Unstress: The Year in Review (2021)
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. And before I start, I would like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land on which I’m recording this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. And just recently I was at the northern border – the Eora Nation – which is basically the Sydney Basin.
The northern border is the Hawkesbury River, the western border is the Napean River, and the southern border is the Georges River, and that is the Eora Nation, and I believe there are 25 or 27 tribes in the Eora Nation of which the Gadigal people one (of them) and that is where I’m recording this podcast. I would like to pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.
Promoting the idea of improving immune function, defining and redefining what holistic actually means
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:53] Well, 2021. What a year. Now, one of the things that I have always prided myself on in the years that we’ve just had is that we’ve always promoted the idea of improving immune function, defining and redefining what holistic actually means.
The fact that we are all connected and we are all affected by everything that occurs in the world, that the environment is linked to our health, our health is linked to the environment, and a holistic approach to health is not some new age philosophy. It just happens to be the way the body works and it happens to be the way the planet works. So that’s been our focus.
In terms of improving immune function, we’ve dealt with many issues such as breathing, and mental health, and nutrition, and environmental health, and a whole range of issues that we’ve dealt with. I mention this because having been in practise now for 42 years and I have been focussed on a holistic approach to health care in general through that time, and many of you would know that specifically, my focus has been on oral health and broadly speaking on stress, but on oral health.
And I am actually a clinician still practising seeing my patients in Sydney, Australia, two days a week and a very big part of my professional journey over the last, well since I started studying Dentistry which is now 48 or so years ago, has been prevention.
Preventive Dentistry is something that dentistry can be very proud of. Starting in the 1940s, championed the idea that sugar may cause tooth decay. Now, I had the wonderful Sarah Wilson on as a guest this year, and Sarah has written many wonderful books, she wrote, of course, I Quit Sugar and I’ve often said Sarah as a patient of mine, but also I got to know her over the years.
I love what she does. I love what she stands for. I love how she writes and her I Quit Sugar did more in the six or eight years of its life than the dental profession did in 60 years, but that’s not to say the dental profession wasn’t championing prevention as in the dietary aspect to prevention, as in keeping your mouth clean through good oral hygiene, and also stressing the importance of early treatment. Because if you have a small cavity, it’s a very simple repair and it’s reasonably cost-effective.
If you let that decay go through to the nerve in the tooth, you’re into extractions, root canal treatments, crowns, implants, dentures literally thousands of dollars worth of work, and far more treatment than you would ever need. And the reason I mention that is because during this pandemic, sadly, unless you can tell me differently, we have heard practically, in fact, nothing about prevention or early treatment.
In fact, sadly, many people, practitioners who I know, that have championed those things have been brought before the regulatory body in Australia and have been seen to be undermining the story of vaccination as though vaccination was one solution.
Dealing with preventable chronic degenerative diseases
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:04:23] And I think the other thing that is interesting about this pandemic is that it gives us a snapshot as to how our health care system works and when you’re dealing with preventable chronic degenerative diseases like cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, these conditions have a long course.
They go on over years 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years a whole lifetime. And so it’s easy to manage these things and call it a health care system. But when it becomes an acute problem like a pandemic, if it’s managed in the same way with one medication for the one condition, then we start to see flaws in the system. And particularly when we’re not talking to people about prevention and early treatment.
Now, very early on in the pandemic, I shared with you some of the information from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. Now I would recommend that you visit that site because it has a wonderful resource dating back literally 20 or 30 years of terrific articles on orthomolecular, which is basically talking about the biochemistry of the body and what each cell in our body needs to function optimally, and how the environment impacts on that optimal function and how we may take certain supplements to help support the environment on nutritional assault we put on ourselves in our modern world.
And I’ve been honoured to be on the editorial board amongst a group of 50 or plus incredibly well-qualified medical and research practitioners. And I have to say I’m humbled to be in their company and I’ve invited several of them on as guests in this last year to talk about immune function.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:06:20] People like Dr. Andrew Saul, the editor and founder of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Dr. Richard Cheng, Dr. Thomas Levy, Professor Michael Gonzalez, Dr. Carolyn Dean, Professor Ian Brighthope. The last episode of ‘guest episode’ we did this year was, in fact, this Monday with Professor Ian Brighthope, who was the founder of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine and its founding president, and he is their ambassador, and Ian is an effort in Australian health care. He’s on the board of the National Institute of Integrative Medicine.
