Let's Say Hello

[00:04:29.950] – Allan
Hey Raz, how are you?

[00:04:31.440] – Rachel
Good. How are you today, Allan?

[00:04:33.120] – Allan
I'm doing all right. Still flipped out by that woman.

[00:04:36.670] – Rachel
It is a funny sound on that recording.

[00:04:38.910] – Allan
Yeah. So, yeah, when we go to do a recording on Zoom, they've now got this voice lady that comes in and says, you know, we're recording and then she'll say again, we're not recording. And it's just it's kind of just startling because it's louder than we are. But it's just so you can probably hear us laugh about this for at least the next year. Maybe they can give us different voices, maybe something a little bit calmer and soother to transition into these shows because it's like, don't you know?

[00:05:08.090] – Allan
But now everybody on the call, both of us, Rachel and myself, know that I'm recording. And the little red flashing dot was the indicator for that as well. But it is accessible. This is about accessibility. So I get it. I get it. I get it. But give me a calmer, gentler voice. Everybody will be fine with it, you know, just something nice. Maybe something like Mr. Rogers voice, you know, versus the lady we have.

[00:05:32.010] – Allan
It sounds a lot more like Mr. T.

[00:05:34.230] – Rachel
Yeah. Stern warning.

[00:05:38.400] – Allan
How you doing?

[00:05:39.330] – Rachel
Good. Good. You know, we've been having some rainy weather up here in the spring, which is wonderful for my garden. But I've got a new client for who's running her first full marathon. And I told her to practice running in the rain. And Mike and I just went out. We did a 10k in the rain the other weekend and it really was a hoot. It's just fun. It's fun running and jumping in puddles. And I feel just like a kid again.

[00:06:04.350] – Rachel
And plus I'm testing all my gear because you just never know what the weather will bring on race day. So that's what I want my new client to experience just in case for race day is rainy as well.

[00:06:14.010] – Allan
Just in case it rains. Absolutely. So are you going to chafe? Is it going to hurt? You know, how much is your clothes going to weigh when they're wet. All those things can be big, big deal. You weren't planning on carrying an extra pound or two of water.

[00:06:28.410] – Rachel
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's important to make all those decisions and be prepared. Plus you've got the mental preparedness as well. If it's going to rain, it will be a big deal because you've been through it already. So that's an advantage.

[00:06:42.240] – Allan
And if it happens to be a warm day, you've got a natural cooling effort that's there. So it's actually not the direct sunlight dehydration thing. It's rain.

[00:06:52.740] – Rachel
It could be a good day. Yeah.

[00:06:54.990] – Allan
It rained during my first marathon when I ran. It did. It was so funny. We came up to this hill. It wasn't raining when we started and then we came up to the hill is only one really hill in the whole marathon. Turned this corner and it's raining. It starts raining. As soon as we get to this hill and we're running up this hill and the wind is blowing in our face. As we're running up the hill in the rain.

[00:07:19.920] – Rachel
You have to laugh at that.

[00:07:21.540] – Allan
That's the whole point. I thought I was running with. It's like, I knew I was running with the right group of guys. I ran into these guys. It just start and we're running. And, you know, I knew I was with the right guys because we were just. Does it get any worse than this?

[00:07:35.130] – Allan
Like shut up…

[00:07:36.840] – Rachel
Don't say that. Don't say that out loud. Yeah. Because in Florida, you could have a thunderstorm pretty quickly.

[00:07:44.220] – Allan
Anything could happen. So it's like, yeah, let's just not tempt fate. Let's just race. But they were fun. They were fun for the first ten to twelve miles. And then we dropped down below seven minute miles and I was like, nope, that was not the race I trained for. I was not where I wanted to be. And so I dropped down to closer to my pace, which was closer to seven and a half to forty five.

[00:08:09.690] – Allan
And so anyway yeah they left their buddy. That was kind of the first thing that got me was, we're all military guys and they just, they ran on. Their buddy fell out first. I was also just going to leave him. I'm like, oh yes they are. I realized, OK, I don't, you know, I don't have any skin in this game, I'm not trying to win a race. I'm trying to finish one.

[00:08:27.540] – Allan
So. I dropped out. But, yeah, it's good to know there's different conditions when you're doing things.

[00:08:32.790] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:08:34.050] – Rachel
So how are things with you down there in Panama?

[00:08:36.300] – Allan
They're getting busy. They're getting really busy. You know, Tammy's trying to do some soft openings on Lula's bed and breakfast. So she's had people come in and stay.

[00:08:46.680] – Allan
Most of them are staying for a month or longer. Then she had a photographer come in. She was going to stay for two days and she was scary. She's just a scary person. Oh, I came in and I started opening up because it was hot and living room. So I started opening up windows and I'll turn on lights. And she said, no, no, no, no, you need to have those lights off and close those windows, like, OK, close everything up.

[00:09:07.230] – Allan
And I went my bedroom and I left her. But no, it was interesting because while she was doing all this, I was trying to do a deep clean at the gym. We do that about once every six months. We pull everything out. The mats and everything, and we scrub the mat, scrub the floor. So we were about, I'd say, maybe three quarters of the way through when the water ran out then, you know, Panama.

[00:09:34.260] – Allan
And I'm like, OK, I know there's tanks, but they city water and they were hostile. We should have so much water. It shouldn't be a problem. But no, they weren't pumping water into their tank. And so we didn't have water on our whole block and we didn't know just went out there. Like we're like, what's wrong? The pumps not working. Like, OK, cool. So I guess guys, we're done early goes go on home and I'll see you tomorrow at nine o'clock.

[00:09:55.590] – Allan
We'll do what we can do. I show up at nine o'clock. I put the bucket, I turn the spigot. It works. cool. They come in, the girl goes there was helping one of the girls that was helping me goes over with a bucket but it turns it on. Nothing comes out. Oh. And I'm like I got water out there. Look there's water in that blue bucket. I got water so I know it's working.

[00:10:13.920] – Allan
When it was not working they hadn't got the pump fixed and they didn't know when it was going to be fixed. So I sent my staff off to go find water in buckets and bring it in because we had to have it to scrub the mats and they found it down at the fire department and they were able to get enough water for us to finish. But just enough. I mean, literally, she went down with the bucket and came back and said, that's the last bucket, because they've now turned off the water to the whole area so they can fix the pump.

[00:10:42.090] – Allan
And so there's no more water. And I'm like, OK. And I went home. I told my wife, I'm like, yeah, we had to go the fire department to get water and we got the last of their water, just like a fire department doesn't have any water.

[00:10:54.180] – Rachel
That's concerning. That's not good.

[00:10:55.620] – Allan
I thought, dammit, I'm going to be that guy. I used all the water.

[00:10:59.970] – Rachel
Oh my goodness.

[00:11:01.770] – Allan
Now we literally probably took I would say. Forty gallons from them, so that was not put out a house fire amount of water that we were using to clean the gym, let's be real. But, yeah, we were able to scrub all the mats, get all of them back and get all the equipment out and stuff, you know, dusted off, cleaned off and put back in. So it was a tough, tough weekend, but we were able to get it done.

[00:11:26.120] – Allan
And, you know, kind of one of those things and I say this over and over, everybody on the podcast is know your strengths, know your weaknesses. You know, don't let your ego get in the way. The first the first two times when I own this gym, I did the deep cleaning by myself, hauled all those mats out, scrubbed them all out, put them all back and did it all by myself.

[00:11:46.010] – Allan
The first two times. The last time I did it, I hired three people to help me. And I was still exhausted at the end of the day, and this time I hired four, so there was a little bit more standing around than I would have liked, you know, spending money by the hour. You don't want a lot of standing around, but it was good to have the extra hand. So, like, we had to go a block away and get water in buckets.

[00:12:08.850] – Allan
I had the people to do it and it wasn't me doing it.

[00:12:12.270] – Rachel
Yeah, no kidding. I can't imagine the weight of all your machines and all your cardio equipment and.

[00:12:18.540] – Allan
Yeah, well, that's the other thing. When I bought the gym I had there were 350 pounds of Olympic plates in this gym. And one barbell. You know, and now I have five barbells and a curl bar and about fourteen hundred pounds of Olympic plates. So, yeah, there's a lot more equipment in here now than when the two times I did it. But those horse mats are still those horse mats are still those first mats and they're heavy and there's no real grip to them.

[00:12:49.270] – Allan
So you use a ton of grip strength, picking those up, holding them, flipping them over and doing all that scrubbing. So it's still a tough day to do the work, even when I'm only doing a fraction of it.

[00:13:00.480] – Allan
But I knew my strengths and weaknesses and what was about to get myself hurt.

[00:13:07.920] – Rachel
it's good to have that extra help for sure.

[00:13:10.380] – Allan
So my workouts this weekend had a lot of grip strength, but a lot of moving around. All right. Well, you ready to have a conversation with Dr. Raza?

[00:13:23.580] – Rachel
Yes.

Interview

[00:13:53.100] – Allan
Dr. Raza, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:13:56.100] – Dr. Raza
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:13:57.940] – Allan
Now, you know, as we went into covid and I have made a point on the podcast of not talking about covid a whole lot. And I only say that because there's so much that's happened around covered so many conversations around covid and it's become so political. But one of the things that really concerned me as we went into Lockdowns was the term I use, the term it's called unintended consequences that, you know, so many things are happening to us around what we're trying we're trying to avoid one thing, but we create additional problems for ourselves.

[00:14:38.130] – Allan
And it's just something that, you know, you had someone reach out to me so that you could be on the show. And I was like, absolutely, we have to talk about these unintended consequences of covid. So thank you so much for taking time to be with us today.

[00:14:53.340] – Dr. Raza
And not at all. Thank you for having me.

[00:14:55.590] – Allan
Now, you know, we went into the lockdowns and

[00:14:59.980] – Allan
Kind of the worst part of this was some of my clients were doctors. And so I was training a doctor and the doctor's like, well, we're closing down the clinic. And I'm thinking, well, kids aren't going to stop getting sick, kids are still going to need, you know, their immunizations and are still going to need their health care visits.

[00:15:21.900] – Allan
so our medical care doesn't stop just because we decide we're going to stay in our apartment or house. It doesn't stop because, you know, our office says, oh, well, you can work from home. The things that get us sick, the things that are happening in our bodies that require medical attention are better addressed if we are a little bit more proactive than if we go in for emergency care. And that's the discussion. But what we've noticed and you brought to my attention actual statistics from the CDC is that while we had this huge problem with heart disease before, it's now actually become something worse.

