Why your microbiome quietly runs the show, not the organs

1. 0:00 – 2:15

   Intro

   1. SMSimon Mills0:00

      That is the most widely prescribed drug in this country, and I believe in the US also. But the list of problems accruing from long-term use is beginning to grow and they're serious: cancers, dementias. But the other thing is, is that once you're on it, it's really difficult to come off it. And that's not all. We use far too many antibiotics, and that's becoming a serious health issue now, because the number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise dramatically. It's quite frightening.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:28

      So are there alternatives on this table that I should also consider as a form of medicine?

   3. SMSimon Mills0:33

      Oh, yes. And most of these ones I'm gonna be talking about have a pretty immediate effect. Now, have a bite of this.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett0:39

      Whoa!

   5. NANarrator0:39

      For almost 50 years, Dr. Simon Mills has pioneered how we think about natural medicine, earning global recognition as one of the most respected and influential herbal practitioners of our time.

   6. SMSimon Mills0:50

      These things have medicinal properties. So let's start with dark chocolate. In terms of long-term brain health and cardiovascular health, it's one of the best medicines around.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett1:00

      Really?

   8. SMSimon Mills1:01

      Oh, yes. The next one is garlic. And in some parts of the world, they use garlic instead of penicillin. In fact, there was an old trick where if you had enough garlic, breathe on a Petri dish and you could kill various pathogens just with (laughs) your breath.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett1:12

      Wow!

   10. SMSimon Mills1:13

       And then there's this to reduce your cholesterol levels. This can really help with your eyesight. This is for your blood flow, gut health, cardiovascular health. Now, this is one of the ones to watch in terms of long-term brain health, rosemary. We actually did a clinical trial on this, and all you need to do is press it and sniff. So you can see why some of this stuff really is powerful. Now, we have some more to get through, and this is where it gets interesting. There's a lot of people listening who will want to hear this. Coffee.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett1:38

       Oh, God. What do I need to know?

   12. SMSimon Mills1:40

       So...

   13. SBSteven Bartlett1:42

       I see messages all the time in the comments section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you could do me a favor and double-check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show and the trajectory it's on. So, please do double-check if you've subscribed, and, uh, thank you so much. Because in a strange way, you are- you're part of our history, and you're on this journey with us, and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you. Simon Mills, you

2. 2:15 – 6:05

   The Power of Medicinal Plants

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:15

      are a pioneer, by all accounts, in what is called complementary medicine. But you're also one of the most respected herbal practitioners in the world. You've been doing this for more than 50 years. I've actually never spoken to somebody that has a comprehensive understanding of herbal remedies and herbal medicine. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today. What is, what is the mission you're on, and why do you think it's important?

   2. SMSimon Mills2:42

      I think my main mission is to do what I can to help people get stronger. I sometimes say that, you know, the world is pretty rough out there. I can't do anything about the sea and the waves, but I can help you to build a better boat that can sit better in the water. And I think people relate to that, that if they were- felt a bit stronger in themselves, they would be able to cope better with what life throws at them. I chose plants because people have always used plants as their primary source of medicine. People have always grown up with plants. They've evolved along with plants. And what I aim to do is to put the old wisdoms into some scientific framework, and then make it fit with conventional norms of healthcare.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett3:34

      You are a board member of the British Herbal Medicine Association. You're the first Chair of the Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, launched in Parliament by former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home. You led a major European Commission project on herbal medicine involving over 20 centers across Europe. You're the Secretary of the European Scientific Cooperative on...

   4. SMSimon Mills3:59

      Phytotherapy.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett3:59

      I was not able to say that word, so...

   6. SMSimon Mills4:01

      Which is the, which is the polite way of saying herbs.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:04

      Okay.

   8. SMSimon Mills4:04

      So, it's phyto, plant, therapy.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett4:07

      When- I think when people think about herbal medicine and using plants as a form of medicine, they think of tribes and they think of, I don't know, sort of ancient Chinese traditions. And I think, you know, uh, the modern Westerner thinks of pills-

   10. SMSimon Mills4:22

       Yes.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett4:22

       ... when they think of medicine.

   12. SMSimon Mills4:23

       Yes.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett4:25

       What is- what is it that we've l- lost? Is there like a lost wisdom?

   14. SMSimon Mills4:29

       Yes.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett4:30

       A-a-and how did that happen, and what have- what is it we've lost?

   16. SMSimon Mills4:34

       When we lived in the countryside, when we lived close to nature, that was very much around us. And, and in every little community, there'd be someone, usually a woman, who would know their way around the plants and would, you know, help you out when you had an illness and sickness. I'm not saying that there's a golden age, but when we moved into cities, we lost a lot. Apart from anything else, we were living on top of each other. We had to drink each other's water. You know, there was a lot of new illnesses, sicknesses, pestilences, and so on, that only came in cities. In that world, the herbs couldn't cut it. So we needed stronger stuff. So they started using minerals. They started using things that were poisons. And the original physician's job was to be the only guy who could handle medicines that other people would not be safe to use. And so you got your training to use these much more powerful medicines. And it was thought that the old plant things were too soft and gentle, and so they were generally discarded. And then you develop these medicines into pills, because often they were powders anyway. And, you know, then the pharmaceutical industry came in and branded and made, uh, proprietary materials from them. And that drifted a long way from just going down to a hedgerow, going into the garden, going into the kitchen, and picking up remedies.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett5:52

       A l- a lot of cultures around the world still use plants as their first form of medication for a variety of different sort of illnesses and diseases, right?

   18. SMSimon Mills6:02

       They do, yes. I mean, most do. I mean, if

3. 6:05 – 7:22

   Why Medicinal Plants Help Like Paracetamol Does

   1. SMSimon Mills6:05

      you're Inuit in northern e- territories in Canada and so, and Alaska, you would probably not have very many plants to choose from, but for most other people, they're surrounded by plants. Th- that's their world.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:18

      I, I think, you know, 'cause I'm, I'm, what, 32 years old, so I've not really grown up with the wisdom of plants and how they can be used to treat some of the illnesses that I have. From a very young age, I'm taking cough syrup and I'm taking paracetamol when I have a headache, and all these kinds of pills and medicines. But plants were never a par- really a part of that conversation.

   3. SMSimon Mills6:40

      No.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett6:40

      And I guess that makes me think that they don't work, or...

   5. SMSimon Mills6:43

      Hm. That's what most people would now think. And one of th- uh, one of the points of this conversation now is to point you to ways in which they can, and to show you how you can figure that out within a minute or f- an hour. Most of these ones I'm gonna be talking about have a pretty immediate effect. So is it, you know, we now think, "Oh, if you take a herb, it may take months before anything happens." When I see a patient, my usual request of them is, "Can you call me tomorrow to let me know how it's going?" Because things happen so fast. And if you're up for it, you can do a couple of taste tests, and you can see why some of this stuff really is powerful.

4. 7:22 – 12:24

   How Western Culture Is Getting It Wrong

   1. SMSimon Mills7:22

   2. SBSteven Bartlett7:22

      W- what is it that, that you know from the 50-plus years of work that you've done working with plants as a form of medicine that the average person on the street doesn't know?

   3. SMSimon Mills7:33

      How close we are to being, to having... Uh, I, I think life is a miracle, as I said in that early encounter. Um, and we can realize the miracle within us if we just trust it. I've got a few guys to, what I call health empowerment, things that you can do yourself at home just to begin to understand what's going on in here, and to nourish it. Uh, and the plants are the, in my world, the, um, one of the most effective ways of supporting that inner miracle that we have, uh, to nourish our health, to empower us. It, uh, is, I sometimes think that, you know, med- uh, medicine is extraordinary. I mean, we now live with cancer. We used to die with it. Uh, almost all the major illnesses of the past have now had treatments for. But, you know, if you've got a chronic condition and you're still left with yourself, and you're maybe not feeling so good in yourself, I sometimes think that a lot of medicine is a bit like, uh, fast food delivery. You know, we have a meal brought in because it's convenient, but that also de-skills us. You know, we, we've stopped learning how to cook even. You know, I remember going to New York back in the '80s and was surprised to find that so many apartments in New York didn't have kitchens, because everyone went out to eat. And I thought, "Gosh, you're losing all those skills of making food and enjoying it and sitting it down over a m- over a table." Um, I think medicine, you know, we use far too many antibiotics. We use, you know, these, um, PPI things called omeprazole for our acid reflux, the most widely prescribed drug in this country, and I think US a- also. Mostly unnecessary. Uh, we use a lot of, uh, anti-inflammatories just because it's sore, without asking, "Why is it sore? And why are we suppressing one of our body's main defenses?" 'Cause inflammation is a defense. So these are things that you learn as you get into this world, that a lot of what we think are problems are solutions waiting for support.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett9:41

      'Cause I think most people would think that is medicine-

   5. SMSimon Mills9:45

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett9:45

      ... and...