About Vaccines
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:07:05] So he, in that last episode, and I talked to him earlier in the year about medicinal cannabis and its effects, but also in the last episode, we discussed ‘immune function, does it still matter?’ And of course, it’s a silly question, but it’s one that needs to be asked in our current pandemic because it’s almost as though the only thing we have going for us is vaccinations.
And look, I have had my double vax with the AstraZeneca. I did that because this is part of the community. I am part of a community. I have known so many people in hospitality, in education, in tourism, in entertainment, in small retail, either as a retail owner or as a shop assistant. I know so many people in those situations. Cleaners, waiters, you know, these are all ordinary people that are trying to make a living. And the effect of this pandemic has been, well, huge. I mean, mental health is a huge and growing problem at the best of times, but these last two years have not been the best of times.
So for me, when the government said we needed a vaccination rate of 70% before things would return to normal, and I must say I’ve never had a flu vaccine although I’ve had my hepatitis (vaccine), I’ve had my smallpox (vaccine). When my grandchildren were born, I was asked to have a whooping cough vaccine. No problem with that.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:08:36] All of these vaccines that I’ve had have been the traditional vectors, the traditional protein, or attenuated virus vectors, which have been around for 40 or 50 years, and they’ve been proven to be safe. And even though I knew the AstraZeneca, the Moderna was an experimental mRNA vaccine and the AstraZeneca and experimental DNA vaccine, I chose to have it knowing that I was entering the phase 3 clinical trial, and I hope you all know that too, knowing that the only reason I was having it was to reduce my own chance of hospitalisation, knowing that with those vaccines.
I was still capable of contracting the virus and transmitting the virus. In fact, arguably as new variants came along, that wasn’t a part of the vaccine that I had. Arguably, I was more susceptible to getting it and transmitting it. I knew all of those things, but I wanted to be a statistic. I wanted to be part of that statistic to get people back to work and back to normal.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:09:45] Well, as we are seeing now with the Omicron variant, as I see people lined up around the street, most of them, I would assume are double vaxxed. They’re wearing masks and they’re getting PCR tests to show that they are negative so that they can attend the Christmas celebrations, I can’t help but be feeling a certain irony about the public health approach to this pandemic, and I’m not saying vaccines are an important part of that.
But what I am saying is that prevention and early treatment should be the foundation on which it is built. It’s the foundation on which my dental practise has been built for 42 years. And if I said to my patients, “Forget about coming in for a clean, we’re not going to bother taking x-rays until I can see the decay with my own two eyes or until you present with pain or an abscess, I don’t want to see you.
Just eat good food and brush your teeth. That’s it. Until then, good luck. I don’t need to see you until you’re either in pain or we can see the decay.” If that was my approach in my dental practise, I would have probably been brought before opera and de-registered. Quite rightfully, that would have been it.
Public Health Awareness
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:11:05] Sadly, the approach that we seem to be taking publicly as public health, as a government, as state and federal public health departments, public health is all about vaccinations and that is why the focus for this podcast has been very much on a more holistic approach. This was the case before the pandemic. It will be the case after the pandemic, but it’s never been more important than now.
Which brings me to The Year in Review and what a year it has been. We started off after our summer series. We started off and by the way, the summer series… Well, I’ll tell you about the summer series coming up, but we started off focussed on breath and intentional stress, and we talked to that legendary Bondi lifesaver, Dean Gladstone. I love Dean.
I love what the Bondi Rescue team does now in its 20th season, and Dean is just the loveliest guy. He’s involved with breath training, the Wim Hof Method, and building intentional stress to boost immune function.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:12:14] Then we talked to Natasha Moore and explored The Pleasures of Pessimism, what a wonderful idea in this current year. Before we refocused on airway and spoke to my mentor in New York, Dr. Howard Hindin, who is a dentist, he is still practising after 60 years. He is President of the American Academy of Physiological Medicine & Dentistry, medical practitioners and dentistry, medical medicine and dental practise, and how Howard Hindin was talking about airway and the importance of airway.
