If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Gary Moller is back with my hair test results. We're going to take a deep dive into what these results mean, how we can correct any issues and what the next steps are. As I said before, I'm sharing this health journey with you all so you can see what a positive impact looking after your own health can be and the interest that you have in your own lives. Gary's itching to go and he joins me now. Welcome back to The Crunch, Gary. It's a pleasure to have you here. Last time we spoke, we were going to go and get a hair test to find out all the elements that are coming out of my body or not coming out of my body. I thought it'd be an opportune time to update the listeners on what that showed and what that means for me and tell you about some stuff that you recommended during the Christmas New Year break and the results of that. So it's good pleasure to have you back on The Crunch. Well, it's a real pleasure, Cam. I'd like to start by just asking you a question, getting your permission. The first thing is that, Cam, we are going to be talking about medical related matters. And we may delve into some personal things. And you need to be comfortable with sharing this with the public, with your listeners. So I want your permission to... Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been pretty public about my journey of the recovery from my stroke. I've been open about some of the medications and side effects and things like that. And I think it's important for listeners to understand the full picture so that they can wonder about their own situation and start to question whether or not they're on correct medications or there's something that they can do that seems to be really simple to actually fix and correct a few things. So yeah, I've got no problems at all sharing that information. I think that it's educational for the listeners and I've got no secrets. Of course. That's wonderful. And I just wanted to make sure that that's absolutely clear. And the other thing, Cam, which listeners need to be aware is that we're talking about Cameron Slater and we're talking about perhaps the merits or whatever of changing medication, of perhaps introducing other therapies for the listeners. I'm not expecting them to go and do the same for themselves. Each person has to do their own research, look up their own medications and consult a professional health practitioner to ensure that they're actually not endangering themselves. That's right.  I've trained her nicely. She knows that I go and do these sorts of things and we always work in conjunction with that. And I'm putting in place things to monitor as well. I've got one of those wrist blood pressure testing devices. I'm checking my blood pressure to see that there's any changes and any changes that we make. I'm making sure I'm on top of that sort of thing. That's what people should do. They need to take an interest in their own health because nobody else is going to do that. And if they don't do that, then they'll end up in an emergency situation and you can't guarantee what the outcomes are going to be when it's an emergency situation. Well, where shall we start? I think it's great we've clarified things. This test that we are discussing was done in December and you've had a number of weeks where you have steadily and faithfully plugged away. An absolutely model patient I must add. I'm delighted to hear that. Perhaps we should start with blood pressures. And how are you feeling? Are you feeling okay? Are you feeling well? Yeah, I'm feeling fantastic. I'm just for the listener's benefit that Gary recommended that I start making up his famous citrus peel drink. I will explain why you suggested that and that came out of the results, the test results that we had and there were some things that maybe we needed to cleanse or clean up. But I'll tell you what, over the New Year period, especially in January, I've met up with a few people in person and they're saying, gee, Cam, what have you done?  So the only thing that I've done over that Christmas New Year period is drink copious quantities of your citrus peel drink. And when you told me to make this up and I looked at the recipe and looked at the things that are required, I sat there and thought, oh, good grief, I'm a manly man.  I'm just not a green tea drink, none of that, right? But the drink was actually very pleasant. It's not bitter at all, even though it's got a whole lemon in it. And eating the lemon peel, which you suggested that I do as I drink through it and have a couple of slices a day of the lemon peel, was not unpleasant. It wasn't bitter, it was nice. And so I kind of do it all the time, especially on the hot days at the moment here in Auckland, approaching 30 degrees. That drink and a slice of the lemon chilled in the fridge is just delightful and really tasty. And it's something that I've changed into my diet and I think it's made huge improvements. Well, here in Wellington, approaching 20 degrees, I must say, I enjoy having one of those lemon drinks as well. Now, I went the next step and I bought the Sujean Black Currant Powder. Yes. You know what, it's actually doesn't really taste, you think it might taste like ribena, it doesn't. The lemon taste comes through more than the black currant taste. But I added the Sujean Black Currant into my, you know, I get bottled water. It's cheapest chips you can buy six bottles for about three bucks from the supermarket or $3.50 if it's on something like that on special. And I just pour a litre and a half into a jug and put all the ingredients and mix all that up and everything and leave it in the fridge overnight before I start drinking it. So, you know, it's working. OK, well, I think it's working. Well, I well, Cam, I haven't seen you for a couple of months now. And maybe it's the filter on the camera. But no filters here. You do look you do look and you look and definitely better health. I think perhaps a bit of the darkness under the eyes. I can't really see any. I think you're looking pretty pretty good for a fifty or five year old. Yeah. The medication you're on. Yep. Can we just go over that? You're taking essentially it's focusing on cardiovascular, preventing stroke and heart attack. These are the things that they prescribed after I had my stroke to get my blood pressure under control and those sorts of things. Yeah, of course, I'm also doing five kilometre walks every day as well. So, yes, which is wonderful.  Now, well, I just want my health to be good because if you don't have your health, well, you've got nothing. I think you've heard this, let me say this before, but let food be our medicine and body heal by self. Yeah. And the medication you're on may be beneficial in managing. Yes. Whatever the condition is, but it is not going to cure anything. You are going to cure yourself, which is what you have been in the process of doing, which is wonderful. And ultimately, if you do the job right, you will be bringing the health and vitality in underneath the medication. And ultimately, the need for the medication will decrease to the point where you with the cooperation of your doctor, though, ultimately, you are the decision maker on this, you will be able to remove each medication one by one to the point where you are completely medication free and you just get on with life. Now, I'll make one point as well. You're in your mid fifties. Yeah. Congratulations. Now, you are genetically programmed to see your genes. Your genes are there to serve you faithfully until around about 110 years of age. Yeah, so I'm halfway there. Yeah, you're halfway there. Now, the question I want you to the mental exercise is, what do you think about taking all of these drugs for the next half of your life? I'm not very is it really not really keen on that? Because, you know, you get side effects with these drugs and I'm not sure for another, even if let's to say another 20 years, right, let's say I get another 20 years, I don't want to be taking this cocktail of drugs for another 20 years. I want to actually get those down to almost nothing. OK, now, so all of the drugs you're on and there's ativistatin, meterozeropine, clopidrol, lozatine and chlorodine. Well, don't worry about the pronunciation. I just get completely tongue tied with all of them. But basically you're on those medications and each one of them comes with a long list of side effects. If it is a relatively recent drug, it will have a shorter list of side effects. OK, yeah, usually a lot shorter because it takes 10 to 20 years of the drug being out on the market for us to truly know all of the side effects from them because we're talking about human years as opposed to, say, rat years from those original lab studies. So it often is the case that an older drug will have a longer list than the new one, but don't be fooled. The new one, once you give it enough time, may have just as long a list. Now, if each drug has got, say, 20 different side effects, some serious, some minor, hey, I don't think any of them are minor, by the way, but let's call them minor. If you then combine four or five drugs together, which have never had to be tested together before going on the market, they're only tested on their own and you combine them all together. You would need a supercomputer to figure out all of the possible interactions, most of which are probably unknown.  