your training to use these much more powerful medicines. And it was thought that the old plant things were too soft and gentle and so they were generally discarded. And then you developed these medicines into pills because often they were powders anyway. And you know then the pharmaceutical industry came in and branded and and made um proprietary materials from them. And that drifted a long way from just going down to a hedro, going into the garden, going to the kitchen and picking up remedies. A lot of cultures around the world still use plants as the first form of medication for a variety of different sort of illnesses and diseases. Right. They do. Yes. I mean, most do. I mean, if you were Inuit and Northern
6:07 Territories in Canada and so and Alaska, you would probably not have very many plants to choose from, but for most other people, they surrounded by plants. That's their world. I think, you know, cuz I'm what, 32 years old, so I've not really grown up with the wisdom of plants and how they can be used to treat some of the illnesses that I have from a very young age. I'm taking cough syrup and I'm taking paracetamol when I have a headache and all these kinds of pills and medicines, but plants were never a really a part of that conversation. And I guess that makes me think that they don't work or that's what most people would now think. And one of one of the points of this conversation now is to point you to ways in which they can and to show you how you can figure that out within a minute
6:54 or an hour. Most of these ones I'm going to be talking about have a pretty immediate effect. So it, you know, we now think, oh, if you take a herb, it may take months before anything happens. When I see a patient, my usual request to them is, can you call me tomorrow to let me know how it's going because things happen so fast? And if you're up for it, you can do a couple of taste tests and you can see why some of this stuff really is powerful. What is it that that you know from the 50 plus years of work that you've done working with plants as a form of medicine that the average person on the street doesn't know how close we are to being to having uh I I think life is a miracle as I said in that early encounter um and we can
7:44 realize the miracle within us if we just trust it. I've got a few guys to what I call health empowerment. Things that you can do yourself at home just to begin to understand what's going on in here and to nourish it. Uh and the plants are the in my world the one of the most effective ways of supporting that inner miracle that we have uh to nourish our health to empower us. I I sometimes think that you know medicine is extraordinary. I mean we now live with cancer. you used to die with it. Uh almost all the major illnesses of the past have now had treatments for but you know if you've got a chronic condition you still left with yourself and you're maybe not feeling so good in
8:30 yourself. I sometimes think that a lot of medicine is a bit like uh fast food delivery. You know we have a meal brought in because it's convenient but that also desklls us. you know, we we've stopped learning how to cook even. You know, I remember going to New York back in the 80s and surprised to find that so many apartments in New York didn't have kitchens because everyone went out to eat. And I thought, gosh, you're losing all those skills of making food and enjoying it and sitting it down over a over a table. Um I think medicine, you know, we use far too many antibiotics. We use, you know, these um PPI things called azole for our acid reflux, the most widely prescribed drug in this country. And I think USL also mostly
9:15 unnecessary. Uh we use a lot of uh anti-inflammatories just because it's sore without asking why is it sore and why are we suppressing one of our body's main defenses because inflammation is a defense. So these are things that you learn as you get into this world that a lot of what we think are problems are solutions waiting for support because I think most people would think that is medicine and that is a food. That's food. Yes. Well, you're right. Medicine food. Yeah, you're quite right. That's medicine. That's a food. What I'm saying is that there's a spectrum. And we may talk about that raspberry because it's red. And we might talk about the broccoli because it's green
10:02 and there's oranges uh colors there. All of these colors actually have properties that are actually quite valuable properties for our circulatory health, for our gut health, our brain health. Um and when the more the science is looking at it, the more amazing it's looking these things have medicinal properties. So you're saying that this is medicine as well? Yes. Food be thy medicine is what old hypocrates said 2,000 years ago, 2 and a half thousand years ago. Is it the Chinese that are particularly big on herbal medicines? Yes. Almost any other anywhere. I mean there's there's only five countries in the world that are not big on herbal medicines and I'll tell you who they are
10:47 and you can see if you can draw your own conclusions. UK is one, US is the second, Canada is the third, Australia and New Zealand. Now, can you think of something that combi com binds them all together? They're originally white Englishspeaking countries. If you go across to France, the channel here, go to any pharmacy, most of the medicine stocks on the pharmacy are herbal. If you go to some parts of Germany, you have to sit a herbal exam to get your license. And further east in the old Soviet uh block where they couldn't afford the pharmaceutical industry, they had homegrown primarily plant-based medicines much more widely going to Asia. It's the majority by far and doctors and people working with
11:35 plants and acupuncture in China work together without thinking about it. And many doctors use plants in their med as their medicines. Yeah. How different, cuz I've never really spent a significant amount of time in China. How different is the perception of herbal medicines there than it is out on the streets of London? They don't think twice about it. It's what they grow up with. Um they like a lot of people, we would say regretfully, do seem to want to do more things like the west does. Um so they'd adopt more western habits and as soon as you earn a bit of money you tend to adopt more western lifestyles and think that the herbal thing is for your parents and grandparents. So there's still that trend even in Asia um but they start