   7. SMSimon Mills9:46

      That is a food.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett9:46

      That's food.

   9. SMSimon Mills9:47

      Yes. Well, you're right.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett9:48

       Medicine, food.

   11. SMSimon Mills9:49

       Yeah. You're quite right. That's medicine, that's a food. What I'm saying is that there's a spectrum, and we may talk about th- that raspberry because it's red, and we might talk about the broccoli 'cause it's green, and there's oranges, uh, colors there. All of these colors actually have properties that are actually quite valuable properties for our circulatory health, for our gut health, our brain health. Um, and when the more the science is looking at it, the more amazing it's looking. These things have medicinal properties.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett10:23

       So you're saying that this is medicine as well?

   13. SMSimon Mills10:25

       Yes.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett10:27

       Not just food?

   15. SMSimon Mills10:27

       "Let food be thy medicine" is what old Hippocrates said 2,000 years ago. 2,500 years ago.

   16. SBSteven Bartlett10:35

       I- is it th- the Chinese that are particularly big on herbal medicines?

   17. SMSimon Mills10:38

       Yes. Almost any p- other, anywhere... I mean there's f- there's only five countries in the world that are not big on herbal medicines, and I'll tell you who they are and you can see if you can draw your own conclusions. UK is one.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett10:51

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SMSimon Mills10:51

       US is the second. Canada is the third. Australia and New Zealand. Now, can you think of something that c- comb- binds them all together?

   20. SBSteven Bartlett11:00

       Yeah. That-

   21. SMSimon Mills11:00

       They're, they're originally white English-speaking countries. If you go across to France, the channel here, go to any pharmacy, most of the medicine stocks on the pharmacy are herbal. If you go to some parts of Germany, you have to s- sit a herbal exam to get your license. And further east, in the old Soviet, uh, bloc where they couldn't afford the pharmaceutical industry, they had homegrown, primarily plant-based medicines much more widely. Go into Asia, it's the majority by far. And doctors and people working with plants and acupuncture in China work together without thinking about it, and many doctors use plants in their medi- med- as their medicines.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett11:45

       H- how, yeah, how diff- 'cause I've never really spent a, a significant amount of time in China. How different is the perception of herbal medicines there than it is out on the streets of London?

   23. SMSimon Mills11:55

       They don't think twice about it. It's what they grew up with. Um, they, like a lot of people, we would say regretfully, do seem to want to do more things like the West does. Um, so they adopt more Western habits, and as soon as you earn a bit of money, you tend to...... adopt more Western lifestyles and think that the herbal thing is for your parents and grandparents. So there's still that trend, even in Asia. Um, but they start from a much broader base of experience.

5. 12:24 – 14:46

   Why People Should Care About Medicinal Plants

   1. SMSimon Mills12:26

   2. SBSteven Bartlett12:26

      Why, why should anyone care? You know, I have ibuprofen at home. I have medicine that I can have in the, the cupboard. I have, you know, cough syrups if I get sick. If I get the flu, I have some flu pills that I brought from the pharmacy. Why should anyone care about what we're gonna talk about today?

   3. SMSimon Mills12:44

      I suppose the answer is in my practice. So I see patients three sessions a week, and these are people, almost most of them have been round the block. They've had treatments for their conditions, sometimes for many years. They're often living with chronic complex conditions, and they're sore, they're tired, their energy's gone. You know, they've been told that, uh, "We ca- just keep taking the pills." You know, "We've d-done all the tests, there's nothing else we can do," time and time again. That's when the cookie crumbles, because then you realize the ibuprofen and the quick pills ain't doing it anymore. There's a bigger health need that needs somehow fixing. And that's when they come to me as a practitioner, and I give them things that they can see improving their health, their sleep, their eating, their whatever it is that's not... their energy levels, whatever it is that's not playing properly. We're, I see myself as a fine-tuning or upping the performance. Uh, I'm not... When someone comes to me and they say, "I've got," whatever it is, arthritis or skin disease or whatever, uh, I will politely take all the notes down, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in where that came from. What is the misbehavior? What is the poor performance, uh, that explains why all this happened? And often you find they had pneumonia at the age of three or they had glandular fever at the age of 15 or 16, and things took a turn then, and you can see the trail. And often what I'm doing is going backwards and fixing things that weren't fixed back a long time ago.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett14:26

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SMSimon Mills14:26

      Working on digestion particularly, 'cause that's where we work, uh, kidney function, uh, l-liver function, you know, circulation, you know, um, up to the brain w-we're dealing in that area. Um, so we're looking at the performance of the body, and it's only when it doesn't behave that you notice the need to doing it.

6. 14:46 – 14:48

   Helping 10K+ People With Plants

   1. SMSimon Mills14:46

   2. SBSteven Bartlett14:46

      How many patients have you seen in your career,

7. 14:48 – 16:28

   Patients Simon Has Helped

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:48

      do you think? Thousands of patients, maybe?

   2. SMSimon Mills14:50

      I would say, uh, upwards of 10,000 each for an hour or so at a time to start with, so we get deep into the story and then rolling on. At any one time I've got 200 running, you know, that I'm actively treating, and two th- couple of hundred.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett15:07

      And what are the range of illnesses or conditions that those patients have had? And when you think about the most remarkable or most interesting case studies, the most reliable case studies that you have, what are the conditions that are at the center of those case studies?

   4. SMSimon Mills15:23

      Have we got a medical encyclopedia anywhere? I mean-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett15:25

      I'm gonna, I'm gonna write down the key ones.

   6. SMSimon Mills15:27

      No, no, I mean, it's literally I've, I don't know if I've seen everything in the medical encyclopedia, but I've seen most things. I mean, literally everything comes in, because mostly it's chronic anyway when they come and see me, and it can be anything. I mean, about a quarter of my patients are living with cancer, so we... that's one big group. I'm not treating the cancer, I'm helping them to live better with whatever it is they're dealing with. Um, about another, th- at least a third, b-b- bit more, are living with chronic inflammatory disease, autoimmune diseases, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, um, things that are more complicated than you can shake a stick at. And again, you know, we're not dealing with the end result, we're looking at what may be leading up to that and seeing if we can improve underlying functions. But literally anything can come by.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett16:26

      I- is there particular case

8. 16:28 – 23:41

   Case Study: Healing Through Plants

   1. SBSteven Bartlett16:28

      studies of patients that you've worked with that stand out to you, that you're most proud of, or that were eureka moments in your own sort of journey?

   2. SMSimon Mills16:38

      Most of my stories are like journeys, so you see little steps and you, you're with somebody often for a long time and you just see changes in the way that they, um, they change over the weeks and months. So, you know, to say I've got an instant eureka moment, I've, I've pulled together a few stories just, you know, knowing I was going to come to them and, you know, just, they're, they're a, they're a motley mix. And in fact I made notes, 'cause it's sometimes better to remind myself of the sort of things I did, because each of these patients will walk out with five or six or eight different plants, and the reason I put them together is because they have a, a unique story. Um, so probably the one with the most complex one is someone, uh, all the names are changed by the way, someone called Heather who's 65, and she had a really severe complex condition called erythema multiforme, which is a complex skin disease that's really distressing, very upsetting. What we know about it is, is that it's linked possibly to other infections, um, so we actually spotted mycoplasma pneumoniae is likely implicated. She'd previously had a lot of lung damage, um, in her youth. She had early pneumonia, and she was diagnosed with a chronic obstructive pulmonary thing, bronchiectasis as it happened. Then she got COVID badly, and most of her trouble started after that. She also had vitamin B12 deficiency, pernicious anemia we call it, which is a-... autoimmune problem. The gut lining stops the vitamin B12 being absorbed. Those were in her background story. The lungs, because it was the earliest, and probably the main factor, were f- first my focus, and the second was what was lining the stomach, because most inflammatory problems start down here. So I ended up giving her something that was a combination of remedies for the gut lining and for the lungs, and almost within a week or so, the itching of the s- her skin subsided. I just happen to think that was the reason to remember it, because it's un- it's unusual to get such quick results in such a complex condition. But it's a reminder that if you can find the right button, then quite big things can happen. I was lucky to find the right button. And progressively, over the ensuing few months, the skin problem disappeared to the extent that she was my dream patient. She said, "I don't need your herbs anymore." That, to me, is my biggest reward, that they can move on. They don't need help anymore. It sticks in your mind because it was a hugely demanding condition that got better without... and had been going for a long time. It'd been going three or four years by the time she saw me. Um, and it resolved very quickly with what seemed to be totally irrelevant treatments, but there- there was a r- rationale for them. Karen, 37, panic attacks, major anxiety problems. Heaven knows, there's a lot of that about. Uh, it turns out that, um... and w- when she, she was hospitalized when she was 20 with jaundice, which is a liver d- liver problem. All the processing, all the detox processes are in the liver. Uh, it's the gateway from the digestion. It handles emotions, it handles the immune system. It- it's an amazing organ. It's self-correcting, by the way, so it fixes itself very quickly if you give it the right nudge. She had jaundice, so immediately a little bell goes off, because... and at a age when that could mean long-term liver damage, hepatitis. Uh, she's ended up with very little appetite. Uh, she feels full easily, gains weight easily, and often feeling nauseous, which is definitely a sign of liver distress still. Menstrual cycle's very erratic. She had early COVID, again, another big hammer, hammer blow, and this- that- the COVID was before her main symptoms of panic attacks set in. Uh, so I used that as an example of the way in which what goes on up here in the brain is linked with what goes on lower down in the gut. You know, interesting point. When we were living in caves, the best place to be was in the cave.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett21:25