And then we talked about heart rate variability and the wonderful Sharon Moore, speech pathologist, who has written a wonderful book called Sleep Wrecked Kids. And following that theme, we spoke to the wonderful paediatrician, Dr. Leila Masson, who’s written a book Children’s Health A to Z.
Leila is an integrative, holistic paediatrician, and she’s a wonderful, holistic practitioner. Carmel Harrington, we got back on to the sleep topic and talked about SIDS and the triple risk of SIDS and understanding that.
Mental Health Awareness
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:27] Then we were focussed on mental health and we discussed with Sarah Woodhouse You’re Not Broken and dealing with stress. And we followed on through the year with Jacqueline Stone, who is a psychologist talking also about stress, and Petrea King, who talked about how trauma can be a gateway to some positive changes in your life.
So mental health has been an issue for us, and during that time we spoke to Dr. Martin Whitely, who wrote that tremendous book called Overprescribing Madness, which seems particularly relevant to our approach to this pandemic. Because though prescription medication is the only way forward. Jacqueline Stone.
We revisited breathing with the Rosalba Courtney. Rosalba Courtney has done a Ph.D in on breath and we call that episode Life is in the Breath. I then went on to speak to the author, James Nestor, who wrote a wonderful book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. And again, one of my mentors, Roger Price, on Breathing Well.
The Five Pillars and the Five Stresses
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:36] And I’ve been talking about, I’ve been studying breath for about 15 or 20 years now, but I can’t revisit it often enough, and I don’t make any apology for talking about it again to you, because it’s a timely reminder for you always to be focussing on it. It’s something that’s easy to listen to and get excited about for the few days after you listen to a podcast but to incorporate it into your everyday life is really important, so I see our health is like tapping a hoop along the street.
If you stop tapping it, eventually that whoop stops rolling down the street and it falls down flat. And now health is a bit like that, reminding ourselves of the five pillars and the five stresses, which is essentially what this is all about
Chris Miliotis, doctor, environmentalist, regenerative agriculture, and bio biodynamic pioneer or advocate, and we talk to him about Diet for a Cool Planet in June, and we revisited him more recently. Then we spoke to several people from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Andrew Saul.
I mentioned Dr. Richard Cheng, Thomas Levy – talking about hydrogen peroxide as a way, as a treatment being put to hydrogen peroxide diluted into a nebuliser and wearing it as a face mask and doing it for a few minutes several times a day, particularly if you have tested positive to COVID, a very effective way of killing the virus.
Use of Neti Pot
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:16:08] And we’ve talked to, through the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, also with Carolyn Dean about magnesium, critically important. With Professor Ian Brighthope that Vitamin D, zinc, Vitamin C, magnesium, quercetin, these are all wonderful things and we’re going to demonstrate, and I haven’t mentioned it, but I should, and that is the use of the neti pot, and I would encourage you to look at this on YouTube.
I’m going to be doing the demonstration of this in the new year. It’s something that I’ve used for years, ever since I had a Septoplasty, you know, straightening my septum in my nose 15 or 20 years ago, and I was told to use a neti pot and it seemed like such a good idea. That is a little pot with a spout that you put into one nostril and you keep your mouth open a little bit.
It’s warm saltwater like a half-level teaspoon of salt, Himalayan rock salt, into warm water, pass it through one nostril allow it to come out the other nostril. Put it in the other nostril allow it to come out the other nostril, have a little bit left in there and gargle out with it. And in the last two years, I have added diluted betadine, about 10 mils betadine in there, and so that is a very powerful antiviral mechanism.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:17:31] So the combination of the episodes we’ve done with those people and the combination of using hydrogen peroxide and the neti pot with warm salt water and diluted iodine is a really powerful preventive procedure. And then talking about early treatment, we’ve touched on the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.
