Nora Gedgaudas – COVID19 Special Report (Part 2) Introduction

Today we’re in part two of our conversation with Nora Gedgaudas and her “COVID19 Special Report”, which if you haven’t had a look at it, there will be links to it in the show notes. So stay tuned to some of the special offers that Nora has for our listeners.

But this was an opportunity to take up the conversation where we left off last time and dive into a little bit more detail. So I hope you enjoy part two of this conversation I had with Nora Gedgaudas.

Podcast Transcript

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Unstress with Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we’re in part two of our conversation with Nora Gedgaudas and her “COVID19 Special Report”, which if you haven’t had a look at it, there will be links to it in the show notes. So stay tuned to some of the special offers that Nora has for our listeners.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:31] But this was an opportunity to take up the conversation where we left off last time and dive into a little bit more detail. So I hope you enjoy part two of this conversation I had with Nora Gedgaudas. Nora, welcome back.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:00:50] Thank you, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:51] And Nora, we were talking last time we spoke. We were just starting really. We talked for about an hour and there was so much we wanted we covered and there was so much more I wanted to cover and I wanted to really get on with what we can do. I think a word that people have become very familiar with is this term “comorbidities”. I think it’s another word for chronic disease and maybe more. But I wondered if you might. Before we lob into what we can do, just remind our listeners about what comorbidities mean.

What comorbidities mean?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:01:23] Well, comorbidities mean that there are you know, you have inherent weaknesses. You know, ill either metabolic diseases, maybe you have certain types of autoimmunity or asthma, COPD,  things that may predispose you to being more vulnerable to an attack on your immune system.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:01:47] But, you know, I think much too much is made of comorbidities because it really isn’t the comorbidities. It is the nutritional status behind the person with the comorbidities. You know, it has to do with whether your immune system is well equipped or not to stand up to this. And there are some things that absolutely, you know, can make a radical difference.

In what tends to be the case with people that have, for instance, metabolic diseases, of which there, you know, something like 70 percent of most people in the world die prematurely of totally preventable metabolic disease is not infectious, you know, viral pandemics and things like that. But, in fact, you know, totally preventable metabolic diseases.

And, you know, in those same populations, you generally have people that just simply have extremely poor nutritional status. And there was an interesting study in Indonesia that was published where they discovered that 98 percent of the persons coming in with supposedly COVID19 whose vitamin D levels were below 20 nanograms per milliliter, died. Where only 4.1% of people that had vitamin D levels in excess of 30 nanograms per milliliter died. And so, again, nutritional status made a life or death difference in those populations, regardless of whatever else might have been going on with them.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:03:30] And yes, I mean, when you have people that they’re well, I mean, I know elderly people that could probably run you or me around circles around us. You know what I mean? There are a lot of I mean, I worry much less about somebody who’s, you know, eighty-five years old. And I’m thinking of a particular person I knew a number of years ago.

You know, somebody who’s 85 years old and they’re playing tennis and they’re doing yoga and they’re eating organic food and whatever else, I worry way less about them than I do about somebody who’s 35 years old and living on a diet, a steady diet of Twinkies and beer and sitting on the couch and eating cheese doodles all day. You know watching TV and dancing with the stars.

I worry way more about somebody you know, like that than I do some older and healthy. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re intrinsically unhealthy. And that’s an unfair thing, I think, to just sort of assume just because somebody is over 70 years of age.

Now, we know on average your risk of dying from this infection if you’re in excess of 70 years of age, you know, or if you’re below seven years of age is like point zero, four percent. I mean, it’s ridiculously low. You know, your odds of getting struck by lightning are greater, I think. But in persons who, you know, who are older than that, it’s slightly higher, you know, and certainly, as we age, things start to break down.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:05:03] But that doesn’t mean that just because you’re older, you’re not healthy and that your immune system can’t do its job. It just means that you know, as we age, we need to pay closer attention. You know, when you’re younger, you have more you know, you have more room maybe for error, a little more room for indulgence, a little more.

There’s a little more you can theoretically get away with, although really that’s changing, you know too. I don’t think the young can take anything for granted either anymore. Now that children are dying young at a younger age than their own parents, statistically. But anyway. But, you know, you come up with the comorbid thing. Go ahead. No, no. I’m sorry.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:46] No, no. You picked that. I was interesting that you picked the vitamin D as an example because it is so critical to everything. And I literally everything. And you named you kind of picked the figure because I think the ideal level just to remind our listeners of vitamin D levels. Yes. Somewhere. What is that? What would you say?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:06:09] Closer to 60? 60 is kind of a sweet spot. And it’s 60 to 80, depending on, you know if you if you have an autoimmune condition or whatever. I mean, people with chronic inflammatory disorders, you know. You really want to check your D levels frequently because you’re gonna be blowing through it when you have chronic inflammation, you blow through vitamin D. You just do. And so, you know, maintaining a certain level of it, although I worry about people just popping vitamin D pills and not paying attention to some of the other fat-soluble nutrients that are required in order to balance D and prevent it from becoming problematic.

For instance, if you’re just taking vitamin D pill, it comes out of your ears, but you’re ignoring the natural form. I mean, like vitamin K2 and K4 which is naturally found in pastured animal fats, particularly poultry fats, poultry liver, that sort of thing. That. You know, you can end up calcifying things that were never meant to be calcified. You know, the fat-soluble nutrients in you know, in my book Primal Fat Burner, which sounds like a weight-loss book, that’ll be everybody’s favorite side effects. But that, you know, it’s meant to be a euphemism for, you know, using fat as a primary source of food, fuel coming to a place of efficient use of fat as a primary source of fuel and ketones.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:07:36] And eating an ancestrally based kind of ketogenic dietary approach. But at any rate, you know, I refer to the fat-soluble nutrients, vitamins. A true vitamin A, which is retinol. Would you basically get from liver, you know, and egg yolks and things like that. But liver would be the biggest source. That’s your best superfood right now, actually. Because prior to World War two, the primary focus of anti-infectives therapy, was vitamin A and I mean, I don’t mean beta carotene, I don’t mean any of the carotenoids. Those don’t count. I mean retinol. And that’s that is a form of vitamin A. You can only find an animal source foods you’ll never be able to meet your vitamin requirements through just eating a bunch of carrots. It can’t happen. It’s just not possible.

