#1758 Health Promotion vs Sickness Management - Dr. Denise Furness

skippity something. Anyway, we won't even go there because I'm not even cool enough to repeat the words that my twelve year old says that's cool in that genre, that age bracket of teenagers.

I'm like, you're saying it though, like that's crap, and he goes, oh, no, actually means like really good. I'm like, but the way that you say it in that sentence doesn't actually mean that. So it's really interesting trying to I mean, he's only twelve, and this is probably something that older boys say as well, so I think they're just grasping onto things they hear as well. So anyway, let's get on with the podcast and not talk about language that I don't even understand.

there and he's walking in. He just stops and looks at it, and he goes to me, that's sick, and I go, is it? He goes fully sick? I go goodie gum drops like, okay, just myself, My black and yellow motorbike is fully sick and as evaluated by a black, bloody fifteen year old Emilio that goes to the gym or whatever. So yeah, I'm with you. I didn't I don't know, but I get the energy behind it or the intention behind it, and it was positive. So two thumbs up for my sick motorbike.

job and you're very busy. You're traversing the globe doing education and gigs and conferences and just enlightening the world to think better, do better, live better, and be healthier. But you were saying there was like when you're flat out at work and he's flat out at work, there can be a little tension in the household, although you both love each other. But he's not working now, so's there's some during the day sex happening. So that's good. I mean that's a paradox, isn't it.

away along. You're like, oh, hello, But anyway, so Ryan's really happy. I'm tidy than I have been in a long time. How's that for listeners? Is that educationabook?

and it's okay too. I can actually be silly and you know, potentially in some people's eyes inappropriate or say things, but at the same time still completely understand cellular biology and genetics and really be out there to just help people get as well as they can. And to be honest, I think the personality in some senses can be really helpful for people because they just sort of then kind of connect with you and go, oh, okay, well, you know she can be like that and say all that.

Maybe it's not so too distant from me, because I think the professionalism sometimes can be a disconnect from the real person, you know, when you're trying to be that. But for a very long time I thought I needed to act a certain way, and I have to say, if I can do a little shout out to her, Tash Corbyn. I've got a business coach who's like Adhd and crazy as well, and she's been so good for me. She's just like, she's amazing. She's making all this money,

but she's a really good person. She's out there doing good with the world, and she's opened my eyes to just being totally off. She's the least Instagrammy. She's so successful, successful in so many ways, but she's also strange and different but authentic and doing amazing things for the world and the planet. Anyway, there you go, little not a little tangent for you all. There's me just falling into being okay with who I am.

just funny bullshit, that really is meaningless. If I was if I was listening to this show as me and I'd never heard you or me or TIF, if I was listening as an outsider with my current knowledge and all of that, I'd go, that's really fucking clever, right, because we've got this lady who's a fucking molecular geneticist or you know, whatever you are, and but oh, she's funny, she's likable, she's charming. I want to keep listening, right.

And that is analogous to me walking out on a stage with a bunch of people who don't know me, and they go, oh, here is another fucking high performance mind coachy, fucking boring cookie cut, here's another slide, here's

some rah rah, here's an inspirational video. And I go out there and I do exactly what they don't expect, you know, And there's stories or there's some laughter, there's some interaction, there's some arms in the air, there's some borderline inappropriate references that ninety nine per cent of people

are okay with. And then all of a sudden, before I've taught them anything or really told them anything, I've got rapport and I've got connection, and I've got a little bit of trust, you know, And I think for you, and I certainly, no, you don't need to be coached by me, But for what your job. Whereas you know, you're not always talking to academics or researchers. In fact, I would think most of the time you're talking to people who don't know what you know, or nearly all

of the time. Then I think just as important as what do I know and what can I tell them, is how do I tell them what I know in a way which is super fucking interesting and understandable and also usable? Like can they operationalize something that I'm telling them today? One? Is it relevant for them too? Do they understand what the fuck I'm saying? And then three, what's one or two or three things that based on what I just told them they can do like now

ish which is going to help them potentially. And I think you have that, you know, apart from the obvious is you've got the skills and the knowledge and the research and the miles on the clock. You've got that other missing piece that most academics don't have.

