Humans of Padel
Join your host Max Marsh Pickard, General Manager of Padel Art & Co founder of The Padel Outlet in a weekly entertaining dive into the world of Padel and the people involved in the industry
Humans of Padel
Healing Naturally | Debra Marsh on Naturopathy and Optimizing Sports Performance
Unlock the secrets of naturopathy with my incredibly insightful guest, Debra Marsh—my mom and a dedicated naturopath. Together, we explore how our bodies can naturally heal and thrive when we make mindful lifestyle choices. Discover why it's crucial to look beyond quick fixes and focus on the root causes of health issues. Debra sheds light on how our body's elimination processes, like urination, can reveal much about our well-being. Whether you're an athlete or a casual fitness enthusiast, learn how staying hydrated and adapting to different environments can significantly impact your health.
In our engaging discussion, we tackle common misconceptions in health and fitness. Processed foods plague modern diets, but the pathway to better gut health lies in fresh, minimally processed foods, especially for athletes. We challenge the notion that high-intensity workouts are the ultimate fitness solution and advocate for the benefits of incorporating consistent, natural movements like yoga and stretching into daily routines. Natural remedies for inflammation, including blackcurrant, thyme, and rosemary, take center stage as Libra shares their detoxifying powers that help reduce pain and enhance overall health.
For those passionate about sports and wellness, Debra offers practical tips to reduce aches and pains, emphasizing the importance of hydration, liver detoxification, and regular stretching. Discover how personalized naturopathic consultations can provide deeper insights into your health, potentially transforming your approach to well-being. As we weave through the conversation, we emphasize the importance of integrating natural health practices while acknowledging the vital role of traditional medicine, ultimately fostering a healthier lifestyle that boosts both well-being and sports performance.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Humans of Paddle podcast. I'm your host, max. In this episode I'm joined by a very special guest to me who is Libra Marsh, my mum. She is a naturopath and has many insightful things to say about how we can change our day-to-day habits to live a healthier and happier life on and off the paddle court. Enjoy the episode. Mother Son Quite a special guest to have on my podcast. I never thought the day would come when I had my own mom on my podcast interviewing your mom on your podcast.
Speaker 1:Go for it, but you do have many interesting things to say. We are going to discuss your recent career change as a naturopath. So first of all, what is naturopathy?
Speaker 2:naturopathy is an alternative way of approaching healthcare.
Speaker 2:It's recognized by the World Health Organization, it's well practiced in the Far East and the Middle East, not quite so well known in Western Europe, where I practice in France, and it's all about using the body's ability to heal itself.
Speaker 2:That sounds a little bit wishy-washy, but essentially our body is an incredible machine and what I've learned about our bodies over the past three, four years has literally blown my mind, and the more I think about it, the more I wonder how we're still standing, because the way we treat our bodies today we really don't deserve the bodies that were given when we were born. But the natural process of healing the body will look after itself, but we need to give it a little bit of a push, so we need to help it along the way with the food we eat, the way we live, the sport we do, the way we move. A big part of naturopathy is what we call physical activity. Now, that doesn't mean I send every one of my clients off to run a marathon, but it's about moving your body. We spend far too much of our time sitting down and we think that 45 minutes, one hour burst at the gym is sufficient. It's actually all about natural movement, so that's what we talk about a lot in naturopathy.
Speaker 1:Why do you think it's not as widespread in the West as in the rest of the world?
Speaker 2:Because in the West we depend so much on the quick fix. I have a headache, give me a pill. I have a stomachache? Give me a pill, whereas in naturopathy, what we talk about is why do you have a headache? That pill will stop the headache in half an hour. But why do you have that headache? What is the cause, the deep, underlying cause of having that headache? Why do you have a headache every Sunday? Because I don't like going to work? Why do I have a headache every other day? Why have I got a stomachache? Why can't I go to the toilet? Naturopaths talk about toilet a lot. I'm afraid that's one of the key parts of this. It's what we put into our bodies and how it comes out.