12:21 from a much broader base of experience. Why why should anyone care? You know I have ibuprofen at home. I have medicine that I can have in the the cupboard. I have, you know, cough syrups if I get sick. If I get the flu, I have some flu pills that I brought from the pharmacy. Why should anyone care about what we're going to talk about today? I suppose the answer is in my practice. So, I see patients three sessions a week. And these are people almost most of them have been around the block. They've had treatments for their conditions sometimes for many years. They're often living with chronic complex conditions and they're sore. They're tired. their energyy's gone. You know, they've been told that we can't just keep taking the
13:07 pills. You know, we've done all the tests, there's nothing else we can do. Time and time again, that's when the cookie crumbles because then you realize the ibuprofen and the quick pills ain't doing it anymore. There's a bigger health need that needs somehow fixing. And that's when they come to me as a practitioner and I give them things that they can see improving their health, their sleep, their eating, their whatever it is that's not their energy levels, whatever it is that's not playing properly. We I see myself as fine-tuning or upping the performance. Uh I'm not when someone comes to me and they say I've got whatever it is, arthritis or skin
13:53 disease or whatever, uh I will politely take all the notes down. But that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in where that came from. What is the misbehavior? What is the poor performance? Uh that explains why all this happened. And often you find they had pneumonia at the age of three or they had glandular fever at the age of 15 or 16 and things took a turn then and you can see the trail and often what I'm doing is going backwards and fixing things that weren't fixed back a long time ago working on digestion particularly because that's where we work uh kidney function uh liver function you know circulation you know up to the brain where we're dealing in that area. Um, so we're
14:40 looking at the performance of the body and it's only when it doesn't behave that you notice the need to doing it. How many patients have you seen in your career, do you think? Thousands of patients, I would say upwards of 10,000 each for an hour or so at a time to start with. So we get deep into the story and then rolling on at any one time I've got 200 running you know I'm actively treating and two couple hundred and what are the range of illnesses or conditions that those patients have had and when you think about the most remarkable or most interesting case studies the most reliable case studies that you have what are the conditions that are at the center of those case studies have you got a medical encyclopedia
15:25 anywhere I'm going I'm going to write down the key ones. No, no. I mean, it's literally I've I don't know if I've seen everything in the medical encyclopedia, but I've seen most things. I mean, literally everything comes in because mostly is chronic anyway when they come and see me. And it can be anything. I mean, about a quarter of my patients are living with cancer. So, we that's one big group. I'm not treating the cancer. I'm helping them to live better with whatever it is they're dealing with. about another at least a third a bit bit more living with chronic inflammatory disease, autoimmune diseases, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, um things that are more complicated than you can shake a stick at. And again, you
16:13 know, we're not dealing with the end result. We're looking at what may be leading up to that and seeing if we can improve underlying functions. But literally anything can come by. Is there particular case studies of patients that you've worked with that stand out to you that you're most proud of or that were Eureka moments in your own sort of journey? Most of my stories are like journeys. So you see little steps and you you're with somebody often for a long time and you just see changes in the way that they um they change over the weeks and months. So you know to say I've got an instant Eureka moment. I' I pulled together a
16:58 few stories just you knowing I was going to come to them and you know just they're a mly mix and in fact I made notes because it was sometimes better to remind myself of the sort of things I did because each of these patients will walk out with five or six or eight different plants and the reason I put them together is because they have a a unique story. Um, so probably the one with the most complex one is someone, all the names are changed by the way, someone called Heather who's 65 and she had a really severe complex condition called irrima multififor which is a complex skin disease that's really distressing, very upsetting. What we know about it is is that it's
17:44 linked possibly to other infections. Um, so we actually spotted myopplasma pneumonia is likely implicated. She had previously had a lot of lung damage um in her youth. She had early pneumonia and she was diagnosed with a chronic obstructive pulmonary thing, bronchiacasis as it happened. Then she got CO badly and most of her trouble started after that. She also had vitamin B12 deficiency, pericious anemia we call it, which is a autoimmune problem. The gut lining stops the vitamin B12 being absorbed. Those were in her background story. the lungs because it was the earliest and probably the main factor were first my focus and the second was what was
18:30 lining the stomach because most inflammatory problems start down here. So I ended up giving her something that was a combination of remedies for the gut lining and for the lungs and almost within a week or so the itching of the her skin subsided. I just happen to think that was the reason I remember it because it's it's unusual to get such quick results in such a complex condition. But it's a reminder that if you can find the right button, then quite big things can happen. I was lucky to find the right button. And progressively over the ensuing few months, the skin problem
19:16 disappeared to the extent that she was my dream patient. She said, "I don't need your herbs anymore. That to me is my biggest reward that they can move on. They don't need help anymore. It sticks in your mind because it was a hugely demanding condition that got better without and it had been going for a long time. It had been going three or four years by the time she saw me. Um, and it resolved very quickly with what seemed to be totally irrelevant treatments. But they there was a rationale for them. Karen 37 panic attacks, major anxiety problems. Heaven knows there's a lot of that about