The clorotaladone, for example, when they originally prescribed that for me, I ended up with swollen legs, calf muscles, feet, like twice the size of my normal feet. I said to the doctor, what's going on here? Oh, I don't know. So I went and did some research, found out that edema is one of the major side effects of the clorotaladone. And then we reduced the dosage. The other side effect of that drug, too, was it made my gums grow up over my teeth, you know, and that's very uncomfortable, very painful.  So I'm the one who did the research on that. We talked to my doctor and said, well, what are we going to do? We reduced it. Now that's gone back to normal. But if it's got that side effect, I don't want it in me. Right. I want to be in it, get myself to a point where I can remove those drugs because of the obvious side effects. And then there's, as you say, the not obvious side effects that you may not be aware of until there's a catastrophe. Yeah. And and then there's all of the incomprehensible interactions where you layer one drug on top of another. Yeah. Absolutely. We can we can never truly understand the impact of that. It's it's a very difficult thing. Kim, I can tell you that the best predictor for a long, healthy, productive life, particularly as we get older, is the absence of the need for medication. Yeah. So if you if you if you go and look at all the longevity studies, yeah, you can see there are certain common factors like their diet, their exercise, getting out into fresh air, a sense of belonging, being part of a community. Having a purpose that is above oneself. OK, yeah, rather than being narcissistic, being outward looking involved in the community and so on and so on. OK, so they're all of those. But one of the factors that is often overlooked, almost ignored, is that none of these people are on long term medication because it will for a start, they don't need it. But they're usually living in parts of the world where they won't have access to it anyway. OK, so that's a really I I've always found that really fascinating. And what highlighted that to me was health professionals who work in aged care, end of life. They know that if you take the patient of their medication, they live longer. OK, so that often says something. If you want to end somebody's life a little bit sooner, you bump the meds up, OK, you don't take them off it.  Think about that for a while. So for the next 55 years, yeah, of him slater's life, I think we should get him to a point where he's so healthy that there's no need for any drugs. Sounds good to me. Now, I'm being very careful about how I'm saying this. I'm saying that we are going to remove the need. OK, it doesn't mean that you just throw the drugs away. Yeah. OK. But actually, you know, I always said to the doctors, you know, why do I need this drug?  They give you a reason. So what's the what's the symptom? Well, what we're only treating symptoms here. What's the underlying cause of this? And it's like my little enigma with potassium, you know, I've seen endocrinologists, various different specialists, they all, you know, have declared it to be NFI, which means they've got no if and idea what it is that's causing it. Well, that's not helpful. They just say, keep taking supplements. Well, most people don't need to take supplements for potassium. So why do I? And then that's the question that I have. And it's the riddle, the enigma that has defeated me thus far, which is why I thought the hair test would be give us a good indicator. Well, there is. So we've got cams, hair tissue analysis on screen.  Now, first of all, we have what is called a reference range. In other words, a person in perfect health and homeopaths understand us is that if you've got perfect homeostasis within a cell, there cannot be the existence of disease dysfunction. Yeah. And when we and when we look at a tissue analysis of healthy people, people who are disease free, their tissue test is more or less all of the nutrients like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and so on within what is called an ideal or reference range. There's a balance, isn't there, that we've got to look towards. And then some of these things come in pairs, don't they? They work together. Everything in the universe operates on yin yang, black, white, hot, cold, positive, negative, male, female, conservative, liberal. If there's darkness, there must be light. If there's heat, there must be cold. And if you have too much of one and too little of another, you end up with imbalance and dysfunction. And let's think of like politics. If you have a political party that has 60% of the vote, you run the risk of a dictatorship. Yes, it's the perfect democracy is where they have 51% of the vote. And if you think also and say a relationship between two people, you don't want a very strong person and a very weak person. Otherwise, you end up with an abusive relationship. Now, we have the same right down to the atomic level. In fact, down to light matter. If there is matter, there must be antimatter, even if we haven't found it. This is the rule of the universe. And by the way, if you want to destroy and confuse what you do as, for example, you destroy the distinction between a man and a woman, for example, and this and that. But it's you can actually apply science to what is going on in society. It's very, very fascinating. Now, anyway, but we won't digress. So if we're looking at cams and we are looking at cams head tissue test, we can see he's only got a couple of nutrients that are within the reference range or within the ideal. And there are a number of ones which are outside of the ideal and are, in fact, too low or too high. Now, there's some fascinating things here. The pattern that I'm looking at cam is, in fact, the pattern of somebody who is probably not eating much in the way of red meat. OK, so that would be the first thing that and but we're looking at them. This is historic. You may be eating red meat right now, but during the last year or so, it looks to me like you have been on a low red meat, probably low cholesterol diet. OK, yeah. Now, and that's because your iron is incredibly low. As is copper, manganese, zinc, chromium and selenium. And when we look at those foods, let's look at those nutrients and we look at the main, most bioavailable food sources. That is things like red meat and also other sources, organ meat and things like green lip muscles, clams, oysters, quinoa, you know, those sorts of things. Yeah, quite fascinating to see that. So that's the first observation. So I should eat more black pudding then and have liver once a week. Yeah, absolutely. Lamb's tribe once a week would be absolutely amazing, wonderful. And have you been doing that, Cam? No, I haven't, but I do like black pudding. So, you know, perhaps I can get some black pudding and have that for breakfast or something. Well, I had black pudding served up for dinner last night. Oh, I love it. And I had some of the leftover earlier today. OK, is there any leftover of black pudding for me? Well, maybe your reptilian subconscious brain is saying, I need it. Yeah, OK. And that's because you're so incredibly low. Just to give readers, Cam's iron is zero point six when it should be around about three point five. It doesn't go much lower. I don't it's just about as low as it can go. Maybe it's all those bleeding gums. OK, combined with a diet of, you know, vegetable forms of iron are far less bioavailable than red meat, venison, black pudding, liver. Basically, the redder, the better. That would be a general of them for Cam's later. Lots of red meat. And they will also provide copper. By the way, copper is found in green lip muscles. That's the copper oxide is green. And mollusks, muscles use copper instead of iron for oxygen transport and storage. So that's why they are a great source of copper. OK, think of think of power. Power is so green, it almost looks black. And that's the copper oxide in it. Well, I love power and power is delicious. Yeah. And again, your subconscious is probably saying, Cam, I need more copper. Now, if we go to another. So I'm going to go to another website. These are all available on my website, GaryMoller.com. And you can find like the citrus recipe on GaryMoller.com. And I've just updated that this morning to be a little more user friendly. Now, if we look at, for example, copper. And copper in Cam's case is very, very low. Now, we look at the functions of copper and it says structure of blood vessels, aorta and heart muscle. It is also necessary for hemoglobin, OK, oxygen transport and storage. It is also necessary for the maintenance of the myelin sheath. If there is a copper deficiency or a copper excess, by the way, then the myelin sheath will be weak. Which means that a person with weak myelin may be very prone to conditions like concussion. OK, and fail to recover from a brain injury. Now, the structure of blood vessels. Now, just think about this. If you want to stop blood vessels from bursting and breaking, you need copper, but you also need zinc with it. So when we look at your hair tissue test, we go to zinc. Your zinc is 12 when it should be 20 to 24. Yeah. Now, when we go and look at the roles and functions of zinc, which I'm going to do now, Cam and I have the benefit in that we're looking at this on a screen. So I'm going to keep describing this for the listeners. Now, first of all, you will see again, the foods that are high. And these are foods when people are going heart healthy. Following the now out of date heart healthy guidelines.  