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SMSimon Mills21:26

      'Cause outside was dangerous. The only thing that got you out, hunger. And when we look at the way in which the cells are pro- uh, the- the machinery inside the cell, we find that the mechanisms contr- managing anxiety are the same as the, uh, s- system man- uh, ma- managing, uh, hu- appetites and, and food processing. So the idea of linking anxiety with metabolism is basic. This was an ex- exact answer. So the mix of herbs that I gave her-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett21:59

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SMSimon Mills21:59

      ... had nothing for the anxiety at all. It was all to do, uh, with metabolism, and so that included milk thistle, barberry, uh, an oriental herb called bupleurum, artichoke leaf, and an Indian remedy called gymnema, which is called sugar destroyer, which, which reduces your, uh, hank- hankering for sweet. First goal was to manage her sugar cravings, 'cause that seemed to be a key part of what she was saying, uh, and to improve her liver functions. This was very quick, and she became more settled over several weeks and months. Then the next thing that happened was her menstrual cycles became clearly the- where the trouble was and she was most likely to be distressed around the period, so we shifted to include women's remedies, which were then included in the mix to help manage the, the hormonal ebb and flow around the menstrual cycle. And, um, three months, which is the normal time for cycles to begin to turn, her cycles began to steady and so did the rest of her symptoms. Nothing to do with anxiety, just dealing with these core functions. So there's a couple of examples of, you know, how we approach things differently. You know, if Karen had gone to most other practitioners, she would have had something for her nerves.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett23:23

      I do really want to talk about, y- you used the term w- women's herbs?

   8. SMSimon Mills23:28

      Women's, yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett23:29

      Women's herbs. I do want to talk about that and I do, I do also want to talk about fertility and the menstrual cycle and things like PCOS because I'm super interested in that, which might surprise some people, but obviously, there's women in my life that struggle with those things, so I do want to get on to that.

9. 23:41 – 27:35

   The Gut Controls Almost Everything

   1. SBSteven Bartlett23:41

      I think a second ago, y- you pointed at the stomach when you said that we treat down here.

   2. SMSimon Mills23:45

      Yes.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett23:46

      Is, is that really the place to start to understand?

   4. SMSimon Mills23:48

      Well, it's a w- place to start plants 'cause that's where you- that's where they go. (laughs)

   5. SBSteven Bartlett23:52

      So tell me what- what do I need to know about this region, the stomach, the gut-

   6. SMSimon Mills23:56

      Well...

   7. SBSteven Bartlett23:58

      ... in order to have a sort of foundational knowledge s- so, so that we can then start talking about ibuprofen, painkillers, fevers-

   8. SMSimon Mills24:04

      Yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett24:04

      ... all these kinds of things?

   10. SMSimon Mills24:05

       Well, very simply, we think... Our intelligence is up here. You know, we got a brain.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett24:11

       In our brain.

   12. SMSimon Mills24:11

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett24:12

       Yeah.

   14. SMSimon Mills24:13

       As soon as you swallow something, until it comes out the other end, we have no control over what goes on down there.... decisions are being made as the food traverses down the tube. And it's a long tube, it's about 20 feet of small intestine that it has to go around, and then like another two or three feet of large intestine. It used to take about 18 hours to go through and we now, because we're sedentary, we take longer. But all that time, intelligent decisions are being made by the digestive system, what to do with this, what to do with that. And the lining of the gut is full of sensors, receptors we call them, that are picking up chemical cues and responding. So as the food changes, as it's digested, as the bile from the liver comes in, it's picking off these signaling devices and switching on a whole series of metabolic, hormonal, all sorts of other functions. All controlled, major choreography going on here, you know, without us even knowing about it. And then just when you thought this was wonderful, you add something called the microbiome. Now, when I was at school, and that was a long time ago, when I was doing medical sciences, oh yeah, there was the, there's the bowel flora and they help digestion, vitamin K, one or two other things, you know, they might be quite useful. Now, the microbiome runs the show. I mean, it's- it's huge, you know. We thought we knew what the kidney did, we thought we knew what the heart did, we thought we knew what the brain did. Well, we know they only do it because they work with a microbiome. It's- it's running the show. (laughs)

   15. SBSteven Bartlett25:54

       And the microbiome is the- the billions of bugs in our guts?

   16. SMSimon Mills25:57

       Trillions.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett25:57

       Trillions?

   18. SMSimon Mills25:58

       We've got more of- of those little critters than we have of our own cells, so much more. So they are huge. They've got about 100 times as much genetic capacity as we do.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett26:08

       We've got more bugs in our gut than cells?

   20. SMSimon Mills26:10

       Yes.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett26:11

       So we're basically...

   22. SMSimon Mills26:12

       We're- we're a walking gut (laughs) . Yes.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett26:16

       We're walking bac- bacteria?

   24. SMSimon Mills26:17

       Yeah. Yeah, there's more- there're m- There's more bacteria than there are us. I mean, this, it's a bit of a gobsmacking thought, and, you know, obviously people want... And no, no, I mean, the bugs will keep them there. One of the big issues of the day are antibiotics, which, uh, we know are becoming a serious health issue now, you know, and the World Health Organization and others say very seriously that antibiotic resistance, you know, antimicrobial resistance as they call it, is the biggest threat we have. Soon, going into a hospital and getting an operation will be a real risk, because hospital-borne infections are increasingly resistant to antibiotics. You know, we're- we're piling them in, to us but also to the animals that we grow. Uh, ha- a lot of them are full of antibiotics, and that means that the diversity of the microbiome is- is being reduced. We're losing what we call biodiversity, there's a biodiversity issue in here. But even with the diminished, um, flora that we have, they still pretty much run the show, and a lot of the fruits and vegetables, particularly the ones with colors in them, actually feed those guys down there and help them to perform better, uh, one good reason to,

10. 27:35 – 33:28

    The Dangers of Becoming Antibiotic Resistant

    1. SMSimon Mills27:35

       as we say, eat the rainbow, just get those colors in. But yes, I mean, as you can see, if I start talking about the gut I'm not gonna stop for the next month.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett27:44

       (laughs)

    3. SMSimon Mills27:45

       (laughs)

    4. SBSteven Bartlett27:45

       Uh, on that point of antibiotics, they- the mechanism is that they kind of kill bacteria, right? So they're killing good bacteria as well in the process often.

    5. SMSimon Mills27:54

       They have different ranges depending on the antibiotic, but yes, they will be cutting a swathe through your gut flora, for sure, some more than others. I mean, the point about antibiotics, and we- we did a big project with this, ironically just before COVID, uh, when I was working with Pukka, the herb tea people. We put a campaign together to find natural approaches to managing antibiotics or reduce the use of them. Antibiotics are useless for anything viral, they don't do anything for a virus, uh, but unfortunately, people with viral problems will still be given antibiotics, mainly by a harassed doctor who just, you know, because they say like, "Give me something, Doc." You know, for viruses, mostly you just have to wait for the body to get rid of it, but giving an antibiotic is actually of no use at all. Uh, don't take my word for it, everyone knows this, and you get NHS, you know, in this country, s- um, posters saying, "Antibiotics are no good for viruses. Please don't ask your doctor for them." So for many of these things, colds and respiratory problems, for example, there are many spices that, I mean, some of the things on that plate there are particularly good for colds and viruses up here. And so we put that all together in a package and said, "We can encourage people not to ask the doc for an antibiotic and use some of these home, easy, free, or sometimes, uh, treatments, um, to, um, uh, to- to, uh, use instead of the antibiotics."