20:03 uh it turns out that um and when she she was hospitalized when she was 20 with jaundice which is a liver liver problem. All the processing all the detox processes are in the liver. Uh it's the gateway from the digestion. It handles emotions. It handles the immune system. It It's an amazing organ. It's self-correcting, by the way. So, it fixes itself very quickly if you give it the right nudge. She had jaundice. So, immediately a little bell goes off because and at a age when that could mean long-term liver damage, hepatitis. Uh she's ended up with very little appetite. uh she feels full easily, gains weight easily and often feeling nauseous which is definitely a sign of
20:50 liver distress still menstrual cycles very erratic. She had early COVID again another big hammer hammer blow and this that the CO was before her main symptoms of panic attacks set in. Uh so I use that as an example of the way in which what goes on up here in the brain is linked with what goes on lower down in the gut. You know interesting point when we were living in caves the best place to be was in the cave cuz outside was dangerous. The only thing that got you out hunger. And when we look at the way in which the cells are
21:36 the the machinery inside the cell, we find that the mechanisms managing anxiety are the same as the system managing appetites and and food processing. So the idea of linking anxiety with metabolism is basic. This was an ex exact answer. So the mix of herbs that I gave her had nothing for the anxiety at all. It was all to do uh with metabolism. And so the included milk thistle, barbar, uh an oriental herb called bup plurum, artich choke leaf and an Indian remedy called gynema which is called sugar destroyer which which reduces your uh hank hankering for sweet. First goal was to manage her sugar
22:22 cravings because that seemed to be a key part of what she was saying. uh and to improve her liver functions. This was very quick and she became more settled over several weeks and months. Then the next thing that happened was her menstrual cycles became clearly the where the trouble was and she was most likely to be distressed around the period. So we shifted to include women's remedies which were then included in the mix to help manage the the hormonal e and flow around the menstrual cycle. and um 3 months, which is the normal time for cycles to begin to turn, her cycles began to steady and so did the rest of her symptoms. Nothing to do with anxiety, just dealing
23:07 with these core functions. So, there's a couple of examples of, you know, how we approach things differently. You know, if Karen had gone to most other practitioners, she would have had something for her nerves. I do really want to talk about you use the term wi women's herbs. Women's Yeah, women's herbs. I do want to talk about that and I I do also want to talk about fertility and the menstrual cycle and things like PCOS because I'm super interested in that which might surprise some people. But obviously there's women in my life that struggle with those things. So I do want to get on to that. I think a second ago you pointed at the stomach when you said that we treat down here. Yes. Is that really the place to start to understand? Well, it's place to start plants cuz that's where you that's where they go. So tell me why what do I need to know
23:53 about this region the stomach the gut? Wow. In order to have a sort of foundational knowledge so that we can then start talking about ibuprofen painkillers fevers all these kinds of things. Well very simply we think our intelligence is up here. You know we got a brain. Yeah. As soon as you swallow something until it comes out the other end. We have no control over what goes on down there. decisions are being made as the food traverses down the tube and it's a long tube. It's about 20 feet of small intestine that has to go around and then like another 2 or 3 ft of large intestine. It used to take about 18 hours to go through and we now because we sit and drew it take longer. But all
24:39 that time intelligent decisions are being made by the digestive system. what to do with this, what to do with that. And the lining of the gut is full of sensors, receptors we call them, that are picking up chemical cues and responding. So, as the food changes, this is digested. As the bile from the liver comes in, it's picking off these signaling devices and switching on a whole series of metabolic hormonal all sorts of other functions. All controlled major choreography going on here, you know, without us even knowing about it. And then just when you thought this was wonderful, you had something called the
25:24 microbiome. Now when I was at school and it was a long time ago when I was doing medical sciences, oh yeah, there was there's the bowel flora and they help with digestion, vitamin K, one or two other things, you know, they might be quite useful. Now the microbiome runs the show and it's it's huge. You know, we thought we knew what the kidney did. We thought we knew what the heart did. We thought we knew what the brain did. We know they only do it because they work with the microbiome. It's it's running a show. And the microbiome is the the billions of bugs in our gut. You've got more of those little critters than we have of our own cells. So much more. So they are huge. They got about 100 times as much genetic capacity as we do. We've got more bugs in our gut than
26:10 cells. Yes. So we're basically we're we're walking gut bags. Yes. We're walking bacteria. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's more bacteria than there are us. I mean this is it's a bit of a gobsmacking thought and you know obviously people want no no I mean the bugs will keep them there one of the big issues of the day are antibiotics which we know are becoming a serious health issue now you know the world health organization and others say very seriously that antibiotic resistance you know antimicrobial resistance as they call it is the biggest threat we have soon going into a hospital and getting an operation will be a real risk Because hospital-b born infections are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. You know, we we're piling them in to us,
26:58 but also to the animals that we grow. Uh a lot of them are full of antibiotics. And that means that the diversity of the microbiome is is being reduced. We've losing we call biodiversity. There's a biodiversity issue in here. But even with the diminished um flora that we have, they still pretty much run the show. And a lot of the fruits and vegetables, particularly the ones with colors in them, actually feed those guys down there and help them to perform better. And one good reason to, as we say, eat the rainbow, just get those colors in. But yes, I mean, as you can see, if I start talking about the gut, I'm not going to stop for the next month.
