Welcome to another exciting episode of Your Mind, Your Rules. And today we're going to cover the rules of health, the rules of physical health, the rules of mental health. And I have a guest here. I'm such a fangirl. Julia Bradbury. Doesn't need an introduction. She's a TV presenter. She's written two Sunday Times best-selling books. One went straight to number one, and it's this one Hack Yourself Healthy. Because we can hack ourselves healthy if we know how. Being healthy isn't boring, it's not restrictive, it's life-changing. So Julia, as you probably know, got breast cancer in 2020. 21. 2021. I got cancer in 2015 and 2017. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I want to talk about your journey. You thought you were healthy, you were naturally very slim, busy, and then you got this horrible news. Not only that you had they told you it was quite a large tumour, it was stage two. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01It wasn't stage two, but it was large, it was six centimetres. So I self-uh I self-checked. I was away filming in Costa Rica, discovered a lump in my left breast, and wasn't very concerned. I was, I've always checked, I've always been on top of things like that. And I tell everybody, men and women, check yourself, check your poo, keep an eye on your own bodily functions. It's one of the most important things that we can do. Nobody else is in charge of our health, just us. And uh to go through that whole story, let's get there quickly because a lot of people have heard it as well. Uh, the diagnosis at the end was a six-centimeter tumour. It took a year actually for this to be confirmed, and uh the prognosis was to have a mastectomy. It was early stage still, even though it took an extra year to be discovered. And then I started having conversations with um the team that were looking after me about uh endocrine therapy, hormonal therapy, tamoxifen, or in my case, it would have been aromatase inhibitors because I'm post-menopausal. And at that stage, uh, somebody who'd been in my life for 20 odd years appeared, and I hadn't realized she'd been through something similar. And she is big in the functional medicine world and the naturopath world. And she said to me, Julia, have you done this? Have you done that? Have you done this test? Have you done a DNA test? Have you done a hormone test? I went, Heidi, I've never heard of no. And she said, Before you do anything, just start doing these investigations. You've got the brain for it. Go into that. And it opened up an entirely new world for me. So I put all of those conversations about my hormonal therapy on pause. And I should say, because a lot of people say, well, Julia didn't go on this and didn't go on that. What I have learnt is it's a very personal journey. It's not just about the cancer, it's about the person, it's about the terrain. Um, so what's right for me might not be right for you, it might not be right for you. Uh, but I was very pleased that I took the pause because actually I didn't end up going on hormonal therapy and I'm five years clear this year.
SPEAKER_00Imagine that was all private. You didn't you weren't offered that on the National Health You had to pay for it.
SPEAKER_01I did. Uh, and I uh I I caveat that because people go, it's all right for you because you know you're a presenter or you're a celebrity and you can pay for everything privately. Because I'm freelance, I've had a 30-year career in television and writing books and doing what I do, I've always had to have private medical insurance. For example, I've just come back from my latest series for ITV in Antarctica. You have to be covered.
SPEAKER_00How are you lucky you had medical insurance?
SPEAKER_01So I've always, and I've had to pay for that throughout throughout my entire career. Because if I fall ill filming somewhere like Costa Rica or Antarctica, or you need to be able to get home and be covered. And so that has always been something that's been factored in to my budget.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my husband got dengue fever when we were in Costa Rica. He was so ill. Yeah. Just they said, Oh, that's what happens here in Costa Rica. He got better. But yeah, you don't realise that in some countries that are not the UK or Europe or the States, there's all kinds of stuff that can happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and you really have to think, it's not you're you're not being uh sort of catastrophic thinking about it. You have to go, if something goes wrong, can I get home? Can I get the treatments I need? Exactly. So, yes, um, I was covered by my insurance, and this was a uh an insurance-led journey. However, everything subsequently, my functional medicine and everything that I've done after that, I've I've self-financed, and I feel very fortunate that I can. I have had to make sacrifices in my life in order to do that. But now, to me, health is the most important investment.
SPEAKER_00It's the most important. We will say organic stuff is expensive, and you know, a burger and fries is £15, but the salad is £20. But we have to see this is an investment in your health, in your longevity.
SPEAKER_01Very much so, and that's a topic I'm very passionate about: pesticides and herbicides. We're seeing a lot of news about a particular herbicide called glyphosate at the moment. Um, it's the most widely used herbicide in the world, and uh it has recently been discovered that one of the papers that was suggesting that it didn't have any cancerous impact, let's call it that, let's not say anything else because it might be litigious. One of those papers that suggested that non-Hodgkin's lymphoma wasn't as a result of overexposure to glyphosate, was actually uh created by the manufacturer. Yeah, we was a false paper. And there's a subsequent paper that's come out showing, certainly in mice and I think now in humans as well, that there are cancer risks associated with glyphosate, and that's on most foods.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we know that the the epidemic of bowel cancer in young people is because of all the ultra-processed food. And when I had cancer, you know, I I was actually so well, I had no idea I even had it, just showed up on a scan, and they called me and I was sure I'd go in, they go, We've made a mistake, but they said, No, no, it isn't a mistake. And rather like you, for the first two days, I was like, Wow, am I gonna die? What's gonna happen here? But I would my husband drove me to see my best friend up in Yorkshire, and I was reading, I don't know if you know Icon. Do you know Icon? There's a company, a charity called Cancer Active, a strange name, but they have a magazine called Icon, it's a great magic. And I was reading it and I thought, wow, look at all these things I can do. I can take all the parabens out of my diet. Don't use deodorant, don't use toothpaste. Perfume. Yeah, perfume, all the stuff you've got here with. So all the parabens I can get rid of. And then I can have organic soap powder and dishwasher, but which is actually very important that what you wash your dishes in. If I can do that, I can reduce my exposure to EMF, so electromagnetic. I shouldn't be sleeping with a phone. People some some people sleep with it under their pillow, which is extra, you should not do that. So everything should be seven feet away from you. Isn't always easy. You know, I was told I would never be able to have a baby. I had cancer twice and was told I'd have to live with that forever. I got run over and was told I couldn't walk for six months. I actually walked in six weeks. And each time I got that diagnosed, I thought, no, this is my mind, my rules. I bounced back from cancer. I had a perfect baby. I recovered from being run over super fast, and I used the techniques in this book. In fact, I wrote this book while I was in plaster, having been run over. Because the things that made me bounce back will make you bounce back from relationship issues, wealth issues, childhood issues, confidence issues. If you want to live your life on your terms and have love, success, health, wealth, even the body of your dreams, it's all in here. Buy it and change your life forever. So I realized I could take all the parabens and the stuff I put on my body, in my body, and cleaned my house with. I realized I could minimize EMFs and I realized I could take turmeric. Turmeric seems to be the number one thing to reduce inflammation, which is a precursor to cancer. I thought, well, look at all of that. And then I could look at what I ate. So I thought, gosh, is it and then I could start visualising. So I thought, gosh, there's at least five things. And I went from absolute fear to, wow, I've got a lot of choice and power here. So I remember sitting in that car on that journey to Yorkshire, going from fear to I can do all of these things. And immediately it made me feel better because I felt I was back in charge. I could have some form of control. I think that's really important. There's a feeling of empowerment, isn't there? When you realise that you it's not just one thing, take the drugs, have the surgery. It isn't that. It's and it's not, it's called complementary, not alternative medicine. You can do other everyone with cancer should be reducing sugar and dairy too. You know, I was a great friend with Jane Plant, who was obsessed with, you know, she had breast cancer five times, and when she stopped eating dairy, it didn't come back anymore because it's a growth hormone that makes your cells grow.
SPEAKER_01Also, it depends on the dairy and the quality of the dairy, the antibiotics that the cows have been fed. There are a lot of other external factors. I felt the same. I think my two big changes were nutritional. I did exactly what you did. So it was a complete turnaround on nutrition. And alcohol was a big one for me. So I think I felt that empowerment that you're feeling when Professor Gareth Evans, who appeared in my documentary, Breast Cancer and Me, I did something called a polygenic risk score, which is a saliva test and it can indicate your risk of reoccurrence. And my risk of recurrence stands at 13%, next to the average woman, woman who's been through a similar journey to me, which would be at 10%. So mine is slightly increased. You know, and if you're looking at between 10 and 13, it's more significant than you would like to think. But for me, I'm going, that's great. 13 is I'm well in the 80s. So I'm looking I flip it and go, that it I think that's a that's a low risk. But when we started talking about alcohol, he said, if you drink six units of alcohol a week, Julia, your risk of reoccurrence can go up by as much as 28%. Well, for me, that was an absolute no-brainer. I have enjoyed social drinking, I've danced on tables, I used to love clubbing when I was younger. I've done all of that. It's no biggie for me at all to go, there's a 28%. It's not a straight down the line mathematical equation. It was very much there's a big risk that I can completely, you know, have control over by cutting out alcohol. So I did that. The other interesting one is exercise in people who have um they they've done trials.
SPEAKER_00Exercise minimizes your chance of getting cancer in the first place. If you can do some form of exercise, you lower your chance of getting it and increase your chance of recovering from it.
SPEAKER_01And reduce your chance of reoccurrence by up to 30%. Which is amazing, isn't it? And again, there it's not for everyone. There are prescribed different types of exercise. It could be resistance training, you need to be uh cardiovascular fit. Essentially, you want your blood to be moving and not sticky. Um, so then I looked at those two things a bit like you and I went 28% on the alcohol, 30% on the exercise. Two absolute non-negotiables for me that make complete sense. And I'm in control of those.
SPEAKER_00We said that expression, take whatever you want, and then pay for it. You know, when I was child, I had cancer. I said, I'm not going anywhere. I was a single parent, there's just no way I could leave my daughter, even though she was an adult. You had young children, which is significantly worse. But my I said, I'm not going anywhere. I will do anything it takes to survive. And I would have done anything, anything at all. And I think that's important because a lot of people say, Oh, well, you know, I've got a year, I've got five years, and they start to read all the statistics and they not to Christopher, effectively give up. It's a death, it's a curse, it's a death sentence, and they talk about it. Well, you know, what's the point? And I've been given this awful sentence, but you know, the word responsibility means an ability to respond. If you're responsible, you are able to respond. And rather like you, I thought, what can I do? How can I survive? Let me look at people who've bounced back from this. Let me look at people who've had, I mean, look at Kylie Minogue, Cheryl Crow, Lance Armstrong, Bob Champion was thought he could never have children with this, and he had three after having testicular cancer. So I was delivering looking for because one of the rules of your mind is whatever you focus on, you get more of. Yeah. Whatever you look for, you go towards. So rather than looking at all this awful, I was looking at the good statistics. Okay, what are statistics here? Rather, like you, I had womb cancer, and my first thought was, well, that's a stroke of luck. I don't need a womb. My womb had been a little bit of a child. You had your children. You gave me the most beautiful child, she's all grown up. I thought, you know, I did what you did. I didn't, I actually said goodbye to it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I remember my doctor saying, now when we take it out, this is the problem. Some of the cancer cells can spill out and go to your liver, and then that's terrible. Give you really awful news. And I thought, okay. So I imagined my womb wrapped in cling film. I imagined a fortress around it. And I was had a conversation. Thank you so much for giving me this great kid. But I got to stay here, this great kid. She needs a mother, even when she's going to be 35. I think she was 25 at the time. So I had the same, I had a conversation, and I remember you telling me later. I did the same.
SPEAKER_01But your doctor told you to have this conversation. It was my friend, the same friend that got me onto this path of exploring more. And she had she'd actually had a double mastectomy, and she said to me, The best advice I have had is to say goodbye to your breasts and everything they've done for you breastfeeding, topless when you were 19 on the beach, or jumping around in an exercise class, thank them. For me, it was one and be grateful for the time that you've had together. And it's a different phase now. And I have called my uh mastectomy breast, I had immediate reconstruction, which I'm very fortunate uh to have had, and I call it mozzarella because I have very, very thin skin. And the surgeon said, Oh, we could do a graph, we could take skin from between your thighs and fat, and we could inject it round you, but you'll have to have a skin graph and you'll have six weeks of extreme pain. And I went, No, that's fine. He said, Well, you will see your implant. I said, I really don't mind. So you can actually, and I've put this on on social media, you can actually see the ripples of where my implant is, but it's Mozzie. And we call that. I don't know. And my kids, we say, sometimes, you know, if they bang into me, I'll go, oh, Mozi, and they go, sorry, Mozzie, give a little tap. And it's Mozzie's my new friend, Mozzie's the new part of me. Interesting, what you said about this death sentence um hanging over you as well. I in Hagu Self Healthy, I spoke to a lot, and I continue to explore my emotional health. And one of the therapists that I spoke to said he really doesn't like it when he deals with a lot of breast cancer patients. He doesn't like it when people are given that number.