So retinol being, you know, very important. But with retinol, you know, in your body, you know, it likes to be balanced, you know, with vitamin D3 likes to be balanced with K2, you know, with vitamin K2 and A. They require zinc in order to function optimally. Right. And by the way, it’s probably that saturated fat, you know, is important. Believe it or not. And cholesterol are important for helping to prevent infection. And saturated fat is important from the standpoint that your lungs surfactant. Right. The thing that protects your lungs from invasive things and from oxidation is a desaturate molecule. You don’t want a whole bunch of polyunsaturated fats or, God forbid, trans fats to take the place of those desaturate molecules that belong in your lungs, that protect your lungs. But vitamin A is also extremely important for the health of every mucosal membrane, including…

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:22] But that polyunsaturated fat is common in vegetable oils. Isn’t that right?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:09:26] Exactly. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Fish oil is also a highly polyunsaturated source of polyunsaturated fat, I should say. You know, EPA and DHEA. But those that those unique, you know, central fatty acids, which, by the way, that that’s the form that we need omega 3s in. You’re not going to get these benefits from walnuts.

You’re not going to get them from flax oil and chia oil and oil and all these other plant-based omega 3 fats because your body cannot make those conversions in any meaningful quantity to EPA. You probably will never get a single molecule of DHA in your body from those things. And that’s just, you know, even assuming that you’re optimally healthy and able to make these any part of these conversions at all or that you have the ethnicity that allows for those conversions. Right. Because many people of Celtic descent, of native descent, of northern European descent, lack the Delta 60 saturates molecules that allow for the elongation of those plant-based fats into, you know, down the pike into a more elongated version of Omega 3 that your body as a human being needs to make use of. But that said, you know, most people are not overdosing on omega 3s unless they’re slugging fish oil.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:46] But it is interesting that you’ve mentioned here vitamin D and the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, K, etc.. And yet and yet public health-wise, we have almost set up a perfect storm here because they are so critical to our immune function, which is so critical to our response. But we’ve been told saturated fat, bad cholesterol, bad stay out of the side, bad meat, bad. And, you know, we could talk. I think you and I both agree about the ethics of factory-farmed animals.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:11:26] Sure. Absolutely no problem.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:28] There is no question about that.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:11:30] But to not even in the same league with what we’re discussing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:33] No, no. That’s right. And so so I just it’s interesting that so many of these public health messages. And I know this is relevant because we’re getting public health messages now, too. We are getting public health messages now, too, from those same people. And I just have serious concerns about how that has set us up. Now, you’ve mentioned A D and he fat-soluble, but I think. And you just mentioned that word slipped under the ketones. And I think the whole glucose balance is another pretty important factor. Tell us more about that.

Whole Glucose Balance

Nora Gedgaudas [00:12:12] Well, we know that that, you know, a high glycaemic meal will just slam your glycosidic index for, you know, up to several hours following that meal, which effectively suppresses your immune function, makes you vulnerable to immune compromise. But there’s also it’s in. And that’s part of the reason why. But there are others as well.

There was a really interesting study that was published that spoke about effective ketogenic adaptation being more effective against influenza than a flu vaccine or it or almost anything else that it is that the influenza virus doesn’t deal well in somebody that is adapted to ketosis and so that is another aspect of things that is important to recognize, and, of course, if you’re well adapted to ketosis, you know, you’re not getting a bunch of blood sugar surges that are going to slam your glycosidic index.

You are you automatically are in a state where you are resistant to the effects of hypoxia. However, that may manifest itself, you know, whether it’s manifesting itself through chronic mask-wearing, which is for sure going to slam you into a state of hypoxia or whether you know you’re hypoxic because you know, you and everybody’s concerned about, you know, COVID leading to a state of hypoxia that, you know, and all of that kind of thing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:13:54] And to remind our listeners who may not be familiar with that term, hypoxia is low oxygen, low oxygen, which we need. And also to remind our listeners, because we’re throwing around a few terms, I just want this to be a little bit of a revision for our listener. Sure. That, you know, we’re told that we need glucose to fuel our bodies, but there is another fuel and that is called ketones. Right. And if you if you listened, you would think the only possible form of fuel in our body is glucose. And that’s why we need carbohydrates. And Nora I remember you telling me because macronutrients protein, fats, and carbohydrates are something I know dietitians focus almost exclusively on together with calories. Right. But I remember you saying what is the recommended Daily Dose or essential Daily Dose for proteins, fats and.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:14:50] Yeah, right. So out of the three major macronutrients, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, the only one for which there is no scientific figure established human dietary requirement is carbohydrates, not in any form, including vegetables.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:05] That surprises people.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:15:06] That’s never been established. Yes. You know, we can actually create all the glucose we need before the few things that we actually require before there are very few tissues like your red blood cells, the retina of your eye.

There are some cells in the inner medulla of your kidneys that that, you know, like to have glucose. But all of that is very, very easily met in, you know, through the synthesis of glucose from both fats and proteins. And we don’t ever have to consume it for any of that, for any of the glyconutrients we have for any of it. And that’s that to me speaks volumes. That, you know, we didn’t evolve as a species consuming a diet that was primarily carbohydrate-based.

If you know or otherwise, we would actually require those foods. But it’s sort of interesting that even ruminants, you know, cows and goats and rabbits and sheep and things like that. Even though their diet consists exclusively of carbohydrate-based foods, they actually derive more than 70 percent of their energy from short-chain, saturated fats that are a by-product of the bacterial synthesis of those short-chain fatty acids from all of the fiber they consume all day long. And that’s where they actually get their energy from. So you see all large mammals are pretty much designed to do this.

The problem is that we humans, we have a digestive system that has a much smaller, you know, fermentative, part of our digestion, much smaller even than our closest primate relatives. Like the chimpanzee has a fermented colon that’s roughly 52 percent of its entire digestive tract. Ours is like roughly 20 percent or maybe even just under that. And so but a chimp, you know, also gets a significant percentage of its energy from the bacterial fermentation of all the fiber from those same short-chain fatty acids. Butyric acid.

You know, primarily from, you know, concerned noshing on all those bananas and leaves all day long. We’re not designed to do that. We have more of the hydrochloric acid-based digestive system and other fermentative part of our digestive system is not capable of supplying us with is not capable of extracting all the nutrition from plant-based foods to supply us with the nutrients we require.

We actually have a more efficient way of getting those nutrients from eating the animals that have synthesized them for us. And so that is how we are designed. But the thing is, is that there is no possible way, you know, in Asia, if you’re working for the food industry or you’re working for Big Agri-Business, no possible way to make five thousand percent profit on a grass-fed steak like you can a box of cereal. You see, back in 2018, I did a talk. I gave a talk at Montana State University and the title of the talk was “Navigating the Matrix”. I have it available on my Web site. I actually uploaded it to my Web site so it wouldn’t go away. It was the riskiest talk I ever gave. It’s also one of the most important. And I was the only talk I ever gave where I was a little afraid of giving it because I thought, oh, no, they’re going to say Nora’s going into tinfoil hat territory here.