You know, I recently posted a podcast that I would highly recommend to you. It’s episode 1747 of Joe Rogan, where he talks to Dr. Peter McCullough. Peter McCullough is a world expert on COVID.
His background is cardiology and nephrology, the study of the heart and kidney particularly relevant when myocarditis is a side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for young men in particular. But he’s also a researcher and an academic and the editor of several highly-regarded journals now.
Peter McCullough has published 650 articles in the medical literature. 51 of those are on COVID, and he’s appeared before the American Congress in 2020 and again in 2021. Now, when someone has that kind of credentials, I think they’re worth listening to, and I posted that I thought it was the most important podcast you will ever listen to. And one of the most informative and I still believe that.
And I wanted to share that with a person who is very senior in public health in Australia. You will have seen him on the podcast. You will have seen him in the press, and I shared that with him. But unfortunately, he wasn’t all that impressed with Peter McCullough’s credentials and dismissed him as being a little bit egocentric, not an infectious diseases expert, and therefore not really worth listening to.
And I must say I was a little bit disappointed by that response because if that is and that’s coming from really, and I kid you not, one of the highest levels of health care in Australia, one of the most highly respected health care practitioners in public health in Australia. And that was the level of response to somebody who has published 650 articles, 51 of them on COVID appeared twice before Congress.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:12] The first time, he estimated that if prevention and early treatment had been undertaken, 50% of the deaths in America, now we’re up to around 800,000+ deaths. 50% of those could have been avoided. He made that estimation in 2020. When he reappeared before Congress in 2021, his estimation had risen to 85%.
So that’s quite a sobering statistic from someone who has written 51 articles on COVID and is clearly an expert on it and has no ties to the pharmaceutical industry, has a lot of knowledge of the pharmaceutical products that are available, makes the point that when we come to early treatment, one medication is simply not enough.
Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine Explained
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:58] So Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine have been around for 40 or 50 years. They have been proven to be safe and accessible and cheap and effective for other viral infections, but they had been pilloried by the press at this time. When we’re talking about early treatment, we’re not talking about one medication.
Ivermectin may be a great product, but it needs to be used with Zinc, it needs to be used with Azithromycin and Doxycycline, it needs to be used with Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Quercetin, which promotes zinc being uptaken by the cells, which are zinc, has a very deleterious effect on viruses. And so this is why these combinations of products, it’s never one drug. And when we look at the way the chronic disease is managed, it’s always looking at one drug.
You are depressed, you get an antidepressant. You’re inflamed, you get an anti-inflammatory. You’re anxious, you’ll get an anti-anxiety tablet. You’re having trouble sleeping, etc.. You have a pandemic, you get a vaccine. You have a diagnosis, Ivermectin is the medication. No, no. That’s not the way it works. It’s a combination of things and it always is.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:22:22] So and the thing that disturbs me is that while drugs like Ivermectin have been described in newspapers that I have previously had a great deal of respect for, The Guardian, for example, dismissed Ivermectin as a horse dewormer espoused by social media and right id influencers and right-wing nutters.
Now, when I heard that, I was kind of taken aback because I used to think and I used to subscribe to The Guardian and I’ll share with you the episode, the article that came out just before Christmas that actually caused me to cancel my subscription to The Guardian. I’ll share it with you in a moment.
But Ivermectin was described as a horse dewormer, and all the newspapers picked up on that. And I could not work out why newspapers are just not being critical of anything, just pursuing the same narrative.
And then an article came out in one of the newspapers, one of the independent journals, making the point that actually the Gates Foundation had donated, this is public, had donated $350 million to various news organisations, including CNN, the BBC, The Atlantic, again, the magazine that I used to have a great deal of respect for, including $12 million to the Guardian, and then it started to all make sense because
The Guardian’s description of the horse dewormer ignored the fact that Ivermectin actually won a Nobel Prise for medicine in 2015 for its effect on humans. It has been given as an anti-parasitic and an antiviral to four billion people globally since it was first discovered in about the 1970s.
