Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: I tell them at TAPS, who else would it be?
Speaker 2: Welcome to you? Project? Doctor Mark Cohen is back for
Speaker 2: that BT and I third fourth. Do you know how
Speaker 2: many times you've been here?
Speaker 1: Doc?
Speaker 2: So few?
Speaker 1: Therefore, Yeah, fun.
Speaker 2: How's life?
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. I've been bouncing around the world and
Speaker 1: doing good things since I've retired. I've never been busier.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I've built in his heelands last week, I
Speaker 1: mean Arizona next week. I me in Melbourne this week.
Speaker 1: So what's this stuff?
Speaker 2: What's the stuff that you're doing, what's got your attention
Speaker 2: and what's got you excited?
Speaker 1: What I'm really excited about is I'm channeling or rediscovering
Speaker 1: medical practices that were really common a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So a thousand years ago there was in the height
Speaker 1: of the Persian Empire, there was a guy called Avisena
Speaker 1: who wrote that he wrote a textbook that they saved
Speaker 1: the most read textbook of all time for the canon
Speaker 1: of medicine. And in those times in Persia, he was
Speaker 1: doing contrast basing, so he was doing her mum thirsteen
Speaker 1: rooms and saunas and cold plunge, and he was combining
Speaker 1: that with oxymals and oxymals. Oxymel means acid honey, where
Speaker 1: you mix vinig with honey, and that was the basis
Speaker 1: of medicine in ancient Persia. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: basi of medicine. Hippocrates time and hypocative says that food
Speaker 1: be thy medicine and medicine bee thy food well, viegar
Speaker 1: and foods. They're both medicines and you can mix them together.
Speaker 1: And in ancient Persia a thousand years ago, they had
Speaker 1: twelve hundred recipes for these oxymals. It was like that
Speaker 1: was the form of medicine you took. And I've just
Speaker 1: sort of rediscovered this. So I've got a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm working with vinegar and honey and I'm making oxymals,
Speaker 1: and I'm also doing a lot with bathing on the
Speaker 1: medical director of the Poeninsula Hot Springs Group and I'm
Speaker 1: the shareholder of the hot spring in New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: I'm off to Arizona next week on a cold plunge
Speaker 1: research workshop with a small group of cold plunge researchers
Speaker 1: were all talking about ice bathing. So I'm really big
Speaker 1: into the sauna and the ice bath world now, and
Speaker 1: I've been big in the hebble medicine, got to write
Speaker 1: textbooks on heavy medicine. And I've been a doctor for
Speaker 1: thirty years in that space, and now it's all coming
Speaker 1: in together, and I'll just only recently realized this. This
Speaker 1: was down a thousand years ago. Yeah, I call it.
Speaker 1: I call it ancient future medicine because it stays. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's old, but it's the future.
Speaker 2: Did you say ancient future medicine?
Speaker 1: Correct putting?
Speaker 2: I think that's the title of my show. Thank you Now,
Speaker 2: I don't have to think about that at the end.
Speaker 2: How much stuff, doc, do you think that we have
Speaker 2: unlearned or just forgotten? You know, it's like you're saying
Speaker 2: a thousand years ago in Persia blah blah blah before
Speaker 2: that Hipiocrates, and like, I wonder how much genius the
Speaker 2: world has forgotten about.
Speaker 1: It's pretty clear that's the case. And I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people talk about you know, these ancient mega
Speaker 1: liths and you know go blecktly Tepe and you know
Speaker 1: the Pyramids, and there's all the technology that we don't
Speaker 1: understand how people did. But with in terms of medicine,
Speaker 1: the stuff I'm really interested in is the stuff that
Speaker 1: was so obvious that our hominy ancestors used it even
Speaker 1: before we were even human, our homony way way two
Speaker 1: million years ago. Ancestors are using it, and that every
Speaker 1: great tradition and every medical every medical practice, every master
Speaker 1: physician would prescribe these things. And they're actually so complicated
Speaker 1: we can't fully understand them. Yet they're so simple. You
Speaker 1: can do them at home with very little cost, training
Speaker 1: or equipment. And I like that. So things like hot
Speaker 1: and cold bathing, you can do that at home, just
Speaker 1: hot and cold shower. Mixing vinegar and honey, that's anyone
Speaker 1: can make vinegar, make kombucha and ignore it for six months,
Speaker 1: or turn to vinegar you mix out with honey. And
Speaker 1: you just got to a bee keeper or have your
Speaker 1: own bees. And I'm just about to get my own bees,
Speaker 1: which I'm really my sixtieth birthday and my ex wife
Speaker 1: gave me from beehives, So that's pretty exciting, you know,
Speaker 1: just my suburban bee e and I'm making my own
Speaker 1: oxymors and we're expanding that. But these therapies, which are
Speaker 1: super ancient, haven't been really talked about or promoted. I spoke,
Speaker 1: I got the key opening keynote lecture of the Herbalist
Speaker 1: and Naturopaths conference a couple of weeks ago, and I
Speaker 1: asked all the audience about two three hundred natropaths there,
Speaker 1: you know, who's heard of oxymors and about it? Maybe
Speaker 1: a quarter put that put their hand up. And then
Speaker 1: when I told them oxyd memes acid mel memes, honey,
Speaker 1: this is acid vinegar that, oh yeah, the first year
Speaker 1: in the history of medicine, they mentioned that we never
Speaker 1: really talked about it. So these are things that I
Speaker 1: guess there's no industry around it because you can do
Speaker 1: it yourself. No one's selling you packets and pills and
Speaker 1: making a big about it. And also beekeeping is hard
Speaker 1: to make a massive industry because you actually need to
Speaker 1: someone on the ground tending to the bees, and you
Speaker 1: need flowers and have one person with a harvester doing
Speaker 1: one hundred thous makers. It's a small industry.
Speaker 2: And I guess with that kind of ancient medicine and
Speaker 2: all of these kind of herbal medicines, naturopathic approaches whatever,
Speaker 2: as you as you kind of intimated, it's it's not
Speaker 2: highly commercialable, commercially exploitable, right, especially so there's going to
Speaker 2: be a whole lot of industry, a whole lot of
Speaker 2: companies that don't want this to happen, you know, because and.