27:45 On that point of antibiotics, they the mechanism is that they kind of kill bacteria, right? So they're killing good bacteria as well in the process. Often they have different range depending on the antibiotic, but yes, they will be cutting a sway through your gut flora for sure, some more than others. I mean the point about antibiotics and we we did a big project with this ironically just before co uh when I was working with pucker that uh tea people we put a campaign together to find natural approaches to managing antibiotics or reduce the use of them. Antibiotics are useless for anything viral. They don't do anything for a virus. But unfortunately people with viral problems will still be given antibiotics mainly by a harassed doctor
28:33 who just you know because they say give me something doc you know for viruses mostly you just have to wait for the body to get rid of it but giving an antibiotic is actually of no use at all. Don't take my word for it. Everyone knows this and you get NHS you know in this country um posters saying antibiotics are no good for viruses. Please don't ask your doctor for them. So for many of these things, coals and respiratory problems for example, there are many spices, I mean some of the things on that plate there are particularly good for coals and viruses up here. And so we put that all together in the package and said we can encourage people not to ask the doc for an antibiotic and use some of these home easy free or sometimes uh treatments um
29:21 to um uh to to uh use instead of the antibiotics. When you say antibiotics are the most urgent health issue of the moment. Um, I want to fully understand why you think it's so so urgent because we're going to develop a resistance which means that we're more susceptible to disease. It's already happening and it's not me that's saying this is these are the guys who look after our health care for us like the double the World Health Organization who are really getting close to panic about this issue uh because already the number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise. dramatically. And new antibiotics, unfortunately,
30:09 there's less financial incentive to develop them because they're often handed out free by in various countries. So, you don't get the margins back and uh the the uh pipeline of new antibiotics is not good. Uh so, all you need to do is check on the World Health Organization to get the chapter and verse on that. It's it it's it's actually quite frightening. I'm on the World Health Organization site now and um I found a definition of antibiotic resistance. It's when bacteria stops responding to antibiotics and is mainly caused by overusing or misusing antibiotics. In 2022, US doctors gave out about 236 million anti [ __ ] it. What? US doctors gave out 236 million
30:56 antibiotic prescriptions. roughly seven prescriptions for every 10 people. Studies show that at least roughly 30% of antibiotic prescriptions in the US aren't needed, especially in places like doctor's offices and emergency rooms. In 2020, about 30 million antibiotic prescriptions were given out in the UK. Children aged 0 to 14 made up 3.6 million of those. And in 2023, the World Health Organization declared antibiotic resistance one of the top global health threats and estimated that it is responsible for 1.27 million global deaths in 2019 and and contributed to almost 5 million deaths. That was 2019. I can tell you uh that the figures have risen dramatically since then.
31:44 So that's what people think you know and just on a personal basis you know you go and you need an operation and you know that that's going to involve exposure to hospital infections which is one of the most serious of the ones in the average hospital you know it's there some of the most lethal ones there um increasingly that is going to be a risk that you get something that you can't treat. You're not saying don't take antibiotics. No, I'm saying take them carefully. Um, use them when you need them and not otherwise. And I'm again, it's not me saying this is most responsible doctors would wish that their patients wouldn't keep asking for them.
32:31 H so there's sort of three things that I've I've been able to ascertain as risks of misuse or overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics which is the impact on the gut microbiome. Um the you're contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance and those are the main things I guess even with the diseases you get you'll be slower to heal because you're less if you've got that resistance. That is one of the things that we do see particularly those who are long-term ill you know that they lose some of the healing capacity and that's so much of the work I do is to aim to put some of that right and there's links to colaractyl cancers yeah according well that's because we're talking about
33:16 the microbiome you see so those are the cancers in the lower gut and we know that the microbiome is a major factor in how well the gut is so things like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and cancer of the bowel very closely linked to the state of the microbiome. Okay. So, are there alternatives on this table or in the world of plants to antibiotics that I should maybe also consider um instead of just jumping straight to antibiotics for everything that I experience? Yes, if you got a serious gut or other infection, you may need the antibiotics. So, let's put that straight away. But if you've got a cold, flu, virus, repres a viral problem, particularly the airways,
34:05 you a antibiotics will have no use at all and b as we just said, they just add to the risk of more because every time you take an antibiotic, you're growing a small population of that of of the species of bacteria that's affected who are resistant to that. It's natural selection, you know. So you have a thousand little bacteria, that's a small amount by their terms, and you kill 90 999 of them. The one that survives will then become two in 20 minutes and four in 40 minutes and suddenly become a new population. And you know, I I I duck that bullet. And so that group of bacteria will already be resistant. So we're creating resistance every time we
34:51 use an antibiotic. So try let's try then doing something else shall we? So let's say you've got a cold. You're feeling the cold. It's got a good name by the way. So cold is one of the things you feel when you've got a cold. And that's interesting because in former times we didn't have tests. We didn't have laboratories. We didn't have paramedics. We didn't have people poking things in you. All we could know is what it felt like. And when you've got a cold, you often feel cold and you feel chills and you want to wrap up and you want hot water or you want to have a hot bath. All that in the old language meant that you were cold and what you needed to do was to heat up. Now you take
35:37 this fella. This is ginger. It's grown widely around the world. in its original Asian form. It was made extinct around the time of the Romans. So popular was it and ever since all the ginger sense of this species uh has got going from rootstock because it no longer seeds itself. So this has been the most valuable natural commodity ever in its dried form worth more than its weight in gold. And you know the reason why all those Europeans ended up in Asia running India and South the Dutch and the Indonesia and so on is because that's where these things came from. That's where the spices came from. And so we decided you know like good capitalists to go and u control the