    6. SBSteven Bartlett29:27

       When you say antibiotics are the most urgent health issue of the moment, um, I wouldn't fully understand why you think it's so- so urgent. Because we're gonna develop a resistance, which means that we're more susceptible to disease?

    7. SMSimon Mills29:43

       It's already happening, and it's not me that's saying, this is, these are the guys who look after our healthcare for us, like the W- the World Health Organization, who are really, uh, getting close to panic about this issue, uh, because already the number of people dying from antibiotic resistance infections is beginning to rise dramatically.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett30:05

       (exhales)

    9. SMSimon Mills30:06

       And new antibiotics, unfortunately there's less financial incentive to develop them because they're often handed out free by, in various countries, so you don't get the margins back, and, uh, the- the, uh, pipeline of new antibiotics is not good, uh, so all you need to do is check on the World Health Organization to get the chapter and verse on that. It's- it- it- it- it's- it's-... actually quite frightening.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett30:31

        I'm on the World Health Organization site now, and, um, I found a definition of antibiotic resistance. It's when bacteria stops responding to antibiotics and is mainly caused by overusing or misusing antibiotics. In 2022, US doctors gave out about 236 million anti- Fuck it. What? US doctors gave out 236 million antibiotic pres- prescriptions, roughly seven prescriptions for every 10 people. Studies show that at least roughly 30% of antibiotic prescriptions in the US aren't needed, especially in places like doctor's offices and emergency rooms. In 2020, about 13 million antibiotic prescriptions were given out in the UK. Children aged zero to 14 made up 3.6 million of those. And in 2023, the World Health Organization declared antibiotic resistance one of the top global health threats and estimated that it is responsible for 1.27 million global deaths in 2019 and c- and contributed to almost five million deaths.

    11. SMSimon Mills31:36

        That was 2019. I can tell you, uh, that the figures have risen dramatically since then. So that's what people... You know, and just on a personal basis, you know, you go and you need an operation, and you know that that's going to involve exposure to hospital infections, which is one of the most serious of them and the ones in the average hospital, you know, it's lea- uh, uh, it, it, they're some of the most lethal ones there. Um, increasingly, that is going to be a risk, that you get something that you can't treat.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett32:12

        You're not saying don't take antibiotics.

    13. SMSimon Mills32:14

        No, I'm saying take them carefully. Um, use them when you need them and not otherwise. And, and again, it's not me saying this. It's most responsible doctors would wish that their patients wouldn't keep asking for them.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett32:31

        Hmm. So there's sort of three things that I've, I've been able to ascertain as risks of misuse or overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics, which is the impact on the gut microbiome, um, the, you're contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance, and...

    15. SMSimon Mills32:49

        Those are the main things.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett32:51

        I guess even with the diseases you get, you'll be slower to heal because you're less... if you've got that resistance.

    17. SMSimon Mills32:58

        That, uh, is one of the things that we do see, particularly those who are long-term ill, you know, that they lose some of their healing capacity. And that's so much of the work I do, is to aim to put some of that right.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett33:12

        And there's links to colorectal cancers?

    19. SMSimon Mills33:14

        Yeah.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett33:15

        What do you think-

    21. SMSimon Mills33:15

        Well, that's because we're talking about the microbiome, you see. So those are the cancers in the lower gut, and we know that the microbiome is a major factor in how well the gut is. So things like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and

11. 33:28 – 39:42

    Alternatives to Antibiotics

    1. SMSimon Mills33:28

       cancer of the bowel, very closely linked to the state of the microbiome.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett33:33

       Ah, okay. So are there alternatives on this table or in the world of plants to antibiotics that I should maybe also consider, um, instead of just jumping straight to antibiotics for-

    3. SMSimon Mills33:46

       Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett33:46

       ... everything that I experience?

    5. SMSimon Mills33:47

       Yes. If you've got a serious gut or other infection, you may need the antibiotics. So, let's put that straight away. But if you've got a cold, flu, virus rep- a, a viral problem, particularly the airways, you... A, antibiotics will have no use at all, and B, as we just said, they just add to the risk of more. 'Cause every time you take an antibiotic, you're growing a small population of that, of, of the species of bacteria that's affected who are resistant to that. It's natural selection, you know. Though you have a thousand little bacteria, that's a small amount by their terms, and you kill 90... 999 of them, the one that survives will then become two in 20 minutes and four in 40 minutes and suddenly become a new population. And, you know, I'd, I'd, I'd duck that bullet. And so that group of bacteria will already be resistant. So we're creating resistance every time we use an antibiotic. So try, let's try then doing something else, shall we? So let's say you've got a cold. You're feeling the cold. It's got a good name, by the way. So cold is one of the things you feel when you've got a cold, and that's interesting because in former times, we didn't have tests, we didn't have laboratories, we didn't have paramedics, we didn't have people poking things in you. All we could know is what it felt like. And when you've got a cold, you often feel cold, and you feel chills, and you want to wrap up, and you want hot water or you want to have a hot bath. All that in the old language meant that you were cold and what you needed to do was to heat up. Now, you take this fella. This is ginger. It's grown widely around the world. In its original Asian form, it was made extinct around the time of the Romans, so popular was it. And ever since, e- all the ginger since of this species, uh, has got to be coming from rootstock as they're no longer seeds itself. So this has been the most valuable natural commodity ever, in its dried form worth more than its weight in gold. And, you know the reason why all those Europeans ended up in Asia and running India and South... the Dutch in the Indonesia and so on, it's because that's where these things came from. That's where the spices came from. And so we decided, you know, like good capitalists to go and, uh, control the business. So ginger became very popular over here because we don't have nothing like it over here. The nearest thing we got is horseradish, which I promise you is no substitute for this. So...How do we use this? We've got a knob of ginger here about the size of your thumb. That's about a good dose. You grate it, fresh ginger, into a, uh, a mug.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett36:48

       Can you do that for me?

    7. SMSimon Mills36:49

       I don't know, have we got a grater?

    8. SBSteven Bartlett36:50

       I've got a, I've got a grater for you.

    9. SMSimon Mills36:51

       Oh. So, um, we've got here a piece of ginger that... (laughs) As I say, about the size of your thumb. A thumb's a good measure because it's your measure, so if you're a small person you'll have a small thumb. But I'm a bigger person so I'm gonna use... And you literally, it's making a bit of a mess here, but when you're doing this at home you don't mind a bit of mess. So you're literally grating, and it grates nicely, doesn't it, into a mug. And let's say that was th- the whole thumb, I don't want to take up too much time on this. And then, the one thing that works brilliantly with ginger is cinnamon. Now, this is f- cinnamon you buy in any shop. It comes in different forms. There's one from China called scasseia which looks like one big curled bark.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett37:40

        Yeah.

    11. SMSimon Mills37:41

        If you look at this one, you'll see that it's tightly wrapped with lots of little curl, lot- lots of little filaments in it.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett37:48

        Yep.

    13. SMSimon Mills37:48

        That's the one you go for. It's got, it's more aromatic. And you either grate that with, if you've got a, uh, a spice mill, or you take a teaspoon of it. Um, let's say there's a teaspoonful, and you put that in your mug.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett38:07

        So that's g- ginger and cinnamon in a mug.

    15. SMSimon Mills38:08

        Ginger and cinnamon, that's it. Then you add your hot water, that there. You're going for real one, right?

    16. SBSteven Bartlett38:22

        I'm going for the real one.

    17. SMSimon Mills38:23

        Oh. Good on you. Uh, at this point a sieve is useful.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett38:28

        Why? What for?

    19. SMSimon Mills38:29

        'Cause it's gonna be r- it's full of...

    20. SBSteven Bartlett38:31

        Oh, bits.

    21. SMSimon Mills38:32

        Bits. And then let's say this is, this is a nice Japanese h- green tea mug, but let's say this is your mug and we'll pour a little bit in there. You see all the stuff that you leave behind?

    22. SBSteven Bartlett38:49

        Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

    23. SMSimon Mills38:54

        And if you don't mind sharing a mug?

    24. SBSteven Bartlett39:00

        So what's in here? This is...

    25. SMSimon Mills39:01

        Just ginger and cinnamon.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett39:03

        Just ginger and cinnamon?

