Most Replayed Moment: The Antibiotic Alternative Big Pharma Doesn't Want You To Know!

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That 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. And there's links to colorectal cancers? Yeah, well, that's it. Because we're talking about the microbiome, you see. So those are the cancers and the lower gut. We know that the microbiome is a major factor in how well the gut is. I think it's like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and cancer of the bowel, very closely linked to the state of the microbiome. So are there alternatives on this table or in the world of plants to antibiotics that I should maybe also consider instead of just jumping straight to antibiotics for everything that I experience? 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, a viral problem, particularly the airways, you, A antibiotics, won't have no use at all. And B, as we just said, they just add to the risk of more. Because every time you take an antibiotic, you're growing a small population of that, of the species of bacteria that's affected who are resistant to that, is natural selection. You have a thousand little bacteria that's a small amount by their terms. And you kill 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 I 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 and then do something else shall we? So let's say you've got a cold, 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 to hot water or you want to have a 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 well and it's original Asian form. It was made extinct around the time of the Romans. So popular was it. And every since, all the ginger sense of this species has got to be going from root stock as they 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 running in deer and the dutch and the Indonesia and so on, is 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 control the business. So ginger became very popular over here because we don't have nothing I could over here. The nearest thing we got is horse radish, 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 mug. Can you do that for me? I've got a great time. I've got a great time for you. So we've got here a piece of ginger, as I say, about the size of your thumb. The thumb is 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 going to use and you literally, it's going to make a bit of a mess here, but doing this at home, you don't mind, a bit of mess. So you're literally grating and grates nicely, isn't it, into a mug. And let's say that was 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. This is cinnamon you buy in any shop. It comes in different forms. There's one from China called Cassia, which looks like one big curled bark. If you look at this one, you'll see that it's tightly wrapped with lots of little curl, lots of little filaments in it. That's the one you go for. It's got a small aromatic. And you either grate that with, if you've got a spice mill or you take a teaspoon of and say there's a teaspoon full, you put that in your mug. So that's ginger and cinnamon? Ginger and cinnamon, that's it. Then you add your hot water. You're going for real, right? No, for the real one. Good on you. At this point a sieve is useful. Why? Because it's going to be full of bits. And then let's say this is a nice Japanese 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? Ah yeah. And if you don't mind sharing a mug, so what's in here? This is just ginger and cinnamon. Just ginger and cinnamon. It's fairly weak. Oh, it is nice though. It's nice and. It is nice. Now can you feel it warm already? Yes, straight away. Yes, really nice. Yeah. Now you see what's happening there is that you. I mean, ginger is an example of a group of remedies, which includes turmeric. By the way, and that's other root. They are the root there. Oh, this one? That's turmeric. It's normally seen in a yellow powder. We might talk about that later. And black pepper and chilies. We've got a chili here. Which when you take them, you think you're burning your mouth, aren't you? The interesting thing is that there's no burning. You can actually have full madras level of 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 pain fibers all the way through the lining 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 just swallowed and then truing a little bit up in the nasal passages are opening up. The mucous cells producing mucous will loosen up and you get more runny mucous, which is helping to flush through the grott on the mucosa. And the main thing you feel is the warmth. And if you're dealing with something down here and the lungs, you'll actually start bringing up more gunk up the airways. There's a natural escalator that the body uses to get stuff out of the lungs. That's stimulated. And the mixture of cinnamon and ginger was created, I think, in heaven. I mean, I think there's such a natural compliment. And anybody can do that. And the point about it is that it's warming. And in the old days, that was the key thing. You 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 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 a hot water bottle on it. If you've got a joint pain and you want to put a heating linoleumontonic, you can use the same thing. Ginger, which is the difference. heating and that's simple old medicine. So when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold, then cinnamon and ginger are good. I think my God. Well, only if it responds to heat. Now, if you want to put a nice peck on, I mean the old doctors when someone came with a migraine would say, tell me, would you prefer a hot pecker or a nice peck for your migraine? And migraine suffers generally split 70, 30, preferring heat to 70, but a third of people with migraines actually want a cold peck. You don't use ginger for that. You use cooling remedies, which we might come on till later. Okay. My girlfriend, she drinks ginger tea all the time, almost every day. Yeah, she likes the heat. She likes the heat. Yeah. She drinks it before bed as well. You can help with the sleep if that's the way it goes. I mean, people are different and there are some people who can't take ginger at all because there's stomach objects or because it literally heats up too much. They get stimulated by it, but that's where the individuality comes in. Okay. So any condition where I might be looking for heat, ginger and cinnamon first place to go. First place to go. Yeah. If you wanted to be Tex Mex, you can take the chilies as well. Well, you know, we think of them as a much more stream version of the heating and remind ourselves there was only when Europeans discovered America's that chilies became used over here. You know, can you imagine an Italian meal without tomatoes and chilies, but in the old days that were none of those because they all came from America. But yeah, chilies were the American equivalent of ginger used for the same purpose. So if someone comes to you and they say, sorry, when should I use chilies as a form of medication, what would you say? First of all, I don't know yet. And you know, if I'm dealing with someone that's a distance, you know, on the phone or something and they say, you know, what should I try? I said, the first thing to do is you figure it out. You can start with herbal teas. You are, do I? I'm going to drop it into the, I'm going to drop it into here. Is that a bad idea? Yeah, no, go for it, but you'll, you'll, you should notice that should