So oysters, hearings, beef, lamb, pork, liver. OK, those are the main ones that are great sources of zinc. Of course, zinc is found in nuts and seeds and so on. But it's not so bioavailable. The benefit of an animal is that they will eat vast volumes of these things and concentrate these nutrients for you, a human being. Now, what you will see is look at this. It is important for the maintenance of artery walls, all of your blood vessels and that, but also your intestinal walls along with copper. OK, so a lot of these things are really important for the functioning of the brain and so on and so on. And it is also essential for the production of the male hormones, which gives a person strength and fortitude, the willingness to go to their death without a quiver of fear. If somebody is lacking zinc, then there is a possibility, a likelihood that they can't produce the hormones and neurotransmitters to prevent conditions like anxiety and depression. Really important.  Straightaway, two things which says your connective tissue is going to be weak. Now, for the last few months, you've been taking some supplementation, which is providing some of these nutrients. Yeah, but we're going to step it up now because we haven't really had a proper discussion on this camp. OK, but guess what? What's good for your arteries is good for your hair, skin and nails. And so if somebody is healthy, if they've got nice, strong arteries, if they've got a good, a healthy digestive trait, well, why don't we look at their skin and nails? If somebody looks healthy, then they're probably healthy on the inside. And in fact, if somebody is not healthy on the inside, there's no way they can look healthy on the outside. So when I'm looking at you, Cam looks healthier. His skin looks better. So maybe he's healthier on the inside as well.  Oh, now, sorry, can we go back just one thing?  You've been obsessively monitoring them. And could you share that with the listeners?   Omron, I think, is the brand that I've got. It's a little one that clips on to your wrist. It takes 30 seconds to do a blood pressure test. You recommend doing blood pressure as soon as you wake up, then breakfast in 10 o'clock, three o'clock, seven o'clock and then bed. So you're monitoring it throughout the day. Once you've got a few days under your belt, then you can maybe every fifth day or whatever, just check it, see where you're going. But my blood pressure is pretty stable now. It definitely not anywhere near what it was like when I had my stroke.  Yeah, so, yeah, I'm pretty happy with where the blood pressure is at. And that gives me an indication that maybe I need to now present all this information to my GP and say, right, what are we going to do about these blood pressure medications? Because they are artificially holding things low and it's not reaching a normal balance and a normal balance is what we're after. They may be. And I'll just point out that the risk type blood pressure monitor so long as my recommendation is that you use an Omron. Now, an Omron is it's made by a company that supplies doctors and it is accurate. It's within a few points of your doctor's blood pressure monitor. Risk type one is convenient. You can carry it around with you and you can slip it on to your wrist at a moment's notice and do so discreetly and get real life readings. The thing about there are only about one hundred and thirty dollars to so they're not a lot of money. Life savers, they save lives. That's one hundred and thirty dollars extremely well spent. Every family should have one. Yeah. OK, now. So you get these readings and you get a cluster of readings. There is the saying, excuse me, for plagiarising it a little, but it is one swallow does not make for a summer. One blood pressure reading at your doctor's surgery is not a diagnosis. No, you've got to have a whole flock of them before you can declare or make a conclusion. So that's why Cam has obsessively taken clusters of blood pressure so he can get a real time record of how dynamic his blood pressure is.  But one twenty over eighty. Hey, if it's one twenty over eighty. Pop the corks, Cam. OK, that's fantastic. Wonderful. Now, here's the next thing. I have found in many cases, the body habituates to many of these blood pressure drugs. In other words, as the months turn into years, the blood pressure medication is not really doing much anyway. So this is what you need to do. Your blood pressure now, Cam, we've been able to demonstrate is consistently with an extremely healthy, safe zones. You haven't been getting any dangerous peaks and also dangerous lows. Look, blood pressure can be too low. That can be that can be terrible as well. OK, so you you've got healthy blood pressure. So it really then begs the question, what would happen if Cam were to progressively titrate his blood pressure medications one at a time downwards? Now, if you while you're doing that and you need to you need to go and talk to your doctor and put this as a proposal, here's the plan. OK, what you do?  I want to win myself off all of my medications, but I want to do so responsibly and safely. I want to pick each drug in order of in some kind of hierarchy. And I want to over the next month titrate that drug downwards. In other words, you might go from two pills to one pill per day.  Most of them are designed so you can break them in half. Yeah. And you do that for another week.  OK. And what you're wanting to do is to keep the blood pressure within certain ranges that you've been able to be in over the last few months. In other words, 120 over 80, if it gets up to one 40, one 45 over, say, 95, then you'd start to be a bit concerned. Yeah. OK. But if you're staying within that range, then, you know, it's all peachy creamy.   And then when that's done, you then move on to the next drug.  Now, you also keep stepping up the nutrition, the lifestyle based strategies which you keep bringing in underneath the medication. So what you are doing is you are progressively removing the need for the drugs. Yeah. OK. And the supplements. Well, the supplements, you don't you you're actually bumping them up while you're doing this. Yes. Well, you're getting those nutrients through your food and in a more available manner rather than just taking some supplement pills or something like that. Oh, look, supplements are supplements. They are supplementary to a good diet. If somebody is not attending to their diet and saying, Gary, give me a whole lot of supplements. I'll say, well, I'm not really happy about that. I would prefer that. So so you have the you have the the wonderful dietary changes which provide that that concrete foundational base. Yeah. And then the supplements are supplementary. You put those on top because and and what the supplements do is that we know how big a dose is in each supplement. So it means that if we if we really have to give Cam extra copper, first of all, we want to make sure that he's got foods that have got copper in them by available copper. But during that loading period, we will bring in some extra bioavailable copper and we know exactly how many milligrams he's we're giving. But the more important thing is is that about four to six months after we do all of this, we repeat the hair tissue test so that we can see whether or not we're on track. We want to make sure that we don't overshoot and we need to know whether or not we're under shooting. The other thing is sometimes when you put things in, it brings other things out. Yeah. Mysteries are sometimes solved. OK. Yeah. So this is quite fascinating. Now, can I just ask you, Cam? Yeah. Over the last year prior to us having our first discussions on this, were you on a cholesterol lowering diet?  No, I wouldn't say that I was. I certainly I usually have two to three eggs every morning. So that's that's a no on that. I wasn't restricting that. I have eaten a lot less red meat than I normally do, because the last year I haven't had the time, you know, for various different reasons to go hunting. I prefer my meat to be on the hoof naturally, rather than I can't really buy meat from the supermarket, because I just don't like it.  