Speaker 1: I've seen pushback already. You know, hot and cold bathing,
Speaker 1: it's such a cheap thing to do. Were having a
Speaker 1: hot and cold shower, having an ice batha masually controlling
Speaker 1: to different ice bath companies. Now. In fact, the guys
Speaker 1: I'm going to meet in America in Arizona, they credit
Speaker 1: an ice bath company and they just exploded after Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan was promoting them. So that that's and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, really beautiful ice bath, but they're twenty grand. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't need the twenty brand ice bath to
Speaker 1: do cold bathing. He just need cold water, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cheap and easily accessible. And I'm really keen to
Speaker 1: promote these ideas. I also have products, So I'm making
Speaker 1: an oximal company, and we'll sell you the best oximal.
Speaker 1: We have vinegar that we've done research on. It's high polyphenols,
Speaker 1: got two hundred probiotics. But I also teach you how
Speaker 1: to make yourself for free. That's how to create a culture.
Speaker 1: And I think what we really need on the planet
Speaker 1: right now, or what everyone needs, is to create a
Speaker 1: wellness culture. And having a culture that supports your well
Speaker 1: being isn't really about making money. It's actually about making
Speaker 1: healthy people, and healthy people will create value and make money.
Speaker 1: So first, my first objective in my life is to
Speaker 1: how do I co create a culture of wellness that
Speaker 1: can infect good health? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like just off the top of my head, Like
Speaker 2: when we think about building a culture of wellness, so
Speaker 2: I think about obviously I'm writing this down, so food
Speaker 2: not in order of imports motan's food, sleep, movement, exercise, lifestyle, stress, relationships.
Speaker 2: The way we socialize has an impact on fucking everything
Speaker 2: from cellular health to immune system relationships. How would you
Speaker 2: not prioritize those? But how would you? So if we
Speaker 2: talk about like we know that people that are lonely
Speaker 2: and disconnected and isolated and don't feel loved or seen
Speaker 2: or you know, that affects their immune system and that
Speaker 2: affects everything from their cellular health up right. And we
Speaker 2: know that food plays a big role. We know that,
Speaker 2: you know, not just micros and macros, but all the
Speaker 2: other shit around that. And then we know that sleep
Speaker 2: is a big deal, and we know that movement, exercise,
Speaker 2: you know, incidental activity, occupational activity, lifestyle stress. How would
Speaker 2: you sort those and what's missing from those jigsaw pieces.
Speaker 1: So I've been trying to sort it's out for years.
Speaker 1: And I've got a philosophy of more meaning less words,
Speaker 1: So how to condense more meaning to f your words?
Speaker 1: And when you do that, it ends up as poetry.
Speaker 1: So I've sort of individentally become a poet. I think
Speaker 1: we shared some of my poet poems in the past,
Speaker 1: but I have this one poem which I call it
Speaker 1: the Recipe for Wellness, and it's super simple. It's bathing
Speaker 1: beautiful water, Prepare delicious food, make the most of every breath,
Speaker 1: Dance through every mood.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say something about mood then,
Speaker 2: but okay, not nothing wrong of the moods, but in
Speaker 2: dance mood.
Speaker 1: If you want, tend the soil beneath your feet, embraced
Speaker 1: sunshine from above, share your gifts with all the world,
Speaker 1: and fill your life with love. Social connection, they say
Speaker 1: the currency of wellness of connection. Yeah, connection to yourself,
Speaker 1: with the environment, with other people. And that's ultimately that
Speaker 1: they're the priorities. And I've got I've got other poems
Speaker 1: to talk about all the different activities you can do
Speaker 1: in your life that improve this anxiety, and things you
Speaker 1: can do if you're anxious, upset, or a fraid or
Speaker 1: in pain that you can do with your body to
Speaker 1: relax your body. So there's all these little hacks and tricks,
Speaker 1: but I really there's it seems to be a big
Speaker 1: emphasis now on what activities can I do to prevent
Speaker 1: cancer or to be healthier, to live a long and
Speaker 1: a healthy life. And people are living their life for
Speaker 1: the future of not being sick, rather than living their
Speaker 1: life for the moment and enjoying your life in the moment.
Speaker 1: And there's a tension between those two. But I really
Speaker 1: believe if you have the most fulfilling life in each
Speaker 1: moment and create as much connection as possible in each moment,
Speaker 1: that's going to pay off down the track.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of us reactive with our health,
Speaker 2: not proactive, like we wait until something breaks or something
Speaker 2: falls off or we get terrified. What's the Is that
Speaker 2: just a fear thing, a laziness thing, or something else.
Speaker 1: Great business model getting people to.
Speaker 2: Get from a commercial point of view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, a great business model, and that really changed
Speaker 1: my whole career in early nineteen nineties, I just graduated
Speaker 1: as the doctor and i'd come across a health retreat
Speaker 1: in Barry Skipsland and I was doing this yoga health
Speaker 1: retreat and I came across Clean Ornish and his yoga teacher,
Speaker 1: and he was the first person to prove that you
Speaker 1: could lifestyle change could reverse heart disease. And he sort
Speaker 1: of said it, but I sort of paraphrased it. At
Speaker 1: the time, it was conventional treatment for a heart attack
Speaker 1: or heart disease was to open up your chest, take
Speaker 1: a vein from your leg, put that vein across the
Speaker 1: blockage in your chest, and repeat that every ten years.
Speaker 1: Because that's what you happened withy It was considered totally
Speaker 1: radical and extreme to relax, exercise, eat good food, and
Speaker 1: share your feelings. And I saw that and I was
Speaker 1: a week in the hospital seeing, yeah, look if you
Speaker 1: do bypass two, sure you get forty grand, fifty grand.
