stock here: kind of longer than it needs to be, but that is par for the course for Youtube.

Transcript: Medicinal Plants, Antibiotics, and Natural Healing with Dr. Simon Mills

Intro
That is the most widely prescribed drug in this country and in the US. The list of problems from long-term use is growing—cancers, dementias—and once started, it’s difficult to stop. Antibiotics are also overused, leading to rising deaths from antibiotic-resistant infections. Many plants have immediate medicinal effects.

Dr. Simon Mills has spent nearly 50 years in natural medicine, recognized globally as one of the most influential herbal practitioners. Examples: dark chocolate for brain and cardiovascular health; garlic, sometimes used like penicillin; rosemary for brain health; foods and herbs that support gut, circulation, cholesterol, eyesight.

Herbal Health Transcript Summary

Fully Cleaned Transcript: Herbal Health (Second Half) you have to use bit of unscientific language here, but remember I talked about the Marines, you know, the guys who do all the battling for us.

You know, we got tonsils, we got addenoids, we got the glands that run down our neck here that sometimes get swelled up, you know, if we got an infection in this area.

You have to take something to take the It sometimes gets in the way of talking as well.

And I was hesitating before giving it to you.

didn’t want to stop you in your in your steps.

But what’s that that tingling cut a as I said a rather confusing story short those are constituents that almost seem to talk directly to those white blood cells and make them more active.

And so echynia in that form particularly works primarily on the front line shall we call it of our immune system.

these battlers that sit up there and so often that’s where you want to start the job and you might have an infection somewhere else in the body but if you can work up here with these guys you can kick off all sorts of benefits and as you’ve just discovered it doesn’t take long.

No m So who should be thinking about echynasia?

Certainly if you got an upper respiratory problem and you you do need to get that tingle if you want to get that particular effect.

I mean you can have echgonia in other forms pills and tablets and so on.

Uh and there are some which don’t have that that tingle factor.

They got other elements to it but for the tingle factor it’s anything to do with an infection that has a link to what’s going on up here.

And that could be for lower down in the gut as well because all you know our gut begins up here as well.

But it could be a sinus problem.

It could be an middle ear problem.

You know, we got all sorts of gum problems and all sorts of problems we have with mouth.

We’ve got a microbiome up here as well.

Um, this can with one or two other things.

Some of the plants we use in this form contain resins.

And this just comes in a you know in in the form of tablets.

And uh they just look like any other tablets except they’re sort of greeny yellow color because that’s just ground up um uh resin.

Now resin we know about that because it’s the sort of thing you get on out of pine trees.

All we need to do is remember the Bible story.

There were three gifts that the baby Jesus got, didn’t he, for his birthday from those wise men.

I use myrrh in a liquid form.

And you almost like you’re lining the mouth with uh this resin.

You know, it’s when you put some myrrh on the mouth, you definitely feel the the mucos are firing up.

And it was most widely used um medicine.

And the reason why it was so valued in the in those days by the three wise men is because my was there first of all, they had to bring it out of Africa, you know, which is where he comes from.

Um remember the Queen of Sheba in who married Solomon you know in the old uh Bible story Queen of Sheba had the trade routes of East East Africa sorted.

So Solomon married wisely by marrying the Queen of Sheba because she was she had the monopoly on um on myrrh particularly and on frankincense.

And those an echgonia maybe with a licorice to help it work well are amazing at reducing infections in this area in the mouth and the throat and the sinuses and the areas around.

Mission
Mills aims to help people become stronger—like building a better boat to weather life’s waves—through plants, the primary medicine source for humans throughout history. He integrates traditional plant wisdom with modern science.

Loss of Plant Knowledge
Urbanization led to loss of herbal traditions. Historically, community healers knew local plants. In cities, new illnesses emerged that herbs couldn’t handle, so minerals and strong drugs replaced them. Pills became the dominant form of medicine.

Why Medicinal Plants Still Matter
Plants can have rapid effects—within hours or days. Many chronic conditions respond well to plant-based approaches aimed at underlying functions, especially digestion, circulation, liver, and kidney health.

Case Studies
– Heather (65): Chronic skin condition linked to lung damage and gut lining issues. Treatment for lungs and gut led to rapid improvement and eventual resolution.
– Karen (37): Panic attacks linked to liver issues from past jaundice. Herbs for metabolism and liver function stabilized her cycle and eased anxiety.

The Gut as the Foundation
Gut intelligence, microbiome health, and plant diversity are key to overall wellness. Overuse of antibiotics damages the microbiome and drives resistance. Plants like garlic, ginger, and colorful fruits/vegetables feed beneficial bacteria.