not that. I can't be both those things. Like, well, actually we can. You know, I'm still that person. I don't have to be sort of. I mean, I'm guessing this is maybe tying into some of the research that you do, perhaps, Craig, and speaking about coaching, I think you picked up on a lot with me in the very early days because we've known each other for so long and even mentioned about, you know, writing a book

or getting all this stuff out there. You know. I think next year might be our time, you know, for us actually doing together. Yeah, just that needed the time and the space. I feel like next year is just going to be amazing. I mean, I'm always positive, but I'm very confident next year is going to be just great. I've got the time and the space. As I said, my amazing husband's now home, so he's taking the load, which is a big step for him. And by the way, like he I will have to say that is when

you talk about images of people. I think he will not like me saying this, because he is not the extrovert at all. He doesn't like me talking about him, but somehow I always do because I'm always talking. But it's been a bit of an adjustment for him in the sense that he was really happy being home, well really happy in an exaggeration. He was more comfortable being home when the kids were babies, because that's kind of acceptable, and then he went back to work when the kids

started school. Plus we needed that when I was caring for Dad, for him to sort of bring in a bit of money. I didn't have the capacity to work as much. But now that I'm busy again, it wasn't working. It just wasn't working, and as it was putting a lot of tension on us, and then me traveling, and we don't have family up here. So you know, he's come home, but I think there's been He doesn't tell me all of it, but there's been a few things

said to him. You know, there's a couple of blokes that a lot, you know, mate should be working, you know, so there's this expectation that he should be out working, and that is a little bit for I think him to work through. I mean, he knows the most important thing is the family. He's so dedicated to us and the kids. But it is a little bit harder with the stigma. I think that's the word I'm looking for. Reality is though, if I was at home still, you know,

my babies are still stells in primary school. You know, she's only grade two, she'll be grade three next year. She's eight, and Harry's about to start high school, which is amazing, but you know they still need us, You still need a parent. So we're just looking at our house at the moment. The last few years there's been no repairs or maintenance because we've been so busy, like just having someone just to do, especially when you live on an acre and a half out in the middle

of you know, New Interland. But that's a little bit sad in some senses, I think for him as well, even though it's great for us as a family, great for me. I've now got time to just put energy into the business, explore cool things with you next year, Craig, because I'll be like, great, I've actually got a little bit of space I can do this, I can commit to my passion and my dreams. But the reality is he's then at home, and that is by today's standards

and society. You still look frowned upon it, but by some people because there's an expectation that men should be working. And I don't think we have to stay home as women anymore. But it's more normal for the mum to be at home with the kids, you know.

company backer in Melbourne. More of that way inclined, so behind the scenes doing things. It's not luck. He doesn't help with the business at all. If anything, he could do more, it's just that I'm a little bit emotionally attached to the business. He wants to do more.

when our family is in a good place. You know, when you got that tension or in you know that you don't have that stability at home, it's very hard to show up or be as good as you can be when you're dealing with that sort of stress at home.

just disclosing all that I'm I've told people. I mean, I'm happy with that. Like she's When I say to people she's more valuable to the U Project than me, they go, oh, so humble of you. I'm like, yeah, I know that sounds humble. That's not actually humble. That's actually reflective of what is true. Right. And so it's like when we do a conference, the U Project conference, or we do let's say we do a U Project event or which just gets called craighap Alive or whatever

in Brisbane or wherever I go. Literally everything except the actual speaking Melissa does. So. Melissa builds the page, Melissa books the venue, Melissa comes up with all the dates, Melissa organizes you know, hotels, afairs. You know, she interacts, she answers one fucking million emails. She's like everything that has to be done.

she does is unseen to most people. It's unseen. It's you know, and because I'm the mouthpiece and I'm the extrovert, and I'm the one on the days showing off and talking bullshit and trying to make people laugh, and you know, it's like I create the energy for those three hours, but the thousand hours leading up to those three hours

is all her. And that's you know. So yeah, I think that people like you and me, who are very public facing, we need at least and Tiff is the same, you know, like Tiff as Tiff sits in and doesn't talk most of the time, and you know, records and edits and like, without her, it's the same we do. I don't know, Tiff probably does two hundred episodes a year with me, you know, and without her, without Melissa, And I'm not I know this sounds cheesy, but it's

just true, Like it just wouldn't happen. Like I'm fucking hopeless. I couldn't do all the stuff that you know. Sometimes I'll ring Tiff and go, ah, like there's something that I could maybe do and if I could, it would take me an hour and it'd be shit, And she does it in sixty seconds and sends it back to me. I'm like, there we go. That's why we've got a you and a me, because you're good at shit that