But, you know, I got over 500 kilos of meat out of that bull. So it was the most delicious meat I've ever had. But, yeah, I mean, I need to add more red meat into my diet and I need to be more mindful of that. And I've resorted to eating a lot of chicken because it's a lot cheaper, but also it's easier to prepare and get ready. And, you know, I'm cooking for myself. So going out and buying big steaks and stuff like that, it hasn't hasn't been done. So, yeah, it's not not being a good diet, I'd imagine. But I've kept up things like eggs. And, you know, I hadn't actually had a lot of bacon either. But certainly not deliberately on a cholesterol lowering diet.  So it's not. Can you share? Can you share what just give us the total cholesterol? Just I'll just bring it up in my little app from the doctor. So my cholesterol was three point zero. Yes, and that's while on a cholesterol lowering drug. Yeah, that's right. Yes, so that's the total. Do you want the HDL and the LDL? No, don't worry. We don't want that. We'll keep it simple at this point. So three point three point eight. Now, first of all, for listeners, I would urge you to go to my website, GaryMoller.com, scroll down the article, several articles to an article about the meat eaters and geogram and read it carefully and also spend an hour and a half listening to Professor Tim Noakes dispelling the cholesterol myth. It's very important that listeners get their heads around this whole confusing thing about cholesterol, triglycerides and so on, the connection between cardiovascular health and carbohydrate consumption and so on. We could do a whole session on this, but rather than us delving into that right now, I want people to listen to Professor Tim Noakes, who, by the way, I've been following for about 40 years. He is probably the most published exercise physiologist on the planet. He's the man. Go and listen to him and that will help to allay people's fears that eating like cams, venison and so on, that it's going to kill them. It isn't. It's actually a heart healthy diet when you think about it. Now, here's the really interesting thing. I'm into my 51st year of studying or full time work in health. Now, it started off that a total cholesterol of six six and a half was sort of kind of acceptable.  And it's now the guidelines for cholesterol have been lowered so low, it's like nobody over the age of 50 can possibly achieve it without medication. So you've got all these old men and old women trying to do the limbo. OK. Yeah. How low can you go? And, you know, and they're trying to go, they're going lower and lower and lower. And it's impossible. It can't be done without medication. But here's the other thing. And Professor Nokes will help to allay your fears on this. Guess what? People with high cholesterol live longer. OK, there's less dementia and so on.  If you put somebody on a cholesterol free diet or give them drugs that block or interfere cholesterol, you are driving the Alzheimer's and dementia epidemic. Don't worry, Cam, you're not showing any signs of it yet. No, but there's a number of, you know, we're talking about side effects, statins, except for where there is clearly a rare genetic disorder involving cholesterol. I don't think anybody should be on statins, especially if they want to be physically active. So is that the first thing that I should go and talk to my GP about? And by the way, there is no side effect, rebound effect from stopping taking a statin. So so what that means? What what does that mean? Does that mean you can stop taking it immediately and you don't need to reduce it slowly over time? And no, there's no no problem at all. It's a little bit different with the blood pressure medications where you are better advised to do so progressively, carefully while monitoring. And in fact, if you want to bump up cholesterol, unhealthy triglycerides and so on, go on a high carbohydrate diet. No, thanks. Well, I'm not. Well, I've done that. You know, high carbohydrate diet with bread and potatoes and all of those sorts of things. It just it just makes me feel bloated. And, you know, not in a good way. I look, I even changed the type of bread that I do.  That's it. Two slices. And it's an oat based bread, not a wheat based bread, although there is wheat in it, but it's reduced. You're doing it.  You know, congratulations. So those who want to know what sort of bread I eat, it's the delicious bread. And, you know, I used to look at down my nose at brown bread and think it was, you know, pretty average until I tasted it delicious. So I thought, wow, OK, I'm changing to this, you know, so. Pam, if you were to ask me in 50 years, how many people have you come across who have an allergy or a physical intolerance to beef and lamb? No one. I can't think of a zero. Zero. If you were to ask me, eggs, fish, shellfish, dairy, then yes, there are, but relatively rare. But and wheat and wheat. Then if you white meat, fish and sorry, chicken and pork, rare cases. But then when you start moving into the plant realm, then you get the explosion of allergies and intolerances. Yeah. OK. Yes. So if somebody has any issues with poor digestion, histamine reactions to things they eat and so on. One of the most beneficial first moves is to remove most and in particular the nightshades. Many of the leafy greens, you know, your cows and your spinach and so on and grains, just about every grain and also nuts and seeds. And that if you eliminate those or vastly reduce them, then guess what, people tend to do better. It's a paradox. We're taught that, you know, it's so wonderful to eat all of these lovely things, make your cow smoothies and that sort of thing. Yeah. I don't really see that as in the in the real world. OK. And by the way, people will say, yes, but we have to have the Russian orphanage. Well, I'll tell you what, you don't ask any parents of a newborn that's being breast or bottle fed, whether or not, you know, the lack of kale and other vegetables and fiber and that causes constipation. Kale's what, catalyzed.  We're omnivores. We're the most versatile eaters. But what really sustains us is foods like meat, eggs, milk, cheese and so on. Concentrated nutrients and energy. We do not have the digestive systems of a cow. Yeah. And we we can't ignore that. And also we have got many thousands of years of adaptation to cooking to fire. So we no longer produce certain enzymes because we rely on cooking. We've lost some of those enzymes here. So that's really quite an interesting thing. Now, I just want to go back to your head tissue test. So, Cam, you were also very low in a little understood mineral called manganese, which has found an egg yolk and snails. I don't recommend that you go and eat lots of snails. We've got something wrong with snails.  OK. Well, snails are not that available in New Zealand, but if you can find them, go for it. But, you know, snails, egg yolk and then things like sunflower and avocado and olives and blueberries and so on. But the foods are relatively limited. And again, what we see when we're looking at the roles and functions of manganese, it's essential for the functioning of the brain. It's essential for the integrity of connective tissue. Yeah. Now, when we're talking about arteries, veins and so on, sure, the main focus of manganese is for things like tendons, ligaments, cartilage and so on for strong bone. But it also plays an important role, again, in any connective tissue, including veins and arteries. Yeah. So here's another one where you are incredibly low. And the other thing about manganese is its role in the utilization of or the metabolism of fat, proteins and carbohydrates, including cholesterol. Yeah. OK. So if you've got incredibly low manganese, then you are not going to be processing fats, carbohydrates and proteins well. Yeah. Now, there is another mineral that you are also very low in. And that is chromium.  Well, I don't recommend it. What I recommend is bioavailable chromium. And what you do is you eat food where the chromium has been made or put into a form that your body can properly utilize. OK. Yeah. So chromium is a metal is incredibly toxic.  So we've got these deficiencies being shown here. Yeah. Is this catastrophic or can it be reversed? Well, of course, it's reversible. Right. Well, this is exactly what I wanted you to say, of course. But yeah. Yeah. So we've got to look at getting these things into my diet through bioavailable methods. Yes. But also, is it possible that there's something that is causing these things to be retained inside the body and not showing in in the hair tests that are coming out in the you know, in those tests, is it possible that there's an organ that might be sucking all these nutrients up and not releasing them? Well, first of all, minerals like chromium, magnesium, calcium, manganese, selenium, if you're under a lot of stress. Yeah. Whether that's physical, psychological, from infections, injuries, over exercising, relationship breakups, all of these things. They all have the same draining effect on your reserves. Right. OK. So as you go through this, you'll see a lot of these nutrients are used for energy production, for producing hormones, for producing structures like tendons, ligaments and muscle and bone and brain and so on, but also neurotransmitters and hormones. OK. Yeah. When you have heightened metabolism, like say, somebody is going through an enormous amount of stress, these nutrients are mobilised from tissue stores, which might be there may be storages in the kidneys, the liver and your bones and so on, but are bought into circulation so that they can be used for producing these stress hormones or neurotransmitters or for tissue repair and so on. And ultimately, some is lost through the bile, through circulation, through the hair, skin and nails, from shedding tissue and so on.  