Speaker 1:I mean it makes sense, if you're going to talk about food, you need to talk about where that food's going exactly but we in the west don't like talking about that.
Speaker 2:I have people come into my practice and they're really uncomfortable once I get to that topic. Um, and I say we just have to talk about. I need to know what is happening in your body. Once I understand how somebody's body is working, what is happening in a holistic view, then I can look at the causes. What is going on inside you.
Speaker 1:So, as it is something that a lot of people don't like talking about, what is something that we should be looking out for?
Speaker 2:I think everybody's conscious of the fact that when they have the wee in the morning it shouldn't be too dark. Actually it doesn't matter. First thing in the morning that shows your body has eliminated very, very well. So if it's dark it just means the toxins have cleared through your body and it's fine. But it shouldn't stay dark. It also shouldn't be clear. So there's a misunderstanding that the clearer it is, the better it is. If it is very clear in the bottom of the toilet bowl, you've drunk too much water, so it's a fine line. It's just a pale yellow. That's the first one. The other one is constipation everybody's aware of.
Speaker 2:But if you're constantly loose there's something going on as well, okay, I mean, I know this is a sports podcast, it's about paddle, but especially when you do a sport, but how?
Speaker 1:can sport impact that?
Speaker 2:Because our especially hydration and I've noticed that here in Dubai you don't tend to drink that much water. When you're playing In France, we do because we're playing outside and we're changing ends, so it's just to drink that much water. When you're playing In France, we do because we're playing outside and we're changing ends, so it's just natural to have the water. But it's that constant hydration and if you have to go to the toilet just after playing paddle and it's very dark, you really haven't hydrated properly. So there's that sort of thing to actually think about.
Speaker 1:What about the fact that playing indoors with air conditioning Does that impact the hydration? Because you don't feel like you're as tired, or you don't feel like you sweat as much because you're in a controlled temperature environment as well?
Speaker 2:That's also I mean again, this is something that I've learned this misunderstanding. We've always think of water as, therefore hydration, so if I'm thirsty I'll drink some water. But in naturopathy, water is as important, if not more important, for the way it cleans through the body. So when we're playing sport, when we're doing physical activity, our body is under a certain amount of stress. The muscles are under stress, we are breathing rapidly when we're playing hard because we need to get oxygen, but the water is helping to clean through the body as well. So the hydration is important, but it's also about cleaning through the toxins and we need that water. Water is just so important for us to clean as much as to hydrate. So if you imagine your cells, we have thousands of billions and billions of cells. We need water to be circulating around those cells to keep the environment clean. We need water to be going into the cells to help bring in all the vitamins and the minerals and nutrients, and we need that water to help us take out toxins in those cells. It's a really complex process.
Speaker 1:It is. Yeah, we only seem to think about it from a hydration perspective. You have a Facebook page called Everyday Naturopathy, which I will put a link to. Let's talk about Everyday Naturopathy. What can people listening to this on a day-to-day basis do to improve the quality of their life, and which are technically steps of naturopathy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I call it Everyday Naturopathy because there's so much information out there on the internet and we're bombarded with we should do this or we shouldn't do that, whereas the very basics are. One is water Drink enough water. If you do sport, you're looking at 1.5 to 2 liters a day. The other one is to think about what you are eating. Easier said than done when we're rushing around and we have busy lives and you haven't got time to cook, but we eat far too much processed food. And when I say processed food, that doesn't necessarily mean everything that's got lots of additives, but something that hasn't got much fresh stuff in it. So, yes, we can bring in healthy food from outside, we can order healthy food from outside, but in order to keep the shelf life of that food, they will have added something preservative. So it's eating food as fresh as possible Not always easy, but that is something that's very, very important is what we're eating. It's to limit things like dairy and it's to limit things like dairy and it's to limit, I wouldn't say all bread, but certainly white bread, because it's been shown that that has an immediate impact on the gut, and when you play sport and you're doing sport, then the gut is the most important thing to look after is to really be very careful of that. The other one is movement. I mean I said earlier, it's thinking about movement, I mean everybody, and a lot. It's thinking about movement. I mean everybody and a lot of people now working from home.