    27. SMSimon Mills39:04

        It's, it's fairly q- weak.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett39:06

        Oh, it is nice though.

    29. SMSimon Mills39:08

        It's nice, innit?

    30. SBSteven Bartlett39:08

        It is nice.
12. 39:42 – 52:36

    Alternatives to Cold Drugs

    1. SMSimon Mills39:42

       burning your mouth, don't you? The interesting thing is that there's no burning. You can actually have full Madras level, uh, chili and no harm will be done to your lining because there's no burning going on. What you're doing is you're stimulating the pain fibers. So you've got-

    2. SBSteven Bartlett40:04

       Ah.

    3. SMSimon Mills40:04

       ... pain fibers all the way through the lining-

    4. SBSteven Bartlett40:07

       Ah.

    5. SMSimon Mills40:08

       ... of the mouth. When you take a hot thing like ginger, it's stimulating the pain fibers, and immediately there's a, what we call a reflex response, which opens up the blood vessels. It's called hyperemia, more blood. And the vessels lining these mucosa, the ones that you've just swallowed and inc- including a little bit up in the nasal passages are opening up. The mucus cells producing mucus will loosen up and you get more runny mucus, which is helping to flush through the, uh, the grot on the mucosa. And the main thing you feel is the warmth.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett40:49

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SMSimon Mills40:50

       And if you're dealing with something down here in the lungs, you'll actually start bringing up more gunk up the airways. It's, there's a natural escalator that we use to, that, that the body uses to get stuff out of the lungs-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett41:03

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SMSimon Mills41:03

       ... that's stimulated. And the mixture of cinnamon and ginger was created, I think, in heaven. I mean, I think they're such a natural complement, and anybody can do that. And s- the point about it is that it's warming, and in the old days, that was the key thing. You would, didn't matter if you had a headache or a joint pain or a menstrual cramp. If you wanted to put a hot water bottle on it or heat it up, then that was a cold problem, and putting a heating medicine would begin to make a difference. So you can use the same thing if you have a headache and you want to put a hot pack on it. If you've got a menstrual cramp and you want to put it o- a hot water bottle on it. If you've got a joint pain and you want to put a, uh, a heating, uh, liniment on it, you can use the same thing.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett41:55

        Ginger and cinnamon.

    11. SMSimon Mills41:56

        Just because it's heating.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett41:57

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SMSimon Mills41:57

        And that's simple, old medicine.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett42:02

        So, so when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold, then cinnamon and ginger are a good... My, I think my cough-

    15. SMSimon Mills42:09

        Well, only if s- it responds to heat. Now, if you want to put an ice pack on, I mean, the old doctors, when someone came with a migraine, would say, "Tell me, would you prefer a hot pack or an ice pack-"

    16. SBSteven Bartlett42:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. SMSimon Mills42:22

        "... for your migraine?" And migraine sufferers generally split 70/30 preferring heat, so 70, but a third of people with migraines actually want a cold pack. You don't use ginger for that. You use cooling remedies, which we might come on to later.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett42:39

        Okay.My girlfriend, she drinks ginger tea all the time.

    19. SMSimon Mills42:43

        Mm-hmm.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett42:43

        Almost every day.

    21. SMSimon Mills42:44

        Yeah. She likes the heat.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett42:46

        She likes the heat.

    23. SMSimon Mills42:47

        Heat, yeah.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett42:48

        She- she drinks it before bed as well.

    25. SMSimon Mills42:50

        Mm-hmm. It can help with sleep if that's the way it goes. I mean, everyone... people are different and there are some people who can't take ginger at all because their stomach objects, um, or because it, you know, literally heats them up too much so they get stimulated by it. Um, but that's where the individuality comes in.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett43:11

        Okay, so any- any condition where I might be looking for heat, ginger and cinnamon-

    27. SMSimon Mills43:17

        First place to go.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett43:17

        ... first place to go.

    29. SMSimon Mills43:18

        Yeah. You could... if you wanted to be Tex-Mex, you can take the chilies, um, you know-

    30. SBSteven Bartlett43:23

        As well?
13. 52:36 – 56:27

    Vitamin D and Zinc for Infection Protection

    1. SMSimon Mills52:36

       an hour or so what effect it's having.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett52:40

       If you're starting a business, that means you're one person doing the workload of probably about 50 people. When I first founded this podcast, I had no idea that I was about to step into 100 different roles that I'd never trained for. Things like researching and production and scheduling and branding, all of it, all at once. And this experience isn't unique to me. But for millions of founders around the world, the tool that changes all of that is our sponsor, Shopify. Shopify now powers 10% of all US e-commerce, from names like Gymshark and Mattel to first-time founders just getting started. It's like having your very own design studio, content creator, and marketing team in one, with hundreds of online store templates, AI tools to create product pages, and easy to launch email and social media plugins. Behind the scenes, Shopify manages your inventory, international shipping, and even your returns. So if you're ready to sell, sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com/bartlett. That's shopify.com/bartlett. $1 a month? No way. On this point of antibiotics, um, I've heard you talk about vitamin D, vitamin C, and zinc?

    3. SMSimon Mills53:46

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett53:48

       As a potential alternative to jumping straight from-

    5. SMSimon Mills53:51

       Not, not straight alternative, but in improving your natural resistance, particularly to viruses and suchlike.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett53:59

       Okay.

    7. SMSimon Mills53:59

       Um, then there is evidence for both vitamin D and vitamin C, but also zinc, as backups in ter- in sub form- supplement form, uh, that do seem to add to your resilience in the face of infections.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett54:15

       I'm quite con- I'm quite concerned because, you know, I'm a, I've got dark skin, and, uh, in the weather that we live in here in the UK, when I am in the UK, I worry that I won't get enough vitamin D. Are these, quote-unquote, "supplements" important do you think? What are the supplements that you think are imperative?

    9. SMSimon Mills54:33

       None.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett54:33

        None?

    11. SMSimon Mills54:34

        N- n- not for mo- for everybody, but there are certain situations. I think vitamin D is a good one, and it's not just people with dark skin that have a vitamin D deficiency. Uh, it is pretty widespread in, in darker c- countries, if we can call our weather and that, um, you know, where there's not enough sun.... uh, vitamin D deficiency is quite widespread. And increasingly, doctors do suggest you have vitamin D supplementation through the winter, particularly. E- even just having a f- 15-minute outdoors with the sun will give you a fairly hefty amount.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett55:07

        Do you supplement?

    13. SMSimon Mills55:08

        Not myself.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett55:10

        (laughs)

    15. SMSimon Mills55:11

        No, I don't. I d- I don't, haven't spotted a need. Uh, but that doesn't mean that I don't recommend supplements to people for there is a need.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett55:21

        Mm-hmm. And garlic? We've got garlic (overlapping dialogue) ... that has an antibiotic role.

    17. SMSimon Mills55:27

        Well, this is... Yeah, garlic, uh, what used to be called Russian penicillin, and when- after penicillin was invented they... Because some parts of the world, they use garlic instead of penicillin, which was hard to come by originally. And it was used in places like the First World War to avoid some of the trench foot and other problems that soldiers would get in those lousy conditions. Garlic, when talking raw now, is a very powerful prebiotic. In other words, it helps the gut flora, the good guys down here in the microbiome. And there's evidence to show a lot of these other ones do as well, but garlic is particularly strong. And, uh, when I'm dealing with a disrupted gut flora, a microbiome, I will sometimes refer to raw garlic as a treatment, but you need to do it with care because, you know, you don't want to lose too many friends.

14. 56:27 – 59:57

    Garlic Benefits

    1. SMSimon Mills56:28

    2. SBSteven Bartlett56:28

       Why? What's wrong with gar- what... Is it pungent?

    3. SMSimon Mills56:31

       It's the aroma you give out afterwards, so, you know, your p- your friends will be very polite, but they'll rather wish you hadn't. Um, and some people find that it does upset, you know, when they swallow. But I have a little trick, which I call the garlic intensive, which is when everything is down, the gut is in the state, you've maybe got a lung infection or whatever, and there's a lot of need for, if you like, an antibiotic type of treatment. Raw garlic, what you do is... And for all sorts of reasons, Friday evening is the best time to do this because you've got the weekend ahead of you. You take one of those cloves, it will... First of all, on that day, you haven't eaten so much, so you don't have so much in the way. Then you take one of these cloves, you peel it, chop it up, small pieces, and swallow it with water. You don't chew it, just chop it up and swallow with a little bit of water, and wait for half an hour just to make sure that that's okay, your stomach's okay to go ahead. If it is, take another clove, chop it up, swallow it. Another half hour later, take another clove. And if you start at six o'clock, by 10 o'clock in the evening, you've got eight cloves inside you.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett57:54

       Eight? And, and what's that gonna do?