But, you know, I was exhaustively careful about my sourcing, about the things that I said and backing up everything I said with actual data and, you know, and all of that. And at the end of that talk, I was oblivious to how people were. I mean, I heard them laugh at a couple of jokes I made. I’m like, OK, that’s a good sign back. And I didn’t know. But I’m like, how are they going to deal with this?

I ended up with a standing ovation and I literally had people who had never met walk up and throw their arms around me. One woman literally threw herself in my arms and started sobbing. After that, she said it was the most incredible thing she ever heard. And people, you know, practitioners were coming up and saying, I’m changing the way I do business from here on forward because of that talk.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:31] So share with us what was the essence of the talk? We’ll have links to that.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:19:37] The essence of basis of the talk was, you know, people were trying to and it’s gonna be hard to encapsulate here. But people were trying to figure out what I wanted to address the issue of after all of these years. And all of this was an academic conference I was speaking at. And we’d had people for years presenting really solid data on you know, the legitimate value of ancestrally based diets and improving every aspect of health and really showing just how antiquated the government, you know, guidelines were in that regard and why, after all of this evidence, all of this peer-reviewed evidence for all of you know, even the anecdotal evidence. And you just go to one of these paleo events and you can see how healthy people are.

Why nothing has changed. And I wanted people to understand that, you know, we’re sitting here thinking that all we have to do is come up with more studies to prove ourselves. And that’s really not the point, because that isn’t really the reason behind these guidelines, has nothing really to do with what’s best for you and me. It really has a lot more to do with, you know, with who is basically controlling the narrative and who’s profiting from the narrative then. And I pointed out, you know, the issues with, you know, with who owns the mainstream media.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:21:04] And, you know, the fact that you know, people like Bill Gates who are heavily involved now in promoting a vegan dietary agenda because he owns all of the distribution rights, for instance, for veggie burgers. You know, here in the States.

But he’s also and there are more than 100 patents on the one that he created this fake bleeding, impossible burger, whatever they’re like, close to 100 patents pending on that thing. There is also a couple of dozen that have already been granted. You can patent, you know, and easily genetically modified patent. These plant-based foods, and it is far more profitable, far, far more profitable, and far more destructive to the environment, by the way, than you know than grass-feeding animals.

But, you know, so I made a systematic case throughout the talk and I had to cut. Oh, my God. I probably had to cut 50 slides from that. It was just one does not surprise me. I’m dabbing tears out of my eyes, you know, and everything else. And it’s sort of funny as we got closer to the end. You know, that the person with the card is like holding up the five minutes to go whatever. And then finally they said, sorry, time’s up. And I still three more slides. And I said, you’re going to have to physically drag me off this stage, you know? And at that point, the audience was actually applauding.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:33] But listen, you do raise that issue about the vegan diet and its popularity and putting aside the ethics, which I think, you know, they always come back to the cruelty of animals. And my response to that is, how big does an animal have to be to count? Right. I mean, that’s an important question, I think, for vegans to answer is how big does an animal have to be to count? Because clearing land and using herbicides and pesticides has an impact on wildlife, which way beyond that.

But anyway, let’s put that aside. Let’s talk about some of the challenges of down one end of the scale of the vegan, a vegan approach in and down the other end is the carnivore, which I’m also intrigued about. And that’s kind of emerged a lot since I last spoke to you. And I’m intrigued to hear what your thoughts are. Right. You’ve touched on some of the things with vegan where.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:23:29] Oh, I mean, I can. Thing is just very, very easy to put to rest. I mean, from an evolutionary standpoint, there’s no basis for this anywhere in our human evolutionary or fossil record. Zero evidence of anything approaching, you know, veganism or vegetarianism at all. There’s certainly no evidence with respect to our physiological design.

We’re just simply we don’t have the physiological makeup of a herbivore. You know, we have our you know, that that the only primate cousin that we have that eats anything approaching and even the primates that we supposedly we evolved from chimps and other great apes. Every one of them hunts and kills and eats meat, with the notable exception of herbivorous gorillas which have a brain, by the way, only about a third of the size of you or of any other of like a human being of similar size.

You know, they have also big fermentation vat in their gut that’s designed to just take and ferment all the stuff that they’re noshing on all day long. And they get a certain amount of insect stuff in there, too, which is by the way another thing Gates is invested in is lab-grown meats and insect meats. And I believe that’s some of that’s coming down the pike to get imposed on us through this whole thing.

But I digress. So, you know, veganism really doesn’t have any kind of biological basis for us at all. And but one thing that it does do is it limits your mTOR levels. Right. Well, depending on just how much insulin you’re generating, as you can generate mTOR with insulinemic, you know, foods as well. But the primary driver of mTOR is excess dietary protein. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:29] Now, Nora, just give us a quick 101 on mTOR.

Mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR)

Nora Gedgaudas [00:25:33] OK, mTOR stands for a mammalian target of rapamycin. And it was something that was discovered in a laboratory. They were doing cancer drug research and they had found that there’s this synthesized rapamycin synthesized by soil bacteria that it seemed to have an inhibiting effect on cancer cells, so they were trying to understand the mechanism behind that so they could create cancer drugs. They could charge a fortune for and they discovered a this metabolic pathway. They never knew existed. And they called it mammalian target of rapamycin. And it basically is kind of like just as insulin is sort of our default sensor for, you know, carbohydrates in the diet, although it’s not actually a blood sugar hormone, in fact.

But it ends up being kind of that by default. But the levels of mTOR in your body are often regulated by the levels of available amino acids, particularly Lucene. But a lot of you know, when you eat protein in excess of what you need in order to maintain and repair yourself. It’s like it’s basically a reproductive mechanism. It’s like, oh, goody, you know, we can build new things. And it creates an impetus for cellular proliferation, which if you are a pregnant woman, a baby, a child, or a teen or you know, you’re still growing in some way.

Then there’s obviously there’s an obvious value in that there’s a need for that, or if you’re a super ultra-elite athlete and you know and you are constantly abusing yourself, which is not exactly what I’d call a natural thing to do. You may have slightly higher protein requirements than you know, than the average person in order to meet that , you know, some of those repairs and things like that. But. But the problem is, is that given the toxic world that we live in and all the mutagenic things that we’re being exposed to every day long, and then I could be a real buzzkill if I started listing them. But I’m sure most people know what I’m talking about.