And I think there have been a total of four or five thousand adverse reactions in those 40 or 50 years and no deaths. So here we have a cheap, effective, accessible medication that has the potential to, in combination with other medications and supplements, turn an early diagnosis of COVID into a non-event. Certainly avoiding hospitalisations and death.
Can we Trust The Science??
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:24:58] And yet the media have dismissed it as horse dewormer and right-wing nutters and social media influencers, that disturbs me, I mean, I have written a book called The Life Less Stressed, and I very often also reflect on why public health messages are so confusing and contradictory. I deal with it in my last episode a few weeks ago called ‘Trust The Science??’ Can we? And I’ve always thought that it’s the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical industries’ influence on all levels of government and health bodies, professional and academic journals right into the doctor’s surgery and well-meaning practitioners.
And I believe this, the vast majority of people are well-meaning, are just too busy to explore this. That influence is a story that is very easy to miss, but once you become aware of it, very difficult to ignore. So there are people who are perhaps their motives are commercial, and I do believe commercial interests are trumping public health issues here, and politics and power and patents are trumping public health, I do believe. Sadly, that’s happening.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:26:20] But I believe the vast majority of people that are working tirelessly, in all levels, are really not aware of this influence. And I would add to that influence, media. And that is why we have such a concerted approach and why social media and I said this when I wrote my book, I thought that the internet was a way of democratising information and making information available to all.
But when I see YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google fact-checking and shutting down any mention of prevention and early treatment as being anti-vax right-wing nutters, social media influencers, I’m concerned by that because public health should be the number one priority, which I’m sure many people would say it is.
But unfortunately, the influence on the industry is a story that is very easy to miss. But once you become aware of it, difficult to ignore. And let me just share with you the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:27:29] This was an article that appeared in The Guardian on the 24th of December. And this is how I view things. I read things holistically and I see how they interpret it. So why does this article get my shackles up? Here’s the heading and tell me if you are concerned by this at all, remembering that as far as I know, dogs are carnivores. “‘Wellness for dogs: Why your pet needs vaccines but not reiki and raw meat.’ Some of what is on sale is total bunkum.
Some is an easy way to spoil your pooch. And some is slightly more complicated…” But raw meat and rocky? No, which is a terrible thing to say for a carnivore, but there it is. According to The Guardian, raw meat is off the menu for dogs. It’s much more important to vaccinate your dogs, and I’m not sure they’re talking about a COVID vaccine, although it wouldn’t surprise me.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:28:28] Look, we had other great guests during the year. I mean, Belinda Fettke is an absolute legend, and when we talk about veganism and we talk about public health messages and we talk about the influence of industry.
Belinda Fettke is somebody who has done a great deal of research and that was in July and in July did a healthy bite on that subject, Why Are Public Health Messages So Confusing, and I felt compelled to reissue the second episode we did with Dr. Gary Fettke, an orthopaedic surgeon, who had the temerity to suggest that eating too much carbohydrates and sugar would cause Type 2 Diabetes and then spent three years defending his good name to the regulatory body. He won in the end, but incredibly traumatic. Controlling Insulin Is Key.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:29:26] We then went on still talking about immune function. We talked to Dr. Leland Stillman about Light Therapy, Circadian Rhythms, & Melatonin. The legendary holistic integrative gastroenterologist, I didn’t think that was possible, but Dr. Pran Yoganathan is an integrative gastroenterologist.
And Pran, on the 2nd of August, took us through on a fantastic voyage through the digestive tract. I asked him to take us on a journey from the moment food enters our mouths till it leaves our body and we covered the whole digestive tract, but he stopped me and said, “It starts even before we put food into our mouth through cooking and fermentation and how our food is grown.” What an episode that was, what a guy he is.
Then we explored a topic that I think is affecting us all, Digital Nutrition, with the wonderful psychologist Jocelyn Brewer talking about Digital Nutrition, Technology Addiction, and Screenagers, which then took us on to another addiction with Paul Dillon talking about the Drugs & Alcohol Education – A Lesson For Us All, the war on drug. And then talking to Nir Eyal about being addicted to technology and how to tear ourselves away from it. So that is How To Feel Less Distracted and what to do about it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:30:58] We then talk to Professor Robert Booy about vaccinations. Robert actually said something that I think was incredibly important, and that is… Now Robert’s background is paediatrician.