36:24 business. So ginger became very popular over here because we don't have nothing like it over here. The nearest thing we got is horseradish which I promise you is no substitute for this. So, how do we use this? We got a knob of ginger here about the size of your thumb. That's about a good dose. You grate it, fresh ginger into a a a mug. Can you do that for me? We got a great I've got a grater for you. So, um we've got here a piece of ginger the as I say about the size of your thumb. The thumb's a good measure because it's your measure. So, if you're a small person, you'll have a small thumb, but I'm a bigger person. So, I'm going to use And you literally, it's making a bit of a mess here, but you're
37:11 doing this at home, you don't mind a bit of mess. So, you're literally grating grace nicely, doesn't it? Into a mug. And let's say that was the whole thumb. I don't want to take up too much time on this. And then the one thing that works brilliantly with ginger is cinnamon. Now, this is cinnamon you buy in any shop. It comes in different forms. There's one from China called Cassia, which looks like one big curled bark. Yeah. If you look at this one, you'll see that it's tightly wrapped with lots of little curl, lots of little filaments in it. That's the one you go for. It's got it's more aromatic. And you either grate that with, if you got a spice mill, or you take a teaspoon of it. Um, let's say
38:01 that's a teaspoon full. And you put that in your mug. So that's ginger and cinnamon. Ginger and cinnamon. That's it. Then you add your hot water that there. You're going for real one, right? Going for the real one. Good on you. Uh, at this point, a civ is useful. Why? What for? cuz it's going to be it's full of oh bits bits and then let's say this is this is a nice Japanese green tea mug but let's say this is your mug and we'll pour a little bit in there. You see all the stuff that you
38:47 leave behind. Oh yeah. Okay. And if you don't mind sharing a mug. So, what's in here? This is just ginger and cinnamon. Just ginger and cinnamon. It's It's fairly weak. Oh, it is nice, though. It's nice, isn't it? It is nice. Now, can you feel it warming already? Yes. Straight away. It's really nice. Yeah. Now you see what what's happening there is that you I mean ginger is an is an example of a group of remedies which includes turmeric by the way and that's other root the other root there that's turmeric um which normally you see in a yellow powder we might talk about that later and black pepper and chilies we got a
39:35 chili here which when you take them you think you're burning your mouth don't The interesting thing is that there's no burning. You can actually have full madras level uh chili and no harm will be done to your lining because there's no burning going on. What you're doing is you're stimulating the pain fibers. So you got pain fibers all the way through the lining of the mouth. When you take a hot thing like ginger, it's stimulating the pain fibers and immediately there's a what we call a reflex response which opens up the blood
40:20 vessels. It's called hyperemia. More blood and the vessels lining these mucosa, the ones that you just swallowed and including a little bit up in the nasal passages are opening up. the mucus cells producing mucus will loosen up and you get more runny mucus which is helping to flush through the uh the grot on the mucosa and the main thing you feel is the warmth. Mhm. And if you're dealing with something down here in the lungs, you'll actually start bringing up more gunk up the airways. It's there's a natural escalator that we use to that the body uses to get stuff out of the lungs that stimulated And the mixture of cinnamon
41:05 and ginger was created I think in heaven. I mean I think that it's such a natural compliment and anybody can do that. And the point about it is that it's warming and in the old days that was the key thing. You would didn't matter if you had a headache or a joint pain or a menstrual cramp. If you wanted to put a hot water bottle on it or heat it up, then that was a cold problem and putting a heating medicine would begin to make the difference. So, you can use the same thing if you have a headache and you want to put a hot pack on it. If you got a menstrual cramp and you want to put a hot water bottle on it, if you got a joint pain and you want to put a a heating
41:52 linament on it, you can use the same thing. ginger just because it's heating and that's simple old medicine. So, so when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold then cinnamon and ginger are a good I think my well only if it responds to heat. Now, if you want to put an ice pack on, I mean the old doctors when someone came with a migraine would say, "Tell me, would you prefer a hot packer or an ice pack for your migraine?" And migraine sufferers generally split 7030 preferring heat to 70, but a third of people with migraines actually want a cold pack. You don't use ginger for that. You use cooling remedies, which we
42:38 might come on to later. Okay. My girlfriend, she drinks ginger tea all the time, almost every day. Yeah, she likes the heat. She likes the heat. Yeah, she she drinks it before bed as well. Can help with sleep if that's the way it goes. I mean, everyone people are different and there are some people who can't take ginger at all because their stomach objects um or because it, you know, literally heats them up too much. They get stimulated by it. Um, but that's where the individuality comes in. Okay. So, any any condition where I might be looking for heat, ginger and cinnamon, the first place to go. First place to go. Yeah, you could, if you wanted to be Texmex, you can take the chilies. Um,
43:23 you know, well, you know, that's a we think of them as a much more extreme version of the heating. and you know remind ourselves it was only when the Europeans discovered Americas that chilies became used over here. You know, can you imagine an Italian meal without, you know, without tomatoes and chilies? But in the old days there were none of those because they all came from America. Um but yeah, chilies were the American equivalent of ginger used for the same purpose. So if someone comes to you and they say, "Simon, when shall I use chilies as a form of medication?" What what would you say? First of all, I don't know yet.
44:09 And you know, if I'm dealing with someone at a distance, you know, online or on the phone or something, and they say, you know, what should I try? I said, the first thing to do is you figure it out. You can start with herbal teas. You are, are you? I'm going to drop it into the I'm going to drop it into here. Is that a bad idea? Yeah. Yeah. No, go for it. But you'll you'll you should notice that's should be quite a hot one. Uh I will ask suggest that they start with herbal teas because herbal teas are a very low dose. Mhm. But they'll allow you to figure out what suits you. And you can divide, as I hinting at earlier, old medicines were often divided into those that were more warming, that we would now call stimulating circulation, and more
44:54 cooling, which we would now translate as stimulating digestion. And depending on which of those you prefer would really give me a clue. So if you were looking at warming remedies, it could be ginger tea, it could be fennel tea, you know, that's a warming remedy. Or it could be cinnamon or um any of the spices. Cardamon is one of my favorites, by the way. Um this is I use cardamon. This is the cardamon pods inside a little black seeds. Absolutely lovely taste. Do you know him? Do you know cardamon? Have you tried it? Not really. No. Oh, have a bite of that. Just bite the seed. Yeah, just bite into it. You don't just just get a hint of the taste. In many parts of the Middle East, cardamon is one of the main flavors.