I'm terrible at. So yeah, I think that, you know, whatever capacity, you know, Ryan's kind of supporting you or walking working alongside you. It's it's like you get the glamorous bit, yeah, and it's it's you know, I get it, but it's yeah, sometimes they're the ones doing the real grind.

traveling on my own. But even the traveling, you know, I can say yes to an event. So next year is so busy. We're definitely we've recovered from COVID, Like it's taken a long time for me to really be booked so far in advance, Like before COVID, i'd be booked at least six, if not twelve months ahead for a conference coming that only really this year did things start to pick up. And now next year I'm booked

through t October, which is exciting. But almost every month I've got well every month I do have something not international, but I've had to say no to a few things, which is exciting only because I've had to. I'm not good at saying no, but balancing out, like I'm in New York in feb and then I've got you know, Europe and the UK, and then I've been asked to go to the UK for something else, and it's already within two months of going to London. It's like, I

can't go back to London. But I can only do that because he's at home and that doesn't put pressure on the kids and us, and like you said, with all the tech stuff as well, Like Ryan's always been my tech person. And even when I went to Jubai, I had five talks and he could see that I was kind of flipping out or leave things to the last minute. It's like can I help? And I say, well, can you format all of these slides just done? You know,

like in a couple of that. And he does things that different his attention to detail because he's a very different personality and he comes from like audio visual background, so used to you know, make music, DJ and stuff, and so he's really into that. So everything just looks amazing. So yeah, you know, having that little team behind you, but like you said, where the face. So everyone just sees me and there's just an assumption that you know,

rhymes at home not really doing anything. It's like, actually he's picking up the pieces everywhere with the house, with the kids, with the business, and also, as I said, is now has a newfound love of LinkedIn. If anything, I'm like, I don't know if you have to put that many videos of me on LinkedIn?

it doesn't have to be one or the other. Like if you've got you know, I've got thirty something thousand on my personal Facebook, similar on my private or business and then thirty two or three on Insta and then a bunch on you.

is fantastic in the set. Of course, I'm biased and all the genetic testing, but it's just I haven't really been able to see if and when this will integrate. But this year has been a game changer. I was in read so I was invited by the Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to go over to a conference which, by the way,

I thought was a scam. I was like, as if, I'm not even going to answer that email, and Lucky Ryan was like, I think you should answer this, and I was like, oh, it's a scam because I get so many emails to ten conferences and half of them are just your dodgy.

So you pay to go over, you pay for for everything, and then you can say, you know, I spoke at this event. Now in saying that as an academic, and you probably know this too. Craig as an academic. You know, I did pay even if I was a speaker. You know, my organization might pay registration or I wasn't getting a speaker fee because I was employed by the hospital or CSIRO. But these were legitimate, big, you know events. These are not big, legitimate events that you know, the top the

head of you know whatever. These are private organizations putting on conferences that I think are just trying to make money from them. But yes, I do, I get I get a few of those. And again talking about Ryan being home because he's now seeing all these things come through, is helping my admin with all the emails. He said, you're just ignoring all these conference things. I said, they're dodgy, I said, I said, I just tell FJ unless they

actually know something about me or there's certain things. If it's just a random one, I said, we just ignore them. We don't have time. But now we've created a template that actually goes back to the person and actually says watch your speaker fee da da da da da da, like just all these questions, and then that means we're

getting that response. And then when we get the response, we can either just say, you know, we respectfully decline or like with Saudi, I can go, oh, wow, this is actually the real deal, because I would have let it slide like I do all the others. And it was amazing, amazing. I for the first time in my life think I've had true imposter syndrome. And now people

talk about that. I think in my world because I've been doing this for so long, and you know, just I could be at any conference and I just feel like I'm in my element. But this was a different kind of event. This was the Global Health Summit. There were politicians and royals and it was huge and it was about changing healthcare. So by two thousand and thirty they want to move to a preventative health model from a reactive. So in Australia, if you get.