What happens if you and especially if you’re middle-aged and you’ve been, you know, abusing yourself over the better part of your life and now you’re taking cells that have otherwise perhaps been mutated in some way. And then you’re giving them an impetus to proliferate. That’s called cancer. And mTOR, you know, even if it’s even more critical in the cancer equation than sugar and, you know, and I was I came to that conclusion very reluctantly because it’s like no no cancer needs sugar.

Well, it doesn’t need sugar in every case. It prefers sugar and lactic acid and glutamine. But the one thing that because there are some cancers that can proliferate in the presence of fatty acids or ketones, there are some. It’s not you know, it’s not a slam dunk that if you’re in ketosis, that cancer can’t grow. But one thing that is universal amongst all cancers are is the elevated presence of growth factors, you know, like IGF1. And, you know, mTOR is a major, major impetus for the generation of growth factors that proliferate.

So it’s not a cancer cell that kills you. It is the proliferation of cancer cells. It’s metastasis that kills. And protein and nexuses is what we need to meet. Our maintenance and repair needs has the potential to provide that unbridled impetus. And so this probably now answers the question that you have about the Carnivore diet. If you’re eating a Carnivore diet, that is, you know, that’s mostly fat-based near eating just enough protein to meet your protein requirements and not going past that. Well, yeah, you could be Carnivore and do that. And, you know, and you’re going to have a really, really, really boring diet.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:29:58] And I understand that with a carnivore diet, you know, they make the point that and I made that point in my first book, I talked about the inherent toxicity of most wild plants and all of the anti-nutrients found in even many modern plants, you know, the goitrogens. And well, I mean, they’re not that big a going concern. But in cruciferous vegetables, but especially in soy, that’s a big, big problem in soy.

And all of these things that I mean there, you know, phytates and oxalates and all these things that can really provide people can be problematic for people. Also, plant-based foods are much more likely to trigger immune reactivities in people because we’re less adapted to consuming them. You know, it’s very unusual for somebody to develop an immune reactivity to beef. There’s some theoretical basis for it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:54] Yeah, I mean, I know you were very keen on above-ground vegetables being a good source with lots of different colors. And I agree with you on that. And then, you know, you do hear about well, vegetables are actually kind of dangerous in many ways because of all these.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:31:12] Well, you know, they put us right. So, you know, it’s on these things. It depends. Yeah. You have a problem with oxalates or nitrates or whatever. Then by all means, don’t consume. Yeah. You know. But the thing is, is that that is important with respect to maintaining, for instance, part of what helps to strengthen your immune health.

Is the diversity of your gut biome, right, that the diversity of the species in your gut biome. Well, what helps that? Dietary diversity. And so if people are removing just arbitrarily removing foods from that, I mean if they’re removing sugar and starch. Awesome. Because there are lots of good reasons to remove sugary starchy foods from your diet. And I can go on all day about that. And I have been known to do so.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:00] I think I’ve sat through many of those.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:32:03] I know you’ve been a witness to some of them. But the fact of the matter is that there are. And if anybody would have to be a fool to not recognize the fact that there are hundreds of studies extolling the virtues of many nutrients, you know, phytonutrients or phytochemicals, certain types of phytochemicals in a variety of plant-based foods that may be additionally helpful to us in many ways and providing a source.

So plant fiber, even though it’s not essential, you know, we can get by with, you know, you know, gelatinous bone broth, you know, eating, making sure we consume plenty of connective tissue in the animal foods we consume. And because all those things are every bit as fermentable as is any other type of fiber. But the more of a variety that we supply our diet with, the more likely we are to have microbial diversity in our gut. And that microbial diversity leads to a much more robust immune system, which is kind of the name of the game.

And so, you know, I, I, I have a problem with the way the carnivore. I don’t have a problem with some of the philosophical basis behind the carnivore diet because it’s certainly there’s evidence to suggest that as a species, you know, we evolved is not just carnivores, very high-level carnivores, you know, with protein levels in our diet, you know, exceeding sometimes that of other, you know, predatory animals that we know that we evolved alongside wolves, bears and, you know, and foxes and all kinds of things like that.

But that doesn’t mean just because our ancestors did something, in my view, is not necessarily the best reason to do the exact same thing, because we don’t know that what they were doing was necessarily optimizing their health. It was keeping them alive enough, long enough to be able to successfully reproduce. And certainly, if you’re jacking up enteral, the time you’re giving yourself the impetus for, you know, a good reproductive capacity, but it’s not necessarily mean you’re going to live the longest and healthiest and particularly, you know, longest post-reproductive life. And where I go to figure that out is human longevity research. And that’s what I hybridized with my in my sort of ancestral approach to diet and in ketogenic principles in my first book and also my subsequent works.

You know, I haven’t been changing my tune with the marketing tide. In fact, I was the first person in the very first person within the entire ancestral health genre that ever embraced the idea of a fat-based ketogenic approach to ancestral eating. And I was kind of marginalized by my peers at the time that were there. It’s like, oh, that’s just sort of extreme and ridiculous.

And then suddenly it became a thing because there was so much science that was getting published showing no, no, no, ketosis can be remarkable, you know, for the brain, remarkable for the immune system. Remarkable for weight loss. Remarkable for your health. You know, on so many levels. On so many levels. In fact, that to me, it absolutely illustrates that that is a natural metabolic state of our species and a reliance on carbohydrates. You know, that a glucose-based metabolism, you know, our glucose as a fuel, I should say, was meant to be the auxiliary fuel. That’s meant to be the rocket fuel in case of an emergency.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:41] Yeah. Now, when I think about ketosis and whether you’re using ketones or glucose, is it an all or nothing? Because I kind of had the analogy drawn of the hybrid car wherein the lower, you know, some times your using electric, sometimes using petrol you cycle between the two. Is that how it can work in the human body where you can go and 80-20 split where 80 percent of the time you’re in ketosis and occasionally.

Ketosis

Nora Gedgaudas [00:36:09] Yeah. So, I mean, look, it’s going to be hard to be in ketosis 100 percent of the time. But I’ll tell you something. It can take a period of weeks to months to fully adapt to a state of effective to arrive at effective ketogenic adaptation. It’s not something that happens overnight.

