← The Dr. Josh Axe Show
The Dr. Josh Axe Show
Top Natural Remedies That Actually Work | Barbara O'Neill
01:26:39
So many women struggle with hormone symptoms without ever understanding where the imbalance truly begins.
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A
There's been this idea especially, I know, living in the United States and it's probably true for most of the Western world that we have to rely on someone else for our health. You have to go to the doctor rather than caring for, for yourself and for your family.
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B
I'm not against doctors. Some of my best friends are doctors and I'm sure you'll be one of my best friends now that I think most doctors are ethical, but the pharmaceutical company is not. The doctors should stop putting, putting their trust in the pharmaceutical companies.
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A
Wow, that's so good.
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B
They must stop. They trust that they've done the research and we've seen it in the paper many times. The whistleblower, they're not doing the testing. They're not. You see, drugs never cure disease. And some might say, well, Barbara, can you really say never? You can say never because they only mask symptoms. It's the body and the body alone is the only, the only thing that has the capacity to heal. Now that changed my life.
- [01:24]
A
What do you think are maybe three or so of the biggest mistakes people are making that they're just totally unaware of that's really harming their health? Hey, everyone. Welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show. Today I have an incredible guest. I'm a huge fan of Barbara o'. Neal. She's been a legend in the space. You know, I got turned on her during COVID I started watching many of her videos online and she does such an incredible job of taking complex health matters and making them simple. We're going to talk about female hormones, fertility, women's hormones, biblical health, and some maybe even controversial views we both have about conventional medicine and natural medicine. Barbara, welcome to the show.
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B
Thanks. It's great to be here.
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A
Well, again, I'm a huge fan of you. When I told my mother in law, my mom, my wife, everybody, I was coming on too. They were extremely excited because you've done such an amazing job of taking, I think, something that a lot of health topics that people maybe knew about quite a few years ago that have sort of been lost. And one of those topics I want to Dive into first is related to hormone health. Actually, before I do that, though, I would love to know a little bit about. So sort of your background of how you got into the natural medicine space.
- [02:51]
B
Well, I'm a fifth generation Australian, Scottish descent. So I was brought up in your average Aussie home. Little bit of a Scottish there because I learned Scottish dancing as a child. Five kids. My father and my brother were inventors. And everything that came into the home, they pulled apart. They wanted to know how it worked. And I couldn't get my license till I learned how an engine works. You know, this was the environment I grew up in. We questioned everything except medicine. You never questioned medicine. And I never even thought about that until my first daughter had an earache. And four courses of antibiotics later, six weeks later, the earache comes back. Now I'm confronted, very confronted with, this is not working. As the doctor writes the fifth course, I said, will my daughter be on this for the rest of her life? He was confronted with my question, and he should have been. Yeah. And he sent me to a near nose and throat specialist who looked in Emma's mouth, in her ears. He said, the child's teething. Give her these drops to keep the Eustachian tubes clean. So when my next child had an earache, I did not go to the doctor. I did not tell anyone, because you get pressure, they'll go deaf. You don't. I went to the old lady next door, so I must have been about 26. She's 86. I said, what did your mother do when you were a little girl and had an earache? She said, she steamed an onion on the stove. I ran home, steamed the onion, put it on his ear. He slept for two hours. I don't think he's ever had another earache.
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A
Wow.
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B
Now, that changed my life. I thought, there's something else. But, you know, to this day, I'm very thankful for that feeling. Not wanting to give my child any more drugs, not wanting to hurt my child, but not knowing what to do. And that really has spurned me on to educate, educate, educate, to show the world, especially mothers, there's something else.
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A
Yeah, you do such an amazing job, especially thinking of your whiteboard videos where you sort of walk us through exactly how people can heal. And this is something, you know, I think doctors or health practitioners need to be teachers and educators. And this is something you do a great job of. And one of the areas I've seen you do a lot of education on is around women's hormones, fertility. I'd love to start there. And diving into women's hormones because what happens today, most of the time women have an issue like hypothyroidism, pcos, severe menopausal symptoms, and their doctor says, here's Synthroid, here's hormone replacement therapy, and two.
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B
Others that have become big are thyroid and osteoporosis and depression. This is big. So I have the advantage of being the health director at our health retreat for 23 years. So a lot of women came through our doors. And I would like to suggest that about 85% of women that came through the doors, whether they be nine, whether they be 90, are hormonal imbalance. So coming from my roots, I want to know why. Why? And I found out why. One of them is the contraceptive pill.
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A
That's right.
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B
It disrupts the hormones. And no one ever told women that it was a hormone disruptor.
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A
You know, there is a study that came out recently that said if women take the pill long term birth control, their chance of getting hypothyroidism goes up by nearly 300%.
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B
Oh, it doesn't surprise me. And breast cancer and polycystic ovarian syndrome and fibroids and endomet. Endometriosis. There was basically. Endometriosis was virtually not until the pill was introduced. So it's not hard to link those figures together. Now there are some women that have never been on the pill, neither their mother. So then we're looking elsewhere and we've got environmental poisons. In the molecular structure of estrogen, there's a phenyl ring and the plastic softening chemical that's in nearly every plastic bottle, that's in cars in. But you know, the dashboard, it's all got a fennel in it. One's bisphenol A, another one is nonelphenyl. Also growth stimulants in chickens. It's in the chicken, it's in the egg. In cattle cleaning products, people are using chemical fabrics. So I've got woolen skirt, I have got woolen top, I love wool. But the fabric that most women are wearing is nylon, acrylic and polyester. And they are three fabrics that were created in a chemical laboratory. And our skin, our skin is. It breathes, it absorbs. So when it's touching the skin, we're taking it in. Now, all of these areas I've just mentioned, little by little, like the dripping tap on a stone, are disrupting, disrupting that hormone balance. And our body runs according to precision balance.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So this disruption is causing all the problems we're seeing, which are some of them we just mentioned now, what are.
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A
Some of the things like if you were working with a woman and she has, and you could, you could hit on these altogether or categorically, but these common conditions, hypothyroidism being one, pcos, infertility, some of those issues, what are some of the things that you start to recommend women do to bring their hormones back into balance?
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B
Now you asked me first of all, what was my journey? There was another part of my journey is when I became a Christian. I became a Christian at the age of about 26, 27 and I discovered health from the Bible. And there's a verse in there, it's Psalm 104, 14, that God gave herbs for the service of man. I love that verse, the service. I'm here to serve you. Where would you like me? What would you have me do? Whereas drugs, they're like robots. Get out of my way.
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That's right.
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B
I got a job to do.
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I'm gonna force you to do something the body doesn't want to do.
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B
I got a job to do, whether you need it or not. So see a marked difference. The wild yam contains a plant chemical called diosgenine. And when that wild yam is made into a oil based cream and that cream is applied to the skin, the fat cells take it up and it stimulates the biochemical pathway in the body that the body uses to make progesterone. Yeah.
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A
Wow.
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B
Now progesterone's mother hormone. So mother hor overall and unfortunately what the pill does, it displaces progesterone and boosts up estrogen. So the way to remedy that imbalance, which is estrogen dominant progesterone deficiency, is reinstate mother. And that's what the yam cream does. It stimulates the body to reinstate progesterone. And when you boost progesterone it brings estrogen down, it rebalances testosterone, it brings everything back into balance.
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A
Know I, I, I was, I was reading on this a little bit about yams and sweet potatoes and this amazing compound you're sharing. And obviously I think eating those is fantastic. But as you're mentioning, the cream is going to be a little bit of higher dose, higher absorption. There are great benefits there. There was a, a paper that came out two months ago that said Japan now has 95000 centurions. So think about almost a hundred thousand people over a hundred years old. It's amazing. And hormone replacement there is virtually non Existent. But one of the top two, I think, sources of carbohydrates they consume are purple sweet potatoes. It's a big part of their diet, especially women going through menopause. And so I think one of those reasons might be that in boosting yin, boosting progesterone, as you're sharing, I absolutely love that. Well, what are your. What are your thoughts on. Is there anything in particular herbs or things that you like for women who are really struggling with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's?
