Great team. It's you project, David James, Kevin, Patrick Gillspian's here as he is on a semi regular basis. Tiffany and Mildred Malaria Cook is here in the.
Malaria Mildred or is that really your name?
That's her real No, that's so hurtful. David, Hi, Hi, how are you? I'm fabulous? Thanks? How's your Monday gone? Give us a quick snapshot? Oh, we know you bought because you and I did a potty before. You bought four new tires and you didn't get ripped.
Loved him some shining, got out for a stroll.
I've had a good monday. You've had a really good monday. We're beautiful. I went down the beach and I put my little toes in the sand, and then I put my little calves, which are not that little, my significant calves in the water in the water. How Good's just getting in salt water a little bit?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, my body was happy. I went and sat in the grass. There's something about connecting with nature. Yeah, I reckon. David Gillespie'd be a big fan of grounding tif you know where you take your shoes and socks off and just get in the dirt and there's that I reckon he'd be all over that. What he's got to say. I don't know, that's bullshit.
I looked at it now, I know. I mean, you know there's die Hard, the die Hard thing, you know where you at the start of die Hard where the guy sitting next to him on the plane says to you know, when you get off the plane, scrunch your toes. You're going to take your shoes off and scrunch your toes in the carpet. Make you feel you know, make you feel good.
What about those in that same kind of vein? I shouldn't say what I'm about to say everyone, So if you don't want to be offended, just come back in thirty seconds. You've been warned. What about those people who stick there and facing the sun? You know they I forget, there's some kind of they get that kind of if you've heard of this, haven't you Where people in the morning they stick their bum up facing the sun to get some kind of and the thirty second people are back,
you're welcome. I can't say I'm going to be doing that anytime soon, especially in Magpie season.
What's it supposed to do for you.
Oh, I don't know, it's some you know, it's I shouldn't say it's in that group. But there's a bunch of people who, not a few, like quite a lot of people who if maybe you can look up what's see that, I reckon that David Ashbury would do that? Yeah, probably maybe. Well he also David Asbury, who's a world famous biohacker that you probably don't know of or need to know of David. But one of the things he's famous for is recommending people inject their own urine intramuscularly.
Oh yeah, yeah, and many other interesting and curious things. I think he was one of the whether or not that's a good or bad thing, but one of the kind of ten, twelve, fifteen year ago early pioneers, if that's a good thing of what they colloquially call biohacking. But it's gaining I think it's gaining in some places a little bit of credibility because what's his name, doctor Jeff gross Tiff, you know, the one from Las Vegas
that we have on ye. I mean he's literally a surgeon and a medical doctor and considers himself a biohacker. So must be getting a little bit of something.
Really, I mean, a surgeon is the ultimate biohacker, aren't they. I mean they're getting in there and chopping stuff up.
Well, I know another surgeon who he said to me, don't get don't get back surgery unless there is no other option.
Look, there's a lot of a lot of stuff, and about the efficacy of a lot of orthopedic surgery, you know, a lot of it seems to fall in the category of doing it to make the surgeon rich and not much else. You know, because the studies on whether or not you know, knee operations and back operations and so on, actually do anything pretty light on the ground.
Well. Dr cal Freed, who is a is a sports physician in Melbourne, worked in the AFL system for a very long time. Friend of mine, has been on the show quite a few times. He is absolutely against any surgery unless there's no other option. And of course there are times when surgery is required, of course, but you know, some people have a bit of a dodgyback surgery. It's like, no, no, let's try these other seven things before we get to the surgical option, which is not say, I mean, of course,
some surgery is life saving. Of course, we're not saying all surgery is bad or surgeons are bad. We're just saying maybe it should be. Maybe it should move down the list a little bit and we'll particularly for orthopedics.
You know it should definitely do research on any orthopedic operation for a chronic disease before you go that way, I would suggest.
Now, speaking of all things medical, let me get my little let me get a little my little specs out. So in your substack tip, what are you laughing at? And I look like fucking elma fud when I swapped one pair of glasses for another pair of glasses. I'm old as fuck now, so I don't care the rest of you can make fun of me. You've got to live as long as me first, so you can all get rid of You've got to get to this age.
Lucky. You're not sensitive about it though, right.
No, not at all. I'm not sensitive at all. Back in therapy for Jumbo and Invisible and Dangerous Overdose is the name of an article that David wrote for that's in substack in his little what's it called to game data? Thank you? Thank you. Every day, millions of Australian women consumer government mandated medication. They don't know, they don't know they're taking. It's in their morning toast, their lunchtime sandwich.
They're fortified cereal and they're multi vitamin tablet. This medication, folic acid vitamin B nine was introduced as a public health miracle, simple way to protect unborn babies from devastating birth defects. But a decade later, a startling picture is emerging.