It's easy. It's available. They just shovel it in their face as quick as they can. Yeah. Yeah. The perfect stress food is a burger of chips or potato chips or a block of chocolate. OK. And these are energy dense, but nutrient poor. So when people are stressed and exhausted, they tend or even just think of the marathon runner, hey, they'll have the pasta party. They eat gels and energy drinks and so on and so on. And these provide sugar hits and so on. Just remember that pasta. Once you once it hits your saliva, it's converted from starch into glucose. Yeah. And by the way, excess sugar. If it's not burned immediately by the body stored as fat. Yes.  By the way, I've seen fatty liver disease and children as young as 10. Yeah. OK. It used to be an old man's or old woman's disease. Now we're seeing it in adolescent children and it's the junk food, the carbohydrates, so diet. Yeah. Now, when we got these tests, we had a little chat, you know, I think it was for about half an hour or so, maybe even been an hour. The thing that you said to me that we should do immediately was to start making this citrus peel drink that you recommend. So as I said, I found it very tasty, very refreshing and not at all unpleasant. And I'm not somebody who is normally eaten fruit and vegetables and things like that.  But I found this absolutely delightful to drink. In fact, I, you know, I'm making up at least three or four jugs a week of this. Right. So why did you recommend that I do do that? And all of the things you can. And again, just for listeners, if you do a Google search for Gary Moller citrus peel drink, it'll be the top thing on your Google search.  Yes. And I've just updated that this morning. So well, first of all, prior to COVID, the lockdown, prior to the first lockdown, I attended two medical nutrition conferences and at each one, there was there were papers presented on citrus peel. Yeah. Not sit, not, not, not lemon juice, but citrus peel. OK. And it was mind blowing. A doctor presented, for example, a case of a complete cure of terminal cancer from eating lemons. OK. And there were also other discussions about the role of of it, not just as a for the prevention and treatment of cancer, but also for cardiovascular disease. Yeah. Now, I came out of that in particular, I came out of the last one. It was a couple of days before the first lockdown. And I thought to myself, this should be the headline news. We should be urging all of New Zealand to go and raid their neighbours lemon tree and have lemon lemon citrus peel in their diets. OK. But there was none. And what I realized, Cam, is the reason why there is so much research into citrus peel is because the rush is on to identify and synthesize the active ingredients to come out with the next billion dollar cancer therapy drug or heart drug or whatever. OK. Or you can just go pitch lemons off the neighbours tree and have this lemon drink and not have to pay big farmer for anything. So during the lockdown, when I started to realize that there's some real dodgy stuff going on, I wrote my first citrus recipe. I thought, well, why should I play this silly game? I'm just going to put it out there for the public. Now, for listeners, I want you to do your research. I want you to go into Dr. Google. Go into Google, just Google citrus peel and type in your favourite disease. I want you to type in cancer. I want you to type in cardiovascular disease. Type in cardiovascular myopathy. Type in arteriosclerosis. Type in dementia, Alzheimer's. OK, you can do just do it. And I want you to scroll through there. And what it will do is it will blow your way. It'll be well, well, well, this is amazing. Now, why doesn't your doctor prescribe any of this? You will notice as you do your research that much of this is what your doctor should be reading and is presumably reading. OK, but your doctor will not prescribe it. Your doctor will only prescribe what is on the Pharmac list of approved medicines. OK, then I don't prescribe anything else. Are they? Well, the doc that one of the great disasters of the last three years, the Covid era is that now I used to be the practitioner support for interclinical laboratories. So I worked for a good 10 years supporting doctors, nutritionists, naturopaths and so on in the use and interpretation of her tissue mineral analysis. I covered the whole country. I knew all the doctors that were practicing true integrative medicine. Now, many of them, if not most of them have have been fired, silenced, thrown out of the thrown out of the profession. Many of them have gone into retirement, handed back their practicing certificates and so on. We've been decimated. We've lost most of those doctors. OK, and if you want to, if you don't believe me, just go to NZ DSOS, OK, doctors speaking out with science, and you will see some of the braver doctors that are not taking this outrage lying down. Now, getting back to the citrus, you will see that citrus peel is incredible.  Well, let me tell you something, right? And this is a little bit squeamish.  Yeah, I've got to say that it cleaned me right out. All right, not in an unpleasant way, but in what I would describe as the heaviest the heaviest movements I've ever I've ever had. All right. And and and since then, if I've had no stomach trouble, no crook guts, I know I eat a whole lot of different stuff or dodgy kebabs and things like that occasionally. But I haven't had any crook guts or any gut issues since I've been starting to drink this drink. I'm a keen gardener and I like making compost. One of the problems is that I don't have worms in my compost. And the reason why is because I'm putting citrus in and worms do not like citrus. And if you just think about it in the world of nature, bitter is an antiparasitic. If you look at the most potent antiparasitics, a good rule of thumb is that if it's bitter, so think of Swedish bitters, OK, that concoction for gut upsets and so on. If an animal has got a gut infection, they will go and eat bitter plants. OK, so that's good. If you think of like Tomissia, which is a herbal antiparasitic, which is effective against COVID, by the way, it is very bitter. OK. So you asked me to drink this drink and keep drinking it. Yes. And you did that because you wanted to straighten out my liver, didn't you? Well, not just that. To clean your arteries, to keep your brain working so that you are coherent when you are hosting your radio programs and so on. The benefits go way beyond just keeping your liver nice and clean. Yeah, but it certainly there were other ingredients like milk thistle and dandelion, and these do augment liver detoxification. And this is especially important for Cameron because he's on several medications which are toxic to the liver and kidneys. And so we want to support liver and kidney function. Now, shall we just get to potassium? Yes. Oh, now, I should also just point out, I was going to say a little bit about chromium. One of the things that you can see a common factor with a lot of these minerals and your head tissue tests that are too low, they are integral to fat, glucose and protein metabolism. Yeah. So if you're wondering, if you've got an unhealthy cholesterol profile, maybe it's got something to do with this. You haven't got enough of these base nutrients that act as catalysts and so on to allow your body to properly use the nutrients cholesterol and so on, that you're getting through your diet and which your liver makes 70 percent of anyway. OK, so I think we should love your liver, support it. Now, right, good. One of the things as well about adipostatin and these other drugs, even the antidepressant you're on. These are toxic to the kidneys. Right. Your kidneys are very delicate organs. They are very easily damaged. Readers or listeners could get on to YouTube and just watch some videos about kidney function. OK, so this drink is going to help clear those up, too. So it's going to clear help clear out the liver, help clear out the kidneys. Yes, kidney function, the filtration in that is a delicate interplay between the shifting of sodium and potassium ions across the membranes. Yeah. Now, if the kidneys are being clogged up by toxins, OK, metabolic byproducts from these drugs you're taking, then, and by the way, statins can have a direct effect on the kidneys, on kidney function. You may end up with an inability of your kidneys to maintain the potassium-sodium balance. And you will notice that diuretics work by manipulating potassium and sodium. Yeah. OK, so there's a connection