[00:16:04.230] – Allan
Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:16:06.030] – Dr. Raza
It has. So if you go back to last March and here in Dallas, Texas, the spring break is always like first or second week of March.

[00:16:18.030] – Dr. Raza
And so the Thursday before spring break, I remember getting my wife's cardiologist as well. So both of us got an announcement on email and text that school was going to close early and no school on Friday would go into spring break with the anticipation that school would not return after spring break. And at the same time, locally in Dallas and statewide in Texas, we also went into lockdown. In our clinic, logistically, what that meant was that for our nurses or techs or aids, they now have to consider child care issues in addition to the hospital that we're in where we have our clinic, they indicated sort of protocols for who can now come in, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:17:09.380] – Dr. Raza
And so I still remember on that Monday, March 16th, we started to do telemedicine for the first time. We've never done this as a cardiologist, as a cardiology practice, because cardiology, you have to see the patient in front of you. You have to look, listen, examine, do EKGs, et cetera. But we started off on this in April and into May. And slowly things improved, especially locally here in Texas, whereby they opened up in May.

[00:17:41.240] – Dr. Raza
But clearly what we noticed was a drop in the number of visits to the emergency room, to the hospital and to our clinics and patients who would otherwise come in for cardiovascular issues. That is both acute symptoms and chronic management issues. And this basically persisted throughout certainly the acute hospitalization and emergency room data stand down throughout 2020. And this data was not just this is not just US based data.

[00:18:13.380] – Dr. Raza
This is this was also manifested in Europe and in the U.K. whereby they have large nationwide health care system. And so it's very easy to data. But, you know, the NHS can easily look at hospitalizations for cardiovascular issues. 2019, 2020. And we don't get better cardiovascular disease in one year. It doesn't work like that. We look at data in chunks of decades at a time in the clinic, there was a little bit of a reflection whereby June, July was busier than sort of tapered off again, as we initially had a surge in the fall and then definitely the November, December, January surge.

[00:18:57.710] – Dr. Raza
And sure enough, it wasn't surprising when the CDC came out with their data last week that the deaths from heart disease had gone up for the first time in two decades. And this reflected the fact that what was happening wasn't that we had gotten better at treating cardiovascular disease. And so that's why the hospitalizations are down. That's why the rate of our defects is down. That's why clinic visits were down. It's that patients were not seeking medical attention. And so therefore there are heart disease prosecuting chronic or being we're not being managed, not being looked after.

[00:19:34.430] – Dr. Raza
And of course, the unintended consequences is downstream. You have cardiovascular events and as we know, cardiovascular events, unfortunately, to death.

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[00:21:56.620] – Allan
I think many of us have paid attention, at least enough attention to know that if we are going through certain symptoms, you know, pain in the arm is one, dizziness, tightness in the chest, some of those basic things that were we start paying attention to once we're 40, we pay a lot more attention to it. But at this point in time, you're at home and there's this kind of a sudden, this tepid fear that this is out there.

[00:22:28.600] – Allan
The covid is out there, and we have to be concerned about being exposed. And so it's one of those things where it is kind of a counterbalance to say, do I book an appointment and go in and take a risk or is this just indigestion and maybe I shouldn't have had that second slice of pizza I ordered from Domino's or forth? So, you know, as people are going through this because, you know, I can't say this is the last time this is going to happen in our lifetime.

[00:23:00.580] – Allan
You know, this kind of talk about the different aspects of covid and the different variants and things is it's really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this might not just be a Spanish flu, if you will, where we have a three year period of time when everybody goes through this situation and then effectively it's passed and we're on, this might be a little bit more of a protracted thing. So before we move on, because I do think this is important and I really think it's important as far as the four steps that you have for how we can move forward, move beyond this.

[00:23:40.720] – Allan
But can we just take one step back and kind of talk about for an individual and, you know, heart disease is the number one killer for men and women in the United States. So as we're looking at that, and I know men and women actually have slightly different symptoms sometimes. Could you just take us back to that level of, let's talk about the symptoms of what would a man experience? And this is the time to go into the emergency room and this is the time to make an appointment with a cardiologist like yourself.

[00:24:14.680] – Allan
And what would a woman experience that could be slightly different? So someone, at least at this point thinking I haven't yet been vaccinated, but I so I'm putting off going to the doctor, putting off, going to the emergency room. What should they be looking for?

[00:24:28.810] – Dr. Raza
It's a great question that you brought up the pizza analogy because you can rationalize your symptoms in many different ways, depending on what you yourself are going through at that point. So you're absolutely right. March of 2020. I have patients tell me this, that they would have chest discomfort, et cetera, and they would say it was probably this, it's probably stress not sleeping well and so on and so forth. And later you find out that this is not the first cardiovascular issue.

[00:24:59.730] – Dr. Raza
So let's go back to, like you said, to the very beginning. So for me and for most cardiologists and we have to do a better job at public information disseminating this out to the public. If you have chest pain, chest pressure, if you have arm numbness, jaw pain, nausea, typefaces where you're sweating, shortness of breath with exertion, shortness of breath, when you lay flat at night, palpitations, unexplained episodes of passing out or even sort of seizure like activity, you should absolutely seek medical attention and you should do it sooner rather than later before you start rationalizing and then more subtle signs.

[00:25:44.240] – Dr. Raza
So if you feel more sure, more tired or fatigued at the end of the day, if you feel that, you know, I used to be able to walk up and down this corridor at work or I used to be able to climb a flight of stairs, now I have to take a break in the middle. Don't rationalize it as I'm a year older, maybe have gained 15 pounds and I'm a little heavier. It's easier.

[00:26:08.620] – Dr. Raza
It's very easy to rationalize. What you actually should do is go out, seek medical attention and then make sure it's not anything we need to worry about. All the other things. Let's rule it out first and then go with the well, I'm just a condition, I just need to lose a little bit weight, it's stress and anxiety. Those things won't markedly alter your mortality and morbidity to way heart disease potentially can. And remember, early intervention is always better, whether it's cancer, whether it's heart disease, you're going to find something more options

[00:26:45.460] – Dr. Raza
We have a better chance we have at preventing something worse.

[00:26:50.050] – Allan
And I think you hit on something really important. There's the early intervention. You know, don't talk. Yourself out of talking to a doctor. The worst case is he tells you, you're perfectly fine, go home and leave me alone. And that would be a great case.

[00:27:05.260] – Dr. Raza
we get that all the time, you know, we get patients who come in and they have chest discomfort. We do the evaluation.

[00:27:11.830] – Dr. Raza
It's not the heart.

[00:27:12.780] – Dr. Raza
What we tell them is, OK, I understand you had symptoms of X, Y, Z. What I can tell you is it's not the heart.

[00:27:19.570] – Dr. Raza
What it could be?

[00:27:20.710] – Dr. Raza
I don't know for sure. But let's take the next step at going back to your primary care doctor, letting them know that you had a battery of cardiovascular tests. You don't think it's your heart.

[00:27:30.500] – Dr. Raza
Let's go down the next thing down the line, whether it's high, whether it's whatever, X, Y, Z.

[00:27:36.760] – Allan
Well, anyone that tells me they went through the last 18 months without feeling some level of anxiety and maybe even moments where they just sat there and said, OK, I'm just beyond myself. They're not being realistic because I think we all went through those moments where we're like, OK, I'm not right. This is not right. I don't feel good. And it may not be a huge health concern, but in the grand scheme of things, if you're feeling any of those symptoms, feeling any of that, it's worth having the conversation and we've put the conversation off.

[00:28:09.720] – Allan
Because of the lockdowns, because of covid restrictions and just the basic fear that's out there, which, again, the fear leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to not some dissimilar, but then also that's confounder that could actually be causing some of the heart issues. So we kind of look at this full circle. It doesn't surprise me to see the higher numbers post covid, but for a long time the numbers looked great because, well, no one was going to the doctor, even the emergency room.

[00:28:40.320] – Allan
And as a result, it's like, you know, flu deaths are down, cancer deaths, all these things are down. And you're like, no, they're not down. They're just submerged into this environment.

[00:28:51.000] – Dr. Raza
They are. And you have this backlog of access to care. So, for example, telemedicine is wonderful, but you have to understand the limitations. So when primary care doctors or specialists like myself, we did tell you we're still relying on Internet connection folks having to either hold up an iPad or a smartphone. The angles are off, the lighting is bad. You can't really see the patient.

[00:29:18.990] – Dr. Raza
And there's a lot of value in actually looking at someone and talking to someone face to face versus over the phone. And so what would happen is I can easily see where they speak to a primary care doctor or a cardiologist and symptoms, I think that minimized lost in translation. And they say, well, we'll see you back in six months and six months passed down the line. And I miss the appointment or something else happens. And this data is has been tracked and the VA population and also in the UK where the NHS has this backlog now, I think about five million well visits of folks who haven't gone for their annual physical screenings.

[00:30:06.150] – Dr. Raza
And if you just do the numbers and add up all those patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and so on and so forth, we haven't had a checkup, whether it's in person over the phone, it's not surprising that you see these numbers. Going back to the initial question that you had. What are the differences between men and women with heart disease? That's a fascinating discussion that's been discussed and actually researched ad nauseum. The American College of Cardiology actually has a wonderful graphic on signs and symptoms of heart disease and actually tweeted it out the other day.

[00:30:41.500] – Dr. Raza
You can follow me at SadiRazaMD and what it is, is the signs and symptoms are similar, but women may have additional symptoms than men, so they may have the nausea, the diaphoresis which is sweating, the dizziness on top of the chest the pain, and the pressure down the left arm, et cetera.

[00:31:01.000] – Allan
OK, now you developed or at least presented to me kind of a four step process that you feel, and I'll guess I'll put my own title to it. And this should not just be about heart care, but in this premise of our conversation, it definitely is.

[00:31:18.310] – Allan
This is a post covid Wellness plan,

[00:31:23.380] – Allan
particularly for people over 40, because we're the ones most likely to be suffering from cardiovascular disease and dying from cardiovascular disease. So can you talk about your four steps? And why each is important?

[00:31:36.580] – Dr. Raza
Sure. So I think step one, and I'll be careful in what I say here, I think step one is try and get vaccinated. So today, I think the administration is going to announce that they've had more than three hundred million doses that have been given since the vaccines came out.