Antibiotics: Risks and Alternatives
Antibiotics should be used only when necessary. Overuse fuels resistance, making infections harder to treat. Alternatives for viral illnesses: ginger + cinnamon tea for warming; peppermint for cooling; bitters for digestion and fever.

Garlic
Known as “Russian penicillin.” Raw garlic supports gut flora and can be used intensively for gut or lung infections (eight cloves over an evening).

Chronic Pain & Inflammation
Inflammation is a defense, not the enemy. For joint pain, topical heat remedies (mustard, cayenne) can improve blood flow and reduce pain without suppressing healing.

Diet & Microbiome
Eat a diverse range of plants—“eat the rainbow.” Purples/blues (anthocyanins) are especially beneficial for brain, circulation, and eye health. Root vegetables are strong prebiotics. Whole grains, beans, and legumes support gut health.

Keto Diet & Hormones
Keto can improve insulin sensitivity and regulate menstrual cycles, especially in women with PCOS. Reducing sugar benefits fertility. Mills has seen success supporting conception with herbal remedies.

Summary
– Use medicinal plants to support body systems, not just suppress symptoms.
– Protect microbiome health; avoid unnecessary antibiotics.
– For colds/viral illnesses, try warming/cooling herbal remedies.
– Diet diversity and plant-based foods are essential for long-term health.
– Chronic inflammation often starts in the gut—address underlying causes.

——————————————— Here is the entire second half

Fully Cleaned Transcript: Herbal Health (Second Half)

you have to use bit of unscientific language here, but remember I talked about the Marines, you know, the guys

who do all the battling for us. A lot of them hang out. Their barracks are in the throat. You know, we got tonsils, we got addenoids, we got the glands that run

down our neck here that sometimes get swelled up, you know, if we got an infection in this area. Yeah. You have

to take something to take the It sometimes gets in the way of talking as well. And I was hesitating before

giving it to you. didn’t want to stop you in your in your steps. But what’s that that tingling

cut a as I said a rather confusing story short those are constituents that almost

seem to talk directly to those white blood cells and make them more active.

And so echynia in that form particularly works primarily on the front line shall

we call it of our immune system. these battlers that sit up there and so often

that’s where you want to start the job and you might have an infection somewhere else in the body but if you can work up here with these guys you can

kick off all sorts of benefits and as you’ve just discovered it doesn’t take long. No m So who should be thinking about

echynasia? Certainly if you got an upper respiratory problem and you you do need

to get that tingle if you want to get that particular effect. I mean you can have echgonia in other forms pills and

tablets and so on. Uh and there are some which don’t have that that tingle factor. They got other elements to it

but for the tingle factor it’s anything to do with an infection that has a link

to what’s going on up here. And that could be for lower down in the gut as well because all you know our gut begins

up here as well. But it could be a sinus problem. It could be an middle ear problem. It could be a throat problem.

It could be a gum problem. You know, we got all sorts of gum problems and all sorts of problems we have with mouth.

We’ve got a microbiome up here as well. Um, this can with one or two other

things. Some of the plants we use in this form contain resins. An example is uh frankincense. We got

some tablets there. These ones. Yeah. otherwise known as Boswelia. And this just comes in a you know in in the

form of tablets. And uh they just look like any other tablets

except they’re sort of greeny yellow color because that’s just ground up um

uh resin. Now resin we know about that because it’s the sort of thing you get

on out of pine trees. You know that very tacky stuff. All we need to do is

remember the Bible story. There were three gifts that the baby Jesus got, didn’t he, for his birthday

from those wise men. One was gold. Fair enough. The other two were resins. Myrrh

and frankincense. This is the frankincense. I use myrrh in a liquid form. And you

almost like you’re lining the mouth with uh this resin. You know, it’s

when you put some myrrh on the mouth, you definitely feel the the mucos are

firing up. And it was most widely used um medicine. And the reason why it was

so valued in the in those days by the three wise men is because my was there

first of all, they had to bring it out of Africa, you know, which is where he comes from. Um remember the Queen of

Sheba in who married Solomon you know in the old uh Bible story Queen of Sheba

had the trade routes of East East Africa sorted. So Solomon married wisely by

marrying the Queen of Sheba because she was she had the monopoly on um on myrrh

particularly and on frankincense. And those an echgonia

maybe with a licorice to help it work well are amazing at reducing infections

in this area in the mouth and the throat and the sinuses and the areas around.

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Water Fasting and Long Fasts

Do you do you think that um things like water fasts, people are doing a lot of

these sort of water fasts and these sort of 7-day prolonged fasts are effective medicines?