which is what they are moving towards. That is because they actually do have a higher frequency, a higher rate of rare genetic diseases in their population because there's a lot of people coming together and breeding because they want to keep bloodlines and families. So they've realized now that's not okay. So they do have a high risk of certain genetic diseases compared to other populations. So they already have that in place. If you get engaged, you're going

to get married, you have to do genetic testing. If a couple has both of these genetic disorders, they are told, you know, well, if you have children, you're going to get these diseases. So that's already happening. But they want to do whole genome sequencing on the entire population, in the sense of doing even like what I do nutral genomics or just looking at chronic disease. I think I

think this is where I come in. I'm trying to learn still how I was invited to this prestigious event, because there were times that I was like, how the hell am I here? Like do they make a mistake? You know, when people are meeting me, they're like, what do you do? I'm like, Oh, I run a business, And you can see their face light up, and I'm thinking my business is from home, seeing patients online and doing a bit of education. These are people at a very different level to where I'm at.

lot of us. Mind you. I met other geneticists, clinical geneticists that are still working in a medical practice doing what I do, which was amazing because we don't have that here in Australia just yet. I think it's coming. But what it just showed me is so they invested. They're investing thirteen a billion, not million billion dollars into changing healthcare. It's genetics AI tech and it's exciting and

what we will see in the future. I don't think Australia will adopt this as early, but these countries will lead the way and we will start having what I do as a more mainstream approach to identifying are you at risk of cardiovascular disease or type two diabetes or you know where where do we need to optimize your nutrition? What are your genetic strengths and susceptibilities, you know, giving people that information. So we are definitely moving towards it

because we have the knowledge. It's just not it's just not part of the medical model here in Australia as yet. So that's super exciting everyone.

trying to manage sickness. But the problem with the current sickness management model that Australians live in is that it's very fucking profitable.

a choice. Yeah, because someone like me, maybe someone won't take that information. Knowing that I have the strongest genetic respector for Alzheimer's and dementia, I take that on board and I appreciate knowing that because it gives me a bit of motivation when life is busy and crazy, to just remind myself, this is what you've been dealt. We need to we need to keep this in check. And someone else might actually not react that way. That could be more of a stress, more anxiety. And not everyone

wants to make the changes. I mean, this is what you do, Craig. You're there trying to get people to make change. Now. I use genetics for that because I feel like when people understand their DNA, that's, you know, that really helps them feel like they should be doing these things. It's not just generic advice. This is about me. I can see that this potentially is really going to help me. But not everyone is wanting to make those

changes for whatever reasons. They're not going to change their diet, they're not going to exercise, they're not going to you know. So it's got to be the people that actually want the information and that are willing or interested in living that particular lifestyle. And that's not everyone.

Who's controlling all of that information and who's controlling the safety of that and you know the privacy of that. I think there's anyway, let's not get political, but.

you know, so nothing. They do not want any of their data potentially being accessed or breached by anyone else. So, and it's a very important question in the sense of well what happens if someone does get this information. So things are changing in Australia for those of you who've had DNA testing, or if you're thinking about it, or if you had it and this wasn't explained to you.

Because even back in the day when I did research and we were doing genetic testing on all of our patients in the recurrent miscarriage clinic or the hardest clinic, trying to work out, you know, was there a genetic component to the stillbirth or the preclamsy or whatever it was. We I wasn't told then that this information legally back

then has changed. But back then, if you had done any genetic testing and you want to get life insurance, you had to disclose that you'd had genetic TIS testing done and potentially, depending what was in that, it could affect your life insurance. So that's also a huge problem.

Thankfully it's taken a long time. That is no longer the case in Australia, and part of that has always been around, well, if that's the case, you're you're going to prevent people doing research, us learning improving what we know with genetics if it's going to basically hinder people or it's going to have some sort of negative effect on them. So things were changed a few years ago.

For example, if you had the brackagenes, you still could get life insurance up which is associated with breast cancer up to a certain amount like five hundred thousand, but not the higher amounts. But now it's all changed. You don't have to disclose that. Yeah, so things are changing around privacy with DNA testing and genetics. In Europe, it's always been much more for the consumer. So in Europe, you know, they can't discriminate, they can't use that information.