SPEAKER_00Well, they don't they don't do it anymore. They don't now say five years or two years because they know that what is expected, another rule, tends to be realized. Yes. What you expect, you become.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Let's say you've got two years or three years or five years, you kind of are doing a mental countdown automatically. And your body goes into some sort of shutdown, you know, preparing, yeah. Preparing to go. You know, when I was sort of I could never have children, I remember a voice in my head saying, Don't let that in. I was sitting in a doctor's office and said, You'll never get pregnant. And if you got pregnant, you could never carry a baby to Fortune. And if you could do that, the baby would have everything wrong with it. And none of that was true. I got pregnant, had a perfect baby, and I remember thinking, I'm not going to let that in. When I had cancer, the strangest thing happened. I was in this doctor's office, waiting for to say it was a mistake, and she said, No, and I saw it come back, and she literally went, It has your address, it knows you live. Yes, it will probably come back. And I remember thinking, wow, what a weird thing to tell me. It will probably and then she said, and when it does, that's the terror time. Oh my gosh. When you get it back again, you can't you can't fix it, which is actually not true. No. But I've read that too. I've read if you have breast cancer and it comes back, that's a terrible thing, which is a terrible thing to hear. But I was so shocked. She literally knocked on the table and said, It has your address, it knows where you live, it will very likely come back.
SPEAKER_01And what a very powerful sentence and way to deliver it. And if it wasn't you that she'd deliver that to anybody else would go, and then you have the why bother?
SPEAKER_00Why bother doing all Julia stuff, no sugar? Well, it's going to come back anyway. So it almost makes you give up because you're told it will come back. So you go, what's the point?
SPEAKER_01They're in the in the intricative world, which you've mentioned, which is not to say don't accept the standard of care treatment, but in the integrative world, a lot of testing goes on as you're moving through your journey as well. And now there's a very interesting scenario with a cancer that does return. Uh, there is a suggestion that you should have a biopsy on that cancer because it's a different cancer, it's it behaves differently, uh, and potentially treating it the same way as you did the first cancer might not work because it's adapted, it's changed. It's as you know, cancer is fiendishly clever and complex. And so sugar feeds cancer. Well, sugar does all sorts of things do. There are other elements and uh minerals and all sorts of things. It depends on the person, the environment. Uh, so isn't that interesting that you could then go through the same treatment that you went through before and actually it's not gonna work because you're treating the wrong cancer at the rot at a different time at the person whose body has changed since then as well. And I'm fascinated by this world, and I'm really sad when I see, and there are quite a lot of um traditionally trained medical doctors who are very dismissive of integrative and complementary medicine. And I don't think there should be this big chasm. I think we should be trying to bring these two worlds together because there is a there is a place for both of them. Um, and this sort of rubbishing of the two is very unhelpful to us, the patients.
SPEAKER_00But what I found so interesting, because it's a journey, is that first of all, when I my doctors looked at me, he said, Don't lose any more weight, you know, before you come in. And I said, Well, not having any sugar, he said, You need sugar, it will build you up. And then, even odder, the day before the surgery, they gave me this sash, they said, You take that to feed your body during well, what is it? And she wouldn't tell me. No, it was just white powder, it was just and I thought and they wouldn't tell me what it was. I had to Google it. I just tipped it down. They think it was just glucose. Yeah, they said, Yes, it gives your body a meal while you're like, My body doesn't need a meal. We can go for at least 48 hours without food. And there's a lot of interesting work about fasting and chemotherapy as well now. Yeah, and then that too, because I had a friend with cancer, and I didn't have to have chemo, or I was only stage one. For me, it was just a blip, it was so it was nothing, and I had it the next day. I didn't, I was on stage a week later, just getting on with my life. I felt like I never really had it. Second time was slightly a little bit different, but not much. But my friend was in a much more advanced state, and I was telling you, you know, if you're having chemo, if you fast, it makes the chemo work better. The cancer cells become weaker and the non-cancer. So she was fasting, went along to the chemo um ward and it had got flooded and they had to cancel everything. They said, Come back tomorrow. And she said, I'm fasting. They went, Don't worry. She went, then we've got a lovely cake for you, and we've made you some tomatoes and put extra cream in it and a bit of sugar to build you up. And if you go to a millen ward, if you go to a chemotherapy ward, they give you milkshakes, chocolate drinks, hot chocolate. I mean, there's no juices there apart from obviously apple juice, but there's nothing healthy, and they say you can't have anything with a germ in it, you know. God forbid those that salad. But you could have a bar of chocolate because it's sterile. And I was I took the menu home. I was so shocked. I took the menu home with me and had a look at it and thought, wow, on a cancer ward, you get tomato soup, loads of drinks, because obviously your mouth and the ulcers, milkshakes, and and this hideous stuff called ensure. So I was really shocked, although they know this. And then I did a tweet saying oncologists don't eat sugar. People said, My oncologist's got a bowl of quality street on his table, going, eat some, you know, have a little treat, you need that. You're about to have chemotherapy, so have a nice bounty bar, here's a Mars bar. And it's so strange. It's like going to an oncologist who's smoking. But I was when I put that out, people said, that's just not true. So many oncologists encourage you to eat sugar.
SPEAKER_01I've I hear that every day, Marissa. I get messages from people every day asking me for help and advice. And I always say, look, I'm not an expert. I've been through You kind of are. You kind of are an expert.
SPEAKER_00You should label yourself an expert because you are. You've been there, done that, and you are an expert.
SPEAKER_01Because you've told me I am. Marissa says I am an I am.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love what you've written.
SPEAKER_01I have a lived experience, and I have been exposed to some really expert voices. And what I do is I point them in the right direction. And a lady this week did exactly what you just said. She sent me the menu, and I can't remember whether it's biscuits or donuts, something was on there that was absolutely shocking. And when you talk to people like Dr. Robert Lustig, who is a true expert in sugar, that's his life's work, and the damage that sugar can do to us at a mitochondrial level, those are our most important cells. When you talk to um fully qualified nutritionists who spent years studying nutrition, there's a man called Michael Ash in my book who I speak to, and he's helping me with my next book about food as well. And they explain what happens to you on a cellular level when you literally bang your body with. Could you tell us?
SPEAKER_00Because I think that's the beauty of you. People think, oh, I've got cancer. Here's Julia. She's been through and she's got some advice that could help me. So talk to our audience about sugar. Because we'll say your you your body needs sugar.
SPEAKER_01Well, your body does need sugar, and your body Brain runs on sugar, but there's refined sugar and there's excess sugar. And we now per head in the world, in the Western world, we eat more sugar than ever before. And this will give you an idea of where we're at with sugar and ultra-processed foods. We are now at the point in the world where there are more people suffering from obesity than are starving. Isn't that interesting? And diabetes, too. So think about the think about that population, people who have not enough food, where they're nutritionally devoid, where they don't have access to running water. We see these pictures, there are amazing charities, we all do our bit to help. But if you think that now there are more people who have overindulged, who are overweight, and I don't mean to put blame because I would say that the sh the ultra-processed and the sugar industry is to blame because they push this stuff like a drug.
SPEAKER_00You know, I was in Whole Foods a few years ago and my husband had a cold. I was buying in some chicken soup, and I said, It's got sugar. Our customers like it. I said, I'm your customer. I don't like it. I mean, this is Whole Foods. Yeah. Your chicken soup, the third ingredient was sugar. I couldn't find anything in there. So you made your own? Yeah, yeah. I was very busy at the time, and I just wanted to take something home for him. He's a great cook, as it happens, he cooks all the time. But you know, you'll buy a chicken. I was actually eating some scrambled eggs in a restaurant, and they put what they would the glazer, but it's sugar. I said, I don't want sugar. I sent it back, but um, it's in everything.
SPEAKER_01It is in everything, and Robert Lustig will tell you it affects your gut, it affects your gut permeability. So, what's allowed into your bloodstream, which your immune system has to work on filtering away, uh, sugar has a negative impact on that. Sugar has a really negative impact on your liver. There's something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease through the roof, skyrocketing around the world. Um, I and Robert uh Lustig has some frightening stories when he was uh had a pediatric ward. Children whose sugar reading, your glucose level, when you go for a resting glucose level. I mean, mine's around four or five. I work really hard to keep it there. Every time I eat food, whatever it is, I move to make sure that I've got nice balance with my sugar levels. So I'm at about four or five. So you never lie on the sofa eating a bigger Pringles. But I used to. You used to. But now I would get up, even if I just get up, I have some moves that I do and I do some squats and I do some, you know, jumping up and down, I pump my arms, do that four times, or I go for a walk with the dog every time that I every time that I eat. And uh Robert has been dealing in the in his past. I'm at four or five. He had children who are at 120 on their on their glucose levels.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because he tells you in a way that makes so much sense that sugar and alcohol have the same same effect on your liver. And if you give your child cocoa pops and a glass of orange juice, maybe some toast, you might as well give them a glass of wine. We'd never give our children a glass of wine for breakfast. But it's the same for the liver.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Glass of wine, cocoa pops, toast and jam. And starting your day off like that.
SPEAKER_01With sugar, yeah. With sugar, you're in for a very negative rise. Yeah. Because you start on a sugar spike and then it goes down, and then you have your 11 o'clock cake or dunking biscuits because you need to peek up again because you lose your energy. I would say advice start your day with protein and fibre. Save and savour. Save savoury savvy savour.
SPEAKER_00I do that. I always have savory fruit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and but throw those herbs on. Tim Spector will always talk about your 30 vegetables and seeds and herbs a week, and people go, 30? How do I do 30? Well, in the morning I have my plates of vegetables and some clean protein that might be from last night's meal, or maybe I've opened a can of um uh pilchards or sardines or something and mashed it up with some avocado. I don't love those fish, by the way. Mackerel's my favourite, but very good for you. High omega-3s. So I'll mix those up. I put olive oil, I put fennel seeds sometimes, I put uh cardamom in there, I have dill, um, you know, you mix it up. Have those herbs on standby in your little drawer because that adds to everything. If you've got five herbs on there and plus the vegetables, you're up to 10, 15 before before 10 o'clock in the morning.
SPEAKER_00Do you know when I lived in LA, it wasn't okay? I went for breakfast with somebody and she sent out for avocado and toast and coffee. When it arrived, the coffee was cold, and she went, Oh, I never cook. And a third of people in LA don't cook and never shop for food, ever. So they they wouldn't even know what you were talking about because they everything is delivered. Even a cup of coffee, she didn't make it, she had it delivered, and it was cold. She goes, Oh, yeah, I don't make anything. So I like a really clean kitchen, so I never cook.
SPEAKER_02Extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00But it's actually, it's not, it's really common. The amount of people who never cook, they warm things up. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Well, 60% of the of the UK processed food.
SPEAKER_00And then in New York, I bet they don't have a kitchen. They don't know I well, I don't have space for a kitchen. They order they they go to little bodigos that have it all pre-cooked and pre-chopped up. And it's actually not shocking. There's a load of people who never cook don't even shop for food. They might warm stuff up or microwave it, occasionally grill something. In plastic, probably. In plastic, yeah. And then we wonder why we've got this epidemic of colon cancer, because we people don't eat real, live, natural food. You know, it's like you can buy scrambled eggs in a cart, and it's like, why would you buy scrap? I mean, they take two minutes to make.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And by cooking, by being in that environment, by preparing your own food, you're also telling your body on your mind, I'm ready for food. I'm getting ready for it. So your enzymes start to uh get ready to digest your food. Your mouth starts to water sometimes. You're really looking forward to something. You're preparing yourself, and then I always take a breath before I eat, and I look down at the plate, and it's not a religious thing, it's a thank you. I'm looking forward to this. Again, it's uh, I'm feeding my body health. Uh I'm really gonna enjoy this.
SPEAKER_00So when you meet people who don't cook, just like always get takeouts. How can you help them? Because to them, the idea of change feels like work. This is not change, this is I've got to buy it, bring it home, I've got to wash it, I've got to chop it, I've got to cook it. And I can usually just get it from Deliveroo, but it seems like such work. So, how can we help people who really want to change but have put off? Well, you're the queen of this, but it's a reframe, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It is a reframe. It's a reframe that actually we all live such busy lives. Isn't it a joy to cook? Yeah, well, to choose your ingredients, to look at the colours at the supermarket, to pick your fresh vegetables, to take that time that is important time. We've very much become human doings. Sure, not human beings.
SPEAKER_00I mean, how I do it as I tell people, listen, your body is the most priceless, mind-boggling you will ever own in your whole life. And you have to come at it from love. When you love your body, you think I wouldn't put a donut in my body, I wouldn't have a Pop Tart for bread because that's abuse. It's abuse to wake up and think, let me have a donut. I mean, I've never really got donuts. To me, they're just fat and sugar. Doesn't mean I didn't like chocolate, but donuts, my brain. They were not your thing. You see, you eat something if the picture is right. You know, if someone spat on your food, you couldn't eat it. If someone brought brought the food over and they were bleeding on it, you think, no, I can't eat it now. I was actually in Morocco with my husband. No, Egypt, and we ordered this food, and he came out and he said, Don't eat it. He said, There's no when you go to the toilet, they wash their hands in the bowl of salad. There's a bowl of salad and tomatoes in water, and that's where you wash your hands. He said, We're not eating anything. Because that picture was so awful to him.
SPEAKER_01Is that what you do or you've done in the past when you're helping clients who have issues with food?