Uh my usual answer when I’m faced with a question and and someone needed to answer from is to think back a bit. What

did humans evolve to do? And when we were hunter gatherers, which you know was 3 or 400,000 years, we were hunter

gatherers. And now what we’re doing now is a tiny. But we evolved to eat

intermittently. You know, when you’re a hunter gatherer, there are times when you’re not eating at all, especially offseason, and you

get very hungry and then you eat a lot and you have a big feast. So I think our

systems were designed to be intermittent fasting and fasting is probably part of our gene makeup. You know that’s what we

were in a sense meant to do. So the fundamental principle of fasting is probably right on.

issue is is that sometimes if your metabolism, your digestion, your

hormones or other functions are not at prime place, fasting, particularly if

it’s extended, can actually be damaging. So, you do need a bit of advice if

you’re going down that route just to make sure it’s okay for you. And at the start of the conversation,

Cancer Prevention

you referenced that you deal with a lot of cancer patients. So I think you said one/3 about a third of my a quarter maybe a

quarter to a third yeah are living with cancer living with cancer which is something that’s relatively new

remember because I mean that is a testament to what modern medicine has

done because when I started out all those decades ago most people died with

cancer were increasingly getting people living with cancer for extended periods of time and

you know the cancer is not I mean we there are things we can do to help and there is evidence to show that we can

help reduce the risk at least and if not sometimes the um virilence of cancer but

mostly what we’re doing is helping people to function better while they’ve been through chemo or various other

treatments while they’ve still recovering from the cancer and its effects and it could be digestion could

be things like sleep it could be you know all sorts of other things that we can do to help. So there’s there’s the

preventative element which is doing things within your sort of lifestyle choices, your diet to reduce the the

likelihood you’ll get cancer. But then once you have it, there’s ways you can use herbs and other sort of remedies to

better deal with life life generally. When you when you think

about cancer prevention, is it do you think that one of the most powerful things we can do is to focus on what

we’re putting inside our bodies? Yes. And you know, we’ve learned about cigarettes a long time ago. And there

are other foods that have got a higher risk of cancer. We talk about, you know,

processed meats for example has increasingly been seen as a cancer risk. U but I suggest that the main risk in

cancer is just poor diets generally. Too much fat, too much carbs, too much sugar

all at once usually. Um and that strains the body in a way it wasn’t meant. And

there is evidence to show that by correcting poor diet you can prevent um

cancer increasingly that’s accepted. I’m pretty sure that the cardiovascular diseases are the single biggest killer.

Cardiovascular Health Improvements

Yes. Still cardiovascular in the west we’re talking about so developed countries

catching up I’m afraid in other parts of the world where they adopt more western

lifestyles. Uh but that’s a combination of food and poor low level of exercise.

um that we’re putting our finger on there is also cardiovascular disease is

a is another form of long-term inflammation and increasingly that’s

been understood. You know, it’s not just fat or cholesterol or blood pressure.

It’s an inflammatory mechanism going on that’s causing the harm and that’s

increasingly accepted by cardiologists and such. So, if I’m if I’m trying to

reduce my chances of having some kind of heart related issue, are there any herbs or any products here that you think are

beneficial? Mostly, it’s the food. When we’re talking about long-term cardiovascular health, uh we have plants that we use uh

to manage cardiac cardiovascular problems. I mean the classic that a lot of people know

about is the Hawthorne or the Mayflower. Uh but the Hawthorne particularly the flour and the leaf used to be a regular

home remedy that people used to use and drink as a tea uh for all sorts of reasons. You know managing fevers and

all sorts of things like that. But we can we can now see regular hawthornne consumption, hawthornne leaf consumption

as a preventative for some of the problems of cardiovascular. Just as an example, I would I would use spices as

my main go-to to help to fend off cardiovascular problems because they all

have vascular benefits. Spices as in as in

Benefits of Turmeric Consumption

the ginger, the cinnamon we talked about, but here’s turmeric. And this is something we don’t usually see in but if

you can see there’s in fact if you cut that with your knife there I’ve just cut it open.

Yeah. You’ll see it’s bright. Yeah. It’s bright orange. That’s the kurcumin

that people use as a supplement. I’ve got kurcumin at home. I was um I was advised to use that when I pulled

the ligaments in my ankle. Yes. It’s an anti-inflammatory, isn’t it? You can see a little bit why I don’t

like using anti-inflammatory because I like inflammation as a friend. So what I prefer to talk about is they modulate or

support or manage inflammation. Uh but turmeric is an extraordinary remedy and

here’s an interesting story. We talk about we need kurcumin that from turmeric and you’ll get a supplement

saying you know my co my turmeric’s got more kurcumin than yours and it’s more available. The the interesting point is

that kurcumin is not absorbed by into the body at all about one or two% maybe

the rest stays stubbornly in the gut and there’s a very good reason for that

because in any high dose kuramin is toxic. So there’s a good reason for it staying

in the gut, but there’s a lot of work on making it more bioavailable, getting the levels up in the blood. And if you add

pepper, you might get from 1 or 2% to 2 to 3%, you know, but it’s still small

beer compared with the amount of turmeric that we uh take uh the amounts

of kurcumin that we take in in an ordinary curry. So what’s going on? And that what is going on is that kurcamin

and in and turmeric is one of the best remedies we have for microbiome.