[00:31:56.320] – Dr. Raza
The US has three vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, which are MRNA based vaccine, and this Johnson & Johnson, which is one shot at no virus vaccine. Since March of 2020 to now, our ability to mask handwash and social distance hasn't improved. We're not better at wearing masks now than we were in March.

[00:32:22.450] – Dr. Raza
We're not better at being socially distant from each other now. We're not washing our hands better. If anything, societies open up and then those lockdowns and they really haven't been a this wealth of medications that have come down the pike.

[00:32:39.060] – Dr. Raza
You know, we had the plasma convalescent plasma that patients got potentially a randomized clinical trial, which showed minimal improvement with that, yes, we have the infusions, but really it's not because of medications or non pharmaceutical interventions that our covid numbers have plummeted in the US, both in the US, nationally and locally at the local level, at the city level and internationally. You look at countries like Israel, you look at the European Union and all of them, the curves start to markedly come down from when a robust vaccination program was enacted.

[00:33:20.890] – Dr. Raza
So clearly the vaccines work and for the most part, they're safe. And I say that for the most part because that's sort of just couching my words, because there'll be folks that say, well, in this case, the microdata is you're forgetting about the Johnson & Johnson, the vaccine, which is stopped briefly because of clots in the brain, et cetera. So I'm not discounting those. But out of 300 million people who have been vaccinated, the vast majority have had really no side effects, apart from the normal immune response that we expect from any vaccine with the flu vaccine in this case, the covid vaccine. We know, they prevent moderate to severe this is to prevent hospitalizations, and therefore they prevent the virus.

[00:34:12.160] – Allan
And in a person, a person that's most likely to suffer from cardiovascular event is what we would call an at risk person for covid.

[00:34:20.380] – Dr. Raza
Correct. Absolutely. And this is, again, borne out in our hospitals. If you look at, pick a hospital, any hospital in the US hospital, any hospital in the world, the folks who are now hospitalized with covid are younger and primarily those who are unvaccinated, which is markedly different from the typical covid admitted patient in the hospital that we had for the first 12 to 15, 15 months of this pandemic.

[00:34:48.940] – Dr. Raza
So step number one, get vaccinated.

[00:34:51.280] – Dr. Raza
It's very easy to do now, there's a phone number that you can text with zip code and you'll get a list of places that you can get vaccinated. It's now one of those things where you don't have to get in line. CBS, Walgreens, Walmart, lots of places have them that you just walk in. A lot of them you can pick which one you want. If that's your choice, you want to go with Pfizer or Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, they'll give you the date for the second one.

[00:35:18.610] – Dr. Raza
Get a nice card to carry. So get vaccine. Step two, got to reengage with your physicians, whether it's your primary care physician or to one physician, some specialist, endocrinologist or cardiologist, or lung doctor, we engage with them. Get back to figuring out how far away from the baseline you are. Have an honest conversation with them about the signs and symptoms that you've had recently and give them an overview of your health over the past 15 months.

[00:35:47.370] – Dr. Raza
What's happened?

[00:35:48.060] – Dr. Raza
Have you gained weight?

[00:35:49.650] – Dr. Raza
Have you lost weight? Other stressors? Were you exposed to covid? Where you admitted with covid? Let them know. Give them a full comprehensive history of the last 12 months since they last saw you.

[00:36:02.310] – Dr. Raza
Step three, get back to exercising. So if you look at data that we have from fitness trackers, the number of steps that the average person normally walks in a day that are tracked in Apple watches, Fitbit, et cetera, those fell dramatically between 2019 and 2020, because we naturally became more sedentary when malls shut down.

[00:36:28.230] – Dr. Raza
When you don't when you work from home. You don't have to park your car and you walk into an office, go up and down off this corridor, up and down stairs, go to the break room. You know, you don't have malls that you can go into, shopping, etc. grocery stores, those steps go away. And they're not replaced by walking at home. They're just not, you know, and so you have to get active again.

[00:36:53.040] – Dr. Raza
I understand the hesitancy as far as going back to gyms, but you don't have to go back to a gym to become active. This great workout videos that you can do at home. But we got to get mobile again. We got to become less sedentary. We have to do that and then set yourself targets. How did you gain weight during covid? So let's start on a plan to start losing that weight. Did your diet get altered? Were you having more comfort foods?

[00:37:20.190] – Dr. Raza
Understandable. Obviously, you know, if you go back to March, I remember our kids were off school and we did a lot of baking, cookies and brownies and cakes. And you can do those things were flying off the shelves because people were eating comfort food. So get back to eating healthier foods, veggies, et cetera.

[00:37:39.990] – Dr. Raza
And then the last thing is, make a plan to get to sort of take ownership of your own health care and set yourself health goals for the next three to five years.

[00:37:52.480] – Dr. Raza
What do I want to achieve? Where do I want to be? Whether it's a weight target, whether it's well, I want to make sure that I have my, you know, get my colonoscopy done and make sure, you know, there's a knee that's bothering me I'll go visit an orthopedic doctor, this hip that's bothering me I'll go get my hip replaced, et cetera, et cetera. And that's sort of what I would go towards as we come out of this pandemic, sort of reassess and realign our interests and taking care of our own body, our bodies our temple.

[00:38:24.880] – Dr. Raza
You know, we got to take care of it. During the pandemic, the average American gained around twenty nine pounds.

[00:38:33.970] – Dr. Raza
A lot of folks gained as much as 50 pounds. We say the covid 15, but it was actually not 15. It's more like 20 or 30 pounds on average that people gained. And there's many reasons for that. Give yourself a pass, but try and assess the fact that you did gain weight. You may have developed unhealthy habits and tried to work to correct those. Again, prevention is cure. Start engaging with your primary care doctors. Get an assessment for what your blood pressure is.

[00:39:03.130] – Dr. Raza
Have you become diabetic? You now pre diabetic? Too cholesterol or other medications that you should have been on that you stop taking because you just didn't go to see a doctor and so you didn't fill the prescriptions and so on, so forth.

[00:39:18.580] – Allan
So I kind of had three takeaways from that. One, one being what happened, happened. If you let yourself go and you put on some weight that's passed, let's let's look forward. That was an event. Let's move forward. The second is you're the CEO of your own health.

[00:39:37.120] – Allan
So you've got to be proactive. You've got to step up and do the right things for yourself. And that means making the doctor's appointments. That means moving more. That means eating better. And so making those lifestyle choices that we should have been making all along. But now going forward is our opportunity to act. We can't act on the past, but be the CEO now. Make the right decisions now and the final one. And you didn't really get into this, but you did a little.

[00:40:01.330] – Allan
But be patient.

[00:40:03.790] – Allan
There's a backlog in service. There's a backlog in what doctors are able to do. But if obviously if you become a priority patient, you're going to move to the front of the line so that you've got to be out there, you've got to get that communication with your doctor so that you're getting the care that you deserve. So get into the mix and then, yes, it there's just going to be an element of patients in that your appointment that you normally would have made next week is now maybe three weeks or four weeks from now.

[00:40:32.170] – Allan
And just realizing, OK, there are people right now that are suffering and need the care now and there's a prioritization of service, have the patients to work through that and don't give up on it. Stick with it.

[00:40:45.040] – Dr. Raza
I agree. And the other thing is, the other thing I like about the patient is you've got to take a long term view to health.

[00:40:51.640] – Dr. Raza
And as far unfortunately, all of us know this, it is far easier to gain weight than it is to lose weight. And you have to have a plan in place that has it's a marathon, not a sprint. Set yourself ambitious targets, but don't be disappointed if you don't get them quickly. Sort of a what I would say, take it not even month to month, but maybe season by season. See where you are.

[00:41:18.580] – Dr. Raza
If you walk on a treadmill every day to go as you walk for a half hour, well, the goal is to walk further and thirty pounds two months from now than you did than you do currently. That means you quickened the pace. That means your cardiovascular conditioning and so on, so forth. And the weighing scale is not the end all be all. It's not, you know, you can not lose weight but reduce fat, build up muscle, which is just as important.

[00:41:55.070] – Dr. Raza
It's about an overall level of health. But you're absolutely right. You have to be invested with yourself. I tell patients all the time I can be the world's greatest cardiologist, but I can't help you if when you go home, the diabetes isn't well controlled. If you don't take the medications for blood pressure or for your thyroid or X, Y, Z that you're supposed to, or if you're going for surgery you need and you don't follow the instructions of the orthopedic surgeon properly.

[00:42:28.060] – Dr. Raza
You know, complications, X, Y and Z. You got to be invested in your own health.

[00:42:33.160] – Dr. Raza
And together it truly takes a village. Together we can help you feeling better. At the end of the day, the goal for everyone is I want you to live life to the fullest. Spend as much time out of the hospital, away from doctors offices, doing the things that you love with the people that you love.

[00:42:51.790] – Allan
Awesome. So, Dr. Raza, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay?

[00:43:01.090] – Dr. Raza
Well, I think find something that makes you happy. Find people that you can be happy with and find a way that you can achieve those to the best way that you can. Whatever path it takes. It's about the journey as it's not just the destination.

[00:43:19.090] – Allan
Now, Dr. Raza, say if someone wanted to learn more about you and what you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:43:25.030] – Dr. Raza
so if you go to my Twitter page, so at SadiRazaMD, you'll find a link to my website or practice.

[00:43:33.850] – Dr. Raza
And I tweet regularly about cardiovascular issues, health and wellness, sports and fitness. And you can follow along and try and make it patient centered.

[00:43:43.930] – Dr. Raza
It's not really geared towards physicians necessarily. It's more towards patients know ways to get prevention, prevention, prevention. Some of it is topical. So for example, in the last week or so, you'll see a lot of posts around a soccer player that had a cardiac arrest last week. But for the most part, it's more general and topical.

[00:44:06.970] – Dr. Raza
And I am fortunate enough to be able to do media from time to time. So look out for articles or radio shows, podcasts, etc.. My wife is a cardiologist. I'm just starting to podcast for the heart doctors for that on Spotify on an Apple podcast. And we'll try and put the word out how to be heart healthy and live life to the fullest.

[00:44:34.780] – Allan
OK, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/494 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Dr. Raza, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:44:45.870] – Dr. Raza
Appreciate it. Thank you, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:44:52.350] – Allan
Hey, Raz. Welcome back.