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B
Well, there's an excellent book called Iodine, why youy need it and why youy Can't Live Without it by Dr. David Brownstein.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now, he is the thyroid expert in the world, and he shows that under and overactive thyroid can both be due to iodine deficiency. And, you know, they used to use iodine as a bread improver, but now they've replaced it with iodine competers. But also berries. Berries are sprayed with another chemical that's an iodine. It's like a bromide, that's an iodine computer. So we're exposed to so many things that are causing this disruption in the iodine. And another point is, too mercury fillings. Mercury has an affinity for selenium, and the thyroid needs selenium to convert iodine into thyroxine. So can you see, someone could be having berry smoothies every day and mouthful of mercury fillings and me having thyroid problems and their mother was on the pill. And not many people, and not many even doctors know those threads that come together. So get the mercury out of the mouth. See a biological dentist. And if you're gonna have berries, have organic. And if you're going to eat bread, make sure it's the ancient grains and it's not being grown with glyphosate, another chemical that can disrupt the hormones. And do an iodine test. So you put, say, lugal solution, which has iodine and iodide on the inside of your arm, and it'll make a brown smudge. We often do at our health retreat. Ladies, let's all have a look at how long it stays. Now, if it's gone in an hour, your iodine levels are low. And if it's still got some semblance of color five hours later, your iodine levels are good. So I like to empower people to be their own doctor. So here's a little test that you can do for yourself. What if it's gone in and out? We'll put it on every day till it stays for five.
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A
There you go.
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B
It can be as simple as that.
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A
You know, one thing I think we've lost the art of, I think there's been this idea especially, I know, living in the United States, and it's probably true for most of the Western world that we have to rely on someone else for our health. Like, you have to go to the doctor rather than caring for yourself and for your family. And I think that this is so important. This is one of the things I really respect about you, is empowering moms and dads to learn about these things. Practices at home. I had a functional medicine practice in Nashville, took care of a lot of kids. And ear infections is one of the most common things I see with this, where kids will get ear infections and then their doctor puts this fear in them that if they don't take an antibiotic, their kid could likely die. And the reality is the statistics don't prove that your own body's creating heat and interferon to kill this virus. But parents are so fearful today, oftentimes of sometimes even trying some of these remedies that I know I teach, and you teach even more.
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B
So that's true because I know with my daughter, they said she'll go deaf. Yeah, well, she didn't go deaf. And I raised five more children and then married Michael 28 years ago with his two. So we actually raised eight children with no antibiotics. And I say to people, they're all still alive. The body's been designed by God to heal itself.
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A
That's right.
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B
And it just needs the right conditions. Back to thyroid. High estrogen opposes thyroid function. So very important part of getting the thyroid working again and is taking the. Or applying the wild yam cream. Dr. John Lee is probably the first physician that blew the whistle on this back in the 80s 90s. He's passed now, but you can still see podcasts by him. And he said that when you eat the yam, your liver detoxifies almost 400%, and that's why the cream, so you can pick up so much more. And you mentioned earlier you can get a heavier dose, a more effective dose by applying it to the skin. I think that's helpful to know.
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A
I love it. It's so powerful. So some just takeaways. One, reducing the toxic exposure, staying away from a lot of the plastic silver fillings. I know my own mom who, she had a battle with cancer, and one of the things we did to help her heal, she had 12 silver fillings in her mouth. Amalgams, had them all removed. And she had dealt with chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, and it was amazing. I mean, really, just even weeks after getting rid of those fillings, she felt a lift in her energy. I mean, there's a real, real difference. And a lot of these metals, they're blocking receptor sites for what you're talking about. Iodine for Sal Millennium. We're not even absorbing these things. And so I love that you're sharing that. I was watching a video of yours here just a little bit before we started the interview on you talking about the importance of the gut microbiome. Because it's not only, you know, we heard this principle, we are what you eat. But really, as you've said, you are what you absorb. Talk to us about how to get the gut microbiome healthy. Some of your favorite plants for doing that and why it's so important when.
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B
You got to get the poisons out and antibiotics. Slaughter gut flora. Chemotherapy slaughters the gut. A lot of people don't realize that the statin drugs, the cholesterol lowering medication, and that's of course the pharmaceutical company Star Child. Cause they've made not millions, not trillions, but billions out of that medication. And yet that just slaughters gut flora. Long term painkiller use can also slaughter gut flora. So we're gonna stop what's slaughtering it.
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Yes.
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B
And we've got to re reinstate the good stuff. When you consider that 70% of our immune system is established by our gut flora. We want that gut flora. The good news is there are some cultured foods that you can take and that will help to boost it. Like sauerkraut, kimchi, bok choy. That's often made also into a sauerkraut. Sauerkrauts are good. And miso is another one. Kefir yogurts, you can get some nice plant based yogurts now. They all help to restore gut flora. But what feeds gut flora is prebiotics. And prebiotic is fiber. And the more variety in fiber you have, the more gut flora you're going to feed. For instance, you can have 10 different types of apples and they will feed 10 different types of gut flora. Wow. Isn't that incredible?
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A
That is amazing. It's so amazing.
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B
Yeah. So variety is the spice of life. Variety is the spice of life to our gut.
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A
Yeah, that's right.
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The vegetable kingdom.
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A
That's right. I love that. It's so powerful. Yeah. I mean, the gut microbiome is something I've been very aware of with my career because you know, there is so much, it's like 99% of the way I practice is not things I learned in school, you know. And so when I started seeing patients, I was very surprised when I first started a functional medicine practice because then school they don't tell you that every woman coming in is going to have hypothyroidism and every male is going to have low testosterone and every person almost is going to have leaky gut, some sort of gut issue. And it's so prevalent and. But I remember really focusing on, especially early in my career, healing the gut. And it helps so many conditions get well. One of the other things I've heard you talk about is certain natural plants and their benefits. As I was watching a video of you earlier, you were talking about the benefits of things like, I want to say aloe and certain other herbals. Share with us some of your favorite herbals and plant based medicines for helping heal the gut.
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B
Well, when you open an aloe vera plant, it's slimy and if you look at the inside of your lip, it's slimy. It's the same.
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A
Yes, exactly.
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B
But aloe vera contains a growth stimulant and it stimulates rapid healing in the lining of the gut. Now our gut cells are remade every three to five days. So with gut problems you can heal them quite quickly with once the right condition is given. But you've got to remember that the gut has memory, so you've got to change that around a bit. So how do you take the aloe vera? Because it's actually not very nice to eat. Some people will put it in a smoothie. You can scrape the gel and mash it up and put it with a little apple juice mainly so it'll coat and soothe. Great for a sore throat, great for ulcer in the stomach, great for irritable bowel all the way down. It's great for that.
- [19:38]
A
Well, if you think about it like this. So like ulcers for instance, it's essentially a burn. And of course aloe is great for burns on your skin. But these burn people don't think about it like that. You got these burns almost these canker like sores throughout our digestive lining. Obviously ulcerative colitis is a great example that some of these forms of ibd, fantastic.
- [19:57]
B
In fact, we've seen people totally heal from irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, colitis, gastritis, you name it that they heal nicely. The other herb is slippery elm. Oh yeah, and slippery elm is the Powdered bark of the slippery elm tree. And when you mix hot water with it, it goes like a soft jelly. So again, nice and slimy for the lining of the gut. It also contains a growth stimulant. So I just love Psalm 104:14. God gave herbs for the service of man. So these herbs come in, they coat, soothe, and help to heal the lining of the gut.
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A
It's so powerful. You know, I wrote this really short little ebook years ago, and it was called the King's Medicine Cabinet. And in the book, I kind of posed in the first just. Again, this is a free ebook I just gave away online. And in the book, I said, if we would go back to the time of King David, King Solomon, Queen Esther, and we would have opened up their medicine cabinet, what would we have found in a biblical medicine cabinet thousands of years ago? What do you think we would have found in those biblical medicine cabinets?
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B
I'm sure there'd be comfrey. There's.
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A
Yes. Yeah.
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B
Comfrey's the other plant that has a growth stimulant. You gotta be careful where you put it or it'll take over your garden. Cause it's got a growth stimulant in it.
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A
Wow.
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B
And so I was in a Robert Louis Stevenson, a museum in one of the islands where he apparently lived for a while. And in the medicine cabinet, I saw comfrey.
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A
Wow.
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B
Wow.
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A
Amazing.
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B
I think there would have been comfrey. I think there would have been charcoal. Charcoal absorbs and neutralizes poisons. Even medicine use it now. Do you know they filter blood for dialysis with charcoal, and if someone has an overdose, they give them charcoal. It absorbs and neutralizes poisons. There's nothing else on the planet like charcoal. I'm sure there would have been charcoal there. And depending on where they lived as to what herbs and what foods would have been available.
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A
Yeah, yeah. We read about the three wise men bringing Jesus gold. But frankincense and myrrh, we know those were used for medicine.
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B
Don't forget the frankincense and don't forget the myrrh.
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A
That's right. Yeah. I'd actually read back many years ago, during that time that when women were in labor post pregnancy, they gave myrrh to keep women from getting infection and for recovering faster. That was pretty amazing. I know a few other herbs that Solomon references are. He mentions sandalwoods, which is aloe, by the way. You just mentioned aloe. So people don't realize that aloes in the Bible, but that's actually referenced as part of Sandalwood. And then the other one is saffro. He actually mentioned saffron, which is all these benefits for mood and sleep. So I love that you're quoting Psalms 104. Because the Bible to me is the greatest health book ever written.