There’s a conversation going on. The turmeric is encouraging the good guys. The good guys are breaking turmeric and

kurcumin down into more available materials which are active. it belongs in the gut and its

inflammatory modulating effects come mostly from the products of the

microbiome working on the kurcumin and moving through the body that way. So

it’s a wonderful lesson in you know the that the medicine actually relies in

this case almost entirely on a good microbiome.

an effect that is reduced by the way if you have a lot of antibiotics. Okay, so my microbiome is really the

Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Postbiotics

processing center for many of these things. And if I have a bad gut

microbiome because I’ve been eating the wrong foods and I haven’t had diversity of plants, then even if I take some of

these herbs that are good for me, I won’t be able to process them properly anyway. Not as well as you might. Yes, that is

true. We talk about uh we the the the we got probiotics which is the yogurts and

the kimchi and the cafiers and so on which are actually living organisms. They have to get through the stomach by

the way which is quite a hard deal because the stomach’s job is to sterilize foods but some of them will

get through. Those are the probiotics. The prebiotics are what we’ve been talking about here. The foods that will

encourage the good guys in the microbiome. We got a new kit on the block called postbiotics.

Mhm. Which is now an industrial term used for killed bacteria which are then given as

a medicine. But technically a postbiotic is anything that the bacteria produce.

Mhm. And we’re learning that more and more of what we eat, particularly from the plant

side, is converted by the microbiome into medicines.

And all those polyphenols and the colorings and so on are in that group. So a lot of the benefits of polyphenols

are postbiotic benefits. There was a study done in 2007 that

showed can’t even say it. Curcumin that shows curcumin upregulates anti-

oxidant defenses and downregulates oxidative stress. Yeah. There was a study done in 2016

which is a meta analysis of random control trials found curcuminum comparable to ibuprofen in terms of pain

relief. Answers your earlier question, doesn’t it? And there’s a lot of uh lots of studies

The Shocking Benefits of Curcumin

that show that it’s effective for people that have things like arthritis and joint pains.

Yeah, that was leaving the best to last. Yeah, there there’s a lot of work on

kurcamin and turmeric. As I say, a lot of people get confused because they think the it only works if you absorb it

into the blood. And I’m saying that actually you don’t. What you do is you work with the microbiome to make it

useful. And there’s early preclinical studies taking place around the impact it can

have with cancers. And there’s promising but early studies showing the impact that curcumin that comes from turmeric

can have on brain health. Yes. Well, that’s definitely a big story, but just on the when you say

preclinical, that usually mean that it does mean laboratory. So that’s a test tubes and b rats and other animals.

None of those tell us what happens when we put it in a human. Put it in the human. So all a

preclinical study will do is point to a possible effect. And time again, pharmaceutical companies will tell you

this. you know, a promising pre-clinical lead doesn’t lead to a medicine because it turns out to be a toxic or doesn’t

agree with humans. So, we take pre-clinical evidence with caution. And

we’re personally I’m mostly interested in human studies because that’s the only

thing that makes any sense. Um, but you mentioned brain health because here’s one of the big gaps we have, don’t we?

Because we were we’ve got a lot of brain health issues right now. Mhm. dementia is still going in the

wrong direction. Um it’s a very distressing thing if you have any in your family and increasingly there’s

people saying what can we do to prevent this and Alzheimer’s is all about there

being the wrong sort of protein and deposits in the brain but increasingly the focus is switching on to the blood

supply to the brain what we call the vascular effects on the brain and

there’s something we used to call the blood brain barrier which you probably heard of which is seen to be the place

where the barrier that stops a lot of stuff entering the brain and potentially upsetting it. We now know this bloodb

brain barrier is a very dynamic interesting interface between the brains

tissue and the rest of us. is now called the neurovvascular unit, NVU.

And it is so exciting. And the more we look at it so far, the more we find that

the things that help the neurovvascular unit, the bloodb brain barrier are plants. And we have green tea. And you

know we can if you if you really want to help um our brain health regular

drinking of green tea you know it’s been shown to be really useful. Not

that rather than the supplement by the way is the drink that you have um oh I put it in here right so we can make it.