Speaker 1: And I was part of the Health Enhancement lifestyle program
Speaker 1: where we were trying to educate people in a rehab
Speaker 1: hospital at to see the court and other places to
Speaker 1: do that. When we were charging four hundred bucks for
Speaker 1: a lifestyle program and people just weren't interested. They'll paid
Speaker 1: forty grand for their heart to fix their heart attack
Speaker 1: because they won't pay four hundred dollars to live a
Speaker 1: healthy life. So there is a bit of I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's hedonism or people just they don't they
Speaker 1: want what they want now and they're not really interested
Speaker 1: in prevention. But I think the whole culture that we
Speaker 1: have this is where I talk about a culture of wellness,
Speaker 1: because at the moment, we have a culture of illness. Now,
Speaker 1: food comes pre poisoned, our water comes pre poisoned, our
Speaker 1: air is poisoned. The industries, the biggest industries in the
Speaker 1: world are the ones that make only out of people's units.
Speaker 1: But it's a great business model, but it's not great
Speaker 1: for healthy people.
Speaker 2: Well, and you think about that, you know, how people
Speaker 2: have paid forty grand for an operation but not four
Speaker 2: hundred for a wellness program or whatever. Right, And then
Speaker 2: I think about as an excise scientist, I think about,
Speaker 2: you know, people paying people putting ozepic in their body right,
Speaker 2: which essentially, among other things, kills their appetite, whereas and
Speaker 2: has some pretty disgusting side effects. Whereas they could get
Speaker 2: you know, albeit a bit longer and a little bit well,
Speaker 2: a lot more discipline and effort, you know, but obviously
Speaker 2: with modifying lifestyle factors, you know. But it's it's like
Speaker 2: people would rather appeal than some kind of work or
Speaker 2: effort or discomfort, you know. And it's like that's why
Speaker 2: instant gratification sells. That's why surgery cells because I can
Speaker 2: just go in and you weave your magic and I
Speaker 2: come out and you know this is Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: I think very much indicative of a lot of people's thinking,
Speaker 2: like quick fixes, magic pills, instant gratification cells.
Speaker 1: Well what's the saying that instant gratification is not fast
Speaker 1: enough anymore? Yes, people that right now. And so what
Speaker 1: I'm interested in is things like that you want to
Speaker 1: do because they're fun in themselves. So that is the gratification.
Speaker 1: So I've been making these oximals myself. So it's honey
Speaker 1: and vinegar and I put herbs in it, and I
Speaker 1: put a lot of bitter herbs. So you've got the
Speaker 1: sweet and the sour and the bitter. And what that does,
Speaker 1: It just sparks your brain off. It tastes like it
Speaker 1: tastes like sherbet candy. So it's sweet and sound like.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a dessert wine, and you'll sip it
Speaker 1: and your brain just does backflips because it's got all
Speaker 1: these different flavors, and we put leaves, roots, flowers, fruits,
Speaker 1: and fungi, so it gives a really broad favor profile.
Speaker 1: You want to have it every day because it's so delicious.
Speaker 1: And then the side effect is it's super good for
Speaker 1: you at balancing your blood sugar, it helps gut microbiome,
Speaker 1: it feels better, you sleep better, you got more energy,
Speaker 1: it stops the blood sugar spikes. So all these secondary benefits,
Speaker 1: but they're not the reason why you're having it. The
Speaker 1: reason why you're having it is it tastes delicious and
Speaker 1: it feels good to have it. So they're the sort
Speaker 1: of things I'm interested in.
Speaker 2: How do I I'm just right now, which is terrible protocol.
Speaker 2: So it's O X Y M E L right yep
Speaker 2: Oximal is a mixture of honey and vinegar used as medicine.
Speaker 2: According to Scientific America. Recently, the mixture is but used
Speaker 2: been used successfully in biofilm for topical uses on wounds
Speaker 2: where bacteria has become resistant to antibiotics. Both ingredients have
Speaker 2: been used historically as antseptics, but the combination blah blah blah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because it was one thousand years ago
Speaker 1: or two thousand ars that they were using this. But
Speaker 1: last last year there were two big scientific studies published
Speaker 1: on oximals and one was a review article reviewing all
Speaker 1: the history of the pre clinical and clinical studies of oximals,
Speaker 1: and the other study was a really interesting one where
Speaker 1: they took manuka honey and vinegar and they diluted the
Speaker 1: manuka honey to the point where it didn't kill bacteria anymore.
Speaker 1: And they took the vinegar and they diluted that to
Speaker 1: the point where it didn't kill bacteria anymore. Then they
Speaker 1: took the two dilutions and mix them together and it
Speaker 1: did kill bacteria. And what that showed is that there's
Speaker 1: a different mechanism of action between the honey and the
Speaker 1: vinegar and that their synergy. So there's a combined effect
Speaker 1: of honey and vinegar that's effective against bacteria. And what
Speaker 1: they found there was the vinegar with the highest polyphenols,
Speaker 1: and polyphenols are like the plants immune system. They're they're
Speaker 1: the chemicals that the plants used to defend themselves. They're
Speaker 1: often what really expensive foods are really high in. So
Speaker 1: coffee and chocolate and red wine and olive oil the
Speaker 1: high in polyphenols. And they found that the high polyphenol
Speaker 1: vinegars had a much bigger difference. So they use pomegranate
Speaker 1: vinegar and date and apple and white wine vinegar. We
Speaker 1: use kombucha vinegar because green tea actually has more polyphenols
Speaker 1: than apples or grapes or pomegranites. So the highest polyphenol
Speaker 1: vineggar you can make is that I know of, is
Speaker 1: kombucha vinegar. And people can do that at home pretty
Speaker 1: much for free sugar tea and some water and a
Speaker 1: bit of time, and you can make your ow kombucha vinegar.
Speaker 1: And it does does depend on the tea that you use.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are different qualities of tea, and I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason that tea is actually the most
Speaker 1: drunk beverage on Earth. He's drug more than coffee or
Speaker 1: any even just more than water, I think in terms
Speaker 1: of just as a bear fridge, and it's got a
Speaker 1: broad flavor profile. But to make a high polyphenol vinegar
Speaker 1: and mix that with honey, you've got you've got a
Speaker 1: really potent form of medicine that never gets resistance for
Speaker 1: antibodic resistance, never builds up against it by films. You know,
Speaker 1: they did some studies on biofilms and by films bacterial
Speaker 1: form sheets, especially in the back of your throat or
Speaker 1: on wounds, and then show that the honey vinegar combinations
Speaker 1: are super effective against buiofilms.