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B
It's the greatest medical book that has ever been written. And you know what I found interesting when I was a little girl in the Presbyterian Church cause I was raised Scottish, you heard about Daniel and the lion's den. You heard about Daniel's three friends in the fiery furnace. Thrilling stories. But we never heard about Daniel chapter. And Daniel chapter one is when one young Daniel's about 16 taken captive and they're gonna be given the king's food and wine. And Daniel and his three friends said no. Now that's quite a stand for a 16 year old boy to say. I'm not gonna eat at the king's table. He could have lost his head. Yeah, but the Bible says that the prince had favour with Daniel and so he allowed him to go 10 days with just pulse, which is vegetables and water to drink. And after 10 days it said their faces were fairer and fatter than all the other young men. So they were allowed to just have water to drink and a plant based diet for three years. And at the end of three years the Bible says that the king tested them and they were 10 times smarter than all the wise men in the well Babylon, that was the known world at that time.
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A
That's amazing.
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B
And so that's a story I never heard of.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are one of you know, I recently was writing a book on a biblical diet and one of the things it was so fun to do over the past couple years and I've done this for quite a few years already, but really saying, okay, I'm gonna write a book on it. So every time I read through the Bible it was like I was using a microscope or a magnifying glass looking for what are those quotes about health. And they are throughout the entire Bible. Like I started learning that 2/3 of Jesus parables he taught were on farming and food. Yeah, I mean his miracles, the fish, the loaves of bread, I mean the Bible communion in terms of what you're doing there. There's.
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B
He spent more time healing than preaching.
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A
That's right. It's amazing. It's so amazing. And so I appreciate so much how you appreciate the Bible. I've heard you talk about the Bible in those talks as. So you talked about the Daniel and sometimes we call that the Daniel Fast today. What are some of the benefits of fasting? Is that something that you ever recommend for anyone you're working with or for overall health?
- [25:04]
B
Well, at our health retreat in Australia, Misty Mountain Health Retreat, guests come in for either one week or two weeks. They come in on a Sunday, we give them a beautiful meal. And then in the afternoon they have a steam sauna and we just serve them a thin soup at night. And then Monday, Tuesday are juicing days. And every two hours we serve a fresh vegetable, light fruit juice. So they first two days are fasting days. And they steam saun at the end of every day because that stimulates their skin to throw off more waste. And we find that it's very effective because the stomach is very happy when it gets a little rest. Yes. And we say to our guests, you couldn't eat in a day what we put in your juices. So what we do is we nutritionally support the body, we nutritionally support the liver to effectively detoxify them. Cause when you're not eating, solid food takes about 1200 calories to digest a meal. So when you're not digesting the meal, then the body's looking around for something to do. So it'll go to the parts of the body with the greatest need. And that's the theory as to why it's being used for centuries to help people heal.
- [26:18]
A
It's amazing. So my mom had cancer when she was 41. She had breast cancer. And then about 18 years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again on her lung. And that second time, first time we went all conventional. Second time we did all natural. And the diet you're describing is very similar to what my mom followed to reverse cancer. She did basically broth, lots of steamed vegetables, juice vegetables, some berries, and wild salmon. I mean, that was her whole diet and was able to reverse her reverse cancer that way. But it's, you know, there is this, the Bible and a lot of world religions talk a lot about fasting, obviously for spiritual breakthrough, but for the health breakthroughs, there's so much scientific literature and just historical evidence on the benefits there.
- [27:03]
B
That's right. It's been used for centuries to help stimulate healing in the body. And that's why it works. The body doesn't have to digest. Now let's do something else. Let's go to areas that. That need. Need help.
- [27:18]
A
Yeah, it can repair, it can regenerate. Now, I want to mention this. You mentioned statin drugs earlier. We often call the gut the second brain. So most people know this statin Drugs. Cause your brain is made up of about 25% cholesterol. It's a lot of fat. So when you're doing these statin drugs, you are demyelinating. You are destroying your entire nervous system. Well, half your nerve, a big part of your nervous system is in your gut. So that's another thing with these statin drugs. You're destroying the body in such a mess. And there's not a single drug that doesn't cause a depletion in the body of a vitamin or nutrient. And they don't even put those side effects on the labels.
- [27:55]
B
That's true. That's true. You see, drugs never cure disease. And some might say, well, Barbara, can you really say never? You can say never because they only mask symptoms. It's the body. And the body alone is the only. The only thing that has the capacity to heal. Now, water treatments work with the body. Herbs work with the body. But it's the body that does the healing. But it will heal when you give it the right conditions. And unfortunately, the drugs, they don't work with the body. They mask the symptoms. And so the people think, oh, this is helping because I don't have a headache anymore. I don't have a bad rash anymore. But they don't realise they've just pushed it further in the body. It's gonna come out again. Skin.
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A
That's right. Yeah. I think one thing people don't realize, to your point, is that drugs essentially are forcing your body to do actually something it doesn't want to do.
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B
That's right.
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A
Forcing it. Vitamins, minerals, herbals. Herbals are changing your environment. Vitamins and minerals are giving your body just the tools it needs to heal itself. Yeah. I was really blessed to learn this principle. Food doesn't actually heal you. Broccoli, turmeric, none of it heals you. Your body heals itself. Change the environment. You did such a great job of teaching that I want to. Right before we started, you shared something with me, which I just loved. And I want to get into this. You delivered one of your own babies yourself. Okay. That's amazing. We did with my wife Chelsea. We did two at home births in a tub. The most amazing spiritual experience of our lives.
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B
It is.
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A
Talk to me about fertility, birth home births and your experience there. And also delivering your own baby at home.
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B
Well, it challenges me that what they've done with birthing today. So I read a book called the Midwife of Oswyc. She's a Polish woman in her 50s in Oswych. She delivered 3,000 babies in two years. Didn't lose a baby.
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A
Wow.
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B
Now let's look at that. These women are in the most terrible conditions. They're malnourished, spiritually, emotionally, mentally traumatized. She never lost a baby. So you know what I say, what's happening in our hospitals? What's happening that we've got such a high death rate in our hospitals? It's intervention. So my babies. I had several babies at home, and it was such an incredible experience. You've experienced it yourself. There's nothing like it. So with my fifth child, they. They checked me and they said, you've got a while to go. So I decided to start marching around the room. And seven minutes later, I had another contraction. And I could feel. Pushing the back of my throat, you know, to push. And I thought, what's going on? And I felt down, and I could feel the head. And so I started panting, started panting. Cause my baby's just come too fast. I knew that from my home births. No one was in the ruin except my husband. And I'm panting and he's tapping me, saying, you shouldn't be panting yet. And I'm. I couldn't tell him. And you know what? I was confronted with the fact I've got to do this myself.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Wow. So what I did is as I panted, the head would go back. As I didn't pant, the head would push. So I just panted, massaged like I'd seen the midwives do it. And the head fell into my hand.
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A
Oh, my goodness.
- [31:21]
B
Wow. And I said the head. And he. She jot round and oh, I'm sitting there with her head. And then a nurse's aide with a mop and bucket came into the room, saw me sitting there with the head. The mop and bucket went flying. She went running. People came from everywhere. It was a tiny little country hospital. Cause I went into labor early. So I went into there. My midwife's in Sydney. And they came into the room, they looked at me, looked at me with their head. And they said, can we check if the cord's around the neck? And I said, yes, they checked. You're fine. And then I got my next contraction, and she went to take the baby. And I said, I'll take the baby.
- [32:06]
A
Yeah.
- [32:06]
B
Because the head's the hardest. And that baby, the head just goes. The rest of the body goes, blah, blah. And I just pulled that baby up. And I thought, praise be to God, why don't let that women do this? But. But I think women are fearful yeah. They're so fearful. It's time to know your body, to work with your body, to know that your body can do it.
- [32:32]
A
I think so much of it comes with this thing where we've sort of made the medical system and doctors, they've sort of replaced God in a way, in the minds of a lot of people. I think for a lot of people, they have this. You know, the Bible says in the Psalms, you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
- [32:51]
B
That's right.
- [32:52]
A
And I think a lot of people have sort of lost that idea that science or this idea of science is sort of again replaces God and it constantly is violating God's design.
- [33:03]
B
It is you will love. Psalm 146. 3. It says, Put not your trust in princes, neither in the Son of man, in whom there is no help. So who are the princes? They're the authorities in the field, the authorities in government, the authorities in medicine, the authorities in nutrition. What has the Bible said, Put not your trust in princes, neither in the Son of man, in whom there's no health. His breath goes forth, he returns unto his earth. In that very day his thoughts perish. In other words, he's just a man. But verse five says, happy is he that has the God of Jacob as his help, whose hope is in the Lord, his God, that made heaven, earth, sea, and all that in them is. That's us. And keeps truth forever.