    5. SMSimon Mills57:57

       Well, at this point you, you usually go to bed. And I would suggest you go to bed alone at this point, because you're not very friendly at this point because you're oozing garlic. The aroma of garlic is coming out of all your pores. Incidentally, it's also coming out of your lungs. And, you know, there was an old trick where you used to be able to, if you had enough garlic, breathe on a Petri dish in a laboratory with various pathogens, and you could kill them just with (laughs) your breath.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett58:23

       (laughs)

    7. SMSimon Mills58:23

       You know, it's... The o- oil of garlic is a powerful antiseptic. But what it's doing in the lower digestion is, it seems the good guys down there quite like it. But the bad guys... You know, in the old days we had, garlic was, you know, against the devil. And it looks as though the bad guys down there don't like garlic. So just doing that over a weekend can make a big difference to your good... the good guys in the microbiome. And if you've got a low level gut or lung infection, that can be really helpful. But that's, you know, something you can do at home, but you don't want to do that too often. In fact, I would suggest that one garlic intensive is probably enough for most people.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett59:07

       So prebiotic effects, it has an anti-microbial properties, um, which... Uh, is it good for pain? You called it Russian penicillin. Is it-

    9. SMSimon Mills59:18

       Yeah. Well, it depends where the pain's coming from. Um, but if your pain is a cough or a chest infection, yes, particularly, particularly good for chest infections. Some people do use it for arthritic problems. Uh, it will depend on what's causing the arthritis. I, you know, and I... It's very hard for me to say one of these things will do it for everybody. It won't. It will do for, in certain situations. And what we learn when we're dealing with plants is that you, you're the, you're the boss. You find out for yourselves. All people like me do is say, "Well, give this a try. This is worth trying. This is valuable. Why don't you give it a go?"

15. 59:57 – 1:03:02

    Remedies for Chronic Pain

    1. SMSimon Mills59:57

    2. SBSteven Bartlett59:57

       How do you think about chronic pain? There's so many people living with a variety of different types of chronic pain. It affects 51.6 million people, I believe, just in the US alone. And the most f- common forms of chronic pain are conditions such as arthritis or migraines or lower back pain or other types of nerve damage. Roughly 75 to 85% of Americans will experience some form of back pain during their lives. When I think about this big array of plants that are in front of me, and other plants, what is... what is the first place to go in your mind if you're dealing with chronic b- pain?

    3. SMSimon Mills1:00:31

       It depends, again, on where it is. But let's take joints and back. Um, you know, where you've got a joint uh, uh, that's causing... and it's because it's inflamed.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:40

       Yeah.

    5. SMSimon Mills1:00:40

       So w- when you have inflammation, you add itis to the name of the plant. So this is arthritis because it's, it's an inflammation of the, the joint. (laughs)

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:51

       Yeah.

    7. SMSimon Mills1:00:51

       Um, you, you have cystitis, which is the bladder. You have bronchitis if it's the lungs, gastritis if it's the stomach. So, itis tells us there's an inflammation.... and mostly with arthritis, it's an inflammation. And briefly, it's because there's junk being dumped on the joint. The joints have got very poor circulation by design because, you know, there's- there's surfaces being pressed against each other. And so the tissue in the joint is cartilage, gristle in- in if you're eating it, um, which is designed to survive with very poor circulation because, you know, when you've got two things pressing, there's not much room for blood in there. So if there is metabolic waste, let's call it junk, in the system, it's more likely to come out in these places where there's poor circulation. Sometimes think it's a bit like a U-bend under a basin. You know, if there's any stuff in the sink, it's gonna come de- deposit there. So I think of joints as a bit like a U-bend.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:55

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SMSimon Mills1:01:56

       So the first thing that people did with a joint pain, an inflammation of the joint, was to help to clean the joint, bring more blood into the area. And that's what the inflammation is doing. It's hurts like billy ho, but what it's doing is bringing more blood in by brute force to do what I was just saying. But if you were to put on a mustard plaster or a cayenne plaster-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:25

        A cayenne pepper plaster?

    11. SMSimon Mills1:02:26

        Which you simply put on on the ex- outside.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:29

        Mm-hmm.

    13. SMSimon Mills1:02:30

        And you can buy these in pharmacies and so on. It's called capsicum, ca- capsaicin, beg your pardon. Um, it's a standard prescription dressing for a pain. What it does is it brings the blood in directly, and that means the inflammation doesn't have to do it. And the inflammation is sore, what you're doing isn't. So by definition, you're reducing the pain level.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:55

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SMSimon Mills1:02:56

        That's an example of using plants in a creative way, which people always did.

16. 1:03:02 – 1:09:15

    Arthritis Relief Medicinal Plant

    1. SMSimon Mills1:03:02

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:02

       They- they used to do that back in the day?

    3. SMSimon Mills1:03:04

       Oh, yes. Yeah, I mean if you go to North America, the native populations would regularly use cayenne as their salve for bad joints. In Europe, it was mostly mustard. Um, the- then we're talking the yellow mustard, the one that's strong, use as a plaster over a joint. And if you've got arthritis in your fingers, and this is something anyone can do with, you know, who's suffering the pain here, use a mustard bath. Put your fingers into a s- dilute warm solution of mustard. And it's amazing how quickly they ease up. Or you could put a plaster on the hip or whatever. Um, people always did this.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:46

       Have you seen this work in-

    5. SMSimon Mills1:03:47

       Yes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:47

       ... your practice?

    7. SMSimon Mills1:03:48

       Oh, yes. And I often recommend it to patients, and they keep reporting back. It's really makes a difference.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:55

       I think I worry about lower back pain because I spend so long sitting down and...

    9. SMSimon Mills1:03:58

       I've got low back pain too.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:00

        Really?

    11. SMSimon Mills1:04:00

        And I didn't use herbs very much for that.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:04

        What did you do?

    13. SMSimon Mills1:04:05

        Well, there's a long story, but there was a very good, uh, West African combo called Osibisa, which I saw back in the day when I had really bad back. And I got- the music got so into me that I loosened up and began to jive and dance around and realized that my back had gone, and it stayed gone for decades. It's just unlocked a knot. So that wasn't any herb, that wasn't any plant.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:32

        Dancing?

    15. SMSimon Mills1:04:33

        Dancing. I mean, letting the music get into you.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:37

        What's the difference?

    17. SMSimon Mills1:04:38

        Well, you know, when you feel the music running through you, you know, you're just moving in- with the beat, you know.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:45

        Mm-hmm.

    19. SMSimon Mills1:04:46

        That loosens up a lot of knots. You know, I don't just do plants. I, you know, I talk about breathing, I talk about exercises that you can do for yourself. And, uh, sometimes when you've got a joint pain, it's all about it's locked and you can find ways of loosening that joint.

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:09

        Ibuprofen.

    21. SMSimon Mills1:05:10

        Yes.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:10

        People reach for this all the time. They, I mean, I was looking at some of the search trend data for ibuprofen, and it is absolutely exploding.

    23. SMSimon Mills1:05:19

        Yes.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:20

        Um, that's the- the search graph, ibuprofen.

    25. SMSimon Mills1:05:22

        Yep.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:23

        Um...

    27. SMSimon Mills1:05:24

        It is, but it's one of the most widely used drugs in this country.

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:27

        Mm-hmm.

    29. SMSimon Mills1:05:28

        Um, it's obviously because it works. And it's based on, um, a plant substance called salicy- salicylic acid, uh, which gave us aspirin. And we still use the basic molecule to create the, what we call non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs, and ibuprofen is one of the most widely used of those. And basically, they cut the inflammatory process, just cut it, and so the inflammation just diminishes.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:05

        Which is good, right? (laughs)
17. 1:09:15 – 1:12:49

    Should We Take Anti-Inflammatory Pills?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:15

       the ice thing and take anti-inflammatories, and I had another one telling me something else about the inflammation, that actually I didn't wanna combat the inflammation because it was doing its job. And so I, it's quite difficult to navigate whether one should let inflammation stay or if I should be taking anti-inflammatories or ibuprofen. Um...