SPEAKER_00It's picture. Yeah, so if a vegetarian never has to fight to avoid bacon, because the picture is this is a creature with a face. Um, a Hindu doesn't have to fight to avoid roast beef because they see that as wrong. So when you make the picture wrong, you can't eat it. Of course, food companies calling their food sunny delight, and what's that? Kind bars. I mean, the most unkind thing you can eat is a kind bar, but they give them names Jolly Ranch, Sunny Delight, Happy Meals, and everything fun side organic or contains, and they have a picture of the one ingredient that it does contain, but in tiny amounts. And of course, they'll say things like um farm fresh, barn fresh, nature's own harvest switch. Which means nothing. Well, the more they're called that, the worse they are. But you see, they're making the picture. They make the picture right. They used to do this thing for chocolate about it, it contains a pint and a half of milk. Like that was a good thing. But we only eat something if the picture is right. If the picture is wrong, like you know, you might say I could eat lamb, but I couldn't eat cat, I couldn't eat dog, I could eat beef, but I couldn't eat gorilla. So it's interesting that when the picture's wrong, you can't eat it. So what you must do is make the picture wrong and start to say, This is my enemy. This feeds cancer. My body, my mind wants it, but my body hates it because the truth is your body doesn't want any of that stuff. Just like your body doesn't want alcohol, but your brain really does. So you have to keep making the picture wrong. Like, what's something I could never eat? Um my brain, what's the food we think of as a baby? The the beef, um uh the ragu or the ragu, no, the bottom. The um the little baby cows that are crated and you can't eat the page.
SPEAKER_01Oh, the veal calf.
SPEAKER_00So I couldn't eat pigeon, I loathe pigeons. I could never eat pigeon. I could never eat veal. I couldn't eat my husband. Used to love, what's that raw meat called again? Uh a tartar, steak tartar. He just he's not allowed to have it anymore since he married me. But I mean I couldn't eat that raw beef with a raw egg on top. No, because just because the picture's wrong to him, it was delicious, he made the picture right. When you understand you eat something if the picture is right, which is why there's that book called I Lick My Cheese, but someone in the buttons lick their cheese, and no one else in the apartment would eat this cheese. Yeah, but someone else said I lick it too. But if you you know, some in China people spit on their food when it arrives, so nobody shares it. Because when you spit in your bowl of noodles, the picture's very different.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if you can make the picture wrong, you won't eat it. If you make the picture right, you will. So you've got to say yummy, beautiful purple sprouting broccoli, which is so good for my body and my mitochondria love this rather than oh, it's delicious chocolate.
SPEAKER_01And what about people who eat for um emotions' sake? You know, there are people who will say to you, Marissa, I just can't stop. You're telling me this, but I love the chocolates. I love the cakes. I'm tired, I'm just about to, I haven't eaten anything all day, so I want my favourite biscuits.
SPEAKER_00How do they stop? Well, you know, the stomach is the seat of all emotions. People say, Oh, my stomach was in not. Well, children say my tummy hurts when they want something because every feeling starts in the stomach. Fear, joy, love, panic, it all starts here. And emotional eaters learned at a very early age to push the feeling down. To don't cry, here's a cookie, you're being good, here's an item. I'm I'm busy for an hour, so here's some chocolate, don't bother me. But also the brain will go back to what something means because everything is a regression. And eating is a natural regression. No one says I'm having the worst day in the world, I need some raw carrots, because I need chocolate, macaroni, cheese, or pizza, because we have taste receptors here. And when your mother gave you that fatty, sweet, creamy stuff, it fixed all your problems instantly. You weren't lonely, you weren't sad, you weren't bored. And the brain always works out what does this mean? What does milk mean? Because milk's the only food. Breast milk is the only food in the world that's half fat and half sugar. You know, if you went back a hundred 500 years, you could find fatty food like fish and nuts, and sweet food like mangoes, but there was no combination. The only combination is breast milk, and now, of course, cow's milk. Yeah, but where does ice cream come from? Yeah, but ice cream comes from another animal's breast milk. Nature just hasn't got no ice cream. If you wander around it, there's no ice cream waiting for you. There's mangoes and berries and bananas, and there's avocados, but they haven't blended them together to make a lovely smoothie and put 10 teaspoons of sugar in it as well. So the brain, when people have a bad day, the brain goes back to you need that milky, creamy, fatty stuff. You know, that combination of fat and sugar. You know it's called the bliss point, don't you? That companies work out. You can put 22 teaspoons in before you're physically sick. So Costa Coffee, Starbucks, put 22 teaspoons of sugar in some of their drinks. Which shouldn't be called coffees, anyway. I know they they well, they must hate their customers to get to do that to me. They mean 22 teaspoons. And occasionally I'll walk down Whole Foods and go, look at this cereal. The first ingredient is sugar. It's not even the fifth. And I always read ingredients because of course the clothes, whatever it is, if it's the first ingredient sugar or the second or the third, it means a third of it is sugar. But we are wired, unfortunately, to do two things to remember what sorted out our needs as a baby. You know, if you if my little daughter fell off the swing and I gave her an ice cream, she was happy. She was 45 and said, Mum, my husband's left. I wouldn't go, I'm gonna send some ice cream over immediately because it only works when your life is simple. But then we have a brain that remembers where sugar is and goes back for more. So when I was with a tribe, they have the honey finders and they're very valuable. I mean, the bees don't leave it out, they hide it, or put out a sheer cliff, and the honey finders will find honey. But if you're wandering around the Serengeti and you found honey, you'd eat as much as you can, you go back to the you wake up with honey, and you go back for more till it was all gone. And if you found ripening mangoes, you'd you wouldn't think there's a lot of fructose there. You'd eat all of it.
SPEAKER_01And you'd remember because you because you'd be you'd know that there isn't an abundance of this. It's here now. Well, sugar was might not be tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00It was a very it never poisoned you. Sugar was a very safe form of calories, honey, mangoes, but it was very safe. And it you packed on some weight for the lean time. So when you found sugar, which was rare, you might find honey twice a year. You should gorge because you might not get it again for six months. But now we're gorging all the time. But now, of course, but the brain still says that Kit Kat is so rare. Even if you sat next to the vending machine for five years or 20, it still says that Kit Kat is rare. You need to keep going back for more. So, sugar, we are our brain is wired to go back for more. To remember where it is and to go back. No one says, you know, that celery in the fridge is calling my name. I keep going back for another bite. They say that cake is calling my name. But when you understand it, you think, okay, how can I work with it? Well, first of all, don't have it in the house. If it really calls your name. I mean, I had to do that many years ago. I just had to stop having it's a kind of go, I love Cadbury's chocolate chunk biscuits. I'll bring them home and just have one. It's like saying, I'll leave that champagne on the table and not touch it. So you have to either not have it or put it, you like, you know, maybe you have a husband or kids that like it, so put it out of sight in a high cupboard in this container you can't see through. Because when you see food, your appropriate doesn't need to eat that. So you're wired to remember where sugar is and go back, or you're wired to eat food. If you see it, you eat it. So if you just put it out of sight, it helps. But the biggest thing is talk to your brain. I'm not in a tribe. I've been sitting next to this Kit Kat machine for 15 years. In 15 years, it's never done a thing for me. It's not my friend, it's my enemy. It's gonna kill off my mitochondria, it's gonna feed cancer. But I'd like to ask you about this new mitochondria and sugar. Could you tell our audience about mitochondria and sugar?
SPEAKER_01So I think we're going to hear a lot more about mitochondrial health. In fact, Liz Earl, the the brilliant Liz Earl, has uh a new book coming out or is out now and how to age well. And she talks a lot about mitochondria. I talk about mitochondria. Because it's now the third brain, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Some people say it's the first brain.
SPEAKER_01Well, in a very simple way, to it to, and and this really is a simplified explanation of it, our mitochondria, we all have, you know, mitochondria are organelles, they are our energy factory. So they are creating something called ATP, which is our energy, which gets us through life. But there is there is a byproduct to that system. It's a little engine that's working. And just like car engines that push out fuel, but push out exhaust fumes, the mitochondria do that as well. And you want your mitochondria to be well balanced and working efficiently. And sugar, unfortunately, has a very negative impact on that mechanism. So if you're mitochondria, well, it means that you're it in a simple way, more exhaust fumes are being pushed into your body. It's not that your engines, all of these engines are not running as efficiently as they could. And so the side effect is uh is more harmful to us. And our mitochondria, look, unfortunately, fortunately, I mean, I love aging. I'm I'm grateful to be here. But the facts of life are collagen starts to deplete, estrogen starts to deplete, uh, you know, muscle starts to waste from the age of 30, sometimes to the age of 20.
SPEAKER_00Human growth hormone, too.
SPEAKER_01So we have to work hard to adapt and work against that. And it's the same with mitochondria. They just get old, they get, you know, they're being used and used again. So what you want to do is to support your mitochondria with really good whole foods. Red light is very good, morning light is exceptional, exercises is very good. So sugar depressors, you know, we know sugar. Sugar depressors are sugar depression systems. Our immune system, our cells, our mitochondria, our gut health, and our brains. Think about your child when they come back from the party.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How hyper are they? You're trying to tell them, look, it's time to go to bed, or will you sit down? Or they can't, they can't listen to instruction. The brain is literally overloaded with the sugar.
SPEAKER_00Overloaded with the sugar. Also, you can make people feel very depressed. If it is sugar, because there's a dip. But isn't it interesting in hospitals bringing in cakes and chocolate cross nuts? My friend had cancer. Her neighbours would leave cakes on her doorstep, bake them, and she couldn't say, No, a vegetable castle would be great. They were making these cakes out of love, but giving to someone who was very sick.
SPEAKER_01Dr. Boon Lin in Hack Self-Healthy is a cardiologist, and uh his his story, he went through his own health um chronic health moment, and he talks about it in the book. And then we had a side conversation about hospital food. So he's a number one cardiac um consultant and surgeon. He's at the top of his game. He walks, he does exercise, he meditates, he works really hard in his stressful environment to he's created habits to try and uh combat some of the bad stuff that happens to him on a daily basis, the assault on his brain and on his body. And he is shocked and horrified about hospital food. He said, How am I meant to tell my patients who are suffering from heart failure or really need to lose some weight in order to improve their heart health? How can I tell them to eat properly when the lady in the hospital with the trolley is coming past and it's got a yogurt, uh, you know, a full sugar flavoured yogurt that you pull the top off, orange juice and maybe brown toast, sliced brown toast, but probably white. I mean, depending on which ward you're in. Um, we the health service can't deliver health when everything that's happening within the health service or a lot of the systems that are there aren't aren't selling that message. I mean, you would not align yourself. Let's say somebody, a big, a big product comes along and says, Marissa, we want you to be our global ambassador. Like Margarine. Yeah, you're amazing. We see you on the we see you on the stage, we want you to talk about how this fuels you and helps you. You couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_00And not only that, what would your audience think? But it's not just the NHS. My husband was in Cedar Side, they thought he had a heart attack. He actually hadn't. Oh yes, it's the room with a thousand pounds, a thousand dollars a night. And the next day they brought him in breakfast, and it was um Kellow's cornflakes, and something called breakfast syrup. And I said, What is it? It's a little thing. It's breakfast. But what is it? This is breakfast syrup. Put it on the cornflakes, it's syrup. I said, You mean it's sugar? Well, we call it breakfast syrup. And I said, This is abuse. I mean, look what you've given my husband. Corn flakes, long life milk, and breakfast. I said, I want something. How they can't say we've got a breakfast muffin. Well, what's that? It was a chocolate chip muffin. They couldn't even make him an omelette. They said, We don't have everything is long life. And everything's been bought into them. I think they Kellogg's give that to them because I can't imagine. They said, Everything is long life. And I thought, this is disgusting. I mean, I took him in. Imagine if you're in Cedar Cina alone, without friends or friends, without a Marissa on your team. And they think, oh, they brought me breakfast syrup and this is C and a cider, a thousand pounds a night for the room, let alone the surgery. In fact, his bill when he was there was $350,000 for three nights. Gosh. And a surgery and for everything. I didn't have a surgery. I just had a little investigation, a stent, no surgery, $350,000. And I said you can take every food item off that bill. Because this is abuse. It's it's so uncaring for your patients. It's actually disgusting. I posted it everywhere. So I'm going to shine a light on this because you can't even give them some scrambled eggs. I mean, or some healthy organic oatmeal, maybe with some uh coconut milk. They didn't even know what that was. Weirdly enough, they wouldn't let him have a cup of tea because it had caffeine in it, because he'd they thought it had a heart. So no tea, but you can't.
SPEAKER_01But you can have lots of sugar. I have an anecdotal story, and I'm going to be very careful about this person's uh identity, but this is somebody who um I knew personally. And they went through extensive chemotherapy and exactly as you had said earlier, put on weight, stay on, you maintain weight, and they were given this liquid drink, which was full of sugar and other things that are very bad for gut health. And I said to them, I'd really love it. They came to me and asked for some advice, and again, caveat, um, this is what I've learnt. I said, I'd love it if we could move you off this and maybe put you onto an avocado smoothie. They they they they were unable, please use that. They were unable uh to have solid food at the time. And they were frightened and didn't uh didn't do that, and they continued on uh this this drink, and very, very sadly, uh after extensive chemo, they passed away. And they had had a a well-known other condition and this drink is known to be a contra to that condition, and that was what they were given knowing the medical history, and it does still shock me, and I'm not here to bash the NHS because it's an incredible service, and we are very lucky in this country that we have something like the NHS. But what I would say to people is now there are so many other modalities out there that can be integrated, that can be worked alongside that we can find out about. It's as you said, that responsibility. And I know that people are sometimes emotionally unable. Sometimes a cancer diagnosis is so crushing for people that they want to be told what to do and they want to just listen to.