But in Australia it was a little bit different. The other thing is a lot of people have just given their DNA away. They've gone and done twenty three and me they've gone and done ancestry and they're like, great for one hundred bucks on ninety bucks, I can get all of this stuff done. They don't read the consent form. They don't realize that all their information is their things at one point were being sold to pharmaceutic companies. I mean it should all be what we call de identified,

like what you would do with your research prey. You know, we're not using personal details, but it's there. And I think twenty three meters had a breach. But a lot of people have given their data away, just like they do on social media, and probably don't understand the consequences potentially to that. But it's changing as we are moving

towards this as a potentially more conventional approach. I think the regulations, the laws will get stronger and stricter to protect us so that it can't come back and cause

any issues. But yeah, these are things that we almost need to be in sort of catch up mode because it's happening so quickly, and people have jumped in head first, as I said to online DNA testing companies without seeing a practitioner, without really knowing what they're doing, and having their lots of people have done whole I have patients that come to me that have done whole genome sequencing.

Now it can be done for less than one thousand dollars, And then I have to say to them, I can't interpret that you need to hold buy informatics team, you need someone else, like unless I was still in a lab and this was my assessment. But sometimes people don't even really know what they're signing up for and what they're getting, and they spend money and they don't even know how to use the information.

rays and all sorts of things. But it's come so far, I mean, nagin doing the whole whole genome and stuff. You know. Yeah, it's it's definitely a lot more affordable, a lot quicker. But the issue at the moment today twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, I'm guessing this will come out next year, seeing we are only the way Merry Christmas. Everyone is like Christmas basically, right, Merry Christmas. It's that it's the interpretation that's that's the biggest thing

at the moment, is about interpreting the information correctly. That's where we need to do a lot of work.

where he studies and teachers genetics and infectious diseases. Received his PhD in CELA molecular biology from University of Pennsylvania. Blah blah blah. He's been on CNN and Bloody a Million TV. Yeah, and you guys are You're different but in the same wheelhouse.

we teach. I teach genetics epigenetics to used to be mainly GPS or doctors wanting to bring this into clinic because some do more so these days, even naturopaths, nutritionists, but there's not a lot of geneticists they are actually doing this. I'm teaching doctors and practitioners how to do it. So I was so excited when I went to Read that I was with other geneticists that had been trained in genetics that were also taking this on board. Because when I was in my bubble of academia. I didn't

even know this was happening in the world. And I am sure that we've discussed this on an earlier podcast, but I gave a talk for ACNEM was twenty and twelve, twenty eleven, and I said, I think we're ready for this in clinical practice. You know, we had an eighty percent success rate in the recurrent miscarriage clinic. And that wasn't just genetics. You know, there was a team, we had sonographers looking for structural abnormalities in uterus. You know,

there's a whole team of people. But we had great success. The genetics was a huge part of it, identifying certain things. And I said, you know, we should be doing this out in the real world, not just in a research sense. And they kind of, you know, link my arm after I've finished the presentation and they take me out and there we go. When we're looking at all the sponsors, three of them are genetic testing companies, and it was already happening. And in my little world, I thought only

did this in a research sense. I had no idea there were commercial companies and people could just do DNA testing, which was great because I ended up obviously leaving and then becoming a practitioner myself, and now I use places like this because I don't have a lab anymore. But that's the interesting thing. When you are an academic, you just don't know that these things are actually happening in

the real world. So yeah, it was exciting to meet other geneticists that were embracing this and people saying to me, you know clinical geneticists that still run medical genetics clinics and going, oh, methylation is so important, and they're bringing this in medical model that they are truly bringing it together. Exciting.

the medical board and things like that. But sometimes these things, like you know, nutritional medicine was based was sort of classified as complementary medicine. At one point, gps were potentially losing their medical license for practicing complementary medicine or not

not doing exactly what the guidelines say. So for some of these gps, not only is it money and time to learn about nutrition, environmental toxins, the impact of stress, the impact of genetics, you know that, they're also putting themselves on the radar as well. So it's but things

are changing. Someone called Penny cold to Cott and a huge team of people but led the way with you know, working with the politicians the medical boards to try to protect integrative doctors and also try to, I guess show the differences between evidence based you know, what we do, which is based on science, compared to sometimes some other things that may not be so safe. A lot of that been put in place now so there's a little

bit more protection. But at one point doctors were losing their license pretty quickly if they were doing things that were seen to be outside the scope. So that's that's a bit sad, but that's because there's a model exactly like what you said. It's based on, you know, waiting for that diagnosis, that pharmaceutical model give those medications. And I think it'll be quite a while before it changes here in Australia, but it is happening.

are just fundamentals of health, you know. And imagine if we had a medical training paradigm where people go in to do medicine and before we throw drugs, depending of course on the issue or the condition, but imagine if the first strategy was changing food, or was addressing sleep, or was addressing you know, exercise or movement or you know, all of these other things before we just start chucking

drugs at it. Now, I know that's not appropriate for every condition, you know, but there are a lot of conditions where you know, maybe the starting point is not a drug. Maybe the starting point is that you have lest you know, you've got anxiety. Let's cut out caffeine, Let's cut out nicotine. Let's try and get some sleep.