there. Now, we can't be sure of the exact mechanism, but hey, if we can't figure out why on earth has Cameron got these very strange blood records of blood levels of potassium and he's going to keep taking this potassium supplement, then why don't we focus on the obvious, even if we don't fully understand it. Now, the question is, Cam, what would happen to your potassium levels as you titrate down these medications? I'm going to expect, hey, your body's just going to sort it out and it will normalize over time. And it may already have normalized. It appears that you have had an improvement, haven't you, with your potassium levels on what they have been in the past? Would that be? Yeah, so I got a blood test on the 9th of January. It's a usual scheduled blood test. And my potassium was at 3.6 and the normal range is 3.5 to 5.2. Now, for the last five years, my potassium has never been in the normal range. Now, it's at the low end of the normal range, but the only thing that's changed between the tests that I had in in October and the test in January is that I've been taking your drink. And some of those ingredients, in fact, all of those ingredients should be supportive of liver and kidney function. Yeah. OK, so we won't take credit, but. Well, it's a start. I think it's an interesting thing to speculate on. And by the way, hey, what's the downside of doing these things? Well, you know, that's the thing. I mean, there's a little bit of a time issue in making up this drink. You know, it's terrible. It takes about five minutes to make it. You know, most of that slicing the lemon up and biffing the tea bags into the into the mix. And so, you know, if you if you don't make this drink up because you think it takes too long, then you're just lazy. You know, and and the benefits of it. I've experienced a huge change. Now, there's another ingredient in that that might be particularly interesting to to blokes is that you've got this new cell in there, a liquid, which is essentially full of acid. Now, what does that do? Well, it has a number of a wide range of benefits. And again, we could do a whole session on public acid. Just a quick overview on that. Yes, it improves digestion. It nourishes a healthy gut bacteria. It helps the uptake, the transport of nutrients across the cell membrane. So when you take full and it's rich in minerals and and various other ingredients. But I think the most exciting thing about full thick acid itself is that it facilitates the sucking or the transport of nutrients across the cell wall into the cell, but also the shifting of metabolic waste products out of the cell. Yeah. So you have all these wonderful nutrients that you're now adding to your diet. What we have to do is we need to get transport those nutrients across the various cell compartments or the body compartments, eventually to the cell wall and then through the cell wall and even a step further into the mitochondria. OK, and public acid facilitates that. So you could say that for the nutrients you're taking, public acid gives you more bang for your bucks. And for blokes, there's a number of studies out there that shows that it boosts testosterone. Well, yes, it will it boosts. I would tell you, it boosts everything. Yeah. That's wonderful. And it is argued that the purest full thick acid comes from the deep south of New Zealand. Yeah. The full thick acid that is on my website.  You'll get anywhere. Yeah, I just put a splash into the mixture. All right. So like randomly splash a decent helping of it and it doesn't taste bad. It doesn't taint the drink or anything. It's lovely. It's delicious. I love it.  Yeah, it's refreshing. It's energizing. So so what we've seen from my test is that I'm low on a whole lot of things. Yes. That possibly my liver and kidneys, because of the medications on may not be working particularly well. And so that's why we started the citrus peel drink. To clean that up. There is one other thing which I need to discuss relevant, which is on this head tissue test. Well, there's two things. First of all, what we can say is that it appears that you have no toxins, OK, like lead, mercury, cadmium.  So let's put that aside. We don't have to worry about that at all. However, you will see one thing that is sticking up that we need to talk about. And then there's phosphorus. Oh, phosphorus. Yeah, don't worry about the aluminium. We'll do a repeat test. And if the aluminium goes up, then we'll talk about it. If it goes down, we won't talk about it. So we've got the phosphorus that's a skyscraper. Yes. And it is too high. Yeah. It's you can say, yeah, but it's only a little bit above the reference or the ideal. But the trouble is, Cam, it's fixing the selenium, isn't it? Well, yeah, it's sticking its head up above the general law of the land. So so you got really low. The potassium was a bit on the low side as well. Yeah. I think we've got that under control. So low iron, copper, manganese, zinc, chromium, very low selenium, which is another issue. Don't worry. We're dealing with that. But the phosphorus then goes up very high. Now, what's going on there? I will bring up, well, again, go to our mineral information listeners. We're just looking at a chart and we're going to go to phosphorus. Now, phosphorus is the energy carrier within the cells. OK, think of the phosphorus match. Phosphorus is high energy. It is the atom which is used by your mitochondria, which are the they're in every single cell and they are the powered generators. They're like the little the little hydroelectric power stations, OK? Which are generating energy and the energy is in the form of what is called adenosine triphosphate, OK? ATP for short and they are your mitochondria. Take a molecule called adenosine diphosphate and it adds a few electrons and creates a high energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate that then migrates around and wherever an electron or two is required for energy production, it will donate that and it will degrade back down to adenosine diphosphate and then it goes back to the mitochondria to be regenerated again to be a high energy molecule, OK? So how do we get that down? Well, let's just talk about statins. Statins destroy mitochondria, OK? And doctors prescribe statins.  OK, now what statins do is they destroy your hydroelectric power stations, OK? And the pattern for it, if we see that in action, we see phosphorus being high, OK? That is not a good sign. It says to me, Cam Slater is bleeding phosphorus. The energy, the energy systems is being dismantled. Yeah, OK, that's a Russian missile attack on your energy system. OK, yeah, got the idea now. So when we are looking at it and we go down and we look at the roles and functions of phosphorus. Really important. You can see it's so much to do with energy production. Phosphorus is important for bone, OK, calcium, phosphate, monobasic, niobasic and tribasic for bone and teeth and so on. But it's it's so crucial for the production of ATP, adenosine, triphosphate, OK? And when it is elevated on a head tissue test, it is frequently indicative of excessive protein breakdown of body tissues. OK, yeah, in your case, it is not due to toxic metals like lead or cadmium or arsenic because your body is clean with that. So what else could it be? The most common that I've found is statin use. Yeah, now, look up conditions like just type into Google, statins and muscle breakdown. Statins, rhabdomyolysis, OK? And you will be shocked. You will understand that statins destroy muscle tissue and muscle tissue, of course, is extremely rich in mitochondria. OK, so there's a little bit of information for you and we can see it on this. So our goal is to bring the phosphorus down in line with these other minerals and then march them like soldiers on parade up to the line. Yeah, OK. Now, you've been in the Army, haven't you? I have. Good. I was as well. And when you've got a ragtag bunch of soldiers, the the sergeant has a hissy foot. OK, if Gary Mollis got us put over the line, OK, he will swear black and blue. Now, what do you do? You don't all put your foot on the line. What you have to do is you have to fall back. He'll yell fall back and you fall back about a meter. You put hands on shoulders and then you shuffle everybody forward. Yeah, what we've got to do is we've got to get that phosphorus and magnesium and a couple of other things. We've got to get them to fall back and then we march them forward. Yeah, and that's what we are setting out to do. OK. And by the way, I think you're doing it. We now need to do a repeat test and say two months from now. Yeah, so we do a repeat test in two months now. But what are the what next steps? So you would you suggest would you suggest I start doing your super smoothie and adding some things into that? How much time have we got, Cam? Hey, we've got a few minutes more. It's it's been very interesting. It always is interesting with you, Gary. But yeah, we've covered the test and the test results. We've covered what causes that. We've covered how we can cleanse the liver and the kidneys. So I guess a brief touch on the