[00:44:54.130] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, what a wonderful interview with Dr. Raza. You know, it is I was kind of wondering how the covid shut down had other implications than what we commonly talk about on the news. I mean, besides the covid 15 or covid 20, that might be that extra weight we've all gained. You know, there is a real concern about our overall health, but particularly cardiovascular health. That's a pretty scary side effect.

[00:45:21.170] – Allan
Yeah, I kind of knew a little bit of this was happening because a couple of my clients, as we went into covid are medical professionals. And so when they were going to telemedicine, I was thinking, well, how does someone who was about to potentially start chemotherapy and radiation treatment, how do they telemedicine that, you know you know, if a kid needs their standard vaccinations now, granted, they're not running into other kids with mumps because they're not seeing other kids with mumps.

[00:45:53.710] – Allan
But, you know, so maybe some of that stuff isn't necessary. But it just seemed to me it's like there's a lot of well care that just didn't happen. And so you can't go to your gyms. A lot of people didn't feel like training. They was just if I can't go to my gym, if I can't get out and, you know, do the things I was doing, the sports I was playing with, things like that to keep me engaged and doing this, I mean, you give me a stat that a lot of that stuff Strava put out that the people that were doing these virtual runs was kind of going up.

[00:46:28.420] – Allan
but if you were part of a run club and that was kind of the real thing that got you showing up, was that accountability like where you belong to a gym or belong to a cross fit and things like and those things were just gone. And you're like, OK, I need five people around me sweating harder than I am for me to get my bike gear. You know, it's just I could see where that investment wasn't happening. The investment of time.

[00:46:54.190] – Allan
The investment of effort and then the investment of money. A lot of people were trying to buy home equipment, but there was none to be found.

[00:47:01.720] – Rachel
Oh, yeah, I know that probably sold out pretty quick. But, you know, down with you where you are in Panama, you had a pretty strict shutdown. You weren't even allowed to get out and get moving. And I know a lot of countries that were like that as well. And here in the United States, we did have a little bit of freedom to be outside and most of our country. But I think a lot of people were still afraid to go out.

[00:47:25.360] – Rachel
We didn't know a lot about covid. We just knew that we didn't want to get it and end up in the hospital. So, you know, I think a lot of people did stay home. And I think the level of stress went up. And we had talked about in the past about how the parents that had to learn how to work at home that had never worked at home before, plus help to home school their kids because school went virtual I mean, jeez, there's so many things that kept people from being able to go out and work out any more.

[00:47:53.920] – Rachel
So there's it's not really surprising that we have a covid weight gain or any other health implications.

[00:47:59.770] – Allan
Yeah, but the data is there, you know, the cardiovascular events and deaths from that is going up. And it shouldn't. I'm almost certain that we're going to see cancer, diabetes, those types of things, you know, where the care just wasn't there. If you're not going in and getting your dialysis, you know, if you're not, you know, going in the doctor and getting your blood pressure done and checking your meds or maybe not even getting them filled.

[00:48:28.770] – Allan
Because you didn't want to get out and go to the pharmacy because you just didn't want to be exposed.

[00:48:34.810] – Rachel
Well, that and plus, some doctors won't refill a prescription unless they see you in person.

[00:48:40.300] – Allan
Well, they were doing telemedicine. They changed medical care a little bit. But there's just so many things. It's like, OK, they can't get the labs to know. They can't do a blood pressure. And if you don't have the monitor yourself already, it's like you don't know. It's like, you know, because you walk into the doctor, they stand on the scale. They, you know, your blood pressure.

[00:48:59.620] – Allan
And that's the part of the natural conversation with your doctor, which kind of takes me to the next transition. You go to your doctor. Get your care team together. As I mentioned before, this podcast, you know, we've got to start showing our priorities with the way we spend our money, the way we spend our effort and the way we spend our time. And it's easy to audit that. Just go and look at your bank statement.

[00:49:26.200] – Allan
Look at your credit card statement. Where are you spending your your money? Look at it days time and just say, OK, how much time that I spend watching Netflix versus exercising? And maybe we're doing both. And that's awesome. You know, double dip in there. You're on the treadmill or the elliptical and you're watching your Netflix show. That',s cool. That's totally cool. But most of us aren't doing that. You know, they weren't doing that.

[00:49:49.240] – Allan
And so it's look at where you're spending your time. Look at the effort you're putting in and look at where you're spending your money and answer that question, what are your true priorities here? And it's time to shift that, because if you're not taking care of your health, you're soon enough can be taken care of illness.

[00:50:04.990] – Rachel
Yeah. Dr. Raza mentioned that too, suggesting that we, of course, reengage with our specialists and but also get back into exercising and resetting our eating habits. You know, it's it's a multifaceted way of improving our health. But we do need to focus. We do need to focus on it.

[00:50:26.700] – Allan
Now, I ran across a study this week. Thirty five chronic diseases can be traced to inactivity.

[00:50:34.260] – Rachel
Wow.

[00:50:35.220] – Allan
OK, and I'll make sure to put a link to that in the show notes. But this is not and this is not really a new study. I didn't realize this was out there. That's the first time I was seeing it. The study was done in 2012. But, yeah, they've manually, physically traced thirty five different chronic diseases directly to lack of activity.

[00:50:55.380] – Rachel
So the best thing you can do for your health is move.

[00:50:58.290] – Allan
Move

[00:51:00.990] – Rachel
Do something. Anything.

[00:51:02.150] – Allan
Well, the human body was built to move. I mean, our lymphatic system is how we get rid of toxins and waste in our body.

[00:51:09.030] – Allan
And it doesn't have a pump system, the pump system for your lymphatic system as your muscles, your skeletal muscle. So if you're not moving, then you're basically letting gunk sit there and it's poison. Your body needs to get rid of it. And the only way it can do that is if you move and push that stuff through your system to get it out. And so that's yeah, absolutely. We need movement. And then there's just so many other things that movement gets us.

[00:51:35.100] – Allan
You know, if you get the endorphins because you're doing it enough, if you know the movement patterns. And the other thing movement does is it kind of gets the the juices going with blood and flows and everything else to where maybe your knees hurt less because you're actually getting more nutrients and fluids and liquids in the knee so that'll function better. Now, obviously, if you go do some exercise and the knee swells up, you've got to talk to somebody and have that taken care of.

[00:52:02.670] – Allan
But for a lot of us, the aches and pains that we're feeling is vicious.

[00:52:08.970] – Rachel
it is. And I've said to a lot of my friends and in run clubs and elsewhere that if you rest, you rust. And it's essentially true. You just need to keep moving to keep those joints fluid, keep your balance, keep your flexibility. I mean, I'm not saying run marathons or do something crazy. Just take a walk, walk for a mile, walk for two miles and just a little bit of fresh air.

[00:52:33.000] – Rachel
And some activity can do so much good for your health overall.

[00:52:37.650] – Allan
Well, you're the one that admitted marathons are crazy, so.

[00:52:41.610] – Rachel
Yeah, maybe. But, you know. Yeah, no, you don't have to run marathons, but, you know, you can get so much benefit from just walking one, two or three miles. And if that feels good, do a little jogging and maybe maybe register for a local 5K. I've got a 5K coming up this weekend and proceeds go to the local cross-country team. So, you know, you do a little good for others while you're doing good for yourself.

[00:53:09.810] – Allan
Awesome. Rachel, so I guess I'll see you next week.

[00:53:13.120] – Rachel
Yeah. Take care.

[00:53:14.390] – Allan
You too.

[00:53:15.120] – Rachel
Thanks.

Patreons

The following listeners have sponsored this show by pledging on our Patreon Page:

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:00:49.670] – Allan
Raz, how are you doing?

[00:00:52.070] – Rachel
Great, Allan, how are you today?

[00:00:54.320] – Allan
I'm doing well. I'm cold. Yeah, and by the time we issue this one, I'll be on my way back to Panama. And I can just say that, for me, I would say 40 is the new 70. And what I mean by that is it's 70 degrees out. I feel like it's 40 degrees. So it's been nice that we got really lucky on our trip. And it's not been really cold anywhere we've gone. But when the temperature drops below 70, I'm like, no, just no.

[00:01:31.010] – Rachel
Yeah, yeah. We've been feeling some cold weather up here. I've been laying layering up a little bit more on my runs. So, yeah, it's changed season for us getting cold.

[00:01:41.720] – Allan
Yeah. Our guests today are kind of interesting. It's a really interesting concept where we're going to be talking about 5G. We're going to be talking about the coronavirus. And I just want to put this out before we really get into the context of all of this, as I am not a doctor and I'm not going to give you any medical advice whatsoever in this show. Dr. Cowen is a doctor. He was a medical doctor, but he's let his license lapse because he couldn't get anybody that wanted to buy his practice. So he just let it lapse. And he's retired effectively. He's approaching health from a different perspective. So just recognize that the people talking on this show, none of us are actual doctors. So we're not meaning any of this to be medical advice. If you have questions about this, we encourage you to do the research.

We encourage you to go out and talk to your medical professionals and then make the decisions that are that are right for you because we are talking about something that is is actually kind of it's interesting when you think about it in concept, but it's a little bit controversial. But I wanted to bring this concept up for you because I think it's just really important to have the full picture as you're making decisions. And, there's a lot of discourse on this and some of it's informed and a lot of it is not. So with that, we'll go ahead and get into our interview.

Interview

[00:03:37.150] – Allan
Tom, Sally, for both of you, welcome back to the 40+ Fitness Podcast you both have been on one time before. And so I'm really happy. We did your Cosmic Heart book a few years back.

[00:03:52.180] – Tom Cowan
Thank you.

[00:03:53.020]
The interesting thing about that book, that book in particular, Tom, is I can actually remember where I was when I had that aha moment in that book where I was like, this is can be transformative. And so I just want to say that that was one of the books that sticks out in my memory. And I've had almost 300 people on the podcast.

[00:04:17.260] – Allan
And so but that's one of the books and one of the moments I remember walking to get the keys to my house because I'd gotten locked out and my niece was working at a restaurant about a mile from our house. So I was walking to get keys because I'd locked myself out of the house. Seems to be a recurring theme in my life, but she happened to have keys to the house. I was walking back there and I was listening to yours, the audio book, and it was just a really enjoyable read.