Speaker 2:I worked from home for a very long time, I mean for 20 years. My job was working from home and then getting on an airplane and going abroad, and I know I didn't move enough, even though I was doing sport every single day, and I know the impact on my body. This time last year I almost had to give up paddle because my leg was hurting so badly. Now I'm back hitting the ball as well as ever and enjoying it, and a lot of that started off from working from home, because I was sitting down in front of my computer and I used to love doing bootcamp, which was at lunchtime, and I would run out the house, do a physical exercise for 45 minutes, really agile, fly back, fly in the shower and then sit down again and it was the worst possible thing I could do for my body Seemed a good idea at the time, but it was the worst possible thing I could do for my body.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying is more permanent motion is more important than high-intensity exercise? Yes, because culturally there is a whole thing about putting doing as much exercise as you can in the shortest amount of time, which is optimization of your your day-to-day schedule. But what you're saying is what will have a more positive impact is to do less but longer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I've learned. And again, it's time and then, but then it's finding the time and then if you find the time, you have the time. But I've learned now. Okay, and it doesn't just come with age I know it comes with age, but it's also. I try to move regularly. I do a lot of yoga, I do a lot of stretching. I try the first thing I do in the mornings to do some sport. So if I'm at home it'll be yoga when I'm here up on the roof swimming, but at least I've got my body moving. And then not obsessively, but okay, I wear a watch to count steps but it gives me an idea of how much movement I've had in the day. And it's quite terrifying when you wear a watch like this and you suddenly look at it and it's two o'clock in the afternoon and you've done 970 steps. And essentially that's get up from the computer, go downstairs, make a cup of coffee, go back upstairs again, nip the loo. That's what I've done.
Speaker 1:When they say just even wearing the watch has a positive impact. It's like weighing yourself every day. Yeah, even if you don't do anything to lose weight, you're just weighing yourself, and whatever is measurable is actionable. Just the fact to actually measure what you're doing already is a step in the right direction to improving that, and obviously, especially in Western culture, around naturopathy there's a lot of you know it's which doctor? It's not real medicine. There's no facts behind it. You know I make the odd joke about the, the teas that you'll give me the nettles and the nettles and ashwagandha and everything else but there's, um, there's a few actually that have realistically worked and had a positive impact on me as well.
Speaker 1:Um, for inflammation, you were using one, I think, for yourself and for me, for the knees. What was that?
Speaker 2:um, that for the knees, the inflammation. It was a combination of plants. There's black currant, which in fact was Cassis. I mean that is excellent for inflammation. There's also we use something called, we use thyme and we use rosemary, because that's a detox. That inflammation is not just about diminishing the inflammation, it's about detoxing the body because essentially inflammation on your joints. So when your elbows are hurting, your knees are hurting, it means the toxins have accumulated in that area. But if you detox your body so detox is a bit of a trendy word, but it's essentially helping the body eliminate the toxins. And that's what I've been doing the past year. If you detox the body, the inflammation will go down. So the cassis is the immediate, or the cassis the blackcurrant is the immediate, taking out the pain and the heat of the inflammation. And the thyme and the rosemary they will help the liver detox and help take out the toxins of your body. So that's where inflammation comes from.
Speaker 1:So, as the average unhealthy paddle player that I am and that many people are because paddle is not a high-performance sport, realistically, for the most people that play it what would you suggest that someone like me could do on a daily basis to reduce the aches and pains that I do have in my knees, in my back, in my shoulder, after playing paddle?