Let's do some movement, because we know that that promotes, you know, dopamine and turns on your parasympathetic nervous system and will calm you down potentially depends, you know, Let's do some other shit that's going to change what's happening in your body biochemically before we go. Well, here's a pill that doesn't actually fix anything. It just changes a symptom temporarily, you know.

had graves. Being on medication saved my life. You know, I love the integrative model where we are utilizing this you know this, the medicines and the pharmaceuticals that are out there, because it can actually be life saving. And I think medicine is amazing with emergency medicine, but when it comes to the chronic health conditions, it's not working. And we can say it without me bagging any doctors. They are amazing GPS, even those that aren't even integrated.

You know, they're working their butts off. They've only got two seconds. Of course I'm exaggerating, but you know, two seconds to see each patient deal with all this stuff. But the reality is these medications are fixing a symptom like blood pressure medication so well, you know, we can actually do so much and in most cases you probably could turn around that hypertension through diet and lifestyle. I mean with mine, I was told you'll never recover for

an autoimmune disease. You have to have your thire removed or radioactive eye died, can't be near your baby, can't be near your husband, can't go through traveling and all these things. And you're like, that doesn't sound good. You know I'm going to be radioactive. I can't be him a child, and then we can give you hormone. It's okay, because we can treat you. We've actually got something to give you. It's fine. We can give you hormones and replace what your thyroid does and you'll be okay. It's

actually common for women. It's fine. And you're like, that does not sound fine, and so many people don't have. I guess the background that I had and the support again from my husband to question that, because when I did question it, and we've definitely talked about this before, but when we did question it, the endocrinologist said, well, you'll die early, you won't have any more children. You know. I'm leaving in tears. Came home just crying, an absolute mess,

saying to Ryan, I just just doesn't feel right. I don't want to go down this path. And he came with me to the next appointment. We asked for a second opinion. We then see another top end of chronologist who says, oh, no, I would never do that for a reproductive age woman. He said, you'll stay on medication anti thire medication. Then once you've had a child, because you've had aggressive graves and you won't recover. So Simil

a message, but different treatment. He said, we will remove your thyroid or you'll have the radiodivider after you've finished having your children, because if we do this now, it'll affect your fertility. An you're thinking, these are mainstream doctors, evidence based giving me different information. It's crazy, But I recovered, as you know. I mean, that was really my path into integrative medicine as well. And I'm so blessed that I do understand genetics and ne epigenetics, because I thought,

this doesn't make sense. You know, we're not stagnant beings just because you get a diagnosis right now, you've got diabetes or hypertension or on autoimmune disease, something's triggered. That was it stress virus, nutrient deficiencies, genetic susceptibility. It's likely it was all of them. It's never just one thing, you know, lots of things have to come together for you to have that perfect storm and then get really sick. And depending on what manifests, that foundation is your genetics.

So for me, I have all the genes for Graves disease, the autoimmune staff, I've got the HLA's with celia. I don't have celiac, but you know, there's a lot of things that are sort of all linked in that autoimmune stuff, mind you, fertility stuff no surprise, you know, babies and no ivf isshues or whatever. It's a strong point for me.

But we all have these sort of strengths and these susceptibilities and predispositions, and if we're not living a certain kind of lifestyle, you know, a disconnection from our genetics and what our body needs. We can get sick. That's our body telling us something's wrong. But that's not a forever state. You don't stay sick forever. That's it unless you keep doing the same thing. If you change that environment, you change your diet, you change your exposures, you get

out of that toxic relationship that whatever it is. You know, all the things that are coming in that are triggering all those negative effects. You change all that, you're going to get a different response. Now, I can't say to every single person you'll totally recover, but I can guarantee

you'll get much much better. Depending on the level of damage to your body or certain tissues, you might still have to rely on a medication or there might be some thing, but you can one hundred percent get well and in extreme cases, I've even heard from a practitioner, a functional medicine doctor in the US, someone that had their thyroid removed it actually grew back. So yes, so

you know, the body's pretty amazing. I mean, we even just talking to my mother in law this morning about angiogenesis like the creation of new blood vessels because she's got a blockage and deciding whether she has surgery and going through all that with her and letting her know how much the body can heal and are if you're putting the right things in. But for everyone listening, you know, even if you are on a there's nothing against medication.