- [33:43]
A
That's a amazing.
- [33:44]
B
Isn't that a beautiful verse? So it's actually a challenge to us people. Stop putting so much faith and trust in the doctor. It doesn't mean you don't go. It doesn't mean you don't go anywhere near them. You might go and you might get their advice. But you know what you say, thank you so much for your opinion. Cause actually, that's what it is. You're gracious. The Bible says in Colossians 4, 6, let your speech be always with grace seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man. You say, thank you so much for your advice. I'll seriously consider this. And you leave. And you do consider it because 2 Timothy 1:7. The Bible says that God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power. That's right. What's power? Knowledge. But of power. Love. And a sound mind. And a sound mind weighs up the pros and cons. But if a person's been told you've got cancer, you've gotta do this immediately. That's shocking news.
- [34:44]
A
That's right.
- [34:45]
B
Right. Please have the courage to say thank you so much for your opinion. I'll get back to you and you leave.
- [34:52]
A
You know, we've got into. And I, I've, I've seen this so often, it sort of shocks me. You know, there are statistics around. Once five o' clock rolls around, the amount of C sections that happen go up dramatically. The amount of C sections now that are being scheduled months out is crazy. I've had doctors not happen once. I've heard this 10 times where women have told me, well, the doctor told me that I have a small body and that my hips are too small so I have to have a C section before they even try.
- [35:20]
B
I mean, that's, look how tiny I am. I gave birth to a ten pound baby.
- [35:25]
A
Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
- [35:27]
B
See, and that's where squatting's great for women. It just.
- [35:30]
A
Let's use gravity. Exactly. Let's use gravity, not fight against gravity.
- [35:34]
B
And I'll tell you something I've been told far too many times, and this was told me just a few days ago. Had a scan. The doctor said, there's water around half the baby's heart. Had another scan a month later. Now there's water around both the hearts. Have to go in immediately and have A and give birth to the baby. And the woman's 35 weeks. Oh. Have to do a C section. Then they scan the heart after the birth. They don't see very much at all. So a lady emailed me, she said, barbara, I've just had a scan. I'm 35 weeks. They say that my baby's too small, the placenta's breaking down. I said, I believe it. Now when I say that that challenges many people. I said, you know what a scan is? It's just sound waves coming back. I said, it could be wrong. If I were you, I would not go back. I would enjoy your last few weeks of labor. You feel good? Yeah. Baby's moving. Yeah. She went into labor at about 39 weeks. Gave birth naturally. Baby was perfect. Placenta was perfect. Yeah. So I'm almost at the stage where I say to women, I can't tell you what to do, but if I was you, I would not have scans.
- [36:53]
A
Yeah.
- [36:54]
B
Cause what it does, it puts fear into the woman. And then a scan later. Oh, actually we can't see it this time there. That mother needs peace, calm and happiness through her pregnancy.
- [37:08]
A
Yeah. It's so important. Well, one of the things that I tell the patients I work with that are dealing with infertility, I tell the women, I said, here is the state we need to get you into. Because I think a lot of infertility can be driven through unhealthy emotions, not feeling safe and secure. And I tell them, I said, this is how I want you to feel. I want you to think about your favorite couch. You're bundled up with a blanket, you've got your favorite perfect, you know, beverage. Maybe it's a hot cup of hot cocoa or a coffee. You got your family there, Christmas tree, fire. And you feel safe, secure, warm nerve. I'm like, that's the emotional state we need to get you into. But, but, but you're, what you're saying is like the medical system today, rather than doing that, it's stripping away hope, it's putting in fear. We know that that causes the body to sort of lock and tighten up. And I see that, I think a lot of times sort of interfering with that whole birthing process.
- [37:56]
B
And a woman goes home, she's just been told they think they see something in the baby's kidney. She goes home, she's crying all the way home. They say, we'll scan again in a month. What's that next month like for her? So if they contact me, you know what I say? I don't believe them.
- [38:11]
A
That's right.
- [38:12]
B
And I said, and even if there's something there, what are they gonna do?
- [38:16]
A
Yeah, there's no interventions that they have.
- [38:18]
B
That work and sometimes they get it wrong.
- [38:25]
A
Do you have unexplainable illness, hormone dysfunction, weight resistance, brain fog, and you're tired of being dismissed when you know something isn't right? Well, get my at home testing of targeted biomarkers including hormones, thyroid and metabolism, plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to help you understand your results. The truth is your doctor's probably reading your blood work all wrong. They're missing the cellular issues behind the symptoms. This new testing flips the script. The future of interpreting test results is here. I'm currently offering a simple at home BL blood test that actually tests for the right things. And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of your results. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now we've talked about women's hormones, we've talked about, and I do want to say just for everybody, if you have not done a home birth, if you are at the age where you could do it in the future, it is the most incredible experience, supernatural, amazing thing. So definitely, definitely consider that you don't have to deliver your Own baby. And we'll leave that up to Barbara. But getting a good midwife is amazing. We had a midwife we worked with. She's done well over a thousand births and women in her 60s now, and she's just absolutely amazing. Had the best experience. So my wife, she never wants to bother anybody. So we almost had to deliver the baby because I'm looking at her contraction, I'm like, like, are you keeping track of time anymore? She's like, well, no, I lost track. And then 30 minutes later, the baby was here. So anyways, but having a great midwife's amazing. We talked about women's hormones. I want to talk about men's hormones as well. We are seeing now more than ever before, male testosterone just plummeting. I want to say over the last 50 years, male testosterone has dropped by 33% in some areas of the country. If you're comparing, it's over 50%. And so we're seeing men now contributing to a lot of the infertility issues.
- [40:33]
B
That's true.
- [40:34]
A
What do you think the root cause of that is and what are some things men can start to do?
- [40:37]
B
I think it's the same root cause as with women. Mother hormones being displaced. And I think it's really nice to picture it like this mother hormone, progesterone. She's very protective of her son, testosterone. So when mother hormone is where she should be, she plays a protective role on testosterone, keeping it in the balance that it should be. And so all those environmental poisons we talked about, if a man, if his mother was on the pill before she gave birth to him, there's a factor coming through there. Another factor, too, not often talked about is laptops on the lap. So I say protect the family jewels, men and women. Don't put your laptop on your lap.
- [41:23]
A
The phone's in your pocket.
- [41:25]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there. And it's not the odd day. It happens. It's day after day after day after day. So these are all contributing factors, but it's actually the same as with women. We've got to reinstate mother hormone. And that's where the wild yam cream, it does that. So whether man or woman, they can apply that yam cream. But we had a man come with prostate cancer. Yeah, he was having a 3 monthly injection to try and get his testosterone levels right. He'd developed breasts. He was getting hot flushes. So at our retreat, he learned about the yam cream and he made the decision not to go and have that three monthly injection anymore. He made the decision to start applying that yam cream twice a day. Men don't have a break like women. Cause they're not cyclic. Women apply twice a day, three weeks, a month. Men apply it every day, twice a day. He stopped his nightly red wine, stopped his coffee, started to go more plant based exercise. So all of the basic laws of health. We got an email, 10 months later, breasts have gone down, hot flashes have stopped. Testosterone levels are the best they've been for years.
- [42:42]
A
That's so great. I love hearing that. You know, I actually had not heard that before in my training and looking at Chinese medicine and some other things. What we would tend to do is go more directly at testosterone. And so I would do Panax, ginseng, fenugreek, more weightlifting. I mean some of those things. But I like your point, and this is something I really appreciate about you, is we want to always go to the root of all roots. I see cortisol being another hormone. That's the root of all roots. It's like to your point, cortisol goes up, insulin goes up. Now estrogen can't be detoxified by the liver when that happens. So then, then T4 can't be converted to T3. So this whole hormonal pathway. But that's great wisdom and that's something I'm gonna start using more frequently in testing with patients. Is doing more of the progesterone increasing in men? Because I've done it in women a lot, but not as frequently with men.
- [43:35]
B
Yeah, in fact, great for prostate, great for low sperm count, but also penile dysfunction. And I don't know how else to say this, but one man said to me, this cream just puts lead in my pencil. He said, I'm not performing like I when I was 20, but I'm better than I was. So in all of those areas, the yam cream can, yes, definitely help men. And Cheryl Selman, in her book Hormone Heresy, she explains it like this. She said, men are like the sun. They rise every morning, conquer the day, go down every night. But women are like the moon. Sometimes they're full, sometimes they're half, sometimes they're a slither. So women are more cyclic. So they have one week, week a month off.