So as you make that can you explain to me why green tea is a good idea

because it contains a number of again polyphenols and polyphenols are those

are these colors these colors yeah in this case it’s green obviously and me tea is just the smoked unprocessed part

of the tea leaf so it’s a plant called chameleia senses um

so this is a nice Japanese teapot. That’s the sort of thing you’d have green tea in. And these are the mugs,

but we’ve filled these up already with uh uh ginger and cinnamon. So, let’s

let’s leave it for a moment. But what we can while it’s sitting there for a while, there are a number of these

polyphenols and green tea that seem to be particularly effective in modulating that barrier. We

talked about the neurovvascular unit between the brain and the rest of us. And um there’s all sorts of reasons why

regular consumption of green tea seems to be linked to less of this sort of trouble.

What what sort of trouble? The dementia type problems, cognitive decline as you get older.

Do they find that in cultures where they drink a lot of green tea, they have less dementia? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean there’s a cause and effect. So you need a few

other things to establish that. What we’re finding is that other plants have

very likely powerful effects in this area. And I mentioned the rosemary. Now all you need to do to appreciate

rosemary is to press it and sniff. Oh, it smells so good. Really nice.

That’s not just nice because what you’re doing there is you’re inhaling volatile oils, the things that give the smell.

And when you’re inhaling, they’re literally going into your brain because part of the brain actually

reaches the outside world. It’s called the alactory lobe and it’s right at the top of the nose here.

And when you inhale something, it literally moves into the brain and from

there into the lyic system. Remember there’s a line in a Shakespeare play called Hamlet Ailia

the young lady says rosemary that’s for remembrance

because everyone knew that this improved cognitive functions and when I was in

working on our campus in Maryland we actually did a clinical trial with rosemary in people with struggling with

their crosswords you know as they get older and found that although it wasn’t a conclusive study there were pointers

to it improving cognitive or performance in those people and there’s been other

studies since that re that reinforce that. I would say that rosemary is one of the ones to watch in terms of

long-term brain health. There’s another remedy called GKO that a lot of people know about which is used as a

prescription medicine in Europe uh for cardiovascular problems and that’s been

shown to be likely useful and using the same sort of mechanisms as as we’ve seen

here and with the green tea. I’ll check it here. Yeah, that looks all right.

You see it’s more yellow than green, but uh and this is flavored with a little bit

of mint to make it a little more agreeable. Sometimes people find green tea is not their favorite taste.

Green tea is rich in polyphenols um which are linked to benefits ranging from heart and brain health to fat loss

and cancer prevention.

It’s got a nice minty flavor. Yeah. You could live with that, couldn’t you? Yeah. Yeah,

my girlfriend again, she she’s all over this stuff. She’s always bloody right. Well, you know that or learned that

lesson a long time ago. I know, right? Like I say it all the time on this podcast, but she’s always like two, three years ahead of what then

Cocoa Powder Healing Benefits

someone really really smart comes and tells me and I spend those two or three years in denial. I’m like, what the [ __ ] is she like doing over there? Don’t get

me started on cacao. If you start talking to me about cacao, I’m going to leave. No, no, no, no, no. She’s been telling I’m gonna I’m gonna nail this because

there’s a lot of people listening who will want to hear this. Okay, Coco. Yeah, chocolate, dark chocolate is a medicine.

End of one of the best medicines around is 50 g or 100 g of 75% or more dark

chocolate. Do you know what I’ve just realized? My girlfriend, she’s going to live till she’s 150 because she all she

eats 90% or something 80% dark chocolate. She drinks green tea all day.

She has the ginger and cinnamon drinks all day.

She eats the full rainbow. She should be slipping in for you. I know. I I know. Exactly.

No, Coco. Seriously, brain health as well,

cardiovascular health. I mean, they just they do studies where they’ve put coco into volunteers. That

means students usually um you know so young kids and they were able to show

changes in the blood flow within minutes certainly within an hour of eating cocoa

beneficial changes in your blood flow. They call it the heart medicine. Yeah. Heart circulation brain.

So she’s um my girlfriend’s very spiritual. She runs a business called Barley Breathwork. Um hashtag ad if I

have to say that. But in her business, one of the things she does at the very start of the session with women all over the world that come to her retreats is

she makes cacao for them. And you notice instantly how people change

when they’ve had a hot cup of cacao. It’s and and she says it like almost brings out their heart. And I guess

that’s because of the circulation reasons. It is, but it also of course we know it contains a few other beneficial

stimul stimulating effects sort of similar to the effects with coffee which in certainly as I’ve already said is a

medicine as well. Uh but cocoa and chocolate does have a uplifting effect

which is why we love it. So and we have to be clear here we’re not talking about hot chocolate that comes

from a packet or something necessarily. We would like it to be as dark as possible. Okay. So,

the less sugar, the less fat. Um, so we talk about 75% cocoa solids, you know,

so it’s dark chocolate and it tastes a bit more medicinal, doesn’t it? It’s not as sweet. Um, but I’m saying to many of

my patients, take 50 grams a day.