You might need it to save your life. If you are experiencing something really severe, maybe it's a temporary fix while you then you know a bit of symptom relief, try to start to think about, well, what is going on, what got me here? And then what can I do to start to pull me out of this? And you may actually find that, you know, you're no longer reliant on medication to have a diagnosis, because that is fact that you are not just the same person forever in

a day, we're constantly evolving. You sells all that stuff.

but yes we did. Yeah, I did a project with listeners and we had a couple of hundred get involved, and I'm sure half of them dropped out. But so I did a show then called the High Performance Show, and I said, I was talking about this idea, and the idea, it's the simplest idea ever, is just don't drink any calories for a month. Right, So that's the only change. So eat what you normally eat. Let's just change one thing, but all of the calories that you take.

And it's funny because I spoke to many people who have I would say most people have between five hundred and one thousand calories a day of liquid. If you add up like a fruit juice here and there, or a couple of coffees or a beer or a whatever milk on their thing or you know. And then so I spoke to a guy who had we figured out it was about nine hundred a day, and you go, well, that's twenty seven thousand calories in a thirty day period on top of your food, like, on top of your meals.

That's twenty seven thousand calories. And when you realize that three and a half thousand calories equates to a pound of fat, or seventy seven hundred calories equates to a kilo of stored fat, because fat's just energy, blah blah blah whatever. Right, I know it's not exactly that, but just the idea of saying, well, let's remove twenty seven thousand calories, keep your food the same, keep your movement

the same, keep your lifestyle the same. So that guy did that and lost just over four k's And he didn't exercise anymore, he didn't eat any less, but he lost over four k's. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing that you can. You know, you don't need to be Denise, you don't need to be me. You don't need to be a bloody physician. You can say, all right, well, what I'm going to go from four coffee in the day to one and I'll just see what happens. Well, I'm going to do strength training twice a week for

forty five minutes, and that's the only change. But I'm not going to do it for three weeks. I'm going to give up. I'm going to do it for six months, two days a week, no matter what, and then see what happens. You know, it's like we can run our own experiments in an intelligent, safe.

to the cardiologist. Whatever, it doesn't matter now, I said, actually, Dad, in a year's time, it'd almost have bloody, brand new lungs like you know those cells are going to die and to get new ones. Even with our liver, I've had people say to me, I've kind of drunk my whole life, or I took drugs when I was young. This it's like, no, no, no, Your liver regenerates really quickly. We can take a biopsy out of chunk and it

will grow back pretty quickly. So you start putting the good nutrients in plenty of water, doing the right things, those old cells die and then you get new cells that are healthier. So it is never ever too late. And I know, you know, I'm not sure what you think about this, but kind of rounding off, I know you've got I've got one more patient and then that's it for Christmas. I wasn't going to work today, but of course we love our business. We fit everything in

and you've got one other person. But new Year's goals. I know, it's sort of one of those things you think, oh, you know, new Year's resolutions or goals. But one thing, like you said, Craig, one small thing, because often that one positive thing, if you can nail, that will lead into something else, and it'll lead into something else. But just and super simple doesn't have to be complicated, a whole overhaul, just choosing one thing. So for me, everyone,

I'm putting this out there because it helps. For me. It's committing to the gym. Even though I have a full set up at home, I don't use it. I have to go to the gym, and I tend to prioritize everything else. Even this week meeting to the US in the morning, patients fitting them in, and it was a sign from the universe because the US meeting got canceled. Something happened in the lab that I was meant to

meet another one patient's results wasn't ready. I was like, I've pushed the gym aside to fit in these really early morning meetings, trying to help people out, and they're getting canceled anyway. So one thing, one thing, and for me, everyone, exercise. Next time you see me. I'm going to be fit. I'm getting my muscles back doing as everyone.

the most exciting thing in my life right now. But yeah, and I will be seeing a lot more of you in twenty twenty five. Tiff Craig and Melissa, I know you're listening there somewhere in the background.