SPEAKER_00People don't know, you know, when I had cancer, my husband is very he's very kind, and he would go and get himself a coffee, and then he would come back and he'd bring me two green juices every single day. I mean, he could have made them, but it was a little juice bar. And about the guy said, I I know your wife, I've been putting maple syrup in there for her to build her up because someone said she's got cancer. So he was buying these green juices that the guys are putting in, sweating in maple. I thought, God, they're very sweet. And they said, No, no, that's the um I can't what they said it was. The kiwis or some some yeah, but all the me was squirting in loads of maple syrup, not even organic, because he thought it would build me up and I'd be so grateful. And I thought, God, I was trying to, you know, I was deliberately having no sugar because I didn't want to feed any cancer cells.
SPEAKER_01This is always a very sobering statistic. We do need some glucose to run. We can run on ketones and other things as well. Because we we produce it.
SPEAKER_00Because we know the amount of sugar you need is zero. Well, none.
SPEAKER_01The the amount of sugar that that's coursing around our blood is a teaspoonful.
SPEAKER_00But where does it if we never ate sugar, where would we go? We'd be producing it from our foods.
SPEAKER_01We'd be producing it from uh from from the intake of our nutrients, depending on whether they're refined. Even if you were just eating raw meat, you'd still make it. You'd still make it and and uh and and uh there'd be certain vegetables, you're still they they still have an element of carbohydrates which turn to uh to good meat.
SPEAKER_00But that's why bodybuilders don't all they have is meat. They're like 100% keto, because they don't want to have any fat in their body or in their muscles, so they have none.
SPEAKER_01But the difference between somebody with type 2 diabetes and between another person in terms of the amount of sugar that's running around their blood is only one other teaspoon. Isn't that amazing? So one teaspoon more. One teaspoon more gets you to the stage of being a type 2 diabetic, and you might just be on the cusp of starting to lose limbs at that stage. That's how little extra sugar in our lives, external sugar, uh, we need to consume for it to become life-threatening. I mean, type 2 diabetes is life limiting. Uh, on average, it can reduce your lifespan by 10 to 15 years, I believe. Do a do a fact check. But it also opens the gate to all sorts of other diseases. And that I think isn't spoken about enough because people laugh off sugar as something that isn't that dangerous and it isn't toxic and it isn't impacting our liver and our mitochondria and our on our life. Uh, and it was one of the hardest things for me because I've got a sweet tooth. Yeah. And so I had to go, it's like, right, I'm gonna stop snacking. So no in i eating in between meals. And just yeah, to reduce that access to sugar because for me, the snacking was always invariably something sweet. It was the 11 o'clock let's dunk a biscuit, it was between lunch and and and dinner, let's have a little and you would even eat really cheap, awful sweets. My favourite was to sit on the sofa at night, um, watching some crappy television, like a I knew back to back, whatever, with a uh a tub of sweet popcorn, and I would pour a bag of Maltesers into it.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01And I might even have a side of ice cream.
SPEAKER_00Wow, amazing.
SPEAKER_01Amazingly bad. I mean, now I look at that. I mean, the popcorn arguably has a bit of fibre in it, but it was the sweet one. And it would be late at night. So you're just going to bed with a stomach that's full of sugar. Full of sugar, and you digest it. Yeah, your body's not using it.
SPEAKER_00Sleep means that your your sleep patterns will be your cell repair because your cell repair starts about 2 a.m.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the same enzymes that digest food repair your cells. If your stomach's full of food, it's set aside, which is fine once, but every night it means your body is never actually repairing itself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And that's my that's one of the big when people ask me about how do you give up sugar? I say the two things, and it will be hard at first, is to give up snacking and do not eat before you go to bed. Two to four hours ideally before you go to bed.
SPEAKER_00What do you think about having just something what about just having no refined sugar? Is that okay? That's that's my life. So I can't imagine a life. What would I do at birthdays, Christmases, Easters? We'd be obsessed with sugar traveling, picnics. But I find it if you know refined sugar is is actually an easier thing to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you're just cut you're just saying no entirely. And what I do is I take my new best friend dark chocolate with me. And if I know it's a birthday or a celebration, or we're out for friends for dinner, and I know they're going to have pudding, I will have some dark chocolate in my handbag and some nuts.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that will be my pudding. So while they're there, I will have that pudding. If you're in a really nice restaurant, you might say, Well, would you mind melting this dark chocolate over my nuts for me, please? And they will. Yeah. Um, and you make it, you're you're still a part of that social environment. But you have you do have to plan. And you asked me earlier about how do you introduce this into your life. It's about turning things into joy, it's about enjoying food preparation, enjoying buying good food, really embracing that, embracing the colours and the different foods and trying new things and making it familiar.
SPEAKER_00Because when when you say it's so hard to cook, say it's unfamiliar because anything becomes familiar, but hard stuff stays hard. And prepare Sundays. Do batch cooking and get stuff delivered. You know, I used to do batch cooking every Sunday. It's so easy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Here's something though that I'm sure people say, okay, no sugar. I'm just sweetening everything now with equal or splendor, and I'm making my own stuff, and I'm I'm having a coffee with four teaspoons of splendour instead of having a dessert. And they think that's good, but they don't understand that artificial sweeteners are also very carcinogenic.
SPEAKER_01I think the the research is beginning to point in the direction when it comes to artificial sweeteners that A, they're not great for our gut microbiome. Uh so the good bacteria and the bad bacteria, the bad bacteria doesn't really know what to do with these artificial sweeteners that have been created that over millions of years, our body is not used to uh ingesting. And they're made from petrochemicals too. Which is also I I'm I'm very anti petro on my skin and in my body.
SPEAKER_00You can get monk fruit, which is which is which is it's totally healthy. You get a good one, an organic one, don't have too much of it. Because even if you if you put in five teaspoons in your tea, you're training your taste buds to want sugar, just have half a spoon. You can wean yourself off sugar.
SPEAKER_01Or actually don't. I mean, I've completely I used to do the sweet tea and sweet coffee thing, and now I don't at all. I've I've completely trained my palate not to. If you really want something, if you do want that sweet treaty, put that in. There are so many things out there, as you said. Monk fruit, cinnamon is great, aeroverdic medicine relies, and aerovedic world relies very much on cinnamon. I give that to my children. It does. And there's another, this is a fantastic uh discovery that I've made in the last year: chicory syrup. So chicory syrup is very low GI, so glycemic index. It's very low, it's uh less than 5% sugar. It is a syrup, but it's sweet without being overly sweet. What can I say? Versus a maple syrup where you really get that hit. You can really taste the sweetness. It's more like a vanilla. Yes, people think honey is good for you.
SPEAKER_00They go, Oh, honey's from bees. I've heard that's really healthy. Well, honey from the supermarket isn't from bees. No, of course I know that. Either. Um but people think it's healthy because it's a few.
SPEAKER_01I would I would argue that an amazing wild honey um would be good for you if you could just have half a teaspoon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you have five or six, you're spreading it on toast and loads of it, then no. Anything in excess is not.
SPEAKER_01But again, important to say to people this is not about never enjoying food again. Of course. It's not about not having the joy, it's finding alternatives. Yeah. Cinnamon, vanilla, chicory syrup, and putting good stuff in.
SPEAKER_00Actually, it's more important to put good stuff in than to take bad stuff out. Yeah. So don't worry about taking everything out. Focus on what are you putting in apart from the sugar.
SPEAKER_01And you'll also then find yourself becoming fuller more easily.
SPEAKER_00And also your taste buds change in 31 days. When you take sugar out of your tea or coffee, you think, oh, it's horrible. When I gave up milk, I used to have tea with milk and honey. I can hardly believe it. I loved it. I wouldn't look at it now. And when I stopped, I really missed it. And now I like tea with ram and milk, I like black tea, I like herb tea. If you gave me a cup of tea with milk, cow's milk and honey, I could never drink it. I could not. But I at the time I loved it. Because your taste buds change in just 31 days. So you just have to think, okay, this is not hard, it is unfamiliar. But if I keep going, I mean I loved sugar too. I love chocolate, I love junk food. When when I was a student, I remember somebody, a boyfriend came around with a chicken to cook, and I didn't know my oven had never been connected. Because all my friends, they they lived on Cadbury's Smash and all the packets food. Packet food we didn't know, we had no idea how awful that was.
SPEAKER_01And sh uh chocolate now, there's this wonderful new phenomenon called lab-grown chocolate, which a lot of the big companies are investing heavily in. So lab grown, and also chocolate that's not chocolate anymore. It's got less less than 30%, less than 25% cocoa in there. It is it is sweetened and emulsified, and as you said, palm oil is added to it. So beware the uh the chocolate bar masquerading as a chocolate bar because it isn't.
SPEAKER_00And sometimes it helps to say, is it my body that wants this, or is it my mind? Because your body actually can't even digest that stuff, but your mind really wants it.
SPEAKER_01I have uh I've had all my I've had my DNA tested, I've had my my brain DNA pathways tested, and um psychologically, this is one of my pathways. I'm I I'm I I'm always looking for new projects, I'm break-driven. Um I've always got lots of plates spinning, and one of the side effects of that as well is that uh sometimes I just don't feel full. I can eat a lot. People always say to me, How where'd you put it all, Julia? Even you know, when I was eating lots and lots of sugar, it's like, why don't you put any weight on? What's what's happening with you? And it now I've replaced that sugar. I eat a big breakfast. I have a big plate of fibre and the protein, and then I have uh soaked nuts and coconut, and I put my blueberries in there. And people look at my breakfast in the morning and go, I could never do that. I would just would be, I could eat half of that. First of all, I can. It also fills me up for the day. I'm genuinely. So you're not snacking.
SPEAKER_00I'm not snacking. And you're eating some good fats.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good fats. My olive oil somewhere in there as well. When it comes to the night time, so my evening meal now, which is at five or six o'clock, I do want a little bit of dark chocolate. Well, I could keep going with that dark chocolate bar. So I have my my string, my I have my little my my allowance, and then I could just keep going because then I'm not you put it out of sight. I put it down and I say to myself, why do you want more? And the answer is you don't actually want more, and you can have this again tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Which is a very clever way. Because your psychology talks to your biology every single hour. Every day, your psychology talks to your biology. When you say, Why do you want more? You don't really want more. You can have it tomorrow. You've given your biology a great thing. More is for tomorrow, less is more. I think I need this, but I really don't. So what did you how did you have to dialogue with yourself? Again, that psychology biology. What did you have to tell yourself? What rules did you have to create and indeed quickly give up in order to come through cancer? I don't think about reoccurrence.
SPEAKER_01Obviously, thoughts pop into your head.
SPEAKER_00You don't have what you know they think scans I, I've got scans eye. Not at all.
SPEAKER_01Not at all. I I remember saying in an interview once, I will not, I refuse to live under a fear of reoccurrence. Everybody talks about it, and there's a conversation. Do you worry about it? Might come back. And I was like, no. I'm doing everything in my power to take out it like that. To take the best care of my body now. I'm doing really positive things. I'm feeling my body health and it's a very good idea. So you're giving yourself that you and cancer are done. Yeah, and I'm I'm putting myself there, and I don't want to have that fear. I don't want my cellular body to feel that fear.
SPEAKER_00Well, because fear creates cortisol. Cortisol creates inflammation, which is a precursor to cancer. So I often say, is this going to create cortisol? Is this really worth it? You know, I don't want cortisol in my body. So I often think about whether to say yes or no, depending on how much cortisol it might create.
SPEAKER_01But the other thing that I did which would potentially be contra for other people is I don't like to spend lots of time on forums. I get a lot of people who write to me asking for help and advice and just put them in the right direction. And I do that. And now you can just give me your book, which is so great. Thank you. But I found forums a bit depressing and a bit quite sad-inducing is the word I use. And it wasn't a place that I felt I could be, and I wouldn't be helpful to people, and I I wasn't able to help because I was in that state. So for me, those types of things where I know for some people they can be very supportive because you're going through the same thing or a similar thing, and you can swap stories. I found a lot of the time I wasn't going through the same thing because I'd put I'd put it behind me and I was moving forward, and I I didn't want to dwell. You said something brilliant to me when we had a cup of tea one day. You said, darling, I've heard you talk about my breast cancer diagnosis, and you must stop talking about it as my breast cancer diagnosis because it's gone.