- [44:20]
A
Isn't amazing how? I mean, what you just said there. I think God teaches us with nature. I mean literally, the sun is like a male cycle, the moon is a woman's cycle every 28, 30 day. I mean that same exact same cycle. It's amazing. I've always appreciated one of the things that I've taught, and I think I've heard you talk about this as well, is this. You can often know how to heal an organization by, by or what foods to eat for the organ based on the appearance of the organ. Right. Like a walnut looks like a hemisphere of the brain. Tomatoes have four chambers and they're red. So does your heart. You know, beets look like blood and.
- [44:57]
B
So celery like the fema, your bones.
- [45:00]
A
Right, exactly. It's amazing for, you know, keeping you from losing minerals. So I, I, I, if there's one thing that I really would love people to walk away with is that I want them to understand the, that God is for you, not against you. You're fearfully and wonderfully made and that there are all of these things in nature that are so powerful. I did wanna ask you about hormone replacement therapy and your views on that.
- [45:25]
B
My views on that are I'm not in agreeance with it because I'm not in agreeance with using synthetic hormones. So if a woman is on hormone replacement therapy, and I have to tell you, I have had several women testify that six years after being on hormone replacement therapy, they developed breast cancer.
- [45:43]
A
Yeah, I've seen it.
- [45:44]
B
So yes, you've seen it yourself. So I'm not in agreeance with it because it further disrupts the hormones. So if a woman's on hormone replacement therapy, my suggestion is, well, what I would do, I would stop, but the day I stop, I would start applying the yam cream. So we have a yam cream that we sell here in the uk. My daughters make it in Tasmania. It's called Trello. So it's about 3 tre, meaning 3 lune, the lunar cycle. And I remember when my husband saw that, he said, oh, this is a terrible name. It needs to be Ruth's yam cream or Mary's yam cream, that my daughter Mary's yam cream. Of course, my daughters say no tres lune and referring to the lunar cycle. So men or women do very well with it. One lady said it didn't work. I said, how long to try it for? She said, two months. I said, well, this is what's happening after two months. This is estrogen, which should be down there. Here's progesterone, that should be up there. And after two months, we're about here. What we want, we want the mother hormone back. How long will it take? Well, we've got a saying in Australia. How long's a piece of string? It could be an inch longer, it.
- [47:02]
A
Could be mile long.
- [47:04]
B
Mile long. So it depends on. I've seen three generations of women with it out. Now, it's not gonna take three generations to get back. In fact, it's not gonna take 20 years to get back, but it might take a year. And this is where time. And the Bible has a beautiful section in Hebrews on time. It's Hebrews 10:35. It says, cast not away, therefore thy confidence in the witch's great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience in that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise for yet a little while. And he that shall come or will come, he shall come. But the just shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that draw back under perdition, but of them that believing in the saving of the soul. Now I add something to that. But to them that believing in the saving or the healing of the body. So don't cast your confidence away. Have confidence in God, confidence in this body that he gave us. But ye have need of patience.
- [48:11]
A
You know, a lot of these sort of ancient sages would always say that the partner of wisdom, the greatest partner, is patience. I mean, so it's part of being wise. It's part of doing the right things.
- [48:24]
B
We don't get sick overnight and we don't heal overnight. And that's another problem with medicine today. Quick fixes.
- [48:30]
A
That's right. And that's what we're trained to be. And social media has made it worse. Everything else we want every, we order food, I mean, everything we want to see instantly. But it's typically not the best way. You know, I was reading proverbs here this last week, and one really struck to me. It basically said this wealth that comes quickly will not last. Wealth that comes built over time will last. And I think that's so true. You know, one of the things I have studied and understood and what you're sharing with hormone replacement therapy, and this is the ancient Asian view, but is that when you start taking synthetic hormones from the outside in, your body starts turning off its own tap. So it stops producing progesterone, stops producing estrogen itself. And then in Chinese medicine, they would call that a Qi deficiency in a certain organ. So now you have lack of blood flow, lack of movement in that area. Because now your body think about your body is like it's got a spring inside of it. It you're turning your own natural spring off versus what you teach is. No, listen, we're going to open that spring up so water is just flooding out in your point with doing the yam cream and some of these other therapies, I think is we want to work with the body, not against the body. I see men now getting on testosterone therapy in their 20s and 30s, and then some of them saying, well, I want to have a family one day. And I'm sitting there thinking, you're increasing your rate of infertility dramatically.
- [49:59]
B
Dramatically, yeah.
- [50:00]
A
And so I. I love what you're teaching. I think so often people are running to hormone replacement therapy rather than doing all the right things. It's like if you follow the right diet and do these ancient remedies you've talked about. I found that 99% of the time, people heal, people get well, they do.
- [50:16]
B
And. And there's always a consequence. That's right. You know, that's Newton's third law of motion. To every action, there's an equal and an opposite reaction. And Proverbs 26:2, it says, the curse ca shall not come. So there's always a cause. And the cause. See, I've got a. I think there a dent in my cheek. You know what that dent's from? I crashed on my bicycle on the bridge. Real easy. Cause of dent crash. But it's not usually that easy. Yeah, it can be a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And that happened and this happened and this happened. And this has been happening for a while. And it's like the straw that breaks the camel's back. A piece of straw cannot break a camel's back. But on top of everything else. Else it can tip the scales.
- [51:00]
A
That's right.
- [51:01]
B
And that's what often you see. And because the person's suddenly gone down, they want to suddenly get better, but they don't realize that it's actually all of those things that have been happening for many years that have contributed to this.
- [51:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of these mistakes we can make. I mean, you've talked about plastic bottles, bisphenol A, the glyphosate, a lot of these things that add up. What do you think are. Are maybe three or so of the biggest mistakes people are making that they're just totally unaware of that's really harming their health.
- [51:33]
B
I think a really big mistake is thinking that coffee and tea are hydrating them. So every morning when we go to the hotel to have breakfast, they say, will you have tea or coffee? No. They look at you as if you're strange and they put our cup upside down. Because I would say we are probably the only ones there not not having tea or coffee. What will you have to drink? Well, we've already drank a lot of water. So that misconception that tea and coffee are hydrating, they're actually dehydrating you. If you are dehydrated and you drink a cup of coffee, you'll be more dehydrated after that because coffee has caffeine, which is a dehydrator. You put sugar in that. Another dehydrator, you drink tea. Not as much caffeine, but it's got tannin. Another dehydrator. Wow. So that's a real misconception. Another misconception is exercise is for children. We should never stop. Never stop. Stagnant pools breed disease and stagnant bodies. That's a big disease producer is the body's just not moving. We need to move every day. Muscle knows no age. Whether you're 9 or 90, you can have strong muscle. So that's another misconception. And the other misconception is it doesn't matter if you don't go to bed till midnight.
- [53:02]
A
This is a good one. I like this one.
- [53:05]
B
And when you understand what happens in your brain at night, as a British neurologist named Dr. Matthew Walker, he wrote a book While We Sleep. And at the end of it he said, I did not like what I found because I was hoping the research would show six hours is all right. No, no, eight. Must be eight.
- [53:25]
A
That's right.
- [53:25]
B
And also catching at least two hours before midnight.
- [53:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's so powerful. And I remember hearing at a lecture when I was younger, somebody say it was a practitioner. Every hour before midnight is worth almost double. And I thought, and at first I thought, thought, is that right? And then, you know, through trial and error and realizing I'm like, absolutely, that's absolutely true. I'm really blessed. I have a, I have a one and a half year old and a five year old and my five year old, my, my wife puts the one and a half year old to bed. I put the five year old to bed. But I'm going to bed at like 8:30 now, which, you know, I feel so refreshed every single morning going to bed just after eight. But, but yeah, it's, you know, I, I, I absolutely agree. I mean I think that's, that's a, there, there was a study that came out recently that said on average women are getting a little less like 40 out 40 minutes less of sleep a night compared to 50, 60 years ago. And men, it's like 30, 30 minutes less. But what people don't realize is, I mean, think 40 minutes of less. Less sleep.
- [54:29]
B
And when. When you realize the difference between before midnight and after midnight, if they're losing before midnight, that you double it.
- [54:40]
A
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's exactly right. So it's such an important part of us regenerating when we sleep.
- [54:47]
B
It is. It is. And if we don't get regenerated every night, we're going to age very quickly.
- [54:52]
A
That's right. It's so right. As I mentioned earlier, you talk a lot about food as medicine. You talk a lot about herbs as medicine. And let's start with food here. What are some of your favorite foods that people can start eating that act as a form of medicine for the body?
- [55:10]
B
Well, I know people often say to me, what are we gonna feed you? I said, just feed me greens and beans. I love greens and beans. And a lot of people get put off the beans because they say they give the wind. Well, are they soaked? Are they very well rinsed? Are they prepared properly? And if they still give wind, we've got to start real slow and slowly build the microorganisms up in our gut for that particular legume.