[00:04:40.950] – Allan
And it kind of turned my thinking on a lot of things. And this book is doing the same thing. It's kind of turning some things I had or I thought I knew on their ear. And so this really got me to thinking I might not know as much as I thought I knew, which is kind of another recurring theme in my life where I know the more I know.

[00:05:06.760] – Tom Cowan
I've done it myself.

[00:05:11.260] – Allan
So thank you both for the opportunity to talk about this book, because we're going through a time that at least for anyone alive, we've never experienced before, we've never experienced anything like this where people around the world are getting sick and they're getting shut in. And it's creating all kinds of problems for us.

[00:05:33.490] – Sally Fallon Morell
And it's all predicated on the notion that this illness is contagious.

[00:05:42.550] – Allan
Right. And so your book is called The Contagion Myth. And, like I said, when I got into it, I was like, OK, in my whole life, we were taught bacteria and, you know, viruses. And then a few years ago, I think it kind of turned on its on its ear and said, no, don't wash your hands and use those antiseptic things. You know, this stuff. I don't use that because you need some of that bacteria, you need some of that virus that makes us healthy.

[00:06:14.920] – Allan
And so, you know, much like eggs, what do you eat, eggs or not eat eggs? Do you do saturated fat and ideas back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And you're proposing a theory that's very different from the germ theory that I I grew up knowing. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what's wrong with germ theory and with this whole coronavirus to covid-19 thing? Why why are we getting that wrong?

[00:06:45.270] – Tom Cowan
Yeah, so basically the idea of the germ theory is that originally the people who proposed it said we were sterile organisms, which means that from, as I like to say, from the skin on in, there was no bacteria or they didn't know about viruses at all. And if there was a bacteria in you, it's because it was a pathogen, meaning it came from the outside and then, quote, infected you and made you sick. The first thing I would point out about that is that would make human beings different from essentially every other thing in nature.

[00:07:27.150] – Tom Cowan
For instance, if you have a compost pile and you put dead squirrels in it, which maybe don't belong in a compost pile, you'll get fungus and bacteria to eat the squirrel. And as far as I know, nobody says that the compost pile has an infection. Another example we use is if you come upon a dead dog and there's maggots on it, nobody thinks the maggots killed the dog. Another example is if you cut down trees in the forest and then the trees die and are sitting in the forest floor, if you said bacteria and fungus are bad, so I'm going to get rid of them. And so you antifungal an antibiotic, the whole forest, you would never decompose the trees, you would never recycle that and you'd end up with a dead forest. So the fact of the matter is, whether people believe it or not, is the role of bacteria in nature is to recycle that which is diseased and dying or maybe dead. And that's just the observational fact. And there's no particular reason why that should be different in us. And one can't say because there's bacteria pressing in your throat that that means they're causing the disease any more than you can say because there's firemen at a fire that they caused the fire.

[00:08:53.580] – Tom Cowan
So there isn't a scientific method of determining whether something is the cause, something meaning a bacteria or a virus. And if you could permit me, I think I have an analogy that will make it make sense for people, if that's OK.

[00:09:12.660] – Allan
Sure.

[00:09:13.440] – Tom Cowan
Imagine I had the hypothesis, which is reasonable, that the calf pay careful attention to the words I'm using here. The caffeine found in coffee beans raises people's blood pressure, right? That's my hypothesis. That's what I got out of epidemiology. In other words, a lot of people got sick in a certain place. Then the sickness seemed to spread or the nursing home, or my Uncle Harry went to a party and then he got sick. These are all epidemiological observations which we then have to prove with real science whether such and such is the cause of that problem. Right? That's how science works. So the epidemiology is is the caffeine in coffee causes high blood pressure.

[00:10:04.770] – Tom Cowan
So if I said, Allan, I'm going to grind up the coffee beans, put them in a capsule and have 10 people eat it and it raises their blood pressure, would you agree that the caffeine in the coffee made their blood pressure go up?

[00:10:18.900] – Allan
It would be it would appear so. I mean, that was the one thing. But I don't know if we controlled for everything, but in a general sense, I would say yes.

[00:10:26.940] – Tom Cowan
Let me change your mind a little bit unless you somehow think the only thing in a coffee bean is caffeine. Then you have no idea which of a hundred different substances in the coffee bean actually made, you have high blood pressure. So my conclusion was now we know that coffee beans cause high blood pressure, but we don't know it's the caffeine. So let's go a little further than we put the coffee through a drip filter like people who make coffee. And you you throw away the grounds.

[00:11:00.450] – Tom Cowan
Right? And you have liquid coffee and you know that the caffeine is water soluble. So then you have somebody drink that and their blood pressure goes up. Do you now know that the caffeine caused high blood pressure,

[00:11:14.970] – Allan
OK, to not be tricked again? I would say no. There's also some other things in that coffee brand has been liquefied. So not going to catch me twice.

[00:11:25.380] – Tom Cowan
Now, the next step, I do some laboratory procedure to extract the caffeine. Right? And then I prove to you that the only thing you could do this with chromatographs and different laboratory techniques. I prove to you, Allan, that the only thing I have now is pure caffeine. Then I give it to people and it makes their blood pressure go up. Have I now proven that it's the caffeine in the in the coffee beans?

[00:11:55.610] – Allan
I'm real close to saying yes.

[00:11:57.560] – Tom Cowan
And I would agree with you. You got it. That's how we understand causation. That's how we understand isolation. Now, here's a statement at this point. And according and I'm saying this based on what the CDC is telling us in a July 2020 bulletin they put out. I'm also let me read you something from European surveillance. This was a group of virologists who are tasked with making a test for the coronavirus.

[00:12:31.700] – Tom Cowan
They say, quote, the ongoing outbreak of the recently emerged novel coronavirus poses a challenge to public health laboratories as virus isolates are unavailable. Later, they said, we aim to develop and deploy robust diagnostic methodology for use in public health laboratories without having the virus material available. The CDC says, quote, There is no isolates of the Sars-Cov-2 virus available. Therefore, they never got the caffeine. That's what they're saying. We asked that the lead authors of the six papers that are most referenced for having isolated and characterized this virus, some of them, the title of the paper is Isolation and Characterization of the Virus.

[00:13:29.630] – Tom Cowan
And we asked them, did you isolate the virus? And they said no. We have no pictures, we have no isolates of the virus available. Now, I can tell when I look at the picture because pure virus looks like pure virus. And if there's one virus and a whole lot of cellular debris, then that's not purified or isolated. And the whole point is, unless you isolate, you can't demonstrate that that's the thing that causes disease, any more than giving coffee beans proves that it's the caffeine.

[00:14:10.540] – Tom Cowan
And since they've never isolated, they have no proof that it causes disease. In fact, when they inoculate that into animals, none of them got sick. That's just the facts, even if it wasn't isolated.

[00:14:24.220] – Tom Cowan
Now, the other thing you can't do is you can't devise a test that says I can find a unique piece of this virus unless you've isolated it first. It's like me saying, I found a piece of metal under your chair and I know it's from a flying saucer and you would say, how do you know that? And you would hope that. I would say because I saw a flying saucer. I analyzed the flying saucer. I know what it's made of. And I know that piece of metal could have only come from a flying saucer. If I say to you, Allan. I've actually never seen a flying saucer. And I don't really know if that piece could have come from your chair or an airplane or a helicopter or something you would think. Tom, there's something wrong here. You can't make a test for finding a piece of something which you've never analyzed.

[00:15:28.860] – Tom Cowan
And I'm not like making this up. This is what the CDC is telling us. So literally at this point, nobody has proven even the existence of this virus, let alone whether it's pathogenic. Now, to finish your question, this is the same story that's been going on for one hundred and fifty years. And whenever they do isolate a virus or bacteria, which has been done and can be done, lo and behold, they find that it doesn't cause disease. So they isolated the caffeine. They gave it to the people and they find out it doesn't make your blood pressure go up. It must have been in the grounds or something else.

[00:16:17.820] – Tom Cowan
Now, as far as I can see, because we now have I'm working with sort of 14 groups of doctors and two of them are from MIT and two from Harvard and PhDs. And none of us can find a reference that says these isolated bacteria or virus cause disease. And that's where we are in 2020.

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[00:17:59.630] – Allan
OK, it's a spin on anything I've ever studied or learned in the past.

[00:18:05.980] – Sally Fallon Morell
Allan, I might add no one has done contagion studies either. Now, when we had the Spanish Flu, which killed 50 million people, the US Public Health Service did contagion studies. They took people who were sick and had a group of people who are well, and they had the sick people cough and breathe on the well people. They injected their bodily fluids and their blood into the well people. They tried every possible way to make these well people sick from the people with the flu.

[00:18:42.860] – Sally Fallon Morell
And it was one hundred percent failure. They could not make a single well person sick by exposing them to the sick people. So the Spanish flu was not contagious in spite of what they say. And of course, they were mystified. They had no explanation for this. Now, we do have an explanation, but they need to do that today before we lock down the whole world and make people wear masks and stop school and stop gatherings and stop people from going to church or singing in choirs.

[00:19:12.980] – Sally Fallon Morell
We need to do at the very least, even if you haven't isolated this virus, you need to do contagion studies. And we haven't done them.

[00:19:22.260] – Allan
One of the things that you guys talked about in the book as far as the contagion studies, with the Spanish flu, they had people cough on other people, like you said, is like you stand over that, I don't know, would they even consider doing that in this day and age? I mean, is that ethical?

[00:19:42.340] – Tom Cowan
So here's the interesting thing. One way to answer that question is there's three models you can use to test in infectivity or contagion. One is humans. Two is animals. Three is tissue culture. In other words, you can take tissue from a kidney or an egg or a rabbit or embryo or something and put the virus or something you think has the virus on it. So here's that sort of Gordian knot that we're in. A) you can't do human studies because that's unethical. B) there are no animal models for a viral infection for say, polio and HIV and for coronavirus. In other words, for some mysterious reason, none of the animals get sick. It's only humans. So that doesn't work.

[00:20:43.010] – Sally Fallon Morell
And before coronavirus, Tom and I have found two studies where they tried to make the animals sick. One was mice and one was hamsters. And they did not achieve that. Go ahead, Tom.

[00:20:57.190] – Tom Cowan
And the third one is these tissue cultures, which means they take on purified snot essentially and inoculate that on a tissue and then they starve and poison the tissue. In other words, they take away the nutrients, and they add, they do it with kidney tissue and they add kidney toxic drugs. And then the tissue breaks down and then they say that proves it's contagious. But I am now in possession of a study recently published where they actually tried this on three different human cell lines and none of them got a psychopathic effect, which means none of them were affected by purified stuff from somebody with Sars-Cov-2.