SPEAKER_00But also because my is an ownership word. If I said, Hey, what do you think of my book? Look at my book. We're proud of it, we own it. Yeah, this is my home, meet my kids. What do you think of my boots or my shoes? So when you pre-visit it with my, it is an ownership word. And the brain doesn't get rid of something you own. You know, I work I found that when I worked with a client who'd been divorced for 25 years ago. My ex, he's ruined my life. I said, darling, he's not yours. I love that. 25 years he's moved on, he doesn't talk about you call him my ex-husband, you're prefixing it with my, that means you own it. Annex. Yeah. But the my was the big thing. Yeah. Because you can say the ex-husband, and there's no emotion. If my husband, if here's the wife, I go, well, I don't really like the wife. What is that? Or here's the PA.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Here's the um, here's the what when you say the, it's detached from you. So if you want to own something with pride, call it my, my beautiful heart, my great skill at being a coder. But if you don't want it, call it the. So I never said my can. So my mother would say, I've got one of my migraines. My migraines come back. I've got my tension headaches, my irritable bowel. And I learned then because she always called it my with a kind of pride. We don't always use the pride, but it's very important. Never call something my if you want to be free of it. If you don't want to own it, call it the.
SPEAKER_01I call it now and in interviews, you'll see yourself quoted a lot, A. I went through a cancer diagnosis, and then this is my journey, or this was my experience, or this is how I think it's my is fine, but never, it's not your cancer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. If someone said, I'm going to take that tumour, go, can I take it home with me? Because it's my tumour. People would think that was crazy. You're going, hey doctor, you know, when you take it out, put it in the case. Can I have it, please? I want to take it home because it's mine. You go, I don't want it. It's gone. Like, you know, when I had I had womb cancer, and it was very much I had it, and then I didn't. I went in, they took it away, and I didn't have it anymore. And actually, I called it can, because can't, I called it can. And can I can I can get over this. I can this is a blip. And I always called it can, but not cancer. Because I got and people come to me and go, Hey, I'm a cancer survivor. I said, No, I'm not one. I I'm not in that group. I don't want to even be in the cancer survivors group because I thought it visited me and it left again. And I didn't I understand it, but I didn't want to be someone who's going to a cancer survivors group every week because I want to leave it behind and talking about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're a thriver, not a survivor. Yeah, I like that. What advice would you give? You could actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna use Auntie Melissa, help me here. So when I talk about alcohol and I talk about how I don't drink anymore. I mean, I think I had a glass of wine last year. I call myself Teetotal, and I just say my choice. Here are the here are my this is my personal uh these are my personal statistics. I get lots of pushback on social media from people saying, Oh, Julia Brabbie shamed me. I really enjoy my glass of wine. That'll be my again at the end of the day. I really, you know, it's my treat. And I don't want, you know, I've I've I've lost so much since this diagnosis. I don't want to have to say goodbye to that. And and I don't, I don't, you know, I I I feel ashamed almost. I I always try and respond and say, first of all, I'm not saying I'm and would never tell anybody what to do. I'm just saying this is my situation. I frame it as I've got children, here are my statistics, uh, here's my choice, and here's why. It's a carcinogen, it's a toxin, it doesn't help you sleep, it's a said it's a sedative. Um, it's not helping your blood. You know, all the reasons that we know that alcohol is not good for you. What should I, how can I help people in that situation? What can I say?
SPEAKER_00I think you can say, you know, I did drink for 30 years, and 30 years I looked at what it gave me, and then I realized it I don't need it anymore. It's like saying, I got this J-Malone candle, but I need 30 more. And I've got that and I need 40 more. Because if the first candle made you happy, or the first cushion, or the first bag, or the first page, why do you need more? So everything you want in life is because of how it makes you feel.
SPEAKER_01So it makes them feel good, yeah, and it's their last treat, and they're holding on to it.
SPEAKER_00But some of these people are going through a serious illness, but it will make it, it will make it worse. So, first of all, it's not a treat. If your body could go, hey, I want loads and loads of wine, the body doesn't even like it. So, first of all, it's not a treat. And secondly, whatever it you think it makes, if you can get the feeling without the thing, you've won. So I might say, I need coffee to wake up in the morning, I need designer clothes to feel I'm matter, I I need to have, I need alcohol to relax, I needed to be happy. It's actually a depressant. People, a lot of people who drink a lot start crying. I had a neighbor like that. She drink and cry and drink and cry, and I was aware what a depressant it was. So you're lying to yourself. But you could just say I had it for 30 years, it was great, and now I don't because I've chosen to prioritize living. You know, I want to live a life. You know, when you're 99, you can have a few glasses of wine. Yeah. If you want to.
SPEAKER_01But for those people who feel the shame and feel almost affronted that you've suggested this, you've put this information together.
SPEAKER_00I'm saying it about you, not them, that it's free will. Yeah. So I'm gonna say, look, no Emma. No parabens, no sugar, and some supplements like uh I've got a membrane, turmeric. But you can pick one of those four, or you might say, I'm not giving up my shower gel. I love perfume. You know, I I heard that perfume was a new cigarette, so I don't have that. But I might spray it my hair occasionally. I might put it on my clothes, but I don't put it on my phone. On your thyroid, on your neck, and on your pulse points. No, I mean I if you want to put it in a cotton wool ball and tuck it in your jean pocket or even in your bra, that's fine. It makes me feel sick then. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it it's a choice. You might say, Oh, I I couldn't live without perfume, but you've still got to just go and find perfume without parabens in it. So it's what works for you. I couldn't live without sugar. Well, there's lots of really nice candy bars that have no refined sugar. Uh, you can get alcohol-free alcohol, but it's probably it's probably very highly processed. But you have to look at what works for you. And what works for you might not work for me, what works for me might not work for you. And we're not preaching, we're just saying, hey, look, here's all this advice. Take what works for you. You might find red light therapy or the um, what are those chambers called? Hyperbarics. Hyperbarics, yes. You might love it, you might love running. But you know, we're not preaching here. Yeah, you see, I thought I was doing so great with cold shells. I live in Dubai, then I thought, oh, actually, I'm not, because I came here and thought, well, I don't I love them in Dubai because it's so hot. But you must do what works you're like. Some people I love cold water swimming. Yeah. I really like getting in cold water and swimming. But I wouldn't tell anyone else to do it. They might say I like swimming in water. That my husband likes the water to be like bath temperature. I hate, you know, if you swim in Dubai in August, it's like swimming in a bath. He loves that. I hate it. I know I want it to be cold. We're not preaching to you, we're just giving you some advice.
SPEAKER_01Do you think we're all too comfortable these days? We live in these hermetically sealed rooms and we have air conditioning.
SPEAKER_00And we talked about instant gratification, we're all looking for instant gratification, you know, so I'm feeling pulling something, let me eat that, drink that, Netflix, it shop it. You and I had cancer, we would write to me and go, I thought you were healthy, I thought you were this mental health. How could you get cancer? Somebody wrote me and said, Oh, he had womb cancer. You must be very aggressive. Only aggressive people get womb cancer. And by the way, they hate their mothers. Just thought I'd tell you that. Well, thank you. Thanks for that lovely, that lovely talk. I'm aggressive and I hate my mother. But you know, it was really weird that I felt this sense of shame. Oh, I thought she was that health person that, you know, all the brain stuff sorted out. And it was really weird that I felt um very odd about that for a while.
SPEAKER_01But you've done what I've done, you've educated yourself along the way. And others. And others, and when you know, you know. So you know about parabens now, you know about environmental toxins. There was a very interesting study on women who do housework, and it's most women around the world who still does the housework and the unpaid. And these women didn't smoke, but they had lung cancer. Because of all the cleaning, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I knew I knew two cleaners who both died because they were cleaning houses for 10 hours a day and inhaling all the bleaches and the scents and then we've seen that in the nail salons too. The the girls who work there and inhaling all those chemicals.
SPEAKER_01Well, hairdressing salons, nail salons, cleaning products, those are really big environmental toxin exposures for people. I don't paint my nails anymore. I don't either. Don't do that. I'm not on my toes. And um, I'm very, very careful. I dye my hair and it's organic, and it is paraben-free, ammonia-free, PVD-free, and water-based.
SPEAKER_00And if you go into Sephora, they will actually, they've got a machine that will tell you what which products are organic and free of parabens and sulfates. I mean, so that's not actually hard. I think locyten do the same thing. So it's a choice. I'm not going to give up my products. Let me find, I'm not going to give up eating, but let me find better stuff. And the the nice thing is it starts off being what you do, but it does become who you are. And you know, also you have three children, you know, you're not going to leave them behind. So if if your statistic is I will be a mother if I don't drink, then it's a no-brainer because drinking might take you away from your children. And when you're a parent with cancer, you have an obligation to make them feel safe, to say it's okay. And I said, What a darling, this is just stage one. It's really nothing at all. Look at these statistics. But I wasn't going to start eating McDonald's and drinking coke and anything in front of her. Mamma, you shouldn't be doing that. Because it makes your kids feel better and your partner, if they can see, oh, look at my wife, mother, friend. She's taking some action, she is responsible for her health. And if you're not, that's kind of a worry for them because they see you just being very cavalier about it.
SPEAKER_01But the converse to that, the flip, is that uh your children or your partner think you're completely crazy and obsessed, and you've gone the other way. And it's like, when can we go for a pizza? When when can we do the burger? When can we do this? So I've had to master that balance. Yeah. And my my girls had a birthday recently. I've got twin girls and a son, and they wanted to do different things. And we went to a theme park on one day, and we went to a an interactive show on uh an interactive um experience on another day. And they both wanted burgers on those days. And I had burgers two days running. I haven't eaten a burger for three or four years. One of them was a vegetarian one. I didn't have the bun. Um, I just had, you know, whatever else it came with. And then the next day, we there was another burger. They had milkshake, they had fries. I had it in a lettuce leaf and it was grass fed. And I was like, you know what? These are my children, it's their birthday, it's one weekend.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna do it. But also, studies say that if you do 80% of the time, it's as good as 100%. And also that being fanatical actually is contraindicator. So if you say I'm doing this 80% of the time and I've had two burgers in two days, so on the third day I'm gonna be super healthy, and my body can deal with it. So it's good not to be fanatical, and I think you're doing the right thing because you're having joy and fun, and you don't want to be going, oh, you shouldn't eat that and you shouldn't do that, but you're doing it for you. When people say you're obsessed, I say I'm devoted. Well, I say I'm obsessed with living, probably. I'm obsessed with living. You know, apparently the worst time to die is in the next 10 years, but if you can live by the next 10 years, you might be able to live forever. That's right. I'm not gonna miss out on that. No, incredible stuff happened. I'm obsessed with getting through the next 10 years. It's really important. You know, I remember when I had cancer, somebody who I thought was a friend, like she called me, should my neighbour had that. They were dead in three months. It's very aggressive, and I thought, wow.
SPEAKER_01What two types of cancer did you have?
SPEAKER_00I had womb cancer, and the colon cancer, right? Two years apart. But this was um in 2017 and 2015, so now um actually 11 years and nine years, so I feel pretty good. Yeah. And I always said it's a blip. Me and cancer are done, it's been, it's statistically, I feel great. I'm like you, I don't think about it too much. I think about ways to keep my cortisol levels down. I'm not a fanatically, I mean, I might have some chocolate occasionally. I would never drink Diet Coke or eat Pringles. I just think they're just full of chemicals. I'm quite well they're not a crisp, by the way, if anybody thinks they're a completely manufactured mushed together products in that shape.
SPEAKER_01No potatoes.
SPEAKER_00Nothing, no. So you know, but it's a choice, isn't it? We're all different. I know people who say, Well, I've been through that, I deserve to live my life how I want to live, and it's all fate. I could get run over by a bus and they just do what they've always done. But for me, I wanted to feel I was doing the very best I could to live my best life. It you know, it's about living your life on your terms. It might not be someone else's terms. And you know, every other apparently 50% of people are going to get cancer now. It's extraordinary, one in two. So I was told I had Lynch syndrome, which is why I got cancer twice. It means your body doesn't know you've got it and it can't fight it. And then they say statistically got a 50% chance of well, that's the same as everyone else. So I didn't feel that bad. I thought, wow, it's like saying I've got the BRACA gene. I'm 50% like to get cancer, but now so is everyone else because of pollutants and environment and stress.
SPEAKER_01Which is why managing ourselves and taking responsibility for our own health, as we say, is the most important thing we can do. Having agency over our health.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, don't give that, they never say, hey doctor, here's my illness. Can you fix it? Here's my illness. How can I participate in recovering?
SPEAKER_01How many people go to a doctor, and the NHS isn't set up like this either in the UK? Go to a physician or go to a doctor and say, Will you check me out? And I want to stay as healthy as possible. And will you help me to maintain my health? When do people do that? Yeah, well, almost never.