And he also mentioned, and this is from the work, from the mouth to the paediatrician, that children are at incredibly low risk. I think Robert pointed out to me that the thing that makes us vulnerable are these when viruses invade our body, they, all the proteins, attach onto receptors, particularly in our pharynx and in our airways, called ACE-2 receptors, and that is what then triggers the cytokine storm and inflammation and the whole thing cascades from there.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:31:48] So ACE2 receptors are really important, and that’s why doing neti pot, using hydrogen peroxide, kills the viruses at that interface, right? But Robert pointed out to us that ACE2 receptors are practically non-existent in young children, and that’s why they could get COVID and they would not even be aware they had it.
And I can tell you firsthand that my three grandchildren – six-year-old, three-year-old, and at the time, a one-day-old contracted COVID and they did not even know they had it. And my daughter, who gave birth as a COVID positive and her husband also COVID positive overcame the virus very quickly with just being on it, they were already because they’d gone through the pregnancy, the preparation from the pregnancy, trying to boost immune function, let alone living in a time of COVID.
They were on all the vitamin supplements that I’ve mentioned. And when they contracted it, they took ivermectin along with upped their Vitamin D, Zinc, and Quercetin, and they had no reaction at all. And my grandchildren didn’t even know that they had. Really.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:05] And so Robert pointed out to me why that was because children have no ACE2 receptors, which begs the issue of why we are rushing to include our children in Phase 3 clinical trial. And again, this is the media. Reducing the discussion about childhood vaccinations to either your full vaccinations or you’re an anti-vaxxer. That is just not the issue.
My children and my grandchildren, as I said, including myself, have all had vaccinations. All had the 40 or 50-year-old technology of protein or attenuated virus vaccinations. I have no problem with that, but I am really concerned about my grandchildren being part of a Phase 3 clinical trial.
And again, people who are rushing to vaccinate their children want the very best for their children. The doctors advising those people want the very best. They are not part of the conspiracy. I don’t believe that. They are trusting the science.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:34:24] But my point is here throughout this whole podcast, in my book, in the last episode of ‘Trust the Science??’ is can you trust the science? This is an industry that has been repeatedly found guilty of fraud and illegal marketing. And I think we should exercise caution. From the year 2000 to the year 2020, the pharmaceutical industry has been fined a total of $70 billion in fines and to any other business in the world that would shut them down or certainly shut them up.
The Pharmaceutical Industry
To the pharmaceutical industry, which in 2014 was worth $1 trillion. Now, I don’t even know how many notes, I think that is 1000 billion dollars, right? That was 2014, so I can only guess that it’s got to be worth, I don’t know $1.2 trillion? $1.5 trillion? Whatever, let’s say let’s keep it at $1 trillion because that’s easy to do the calculation, and that’s per year. You start to see that $70 billion fines over a 20-year period.
I can’t even do the maths on that, but I’m guessing it’s something like 0.001% of revenue. So it could be seen as an inconvenient marketing cost, which is fine for an industry. I mean, you know, an industry that’s built on managing chronic diseases that, by the way, are preventable is obviously making a lot of money.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:36:12] But for us to trust the science and we need to remember that the science in medicine is largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The science in this pandemic is definitely funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
So I feel exercising some caution is worthwhile here, particularly when a professor of paediatrics tells me, Professor Robert Booy, that children have very few ACE2 receptors and therefore are not susceptible to the infection, particularly when I know that just by getting the vaccine, it doesn’t stop you getting the infection and it doesn’t stop you transmitting the infection.
So why on earth would I subject my child to an experimental mRNA vaccine, where the company that is producing it, has been given emergency use authority which absolves them of all liability, who should exercise caution. Well, clearly not the media, clearly not our public health authorities. So I think it behoves us to as individuals at least proceed cautiously. And that’s certainly how I feel. So I digress for a moment.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:35] And there we were. We spoke on various issues there. Then I spoke to Professor Frédérick Leroy, The Politics of Nutrition and The Great Reset, and one could argue we then went on in the same week, so on the 13th of September and a week later spoke to another legend in my own mind, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Globalisation and Local Futures.