[00:21:44.770] – Tom Cowan
So those are the three ways. So the first way we can't do because it's not ethical, the second way doesn't work because for some unexplained reason, animals are not models, which is an interesting word for this infection. And the third doesn't work for unexplained reasons. And so there you go. So what's the evidence? The evidence is that frankly, at this point, I don't know what it's I can't follow it because I don't see it.

[00:22:19.810] – Allan
Well, you know, and you talked about this a little bit in the book, as a kid, my brother came home and he said, “Hey, I've got chickenpox.” And he hugged me, as he was saying. And now my brother and I, we fought like cats and dogs growing up. So there was zero reason for him to be hugging me other than he wanted to give me his chickenpox, which he did. I mean, in my opinion, based on that, I mean, he hugged me and two or three days later, I'm breaking out with chickenpox. Everybody in our house got chicken pox that hadn't had it before. So all of us kids got it. That feels like contagion.

[00:22:58.780] – Tom Cowan
So let me dissect that a little bit. Remember that epidemiology, in other words, I got sick and then you got sick or everybody in Wuhan got sick or the nursing home got sick or any epidemiological observation you can make? Every scientist, every virologist, every medical doctor who knows the field would say that is not proof of viral causation. Period. So. now we have an observation, which I would agree we should investigate to see if there is a virus involved there.

[00:23:38.870] – Tom Cowan
I agree. And the reason we should is because chicken pox virus, unlike HIV or unlike the Sars-Cov-2 virus, you can actually find and purify and isolate. And you can find it in your brother, you can you can find it in you, and that's not proof. That's just an interesting further observation. So the proof then is we isolate the virus, expose people who haven't got it. Just to the virus. And what happens is they don't get sick.

[00:24:18.200] – Tom Cowan
Now, you could say, well, why did you get sick? First of all, it is an interesting mystery, right? But all I can say to start with is, Allan, if you can show me a study saying the isolated chicken pox virus has made any animal or person sick, I will change my tune because all 14 of us have looked and we can't find it. So here are some possible theories.

[00:24:47.690] – Tom Cowan
So why do we have viruses in the first place? Well, it turns out very detoxification strategy. In other words, if you're poison in a certain way, and that could be DDT, glyphosate, electromagnetic fields, emotional poisoning, starvation or any nutrient deficiency, your tissues react by the DNA or the RNA and chickenpox case. Its DNA breaks down into the body, packages that up in these little particles.

[00:25:21.830] – Tom Cowan
And because DNA essentially is an antenna with a resonance, it then resonates and sends a signal to other organisms in its environment. Hey, we've been exposed to a new toxin. Here's a way to adapt to that new situation. It's like, what trees do you poison a tree or beetles infect a tree and they send out chemicals through their roots to tell the other trees to make a defensive response. That's what we do. In other words, viruses are simply the mechanism of adaptation because the other model that we're told about, which is you have a mutation and that's spread through the population by survival, is way too slow.

[00:26:11.520] – Tom Cowan
Imagine as the mutation that helps them get rid of DDT. How long do you think it would take before their progeny filled up Boston. Like ten thousand years, in which case there's no more DDT. So that's not how it works. We also know that if you put DNA into a beaker of water and then you put a different beaker of water with with free nucleic acids, which is what a virus is, and you shine a light on the first one, you come back the next day and the second beaker will make an identical copy of the same DNA.

[00:26:54.060] – Tom Cowan
In other words, how does that work by some sort of resonance, like tuning forks, like why know if you put 20, 20-year-old girls in a cabin and they all menstruate at the same time? Is that a virus? Is that contagious or is actually life is more complicated and based on energy that has a resonance that we all feel. We feel when we go into a room with happy people, we feel better. If we go into a room where there's sickness and despair, we feel worse.

[00:27:29.470] – Tom Cowan
Is that a virus? So there's a lot of things that are passed between people. And I can't emphasize enough that when we do the science and isolate the virus and give it to your brother, it doesn't make him sick. It's not the virus. There's something spread. It's not the virus.

[00:27:50.880] – Sally Fallon Morell
However, your brother could have communicated to you, we are coming to the end of our childhood. We are entering a new phase of life. This is a good time to do some housecleaning, get rid of some stuff through our skin. And your body said, “Hey, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll do it too. Right now. This is a good place to do it.” That's the resonance concept.

[00:28:18.630] – Tom Cowan
And the reason why Sally is absolutely correct about this is because when we do real science and find out what the prognosis is of children who have been through chickenpox versus not in every case we find out that children who've been through chickenpox have less cancer, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and a whole lot of other things. So this is a communication strategy to help us adapt to our world. And we have made a misconception and called it a pathogen

[00:28:55.140] – Sally Fallon Morell
And to adapt to do certain types of cleansing activities at certain times.

[00:29:01.210] – Tom Cowan
Yes.

[00:29:01.670] – Sally Fallon Morell
You know, all boys go through puberty at a certain time. All girls do too, all children do. And that's just nature has a timetable for changes in the body, and I think these typical childhood illnesses are part of that timetable, they're getting you ready for your next stage in life.

[00:29:25.760]
Measles is even more interesting because they have never found a measles virus. If you find the measles virus, there's a 100,000 euro prize for you. So what is it that seems to be contagious? We agree that a contagion is the explanation that comes to mind first, but in actuality, life is much more complex and much more wonderful, really. And yes, measles parties work, you know that the message gets around among the children. “Hey, this is a good time.” It's just like in a tribe. I think these transitions happen more at the same time with people who are really living together all the time.

[00:30:16.210] – Allan
Now, you know, we're recording this a little bit before it goes live, and I haven't flown back to the United States yet, but one of the requirements from Panama is that I have a PCR test, a negative PCR test, to be exact, within 48 hours of my flight. And the airline will not let us on the plane if we don't come up with that piece of paper certifying that we've tested negative. But there's a lot of problems with the PCR tests.

[00:30:45.580] – Sally Fallon Morell
Yeah, they're very dangerous. For one thing, very invasive. They're being carried out by people who don't have any training. And you have to ask why? Why can't they just do a swab from your mouth or your nose? Why do they have to go all the way back? Through the sinus passage to the membrane that separates your sinus cavity from the brain. And then, OK, so let's just say they get a positive, what does that positive mean? It does not mean they found the virus. It may mean they found a piece of DNA that they think is part of the virus. It also may mean that the way they've carried out the test is always going to get a positive. Those tests can be set. The number of amplifications you do can be set to always get positives or always get negatives. In fact, there was a big problem in Florida. People were sending in these swabs and they were coming back 100 percent positive because of the way they had calibrated the test.

[00:31:47.230] – Allan
And that's one of the things I'm really concerned about is, you know, you hear about this professional football player gets the test, so he thinks he's not going to be playing on Sunday and Monday. He gets the test. He tests positive. They give him another test on Wednesday and it's negative. They give him another test on Friday and it's negative. So he can play on Sunday. But he didn't get to practice all week because because he.

[00:32:08.530] – Sally Fallon Morell
Well, and they could have sent it to a different lab, you know, that they know gets more negatives. It's just like I know I have a dairy farm and we know which lab gives us better results on our milk, lower counts or whatever. And but I'm concerned about how invasive and painful these tests are. Now, you can also do a blood test, which is for antibodies. That test is equally useless really doesn't tell you anything. But I would see if you could do the blood test instead of this.

[00:32:41.440] – Allan
They don't give us an option as the country wrote the law and it was within 48 hours, which is really difficult because a lot of labs don't turn around that fast. And so we're hopeful we'll find a lab that will allow us to get it. And we think we do. We've got an appointment on a Sunday, strangely enough, to get this done. And so if it happens, great. You know, but we had all kinds of travel problems getting here. So I'm sure if it goes well and smooth, I'd just be shocked. But I'm just I'm concerned about that false positive.

[00:33:14.680] – Sally Fallon Morell
Yeah. Go ahead, Tom.

[00:33:17.200] – Tom Cowan
Well, first of all, I would say there is no such thing as a false positive because a false positive means you've standardized it against the isolation of the virus. And since that's never been done, there is no false positives. False positive means would mean that the test is has a certain meaning and there is no meaning. Now, I would strongly encourage people not to believe what I just said, but I would actually read the package insert because the package insert on the FDA test says this test is not to be used to diagnose the virus or prove causation. The test on the Roach test, the package insert says this PCR test cannot be used to diagnose a viral illness. And the inventor of the test said you can never use this test to diagnose a viral illness or demonstrate causation

[00:34:16.990] – Tom Cowan
So given that which is just the facts of the package insert and what they're required to say, there is no meaning to the test. that's why one set, one says 80 percent that false positive. Another says six or 13. None of those numbers have any meaning at all because it's never been standardized against the isolation of a virus. So we don't know what we're testing for. And just a final thing. They say that the PCR test is unique to a piece of the virus, but the World Health Organization has now disclosed that that piece they're testing for in their test is actually found on human chromosome number eight. Which means it's testing to see whether you're a human being, or a papaya, or a popa, or a goat, or a sheep, because many of those have also tested positive.

[00:35:17.620] – Tom Cowan
Now, you can say, if it's testing for a piece of human chromosome number eight, why doesn't everybody test positive? And the answer is because you can put the number of cycles at 30 and then about four to five percent or so of the people will be positive. You can put it up to eight to 40 cycles and then 80 percent of the people will be positive. And that's not because there's any difference. It's just because you've looked harder. And so this becomes a very powerful tool in the hands of people who want to say, oh, there's more cases. So that test has 40 cycles. Oh, we gave you a vaccine and now we've got rid of it. And so now the test has 30 cycles and all that's changed is the number of cycles and got a different result. Because they're testing for a piece of protein or DNA on human chromosome number eight.

[00:36:22.840] – Sally Fallon Morell
It's so tragic, the incompetence of our public health. Profession. And this outbreak, it just boggles the mind because they have used an invalid type of test for this, the numbers are meaningless. And Tom and I are not arguing that this is just a bad case of the flu that's been poorly treated or counted as Covid or whatever. We are not arguing that we think this is a serious disease, life-threatening disease. We believe it's caused by electromagnetic radiation, mainly with the roll out of 5G. And we need to be looking very carefully at every person who gets sick. We need to determine whether they're sick by their symptoms and not the tests.