SPEAKER_00Mostly when they're ill. So you're taking drugs that have side effects, you're in a, you know, I I hate going to the doctors. I don't even want to go to I hate, I won't go to the bathroom in the hospital. I think all the germs in there, all the sick people, it's not their fault. But I I want to avoid going to a place of illness. So when I when I had cancer, I would always say my body is a wellness-making machine. Because here's another thing if you can visualize wellness, you know, studies show on PEP scans, if you visualize all your cancer cells being attacked by non-cancer cells, it actually happens. And we know that because if I think of something sad, won't my eyes fill up with tears? If I think of something sexual, I might get aroused. I'm sitting at home reading, and I say, oh if I think of food, if I see a picture of it, my stomach rumbles. And if I think of something upsetting, I might blush. And if I think of something annoying, I might get really angry. I'm currently watching the news and what's going on, I can get angry. So I'm thinking a thought, my body's making it real. We know that happens just by the teary eyes when you watch a cat video on something. And then we have the placebo proof that what you think of a drug affects you more than what's in it. So if I'm thinking my body is fighting cancer, my body is doing wellness, my good cells are surrounding the cancer sound. If I think of that, I know it happens because there was a study when the Rainbow Children Sort of in Cleveland, where they had these little kids watch a puppet show so long ago because I had a policeman puppet that was hitting the other one with a trunch, and they never do that now. But anyway, this was a germ, and this was the policeman. He was beating up the germ, and all the kids watched it. That's very funny, like punching Judy. And they closed and said, just imagine this is happening in your body. Imagine you've got the good cop going, beating up all the germs, and they took swabs of their cheeks within five minutes. The immunoglobulin levels had gone up so high, they were literally fighting an infection because they saw it. And so it's something we're not taught enough. If you have cancer or diabetes or any kind of illness, if you can imagine your own body doing wellness, and then you go to places like Lourdes and say, I now felt the healing power. But it's the placebo going on in you.
SPEAKER_01Something I do every morning, um, and I've done this for the last four or five years. Uh, I do breath work, I get in the morning light, I sit on a windowsill, I look at nature, I listen to the birds, uh, I do some chanting, which I learnt in India, uh, because it's and the chanting is for everybody else, it's for other people, it's to put some. But can I ask you why?
SPEAKER_00What is the science behind the light and the bird song? I know it, but I want you to say that.
SPEAKER_01I will explain it, but I'm let me finish the bit because it ends with you, which is lovely. So I do all of those things, and I'm going to tell you why in a moment. And at the end of that breathwork of morning light and bird song, which I'll explain the scientifically benefits in a moment. At the end of that, I have an affirmation, a positive life affirmation for me. Okay. And the beginning of the affirmation is I am kind and loved. And then it goes, I am kind and loving. And then I continue with other positive, positive things. My mind is alert, it's retentive, I'm feeding my body health. And then the Marissa line comes in, which is I deserve phenomenal health. And I deserve phenomenal wealth.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01And I am deserving of, and I deserve. And that is my those are my final two words, which are yes, I'm here, I'm underneath my trees, I should be here. I deserve to be here. Yeah. And I am doing everything I can for my health. And the wealth is abundance wealth, it's not money, money, it's being rich. Yeah, rich in state. Yeah, wealthy because you have love. The science of the morning light is very compelling. And if people uh watch the Andrew Huberman Huberman podcast, he talks a lot about this. But so do lots of biohackers and health and wellness experts. But when you get morning light uh into your eyes, first of all, trying to do it at the same time every morning, what you're trying to do is live by your circadian rhythms. So we've evolved to to be in sync with the circadian rhythm of Earth. Yeah, we're gonna be able to do that. So we we want to sleep when it's dark, wait when it's light. When you get that morning light into your retina, uh signals travel to a part of your brain called the SCN, the supercharismatic nuclei or nucleus, and that then delivers a series of signals to your whole body to release or hold back hormones for the day. So melatonin starts to reduce because you've been using melatonin has been rising at night, and cortisol starts to rise because cortisol in the morning, that cortisol awakening response, C-A-R, and you can do a test to have a look and see how your cortisol works throughout the day, which is fascinating. Uh, the cortisol awakening response is that's good cortisol. It's getting us ready for the day. It's preparing us to move, it's preparing us to hunt, it's preparing us to head off to a different, uh, uh a different place, perhaps, uh as our ancestors would have done. It's preparing us to look after our children and our or our partners. So that's that's the good thing. You want that spike in the morning, and the morning light helps that. Uh, it helps to deliver that awakening response. So that's the science behind it, as well as handling a lot of your other hormones and serotonin. So that's why that is important. Five to ten minutes, longer if you can.
SPEAKER_00What would you do in the middle of winter when it's dark and rainy? So you still, wherever you are in the world, you're gonna get your morning light. I'm gonna get my morning light. It's not as great, but it's still there. It's still there. And you can you can get portable light boxes. And the opposite of that is if you sleep in the pitch, pitch, pitch black, every system in your body, including your metabolic system, resets itself. So people, yeah. Well, I I use an eye mask. I I can't bother to shut and open my curtains. So I've got so many windows in my bedroom. But I'm and the wraparound eye mask, but of course you can't press against your eye because then you can't get the rim. So you want the ones of the little indentations for your eyes. But you know, an eye mask or blackout blinds or shutting your curtains. But you're correct, it's pitch black at night and daylight as soon as you wake up, it it does wonder. It's this Mother Nature doing her work for you. It doesn't cost you anything.
SPEAKER_01And honestly, I feel so much better after that 10-15 minutes. It's literally like having a cough. That's amazing, and yet nobody knows. It's a complete boost. Then the positive affirmations, you know why I'm doing that. You can tell everybody why I'm doing that.
SPEAKER_00Because your psychology is having a conversation with your biology. I'm programming myself. So people who say I always get sick, I get every headache, oh, I get every allergy in the summer, every cold in the winter. If I eat that, you know, you're actually this is a statement. Your mind's job is to make your thoughts real, and your job is to think better thoughts. I'd never go, that'll make me sick, that'll make me fat. I go, Well, no, I can eat that and burn it all off. Um on the whole, I I don't eat stuff that's really bad for me. If I might, I wouldn't go, I'm gonna get sick now, or I've just been with my little grandson sneezing, and now I'm gonna get ill. I stayed up too late, now I'm gonna be the next day's gonna be a write-off. Because one of the rules of your mind is what you expect is almost always real. Because I knew it. I knew I'd get sick, I knew that was the mistake, I knew I'd get dumped, I knew that wouldn't work, but then we still go into it. So you have to have better expectations. I expect my body to recover fast, I expect my body to bounce back, I expect a little cold to be gone in three days, and I expect all the good stuff I'm doing to keep me free of cancer forever.
SPEAKER_01When I was a little girl, I was bullied at school, and I remember being at home uh in in Sheffield, and I was obsessed with television. I loved Tiz Was, I loved Chris Ever, uh Chris uh Tarrant and that whole team, and I knew somewhere that I wanted to do something in television. Um, and I remember sitting, I was actually on the loo when I was a little girl. I must have been about 12, and I imagined myself being interviewed for a magazine article. Isn't that amazing? And it happened.
SPEAKER_00And it happened a thousand times. Yeah, you know, when I wrote my first book, I think, oh god, I've never written before. Is this any good? And I go, no, I can see it in the window of WH Smith's, and I can see people at the airport reading it, and I focused on that, and my mind made that happen because you know you think a thought and you actually make it real. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad. In fact, the mind doesn't know the difference between a good thought and something you're imagining. Is it are you imagining it or is it real? Which is why if you imagine your body healing itself, the body doesn't know it's an imagination, it thinks it's real, so it starts, oh, that's just a placebo. But what you're saying is your body is making itself better all by itself because you think you're taking a drug. And and the that that the throwaway of it's just placebo, just placebo, as you said, is incredibly amazing. The body will heal itself with a thought. And so, rather like you, you you visualize yourself being on TV, I visualize writing books, and you know, it's you know, first I think I'm gonna write a book. I think, no, no, I'm gonna write a book that helps people. Then I thought I'm gonna write a best-selling book that helps. And now my mind is very clear, there's no confusion. And now my mind's gonna help me have the energy to write that book for eight hours and really apply myself because I've told it this is what I require. But if you go, oh, I'm gonna write a book, what if it's awful? Nobody buys it, awful reviews, your mind will say, Don't do it, don't sit at your desk. It's very important to tidy up every sock, there's socks need to be put in together, cushions need forks that need to be lined up, because you've told it it's gonna be awful. Because your brain wants to move you away from pain all the time, but you get to choose what pain is. And so, with cancer, with diabetes, with any illness at all, you've often said you believe cancer saved your life. So it because you'd have gone on eating the popcorn with a whole bag of Maltese and probably for years.
SPEAKER_01I'm pushing myself, pushing it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So sometimes we get away and think, you know, this I needed this wake-up call. This is probably a very good thing. Because it's never what happens, it's how you feel about it. And I think I love the fact that you used the cancer that visited you to write a book to say to other people, look, you have all these options. And many of them are free. Yeah, there were so many. Breath work is free, daylight is free. Sleeping in the dark is free. You know, we you know, when I go, I went to the health optimization, I went to a lot, I go to a lot, I speak at a lot of biohacking summits. You think, Oh my god, there's so much stuff. I mean, when I spoke at this biohacking summit in Texas, I just it was like it was so much stuff. It's like, where do you start? Start with the stuff that's free, breathing, sleeping, you know, do the four things our grandparents did. Go to bed before midnight and sleep in the dark, drink water, move your body, and put some green stuff in your body. I mean, this is not hard work. If you can do those four things, talk to people, connect with people, and and also talk to yourself. The fifth thing is how do you dialogue with you? Do you go, oh cancer's come upon me, and that's it now? I've got the alcoholic gene, so it's not my fault. I've got the fat gene, I've got the depression to think, you know what, I don't want the depressed gene. I'm not having that. I'm going to say no to that, I'm going to fight back. There are many people who've had all kinds of issues. Again, Bob Champion was already never have children. Gary Lineker's son had leukemia when he was a tiny baby. There are a lot of people who've had all kinds, but they've bounced back.
SPEAKER_01You can override your DNA and you can override your genetic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love Bruce Lipston for that. Bruce Lipton, he's amazing. Yeah. Epigenetics.
SPEAKER_01I was told um I've had I've had all of those, the, the, the DNA tests, and uh one of my uh consultants said to me, It's incredible. She said, You've got all these SNPs, single nucleotide, uh nucleotide polymorphisms, all of these things that indicate that you it could tip in the wrong direction for you. And it's testament to what you're doing that none of this has happened.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because you're working on that with your nature, you're working on that because you've given up alcohol, you're working on that because you're reducing your cortisol, you're working on that because you do the gratitude and the chanting. And you can have agency over these things. It is not a fatal concept.
SPEAKER_00You must have agency, you know. It's never what happens, it was what you do about it. And some people who've faced adversity and written books have given other people hope. Oh, look at that. You know, look at Kylie Manoek had breast cancer, Cheryl Crow, and they're still here. And it gives people hope. I think you're a great role model for women and men because they go, Well, look at Julia, turned her life around, is actively participating in her wellness, not her illness. And but you're also saying you can do it too. You don't have to do what I do, but you can do some of what I do. And that's the thing that when you feel you have no power and no choice, you do. You have a choice to talk yourself out of being negative and into being positive, and a choice to think, well, what could it's like if someone said you've got a had a heart attack, okay. I can't eat bacon and sausages and fry-ups anymore, and I need to go for a walk. We accept that with heart attacks, but with cancer, I think it's changing now. We're understanding diet, exercise, what you put in, what you take out, what you put on your skin, what you ingest, what you inhale.
SPEAKER_01And what you consume visually as well. You were talking about the news. Yeah. At the moment, the news is incredibly negative. Yeah. And it could really get us done. I don't listen to the news in the morning anymore. I learn stuff throughout the day. I I have people who I can talk to about, oh, what's happened? What's he done? What's she done? Where are we at? But I don't it I find it upsetting, and I don't want that's I don't have that emotional bank for that.
SPEAKER_00If I'm reading the paper on my iPad and go, that's going to upset me, I just scroll on. I think, what is the point? You know, we have to take responsibility for how we feel. And it's no one else's job, it's your job. To go, that will upset me. That isn't good for me. You know, if I'm going to stay up until 3 a.m. drinking, that's not good for me. I'm I'm going to say no to that. You know, I I had a silly thing, but someone called me and said, Hey, I want to take you out for dinner. I've got a place in this amazing best restaurant in California. We've got a table at half ten. I'm like, I don't I know. No. Does that mean we're going to be eating at half eleven? She said, but it's so hard to get it. I thought that's probably we've got a table at half ten. I said, I really am so grateful you tried, but on a weekday, there's no way I can never go out for dinner at half ten. I can be there at one in the morning, and it's so bad for me. So you have to learn to say, it's like it doesn't work for me. It's like someone turning come out with loads of cakes, go, well, you know, I was working on a TV show recently in the East End and they had pink donuts. And some and I said, Um, could you get me some hard boiled eggs? Or even a can of tuna, yeah, and I've got some tuna fish. I just can't, I'm, I I would not eat one of those things.
SPEAKER_01I made sure in a uh uh I made sure in a campaign last year that I was involved in, a cancer campaign, that um the option for a coffee morning, yeah, I made made it very clear that you don't have to bring cakes, cook cakes, do cakes, that there are uh other ways, there are other things, there are lower, lower sugar options, there are keto options, there are fruit and there's gluten-free and there's fruit and nuts. And I was that was my when they asked me to participate, I said, I will absolutely I'll support this incredible charity because you're helping people through cancer diagnosis. Of course I will, but it's very important to me that we make it clear that this sort of cake morning idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And you know what? Pulling people together, the community aspect, helping others, being there together, all of that is incredibly positive. And that's wonderful, but it doesn't have to be about the cakes.