It’s a medicine. Damn, she’s right. My fridge is full of

dark chocolate. I tend to avoid it, but the drawer of my fridge has all of her dark chocolate in and it’s she she likes

it 90%. If she can get it 90%, she’ll take it. Yeah. 90% is quite bitter now.

Yeah. Yeah. I am I was in Peru and I went to a chocolate making lesson and that

chocolate making lesson changed my life. And it changed my life because I didn’t realize how much sugar goes into

chocolate, but specifically white chocolate. Oh my god. They said they gave me this big beaker which was you

know this big like a a foot high and a foot wide and they were like right pour the sugar in. So I poured some and

they’re like they like laughed at me. They were like no fill it like 70% with this white sugar. And I was like there’s

no way. I poured about 60 or 70% white sugar into this massive tube and

they were like okay now put a little bit of this and a little bit of this little bit of oil whatever. And I couldn’t believe that it’s literally like the

white chocolate is like literally all sugar. Then milk chocolate was like 50% sugar. And then when we did when we made

the dark chocolate, it was a tiny amount like a tiny tiny amount. And from that

day onwards, white chocolate’s left my life. There was once upon a time we a few years back when the Europeans uh

union, I think before we joined it, said that we shouldn’t call uh dairy milk

chocolate at all. It’s a chocolate flavor candy is what they described it as literally. Yeah. So this is So we’ve got

Shocking Link Between Alzheimer’s and Green Tea

some green tea here. Yeah. And you’re talking to me about the association between green tea and

Alzheimer’s which is really exciting. Yes. Um there’s quite a lot of work being done

now on these and there they’re obviously looking for medications as well but so far most of

the data coming in in relates to plant-based materials. So it suggests that there’s other reasons why having

plants and again spices come back into the mix um seem to be helpful for brain

health. I’m having a look at the green tea.

There was a study done in 2008 which supports how it improved cognitive function, memory, attention accuracy and

um long-term consumption associated with lower risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease according to the

Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry in 2011. It’s nice to have somebody else just say

what you said. Yeah, but it’s it’s exactly I didn’t realize. I didn’t I had no idea.

I had no idea. All those times I turned it down when she offered it to me.

You can’t say sorry. I have literally literally I’ve got a Wow. heart health, brain function, fat

burning and metabolism, cancer prevention, early evidence, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, gut and oral

health. What about matcha? I’m a I’m a big investor in um the biggest matcha

company in Europe. It’s probably more beneficial than the basic green tea because it’s it’s it’s more shall we say

pure. Um it’s finer quality. So the chances are that matcha will do more

than we’ve just said the green tea will do. Um but there’s there’s a evidence lack and a lot of these things is we

need more evidence, but it would point to matcha being particularly helpful.

Cholesterol and Statins — Is There an Alternative?

We haven’t talked much about cholesterol. No, you haven’t brought it up.

Cholesterol is a type of fat made in your liver which travels in your blood and can be found. What is um for anyone

that doesn’t know cholesterol, what it is and why it if it’s a good or bad thing, what do I need to know about cholesterol

and is there anything in front of us here that can help keep my cholesterol in a healthy state? I did think I think

a doctor did actually tell me at one point that I had high cholesterol um a couple of years ago because of my

diet at the time. The keto of course will tend to well it’s interesting again keto you think would push up your

cholesterol levels but actually there’s a mixture of effects. So it’s not it’s not a done deal that it will raise your

cholesterol. It there’s cholesterol is part of a range of fats the body has.

Most of the fats that are in the body come from the food and they come in as heavy fats we say. And what the

digestion does is a strip down the heaviness and it becomes more what we

call high density uh lipop liposite

HDLs. My tongue is twisting around it. And uh cholesterol is sort of in the

middle of that as one of the elements within that spectrum of fats.

What cholesterol is actually a secreted by the liver for very good reasons. It helps with all sorts of things. It’s the

basis of some of our hormones. There’s all sorts of reasons why we need cholesterol. I sometimes have referred

to in the past as the tiger in the tank that it sort of helps to fire up some of our get up and go. And if we were

physically active during the during the day working on the land or whatever, you need a certain amount of cholesterol to

motor. We’re sitting in chairs and the cholesterol becomes increasing a

problem. We have a highfat diet that tends to put in more of it. And the

point is that many of us our cholesterol levels increasingly rise and that is a risk factor as we know for

cardiovascular disease. we we said was still one of the biggest killer. So

cholesterol is up there as a risk factor and so the usual thing that a doctor will do is to hand you something a

statin basically that will reduce your cholesterol levels.