Speaker 2: If somebody wants to start, you know, making their own,
Speaker 2: is there a recipe? Is there is there a Can
Speaker 2: they go somewhere?
Speaker 1: Sure? I mean, just they can google it online. I've
Speaker 1: been studying these recipes because in the past what they
Speaker 1: do sometimes there was fifty percent vinegar and fhibuous en honey,
Speaker 1: and they used to boil it. And I think the
Speaker 1: boiling it was a way to stop it fermenting, because
Speaker 1: if you don't stop the fermentation, it actually becomes more delicious,
Speaker 1: It becomes fuzzy, and then it turns to meat and
Speaker 1: becomes alcoholic, right, so, which is not necessarily bad thing.
Speaker 1: And actually I've been researching that the origins of meta
Speaker 1: and that the word need has the same roots as
Speaker 1: the word medicine. The very first medicines were made from honey.
Speaker 1: Honey used to be the most most valuable thing on earth.
Speaker 1: If you if you're a caveman or a hominid, you know,
Speaker 1: honey is the most dense form of bluecoats. You can
Speaker 1: a wound or a burn and it will cure the
Speaker 1: wound or a bern. You can put any other food
Speaker 1: in it and will preserve the other food. And if
Speaker 1: you get it wet, it'll ferment and turn it into
Speaker 1: alcohol and become medicine. So honey is the most amazing substance.
Speaker 2: So you can get ship faced and treated all at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: That's what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You know when you finished medicine. So you're
Speaker 2: a doctor, doctor, You're you're a double doctor. You're a
Speaker 2: medical doctor in Europe.
Speaker 1: Doctor.
Speaker 3: I did two PhD so doctor, doctor, doctor, Oh you
Speaker 3: did too, of course you did, okay, well, before I asked, mate,
Speaker 3: so what did in what order did you do your doctoring?
Speaker 1: I start off with Western medicine, then did an honors degree,
Speaker 1: then took some time off and did a pH d
Speaker 1: in Chinese medicine, then went back and finished my medical degree,
Speaker 1: and then did a second PhD in Electrical computer systems engineering.
Speaker 2: Of course, as you do. Yeah, no, of course, Okay,
Speaker 2: so you're a three times doctor. Well that is fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 2: When you when you finished medicine Western medicine and then
Speaker 2: you headed off to see Dean Cornish and the like
Speaker 2: Dean Cornish at ol Audis year, did you get push
Speaker 2: back from you? You know, your your colleagues.
Speaker 1: Who I have, but not as much as my mentors
Speaker 1: and the people before me. Right so, And because because
Speaker 1: I have, you know, got a medical degree in two PhDs,
Speaker 1: I'm often accepted by the medical fraternity. But and I
Speaker 1: used to be the head of the Australasian Integrated Medicine Association.
Speaker 1: I had that at the start of the two thousands,
Speaker 1: and I was involved integrated medicine and acupuncture research and
Speaker 1: stuff throughout the nineteen nineties. And most of the research
Speaker 1: I've done is all the stuff there's no money behind it,
Speaker 1: meditation and acupuncture and herbal medicine and spas and saunas
Speaker 1: and things like that, and there has been pushed back,
Speaker 1: and this still is pushback. You'll read mainstream articles about
Speaker 1: cold cold water swimming and ice bading and they'll say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: look it does help with depression. But it can kill you,
Speaker 1: so be careful. You know, they sort of just try
Speaker 1: and sort of put a damping on it. No pun there.
Speaker 1: But I haven't had nearly the pushback that there was
Speaker 1: a generation of doctors before me who are ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years older than me, who are getting deep and getting
Speaker 1: attacked at. And I do have colleagues in the integrated
Speaker 1: medicine community you have been really pushed hard against. And
Speaker 1: they keep on telling me that a kite flies highest
Speaker 1: and it's got a strong wind against it. But otherwise
Speaker 1: I've made a conscious decision in my career and in
Speaker 1: my life that I don't want to fight against anything.
Speaker 1: I want to work towards what I want y So
Speaker 1: I want health and wellness and to have fun. I
Speaker 1: mean having fun is really high in my values. So
Speaker 1: all the research on stuff that's fun, you know, health
Speaker 1: retreats and spars and saunas and hot spring and yoga
Speaker 1: and meditation, it's all fun stuff. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of money in it, but it's really fun rather than
Speaker 1: sort of trying to fight a system or trying to
Speaker 1: tackle and there's great people who do that, but that's
Speaker 1: not me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think also, sometimes you know when people live
Speaker 2: in a certain eir co chamber, you know, they and
Speaker 2: they've believed something for a very long time, and they've
Speaker 2: had a certain operating system and existed in a certain
Speaker 2: paradigm of thought and behavior and whatever. That also becomes
Speaker 2: their identity. So if you question anything, you question their
Speaker 2: identity as well. So yeah, it's very and people are
Speaker 2: emotional and people are self protecting, and it's like, if
Speaker 2: you question my belief or my ideology, then you're attacking me,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And and there's a book called the Four Agreements, which
Speaker 1: I really love, and let's saying that being peckable with
Speaker 1: your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and
Speaker 1: do your best. So not taking anything personally is really great.
Speaker 1: So you know, if they're attacking you, they're not really
Speaker 1: attacking me. They're just they've got their issues and poor them.
Speaker 1: So that's that's stead me in good, good position. Throughout
Speaker 1: there's always detractors, and then sometimes it's been good. Like
Speaker 1: in the pandemic, people were trolling and saying, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't talk about Sauls as reducing viral infections because and
Speaker 1: that it's obviously true. So I end up writing a
Speaker 1: peer reviewed article about it, just to get back at
Speaker 1: these people who are try to kick me down. And
Speaker 1: you know, I published that article, and then I publish
Speaker 1: a whole lot of articles on hydro thermal facilities because
Speaker 1: when you're in a sauna, you're improve your immune system
Speaker 1: and it'll dissolve any viruses, say they melt. And because
Speaker 1: of that article, I've been told in Europe that was
Speaker 1: translated into half a dozen languages, and a lot of
Speaker 1: spar centers were allowed to open because of that research.