You can stop eating carbohydrates and in 24 to 48 hours, your body is gonna be kicking out a bunch of ketones, most of which is going to be flushed down the toilet as a waste product because your body doesn’t know how to make efficient use of it. And so, you know, the whole idea behind adopting a, you know, a more full time, a state of effective ketogenic adaptation and in there, isn’t there more points I want to make about that? But it’s not something that I mean, if you, for instance, eat. You decide to eat. I don’t know, a Krispy Kreme doughnut or something like that.

When you’re infected, he tells us you’re gonna be out of effective ketosis for a couple of days. It’s not going to just balance right back in it. And what I find with people and in fact, the research seems to suggest that those cheat days are just not a good idea. You know, they’re just not a good idea. It undermines whatever benefits that you have worked so hard to painstakingly cultivate with that metabolic, that sort of metabolic advantage. And I know so many people who, you know, they were doing so fantastically.

I’m hearing from them or they’re showing up in my office and oh my God, they’ve lost all this weight. They never felt better. Their brain is clear that they’re not getting this or that symptom anymore. And then Christmas comes along and next thing you know, you know, they’ve fallen off their wagon because they figure they can, you know, stand to indulge a little. And they suddenly they go into a state of just totally struggling to get back to where they were before. It’s harder. It can be very derailing for people. And it’s just not smart.

You really want to pick your fuel. You’re either going to be a fat burner primarily or sugar burner primarily. And the degree to which you allow yourself to indulge in the sugar-based metabolism, you know, you’re undermining your capacity to get the benefits.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:38:37] You know, you thought you were trying to get from ketosis. A lot of people are trying to make up for all the crap that they eat by going on fasts and things like that. And the problem is that, yes, fasting will give you some of the benefits associated with long-term ketosis, but intermittent fasting works intermittently, at best. And the problem is it doesn’t make up for all the crap that you eat on, you know, outside of that. And the other issue that I that I’m concerned about with the big fad in fasting, and I particularly worry about people who have adopted, he told us, and they want to adopt fasting on top of that. You can do that. You can accelerate some benefits.

But you’ve got to be extremely careful because you see cleansing is not rebuilding. And you if you’re doing the type of approach I advocate, what you’re getting is the amount of protein that you need for your own maintenance and repair. But you’re not meaningfully exceeding that day to day. And if you’re fasting on top of that, you can end up in protein deficits that cause all of everything that you started to gain from this way of eating to unravel on you, because now you are depriving yourself of nutrition.

It’s really important that you eat a nutrient-dense diet and that you meet your foundational nutritional requirements, which are far more than caloric in nature, that you’re getting adequate, you know, sufficient, if not abundant in today’s world. You know, vitamin A and D3 and K2 and that you’re getting the elongated forms of omega 3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA from, you know, the foods that you’re consuming and that, you know, you’re getting all these nutrients. And fasting doesn’t provide your body with nutrients.

Now, you may become more efficient with dealing with nutrients in some ways, and yet I’m not saying intermittent fasting is a bad thing. It’s just become I think it’s very, very easy for people to start arriving at diminishing returns with it. Know, you have to be really careful.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:49] I mean, you know, when we when I have been doing intermittent fasting.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:40:54] You know what you’re doing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:56] Yeah. I’d like to think that I also have a nutrient-dense diet and actually, you know, I, I kind of been interested in nutrition for 40 years and I kind of think to myself, wow, how do I not even think of intermittent fasting before the last five or 10 years? I mean, really, if you look at ancestrally when in human history, did we eat two meals, three meals a day? And so it’s true. But I love your analogy that one of the first things I heard you say was how our metabolism was like a fire. And it’s very much about that. I want to just share with us again that one because it’s such a pearl and it’s such a great image for people to have.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:41:35] It is. Yeah. I’ve got this little woodstove analogy. So so I basically think of carbohydrates is the equivalent of metabolic kindling. Right. Your brown rice, your beans, your whole grains and junk like that, you know, yours sweet potatoes, whatever.

Those are a little bit like throwing twigs on your metabolic fire and things like white rice, white potatoes, you know, junk like that, refined, you know, breads and whatever else along those lines are really a lot like throwing crumpled up paper on that metabolic fire. And then you have sugary beverages and sweetened alcoholic beverages and things that are really a lot like throwing gasoline or lighter fluid on that metabolic fire.

Now say again, metaphorically speaking. Say you have a wood stove and you know that you that you’re using to heat your house with. I know you Aussies can’t really relate to needing to heat your houses very much. But, you know, I come from Minnesota, so that type of analogy works well for me. So in it all, you had to run that wood stove at all, you had to heat your house with was kindling just piles of twigs and crumpled up paper and little lighter, you know, a little charcoal, lighter fluid on the side where you could certainly do that. And metaphorically speaking, this is what ninety-nine percent of our society is doing on a daily basis.

You know, when you’re relying on kindling as your primary source of fuel, though, what are you actually doing? You’re constantly parked in front of that wood stove with the door open and you’re preoccupied with where the next handful of fuel is coming from to keep that fire going. And God forbid you to walk away from it for any length of time. You try to sleep through the night. And there’s an analogy to be had there.

You wake up at 3:00 in the morning and, oh, my God, the house is freezing. The fire’s going out. Oh, my gosh. And your crumpling of paper and squirting lighter fluid on to get the fire going again. You know. What’s the alternative and what if you were to take a nice, big, fat log and throw that on your fire? Now you are effectively free. You’re not enslaved to that wood stove. You can go about your business. You can go to work assuming anybody’s letting you out of your house to do that. You can go do whatever you want. You can sleep through the night. And then you wake up in the morning and, oh, look, the log is burning down.

I’ll just throw another log on. And I basically see a dependence on carbohydrate-based foods as a form of metabolic enslavement. I mean, really, that’s literally what it amounts to when you’re relying on fat as a primary source of fuel. Eating becomes more of a choice than a constant necessity and preoccupation.

Anybody you know, that is relying on carbohydrates as a primary source of fuel is going to have an energy curve and a cognitive curve and everything else that in a mood curve that looks like this. And, you know, whereas fat is something that can provide your body with a totally reliable, long-time burning fuel that is there for you. Pretty much. I mean, it’s particularly if you’re tapped into your own reserves. Right. In the absence of regular meals.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:44:50] In other analogy, is one like, you know, we see these huge gasoline tankers going down the road that have hundreds of gallons of petrol in the right, you know, on 18 wheels going down the highway. And then we see them pull into a truck stop to fill up the gas tank because, you know, yeah, they have hundreds of gallons of gasoline, but the vehicle they’re driving is not adapted.