    2. SMSimon Mills1:09:35

       Well, if you've got a match to... You know, you sometimes need something just to get your match fit or match-acceptable. Um, but if it's a short-term, we call it acute inflammation, then overwhelmingly, the advice is don't suppress it because in the short term... And you know, we get a cut, get a bit of dirt, it gets swollen, maybe a bit of pus and so on, and after a while, it sorts itself out. That's this miracle I called, talked about earlier. The body heals itself all the time. That's inflammation doing its job properly, cleaning out... The Marines go in, clear all the stuff out, back to their barracks, back to normal. That's great. It's only if, as I said, the junk keeps piling in and the job doesn't get finished, we call that chronic inflammation. That's when you sometimes need a bit of help.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:26

       And chronic inflammation is of- often caused by something further upstream, right?

    4. SMSimon Mills1:10:31

       Yes.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:31

       So you try and think about what's causing it upstream.

    6. SMSimon Mills1:10:33

       Exactly so.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:10:34

       And what tends to be the perpetrator upstream?

    8. SMSimon Mills1:10:37

       The gut is where most of these things begin 'cause when you think about it, that's where we take most foreign material. Almost all of it has to be dealt with by the gut. So that's where most of our immune system is. You know, we talk about the immune system, but, you know, the majority of s- the immune system is a m- few millimeters away from the lining of the gut because that's where the action is. That's where all the foreign stuff is. So if there's a disruption there, it's w- that's the first place to begin, uh, 'cause it's usually the best place to begin. Um, and if we add, uh, what we talked about, the microbiome as another big factor, then there's plenty to work be, done with down there. So if it's a chronic inflammation, I will spend a lot of time looking at what might be going on down there.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:25

       And what's the typical suggestion if it is a, a gut-related problem?

    10. SMSimon Mills1:11:29

        Well, the first thing is, do, is to, um, get the best food you can down there, which is mostly plant-based. Um, I mean, there are exceptions to that. Uh, but in, if we're looking at restoring your good health down here, the gut does seem to like plants at this point. Um, so we talk about, you know, having a wide range of plants, you know, that the, the, uh, current, uh, advice from one or two people is that you would aim to have 30 different s- types of plant per week, you know, just to get the diversity 'cause we don't know which one you need. So why don't you give as much difference as you can? And, you know, there v- r- uh... You know, people think you can't afford to eat healthily. All I would suggest is that you go and travel to somewhere like India or anywhere in Asia where they eat pretty much a lot of plants, mostly plants, for pennies. You know, you can make a healthy meal by, if you know how to cook, by just mixing some of these simple, the dahls and the, m- the root vegetables and the other vegetables easily mix together. P- a few spices in there, absolutely delicious, and your gut and your microbiome will be jumping with glee.

18. 1:12:49 – 1:17:27

    The Superpower of Purple Vegetables

    1. SMSimon Mills1:12:49

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:49

       You talk about eating your rainbow.

    3. SMSimon Mills1:12:51

       Yes, yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:51

       What does that mean?

    5. SMSimon Mills1:12:53

       Means as many colors as you can fit in, um, literally, because each color is ca- is produced by a constituent of plants, s- many of them we call polyphenols, which we know have a range of effects on all sorts of, uh, s-... mainly on the microbiome again, 'cause they're all in different ways prebiotic. They all help good guys prosper down there. But then after the microbiome has processed them, which is interesting, the microbiome is, um, is critical for processing polyphenols. They don't get absorbed unless the microbiome breaks 'em up already. So, the benefits of the colors depend on the good guys down here.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:39

       Hm.

    7. SMSimon Mills1:13:39

       When they get into the blood, they start doing all sorts of wonderful things to the lining of the blood vessels. For example, up into the brain where we got a what we call blood-brain barrier, which is actually a very exciting interface. The polyphenols, the colors all have well-established mechanisms that improve the health all around the body. So simple. If you've got a child who used to say, "Eat your greens," we now say, "Eat your rainbow." The more different colors the better.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:12

       I wonder if that's why they put so many, um, artificial dyes in junk food.

    9. SMSimon Mills1:14:16

       Well, I wish they wouldn't.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:17

        To try and trick our brains into thinking it's... I don't know.

    11. SMSimon Mills1:14:20

        No. There's nothing quite like the original.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:23

        In terms of fruit-

    13. SMSimon Mills1:14:24

        Yeah.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:24

        ... what, what are your favorite fruits to sort of recommend people to eat, and why?

    15. SMSimon Mills1:14:28

        Probably the, the... if you wanted to have a sh- you know, a top list, the darker the color the better. So, we talk about purples, and I'm pleased to see that, uh, your team has found a purple carrot there (laughs) . And we remind ourselves that most vegetables were purple once upon a time. If you think of maize, you know, and the, the sweet corn and the maize that you grow in the Americas, that mostly was originally purple. And we bred the purple out because it didn't look so appetizing. And we're probably purple deficient. Uh, I think we could do with more purple in our lives, because the purple and blue color is a... something called anthocyanins. These are types of polyphenol, and they're particularly powerful, particularly with the blood supply. And we're talking about things like eyesights and brain health and circulatory health, blood pressure control, and all those sort of things can be improved just by having more purple in our lives. So we got beetroot, that'll do. We've got the berries. Uh, red grapes are probably more... We've got the... yeah, we've got the red grapes here. That's got more of these than the yellow g- grapes do. Um, so I would start with the reds and purples.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:45

        You said you think we're purple deficient.

    17. SMSimon Mills1:15:48

        Yeah (laughs) . I mean, just, you know, think it's something interesting to say, but yeah, there's probably something in that (laughs) .

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:56

        Mm-hmm. And in terms of vegetables, what are your favorite go-to vegetables that, that you'd recommend I eat?

    19. SMSimon Mills1:16:03

        Uh, I'd start with the roots, the root vegetables, the carrots, the beetroots, the parsnips, uh, the, the various other root vegetables out there. Not all of which are people's favorites, but they have, uh, fiber, a sort of starch in them which is particularly prebiotic, and some of the most powerful prebiotics are the root vegetables. So, those are definitely worth having. The greens obviously and broccoli, and interestingly I found a purple one, uh, which is easy enough to get, so, you know, you can get the purple or the green. You know, obviously there's a value in the, in the purple there. Uh, but any broccoli, any of the cabbage family is full of all sorts of other ingredients, uh, that have their own benefits in all sorts of ways. Metabolism, gut, hormonal, blood supply. So greens, roots, and the big one in most people's lives are the grains. You know, wheat, for example, but cereals, lentils, dal, uh, peas and beans. Uh, all of these have their own benefits, uh, particularly for the microbiome. You know, again, I don't know exactly what even I need, let alone what anyone else needs. So, uh, the best thing to do is to have as much diversity as possible.

19. 1:17:27 – 1:18:23

    Your Diet Recommendations

    1. SMSimon Mills1:17:27

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:27

       What is your diet? Are you a meat-

    3. SMSimon Mills1:17:29

       It's a mix. Yeah.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:17:30

       ... are you a vegan? Do you eat meat?

    5. SMSimon Mills1:17:31

       Yeah. Uh, I have, um, as f- you know, I just have a broad range of what most humans have eaten, which is a mixture of things. Uh, I do... obviously many of my patients are vegans and they can... you can live quite well with them. You have to add a few extra things just to cover your back on a few areas, but you can live perfectly well at least when you're a grown-up, an adult, on a plant-only diet. Um, but you know, who am I to say that an Inuit in the Arctic who never sees any vegetable ever and only lives on... or traditionally only lives on s- seal and whale meat and blubber, is any less healthy than someone in Thailand who lives only on rice and vegetables? You know, we're all... we, we can cope with all sorts of variety of foods. There isn't one food for everybody.

20. 1:18:23 – 1:20:24

    Keto Diet and Sugar

    1. SMSimon Mills1:18:23

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:23

       I think we were, we were discussing before we started recording that I'm currently on a ketosis diet, the keto diet.

    3. SMSimon Mills1:18:29

       Keto diet, yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:29

       Which basically means that I'm extremely low carb in my diet.

    5. SMSimon Mills1:18:33

       Yes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:33

       Basically consuming no sugar.

    7. SMSimon Mills1:18:35

       Yes.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:35

       Um, what do you think of the keto diet? What's been your experience with it?

    9. SMSimon Mills1:18:40

       They can be, and I think y- you're one of those that would get a lot of benefit from it. Um, because it... I mean, sugars are... you know, they're in a lot of vegetable material. And of course, unfortunately, we have sugar now as an added-

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:18:54

        Right.