Now, Helena has been working tirelessly for 40 years. And Professor Frédérick Leroy is a great commentator and academic on this. His background is Bioengineering Sciences and Applied Biological Sciences. So we spoke to both an academic and an advocate for, you know, the whole idea of globalisation and the implications that has for all of us.
Then we got back on to mental health, and then we spoke to the wonderful Professor Julia Rucklidge talking about The Better Brain. Now, mental health is a huge and growing problem. We know that. And it’s perhaps sobering to learn while we were talking about vaccinations for children to learn that the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) put out a recently a statistic saying what the greatest cause of death was for 5-16-year-olds, particularly relevant when they are being lined up for vaccinations. And the greatest cause of death, according to the government’s Australian Bureau of Statistics, was suicide.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:39:15] Now we know mental health is a problem. We know social media is having a huge impact on that. We know that one of the greatest things about Homo sapiens as a species is our ability to come together, to collaborate, to communicate, to co-regulate when we are feeling stressed, to give each other physical and emotional support. So for us to be isolated is a huge challenge to our mental health.
And when we look at the number of children that have died in 2020 from COVID, I think the number would be close to zero. So the statistic is, this from the ABS: Causes of death from COVID in 2020 – 0 children, 5-17-year olds 99 deaths in 2020, when they include 19-year-olds, that number jumped to 200.
So I think it’s fair to say that this is a problem when we look at it holistically. Now, not to mention the impact that lockdowns have had on people’s livelihoods, businesses that built up over a lifetime, their inability to be with loved ones during times of stress. So Julia Rucklidge episode, The Better Brain, really talked about good nutrition and its impact on mental health, and that is so important as we are all faced with some mental health challenges, significant mental health challenges.
Trying to eat well, trying to be well-nourished, trying to ensure that every cell in our body is working optimally, trying to sleep well. OK, we get a bad night’s sleep, but play the long game, you know? Yes, we all get a couple of nights of sleep that aren’t good, but eventually, we get back on the bed, on the wagon and we’re back into the routine.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:41:17] And dovetailing with that, it seemed appropriate to talk to Dr. Martin Whitely, who wrote a wonderful book called Overprescribing Madness. Now, Martin was a high school teacher in WA who saw firsthand what diagnoses of attention deficit disorders were being done in his classroom and how children were being medicated, and he felt there was something inherently wrong with that.
So he went into parliament to do something about it, and he could see that that wasn’t the best way of going. So he then went and did his Ph.D. on ADHD in the prescription of medication for that, which led him to a whole story about prescription medication for mental health. So that was an incredibly confronting and disturbing story, but an important one.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:42:12] We’ve spoken to Matthew DeFina and as a man who has crawled into my cave mentally, emotionally through my life, I was very excited to learn that The Man Cave was actually populated by other men who I could and should talk to, and it was a safe place. And so that discussion during this very stressful time seemed very timely to talk to Matthew DeFina about Positive Masculinity & The Man Cave.
A wonderful conversation on the 25th of October with Professor Pasi Sahlberg. Now Finland has the best education system in the world and in teachers they trust, and they put a great deal of trust and autonomy in their teaching profession. And when Pasi Sahlberg came to Australia three years ago, my wife is in education at the University of Technology in Sydney, so I knew he was coming.
I was excited about it and it took me a while to get him on. But that is an episode well worth listening to, and I followed that up with Let’s Make this the Century of the Revered Teacher. They are so critically important.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:22] As I mentioned Sarah Wilson, whose wonderful book, This One Wild and Precious Life, our life and make it the habit of a lifetime. How you can improve your emotional intelligence. Yes, we talked to Petrea King about How Trauma Can Lead to Positive Change. And I truly believe this pandemic, as traumatic as it is, will eventually lead to positive change.