Do tell Okay, So let's I want to preface this by if there are any pregnant we're about to be pregnant women listening. There is nothing wrong with taking FOLL eight supplements. It is a undoubtedly a good thing to do. The benefits in preventing spina bifitter and other brain formation or birth defects associated with brain malformation are unequivocal. So I don't want this segment to talk anyone out of that, and I make that really really clear in the piece
as well. But there's an unintended consequence of MANDA, and I guess what I'm talking about mostly in this piece is mass medication, which I have a real problem with. And we've talked before about fluoridation and very other things. I'm not against the things that they're supposed to be fixing. I am against mass medicating people without them knowing they're
being mass medicated. And we've talked before about some of the other B vitamin's vitamin B six, for example, which is added into magnesium tablets to make them absorbed more easily, but can massively overdose you on vitamin B six in a really dangerous fashion, just because you don't even know you're taking it. You know, people would say I'm not taking out at all, without realizing they're taking ten times the daily dose just by taking magnesium tablets. This falls
into that category. So in two thousand and nine, the Australian government mandated the vitamin B nine, or folic acid, be added to all bread sold in Australia, all bread and flour for making bread. So it is added in, and it's added in a very specific level, which is at one hundred and twenty micrograms per hundred grams. The
aim there was to prevent foliated deficiency in the population. Now, we've never had a big problem foloid deficiency, but there were some very convincing studies that said that if pregnant women increase their folid intake to up to one thousand micrograms per day. Then there was a significant reduction in the chances of spina biffeter and a bunch of other birth defects associated with the brain and spinal cord occurring. Now, these things are pretty rare anyway, so a significant increase
in the probability or decrease in the probability. You don't have to have change much to do that. But it was clear on the evidence that if you increase foliated supplementation during pregnancy you could reduce the rate of spina biffeter and some other conditions equivocal. So the government said, right, well, we're not taking any chances with this. We're going to mandate this in the bread and so we're not going to tell others to be to go and take foloated supplements,
although they do that as well. We're just going to make sure if you ignore all health advice and you ignore people telling you to take foloiated supplements and all that sort of stuff, and you are pregnant, then you'll be fine. And that's the thing of it. So it happened in two thousand and nine. Great so far the problem is that a very big study has just been released. There's looked at a really interesting scientific experiment, which is
normally you can't do experiments on pregnant women. You know, ethics. People have all sorts of problems. You know, I can control group you're going to do something to in another control and another group you're going to not do something to. It's just there's all kinds of ethical problems with that.
So it's really tricky. But there was a natural experiment that occurred in Australia in that there was a popular there was a big study of pregnant women that was where they recruited the population before the mandate, and another big study the recruited from the same population after the mandate ten years later. So there was a before two thousand and nine and then ten years later, same group. And so you've got a fantastic experiment there where you can say, Okay, first of all, did it deliver the
promised benefits in spine and bifida. Answer unequivocally yes, they did. Okay, terrific. But the other thing they noticed was a huge increase and I'm talking a tripling of the rate of gestational diabetes in the mothers.
Oh wow, oh wow.
So gestational diabetes is just is like type two diabetes, but it's called gestational because it happens, you know, usually first during pregnancy, and now all pregnant women get a little bit insulent resistant. It's the nature of pregnancy. And the reason for that is that evolution favors the baby, and so the baby must be fed first. So if you make the mother a little insulin resistant, then the blood glucose is going to the baby first. So that's
all perfectly normal and perfectly by design. What they found though, was that if you significantly overdose people on FOL eight, if you go above that's what seems to be that magical thousand micrograms today, by the way, the recommended doses four to six hundred micrograms per day for a pregnant woman. But there's this sort of goldilock zone that's between that and a thousand, where as long as you're under the thousand,
you're okay. B But if you go above that and significantly above that, then you significantly increase the likelihood that the mother will experience gestational diabetes. So, in other words, the mother will become a type two diabetic at least during the pregnancy. And the studies also say that if you're if you have a gestational diabetes, then you're much much more likely to ultimately end up with type two diabetes within a decade after the pregnancy.
Can I ask a quick ask a quick question just to try to give this some context or meaning for people going, you know, four to six hundred micrograms of fole eight or up to a thousand, and it's in the bread, and so people that are maybe I don't know if you know the answer to this, but so if somebody had, let's say, two pieces of bread that's got FOL eight, you know it's been supplemented or what do they call it fortified with fol eight? How much
like four to six hundred micrograms? What would two bits of kind of regular bread have do you know.
Oh, well, that's two bits of bread is going to be around two hundred grams. Mark in terms of bread, it's one hundred and twenty. It's mandated to be one hundred and twenty micrograms per hundred grams. Okay, so every sandwich you have is going to be one hundred and twenty micrograms. The problem is, and if that was the only place it was. Then nobody be at any particular risk. I suspected nobody's eating that much bread. I mean, unless you're chowing die down on an entire loaf of bread.