Speaker 2:One I mean I know you hydrate, but I don't think you hydrate enough is to regularly get up to two. You need two liters of water a day because of your you know your height and your size you need two liters of water a day. I would strongly recommend, um, some sort of detox of the liver. Now that doesn't just mean take, stopping the alcohol, it means giving a cleanse. But in naturop terms, that is either in autumn or spring, which probably doesn't mean an awful lot in Dubai with the seasons, but next spring, massive detox A bit late now. Massive detox to clear you out.
Speaker 2:And movement, general movement. I know you feel you're on the go all the time, but you're on the go in the lift, down the stairs, in the car to work, then you need to talk to somebody and then you're back again in the car work. Then you need to talk to somebody and then you're back again in the car pick up your daughter, back again out. Is that having that constant, that constant movement, so that when you do go on the court your body's been in perpetual, it has had that motion? Stretching, definitely stretching, um, that's one.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the biggest things that I've learned about my own body the past year that I really didn't stretch like. I've still got a leg. When I sit cross-legged, this leg won't go completely down. That's damage that I've learned about my own body the past year that I really didn't stretch a lot. I've still got a leg. When I sit cross-legged, this leg won't go completely down. That's damage that I've caused over the years playing sport. But constantly stretching has really helped as well. And food intake and that's probably the hardest one I think, particularly for you, is having as much fresh food as possible and regular meals so that your body has a sort of clock. Our bodies are work. They work on a regular clock. Our body likes routine and it likes to know when it's going to be fed. Um, it doesn't like big surprises of not having anything for six or seven hours.
Speaker 1:So what about the whole intermittent fasting? Two meals a day, three meals a day, one meal a day?
Speaker 2:this is where naturopathy, from my my point, is interesting, but it's also complex. Every single person is different and I am a big fan of intermittent fasting because I think our body needs a rest. We eat too much anyway. Our body needs a rest, but some people, their bodies and their metabolism and their makeup is just not made for intermittent fasting. So if you wake up in the morning hungry, then you should eat. If you are somebody who needs breakfast, don't do intermittent fasting in the morning because it's the trendy thing to do. But if you're somebody who functions pretty well or you eat quite late at night, intermittent fasting in the morning is perfect for you.
Speaker 2:A one-day fast a week is very, very good for people who have a day where they can stay at home and they're not doing very much just because it's trendy to do a one-day fast. It doesn't suit everybody because their lifestyles, but occasionally doing a one-day fast is very, very good for the body. But if at the end of that one-day fast you suddenly start having a headache, you need to do a detox first. You need to clear your liver first and then think about the detox how do you detoxify your liver?
Speaker 2:um, there's a lot of plants that do that. So, um, in, there's aloe vera you can drink. There is thyme, there's rosemary, but you make up a drink, perhaps a liter and a half. You can make it up in the morning, put it in a flask and you just drink it all day and it just gives your liver this extra boost. Okay, perhaps it might be an idea to cut down on the alcohol for a bit. Might be an idea to cut down on animal protein a bit. Might be an idea to cut down on animal protein for a while.
Speaker 2:Animal protein is the biggest inflammatory at the moment in people's bodies. So you know, if people can go to 50-50, so 50% of protein, animal, 50% plant-based, at least that helps get down the the animal. So, but as individuals are um different, um, I'd often I mean in the spring this year I was very busy in the spring because everybody's coming to me for their personal programs and although there's a similar basis, there's similar principles, each person had something slightly different depending on their lifestyle, their personality, their temperament. Um, some people just can't go without food. It gets them angry, it gets them anxious if they haven't got food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess there's a whole psychological aspect to that as well. So let's say, I come to you as a naturopath.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How does that look like? What does a whole consultation look like with a naturopath?
Speaker 2:Okay. So your first consultation with a naturopath will usually be an hour and a half and in that hour and a half my aim is to understand how your body works, but also how. I'm not saying how your mind works. That sounds like I'm trying to read your mind, but it's how you work with stress, how your emotions, so it's the whole whole body and a lot of that is me asking questions and, hopefully, the person in front of me being as honest as possible. But it's not about just about honesty. It's about people being aware of their bodies and what is surprising is how people aren't aware of their own bodies. So there are also.