Speaker 1: So sometimes it is good to get you back up.
Speaker 1: And you know, my tendency is just really to follow
Speaker 1: the stuff that I love doing, rather than trying to
Speaker 1: fight against something else.
Speaker 2: So while I've got you here, I want to I'm
Speaker 2: going to I'm going to use you a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 2: So infrared sauna or steamwre sauna.
Speaker 1: Whatever makes you sweat. There's been no studies comparing the two.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I had a PhD student SHOWI Hassan,
Speaker 1: who's a brilliant medical doctor. She did a PhD. It's
Speaker 1: eight years researching saunas, and we were going to do
Speaker 1: the first ever human clinical trial comparing infrared sauna with
Speaker 1: traditional with exercise. She was doing this with the Queensland
Speaker 1: Institute of Sport. We had it all set up and
Speaker 1: then their traditional sauna busted and then the pandemic hits.
Speaker 1: So we ended up doing the study, but we didn't
Speaker 1: use the traditional sauna, so we didn't we compared disordering
Speaker 1: with exercise. We looked at detoxification and the effects on
Speaker 1: the heart, but we didn't compare directly infrared with traditional sauna.
Speaker 1: I had it both home. I'm pretty privileged. I yes,
Speaker 1: I was given an infrared sauna about fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: which I still haven't. I built a traditional sauna, and
Speaker 1: I prefer the traditional sauna because I love putting. I
Speaker 1: love the steam. I loved able to loft the steam
Speaker 1: around and wave it around. I love putting cold water
Speaker 1: on my body when I'm in the sauna. Putting squater
Speaker 1: on your head or on your feet when you're really
Speaker 1: hot is just super delightful, and you can't do that
Speaker 1: the red sauna. But I think that the benefit it.
Speaker 4: Really is from the stress and sweating and doing something
Speaker 4: you don't really we want to do, or doing something
Speaker 4: to the point where you're comfortably uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: MM.
Speaker 1: So, whether it's an infrared fat or a hot bath
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. If it's if it's hot enough
Speaker 1: to make you sweat and turn on your physiological air conditioning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your panther willle bit, your heart beats harder, you know,
Speaker 1: you sweat, you turn on your heat shop proteins and
Speaker 1: all of those biochemical things that happen. That's the benefit.
Speaker 1: So how do you get there? I think is less important.
Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of variables around kind of
Speaker 2: cold water immersion and ice bars and cold showers and
Speaker 2: because you know, the temperature of the tap border in
Speaker 2: Melbourne is probably different to Queensland, to work of course.
Speaker 1: But pretty cold this morning. Yeah, this morning it was
Speaker 1: like six six degrees out of the shower or something exactly.
Speaker 2: So is there if somebody's thinking, you know what, I
Speaker 2: want to introduce a little bit of cold water or
Speaker 2: cold showers into my life? Is there a Is there
Speaker 2: are kind of an optimal time one to three minutes
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: I credit a little song and dance for this expression.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I told me you set me up.
Speaker 1: So I did a lecture series about seven eight years
Speaker 1: ago with Wim Half When I was I was talking
Speaker 1: about the science of the wim Holf method, and all
Speaker 1: the vow for males, all the full on by fighters
Speaker 1: and martial artists were all getting into the ice bath.
Speaker 1: And then I ran a retreat at wing Ghana, which
Speaker 1: was a luxury hell to treat in Queensland, and they
Speaker 1: were like autun seventy year old mostly females, who said,
Speaker 1: we're not going to get into the cold water. We
Speaker 1: don't we don't do cold and I was I sort
Speaker 1: of worked, O, how can we make it appealing for them?
Speaker 1: And I came up with little song and dance. I
Speaker 1: call it the cold water Hokey pokey, so you can
Speaker 1: do it home in the shower and and it makes
Speaker 1: it really easy. But basically what you do you start
Speaker 1: off with the hot shower, and everyone loves the hot shower,
Speaker 1: and you get well, you get hot. Then at the
Speaker 1: end of that you turn the heat up a little bit,
Speaker 1: so a bit prickly hot and a bit flushed. And
Speaker 1: then the hardest part of the whole thing, the hardest
Speaker 1: part of any cold water immersion is the decision to
Speaker 1: do it. It's jumping into the swimming pool or just
Speaker 1: getting wet that's making that decision the hardest if you
Speaker 1: make the decision, you're going to do it. So you
Speaker 1: turn the hot water off and the cold water on,
Speaker 1: but you just wet your left foot, right, it's okay,
Speaker 1: you know you're hot, and your left foot. Then you
Speaker 1: do your leg, and then you do your right foot.
Speaker 1: In your leg, your left hands and arm and your
Speaker 1: other hand and arm. And what that does. It pushes
Speaker 1: the warm blood. It constricts the book blood vessels in
Speaker 1: your arms and legs, and that pushes all this warm
Speaker 1: blood into your core. So you're still feeling warm even
Speaker 1: though your arms and legs are cold. Keep breathing calmly
Speaker 1: and smile to yourself, because that's what it's all about,
Speaker 1: breathing calmly and smiling to yourself, being comfortably uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: then you take a really big breath in and as
Speaker 1: you as you're slowly breathing out, you put your left
Speaker 1: side in, And normally, when you putst side in, the
Speaker 1: water would hit your neck where the blood vessels are
Speaker 1: close to the surface, and that courses you. That would
Speaker 1: normally cause you for gasp, and that's the cold water
Speaker 1: hypeer ventilation reaction. But if you're already breathing out slowly.
Speaker 1: When you do that, you don't but you do feel
Speaker 1: the cold, but it doesn't have that emotional shot to it.