- [55:39]
A
Can I tell you, there is a video online recently of. I want to say it was an Italian family, and they said for every meal, this is a little. I thought a little. It was very extreme. But I want to say all three of them were over 100 years old, and they all ate three bean soup for every meal. So it was so you can't live to be over. You know, that was like their main staple.
- [56:03]
B
And you see, the beans are actually quite low in carbohydrates compared to grain.
- [56:09]
A
Very high fiber.
- [56:10]
B
They're high fiber. They're great proteins. And the greens, the greens, the greens. The greens are incredibly high in minerals. And our bones are made of minerals. We need minerals. Now when you cook them, you don't lose the minerals because the minerals, you know, heat doesn't destroy.
- [56:30]
A
It doesn't affect metal like that. Right? No, that's right. You know, I, you know, there. There are. Now, there's this kind of this movement that's happened. I literally just had this question. So I just, you know, got done speaking here, and right afterwards, somebody came up to me. They said, hey, what do you think about lectins? What do you think about, you know, eating vegetables? Because I've heard now, I mean, it's so crazy. Can I just say, like, Somebody was like, I heard that you shouldn't eat vegetables because they're not healthy. And I'm like, there's like thousands of years of like Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, the Bible, saying that's just not true, but.
- [57:03]
B
It'S the test of time. I've got a funny story about this. It was probably about two years ago. Oh, no, it was 2022 when I came back into Australia. I was put into quarantine for two weeks and someone gave me a book just before I got on the plane. The plant paradox by Dr. Stephen Gundry.
- [57:22]
A
And I do want to say, I know Stephen, he's a really nice guy. I disagree with him on quite a bit.
- [57:25]
B
And you know what was interesting? I started to read it and he's saying the tongue took 10 million years to develop. And I just kept closing the book thinking, ah, I don't want to be bothered with this. But you know what? I'm in a room for two weeks, can't get out. So I kept going back to the book. I'm so glad I read it because I wanted to know, well, what are lectins and why did God put them in food?
- [57:50]
A
Protection for the blood.
- [57:51]
B
Now, the. You'll find lectins high in unripe fruit. And of course, the birds don't eat the unripe fruit, they only eat the ripe fruit. So when you get the ripe pear or the ripe fig, there's no lectins. So I thought, well, that makes sense. There's a bitterness before they ripen and that stops the birds. That makes sense. And then, well, it's in legumes. But if you soak them and you rinse them several times and cook them well, especially in a pressure cooker, disarms the lectins. What about grain? Yes, there's lectins in grains, but if they're made into the sourdough method, the sourdough or the culturing process disarms the lectins. So I thought, well, all we have to do is cook them properly and prepare them properly.
- [58:47]
A
I mean, this is such a problem today because I've. I've seen so many people run with these ideas of, yeah, you know, grains are bad. You know, grains are. It's interesting, like in, in writing this, this. The biblio diet, on the biblical diet, the most referenced foods in the Bible are. I mean, sourdough bread is very, very high up there.
- [59:10]
B
Oh, yes.
- [59:10]
A
Red meat is actually very high as part of Solomon's provision vegetables. Pomegranates are the most Referenced fruit along with figs and grapes. And so, I mean, these are all things that are salt, honey. A reference. Olive oil. Referenced so many times, but olive oil, huge.
- [59:29]
B
A man, he was a Christian and was at church one day and he said, you're wrong on the oils. We shouldn't be eating it. I said, you need to do a Bible study on olive oil.
- [59:38]
A
That's right. In fact, I mean, I would almost say one thing almost everybody can agree on, but both vegan and carnivore and whatever, almost everybody agrees that olive oil is the best oil.
- [59:49]
B
Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about that. It's very important. Something else very interesting about lectins, if you've got good gut flora, disarms the lectins. So I thought, well, we don't need to throw vegetables out. We just need to ensure good gut flora and to prepare our food properly. Like Sally Fallon, in her book Nourishing Traditions, she explores all the traditional ways. The long, slow cooking on the wood stove, the rinsing well, the sourdough culturing of the grains. If you prepare your food properly. No problem with lectins.
- [60:25]
A
Yeah, I would say. I mean, the foods that are the most different today compared to, if we're talking about this historically, generally the time of Jesus or even 200 years ago, bread and dairy are the most radically different today. I mean, bread today is like white goose soup that turns into sugar versus then even the way they would harvest it. When it ripe, they would soak it and let it sit in the sun. They would then millet themselves and it was an ancient grain, like an einkorn, and then they would ferment it. There was this great study on celiac disease. So these are people that are severely intolerant to gluten. But if they did a fermentation, sourdough process, in the study of the 17 people, they did another one with about the same amount of people. Zero percent of them had any reaction whatever to gluten. Because your point? It breaks down the lexin, the phytic acid.
- [61:15]
B
That's what it does. It actually totally breaks it down. Yeah.
- [61:18]
A
So as you talked about beans and greens, that's another one. Again, it's got a bad rep. I mean, steamed spinach and kale bok choy, broccoli. And these are amazing, amazing healing foods. I have someone I know who had Ms. And she completely reversed Ms. By eating only meat, high fat and then greens. And her biggest thing was just steam. Greens, vegetables. I'm curious, what are some of the most miraculous healings you've seen, and what were some of the foods or things people did in order to see these miraculous healings in their body?
- [61:51]
B
Where do I start?
- [61:53]
A
Wherever you'd like. Wherever you'd like.
- [61:55]
B
Well, I think one of the most remarkable stories, because people come to our retreat, then they go home, and we don't often hear back. But this lady, Elizabeth cott, she had three tumors in her abdominal area. They wanted to start chemo straight. She didn't like the look of the side effects. She came to our retreat, and as I'm consulting with her, I discovered she's a high sugar eater. You see cancer cells consume 15 times the glucose of any other cell. She never drank. She never smoked. She was a christian. So people would say, well, how come she got cancer? But she ate a lot of sugar. She said, we're polish. We love our desserts. In fact, in one cake about this big, she put 16 cups of white sugar.
- [62:41]
A
Oh, my goodness.
- [62:42]
B
And her house was spotless. But she used chemical cleaners. Chemical chemical cleaners on everything. So she was also being poisoned by the chemicals. So anyway, we implemented the program. She went on no fruit at all for six weeks. And what that does is that's designed to give a sledgehammer effect to cancer cells because they consume so much glucose. We also hyperbaric chamber. She also was taking herbs to help knock off the cancer. Went back to the doctor, I think it was six months since she first been. And he said, oh, just keep doing what you're doing. Because all her cancer levels had come down, all inflammatory markers had come down, went back. So it was a year later, the next visit. First tumor's gone. Another year later, another tumor gone. She said to me, I'm in my 70s now. I feel better now than when I felt in my 40s. Just an incredible story and also another story of a guy who was type 1 diabetic, 62. He was on medication for all heart sugars, 90 units of insulin a day. The doctors had basically said, we can do no more for you. He came to our retreat. He said, I spent a million dollars on my health in the last 10 years. Best Specialists in the land. And they've just sent him home to say, we can do no more for you. Came to our retreat. He said, anything you say, I will do. And he did so, implemented exercise. You know, got the high glycemic foods right down. Low carbohydrate, high fiber, great protein, good fats. Two weeks. And he was from 90 units of insulin a day down to 10 units of insulin.
- [64:35]
A
Wow. That's amazing.
- [64:36]
B
He Mummy, three months later he said, I'm off all my medication.
- [64:40]
A
Wow.
- [64:41]
B
He said, now type 1 diabetic. And we're told that can never be. So he was incredible because he did it. And of course that's the key. He did it.
- [64:52]
A
Yeah.
- [64:52]
B
You know, the Bible says, be ye doers of the word, not hearers only.
- [64:57]
A
That's so good. That's so good. I love that so much. We've talked about food as medicine again. Greens, beans, those are some things you've talked about that people are can really thrive on. It sound like you talked about broth and some other things in your retreat. I want to ask you about plant based medicine and herbals. This is something that I didn't learn about at all in school. School. But through self study of years and years and years, I have become just such a big fan of herbal medicine. What are some of your favorite herbs that you recommend most commonly for various imbalances and conditions?
- [65:32]
B
Well, you mentioned the gut and certainly the slippery elm. We advocate that for any diarrhea. So irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, colitis, ulcerative colitis, all of that, that helps an enormous amount. But I also look at boosting hydrochloric acid. In fact, in my book Self Healed by Design, I've got a chapter, it's called Hydrochloric Acid the Stomach's secret. Wow.
- [65:59]
A
Yeah.