They also know that there’s more push back on that prescription than almost anything else because the word is out

that statins can do this that or the other interfere with your muscle strength and all the rest of it. Give

you little aches and pains that you know most people have statins without a problem but the

impact of statins is still modest in terms of the overall scheme of things. You know the numbers of people’s lives

it saves is probably fairly minimal. So the probably the better conversation is to have what can we do to

recontextualize the cholesterol so that it becomes more like it should be a good

thing rather than a risk and the first thing is to have a more apart from the

keto have the more vegetable-based plant-based diet because that in itself

will tend to mop up and reduce cholesterol. exercise becomes important because by

physical activity we can manage it better. And then where we come in uh with the work I do is to look at high

cholesterol is potentially a sign of liver distress and you know we like

working with the liver and there’s a number of remedies that we use to help

reduce cholesterol levels mainly by getting more out through the bile and so

on. So, it’s a there’s not a straight answer to your question. Um, you know,

the statin is sounds like a simple pill that fixes it. Uh, the reality is is

that we need to look at a much wider range of things. You’re a fan of artichokes for cholesterol. Yes, you you must have read my mind. Uh,

the artich choke leaf uh is the one we’re talking about which is used in France a lot for basically fat liver

related problems a lot. Uh I use it a lot in the practice as a juice actually just as a pressed juice. Um uh yes it’s

one of them. Dandelion root is another old familiar which seems to be helpful

here mostly by as I said flushing stuff through the bile and there is a range of

other things that we use. One of the things that you know many people are concerned about when they’re thinking about changing their diet is

just the cost of it. they think it’s super expensive to to buy all these fresh fruit and veg and you know

is that the case is is that a barrier to to entry to the stuff we’ve talked about today at all

my usual answer that is east eat Asian because as I said if you can make a meal

with vegetables and spices and things like lentils and so on beans for very

cheaply it’s just that we got out of the habit or we haven’t got into the habit of doing that slightly slow cooking. Uh

we will buy our Indian meals sometimes from places that put a more fat in than

they might. Um so some of the meals we can buy that are Asian are a bit too

fatty. But if you make it yourself at home, which means learning how to cook, but you can eat very cheaply.

Omeprazole

What is the most important thing that we didn’t talk about that we should have talked about?

Well, I suppose I didn’t mention much about the omerazole um because that that

I’ve never heard of this before. Mezriole? Yeah, I’ve never heard of it. Yeah, they are increasingly a minority.

Oh, really? Arazzole is the most widely prescribed drug in this country and I believe in the US also. And it’s for

acid reflux. It’s what the Americans call gird and what we call gourd because we spell

esophagus differently. So we spell esophagus with an OE and Americans spell

it with an E. So it’s either gird or gore depending on which country you’re in. And that means gastro esophageal

reflux disease. Gourd. And acid reflux is a real issue with a

lot of people and they find that when they go to a doctor, the doctor will routinely prescribe a merazole or

something like it. And gourd is actually diagnosed by as a

condition which is made better by omerazol. I mean it’s literally it’s a disease that is diagnosed by the

treatment. And what a merazole does is shuts down the acid production in the stomach. So

you don’t get as much damage by reflux. The problem is is that the acid’s doing

a job. It’s sterilizing your food, which is important, isn’t it? It’s also

helping to break it down so that it becomes not an immune threat, which you

know, if you have a blood transfusion or something in the wrong blood, you get a problem. You we’re eating forest stuff

all the time. We rely on the stomach and the juices to make it safe. So, the acid

is there to protect us. When we’re getting acid reflux,

actually, it’s not because you got too much acid. is because you’re refluxing it. It’s going back up into the gullet,

the esophagus. But a merazole will put an end to that. The problem with a two

problems. First is that the list of problems occurring from long-term amrazol use is beginning to grow and is

serious. Cancers, dementias, all sorts of things are beginning to be downstream problems

associated with long-term omerazol use. But the other thing is is that once you’re on it, it’s really difficult to

come off it and you get a famous rebound effect. So you come off the merazole and

wow, you get much more trouble. So the only thing to do is take more mezrazole and people find it really hard to come

off it. So you have to do a lot of hard work to wean people off and do it in sorts of different ways. So what do we

do instead? Well, one simple thing to do, and anyone can do this, and you don’t need to go very far, is to use

what we call the raft principle. So, there are some plants that have got a

lot of mucus in them, mucelage. The classic example from North America, Sri Elm, it’s a sort of powder that

looks like you make polyfiller to fill the crack with, you know, it’s a white powder. When it’s mixed with water, it

forms this paste, this muc mucous stuff. You want to have it as a tablet because

you don’t want all to swallow that stuff. But when it’s in the stomach, it produces this mucus layer. You don’t

need to go to slippery elm. There is a product here in this country called Gavaskon, which is essentially seaweed

gum with I don’t have shares in it, by the way, but it it’s seaweed gum with some minerals in there. And they

advertise it when you see the television ads as the raft. So what they’re doing is you’re putting a layer of mucus on

top of your food. So you have it after you’ve had your last mouthful. You have a bit of there. And then as the food

pushes up back into the gullet, you’ve got this nice mucous coating, a raft to

stop it back up. That carbohydrate, it’s what it is, gets

digested within a couple of hours. End off. No problem. It’s not even a medicine. It’s just a physical barrier.