Speaker 1: So you just slowly breathing out. You put your left
Speaker 1: side in and you're right side in and your front
Speaker 1: side in, and you chain yourself around. Then keep calmly
Speaker 1: and smile to yourself, because that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1: And then you put your whole head in. If you
Speaker 1: take a big breath as you're brething out and you
Speaker 1: put your whole head in, move your head around, stand still,
Speaker 1: get a drenching, slowly turn yourself around, continue breathing, calmly,
Speaker 1: smile to yourself. That's what it's all about. And then
Speaker 1: you go poke you put the water on your groin,
Speaker 1: water on your kidneys, oh hokey, pokey, put the water
Speaker 1: on your armpits, and then all the places vessels come
Speaker 1: close to the surface. And you'll find if you do
Speaker 1: that that takes about one minute. You end up standing
Speaker 1: under the cold shower quite comfortably. And at that point
Speaker 1: you're breathing comfortably and you can turn it off and
Speaker 1: get out and you'll feel tingly and alive. And you've
Speaker 1: started to day singing and dancing and doing something that
Speaker 1: you didn't want to do, which makes everything else that
Speaker 1: you don't want to do. If there's that conversation or
Speaker 1: that job or that mess you have to clean up,
Speaker 1: you've already practiced that whellpower of just getting along with
Speaker 1: it and doing it. So that's that's and it doesn't
Speaker 1: cost any money. You don't need a membership, you don't
Speaker 1: need special clothes, you have to do anything other than
Speaker 1: cold shower, so that's that's super easy. Or you can
Speaker 1: buy a twenty grand Icepa and like yourself with the
Speaker 1: whole hot tub scene room my spa sorta situation. So it's,
Speaker 1: as I say, there's high endways to do it, there's
Speaker 1: always a way you can do it quite inexpensively.
Speaker 2: Well, definitely in Melbourne, Like I try to finish my
Speaker 2: showers with about a minute of just no no hot
Speaker 2: water at all. And when I first started, it's fucking horrible,
Speaker 2: but it just gets it gets more and more, like
Speaker 2: you get used to it over time and you get
Speaker 2: out and there's just a lights up my brain like
Speaker 2: a Christmas tree. It's just it's a really good feeling.
Speaker 2: And also I think, you know, I don't really do
Speaker 2: it for this but for me, there's a real psychological
Speaker 2: and emotional benefit as well as the physiological like I
Speaker 2: feel great, I feel more energetic, but I also feel
Speaker 2: clarity and I you know, I what in terms of
Speaker 2: like treating mental health using these kinds of mechanisms and treatments,
Speaker 2: you know, and like depression and anxiety and which is
Speaker 2: pretty rampant mental health, you know, and rather than reaching
Speaker 2: for an anti axiotic or an antis So there is.
Speaker 1: Good research on that. But again the problem is there
Speaker 1: are a lot of research on cold water swimming as
Speaker 1: an antidepressant. Yeah, it's not an industry. No one's making
Speaker 1: money out of it, so it's not really widely promoted,
Speaker 1: whereas prozacs are multi billion dollars and drug And just
Speaker 1: on that point, one of my PhD students is I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Burns. She was or she's graduated now. So Lauren Burns.
Speaker 1: She won the gold medalp for taekwon do at the
Speaker 1: Sydney Olympics and she's an absolute champion of a human
Speaker 1: being but also a world champion athlete. And in her
Speaker 1: PhD she interviewed people who are multiple world champions and
Speaker 1: asked the how do you set the top of your game,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you say the best in
Speaker 1: the world in your sport over multiple years? What do
Speaker 1: you do, what do you think? How do you perform?
Speaker 1: You know, what do you how do you practice? And
Speaker 1: she were published a few papers on that, and you know,
Speaker 1: mindset was the biggest factor. Social connection came up really strong,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't been widely talked about. But one of
Speaker 1: the things we did was ice bathing, and when we
Speaker 1: interviewed them, or when Lauren interviewed them, they said that
Speaker 1: they started doing ice bathing for recovery, but they kept
Speaker 1: on doing it for the mental health benefits because when
Speaker 1: they when they were doing in the ice part, they're
Speaker 1: just in the in the ice part, that they're not
Speaker 1: thinking about the past and the future, what their competition's doing,
Speaker 1: and just gave them mental discipline and that clarity and
Speaker 1: that focus. So and that was that hadn't been talked
Speaker 1: about widely before. And this was there was one Lane Beachley,
Speaker 1: who was the surfing World champion. She but she spent
Speaker 1: most of the time in cold water anyway. But all
Speaker 1: of the other athletes she interviewed who are multiple world
Speaker 1: champions areadio icepaving and I all said it was for
Speaker 1: the mental health benefits, not to the physical recovery and benefits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love Laurence. She was on here a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago. She's a gun And I think also
Speaker 2: unis A did did some research looking at exercise as
Speaker 2: a treatment for depression, which like really really really outperformed drugs.
Speaker 1: So bottle it. It'd be the most successful drug ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, What's what's something that if anything that you've you
Speaker 2: have ever done a one ad on where you got
Speaker 2: something wrong, or you were taught told train something that
Speaker 2: you later on went that's bullshit, or or there's a
Speaker 2: much better way. Is there anything that you've either done
Speaker 2: a one id on or really had to unlearn something.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I haven't haven't thought about that before.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot, a lot that I learned
Speaker 1: in medicine that is now no longer true, even though
Speaker 1: I was taught it thirty forty years ago when I
Speaker 1: was studying medicine. I mean, all the discussion about brown
Speaker 1: fat we were taught, you know, there's no brown fat
Speaker 1: in the in the adult body. It's only in babies
Speaker 1: and hibernating animals and that's that's been a one ady
Speaker 1: for the medical community, not me personally, who are saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, brown and fats in everybody and you can
Speaker 1: develop it, and that the process you've described earlier where
Speaker 1: you gradually get used to the cold, that was a
Speaker 1: process that everyone went through every year one hundred years
Speaker 1: ago before we had central heating. That as the winter
Speaker 1: got gone on, it got each dag a little bit colder,
Speaker 1: and you built up your brown fat stores and the
Speaker 1: brown fat actually makes heat and protects you from the cold.