[00:37:14.370] – Sally Fallon Morell
There's a whole bunch of questions we need to be asking. Where were they, what their exposure was? Are they already electrically sensitive? Do they have any metal in their body? We need to be doing real, true epidemiology and we're not. And so we just have no idea how many people are sick or is it going up or down or or anything. Where are these illnesses? Where are the true illnesses? Where are they just positive tests? And it's really criminal, the incompetence of the public health officials, and yet they have shut down the whole world.

[00:37:57.020] – Allan
On the 5G because, you know, we know if we put something in a microwave, it's going to be affected by the electromagnetic waves. And we know if we get out in the sun too long, we'll get a sunburn. And it's possible that that skin being burned could then mutate and cause a skin cancer. So we know radiation or electromagnetic waves can cause problems, cellular problems, DNA problems.

[00:38:26.210] – Sally Fallon Morell
Lung problems particularly.

[00:38:31.100] – Tom Cowan
Allan, by the way, I don't know that you actually know that the DNA can be mutated.

[00:38:35.660] – Allan
OK. Yes. I don't have any evidence other than…

[00:38:41.210] – Tom Cowan
All you know is some people who get burned, show up with cancer later in their life. That's all you can say.

[00:38:48.710] – Allan
Yes. OK, fair enough.

[00:38:51.220] – Sally Fallon Morell
You've got to be very careful with Tom.

[00:38:57.940] – Sally Fallon Morell
The truth is, we just don't know. We don't have any clues as to why certain people are getting sick and why others are not getting sick. And I live out in the country. I have a very boring life. I don't go very many places and I don't know anyone, seriously I don't have any friends or relatives who have gotten sick. And then I have people tell me, oh, you're being, you know, not very sympathetic, I know four people who've died of this. These are just observations, kind of meaningless observations.

[00:39:36.130] – Sally Fallon Morell
And by the way, we're not minimizing this. In fact, we and I believe it's going to get worse and worse until we start looking beyond this non-existent virus and into what are the likely causes.

[00:39:52.420] – Allan
One of the things you brought up in the book that I had actually never heard of before is this concept of exosomes or what these exosomes are, that they resemble almost exactly what a virus structure would be like. Can you describe what exosomes are and how they're like viruses or what what they what they represent?

[00:40:16.190] – Tom Cowan
An exosome is exactly what I described before, so the whole question is the theory of how viruses make you sick is they come from the outside. They inject their DNA or RNA into your cells. That it replicates. And then it's somehow some day later, it buds out. And now you have a thousand where you used to have one. And then it goes out of the cells and goes to another person in the whole thing goes again.

[00:40:49.230] – Tom Cowan
But the problem is we don't actually know whether these are coming from the outside. Or as I said before, you poisoned a tissue and it responds by packaging up some genetic material and some proteins. And it essentially spews those out of the tissue and then it communicates with the rest of the body and even potentially other people, even potentially other organisms, as there has been a new poison in town. And here's what you need to make a defensive reaction.

[00:41:25.530] – Tom Cowan
Those things coming from the inside of our tissues are called exosomes. They're not similar to viruses. They're not like viruses. They are exactly the composition of viruses. They have been isolated and purified and they have been shown not to cause disease, but to be communication strategies.

[00:41:48.900] – Tom Cowan
So essentially what's happened here is we have a misconception. The misconception is these things, they're called viruses have come from the outside to infect us when the reality is they're exosomes coming from the inside as detoxification and communication strategies. And when you analyse them, you find they have the same receptors, they have the same ACE protein inhibitors, they have the spike protein. They have all these things which we're alleging to be part of this virus. But they're all breakdown products from our own cells.

[00:42:32.310] – Sally Fallon Morell
It's been a wonderful 20 years as far as paradigm shifts are concerned, because no one is talking about bacteria being bad anymore. Now, we know that we have a biome we can't live without bacteria. They are 80 percent of what they call our immune system. We are covered inside and out with helpful, friendly bacteria, which we call the biome. So this is a huge shift, just in the last 20 years. We need the same shift when it comes to viruses. We just assumed when scientists found these things, they just assumed that they were bad, just like they assumed that bacteria were bad, the wrong assumption. And now we need to have this paradigm shift when it comes to viruses. We have a virome and that virome greatly increases when we're sick or starved or poisoned. And the purpose of the virome is to protect us and help us. It's going to take a while. Just like the bacteria shift took a while.

[00:43:43.920]
I had to laugh the cover of Discover magazine. I read Discover because to me it's always the epitome of conventional science. It's nothing radical or iconoclastic there. And the cover was about the wonderful bacteria in our guts. And they make us feel good chemicals and they do all these things. You would not have seen that twenty years ago or even five years ago in Discover magazine. So I hope I live long enough to see Discover magazine have a on the front page. The Wonderful Virome or something like that. It will take a while.

[00:44:25.830] – Allan
Now, obviously you can't help but follow the press on this because it's 24/7 these days. And so there's there's just so much out there. But a few things that I did run across that are I think are really important is that if you look at the cases of who's getting really, really sick, it's people who were already sick. It's people who were obese, and it's people with low vitamin D So they're depleted in vitamin D or deficient in vitamin D. Seem to be three qualities of the people that end up in the worst shape for dealing with whatever the illness is. And so you go through and this is where I like the practical aspects of this, the things that we can do to protect ourselves. So it's possible we might still get sick, but what are the things we can do to perhaps prevent getting sick or if we do get sick to weather the storm a little bit better?

[00:45:26.260] – Sally Fallon Morell
Well, I think first you have to realize that we are electrical beings, we have a kind of electrical circuitry in our bodies, and most of that circuitry is not the nerve cells, it's the water in our bodies. The water is structured against our cell membranes, against the tissue membranes and it becomes what's called an exclusion zone. And the water is has a charge to it and that functions as a wire in our bodies. So even our cells have all these little networks of structured water and it's like a network of wires in our body.

[00:46:05.210] – Sally Fallon Morell
So you want those wires to be a good and strong and well insulated. So they're not so much affected by electromagnetic radiation from the outside. And the number one thing to do is eat lots of saturated fats. I know that raises eyebrows, but the saturated fats are what your cell membranes need to create this hydrophilic surface, to be strong and not tear or be permeable or anything like that.

[00:46:36.470] – Sally Fallon Morell
Most definitely. And most of these people who are suffering from obesity and, you know, preexisting conditions, I doubt they're eating a lot of saturated fat. They are eating junk food, which is polyunsaturated fat or trans fats. They're not eating the natural fats like butter, tallow, lard and so forth, that our bodies need to have this good, strong, well-insulated circuit. So that's number one.

[00:47:04.640] – Sally Fallon Morell
We talk about getting plenty of B vitamins, plenty of vitamin C in the diet, plenty of vitamin D, but the D needs to be balanced with vitamin A and vitamin K, so all of that is in the food chapter.

[00:47:18.950] – Sally Fallon Morell
At the same time, we need to clean up our environment, especially our houses, especially where we sleep. So that means not having your cell phone in your room, turning off the Wi-Fi at night, if you can actually turn off the electricity in the wires in your bedroom at night. That's helpful. One really easy thing to do is not have an electric clock right by your head when you're sleeping. So there's a list of things that we give for food, for your environment, for your water.

[00:47:51.000] – Sally Fallon Morell
Tom has some very interesting thoughts about drinking well-oxygenated water. You know, when these people get sick, they need and they're put in the hospital with all kinds of electric equipment all around them, around their heads. They might be put on ventilators, are given the worst kind of food, the worst kind of water. If someone gets sick with this disease, they need to get out of the city, get out of that environment, go to places as electrically neutral as possible and have good water, well-oxygenated water, good food, you know, all of these things that we're recommending. Unfortunately, that's not happening.

[00:48:37.290] – Allan
Tom, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:48:49.040] – Tom Cowan
Eat good food, including lard. That's the most important food right now for the all the fat soluble vitamins. The pig has to be from pasture, though, like a real pig, a fake pig, eat good food, be out in the sun, connect with the earth and get rid of all wireless devices.

[00:49:11.780] – Allan
Sally, I had to find wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:49:20.390] – Sally Fallon Morell
Well, in addition to what Tom has said, and I completely agree with him on all of these, by the way, lard from pastured pigs is our best source of vitamin D. There's is a thousand IUs of vitamin D and a tablespoon of that kind of lard. That's the right kind of fats also. But in addition to what Tom is saying, I would say raw dairy products, especially raw liquid milk, fluid milk, because it's such a wonderful source of glutathione, which is a huge help in detoxification.

[00:49:51.560] – Sally Fallon Morell
Clean up your bedroom, get a good night's sleep, spend time outside, do things that you like to do. I know sometimes we have to do a lot of things that we have to do, but as much as possible, you should be doing things that you like.

[00:50:08.670] – Tom Cowan
And there's one more thing that's actually, I think, more important than any of those other things. Sally may not agree, but if right now, if I was to say what the most toxic element in our environment is, it would be fear.

[00:50:25.690] – Sally Fallon Morell
No, I agree, I agree.

[00:50:27.340] – Tom Cowan
And the reason people are afraid is because they are worried about dying. And the reason they're worried about dying is because they think the most important part of them will die. And I'm here to tell everybody that that is a horrible delusion. And for those who need to look into that, I would suggest you spending a lot of effort trying to find out what is a human being, what is a living thing, and do we really die, at least the part of us that we're most interested in? Because if we don't and there's nothing to be afraid of.

[00:51:14.380] – Allan
Well, thank you, Tom, Sally, if someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, The Contagion Myth, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:51:25.450] – Sally Fallon Morell
Well, they can start with my blog, NourishingTraditions.com. Among other sources, including Tom's my art at my blog called Is Coronavirus Contagious. That's one of the main things that started us on this journey that we've taken. So I'm constantly updating. I updated that blog with others and Tom and I are just about to do another one. So that would be one place. And then the Weston A Price Foundation, westonaprice.org is also providing a lot of information in our journal and on our website.

[00:52:09.830] – Tom Cowan
For me, it would be drtomcowan.com.

[00:52:14.770] – Allan
Great, thank you both for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:52:19.330] – Tom Cowan
Thank you.

[00:52:20.230] – Sally Fallon Morell
Thank you.

[00:52:21.970] – Tom Cowan
Take care, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:52:29.530] – Allan
Welcome back, Rachel.