Speaker 2:I use something called iridology, which is looking into the iris and that can give me some information. Now, this again sounds a little bit where's the science behind this? But there's a lot of information here, particularly about stress and particularly about how you eliminate toxins. Information here particularly about stress and particularly about how you eliminate toxins. So if somebody comes to me and says I'm not stressed, I'm super cool, I can look in their eyes I don't obviously say are you telling the truth? Here I start asking more questions.
Speaker 1:What do you see in someone's eye?
Speaker 2:In the iris and the iris got the iris on the iris. So there's the and there's the tiny, the black bit, the pupil. In theory it should be completely round. Often with stress there's a slight flattening off here. Now you can't see that with the naked eye. I look at it and there's a slight flattening off, and this flattening off is the top. And in fact think of the body. The top is your head and this is showing the stress. Other parts.
Speaker 2:We did the very basics in our course to understand the key things. There are a lot more. I mean, there are people who do a lot more reading than I do, so that's what I would see first. Sometimes also I can see in the colored part of the eye. So around there I can see small black dots. And this will lead me then to ask the person in front of me have they had major operations, have they had a lot of antibiotics? Have they had to take a lot of medication in their past? Because this is an indication that they haven't actually cleared it out of their bodies. So this tells me that their body is possibly not eliminating the toxins as efficiently as it could or it didn't in the past. Those are the two main areas.
Speaker 1:You can't see that with the naked eye.
Speaker 2:No, I need to see. Well, you can sometimes see the little black that you look to appear really closely.
Speaker 1:So how do you see it?
Speaker 2:I have a magnifying glass.
Speaker 1:It's a magnifying glass which you look into the eye with them it would not magnify.
Speaker 2:It's got a little light on and you can see it. Oh okay, yeah, that's interesting. And then the other thing I start looking at is parts of the body. So, um, the body gives away so much. So, so if I stand behind you and try and pull your shoulders back, and there's a lot of resistance, stress, and it's not, it's rocket science, certain points here, if I press here and it's sensitive, will tell me, because the whole of the body is linked.
Speaker 2:This side is telling me that this part of the gut is suffering and this part is telling me it's this part of the gut. If it's this part of the gut which goes up, there's too much sugar in the diet and you're not digesting it. If it's this time, there's a protein problem. So there's different parts of the body I look at as well. I look at your fingernails, I look at your hair, look at your skin. Dry skin is often a sign that the kidneys are not flushing through as efficiently as they should be. I mean, it's not like a diagnosis. It's giving me an indication and it's giving me further pathways of questioning.
Speaker 1:Because there could be a million reasons for each of those things Could be a million, could be a million.
Speaker 2:So I'm asking lots of questions and then it's a little bit like being a detective, a little bit like Sherlock Holmes, and you hope by the end of that hour and a half you get the eureka moment and something's understanding. Something usually comes for a particular reason, like headaches, or they can't sleep, or they have bad skin, or they have digestive problems. And often I've unpicked it all a little bit like an onion, you know, I've unpicked all the layers and inside I found out the underlying cause, and it's from that point that I will then create their own personalized program. I usually send it to them within 24 hours, 48 hours, and in that the key points are their diet. The key point is how they're managing stress.
Speaker 2:I recommend, often recommend a lot of breathing and also, if that need be, physical movement, and then on top of that there may be supplementation. Key point is how they're managing stress. I often recommend a lot of breathing and also, if that need be, physical movement, and then on top of that there may be supplementation. There may be plants, there may be extra vitamins or minerals, but that's not the default that comes up. The important part is the food, the physical activity and what's going up.
Speaker 1:So you're looking at changing habits.