SPEAKER_00It's like if you check into hotels, they always have free cookies, and often they'll leave you free cakes or church, they never leave you like nuts and seeds.
SPEAKER_01I went out with a hotelier many, many years ago, and he explained to me why they always put the red lollipops on the counter. He said people love the red lollipops. There's there's barely anyone that doesn't like the red lollipops. So it's the red sweets and the red lollipops because they love them in a glass jar.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow, but why do they love them?
SPEAKER_01Because they look like sweet cherries, it's the it's that sweetest, it's that that's the that's the most attractive sweet. It's the berries, it's back to our primal. Our primal.
SPEAKER_00That's going to be really because, of course, in nature, a red apple, a red onion is better than a green one. Red, anything red is better than green.
SPEAKER_01And one of my big things when I was the sugar addict is was wine gums. I love the red ones. They were my favourite. I could literally get rid of all the yellow ones.
SPEAKER_00Like red and black jelly babies. Yeah. What self-talk sustained you through cancer? What did you have to tell yourself or say to yourself to get through it?
SPEAKER_01I think it's important to have your motivation to find your motivation. So for me, actually, it was very easy because my self-talk was, I'm not leaving my children. Mine was exactly the same. I'm going to be a mother, I'm going to see them when they are adults. I'm going to be here for that. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that that happens. And I spoke about this uh actually on another podcast. I did something called prehab. Nobody had told me about prehab. I researched prehab. You've heard of rehab, rehab, but not alcoholic rehab, rehab rehabilitation after an injury. So let's get you strong again. Let's work if it's your knee, let's work on the muscle surrounding the knee, let's get you back to where you were. Prehab is in anticipation of something coming your way and preparing your body for that. So with a mastectomy, they cut you open, they're cutting through your pectorial muscles, they jolt you upright, they cut off your breast, they lift up the tissue. It's gruesome. It's a big, big operation. Um, so I wanted to be ready for that operation. So I worked on my upper body strength. I made sure my pecs were as strong as they could be, my arms were as strong as they could be, my respiratory health was as as strong as it could be because I was going under an anesthetic. That's bad for your heart, it's bad for your brain, it's bad for your body. I was ready for that operation because I wanted to be able to be up and out of that bed and walking up and down the hospital stairs as quickly as possible. And not just fever for your children, and not just but for my children. Because they were quite young. They were they were, I think my girls were six. So my you know, my son was nine. Yeah, they were, they were, they were little tots, they don't remember it, which I'm very happy about. And there was another interesting thing. I have I've never not when I'm traveling, I could be away for work. I I've never not spoken to my children every day and video called them, seeing them every day. When I went into hospital, I prepared them for the fact that they wouldn't maybe see me for five days. And I said that to them. I said, I love you, I'm going to have something, I'm going away, I'll be back in five days. Daddy will talk to you, but you're not going to see mummy for five days. And I did that because I did not want them to see me ill. Of course, because then you were trying to prop men up while you're trying to recover. And I didn't also want that in their minds. I didn't want them to be thinking about that moment because you look terrible after an operation. You're I was cut open, I had a bandage, I had a drip, you know, you've got the drains, you've got you've got the compression socks on. You know, it's like immediately after giving birth, you might have the glow, but after soon soon after that, you're looking pretty dreadful. And I think that was very important for me, but very important for them. They don't have that image of me. I came back, and for them, I was the same. I was a little bit softer, as I needed to be more gentle.
SPEAKER_00You know, it's interesting you said that because I worked with a girl years ago who got very sick, and she told me that her mother had breast cancer when she was 10, and she fought it for eight years, and then she died, and she said, illness comes to get you. There's nothing you can do about it, because that's what she saw. This was some time ago, and the mother probably didn't do anything except the drugs and the surgery, and she got very burnt, the mother with the radio. Right. So she saw the mother, this is probably looking really ill, vomiting after chemo, burnt after radio. And then she got on, she said, illness comes for you. There's nothing you can do. Because that's what she saw. So she formed a belief which went on to she made a belief which went on to make her. Then we have confirmation, plus we're looking for proof of what we believe. But your beliefs are yours to change. Did you survive? Oh, the mother died. She survived, she survived because she realized that all these illnesses, she had Lyme's disease, all kinds of weird things, but she realized they were all because of watching her mother get ill. So she felt it was coming her way anyway. The mother wanted to live so much, but she didn't. You know, here's you and I saying I was not going anywhere. You know, for some people they they they can't say that, or it's not we're not saying for every mother in the world, just say what I said. But we knew it would work for us. I knew when I said I'm not leaving my daughter, I was there was no way I was gonna leave. I would have done anything, whatever it took, I was gonna live. And I do have a friend who was very sick, and I said, you know, you can say to the doctor, I'll try anything, any drug, I don't care what it is, I want to live at any cost. And he has because they gave him an experimental drug. And it works, and he's still here, but it's that at any cost, you know, I would have been bald in a wheelchair. Yes, I would have been obese if I had been, I wouldn't have cared. They could have cut anything off me.
SPEAKER_01I remember saying that to my partner.
SPEAKER_00I was going to live for my daughter and for myself. I had a wonderful life. I didn't want to, I didn't want it to go away. I was on stage a week later. I bounced back. I said to my partner, I will do anything and everything. Yeah. But I have another friend who said, I'm not prepared to do anything. So I'm not prepared to have chemo, I'm not prepared to have rain, I'm not prepared to lose my hair, so I'm not prepared, I'd rather go actually, than go through that. And so I know someone's just not prepared to stop smoking. Why should I stop smoking? It's I'd rather die early. In fact, Nigella Lawson's husband said that. He said, I'm not going to give up anything.
unknownGosh.
SPEAKER_00So that can happen.
SPEAKER_01That's a that's a that's a that's a mindset I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01Um, but we or that again, back to agency.
SPEAKER_00I've driven past Chancellor and seen people outside with one leg smoking, you must be in their wheelchair. So some people are actually not prepared, probably because they believe it's such hard work and no guarantee. But of course, it isn't work. It's not work to eat better and to sit in the morning and get light on your eyes and here, but in fact, it becomes a joy. You find so much joy in new, unexpected things. Yeah, and of course, the also the brain, like neurobics, means newness. So if you pick up your drink with the other hand or your phone or clean your teeth with the other hand, it keeps your brain very active. So newness is actually very good. But I think people who don't fight have that belief it's so hard, it's all joyless. And what's the point? What's the point's not going to work? But if you think, but actually, we don't think that, and we're all allowed to think whatever we think. I can't make you think what I think. I can only tell you what I think, and I'll accept what you think. But it is interesting that um you know, I was listening to David Bowie's song when he died, and the stuff he talked about, and he sort of fought it and then accepted it. And sometimes, you know, I've worked with people on their way to a hospice who have got to that state of acceptance. I don't want to fight it anymore, I don't want another ten years of this, I don't want my kids to see me going through another five years. I I want to go now. I I can't have my children watching this. And I understand. And how could you possibly argue with those words? I want to go now. Yeah, I understand them completely. I'd love to ask you another question about this word schangxiety.
SPEAKER_01Skangxiety is when you are heading for that screening, whichever it might be. So it could be a mammogram, it could be an MRI, it might be an ultrasound, and you feel this apprehension, this fear that um something's going to be discovered and you're going to get ill and you're going to die. You know, that would be uh that would be the potentially the thought pattern. I have the opposite of anxiety. I want to test everything. That's nice. I want to, I've had full-body MRIs, I've had a brain scan, discovered that I have a cyst benign next to my pineal gland. Really interesting because I struggle with my sleep, I work hard on my sleep, but I have a cyst against my pineal gland that will be impacting my sleep. I know it's impacting my sleep, so I've come to peace with it, and I do everything. I have the cool room, I have the eye mask, I try to go to bed at the right time. Lavender oil pillows. So I'm fighting hard to work on that, and I am still. And it's the sleepers creeping over me, I'm not falling to sleep, which I know.
SPEAKER_00You thought of visualizing that cyst shrinking.
SPEAKER_01I have thought about that, and actually I wanted to talk to you about it.
SPEAKER_00I do this thing called commanding your body. You see, the body likes military type language. If you say, here's the thing: I'm trying to fall asleep. First of all, the brain hates the word trying because it's a misdirected. I'm gonna say, hey, I'm gonna try and pick up this can and drink it. I wouldn't say I might say I'm gonna try and read your book, but you know I'm not gonna read it. I'll try. So trying implies failure. Falling is one of the few fears we're born with. You know, if you pick up a newborn baby, it does that. And we all we have often have a lot of people. Yeah, have that startle reflex. And then I'm trying to fall pregnant. Is that you might start to say to your brain, bananas, blueberries, and oranges, because trying implies failure. Falling is a fear, and pregnant does not ever mean you'll have a baby. You can have eight pregnancies and no child. But if you say, I'm conceiving a perfect healthy child tonight, growing it, raising it, so you've got a little cyst. You can imagine it going from a grape to a raisin, just shriveling up and becoming smaller and turning to dark. So I can do that. I can look at it. And then what you do is you say, I command that cyst to shrink. And imagine heating it up with a heat lamp, so all the liquid, or imagine sucking out the liquid. You could because when you're thinking it, the body's actually doing it. You know, studies show that if you visualize your embryo attaching, your chance of success goes up by 50% just by thinking of it. So now you've got a little, let's imagine it's like a little grape. I don't know what size, what size is it? It's like a lozen shape. Like a little tiny, a small grape. So you say I I instruct, I direct, instruct, command that little grape to shrivel up to the tiniest pinhead raisin. So you see it, the picture, and you say, I direct, I instruct, I command, I compel that, not my that little thing to shrivel up, it's becoming a tenth of its size, a twentieth of it, it's turning to dust. You've got to use very specific language, it must make a picture. The brain only responds to if you say it's a bit meh, or it's it's going away, that's not a picture. But I it's shriveling up, it's losing all its moisture, it's become tiny, it's become dust. So I direct, I command direct, instruct, command, code, compel. You don't have to say all of it. Yeah, direct to instruct, command, code, compel. It's actually in the book, and I'm going to give you a copy. You're directing your body to shrink it. And if you think about it, that people say, Oh, I knew I'd get that cold. Because when you think it's like an erection, what is that? You think a thought, your body goes, Oh, I've just made that real.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we know that thoughts are things, but you can get rid of that. You don't want to have surgery, but you can direct it to shrivel away. You know, I got run over three years ago, and I was told you're going to have a limp, your left leg always shorter than your right, you'll never wear heels again, and you won't walk for six months. And every day I said to my left leg, I command you use that right leg as a model and heal super fast. And I had a very good doctor who said it's not the bones, the ligaments must knit together. So I'd imagine they're literally knitting, knitting, knitting, fiercely knitting. I walked in six weeks, my legs are the same size, I wear hair heels, I've never had a limph. But I directed every day, so I'd direct instruction code my left leg to use my right as a mirror and to be exactly the same. So I'd imagine the bones growing back, and I knew that you have little um little flakes like snow that would land and you'd grow bone cells, osteoblast cells. Yes. I knew what it looked like. So you could really. Yeah, but I only did it, you know, and before that I had a time when I I thought there was something wrong with my tooth. My dentist said, You must have a high pain, he said, You've got a whole ulcer, you've got bone loss. They took the tooth out. Cost about two grand. And he said, Oh, actually, you've got bone loss, now you need a bone graft. That's probably another four grand. I thought, I'm not gonna have a bone graft. So I went home and I said, I command that bone to grow back. And I know that bone is like honeycomb, it's not solid. And every day for just a couple of minutes, I'd say, I command the bone here to grow back, and it's gonna hug that implant like a tight pull of next room. I went back in. He said, It's amazing, it's all grown back. Eight weeks. And I only did it for two or three minutes a day. It wasn't like this is work, it was just when I'm wandering around putting it. It's like Joe Dispenser with his back. Of course. He fixed his back. You can fix anything because the mind knows how to heal. I mean, if I cut my arm, it will heal. But you can make that go away, but you've got to really see it shriveling. Yeah. You can imagine squeezing it like a pimple or um lasering it or put or heating it up or anything you like. Turning to dust. Or just imagine a little grape that you leave in the hot sun becomes a tiny razor, and then if you take it between your hands, it just becomes nothing at all. So it's turning to dust, and then your body's just sucking it out. See, I love it. Say, I direct, instruct, code, I command, I compel. The brain loves this commanding. You know, if you think of saying to your kids, Oh, would you mind sitting down and reading it? So sit down, get a book, be quiet. They commanding language makes us pay attention. So I commanded my body to bounce back from cancer, and you did too, in a different way. But you can get rid of that. Okay. And then say, never say, I'm trying to fall asleep, or I'm trying to go to sleep. Because first of all, nobody wants to fall and where are you going? You fall the lights off. Very confusing. I'm going somewhere. So I thought you got just got into bed. So you say sleep is coming to me and it's staying with me. Sleep is descending upon me like a mist, it's covering me like a blanket. You're waking up onto me. Yeah, sleep is coming. The Norwegian for going to bed is sleep is descending upon me. So much better. So you say sleep is, you know, like when you're on a train trying to work, you can think, oh my god, I can feel I was the other day I was reading my phone, and I I could feel this sleep. I had to put it away, and I fell asleep on the sofa. Because I could feel it coming upon me. So you say, sleep is coming to me. And you can say, I I insist, I demand, I code sleep to come to me and stay with me for eight hours, and it will. And that little thing is just shriveling up and it can't interfere with your sleep because you won't let it.