next steps. And then what we'll do in a couple of months time is we'll have another update for everybody and we'll say that this is what Cam's been doing. He's he's added in the super smoothie with these extra ingredients. OK. So I think we do this very quickly. Yeah. So, Cam, I want listeners to basically go into my website, go into the blog and you will see very close to the top the super smoothie recipe. Yeah. Right. What I'm trying to do, what I'm what I'm seeing is my role is to take all of this knowledge and package it up in a way that people can basically put it into use in their daily lives in a practical and affordable way. And and I want I don't want people to be basically reliant on extremely overpriced and harmful pharmaceuticals to stay alive. OK. Because you're you're so you're recommending foods and food groups and and supplements that are highly bio available. Yes. For thousands of years, we've been told that let food be thy medicine, body, heal yourself. Now, the super smoothie recipe, you will see a number of ingredients. Now, I'm not recommending that you have all of the ingredients, but I have listed just about all of the important ones. Now, just about all of them are found in way protein and foods like meat and eggs and dairy. However, in some cases, we want to fortify it so that we give you a really extra boost. Oh, yeah, especially if there are health issues. Yeah. Now, let's think about depression. OK, you are on an end recent. Yeah. And it's one of the hardest to come off that one. Well, I've had two goes at it and it's quite difficult. The trouble with and we haven't got time to go into it. No. But it can with an SSRI, if you've been on it for any period of time, the symptoms of withdrawal can persist for as long as a year or even more. Right. I think we can we can leave. We can expedite that. But now I want listeners to go into Google again and type in a C or in a settle system, but just type in a C. Yeah. In a C and the words, key words like depression, yeah, in a C depression, in a C anxiety, yeah, in a C suicide ideation. That's a really good one. OK, so think of all of those teenagers that want to kill themselves. Yeah, a self harming and so on. Now, what you will see is like, for example, psychiatric times, the one the magazines, your psychiatrist is reading. OK, and it will you will see a headline. NAC, the novel nutrient that turns psychiatry on its head or something like that. You'll see that headline. I wouldn't he's a headline. NAC is a novel rapidly acting anti suicidal agent. Yes.  OK, NAC with an about and if you give somebody a good dose of NAC, then within about an hour and a half, there is a clinically significant reduction in those suicidal thoughts or negative thoughts or self harming thoughts. OK, it's mind blowing again. As you go through that, you will go, wow, this is amazing. Why didn't my doctor tell me? OK, now I want you to then go and type NAC and covid survival. Yeah. And what you will find is that NAC reduces covid deaths by up to 80 percent, which is which is what which is why NAC was attacked by big farmer during the covid. Yes, it is immensely more effective than the vaccine. Yeah. Now, if you then do vaccines, a bit of a bit of a misnomer, really. Oh, anyway, we won't get into that. So you so you've got this super smoothie thing. And one of the ingredients there is NAC amongst a whole lot of others. So you're saying you can pick and choose some of these. Some will be more important for you, depending on on what you need. But NAC, you should include that. And it's a you can you've got it, haven't you, as a powdered form, which makes it more readily. You know, it's not a tablet or anything. You just mix it in with the with the way powder and everything else. Powders as a rule of thumb are always cheaper than the tabletting. So that's that's the first thing. And and look, you can do the same search. I want you to do the same search for taurine. And by the way, you can with NAC, you can also type NAC FDA ban. And you'll see that the FDA is doing everything they can to ban it. And New Zealand has tried through the Therapeutic Products Act, which we must not allow to reemerge now. But you can type taurine and you can even type in taurine and heart failure, OK, do that. Have a look. Now, you will see, wow, this is incredible.  Look, there's so much there. Where I can help is with whittling down. What are the key ingredients, the most important ingredients for you? But the problem I've got is especially with covid or should I say covid prevention programs is that we are so busy. We can't cope with the workloads.  OK, but that is all the more reason why we've got to get this message out, that the solution is by investing in the basics of health, which is what this whole discussion has been about. Exactly. Yeah, it's a journey, isn't it? That I'm on and your guidance and to eat better, to put better things into my body and get better health results, which will then reduce my need to rely on big farmers. Well, I won't call them solutions because they're not really band-aid. Kim, let's be clear. You suffered a catastrophe. Yeah, I did. And and that is when modern medicine is at its best. OK, they saved your life. Yeah, right.  And the the the long term restoration of health. And that's my focus is I want to I want to repair the damage and I want to mitigate this ever happening again. And the way to do that is to get everything in balance, which is why we're doing all of this. I absolutely do not want listeners to think that this is anti-medicine. No, this is the best time in the history of humanity to be alive, because if you get it run over by a bus, if you have a out of control infection or if you suffer a massive heart attack or stroke, this is the best time. Yeah, I mean, and in my personal situation here, Gary, right, I needed some of these drugs. Absolutely. To keep me alive. But I'm now at the point where I've, you know, I've got through the dangerous period. Exactly. And so and so now I can concentrate to slowly, but surely be able to augment my system, my body in such a way that I may be able to reduce or remove entirely the necessity for those drugs, because they're no longer going to keep me alive. It's actually my change in lifestyle that's keeping me alive. Exactly. It is the where to now and for the next 55, 60 years of your life. So you're going to send me a recipe of the things that I need to get to go in with this whey protein. And then in a couple of months time, we'll touch base again after we've done another another test. And then it'll be interesting to see what happens from that. You're going to be so incredibly healthy. Good. That's what I want. And, you know, this is the thing that I've I've learned with my stroke journey is that, you know, what listeners need to understand is if you have a stroke, there's no government support at all. There's no ACC unless it happened on a on a surgery table or as a result directly as a result of an accident, right? You get nothing from the state. And to be frank, you know, if you're relying on the state for your health, then that's not a good plan. So you have to rely on yourself and you have to be self motivated to learn the things that I'm learning and sharing with you all. And the things that Gary knows and he's sharing. And that's why we're doing this show, because it's not just politics, because if I don't do these things, I'm not going to be around to commentate on politics in 20 years time or 30 years time. I'll have expired in an untimely way. And I know that my mere existence annoys some people and I want to keep on annoying them for a good long time. I think that's a really good note to finish on. Yeah.  But the thing is, Gary, it's it's hugely fascinating and learning all of this stuff makes you feel better. It certainly increases your brain power, your ability to think about complex things and all of those sorts of things. And, you know, it's it's something that we will continue throughout the year to share with our listeners so that they can learn for themselves and start to take an interest in looking after yourself. Because if nobody else has your best interests at heart, only you do. And and that's why I'm sharing this so that people can learn so they don't end up like me, so they don't have a catastrophic failure in their brain or their heart or whatever. Well said, because it because it's not pleasant. Right. And let me tell you, a stroke doesn't hurt. Right. It didn't hurt at all. Right. What hurt was the frustration of essentially instantly becoming a cripple and being told by the medical professionals, you'll never do something again. Now, that's a red rag to a bull for me, because I say never say never. Right. And it motivated me to prove them wrong. And I've proved them wrong and I'm continuing to prove them wrong. But I'm doing it in a studied, considerate way in conjunction with, you know, I still talk to my GP about this. They know things that I don't know. I know things that they don't know. So between the two or three of us that are working on this with you, Gary, and my GP, we're going to solve this riddle. We're going to fix the potassium problem. I know we are eventually and my health is going to be better. And you're going to be listening to me on reality check radio for another 30 years. So, yeah, thanks for your time, Gary. It's been a great update to share those results and those tests with listeners.  And then we'll see what it's like in a couple of months time after I've done all of that.  But yeah, that's what that's what we'll do. And we'll touch base. So thank you for your time today and dealing with these complex issues in a simple and easy to understand manner.  Thank you. Thank you. Well, as always, Gary has a lot to say, but he always provides fascinating insights into health. And I've seen a huge improvement in my health since following his advice. I recommend seriously that you embark on your own health discovery and find out what works for you. No one cares more about your health than you. Tell me your thoughts on what Gary had to say by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning into RCR, Reality Check Radio. If you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. You can text us with your message to 2057. That's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you. So connect with us today.