[00:52:30.970] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, how are you?

[00:52:32.290] – Allan
All right, well, so what did you think about that conversation?

[00:52:36.340] – Rachel
Oh, wow, there's a lot to talk about there, but I'd like to talk about the good stuff first. And why don't we start with how science changes, that science doesn't always stay the same all the time?

[00:52:49.240] – Allan
Yeah, it does. And you could you could go back and say at one point, people thought witches were what made people sick. And sometimes they thought the world was flat. And they approach things from that perspective. And the scientists often that would come out with something different, something novel were persecuted.

[00:53:11.290] – Allan
And it still happens today. You know, there's a doctor in South Africa whose last name is Noakes, Dr. Noakes. And he was he was coming out and saying that, you know, this whole fat-phobia thing is a problem, that there's absolutely nothing wrong with people eating saturated fat, absolutely nothing wrong with people eating high fat. And the medical profession in South Africa was all over him. They wanted to revoke his license for the things he was saying on Twitter, saying he's basically giving bad medical advice against what the basic protocols, the standard of care was. And he fought them for years and legal. And finally, you know, again, presenting enough science-backed information to a judge was found not guilty effectively and was allowed to keep his medical license. But he fought for years.

[00:54:03.040] – Allan
And, you know, so sometimes science is just we change our paradigm. I mean, we can go back to just the conversation we had with Dr. Fung. You know, the paradigms of what cancer is have changed. And that's science. You know, they think they know what they know. And then they find something new and we dive a little deeper and we learn something. So, you know, I'm not going to say that Dr. Cowan is right and I'm not going to say that is wrong.

[00:54:29.230] – Allan
I'm just going to say that there's enough going on there that you just you know, you can look at it and you can start to draw inferences. But we're just going to need more work because with 5G, no one's done long term studies. It's new. It's a new thing. We're faced with new technologies all the time. You know, if was a horse-drawn carriage, you could probably get out of the way if it's a car traveling 65 miles per hour. Splat.

[00:54:59.740] – Rachel
Yeah, big difference.

[00:55:01.000] – Allan
You know, so technology has its benefits, but oftentimes there are downsides to the technology. And it's just something for us to wrap our heads around. As we go about our lives, as there's always going to be these new ideas. And there's nothing wrong with the idea. No one's saying he's absolutely right. Even Dr. Cowen says he might not be absolutely right, but he just doesn't buy into the germ theory. And he was just saying, let's talk about 5G and what it means. Let's talk about how there might be another answer to why these things are happening.

[00:55:38.290] – Rachel
Absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely worth researching some more, studying some more. You never know how the tides will change. And in fact, I do remember studying EMFs when I was back in college. This guy was probably 35ish years ago. And that's long time for science and something as interesting as EMFs. But when we studied it and I was an environmental science major, so this is part of my programming. It should continue to be studied and it might even take another 35 years before we figure out or be able to put our finger on something having to do with EMFs.

[00:56:17.350] – Rachel
But it's just one of those long list of things that we could maybe consider for our own personal health and wellbeing. But it's just, like I said, just one of those very many things we need to consider.

[00:56:30.040] – Allan
Yeah. You know, I remember at points in time they've said, you know, OK, don't get out in the sun is completely dangerous. You're going to get skin cancer. That's going to kill you if you get out in the sun. And now we're turning around and saying, well, how you're not getting the vitamin D you need. And that's causing some issues. You're not keeping your circadian rhythm balanced because you're not getting enough blue light, enough sunlight. And so it's just kind of one of those things to say that there are things out there that hurt us that, you know, we don't see, we don't know.

[00:57:03.730] – Allan
And we learn a little bit and then people change and the science changes. And the only thing that really stands in the way of true progress is when large companies or large industries are able to get in there and find a kind of meddle with the stuff. Because, you know, in a sense, the here's a symptom, here's a pill works out very well for the pharmaceutical industry or here's an illness. Here's an illness, here's a vaccine is the same general math. But it's even more compelling because you're not to wait for them to get sick, you just have to have an illness strong enough that people care to take a vaccine. So I'm not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch of the imagination, but even the things they're doing there with these new vaccines and things that are coming out now is those are novel. Those are new. And we've never used an RNA vaccine on people before.

[00:58:01.230] – Allan
And they're testing it and they're finding it generally safe. There are some side effects and, you know, there's going to be limited quantity. But, you know, I want to see I want to see more. I want to see, you know, if, you know, 100 million people have taken this vaccine and are generally tolerating it, then maybe it's Okay. And if it's working, you know, the preliminary data that came out was fantastic.

[00:58:25.560] – Allan
But, you know, in the end, we don't know. It's a novel technology that we're mass producing and doing. And that's kind of you know, that's kind of I am Legend, Will Smith movie kind of material. Not to be so dystopian, but you have to make these decisions on your own based on what you believe and in your heart and the research that you've done.

[00:58:52.890] – Rachel
Mm hmm. Well, there's a reason why vaccines usually take five or more years to develop. It's because of all the study that goes into it and the the number of people that they can test it on. Being that coronavirus has this entire world in a pandemic right now. There's a lot of pressure and we can't continue to live sheltered in our homes with restaurants and things closed all the time. Like our economy is having problems, schools are having problems. I mean, the coronavirus is caused a huge problem that just has a huge ripple effect.

[00:59:25.590] – Rachel
And people are dying. Literally, I don't know what the current count is, but we have over a million people across the world that have had coronavirus. And I forget where we are, 200 thousand, I think, in the United States have died from it. So, I mean, I can understand the rush with the vaccine. And I am optimistic that there is a lot of smart people doing the best science that they can in a short period of time. But there's a reason why science takes time.

[00:59:54.960] – Allan
Yeah, and so we'll see. But I would just say I'm glad that they're seeing some progress there.

[01:00:00.640] – Rachel
Yes.

[01:00:01.230] – Allan
I'm actually happier on the treatment side of things that the treatments are there, because in the end, I think that's actually how you beat this is that, you know, there would be certain people that just won't have an opportunity to get the vaccine before they're infected. So having a good treatment protocol, having good testing protocols or better testing protocols is going to be where we're going to we're going to win this.

[01:00:24.990] – Allan
And you're right, my gym is still closed. When they came out with the protocols for how I can open the gym, it's not something that's feasible. You know, my gym is too small for me to have that many people in the gym, to have my equipment spaced out two meters when the entire length of my gym is probably, I don't know, 12 meters.

[01:00:58.050] – Rachel
Tiny.

[01:00:58.680] – Allan
Yeah. I can't I can't spread out now. And so we have to just limit the number of people in the gym. And then they said, my employees have to be tested every two weeks. And that's just not practical for for me to pay for my employees to be tested every two weeks just for this. So the gym will probably remain closed for a while. And I hate that.

[01:01:19.980] – Allan
Because that is a part of health and fitness. That's part of wellness. And that's being completely ignored because it's seen as a higher risk. But it is a segment of the economy that's going to continue to hurt until they really get a grapple on this thing. So I am hopeful that what they're doing is going to work. And it's worth again at the same time, not necessarily nay saying everyone who believes something different than yourself, just to realize that there might be some validity to it.

[01:01:50.970] – Allan
And hopefully people can wrap their heads around it that are smarter than me and do some work in that area to actually determine if it is or if it isn't. And not to get the PETA people mad, but it's like put some put some rats or mice in 5G and let them go and live their lives and then put some rats in the same basic environment without the 5G. So there's no other confounders. They're eating the same amount, they're eating the same food, they're doing the same thing, the same environment all the way across. And just see, is there a difference in the lives of these mice and that would just give you one more data point to share is or isn't, but, you know, and hopefully someone's doing that. but we're rolling out new technology and doing different things. It's a crapshoot at this point.

[01:02:42.060] – Rachel
Sometimes it is. Yes. Yes, it is.

[01:02:45.210] – Allan
But that's what it takes for us to get out of the crap. And, you know, I guess we take that shot.

[01:02:50.130] – Rachel
Mm hmm. And then let's also go back to the preventative measures. You know, we should all be living a healthier lifestyle as best we can and living a healthy lifestyle, being active, eating good foods and being outside and getting fresh air. I mean, all of these things can be hugely beneficial to our bodies, whether we're talking about cancer prevention, coronavirus prevention, any other disease that's out there, you know, we can take good care of our bodies. Maybe we can put it off for a while.

[01:03:19.950] – Allan
Yeah, and that's the deal is lifestyle is going to decide, you know, who's capable of making it through this and who's not. In most cases, that's what they're finding, is it's lifestyle issues that are the confounder that's causing people to really suffer with this thing. So start working on it. If you're obese, lose some weight. If you're a smoker, quit for the love of God. And if you're not eating well, you know, take that time. If you're not getting out, moving enough, get some sunshine. You know, even though now we're getting into the winter months and it's harder to get vitamin D, maybe you need to supplement. But, you know, making sure that you're getting the nutrition your body needs to be healthy. That's the challenge.

[01:04:00.830] – Allan
So if we're into this for wellness, that's a huge part of it being well means getting past these things the right way. It's great. We're going to have vaccines, treatments and all of that. Prevention is number one. We had Dr. Rob and Dr. Lou on not long ago, and it's been pretty clear. Stay out of hospital if you can, because this is more dangerous than some of the other places you might end up being.

[01:04:29.430] – Allan
And so just just realize that you're you have one thing you can control in this world right now and all the crazy stuff that's going on, you can control you. And you can control what you eat. You can control your movement. You can control how often you wash your hands, who you expose yourself to, all of those things. And so where you have control, this is this is the time to show that restraint, to show that control.

[01:04:54.810] – Rachel
Absolutely. Yeah. There's enough signs right now that shows that masks are working, social distancing, that six feet or more of separation is working.

[01:05:03.510] – Allan
OK, we're going to call that physical distancing.

[01:05:06.210] – Rachel
Right, right. Right. Yes. The physical distancing. Yeah, that's definitely worth working for. Sure. Good ventilation being outside has shown this summer. I mean, we did bring down the curve this summer with all of our outdoor activities. So there's a few things that we know works. And until we can get it under control, at least we can work on some of those preventative measures just to stay safe.

[01:05:33.840] – Allan
Absolutely. All right, Rachel. Well, I'll talk to you again next week.

[01:05:38.430] – Rachel
Awesome. Talk to you soon.

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