SPEAKER_01You see, had I not had my full body MRI and my brainstem, I wouldn't know, I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be talking about, and I wouldn't feel as empowered as I do to do something about it. And I am one of those people that I want to know if something's going on. So there's no anxiety because I will deal with whatever.
SPEAKER_00For you, it's a great thing. It's giving you information. Yeah, you get information, you deal with the information you get, no information.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I'm a big proponent of scanning when you can, MRIs, magnetic residence imaging. It's not harmful, there's no radiation. Uh do that when you can, see how your body is. I've had my heart checked, my cardiac, all in great working order. I take my bloods very regularly. So your scans have given you reassurance. Yeah. Yeah, and it's positive. Um, I do bloods, and there are some things on my bloods that I'm not happy with. I'm working on them. I have an amazing functional medicine doctor. We know that there's not massive problems, we can see there's something going on there. What do we do? How do we address it? What lifestyle changes, if any, can I do? Because knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. And I genuinely believe that. Me too.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So, yes, anxiety is not something that I feel. And it's always when I am doing these tests and I'm showing them on social media and I'm writing about them, I always say, also, I'm here to do this for you. I'm I'm doing things for other people to show this is available, this is available, this is available. It's a buffet. Take your choice. Yeah, take what works for you. What does work for you? If you are genuinely anxious, then don't do that. But if you're dealing with some issues, if you've got massive mental health problems, or let's say you're very overweight and you're struggling and you can't move, you can't get out of the chair, if you're really feeling depressed and down, then why would you not want to find out what is going on and what can I do about it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, one of my clients told me that he was morbidly obese and he took his two little girls to a party and they said, Daddy, when you come to pick us up, don't get out of the car. Nobody must see how fat you are. And of course, they didn't come out. So he walked down the path, rang the bell, they went, We're gonna get bullied now. Everyone knows how fat you are. So I sat in the car and I just cried, but I couldn't get a handle on it. But when he realized what it was doing, what it was costing him, he sort of had an epiphany. And he realized that when he was a premature baby whose mother would cry when he didn't feed and would get very anxious. And when he did feed, she was very happy. So his brain picked up a belief, Oh, I'll die if I don't feed. And of course, he would die from being a beast, and he's lost all that weight. He he now goes running with the kids and swimming and is normal. Life changing. He made a decision. A decision is a Latinum is to cut off from. And there are people I've seen some videos, people who were in a wheelchair, couldn't move, and then thought, I've done this to myself. I'm just eating myself. I I don't want to do this. I'm going to change. I also know people who haven't, and have you know, I know someone who I worked with was 800 pounds. I really loved him. He was so great. He died because he died. Actually, he did lose 400 pounds, but it was still 400 pounds left. 400 pounds to lose. But he'd been abused as a child, and he always thought this thought, I need to be big. If I was big, that person wouldn't have hurt me. If I was big, I could have fought back. And you see, he had a brain. That wasn't a fleeting thought, it was a fixed thought. I need to be big to be safe. Because he was molested by a neighbor, and then of course that thought became an expectation.
SPEAKER_01And isn't it interesting? Other somebody else in that position might have gone, I need to be big, so I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna be super strong, and no one's ever gonna do that to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because if you look at the karate people, they're not big, but they are strong. So yeah, it's interesting how we we think our thoughts, we make them real, but we can change our thoughts. How did you manage fear?
SPEAKER_01I say to myself almost every day, I'm not frightened. I believe I'm a capable human being.
SPEAKER_00But going in for the surgery, that kind of fear, or just getting the diagnosis.
SPEAKER_01I was I was frightened. And actually, I would say that I accepted that fear. Uh this was all before my uh my mastectomy. I accepted the fear as a natural emotion for a situation that I didn't fully understand. I had no idea what was going to happen on the other side of this operation. I didn't know how I would feel losing a breast. I didn't know if I would look the same again. I it was it was the unknown. And the mind doesn't really like the unknown. Oh no, Dr. It likes the familiar, not the unfamiliar. And because I didn't know, and because there's nobody could tell me, I mean, my breast surgeon could show me as many photographs of women who'd been through a similar thing as he wanted, but it didn't mean that that was going to be me. Was my nipple going to be saved? Was the tumour going to be removed with the right margin? None of this was known, I hoped. But I actually gave in to that fear and I let it out. I cried a lot, and I was, and I openly cried a lot because I actually felt that was a good thing to do. Where tears go, healing began. I wanted to release it. I wanted to release it, and I wanted, I wasn't afraid for other people to see me being that that frightened, and I put it in my documentary, and I felt that it was actually quite cathartic, cathartic, and I didn't see it as a negative emotion. I wasn't, I wasn't fearful that I wouldn't get through this. I wasn't fearful that I was going to die because of this operation. I was frightened because of the unknown, and because I was sad. I was sad, I was saying goodbye to a part of me. It was a different chapter, and I let those feelings into my life, into my world, into my mind. And when I woke up from that operation, they were done. I felt huge relief.
SPEAKER_00Just so grateful to be alive.
SPEAKER_01I was awake, I come around, and the relief of, oh, okay. I'm here. This is what it's like. I've got a bandage on, I can't feel anything because I've got painkillers. Um, but I'm here, and we'll see what the next few weeks brings. But the relief was immense. I remember coming around thinking, oh, I'm alive, oh yeah, alive, and everything is great. So I I think there's a place for us to hold fear, and I think as long as you express it, yeah, don't let it take over your life. No, um, I'm not frightened anymore. Uh, I overcome, I'm capable.
SPEAKER_00We because you know what you're capable of, and I think I I can do it. It makes you stronger, not weaker. Yeah. I swore, I thought I'm never going to criticize my body again. If my body keeps does what I'm asking it to do and gets me well, I will never go, oh, my knees have gone all crepey. Got a few wrinkles here. I'll always celebrate it. And it's a nice thing to not feel the need to bash yourself up. Yeah. Instead to think, well, my body here.
SPEAKER_01I've got these, I've got these jowly bits. I'm 55. And you know what?
SPEAKER_00I love these jowly bits. This is this is it's soft. What people say, you know, what's it like getting older go, better than the alternative, wouldn't you? I mean, my best friend died for you. She'd have loved to have got wrinkly knees and wrinkles. She would have loved to have been a grandmother. She never got that joy. Some people say, What's it? You're getting old. Yeah, lucky me. Yeah. I'm not getting old. I always think you're saging. You're aging yoursage. Aging well. And you could say, older, go older. It's very different to old. I'm getting older and wiser.
SPEAKER_01Uh, there was an expression running around on uh Instagram, you're leveling up. I'm level 55. That sounds good.
SPEAKER_00I love that leveling up.
SPEAKER_01Leveling up. I'm let I'm level 55, I'm level 65, I'm level 85. That sounds great, doesn't it? I've got to this point. There's an incredible lady on Instagram called uh uh her handless Train with Joan. I've seen her amazing. 85 started wing training in her 70s, and I remember a very interesting post that she did when her sadly her husband passed away, and she was explaining why, and he'd been moved into a care home. And she said, My husband chose a different path to me. Yeah, he gave up his independence.
SPEAKER_00But he cho isn't that the word she he chose.
SPEAKER_01He didn't, yeah he didn't want to follow the same path as me, and sadly he has he has passed.
SPEAKER_00See, I followed Dr. Ellen Langer, you know, her book about how about people would go into this home and they pretended it was 25 years earlier, and they lived in that world, they wore badges themselves 25 years earlier, the TV, the newspaper from the era. And even their grip changed, and they said, one of them said, I forgot I was 80, I slipped back into that world of being 55, and all of their aging markers changed. And there was another test where people were taken into a room, put on flight simulators, and because they believed they were pilots, the brain, their eyesight changed, and it's impossible for your eyesight to change, but their brains were working very hard to make their eyes that of someone flying a plane. And then they had another study where they took people in a room and had them say words like careful, fragile, delicate. And they walked out like they were 90, but then they went back and said vibrant, they practically skipped out of there. So words have energy, and the word cancer has a very poor energy, which I called it can, because can has a nice energy. But survivors are good energy, victims are bad energy. You know, words have energy, every word you use has a physical reaction and an emotional response. And we have to take back our power.
SPEAKER_01We do, we have to take responsibility, become empowered, and keep living.
SPEAKER_00And you are energy, and you all the things you're doing are giving you good energy. They call it good juju now. You've inspired so many people, including me, with your story and how authentic you are and how you're really sharing. What do you want people to take away from your story? If you could wave a magic wand and it would give them something when you wrote that book, what was your what was the outcome you wanted for your readers?
SPEAKER_01I've had many, many readers who've come up to me at talks and book on my book tour who have said thank you. Thank you because I didn't think that there were these possibilities out there. Thank you because it helped me reframe my situation. Thank you because I've hugged trees for the first time. And I'm going out there experimenting and learning and and spending time with these experts that I find fascinating. I'm curious, and and it's a growth thing for me personally, selfishly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but you're doing it for others at the same time.
SPEAKER_01I I'm doing it to show that these incredible people. There's a conference I go to every year. I go to medical conferences now. Um, and this one is an integrative, it's called IPM, and it's all the cutting-edge people at the forefront of integrative medicine. And they they do these incredible talks, and I want those, that bit of information, what they're sharing, I want that to be out there. I want people to know. Dr. William Lee is an incredible man, you all have come across him in America. His TED talk, Can We Eat to Starve Cancer, has had millions of views. It's amazing. He's he's very big into the benefits of eating foods. Kiwis, eat six Kiwis and you can grow stem cells. Mushrooms, what mushrooms can do for our blood, uh, anti-cancer foods.
SPEAKER_00If he's like you, he's got an act of service. And I read something recently that people who provide an act of service, Vicka school teacher, and as people like you, are happier than those who've got three times their salary. Isn't that nice? So you're doing it for others, but it's also benefiting you.
SPEAKER_01And benefiting me. But what I loved, I mean, he he talks about so many great things, but in Hack Self-Healthy, talking about cancer, I know we don't want this to be a cancer fest, but he talks about immunotherapy. His mother was sent home to die. She'd be like, she'd been diagnosed with endometrial cancer when she was 80. They had given her the traditional standard of care, and a year later it came back. And then they said to him, Take her on a cruise, end of life. She's she's done. And he said, I'm not gonna do that. I'm a scientist, I'm a doctor. He tested her gut microbiome, which was out of out of sorts. Dysbiosis is called gut dysbiosis. Uh, he fixed her gut microbiome, which you can do through various things, foods and supplements and lifestyle changes and even fecal transplants. I don't know if he did that on his mum, but it's possible. And then he reapplied the immunotherapy, if that's the right word. So I think it was three sessions.
SPEAKER_00And she's still here at 90, isn't she?
SPEAKER_01Ten years later, she's still here. And the the bit that I loved and that I quote a lot, that I want people to know, is he said if your oncologist isn't asking you about gut health, you must ask your oncologist about gut health. Yeah. If that doesn't happen, maybe you need a new oncologist. Isn't that interesting? Because you know, the gut is every second brain. Back to how important. So people who have something called achomantia in their gut respond much more favorably to immunotherapy. They are more likely to survive.
SPEAKER_00How can you get achamantia in your gut?
SPEAKER_01Acomantia is very hard. Pomegranates have achamantia. Okay. And there is now one supplement on the market that they have designed that does get achamantia to the lower gut, and Dr. William Lee knows what that supplement is.
SPEAKER_00If you need this, follow Dr. William Lee.
SPEAKER_01Follow Dr. William Lee. But isn't that incredible? This one thing that a pomegranate has. So I drink I have pomegranates almost every day. I have pomegranate juice, I have them deep in the deep freeze.
SPEAKER_00I was in Puerto Rico in the rainforest, and they have this little blue flower that's very powerful. It only grows in these in the Puerto Rican rainforest. And it's powerful at fixing cancer. It's called posy something. Yeah. I was looking, I think, wow, and it's a beautiful flower, it only grows, they're very proud of it. We need to wrap up. I've taken a lot of your time.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's been a pleasure, Mary. So what a joy to be able to talk about this with you.
SPEAKER_00And you know, we both of us we it came and it's gone, and we don't live with a fear, it was just a blip. Just a blip. It was a blip.
SPEAKER_01We're thriving.
SPEAKER_00And whether it's headaches or migraines or stomach aches or irritable bowel, do you know doctors will tell you that up to 80% of people more going to the hospital? And the doctors have real illnesses caused by not diseased organs, disease thinking, which is great news because you can fix the disease thought. Diseased organs requires surgeries, disease. Yeah, disease, that's what it is. We've come so far away, we treat a body, not a mind. But disease thinking is is the big cause of illness now.
SPEAKER_01Important to treat the whole person, mind, body, soul, and the disease.
SPEAKER_00It was always done that way before. So if you have some kind of disease, anything at all, by this book, by this book, and you can do wellness instead of illness. Thank you, darling, so much. I appreciate you. Absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.