You know, in a typical day, you're not going to eat well, maybe you eat two, maybe four, maybe you eat six pieces of bread, but you're still well involved locks aren't. The problem is that, in addition to that, women are also intentionally supplementing with filowed. So one of the big pieces of medical advice that they're given is to take foloid supplements before conception and during pregnancy, and those tablets generally are around that recommended level, somewhere between
four hundred and six hundred micrograms. So that's that plus one hundred and twenty and the two pieces of bread plus a similar amount in a bowl of fortified cereals. So most breakfast cereals are fortified with folate. Plus if you take a multivitamin, then you can add another two to four hundred micrograms on there as well. So, because it's regarded as an unequivocally good thing, it's appearing in lots of places. So there's the mandated thing in the bread.
But it's in lots of other places too. And what the study found is that most Australian women had we're now massively overdosing on folate. So between what they were intentionally taking and what they're accidentally taking, they were taking in a lot of folate and instead of the expected result, which would be well, that doesn't really matter, it's no such thing as too much of a good thing. Well, in this case, it looks like there could be such a thing as too much of a good thing. And
that's the concern. Now, you know, there's ways you can criticize this study. You can you can say, okay, well the population became more obese in that period of time, that's definitely true, but it didn't become not sufficient to explain a tripling of the rate of gestational diabetes where we've gone from five percent of pregnant women having it to fifteen percent of pregnant women having it, big jump in a decade.
Less can I ask? So when in two thousand and nine this became you know, mandated, or this just became was well people made aware of this, like is this government at the time.
I think at the time there was a fairly big awareness campaign around it and you know why it was being done, and everyone unequivocally agreed it was a good thing. Studies, The studies on this are, you know, really clear pregnant women should have folate, you know, prevention of spine of if it is a massive, unequivocal benefit. The concern here is that mass medicating always tends to have unintended consequences.
And what this study has done in a really precise manner is and just because I'm lucky they had samples from the same group before and after, has got into the to answer the question, which is is it possible to have too much of a good thing? And the answer appears to be yes. So it's not I'm not for a minute suggesting people shouldn't take folate or shouldn't have followed supplementation. What I am suggesting is that they
should become an accountant of it. They should very carefully pay attention to how much of it they are actually consuming.
And it's something we talk about, or we've talked about a bit, you and I, but also more broadly on the show, a lot is about the dose. It's like anything exercise is great, but not seven hours a day. You know what I mean, like drinking water is good, but not seven liters a day. You know, it's like me.
But with both of those things, you're never going to do it accidentally. You're never going to accidentally fall over and find you've exercised seven hours a day. Where this this you'll do without knowing about it. And that's the concern is that this is in all the bread by not by law, but it's there anyway. It's also in most of the cereals, and it's creeping into many things
because people see it as a marketing thing. This is you know, this contains folight and that helps sell things to pregnant women.
M wow, well, I guess like people are. How do you manage this? You just become more aware, I guess, and you just.
Well, it's like that with B six and we had this discussion before. I mean, it's know about it, be aware of it, know about it, know how much you're consuming, and be conscious of it. The the the science is really clear that anything one hundred one thousand micrograms a day is perfectly fine. It's it's easy to stay under that as long as you're aware of it and still take foiloight supplements. Just be aware. Okay, If I'm having one hundred grams of bred thats one hundred and twenty grams.
If I'm having a breakfast cereal, there's there's some there. If I'm having any other kind of supplement, I read the label and I check how much folate is in this supplement.
Is there a link to this article in your in your article to the actual.
You always always always people, I can go and read read the study.
If you want to go to David's article if you want to actually look at the paper itself or the research itself and the design.
And it's open access by way, so it's not one of these ones that it's restricted. You can read the whole paper. You can dig in as far as you want to go. It's from the University of South Australia, I think so. And very very recent twenty twenty five article.
Speaking of pregnant women and medical issues that are also in the news recently, there's well I'll just segue into that, but there's been another issue with the very common drug that people have been talking about the dangers of pregnant women using that.
Yeah. Well, in the United States, you know, about a week ago the President looked up and the soupern leader pronounced that til and old, which you know Australian listeners might not be all that familiar with. But that's paracetamol or panadol or a set of minifin as I mean. Donald had a bit of a bit of trouble pronouncing that one, but let's just call it panadol for the purposes of this. So pronounced that pa at all causes autism.