45:42 Things like coffee and so on. Reminds me of um Oh, I was going to say Indian food that I've had. Yes. Used a lot in India. And in China, it's a convolescent tonic. So, they use it when people building up their digestion after being ill for a long time. They will often use cardamon. It's one of my favorite remedies for that. when people really run low, their digestion isn't functioning. It was appeared in one or two of these stories I've got here because I prefer that to most of the other spices when I need warming, as I said before, but also sustaining and nourishing. So, you ask them, do you prefer teas that are warming or would you like something more cooling? You know, one of
46:28 the most cooling remedies that people know about is this, which is mint. That's spearmint. The best one is peppermint. It's got a lovely smell, hasn't it? Yeah. That has always been thought of as cooling. And it's a simple test. Would you prefer ginger or peppermint tea? And already you're beginning to narrow things down a bit. Mhm. The main cooling remedies throughout history from you know the very beginning and in every part of the world you'll find them saying exactly the same thing. The main cooling remedies so-called are the bitters and they taste really bitter.
47:14 When you say cooling you mean I feel hot so I want something to cool me down. That's right. And there's certain conditions where I will feel I'll feel hot. Fever. fever fever and they were often used to fever manage fever and u what h you remember when we were young we were told if you've had a big meal don't go swimming you weren't told that I can't swim so there you go if that was one of the things that you know some of us in my generation at least were always remembered we were told you know if you got a big meal it's not a good idea to go swim because you the blood's moving into the digestion and you won't get nearly as much as you want where you need it in the limbs. Uh and that's you know it is true when you are digesting a
48:01 lot of blood investment shall we call it is going into the digestive system because there's a lot of work needed to break down this food turn it into something useful it is an investment you put a lot in get much more out but what it means is is that um uh digestion is all about I'm just being a bit loose here with the language but it's not about language it's like bringing blood into the core when you got a fever, the blood's all charging around and your body temperature is going up, which is great because fever actually is a defense measure. You know, when our body temperature rises by a couple of degrees, are the white blood cells, the ones that are doing the leg work two or three times as active. So, fever is what
48:49 the body uses when it needs to bring out the big guys, bring out the fight. There's a slight design problem. It was almost as though you know the creator put a you know a purposeful fault in the system because a lot of fever comes from the gut you know they get gut infections you know that's one of the main places and at that moment all the blood's going out here and you want more of it going in more digestion if you like. So when you take a bitter, when you're taking a bitter, you're actually triggering taste buds up here. A bitter a bitter something that tastes bitter. Is are there any plants that are bitter? Yeah, a bitter plants are very common and were highly valued in the old world.
49:35 Um, in our times, probably the most bitter plant that people used in European terms was something called wormwood. Now you may not be familiar with that word but the French for wormwood is vermouth and you think of the use of a drink before a meal. The idea was it was they used to call it an apperitif something that stimulated your appetite. So they would use bitters to improve your appetite and a low level of wormwood would be one of them. Dandelion and boerdo of two other bitters which we now have as a soft drink you know particularly in America and we know that bitters do switch on the appetite so we sometimes use them
50:21 when appetite is poor and you know there's all sorts of reasons why you got a low appetite but bitters can really help particular if you're recovering from an illness um they can help with um getting the dig digestion juices flowing and the appetite up because they bring blood to the digestive system. Well, they do all sorts of things actually. When you switch on these receptors in the mouth, these taste buds, they hardwired and they produce hormones down here in the stomach that switch on all sorts of things and effectively increase digestive activity which involves more blood coming into the area. So, yes, let's imagine you're living in some part of, you know, the the desert area in the Middle East. you know, you're eating a sheep or something that hasn't seen a
51:07 refrigerator and it's a bit dodgy, you know, and you think after a meal, you turn to something easily available in that part of the world. It's a plant called cafe arabica, we call it coffee. You ground the coffee into a sludge at the bottom, pour a bit of hot water, and drink that straight. That's a bitter. So if you ever had an espresso without sugar, that's a bitter. Okay? And that was used as a digestive. In other words, after you're eating, it would help cope with some pretty rough food. So bitters were always seen to be good for your digestion and appetite. And in fever, that actually meant lowering your body temperature. And
51:53 that's we can see that happening. you know it it means that you some of the anger out here just gets sublanimated into digestion. So that was where the bitters got their cooling reputation. And we can now laugh at this is all medieval nonsense. But the point that I keep coming back to when I'm seeing patients, I start with that blank sheet of paper is because the only test of what these do to you is to take it. And as you notice with your ginger and cinnamon, you don't need long. You've got it there straight up. And you know if I give a bitter to somebody uh and you know someone is really bitter they will know within an hour or so what effect it's having.