Speaker 2:And it's about lifestyle and it's about changing habits and it's very hard. It's very hard for people. They go away all enthusiastic and then three weeks later I ring them up. They go well, I bought the vitamins. And that's usually what happens. They buy the vitamins, but unless there's a few more changes elsewhere, those vitamins you might just tip them down the toilet.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, yeah I mean for the, for the people who are dubious and critical of naturopathy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what positive impact have you had on your consultations and the people have come to see you yeah, um, I can understand the uh people being skeptical, because there has been a lot of bad press and there is an extreme view that it's either or. So it's either naturopathy or it's medicine, which I don't agree with. I think the two can work hand in hand. I have one lady who has liver cancer and she's had liver cancer now for two years. It's extreme. It's a very, very hard case. But she came to me not as an alternative but how I could help work alongside her. So what we do is we worked a lot on her diet, we did a lot of breathing together, we did a lot of breathing exercises for relaxation and I gave her some plants which she could only take and I'm really going to have to emphasize this when she's not under chemotherapy. So in between her chemotherapy the idea is that she usually has six weeks between the chemotherapy is to help the body get rid of the residue of the chemotherapy. That's been one of my results. Is that just to see this lady coping with the chemotherapy Now we don't know how she would have coped without my help, but when you get a big hug from a husband to say thank you for helping and her doctor recognizes the positive effect it's had. That's been tremendous as well.
Speaker 2:And then I had one lady who came to me and she'd seen every single specialist under the sun because she was struggling with. It was very strange sort of phenomenon but her head, she felt like it was on fire all the time and she could get no relief from this burning sensation on her scalp. So she'd seen skin specialists. She'd had head scans because they thought there might be brain tumors, which caused stress in itself. As soon as they said that she had absolutely everything, she came to me with this huge file which is a naturopath. Make your heart sink a little bit because you know this person has beat every single specialist and you're really their last resort. So we spent a lot of time together and finally it came down to she was deficient in B12. Do you?
Speaker 1:think with a file that big it would have come up before.
Speaker 2:No, it was, they didn't. Well, this is another story. B12 is traditionally seen as the for vegans, people who don't eat animal products and the doctors in France. She ate animal products and she encouraged them to test, so she took B12 and the pain diminished, but she'd spent two years going to all these specialists. But when you go to a specialist you go to a skin specialist, they focus on the skin. You go to a head specialist they focus on the head, whereas a naturopath is looking at everything and trying to work it out. I had three consultations with the lady. It took some time, but yeah, we got there in the end.
Speaker 1:It was great, it was amazing. It's got that positive impact on someone's life. Is there anything else that you want to touch on, you want to talk about?
Speaker 2:I would reckon anybody, just to look into it. But talk to a specialist.
Speaker 1:Don't just go on the internet and just take the next vitamin or the next plant, because it might not be for you well, I would suggest that, whoever is listening to this, they go onto Instagram, they go to atdebr naturopath, yeah, and they send you a message send me a message, send me a message, they'll get a lot more information yeah, I do this as a passion, as you can tell, um, and yes, I just I'm interested in people.
Speaker 2:I'm interested how our nat, the natural approach, can heal. It's not the answer to everything. We need hospitals, we need doctors, we need the profession what they've done for cancer, but we also need to I mean, it's going back to the roots. It goes back to hypocrites. It goes back thousands and thousands of years, thousands and thousands of years, all of what we're doing.
Speaker 1:It's about prevention.
Speaker 2:It's prevention, Although the prevention and I would add that People don't pay a naturopath for prevention if they don't feel sick. They go to a naturopath often these days as a last resort because they've tried everything else. If it were prevention it would be brilliant. So you know, once a year, twice a year, go to a naturopath, but anyway, that's not the way we're working at the moment. Hopefully we'll get there. Oh, I hope so too.
Speaker 1:Mum, thank you very much for having this conversation, listening to me this was supposed to be a short one, relatively short. We didn't talk much about paddle, but I think everyone who listens to it will have learned something and benefited from your experience, whether it's sport or not, if you are healthy and you have a healthier lifestyle, your sport is going to improve.
Speaker 2:I mean it's. I don't have to speak specifically about paddle exactly, thank you.