It’s not in other words, it’s not hooked up to that larger tank. Instead, it’s hooked up to this tiny little tank that has to be refilled all the time. And that’s fundamentally what you’re seeing with an obese person. They’re like one of these supertankers with tons of fuel, but they’re not burning that fuel. They’re constantly, you know, burning sugar. And the fact just sort of sits there. And, of course, that, you know, your body keeps synthesizing fat as a way to keep you from trying to keep you from becoming diabetic. You know, it’s trying to store all that excess stuff away to get that sugar out of your bloodstream.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:51] But anyway, and we and we started this discussion about comorbidities. And in every disease that you or I have mentioned and I’ve covered in this podcast, insulin, raised the insulin levels are a common denominator that runs through almost every one of them. Yeah. And you mentioned that insulin isn’t really a glucose hormone. It’s actually, what, a fat-storage?

Insulin isn’t really a glucose hormone?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:46:19] It’s a fat-storage hormone, it’s also about the coordination of your energy stores with reproduction and lifespan. It’s a you know, it’s really a you know, insulin is also one of those sort of part of those reproductive mechanisms, but it’s mostly about taking excess nutrients that may come along and throwing them into storage in case of a famine. Right. And so it’s not a blood sugar hormone per se.

But the thing is, as we talked about early on in this discussion, the idea that sugar is there is no human dietary requirement for carbohydrate. You know, less than one percent of our structural makeup is carbohydrate in any manner, shape, or form. When we consume protein, for instance, a lot of that goes to structure before it’s going to get converted. I mean, the excess is a protein that we consume in part, you can trigger mTOR, but something like anywhere from 36 to 58 percent, depending on whose data you’re looking at of excess protein can get converted to sugar and we’ll get used the same way in the body.

And so you can boot yourself out of ketosis by overconsuming protein as well. And people do that. And so that is also not the smartest thing if you want to make take advantage of it of what effective ketogenic adaptation can do. Which actually does far more for you than intermittent fasting. And it does it full time. And it does it without any deprivation at all. You know, you’re eating a nutrient-dens diet all the time. You’re not having to be hungry.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:06] We talked about the macronutrients and I know that if listener went to the Dieticians Association or government website, the recommended daily intake for full carbohydrates is around 310 grams. And I actually went home to the USDA site advice for health care practitioners, put in my weight, put in my age, put in my activity level, and it advised me to eat 400 grams of carbohydrates a day. Not surprisingly,.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:48:36] But not based on any kind of science. But the point I was I was actually trying to finish making because I was when we consume fat, that also goes to structure. Our brain and nervous system are made up of fat primarily. And the our cell membranes are made up of fat and cholesterol and fat is something that has is a major part of our immune function. It’s a major part of a lot of things. Only fat in excess of what we may consume may end up getting stored. But because fat and protein are so essential to our structural makeup, you know, we need to be replenishing those things. And, you know, and adding to those things.

But carbohydrates, virtually every molecule of carbohydrate you consume because less than one percent of our structural makeup is carbs. Less than one percent, you know, is it you know, whatever you don’t need for rocket fuel right now to outrun a cantankerous woolly mammoth or something like that is ultimately going to be considered excess by your metabolism and is going to get mostly converted to fat.

You know, you’re going to get injected into your cells, the degree to which your cells are still listening to insulin. Some of it will get stored as glycogen in your muscles to the tune of maybe a couple thousand calories, you know, depending. That’s kind of a relative thing, but it’s a very limited capacity. Some will get, you know, stored in your liver as glycogen and all the rest of it gets converted to fat and gets stored in places you’d rather not have it. And that’s why, you know, when we consume sugar, almost all of that ends up being excess.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:50:20] All right. And what do you I mean, you know, if we were going to review our carbohydrate level and listen to this and go, hang on, I’ve really got to take stock of what I’m doing for the next week or two, I’m going to measure every bit of carbohydrate I eat. What do you say is a reasonable level to shoot for? To aim for?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:50:43] I you know, if I’m looking at a label on a food item and I see more than maybe two grams. I mean, consider this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:50:50] I’m talking total in a day.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:50:52] Right? I know. And that’s just it. We have no requirement for any dietary levels of this. And so. You know, it’s. You know, the less the better, the less the better, you know. And so there isn’t a safe minimum there. That’s never been shown to be the case.

There’s never been a safe minimum level of carbohydrate, if you realize at any given point in time the average healthy adult has roughly four or five grams of glucose surging through your veins, you know. Now, if you eat something that has five grams of sugar in it, which doesn’t sound like very much, you’ve just doubled your blood sugar levels. Right. And that is going to constitute an emergency. Your body tightly regulates the amount of glucose because it’s inherently damaging.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:51:45] You know, it is itcreates it sets up a state of chronic glycation, which is the process by which, you know, sugar will combine with proteins and fats and things like that in your body. And start to cause them to become sticky in the shape and they start to malfunction. It’s a major impetus for ageing. And it’s also how our tissues break down over time as we get older is through that chronic process of glycation, which is very inflammatory.

So when we start to exceed the amount of glucose that we absolutely need just to get by. You know that. You know, that’s adding to the problem. It’s just always adding to the problem, and it’s a kind of a it’s a cruel fate that we need some amount of glucose for our red blood cells to operate, but we don’t need to get any of it from the food that we eat ever.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:41] What about protein? I mean, I’ve had a figure in my head that I’ve heard is 0.8 gram. I like to rounded up to one gram per kilogram. Well, it’s easier to calculate.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:52:52] It’s easier to calculate. But it’s probably excessive.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:55] Is it? That’s good.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:52:57] So, you know, who actually the time in your life, that time in our lives as human beings where we require more protein than any other time in our life for cellular proliferation, whatever else is when we’re infants. And I have found studies to show that the average amount of protein in breast milk or whatever else is roughly that a gram per kilogram of body weight. You know that.

It is a large amount of protein and that, you know, stimulates cellular proliferation. Point eight grams is going to be below that threshold. And see part of the reason, part of what happens when we give ourselves the amount of protein we need, but not protein and in excess of that to set up proliferative mechanisms. It sends a message, and I like to put it modern-day economic terms people can relate to.

So, like, it’s too expensive to build a new house right now. So let’s fix up the one we’ve got. So what your body sets about doing is dialing down, making new stuff, and instead cleaning out the junk that’s in your cells, you know. And then also repairing and regenerating what’s already there instead of just creating a bunch of new stuff, you know, which is very labor intensive.