Speaker 1: So that's there's all a whole lot of research now
Speaker 1: about brown fatter and people using it, but improving brown
Speaker 1: fat to lose weights because brown fat eats up white
Speaker 1: fatter uses white fatter's fuel to generate heat. But I
Speaker 1: think the benefit it's not so much for the weight loss,
Speaker 1: it's for the metabolic benefits that you get. So that's
Speaker 1: that's where the medical communities change. The other thing I
Speaker 1: guess is the whole our whole attitude of bacteria. Again
Speaker 1: forty years ago and I started medicine, the bacteria of
Speaker 1: the enemy. You know, you needed antibiotics and germs were bad.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to disinfect into antibiotics and all
Speaker 1: these things, and now we're realizing, hey, germs are actually
Speaker 1: the best thing ever. They're actually supporting our health and
Speaker 1: not just in our gus. One of the biggest revelations
Speaker 1: I had just it was only three four years ago,
Speaker 1: this was published talking about the skin micro bio that
Speaker 1: when I when I started medicine, we were taught you
Speaker 1: the service area your skin is one point eight square meters,
Speaker 1: which is about the size of the single bed. If
Speaker 1: I skinned you and lay your skin out, it's about
Speaker 1: the size of a single bed.
Speaker 2: But then they realize there's a thought yeah, and then
Speaker 2: they use.
Speaker 1: That measurement for measuring the size of burns and the
Speaker 1: proportion of the body for different things. But then someone calculated, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's actually three million sweatlands on the body and all
Speaker 1: these sabaceous plans every time that the skin dips down
Speaker 1: and comes back up, and if you stretch that out,
Speaker 1: it's thirty square meters. It's the size of a cat.
Speaker 1: And all those little glands in the sweatlands and the
Speaker 1: sabacious glands when the skip the skin dives down, that's
Speaker 1: where the bacteria live and those plans secrete oils that
Speaker 1: support good bacteria, and those oils protect you from protect
Speaker 1: your skin from drying out, They protect your skin sun
Speaker 1: from sun damage, and in cancer and sunburn. They also
Speaker 1: feed the good bacteria that protect you from infection. And
Speaker 1: that's that was never talked about in the past. And
Speaker 1: what I've realized is when you bathe in chlorine, you
Speaker 1: oxidize those oils and you get rid of those those
Speaker 1: good bacteria, and you actually make your skin more prone
Speaker 1: to drying out, more prone to sun damage, more prone
Speaker 1: to wrinkles and aging, and more prone to infection. Wow.
Speaker 1: So that's yeah, And that's that's when you think about it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, chlorinees and oxidizer. It kills bacteria. If you
Speaker 1: if you're washing your skin with that, it's kind of
Speaker 1: stripped the natural oils off. But those are your protection.
Speaker 1: So that was a revelation to me. And I've always
Speaker 1: been really keen on water, you know, and I do
Speaker 1: have a water filled company and I promote that, but
Speaker 1: it was really these and the whole water industry is
Speaker 1: a it's a whole nother rabbit hole because water is
Speaker 1: so complicated. But one of the simplest things you can
Speaker 1: do to change your health is just improved the quality
Speaker 1: of your water.
Speaker 2: So is that just by filtering? I mean, obviously water
Speaker 2: that's sitting in a plastic bottle in a hot car,
Speaker 2: that's just a try. Can you just explain to people
Speaker 2: what salts are and what they.
Speaker 1: Do and disruptives. So falets are a type of plastic.
Speaker 1: They're used in a whole lot of they're often us
Speaker 1: in fragrance, so they make the smells last longer in
Speaker 1: the air. And but microplastics in water is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest issues. I think it was the University of
Speaker 1: New South Wales did some research about four or five
Speaker 1: years ago and they used to make it in Australia
Speaker 1: and pretty much everyone in the western world eats a
Speaker 1: credit card of plastic the week A week.
Speaker 2: A week.
Speaker 1: I thought that was I thought that was a year.
Speaker 1: Look it up.
Speaker 2: And that's because that's because plastic, among other things, there's
Speaker 2: plastic in our water. And when we have a plastic
Speaker 2: bottle filled with water, especially when it's sitting anywhere near sun,
Speaker 2: it leaches plastic into the water. Right.
Speaker 1: And the think about the companies that make in a
Speaker 1: bottled water, they don't make the water, they make plastic bottles.
Speaker 1: Water but yeah, we need a credit CARDO plastic week.
Speaker 1: Most of that comes from our water. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: the microplastics everywhere. Now there's nanoplastics, which is the next level.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about thal aides and endochrome disrupting chemicals
Speaker 1: that hang out on the plastics, and a lot of
Speaker 1: those chemicals are what we call obe sigents. They make
Speaker 1: you a bet, they take your commodal system, and they
Speaker 1: cause infertility, and their carcinogenics they cause cancers. So pretty
Speaker 1: much all the diseases of the modern world you can
Speaker 1: trace back to us polluting ourselves, which is tragic when
Speaker 1: you think about it. But again, I'd rather than try
Speaker 1: and fight pollution, I'd say, Okay, how do we clean
Speaker 1: it up? And how do we live without that? So
Speaker 1: you filtery of water, and there are ways to do that.
Speaker 1: You can even if you don't have a water filter
Speaker 1: at home. If you've got a hot bath, you can
Speaker 1: turn on the bath really hot, put the fan on
Speaker 1: and wait twenty minutes and the chlorine will evaporate out.
Speaker 1: And I do that in hotels and stuff, and I'm traveling,
Speaker 1: so there are ways to get rid of CHLORI out
Speaker 1: of it. A system and when you do that, your
Speaker 1: skin changes, actually you feel better the surface. There's lots
Speaker 1: of little things that you can do, but affecting your
Speaker 1: water and obviously food as well, just plastic packaging and food,
Speaker 1: so that the increase in endocrime disrupting chemicals, not just
Speaker 1: stalates but also I mean pfasts. They were talking about
Speaker 1: the perfluorinated compounds and the forever chemicals. There's made a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes about it recently. It's just a global
Speaker 1: disaster and there's no living organism on Earth that isn't
Speaker 1: impacted by these chemicals. Down at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Mariana Trench ten kilometers down at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ocean to the top of Mount Everest, they're found microplastics. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of a guy called David Gillespie who
Speaker 2: wrote Sweet Poison?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I haven't. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he's one of Australia's most prolific writers. Is
Speaker 2: a lawyer, but is a researcher, he's an inventor. Is
Speaker 2: a little bit like you, and that he's quirky. You're quirky,
Speaker 2: you know you're quirky. But he's a fucking genius. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he and I talk. We do an episode once a fortnite,
Speaker 2: and he's dead against seed oils and daletes and endocrime disruptors,
Speaker 2: and he talks a lot about it, talks a lot
Speaker 2: about the dumb shit we do to our body basically.