So it could have gavasone, you could have copium, you could have aloe vera, there’s a number of other muc mucousy

type plants that people use and that can without any other complication at all be

one step. And I use it regularly with with when I’m weaning people off. I will use the raft principle to help prevent

some of the harm you get with reflux. That’s simple example.

You’re very fond of these plants. They are living organisms, aren’t they?

Are you concerned about how we we treat them? I’m concerned about the nate the world

that they come from because of course increasingly we have to produce these industrially which sometimes mean in

monoculture. Well, it usually means a monoulture form. They’re grown in rows and rows and they put weed killers down

to get other plants out of the way and so they become less

uh natural. And we talked about the polyphenols. You know, PA, the company I worked for was

all organic and we were able to show that a plant that grows organically

that doesn’t have pesticides needs to fight his own battles more.

Mhm. Because if you got a pesticide, you don’t need to worry about so much, you know, the the pests and the attackers.

So, a plant that’s grown in wild or organically without chemicals has more

polyphenols because the polyphenols are part of the plant’s defense mechanism. M

so the more you can buy or I mean that’s where foraging comes in. You know my colleague in Devon is a forager and he

he can walk around hedro and show you you can make a whole meal out of plasma people just walk past um because people

used to do that. So that’s real wild eating which must be one of the best

ways of eating. Uh but the more close to nature you can get your plants the

better. We have to live with what we’ve got and most plants are grown without

that. But they’re still better than having them not having them at all. Simon, thank you. Um, we have a closing

How to Keep Up With a Fast-Changing World

tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they’re leaving it for. The question left for you is, “Our

world is changing fast. How do you keep up?”

I think the world is we all know getting pretty

scary out there, isn’t it? There is a a truth which is you and the

people around you are the actually the only things that matter daytoday are

they are of closest dearest the ones that we have invested most.

One of the reasons that I’m increasingly happy to spend my time working in the

practice in extra rather than chasing around the world is because

as the world gets more frightening,

the more you realize that it’s the connections you make with each other

you put back to back if you like, you know, face the world out there back to back. And I think

it’s reconnecting with those who are closest to you. That is the best antidote I know. And that also includes

reconnecting with the the nature and the world around it. So that would be my answer.

And who is that in your life? Who are those people? I have family. I have now 10

grandchildren between us, Rachel and myself. Congratulations. And so um the uh

electronic calendar comes into its own to keep track of all that. Uh so yes the

we’ve we’ve uh got a a no spread around the globe. So it’s a it’s a widespread

thing but we’ve got people close by and you know obviously your closest and nearest are the ones that matter.

Simon thank you so much for doing what you do. I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your work. I’ve never had a conversation with someone that knows so much about plants and and

herbs in my life. So, I was so excited to learn more. And you have changed my opinion on so many things. I can’t wait

to go and tell my girlfriend that she’s right about everything. I’ll I’ll slip her the I’ll she can slip

me the tenner. And I highly recommend um people go and check out your your website and go to

your herb which takes place once a month. Um, I’m sure there’s going to be lots of people getting in touch with you to try and come and see you in person as

well, which is fantastic. Is there anything else that if my listeners want to take a step forward from here in this

direction and understand more about herbs? I’ve got your books here which I’m going to link below. There’s the herb hour on your website. Is there

anything else that we should be aware of? As I said, the website does link to this wonderful resource that’s not I mean I

contribute to the herbal reality one which is where you’re going to find almost anything you want to know about using plants. So that’s I’ll stop there,

but you can step through my website to get there because you’ll find a few other things on the way. Um there is

resources out there and it’s increasingly reliable. These are not dreamt up, you know, for a Tik Tok

video. They’re well thought through and based on a lot of human experience. So there is stuff out there if you’re

looking for it. Thank you. You’re very much leading the charge to bring us all back to being human beings and I’m a big big fan of

that and it’s a journey I’m on myself. So, thank you so much for doing the work that you do and being a champion for for

nature in all its forms. So, um and I really really hope that uh I really hope that more people, more podcasters host

you so that you can get the uh get the message out there. Thank you. This has always blown my mind a little

bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven’t yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor?

If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button.

And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I’ll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single

week. We’ll listen to your feedback. We’ll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we’ll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

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Hey. Hey. Hey.

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