- [65:59]
B
Because hydrochloric acid is so important, it not only plays an important part in breaking our protein down. So it's one thing to eat proteins, another thing to break it down so low. Hydrochloric acid acid can be responsible for not breaking down the protein properly. Plus it's also antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial. So I look at boosting that and we've got a great herbal mix. It's got gentian and ginger and dandelion and goldenseal. Just a little goldenseal. Goldenseal is one of my favorite herbs. It's called King of tonics to all mucous membranes.
- [66:40]
A
I love that.
- [66:40]
B
So you can sniff it for sinus. You can rinse your mouth with it. It'll help a stomach ulcer. It'll help to heal irritable bowel. So we put all those bitter herbs in and make a tea out of it. We gently simmer it and all the guests that come to Misty Mountain, they get a little cup of that hot just before each meal. Because I find everyone can do with a boost to their hydrochloric acid.
- [67:08]
A
Well, it's so good. You know, I had a patient come in recently, I was working with him, and he came in and his vitamin D levels were incredibly low on his blood work. And he was supplementing with vitamin D, lots of it, and he still wasn't getting it. And part of the problem was is that he wasn't absorbing it because of bile. Right. His liver, his gallbladder weren't producing enough bile. And that's another thing people don't know about these bitters, is the importance of.
- [67:35]
B
Helping, helping liver and gallbladder free diet.
- [67:38]
A
That it's the worst.
- [67:39]
B
Oh, the worst in the world. The poor old, the poor old liver and gallbladder, they weren't doing anything.
- [67:46]
A
Yeah.
- [67:47]
B
Because there's no fat to make any bile.
- [67:49]
A
Well, I know in the western world, all the emphasis, like most everybody is sweet and salty, Right. But it's bitter and sour that have most of these medicinal benefits.
- [67:57]
B
They do. And there's the null saying, bitter to the mouth, sweet to the stomach, sweet to the liver, sweet to the mouth, bitter to the stomach, bitter to the liver. So all your liver herbs are bitter herbs. So that digestive tea mix, we affectionately call it didge tea.
- [68:13]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [68:14]
B
And we make up a whole batch of it and heat it up. We've seen remarkable results. I myself suffered from anaemia for many, many years. And I realized my first husband was a drug addict and an alcoholic. So life was a little stressful. And even when I was a single mother for four years, years, still I suffered from anaemia. And this is a huge journey. They, they said, barbara, you must be bleeding somewhere. You have to have an oesophagoscopy, a colonoscopy. And I only went and had all these because I was under so much pressure. You're a single mother with six children. But it, you know, there was nothing wrong there. And then I just had to work it out for myself. So I went to my anatomy and physiology books and I studied, studied iron. And iron is bound up in food and it needs acid to free it. And your ferritin levels, which your iron stored, your iron is stored with protein, but if your hydrochloric acid levels are down, you don't have enough protein. And I thought, my problem's low hydrochloric acid. So I put that tea together to boost my hydrochloric acid levels. And after six months, I had another blood test. My haemoglobin was 15. My ferritin levels were way, way up. And yet my ferritin levels at one point were three. My hemoglobin levels at one point were five. So that's how low I used to get. All I did was boost my hydrochloric acid. In fact, in my book Self Heal By Design, I've got a section on anemia and I've got my story in the back of the there, because it's so remarkable. So it was just hydrochloric acid? Yeah.
- [70:02]
A
That's incredible. It's incredible. You know, one of the other conditions or groups of conditions that are just growing really rapidly today are neurological issues. Alzheimer's is a big one. Have you seen any good results with Alzheimer's disease in terms of diet, supplements, treatments that you recommend?
- [70:23]
B
Do you know? We have and much depends on why. Yeah. So in England, you've got the history of Margaret Thatcher. You've got also in the us, Ronald Reagan, who boasted that they only needed five hours sleep a night, and yet they spent the last 20 years with severe Alzheimer's dementia. And now the research, especially Dr. Matthew Walker, in his book why We Sleep, he shows that it's in the early hours of the night, the glymphatic system that's made up of glial cells cleans up any little beginnings of amyloid plaques. And of course, what they have found in people with dementia doing postmortems on them, they've all got these amyloid plaques, these calcified deposits. So I think if Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had known that, they would have gone to bed early. See, it's in the early hours of the night. This glymphatic system keeps a check on all that. I'm not saying all Alzheimer's is due to lack of sleep, but it's a huge factor. We had one lady, she came to our retreat with Alzheimer's. If someone comes with Alzheimer's, they have to come with a carer. Cause we're not a hospital. And she was 69. And when I looked at her, she just looked through me, beyond me. And I discovered she didn't drink water and her bowels hadn't opened for six days. So we gave her herbs to get the bowels moved, got her hydrated. Within 48 hours, there was no sign of Alzheimer's or dementia. Wow, that was an easy fix. It's not always an easy fix. So it's different strokes for different folks, is the saying, well, I love your.
- [72:02]
A
Share this, because one of the things it reminds me of is when we look at our bodies, we have this body clock. When we're connected to the earth with this, with these circadian rhythms. And there are different times, according to these ancient forms of medicine, where different organs are the most active. And you know that 11am time period to 3, that's like liver, gallbladder, you have that 3 to 7, that's more the colon, the lungs, the entire immune system. But there are times where the brain needs to regenerate and heal the most. And those hours you're talking about with lack of sleep, your body cannot regenerate and heal if you're not getting rest.
- [72:41]
B
That is right. So there's not only the cleaning system, but melatonin. And melatonin is very interesting because melatonin is released by our gut flora. So we're getting back to the gut again. So the melatonin is released between say here summertime 10pm and 3am in the wintertime, between 9pm and 2am Melatonin's called the fix and rejuvenate nighttime hormone. So it's melatonin that. That's responsible for the increase in healing regeneration in those early hours, before midnight and just after midnight.
- [73:16]
A
Now, what do you think the biggest reasons are that? I mean, cortisol and melatonin as hormones are incredibly imbalanced and they're causing all these other hormonal issues and healing issues. What are the root of those issues? Being out of balance and how can people bring those back into balance?
- [73:29]
B
Do you know there's an old saying of people burning the candle at both ends?
- [73:33]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [73:35]
B
And really that's what it is. Instead of having that nightly rest, people are pushing themselves. Pushing themselves. I love God's perfect formula in that. Eight hours to work, eight hours to play, eight hours to sleep. And that's what I aim to right now. We're playing. To me, this is fun.
- [73:55]
A
This is fun.
- [73:56]
B
This is fun. So it's getting back to proper sleep, but also you gotta have your lights out. You gotta have all technology outta your bedroom. You gotta have an odor open window, you're going to be sleeping in natural fiber, none of this polyester, nylon.
- [74:11]
A
You know, I recently. Not recently. A few years ago, I switched almost on occasion. Certain dress clothes I don't. But all my clothes now are wool. Almost everything. I have a little bit of organic cotton, but almost everything now is wool that I wear. Because of that.
- [74:24]
B
When I was in Scotland.
- [74:25]
A
The Bible talks about this too, right? Not combining to. Yeah.
- [74:28]
B
When I was in Scotland last year, I had a security guard around me the whole time for this big event. His name's Alex and he's ex Marine. He said, you know, all the Marines now, their underwear, their boxer shorts, their under T shirts, all hundred percent merino. Yeah, it's really fine. You see, in the sheep, the wool at the neck is very, very fine. And it's not prickly. Yeah. So that's what they make the underwear out of. Whereas the back, we make the big, thick woolly coats out of that, the Aran jumpers out of that.
- [75:02]
A
I don't want to share too much, but I'm actually wearing the, you know, merino underwear right now. So it's the best. Absolutely the best.
- [75:08]
B
Oh, it is. And I say to people, I'm only little and I get cold quickly, so I borrow from the sheep. And I love this. This is cashmere. That's.
- [75:17]
A
Oh, it's wonderful.
- [75:18]
B
That's particularly soft. So when you wear natural fiber, especially the wool. And the reason why the Marines like it is it dries so quickly.
- [75:29]
A
Yes.
- [75:29]
B
And they can wear it for five days when they're out on patrol.
- [75:33]
A
And it doesn't smell?
- [75:34]
B
No, because. Because it's breathing and it dries quickly and they don't chill if they get wet.
- [75:40]
A
Why do you think you've become such an international phenomenon to the point to where you're speaking at certain events, you have Marine bodyguards, people there protecting you. Why do you think your message has resonated with so many people?
- [75:55]
B
I think because it's simple and I think because it's reachable. And probably my most famous is put a crystal of Celtic salt or Baja salt on your tongue and drink a glass of water. That one's just gone viral. And you know why I think it's gone viral? Because you can do it.