    11. SMSimon Mills1:18:54

        ... um, to our diets. Um, they tend to slow down various parts of your metabolism. They tend to make metabolism a bit more like hard work. And so, if you take those out and some of the more sugar-producing carbs, then you're freeing up a lot of energy. So, a lot of people on keto diets find that-... you know, they're sharper. That's probably what you do.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:17

        (laughs)

    13. SMSimon Mills1:19:17

        Um, but there are potential downsides. Uh, interestingly, you know, and the first thought was, "Well, that can't be very good for your microbiome because they rely on, um, f- vegetable material to a large part." But when we've looked at the microbiome of keto di- after keto diets, it's not as, it's actually, there's some good guys that reemerge with a keto diet. So it's a mixed bag. The only thing is, is that when you don't have as many plants in your diet, then there's slightly more strain on things like liver and kidney function. So someone who's taking keto for a long term, it's always a good idea to check that they're okay, and some of the more long-term concerns have been around kidney, um, because if there's a lot more of the animal-based material in the, in food, then that's, can be more hard work for the kidney. So it's always worth checking that those functions are doing well. But I come back to the point, there is no one size fits all. We are omnivores. We're designed to eat almost anything.

21. 1:20:24 – 1:22:58

    Keto Diet and the Menstrual Cycle Link

    1. SMSimon Mills1:20:24

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:24

       My girlfriend, she's doing keto as well, and she noticed that her menstrual cycle became more regular.

    3. SMSimon Mills1:20:30

       Yes.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:31

       Which she was, like, shocked by it. And she's really done a lot of A/B testing over the, the last couple of years, and whenever she's in a ke- k- ketogenic diet, very low carb, very low sugar diet for six weeks, she was shocked that she could predict the day when her period would come. And outside of that, sometimes it's really varying.

    5. SMSimon Mills1:20:52

       Yeah. Well, there's a very good point about keto. One of the most effective things that keto does is it reduces insulin resistance, which is something that most of us suffer as we get older and larger, as we get, uh, through our life. Insulin is the hormone that packs sugar away into the s- into the tissues and into the liver. And thank God because if we didn't have, uh, insulin, we would have diabetes. Um, insulin i- resistance is growing and that leads to diabetes increasingly. And so diabetes is in many, most parts of the world now is becoming a- another big health issue, and it's mainly because we have too many carbs, too much sugar in the diet because whenever we eat sugar, particularly sugar, there's more work for the insulin to do, so it gets more likely to get run down and tired. When you're on a keto diet, it's been observed that you're, you get more insulin sensitive. So in other words, the insulin works better, so you can reverse early stages of diabetes by switching to a keto, for example. Now interestingly, many menstrual problems are linked to insulin resistance, and there's something called PCOS which affects quite a lot of women now, uh, in which the ovaries basically produce more hormone-producing cysts, polycystic ovary syndrome, and that is increasingly linked with insulin resistance. So it affects people who are more likely to be in the pre-diabetic phase or putting on weight and that sort of thing. The insulin resistance itself switches the hormone balance, and the menstrual cycle is a m- wonderful choreography. I mean, when you think about it, you know, all around the world is this, it's a pretty predictable cycle and it runs itself. But if there's something like insulin resistant getting in the way,

22. 1:22:58 – 1:24:21

    Can PCOS Symptoms Increase From Sugar?

    1. SMSimon Mills1:22:58

       then that can disrupt hormones. So someone like your girlfriend might find that switching to a keto diet abolishes or reduces that disruptor.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:23:10

       Yeah. Uh, yeah, I was just reading some stats on that said that 80% of women with PCOS have some degree of insulin resistance, even those who aren't overweight. And my girlfriend does have PCOS, which she's talked about publicly before. So it's no surprise that, uh, that when she comes off, she takes sugar out of her diet, her menstrual cycle seems to fall back in line, and I think there's also links to insulin resistance, PCOS, and I guess ovulation and fertility.

    3. SMSimon Mills1:23:37

       Yes. It is so. I think, uh, I mean, the mo- the modern woman, or the modern man for that matter, has a whole string of burdens to carry because we have too much sugar. I mean, when you think about it, you know, sugar only emerged as a common ingredient, you know, 140 years ago, 150 years ago. Up, up 'til that time, only very rich people could afford it. Then we had the, the industrial sugar production and, uh, uh, a lot of slaves over in the Americas producing vast amounts of cane sugar. That is a modern phenomenon, and our bodies weren't designed to deal with the amount of sugar that we now feed it, and it does put a strain on the system, and insulin is one of the f- guys caught in the mix.

23. 1:24:21 – 1:27:41

    Medicinal Plants to Increase Fertility

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:21

       So if you're trying to have kids, which we are now, I guess you wanna remove the, uh...

    2. SMSimon Mills1:24:27

       If that's a factor, I would be looking at reducing your sugar intake at the very least, yeah. I mean, we spent a... I spend a lot of time with, uh, women who are having difficulty conceiving and, you know, I think I have about 13 herb babies, you know. In other words, babies who were born with women who were having challenges getting pregnant, and that was mainly I think because we were stabilizing the menstrual cycle and making the fertile phase a bit more productive.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:01

       And what do you, what do you say to those women? You, you, what do you prescribe, I guess?

    4. SMSimon Mills1:25:07

       I do. Uh, I mean, well, that's my business. I will be prescribing... So you see there's some bottles there.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:12

       Yeah.

    6. SMSimon Mills1:25:12

       Uh, these are the sort of things that we use in the practice. Um, so I've given, I've, I've got a couple here that-... um, just, you know, to the sense, the smell sense. So this is fennel, which we all think we know. But these are very strong extractions that only practitioners use. So these are practitioner-owned supplies. And when you smell it, you realize that the, that they are strong.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:40

       Ooh, wow.

    8. SMSimon Mills1:25:42

       So a teaspoon of that is, uh, really powerful. Now if you really want to realize the power of herbs, this is a remedy called echinacea. And a lot of people know about echinacea, and it's a major supplement. This is a root extraction from a variety of, uh, species of echinacea called angustifolia. And I'm just going to put a little bit in there. I'm gonna test it myself before I give it to you, so I'm not poisoning you. So you just take a little...

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:23

       Do I put it on my skin, or...

    10. SMSimon Mills1:26:24

        Put it on.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:26

        Or did you want me to shot that?

    12. SMSimon Mills1:26:27

        Just lick it.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:30

        Whoa. Wow. Hmm.

    14. SMSimon Mills1:26:36

        So these are the sort of things... this is just a particularly striking example of the sort of things that we use in the practice. And so some of, uh, the women that come to me, for example, with fertility or menstrual problems, we'll go out with a mix of herbs drawn like this from, uh, about a hundred or so different plants that I have on the shelves. And they are often, as I said earlier, women, remedies developed by women. Um, and, uh, incidentally North America is, is a prime site for some really powerful women's remedies. Um, and interestingly when you look at them, you find they contain plants equivalent of steroids. They're not steroids but they seem to interact with our own hormone mechanism. And some of them were particularly good at re-timing the menstrual cycle. And the, the one or two that we were particularly warned that women should not take unless they wished to be pregnant so effective were they. What's that feel- what's

24. 1:27:41 – 1:34:38

    Healing Benefits of Echinacea, Frankincense, and Myrrh for the Upper Body

    1. SMSimon Mills1:27:41

       that doing to your tongue?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:41

       I think it's still right on the edge of my tongue. It's like, it's, it's more... So basically for anyone that can't see what we're doing 'cause you're listening on audio, he put a little drop of this, uh, solution-

    3. SMSimon Mills1:27:50

       Echinacea.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:27:51

       ... echinacea on my finger and I licked it off my finger. And at first I was like, there was this sort of taste journey which was like, hmm, interesting. It kind of tastes like Maggi seasoning, some kind of food seasoning. I'm now 60 seconds later, and I can still... it's like gotten more intense.

    5. SMSimon Mills1:28:07

       It's a bit like fireworks going off.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:08

       Yeah, it's like fireworks going off in my mouth. And all it was was a little lick of it, um-

    7. SMSimon Mills1:28:13

       And you see, the-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:13

       It's getting spicy a little bit.

    9. SMSimon Mills1:28:14

       ... w- what, what we'll use that for is for infections or problems of the mouth and the throat particularly.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:28:21

        What, what's it doing?

    11. SMSimon Mills1:28:23

        Well, you know, you have to use a bit of unscientific language here. But remember I talked about the Marines, you know, the guys who do all the battling for us? A lot of them hang out, their barracks are in the throat. You know, we've got tonsils, we've got adenoids, we've got the glands that run down our neck here that sometimes get swelled up, you know, if we've got an infection in, in this area. Yeah, you have to take something. You take the taste-

Episode duration: 2:13:51