be quite a hot one. I will ask, suggest that they start with herbal teas because herbal teas are a very low dose, but they allow you to figure out what suits you. And you can divide, as I was hinting at earlier, old medicines were often divided into those that were more warming that we would now call stimulating circulation and more cooling, which we would now translate as stimulating digestion. And depending on which of those you prefer would really give me a clue. So if you were looking at warming remedies, it could be gingety, it could be phenol tea, you know, that's a warming remedy or it could be cinnamon or any of the spices. Cardamon is one of my favorites, by the way, this is, I use cardamon, this is the cardamon pods inside of little black seeds. Absids are a lovely taste. Do you know them? Do you know the cardamon? Have you tried it? Not really now. Oh, have a bite of that. Don't you bite the seed? Yeah, just bite into it. You don't just just get a hint of the taste. In many parts of the Middle East, cardamon is one of the main flavours, things like coffee, et cetera. Might remind me of um, oh, I can see Indian food. That's how it is. Used a lot in India. And in China, it's a convalescent tonic, so they use it when people build it up their digestion after being ill for a long time. They will often use cardamon. That's one of my favourite remedies for that when people really run low their digestion isn't functioning. It was appeared in one or two of these stories I've got here. Because I prefer that to most of the other spices when they are need warming, as I said before, but also sustaining and nourishing. So you ask them, do you prefer teas that are warming or would you like something more cooling? Now one of the most cooling remedies that people know about is this, which is mint. That's spear mint. The best one is peppermint. It's got a lovely smell, isn't it? Yeah. That has always been thought of as cooling. And it's a simple test. Would you prefer stinger or peppermint tea and really you're beginning to narrow things down a bit? The main cooling remedies throughout history from very beginning and in every part of the world, you'll find them saying exactly the same thing. The main cooling remedies so called are the bitters. And they taste rarely bitter. When you say cooling, you mean I feel hot. So I want something to cool me down. That's right. And there's certain conditions where I will feel hot fever. They were often used to fever, manage fever. And remember when we were young, we were told, if you've had a big meal, don't go swimming. You weren't told that. I can't swim. There you go. But that was one of the things, you know, some of us in my generation at least were always remembered we were told, you know, if you got a big meal, it's not a good idea to go swim because the blood's moving into the digestion. And you won't get as much as you want when you need it in the limbs. And that's been, it's true. When you're digesting a lot of blood investment, shall we call it, is going into the digestive system because there's a lot of work needed to break down this food, turn it into something useful. It is an investment. You put a lot in, get much more out. But what it means is that digestion is all about ish. I'm just being a bit loose here with the language, but it's not about that. It's like bringing blood into the core. When you've got a fever, the blood's all charging around and your body temperature is going up, which is great because fever actually is a defense measure, you know, when our body temperature rises by a couple of degrees, white blood cells, the ones that are doing the legwork two or three times as active. So fever is what the body uses when it needs to bring out the big guy, is bring out the fight. There's a slight design problem as almost as though, you know, the creator put a, you know, pifts for fault in the system because a lot of fever comes from the gut, you know, you get gut infections, you know, that's one of the main places. And at that moment, all the blood's going out here and you want more of it going in more digestion if you like. So when you take a bitter, when you're taking a bitter, you're actually triggering taste buds up here. A bitter. A bitter, something you taste bitter. Are there any plants that aren't bitter? Yeah, a bitter plant, so very common and were highly valued in the old world. In our times, probably the most bitter plant that people used in European terms was something called wormwood. Now you may not be familiar with that word, but the French were wormwoods for their mousse. And you think of the use of a drink before a meal. The idea was it was, they used to call it an aperitif, something that stimulated your appetite. So there were dues, bitters to improve your appetite and a low level of wormwood would be one of them dandelion and birdock up to other bitters, which we now have as a soft drink, you know, speaking of America. And we know that bitters do switch on the appetite. So we sometimes use them when appetite is poor. And you know, there's all sorts of reasons why you got a low appetite, but bitters can really help, particularly if you're recovering from an illness, they can help with getting the digestion juices flowing and the appetite up. Because they bring blood to the digestive systems? Well, they do all sorts of things actually. When you switch on these receptors in the mouth, these taste buds, they are hardwired and they produce hormones down here in the stomach, that switch on all sorts of things, an effective increase, digestive activity, which involves more blood coming into the area. So yes, let's imagine you're living in some part of, you know, the desert area in the Middle East, you know, you're eating a sheep or something that hasn't seen a refrigerator and it's a bit dodgy, you know. And you think after a meal, you turn to something easily available in that part of the world. It's a plant called Cafe Herabica, we call it coffee. Ground the coffee into a sludge at the bottom, pour a bit of hot water and drink that straight. That's bitter. So if you ever had an espresso without sugar, that's a bitter. And that was used as a digestive, in other words, after you're eating, it would help cope with some pretty rough food. So, bitters were always seen to be good for your digestion and appetite. And in fever, that actually meant lowering your body temperature. And that's, we can see that happening, you know, it means that you're some of the anger out here just gets sublimated into digestion. So that was where the bit has got their cooling reputation. And we can now laugh at this is all medieval nonsense. But the point that I keep coming back to when I'm seeing patients, I start with that blank sheet of paper is because the only test of what these do to you is to take it. And as you notice with your ginger and cinnamon, you don't need long. You've got it there straight up. And if I give a bit of to somebody and so is really bitter, they will know within an hour or so what effect is happy. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by progressive insurance, physically responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. Because progressive offers discounts for paying in full owning a home and more. Plus you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. Visit progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on big technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology podcast forever, you get your podcasts.