It’s very, you know, energetically intensive. But when you go in and you do that, literally the effect is anti-aging. And that’s the whole point because what’s getting re rebuilt and regenerated is you. And rather than the out with the old, in with the new that you get with these when these proliferative mechanisms are activated, you know, you’re getting, you know, these autophagy mechanisms, you know, these things that help to clean out your cells and help your body, you know, detoxify in a more regular way.

And also rebuilding and regenerating your existing tissue. And that’s what anti-aging is about. And that’s what, you know, more than 100 years of longevity research has shown. That’s why caloric restriction, which is where the fasting craze came from, you know, was believed to be in and of itself. Oh, great for enhancing longevity.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:55:20] But what scientists realized and I wrote about this in my very first book, that it wasn’t calories in general that were or beneficially that were having the beneficial effects, the restriction of calories in general. It was primarily carbohydrate calories and protein calories. Fat actually is like a free fuel. It doesn’t enter into that equation.

You know, you can consume, you know, fat all day long in the absence of protein or carbohydrates. And it’s not going to trigger these proliferative mechanisms. But protein definitely does. And sugar does in spades. And so, again, you know, I liked the idea of moderating the mTOR. I realize that it’s an easier calculation with one gram per kilogram. A lot of athletes do that. And it is simpler. I agree. But if I had cancer.

I would cut that amount just about half right. I could be more like point five or point six grams per kilogram of estimated ideal body weight. Right. So it’s not it’s if you weigh 300 pounds or however many kilos that amounts to. You don’t want to use that number. You know you want to use the numbers. Say you knew you were smoking hot when you were in high school and you weighed 150 pounds. That’s the number you use and of course, I’m using the non-metric system because I’m in the States and we’re idiots and we don’t know how to do this metric calculation as well. But, you know, you guys can do it a little more directly.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:56:47] But it’s point eight for the average adult person. Point eight gram per kilogram of estimated ideal body weight. Now, if you’re a pregnant woman, you’re a baby, a child, a teen. I don’t advocate for restricting the protein intake. It’s not more is better, but just make sure that the person is getting as much as they want or need, because, again, you need a certain amount of cellular proliferation in order to grow. Right. And and and all of that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:22] Nora this is I mean, to hear you, and I know I’ve read your wonderful books and I just know they are you. You do not say anything unless you have read and analyzed critically the literature. And it’s just always so that’s why I love. I love connecting and hearing what you have to say. Listen, if our listener was listening to this ongoing. Can you boost your immune system to everything? And we had to leave our listener with a couple of tips to leave them with. Give us a couple. You know that you would you know Nora’s pearls.

Can you boost your immune system to everything?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:58:02] Right. So, you know, understand that your immune system is going to dictate whether or not you are vulnerable to these respiratory viruses floating around or not. Right. If your immune system is healthy, I don’t care how old you are. You’re going to fare probably just fine in a well over 99 percent of people are going to that’s that’s the you know, that’s the survival rate.

You know, that most people are just not going to have any kind of meaningful concern about all of this stuff. But if your immune system is heavily compromised, it’s a problem. Things that improve the health of your immune system. Now, everybody says vitamin C, and there is some very good evidence to suggest that vitamin C and, you know, they talk about I.V. vitamin C, if you do a really high-quality Liposomal vitamin C, that can be virtually the equivalent of intravenous vitamin C.

There are many companies carrying that. I know there’s one here in the states called Pure Thrive that’s been shown to be essentially identical to IV, vitamin C and would you take it orally and it’s tasty and all of that. So, yeah, and there are a number of studies. I know the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has a number of studies they show on their website where intravenous vitamin C was used and was over there treating patients very successfully with I.V. Vitamin C, but so, yeah, of course, I would say, you know, liver is your best superfood.

The vitamin A content of that is going to be incredibly important for your immune system’s capacity to resist infection. There really isn’t a nutrient that’s more important. But vitamin D3 is meant to balance with vitamin A.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:59:47] So D3 is something and I’m a fan of emulsified forms of D3 as opposed to just popping a pill. I like liquid emulsified forms of vitamin D3. I’ve seen that really improve levels quickly. Vitamin K2, mk4, I am not a fan of MK7. The bacterial form of K2 that is popular and all the supplements.

Now there is no basis for it in human physiology. The reason they’re as popular as they are is because they can be patented. And a lot of the research showing that, oh no, no, this form of K2, you know, K2 does wonderful things. They’re extrapolating from MK4 research, the only form of K2 that is found in the human brain, the only form that will that there was a recent study showing that MK7 won’t cross umbilical blood into a fetus. But MK4 will and MK4 is found in, like I say, poultry, fat, poultry, liver, you know, a grass-fed, pure organic grass-fed dairy is pretty high in K2.

I have my qualms about dairy, which is a whole other discussion for us to have. But there is a company called Pure Indian Foods that has a culture that has an absolutely no trace dairy proteins in it at all. It’s extremely high in K2. And that’s the only dairy product in my life. But at any rate, there is also a form of emu oil, which, you know, hey, as an Aussie, you know something you know, a thing or two about emu’s over there, you blokes do.

So there is a specific genetic strain. And over in Australia, the company that sells it is called “Baramul” here in the States. It’s “Walk about health” products. And, you know, that particular strain of emu oil. It is the richest natural source of vitamin K2 on Earth. No richer source. And K2 is so important for immune function.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:01:52] So important to balance with vitamin D because vitamin D will improve your body’s ability to absorb calcium. But K2 decides how and where that calcium is going to get used and where it gets deposited. And if you don’t have sufficient K2 and you are not going to get it from K1. I’m sorry. You know, from eating your green vegetables. That’s not the K I’m talking about.

I’m told that that stuff will enhance blood clotting for better or worse. But you’re not going to convert meaningful amounts of plant-based K1 into the kind of K2 that as a human being, your brain and your body, and your immune system need. And that vitamin D3 needs to balance itself. And so without sufficient K2, you end up calcifying things that were never meant to be calcified. You know, your arteries, your joints, your heart, your brain, you know, not good. So K2 is so important to balance D3 so that you’re not getting.

Look, you know, we hear about all the research that goes into specific nutrients. And the problem is, you know, whenever they do research, they’re trying to eliminate all the other variables in the equation. The problem is that is life is a variable. You know that there are always no food. We’ll have one nutrient that the exclusion of all others were designed to get these things in concert with one another. And they’re designed to interact synergistically. And so you can’t be healthy by just popping pills all the time.