Speaker 2: But he was talking recently, we're talking him. He was
Speaker 2: wheeling out these figures about the rapidly declining testosterone production
Speaker 2: in men, you know, and what the average how much
Speaker 2: testosterone I can't remember the numbers, but it's like, compared
Speaker 2: to seventy or eighty years ago, it's crazily low.
Speaker 1: And he was suggesting that boom counts had gone down
Speaker 1: too dramatically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sperm count sorry, that's what I meant is plummeted.
Speaker 2: And he was saying that within the next ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen years that like a lot of like a fair
Speaker 2: percentage of males won't be able to produce enough sperm
Speaker 2: to get someone pregnant. Essentially, like fertility.
Speaker 1: Look at infertility is an epidemic in the modern world. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the way. Ten fifteen years, so a lot of
Speaker 1: couples have infertility issues, are having a sistive fertility because
Speaker 1: the normal system doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So in terms of moving forward,
Speaker 2: if somebody wants to do like a little bit of
Speaker 2: a stock take on their own life, you know, their
Speaker 2: own lifestyle is there, and I know there's no three
Speaker 2: step plan for anything, doc, But if somebody is listening
Speaker 2: to this and they're like, where do I start? Because
Speaker 2: when we go, oh, well, there's food, and there's sleep,
Speaker 2: and there's lifestyle, and there's stress and anxiety, and then
Speaker 2: there's booze and there's you know, there's should we take
Speaker 2: Should I take a drug for this? Or should I
Speaker 2: have a cold shower? Or if somebody wants to, for
Speaker 2: want of a better term, start to renovate their life
Speaker 2: or change their operating system, where might they start?
Speaker 1: I think you need to start where it's easy, where
Speaker 1: you enjoy it, so and start with something you can
Speaker 1: actually keep going on. Ye, So, and it all starts
Speaker 1: with the decision to do it so that that will power.
Speaker 1: So like hot and cold shower, that's a great place
Speaker 1: to start because you're exercising will power. You don't need
Speaker 1: to buy any equipment. You know, you can just do it.
Speaker 1: And that little cold water hockey pokey I talked about,
Speaker 1: you can just start with the first you know, you
Speaker 1: can spend a week just on your arms and legs
Speaker 1: and then work up to the second verse, and then
Speaker 1: you can do the whole thing. So I think you
Speaker 1: want to do baby steps. You want to do something
Speaker 1: that's sustainable. You want to do something that's fun, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you're not going to keep it up, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's going you're getting a gym membership or doing
Speaker 1: you know, jogging every morning or something. Unless it's fun
Speaker 1: for you, it's hard to keep up. And then one
Speaker 1: of the really effective things I found is changing your
Speaker 1: flavor profile by having more bitters in your life. Right,
Speaker 1: and if you have more bitter, this is a Chinese
Speaker 1: medicine sort of knowledge, you reduce sweet cravings. Most people
Speaker 1: get their business from coffee and chocolate. That's where they
Speaker 1: get their polyphenols as well, actually occidents in our life.
Speaker 1: But increasing your range of business, so having and please
Speaker 1: do that in Europe, and having a pair of teeth
Speaker 1: before dinner, you know, a digestive with business, prepare your
Speaker 1: liver for digestion and opens up your palace so you
Speaker 1: enjoy your food more. You tend to eat less, you
Speaker 1: tend to enjoy your food more, you digest better, and
Speaker 1: you don't get the big blood sugar spike and it
Speaker 1: actually stops you craving sweets. So tweaking your flavor profile
Speaker 1: is much easier than going on a diet for meaning
Speaker 1: your body to enjoy good food. Never even sort of that.
Speaker 2: So where are you off? Do you go on somewhere
Speaker 2: next week?
Speaker 1: Where you go? I'm going to Phoenix, Arizona, So I'm
Speaker 1: going for the shore to stay to the longest day
Speaker 1: and it's forty six degrees integrated there today. But I'm
Speaker 1: at an ice bath conference. There's Morosco Forge, there's an
Speaker 1: ice bath company that have blown up with Joe Rogan support,
Speaker 1: and they're bringing you a whole lot of a whole
Speaker 1: about a dozen researchers on ice bath. They're a beta,
Speaker 1: talk to each other and plan a conference for next year.
Speaker 1: So and they invited me to go. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: why might sounds like fun meet some good people.
Speaker 2: How ironic? How ironic that you go into one of
Speaker 2: the hottest places on earth for an ice bath conference?
Speaker 1: Exactly, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: How do people how do people find you doc and
Speaker 2: connect with you and follow you?
Speaker 1: I'm not super active on socials. I do have a
Speaker 1: Facebook and LinkedIn profiles just Mark Mark with a sea,
Speaker 1: and I have a website Doctor Mark d M A
Speaker 1: r C dot co. And I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: poems and all my academic I've got one hundred academic
Speaker 1: papers and books and products and stuff that they can
Speaker 1: get from my website. But i do try and post
Speaker 1: about my life on Facebook and LinkedIn just to keep
Speaker 1: people up to date with what I'm doing. And I'm
Speaker 1: really open to having people contact me and yeah, where
Speaker 1: I can, I can provide some value.
Speaker 2: Well, we appreciate you. Will say goodbye here, but once again, Enlightening,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming to have a chat on you project.
Speaker 1: Great. It's always great to chat with you. Pray we
Speaker 1: do it again sometime. Thanks TOC