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53:26 shipping, and even your returns. So, if you're ready to sell, sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com/bartlet. That's shopify.com/bartlet. $1 a month. No way. On this point of antibiotics, um I've heard you talk about vitamin D, vitamin C, and zinc as a potential alternative to jumping straight from not not straight alternative, but in improving your natural resistance particularly to viruses and such like. Okay. Um then there is evidence for both vitamin D and vitamin C but also zinc as backups in ter in sub form supplement form uh that do seem to add to your
54:12 resilience in the face of infections. I'm quite concerned because you know I'm a I've got dark skin and uh in the weather that we live in here in the UK when I am in the UK I worry that I won't get enough vitamin D. Are these quote unquote supplements important do you think? What are the supplements that you think are imperative? None. Not for mo for everybody, but there are certain situations. I think vitamin D is a good one. And it's not just people with dark skin that have a vitamin D deficiency is pretty widespread in in darker countries if we can call our weather and that um we know where there's not enough sun. uh vitamin D deficiency is quite widespread and increasingly doctors do suggest you have
54:57 vitamin D supplementation through the winter particularly even just having a 15-minute outdoors with the sun will give you a fairly hefty amount. Do you supplement? Not myself. No, I don't. I I don't haven't spotted a need. Uh but that doesn't mean that I don't recommend supplements to people. Well, there is a need. and garlic. We've got garlic there that has a antibiotic role. Well, this is yeah garlic uh what used to be called Russian penicellin and when after penicellin was invented they because some parts of the world they use garlic instead of penicellin which was hard to come by originally and it was used in places
55:43 like the first world war to avoid some of the French foot and other problems that soldiers would get in those lousy conditions. Garlic, when talking raw now, is a very powerful prebiotic. In other words, it helps the gut flora, the good guys down here in the microbiome. And there's evidence to show a lot of these other ones do as well, but garlic is particularly strong. And uh when I'm dealing with a disrupted gut flora, a microbiome, I will sometimes refer to raw garlic as a treatment. But you need to do it with a little care because you know you don't want to lose too many friends. Why what's wrong with g is it
56:31 is the aroma you give out afterwards. So you know your your friends will be very polite but they'll rather wish you hadn't. Um and some people find that it does upset you know when they swallow. But I have a little trick which I call the garlic intensive which is when everything is down the gut is in the state you maybe got a lung infection or whatever and there's a lot of need for if you like an antibiotic type of treatment raw garlic what you do is and for all sorts of reasons the Friday evening is the best time to do this because you got the weekend ahead of you. You take one of those cloves. It will first of all on that day you
57:18 haven't eaten so much. So you don't have so much on the way. Then you take one of these cloves, you peel it, chop it up small pieces and swallow it with water. You don't chew it. Just chop it up and swallow with a little bit of water and wait for half an hour just to make sure that that's okay. Your stomach's okay to go ahead. If it is, take another clove, chop it up, swallow it. Another half hour later, take another clove. And if you start at 6:00, by 10:00 in the evening, you've got eight cloves inside you. Eight. And And what's that going to do? Well, that's the point. You You usually go to bed, and I would suggest you go to bed alone at this point because you're not very friendly at this point because
58:04 you're oozing garlic. The aroma of garlic is coming out of all your pores. Incidentally, it's also coming out of your lungs. And you know, there was an old trick where you used to be able to, if you had enough garlic, breathe on a petri dish in a laboratory with various pathogens and you could kill them just with your breath. You know, it's the oil of garlic is a powerful antiseptic. But what it's doing in the lower digestion is it seems the good guys down there quite like it, but the bad guys, you know, in the old days we had garlic was, you know, against the devil and it looks as though the bad guys down there don't like garlic. So just doing that over a weekend can make a big difference to your good the good guys in the
58:52 microbiome. And if you got a low-level gut or lung infection, that can be really helpful. But that's, you know, something you can do at home, but you don't want to do that too often. In fact, I would suggest that one garlic intensive is probably enough for most people. So, prebiotic effects. It has an anti- microbial properties um which are is it good for pain? Called it Russian penicellin. Is it? Yeah. Well, it depends where the pain's coming from. Um, but if your pain is a cough or a chest infection, yes, particularly particularly good for chest infections. Some people do use it for arthritic problems. Uh, it will depend on what's causing the arthritis. I, you know, and I, it's very hard for me to say
59:37 one of these things will do it for everybody. It won't. It will do for in certain situations. And what we learn when we're dealing with plants is that you're the you're the boss. You find out for yourself. All people like me do is say, "Well, give this a try. This is worth trying. This is valuable. Why don't you give it a go?" How do you think about chronic pain? There's so many people living with a variety of different types of chronic pain. It affects 51.6 million people, I believe, just in the US alone. And the most common forms of chronic pain are conditions such as arthritis or migraines or lower back pain or other types of nerve damage. Roughly 75 to 85% of Americans will experience some form of back pain during their lives. When I think about this big array of plants
1:00:24 that are in front of me and other plants, what is what is the first place to go in your mind if you're dealing with chronic pain? It depends again where it is. But let's take joints and back. Um you know where you've got a joint that's causing and it's because it's inflamed. Yeah. So when you have inflammation, you add itis to the name of the plant. So this is arthritis because it's the inflammation of the the joint. Um you you have cyitis which is the bladder. You have bronchitis if it's the lungs, gastritis if it's the stomach. So itis tells us there's an inflammation and mostly with arthritis is an inflammation. And briefly, it's because there's junk being dumped on the joint. The joints