You can get yourself into really big trouble. And I know people that have done that and ended up with serious calcification problems. K2 is critical, critical for that. I actually have the walk about stuff right here I just happened to. I’ll take the capsules and I actually snack on them. It’s tastes kind of buttery. I like them, but it comes in a liquid too. And I know Baramul is the exact same company, but it’s just the Aussie available product. So anyway, so those things are super, super, super critical. You know, and obviously, zinc is really important and we lose up to triple.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:04:06] I mean, we have to triple our zinc rate of zinc excretion under stress. Not that anyone’s under any stress right now. Right. And, you know, infections and things like that also severely deplete zinc levels that cancer overconsumption of things like grains and legumes also severely. God forbid you’re eating soy.

You know, you are going to be in zinc deficit big time. And so if you’re going to supplement with zinc and it you know, if somebody is really seriously deficient, what you want is a liquid ionic form of zinc. What ionic forms of zinc do is they bypass because you see it takes hydrochloric acid in order to absorb zinc, but you need zinc in order to manufacture hydrochloric acid.

If you have digestive impairment and most people under stress do, you may have a hard time extracting zinc from even high-quality animal source foods. You may if you’re not digesting. Well, well doesn’t matter how good the food is that you’re eating, you may not be extracting the nutrition from it.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:05:09] Zinc is so important for immune function and it’s so important as a partner to vitamin A that I say that if you’re concerned about your you know, your immune function, getting an ionic form of zinc. It when it’s already ionized. See, that’s what hydrochloric acid does, does it get ionizers it so that it can be taken up by yourselves? And if you don’t have sufficient hydrochloric acid or you’re trying to get your zinc from eating pumpkin seeds, well forget it. It’s not happening.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:05:38] What about oysters?

Nora Gedgaudas [01:05:41] Yes. Oysters are the richest natural form, a source of zinc. The problem with oysters is there are bottom-feeding organisms. And I don’t trust anything coming out of the oceans right now. You guys are a little better off down there. And I’ve had those oysters in like around Wellington and stuff in New Zealand. And, you know, if I were down there, I might still indulge. But I haven’t been eating seafood out of the Pacific for since 2011, you know. And that’s a whole other that’s a whole other show.

So I’m nervous about anything that is kind of a bottom feeder at this point. I worry about the contaminants, the serious contaminants, possibly even radio nuclear contamination in shellfish right now. So but, yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, oysters are rich source of zinc. So I would rather get it from red meat or, you know, other animal source foods. And, you know, I tend to recommend most people, you know, supplement with hydrochloric acid and possibly digestive enzymes just to make sure that you’re breaking down the food that you eat, particularly if you’re under a lot of stress.

Because, you know, digestion is a parasympathetic process. Right. You have to be calm and relaxed in order for the digestive secretions to occur that stimulate the flow of bile, that stimulate the production or release of hydrochloric acid from the parietal cells in the stomach, and all of that stuff. And if you’re in fight or flight mode and you’re stressed out and who isn’t? Right now, I mean, I don’t know who’s digesting what they’re eating. So but like I say, ionic zinc bypasses all of that. And I like ionic, you know, mineral supplements in general just because it helps to bypass those issues. There are some forms of some minerals that are better for some things than others. And that’s that, you know, I teach a 52-week certification course.

I’d say 60 percent of people taking it are practitioners of some kind, including medical doctors and all of that. And everybody just loves the material. It’s really a deep dive into the number of topics related to nutrition and health and also conditions like autoimmunity and things like that. And I have one of the modules in my online course is all about supplementation and it is epic. And it many people have said that was one of the most shocking ones that they know. And one of the most interesting that out of all of them, not that they’re not all interesting is I think that they are, but.

But anyway, you know, your viewers, there are a lot of just lay people, you know, housewives and whatever, that are also taking that certification course not because they plan to be practitioners, but they want to take a deeper dive into this information, understand it more thoroughly so that they can better improve their health and the health of those that they love and their families. So and, you know, your viewers are getting, you know, can get a discount on that, a substantial discount through you. And, you know, as a result of this interview.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:08:57] Well, Nora, you know, I just love it’s so great to connect with you. It’s been too long, but it has what a wealth of information we’ve covered in these two programmes. And we are, of course, going to have links to all of that. Thank you for your generous code, which I think is your courses are incredible and the depths to which you go into them so. Nora, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s lovely to connect.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:09:25] You too, you too Ron. it is just that my heart glows like E.T. when I see you. And, you know, it’s just it’s been much, much too long. I really adore you and I adore the work that you do. It’s so critically important there where you are in Australia. You know, you’re you know, the closest thing Australia has to a Weston Price in this day and age. And, you know, they’re lucky to have you. Wish we had you over here. Thank you.

Conclusion

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:09:53] So there it is. I mean, Nora, good gardeners is just encyclopedic and obsessive in her knowledge. I mean, she does not say things unless she is very focused on the research. And when I first read her book in I think it was 2010, I was put onto it by my good friend Aaron Mckenzie, who said who had been at me at the gym for some time to read Nora’s book, Primal Body, Primal Mind. And of course, I had a list of books that I had that I wanted to read and hers was on that pile. But he kept on at me and at me. And when I started reading it, it is just so accessible that the style is so accessible.

You can hear Nora’s voice in it. But it is so well referenced. And I finished it and I really rated it as one of the best books on nutrition that I had ever read. And I have read many. And my first reaction to reading that book was to get Nora over to Australia, which is exactly what “Nourishing Australia”. My co-founders, Vicky and Tim Poulter from Nourishing Australia brought Nora out. I think it was in 2012 and she did a tour and that introduced her to Australia. And the rest, as they say, is history. I mean, I think you will have heard of the paleo movement in Australia and I think “Nourishing Australia”, bringing Nora out to Australia was an introduction to us of paleo.

And the rest is history, as you say. But I’m very, very proud of that connection. So Nora’s got those and she’s got a few courses, actually. She’s got some terrific books, which I would highly recommend to you. Her primal genic courses, a 21-day course, which she’s given us a special code which I’ll share with you in the show notes, and that 52-week primal restoration course, which she referenced. We’ll also have links to as well.

Now, there are just so many exciting things. Look, this series of of of podcasts have been really focused on what you can do to improve the immune function during this pandemic and beyond and beyond because this isn’t going to be the last pandemic we face. But it’s given us a tremendous opportunity to focus on our health in a way like never before. And I think we can all come out of this much healthier than we came into it. And that’s a big call. But, hey, let’s grasp the opportunity. I hope this finds you all well until next time. 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.