Now that's just nonsense, that's just nonsense. But we have the leader of the free world telling pregnant women to avoid just about the only thing they're allowed to take for pain relief during pregnancy, because mostly they're told to avoid anything that is likely to actually relieve pain or in any significant degree because of the potential dangers of it. And he's basing this on a really flawed study that was done well, I don't know if it was a
flawed study or just a flawed interpretation of it. There has been a study of two and a half million women in the Swedish birth registry, two and a half men and children in the Swedish birth registry. The Swedes are very very good at keeping these records and there are lots of studies that come from these registries that look, there's about a five percent association between a mother having
taken panidole during pregnancy and the incidents of autism. Now, as you would be the first to shout there, you know, correlation is not causation, and in this case, this is real proof of it, because the thing you've got to adjust for in these kinds of studies is why was the mother taking panadol in the first place. Usually they're not taking it because they like the taste. They're taking it because they're suffering pain or fever during pregnancy, and
it could be that that's causing the association. But how do you adjust for that. Well, when you've got two and a half million children in a database, it's easy to adjust for them because many mothers have more than one child, and many of those mothers have one of the children where they were taking kind of old during pregnancy and another child where they weren't, And when you compare those, it goes away entirely. There is no correlation none whatsoever. And it's a big data set, so we
can be reasonably confident in it. So whoever is advising Trump saw the first part of that.
I think it's our fk.
They saw the first part of that and left to Thailand Old causes autism, which is sheer nonsense, as proven by the second part of it, which says, when we actually analyze the data properly, there's not even a correlation there. There's just nothing.
It's like for me, it's like saying, you know two and a half million children, and however, many millions of mums, and of them, you know, fifteen percent of them because of Sweden, fifteen percent of them drove Volvos. So so fifteen percent and fifteen percent of the Volvo of the women drove Volvos also had children with autism. That's a three times the correlation of panadole. You know, I mean
that cause autism. That's the Volvo's cause autism. That could be the name of the show, except I don't want to get sued imagine that.
But that's it's a case study in correlation and causation. It's an absolute case study. And it very rarely are you able to sew quickly and easily debunk that correlation well than in this circumstance. And yet you've now got the US government telling pregnant women not to take, as I said, just about the only thing they are allowed to take for pain during pregnancy. And by the way, this is not advice that's free from danger. Fever during
pregnancy is unequivocally dangerous for unborn children. Yes, and so what you're saying to the population is tuffed out. Well. In fact, those are the exact words that President Trump used, tough it out to a pregnant woman, which is ridiculous.
How do we get to this how do we get to this spot where Donald Trump's handing out medical advice. Let's add odds with medical people.
People just anyone capable of reading a scientific study would say that's nonsense. And it's so it is distressing and should be, in my view, completely disregarded by anyone. H And now, mind you, I've still got problems with panadol. We've talked before about how it actually reduces empathy and makes you.
More about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So those pregnant women, if they don't want to be like psychopaths, should definitely avoid panadole. But if they're running a fever, the risks associated with that are significantly greater than the non existent risks of it causing autism.
And if you're wondering what David's talk about everyone, we spoke probably a good year ago about there is actually a relationship between people who use panadol or panadine or whatever you call it, paracetamol and they're more likely to be yeah, psychopaths or sociopaths or whatever.
That's well, it reduces measureable produces empathy. Yeah, and since that's the core feature of psychopathy, for the four hours or so that it's affecting you, you are likely to be less empathetic.
I haven't paid much attention, but as there's been a lot of pushback in the States to the Grand Medical Chief Advisor, there has.
Been obviously anyone with any position at all of influence has come out and said it essentially the same thing I've just said. But I don't know how much traction that gets in the United States now, logic doesn't seem to play a large part in the way that some people there are behaving.
I'd love to this as not for tonight, but I'd love to do a chat with you one day about just your observations on what's happening. I'm pretty sure that would not be a thirty minute chat. But can I ask you one question, not but a more global question. I guess are you Are you worried about the state of the world in terms of like where it just seems to be like everybody screaming at everybody and extremism becoming. I'm not talking about particular political this or religious that,
or but just I don't know. It just seems to me like a global shouting match at the moment.
I'm a believer in history repeating itself, particularly when it comes to social behaviors and social structures, and I believe that we tend to go through a roughly eighty year cycles of largely progressive behavior, which is everyone helping everyone else, which gets pushed towards the edge where essentially it's the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We're in that phase at the moment, right at the end of it.
The last time it happened was during the Gilded Age, just before the Second World War, and I think there are some real lessons to be learned about how society looked then and how the Second World War solved it. And the probably horrible prediction that that leads us to, which is that the only thing that's going to fix it this time round is a significant disaster. So that's a fairly pessimistic look at the world. But that's my
fear at the moment. And I'm currently just for fun doing a lot of reading about the Gilded Age and we'll probably write something about it at some point, of course.
You will. Toys fun chatting to you mate, Thank you for jumping on a Monday night that you don't normally do.
Pleasure.
We'll say goodbye fair but thanks again, David. Yeah, loads of fun see ye, Thanks TIV, Thanks Tip,