1:01:13 have got very poor circulation by design because, you know, this surfaces being pressed against each other. And so the tissue in the joint is cartilage, gristle in in if you're eating it. Um, which is designed to survive with very poor circulation because you know when you've got two things pressing in, there's not much room for blood than there. So if there is metabolic waste, let's call it junk in the system, it's more likely to come out in these places where there's poor circulation. Sometimes things is a bit like a U bend under a basin. You know, if there's any stuff in the sink, it's going to come deposit there. So I think of joints as a bit like a U bend. So the first thing that people did with
1:01:59 a joint pain and inflammation of the joint was to help to clean the joint, bring more blood into the area. And that's what the inflammation is doing. It's hurts like Billy Ho. But what it's doing is bringing more blood in by brute force to do what I was just saying. But if you were to put on a mustard plaster or a Cayenne plaster, a Cayenne pepper plaster which you simply put on on the X outside. Mhm. And you can buy these inarmacies and so on. It's called capsicum. Okay. So capsent pig button. Um it's a standard prescription dressing for a pain. What it does is it brings the blood in directly
1:02:46 and that means the inflammation doesn't have to do it and the inflammation is sore. What you're doing isn't. So by definition you're reducing the pain level. Mhm. That's an example of using plants in a creative way which people always did. They they used to do that back in the day. Oh yes. Yeah. I mean, if you go to North America, the native populations would regularly use Cayenne as their salve for bad joints. In Europe, it was mostly mustard. Um, we're talking the yellow mustard, the one that's strong, used as a plaster over a joint. And if you've got arthritis in your fingers, and this is something anyone can do with, you know, suffering the pain here, use a mustard bath. put your fingers into a
1:03:34 dilute warm solution of mustard and it's amazing how quickly they ease up or you could put a plaster on the hip or whatever. Um people always did this. Have you seen this work in your practice? Oh yes. And I often recommend it to patients and they keep reporting back. It's really makes a difference. I think I worry about lower back pain because I spend so long sitting down and I've got low back pain too. And I didn't use herbs very much for that. What did you do? Well, it was a long story, but there was a very good uh West African combo called OCBSA, which I saw back in the day when I had really bad back and I got the music got so into me that I loosened up and began to jive and
1:04:22 dance around and realize that my back had gone and it stayed gone for decades. It's just unlocked a knot. So, that wasn't any herb. That wasn't any plant. Dancing. dancing. I mean, letting the music get into you. What's the difference? Well, you know, when you feel the music running through you, you know, you're just moving in with the beat, you know, that loosens up a lot of knots. You know, I don't just do plants. I, you know, I talk about breathing. I talk about exercises that you can do for yourself. And uh sometimes when you got a joint pain, it's all about it's locked and you can find ways of loosening that joint.
1:05:09 Ibuprofen. Yes, people reach for this all the time. I mean, I was looking at some of the search trend data for ibuprofen and it is absolutely exploding. Yes. Um that's the the search graph ibuprofen. Yeah. Um it is but is one of the most widely used drugs in this country. M um it's obviously because it works and it's based on um a plant substance called salic salicylic acid um which gave us aspirin and we still use the basic molecule to create the what we call nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or nsaides and ibuprofen is one of the most widely used of those and basically they cut the
1:05:56 inflammatory process just cut it and so the inflammation just diminishes which is good right well if it gets rid of the pain it is but there's a always a follow up question why was that inflammation necessary because inflammation is a defense it's one of my most powerful defenses we have in the body and whenever someone is saying I'm on I need ibuprofen My next question is what can we do to reduce the need for the inflammation? So when I was talking about the arthritis I was saying this junk shall we say being dumped on the joint can we help to relieve that? Can we go upstream and reduce some of the
1:06:43 metabolic strain? You know people eat sometimes the wrong food and sometimes increases arthritis. Uh you can improve your arthritis by have switching to more plants very often. Um but there are other things that we can give that seem to help reduce some of those pressures. But the pain might be somewhere else. It might be linked to a full-blown disease, you know, and in that case, you know, using anti-inflammatories is the only thing you can do. But if there is a way in which we can help reduce the need for that inflammation in the first place, I would much prefer to do that than just suppress a natural defense. We we tend to think of inflammation as the enemy. We do. And I think we're wrong. We think of it as the disease itself.
1:07:30 We are wrong. It's the consequence of a problem. And it's inflammation itself is a healthy response. It's when we bring out, you know, I sometimes use military language here. And there's a bunch of white blood cells that I liken to Marines. You know, these these are guys who when they're working well, they just go in and do the job. They don't sort of figure it out. They don't ask questions. They just go and do the job. We got a whole bunch of white blood cells that are bit like that. They just we call neutrfils. There's various others of that group and they just go in and whack them. Inflammation is bringing those guys out faster and harder. So, we're bringing in more of the marines if you like to finish the job. What's wrong with that?
1:08:17 You know, that's what we want to do. It happens to be sore. Then if they don't do the job and the junk or the problem keeps piling in, then the marines become the problem and then we use the ibuprofen to shut them up. But as I said, there's always a question, you know, why are we what's what's the consequence of stopping this internal cleansing process that uh is so important. So inflammation is not the enemy. Inflammation is the defense measure that can sometimes overstay its welcome. I had an injury in my ankle a couple of couple of months back because I I pulled some some of the ligaments down there and my ankle was swelled up
1:09:03 and I was getting conflicting information from people about the inflammation because I had this big football game coming up this for this charity match called soccerate at Old Trafford and I had one of my physios telling me to apply the ice thing and take anti-inflammatories and I had another one telling me something else about the inflammation that actually I didn't want to combat the inflammation because it was doing its job and so I
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