- [76:11]
A
You can do it at home. You don't have to pay a doctor. You can.
- [76:14]
B
Yeah.
- [76:15]
A
That's the thing that I so appreciate about everything you put out, is that I can go into my pantry, I can go to my local farmer, I can go to my grocery store, I can just. Yeah. Open up my cabinet and there's medicine there that's inexpensive, that I won't have to pay thousands of dollars of insurance or this or it doesn't have a side effect.
- [76:32]
B
That's right. It's so simple. It's a reachable thing. It's something that everyone can do. I think that's why it's so popular.
- [76:40]
A
You know, I think one of the things that's happened today in mainstream medicine, and by the way, when you look at the statistics, mainstream medicine today is the people trust it less than they ever have by far in history.
- [76:52]
B
Do you know? I hope so. I really hope so. I'm not against doctors. Some of my best friends are doctors and I'm sure you'll be one of my best friends. Now that I think most doctors are ethical but the pharmaceutical company is not.
- [77:06]
A
That's right.
- [77:07]
B
And you can testify to this more than I can that a large part of what you learn in medicine today is pharmacology.
- [77:15]
A
Well, yeah, yeah. And you know, I would also say this is that it's the, to your point, a lot of doctors do have good intentions, but, but the. Most doctors get zero hours of nutrition training. MD Now I have, I have a DC training. So we did get some nutrition training and we had a little, little pharmacology, but not near as much as, as a, as a full on MD but the problem is 0,0 nutrition. The only thing they learn is how to diagnose common things and prescribe drugs for them or do a certain surgery. So there's no nutrition, there's no herbs, there's no lifestyle. You know how many times I've had patients who have come to me and it used to be where they would, because I practice natural medicine, they would come see me after they've already seen 10 different doctors. Right. And you probably have the same thing. It's like they've been to all these doctors, finally they're desperate and then they go see you. But so often I would ask them what their doctor told them to do and most of the time it was, is just take a drug. You know, the average doctor visit is seven minutes. That's the visit. You know how much time they look at the file for? One minute. So how can a doctor ever know you and treat you correctly when it's like, okay, oh, hypothyroid, maybe thyroid. Okay, here's a, here's a. Oh, it's on the computer.
- [78:30]
B
They just click, click, click, click and the computer will tell them what drug to give. But I, I going back to that Psalm 146, put not your trust in Prince. I believe the doctors should stop putting their trust in the pharmaceutical companies.
- [78:45]
A
Wow, that's so good.
- [78:46]
B
They must stop because they trust that they've done the research and we've seen it in the paper many times. The whistleblower, they're not doing the testing. They're not.
- [78:58]
A
I wanna say the five largest lawsuits ever in the United States are for pharmaceutical companies hiding evidence that their drug was killing people. There was a drug called Vioxx. Now this was probably 15 years ago, but it killed almost. Now, some people say it's more than this. A hundred thousand people, one drug alone. And so. But, you know, again, there's so much money behind this. But I think because of one thing I do appreciate about social media is that people want to know the truth. And I think Covid coming out of that, more people than ever realized, oh, I've been lied to. So if I've been lied to about COVID what else have I been lied to about all this time? And so then people sort of wake up and become more aware, and then they start searching out the truth.
- [79:43]
B
And a very similar thing happens at our health retreat. At our health retreat, people start doing the juicing, natural remedies, and they're getting responses. And so you know what? They think they're right on the health. Maybe they're right on God.
- [79:59]
A
That's right.
- [80:00]
B
And that's what we love.
- [80:02]
A
Yeah, I love that as well. You know, I had a spinal infection a few years ago from just a minor medical procedure went wrong. And it was a natural procedure using my own cells. And my disc got infected, and then my bone, and then I had an abscess in my spinal cord. I had a doctor tell me an infectious disease doctor. He told me this. He said, your best case scenario is you have chronic pain the rest of your life. And he said, in all likelihood, you're going to be permanently disabled. We're going to have to fuse your spine. This is three years ago. And I remember for just a short time thinking, like, 24 hours, my life is over. And then I realized, you know what? The great physician is better than this physician. And I just meditated on Bible verses day and night. One in particular, I want to think It's Psalms maybe 102. And it was, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all of his benefits. Who forgives all of our sins, heals all of our diseases. 103. And I just meditated on that verse day and night and day and night. And you know what? I have zero pain. I'm healed. I'm healthier than I was before.
- [81:01]
B
Claim the promises. And now you'll know that all you have to do is put a poultice on it.
- [81:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, I actually did draw.
- [81:10]
B
It'll draw that out.
- [81:11]
A
You know, I did poultices. I did a lot of hyperbaric chamber. I was blown away at the benefits of. And I didn't know you did that. So you've utilized hyperbaric chamber.
- [81:21]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [81:22]
A
Well, what are the benefits?
- [81:23]
B
Well, it's based On Henry's law, that under pressure, more gas goes into a liquid. Liquid. And, of course, the gas is pure oxygen, and the liquid is our blood, which is the oxygen carrier. And so being in that hyperbaric chamber, you're getting blasts of oxygen.
- [81:41]
A
Yeah. And one thing I've heard you quote before, I want to say was Otto Warburg, right. And he said that the cause of cancer is it's really twofold. It's excess sugar and not enough oxygen in the body.
- [81:51]
B
Cancer cannot live in the presence of oxygen. And so that's what they're finding. The hyperbaric chamber was first developed for divers with bends. Cause, you know, the air we breathe, 79% is nitrogen, and the 21% is oxygen. So the divers, when they come up too quick, the nitrogen can't be dispersed. It goes into little bubbles in joints and muscles, and that's the bends. That's the pain. So they developed the hyperbaric chamber to put the divers in, to blast this oxygen in, which disperses the nitrogen, and out it goes.
- [82:25]
A
Wow.
- [82:25]
B
So that's why it was originally developed for divers with bends. But then they discovered that especially diabetics with slow wound healing, and they're finding it's also helping cancer patients because. And, you know, the glycolytic cycle in the cell doesn't use oxygen, but you get down to the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria, it uses oxygen. So that cycle will give 18 times more energy than the glycolytic with no oxygen.
- [82:51]
A
Oxygen that's powerful. And you mentioned certain conditions. I mean, yeah, it's amazing for cancer. It's amazing for stroke patients or people who have had any sort of brain trauma. I use it with a lot of families where the kids have autism and so. So powerful. So I love that you're utilizing that as well. Barbara. This has been a huge blessing. Let me ask you this. What is your favorite Bible verse when it comes to. To health and healing?
- [83:20]
B
That's very difficult.
- [83:21]
A
I know, because you put it. By the way, your knowledge of scripture today has been probably the thing I've been most impressed with, and I really appreciate that.
- [83:32]
B
I love it. And it's Ecclesiastes, chapter three. It says, to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up that which was planted. A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down, a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together, A time to embrace, a time to refrain from embracing. A time to get and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away, A time to rend, a time to sow, A time to keep silence and a time to stop. A time to love, a time to hate, A time of war and a time of peace. There is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. I love that verse because you can apply it so much to the healing of the human body. And there is a season and a time for every purpose. I say to people, there's a time for you to exercise. There's a time for you to sleep. So timing. And you mentioned earlier circadian rhythm. What? Oh, you know what's the best circadian rhythm? Setter. Sunshine.
- [84:49]
A
Yeah.
- [84:49]
B
And that's what I do to get over jet lag. So, yes, it was very hard for me to choose a verse to give you. And I'm sorry I gave you more than one verse. I gave.
- [84:58]
A
You know what? It was a blessing. And if anybody wants to know what Barbara does in her spare time, it's not scroll social media. It's memorized scripture, which is way more healing, way more healthy. Well, Barbara, this was such an honor today. I am so grateful for the incredible work you've done in helping teach people how to use food as medicine, herbs as medicine. The Bible is medicine, nature is medicine. And just so grateful for you taking a lot of these complex matters and making them simple, free in a lot of cases for so many people. So thanks so much for coming on the show today. It was a real blessing for me.
- [85:30]
B
It's been my pleasure.
- [85:31]
A
Thank you so much. Well, everybody, hey, thanks so much for watching the Dr. Josh Ax Show. Remember, each and every week, we're diving deep into the science and principles behind how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Don't forget to subscribe. I want to mention this oftentimes on things like YouTube. Some of my videos have been shadow banned because people like Barbara and I are talking about things that are controversial. So make sure to subscribe. So this shows up in your feed future videos with incredible people of wisdom like Barbara, that's the number one thing you can do to support the show. Subscribe. Thank you for sharing as well. There are millions of people today today struggling with chronic disease and the wisdom that Barbara shared today could help them heal. Thanks for watching. Thanks again to Barbara o' Neal and I'll see you on the next episode.