Peter Brukner, we spoke to him last year, but he has put together something. One of the most important co-morbidities is Diabetes, and he has launched a new initiative which I would encourage you to go and log onto and become part of Defeat Diabetes. My podcast, my company, the Holistic Health Institute, which I will tell you about in a moment, are very proud supporters of Defeat Diabetes. So we talk to him about that.
Sarah Myhill. My goodness, what a wonderful episode that was, Why We Get Sick and How To Stay Well. Chris Miliotis, made a return talking about Make the Problem the SOILution, and he talked about a whole range of things. We got a snapshot from the wonderful Gill McEwen into how she’s very senior, she’s been involved in the pharmaceutical and the vitamin industry, and I think they share many commonalities and many differences.
The pharmaceutical industry is a Goliath to the very tiny David. David is the vitamin industry just a tiny player there with the slingshot. You know you’re generating billions of dollars for sure, but not trillions of dollars. And then I did the episode Trust the Science.
(2021) Year-End Review
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:08] Look, it’s been an incredible year for all of us. It’s been a challenging year. Taking control of your own health has literally never been more important. We are here to support you in that the Summer Series coming up. Over January, we’re going to take a break for a while and the Summer Series is going to be just reinforcing some of the episodes that we did throughout the last 12 to 18 months that I thought were particularly relevant to this time. I hope you have a really good break.
I mentioned the Holistic Health Institute. It’s the company that has produced this podcast over the last three years, produced my first podcast, which I co-hosted with the wonderful doctor, Michelle Woolhouse, called The Good Doctors.
The Holistic Health Institute produced that. It was a company that was formed in 2011. I was the founder and I’m the CEO of the company. We received an Australian R&D Grant to formulate a health assessment tool based on the 5 pillars of health: sleep, breathe, nourish, move and think. It then prompted me to write a book, A Life Less Stressed: The Five Pillars of Health and Wellness, and then has been involved in producing podcasts and supporting organisations like Defeat Diabetes, The Mind Foundation, the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, independent news organisations like Michael West and John Menadue.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:46:46] So I’m very proud of what the Holistic Health Institute stood for and what we’ve been working on in the last 12 months is a wellness programme built on the five pillars, understanding stress, understanding the five stressors in life: emotional, environmental, postural, nutritional and dental stress, understanding that identifying and minimising any as many of those stressors as possible is the key to reducing the effect of stress on your life while at the same time, building resilience through focussing on the five pillars: sleep, breathe, nourish, move and think, understanding that the whole balancing beam of life pivots on our genes and how our genes express themselves. The wonderful science of epigenetics.
Our wellness programme Unstress will be online will be available. We are taking it to the world and we hopefully have received an Australian government export development grant to take this programme to the English-speaking world.
We’re taking it to the corporate world because it’s a way of connecting with as many people and their families as possible. What I want to do is make a difference. I could put my feet up at this stage in my life. But hey, I’m not, and I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I hope you’re learning from it as well.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:48:10] Look, as I’ve often said, ignorance is a wonderful thing. I’ve been practising it all my professional life. And by that, I mean, there’s an awful lot I don’t know. And when you don’t know something you can look at that and dismiss it as not worth knowing or being just rubbish, or you can go, “Wow, that’s interesting. Maybe I’ll explore that and see how that fits into my view of the world.” That is ignorance at work.
And as I said, I practise it often. It’s one of the reasons I have the podcast and invite all those wonderful guests I’ve had who know so much more about various things than I do. I get to ask them questions and I learn so much from them. I hope you do, too.
What concerns me is that when ignorance is combined with ego, arrogance, and with hubris, and when it informs public health policy, that worries me. That does worry me. And that’s why Unstress and the Holistic Health Institute is here to try and engage with as many individuals who are looking to take control of their health as possible.
Thank you for supporting us through this year. Thank you for listening. Please leave a review on the Unstress. We’ve had some great reviews. I shouldn’t be still asking for that, but do look out for our wellness programme in the new year. Have a wonderful break. Have a wonderful rest. Be well. Until next year. This is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.
This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.