And our second speaker is Mrs. Sharda Murlidran, who is an officer with the Indian Administrative Service and is currently Principal Secretary for Local Self-Government with the Government of Kerala. And Mrs. Murlidran has previously served as the Executive Director of Kurumbashree, which is Kerala's flagship program for women's empowerment and poverty eradication. She's also had a stint with the Central Government in New Delhi with the Panchayati Raj Ministry, which is a local government ministry. Murlidran, you know, Kerala has a strong historical track record of well functioning local governments. And if you could make your remarks, putting that in context, and then speaking about the specific role of local governments, Professor Heepan alluded to some of those. You know that this incredible statistic a few days ago about how all the local governments at one point of time were running, you know, some 1,300 community kitchens and in a span of some 45 days managed to serve a total of 8.6 million individuals. And many of these were run in coordination with Kurumbashree, a program that you managed some years ago. And further linked to the point that Professor Heepan made about Kerala already had local disaster management plans in place. And you know that further bolstered your relief efforts. So, ma'am, the floor is yours to sort of elaborate on these aspects as well as other issues. Thank you. I would like to start with just responding to a question I saw in between, which is about what are the figures really? I mean, what is it that makes, what is it about Kerala? So let me just skip the figures as on date. I don't have the exact figures, but we have about, we were the first date in the country to be hit by the coronavirus. It's the end of January. So for us, we are right now entering our fifth month of tackling this virus. And it has come in three waves. So far, the first wave end of January to early February got over very quickly. It was very limited and we were able to control it. Then we had international arrivals bringing the virus and soon the numbers got to escalate. So, but we had reached a point of about 500 cases. The interesting thing. Again, at that point of time, we started as being the only state and then slowly other states started joining in Delhi and Mumbai. The cities started coming in at that point of time, you would lead us in numbers as far as COVID, the number of COVID positive cases was gone. Now, what has been also interesting about Kerala has been the very low rate of fatalities. We had, it was 500 cases, we had four fatalities, three to four fatalities. So this was, this is the scenario till the 4th of May. And then after the 4th of May when the lockdown was released, was relaxed considerably and international and domestic travel was allowed, the numbers just shot up again in Kerala. So the, in this while over three and a half months, we had about 500 cases. Now in the span of two, three weeks, we've had another 500 plus cases that have come in. And the majority of them over 90% of these cases are actually cases which have come to us from other places from either the rest of the country or from abroad carrying the virus. Contact cases inside the state is fairly small. So the number active, of the active cases, we've got about 17 which are, which are contact, which have come out of, connect with the people who had the virus. So that's the context and the number of deaths has now gone up to eight or so. So why and how did Kerala manage what was its strategy, what was different about it? I would like to put an immediate context to how the strategy of management has been. And one immediate context, one very important learning for Kerala, I mean, it's been about its lived experience. The first lived experience that played a vital role in how Kerala responded to this pandemic was Nipah. In 2018, we had a horrible Nipah outbreak in which the fatality rate was about 78%. We need to contrast that with 2% or 3% of Corona. So it was some, it just came out of the blue, we didn't know how to handle it. But learning from Nipah, what Kerala, actually the health system of Kerala, learned to fine tune the art of contact tracing. It was about identifying, isolating, intense monitoring and aggressive containment. Now this was a strategy that Nipah really created a protocol for Kerala. And this is a, I mean, of course there were a lot of learnings from the WHO guidelines as well. But this was something that was activated almost as soon, immediately upon the first case of Corona being detected. This is one context. Another context is the disaster management plans. Now in 2018, when the big floods hit Kerala, once in a century floods, we were completely unprepared. Of course it was a strong response and that the local governments also were, the fact that you had very strong local governments on the ground helped the response. But even then, there was quite a bit of chaos and disorganization and also lack of appreciation of what to do, of what were our fallback support systems that were available, where do you hunt for rope or boats or machines to clear things up. So with that in mind, when the Rebel Kerala initiative was put out, one of the initiatives that the state government did was to say that in the annual planning exercise of local governments, let us bring in a disaster, a community-led disaster management plan. Of course, locating it in the last year of the elected governments in Kerala, we had, we were interested also in jogging the community memory of the lived experience so that we could take lessons from that and incorporate that into our disaster identification of vulnerable communities, looking at relief operations and also looking at what should be mitigation interventions. We also did, but created out of this exercise, we created documents. And these documents had a complete inventorization of human resources at the local level. It also had an inventorization of the infrastructure. So from JCBs to boats to pickaxes, you know, you had to, who had yards of rope to provide to x-ray machines, ventilators, ICUs, who are they, who are the contacts, what are the details. So that information was actually in place. So out of our thousand odd local governments, at least 800 of them had documents with them, which had done a proper inventorization, had to contact details of the people of emergency response teams were also identified and their contacts, etc., were available with them. A third interesting thing is, and again, just completely unrelated, the government this year in its budget announcement came out with a 12-point program for local governments. And interestingly, that included budget hotels, Genegia hotels, they called them to be operated by a good machine, which would serve food at very affordable rates and would also have a provision of providing free food for people who could not afford to pay, which would be raised through sponsorships. They had a scheme which was looking at elderly care. They also had a local economic assurance program, which was saying that one in five families, one member out of five, we should be targeting looking at employment opportunity. So from the primary productive sector to MSMEs, that initiative and that push had already been there. So this was the backdrop against which we are entering the COVID phase. So when COVID hit us, it was very easy to locate local self-government in an augmented role for COVID response coming out of previous experience and also going through the whole process of training, understanding and working on what should be community, the appropriate community response to a disaster. Naturally, we had not thought of health disasters, although we had, you know, passingly referred to the possibility of epidemics as well. Nevertheless, this became, this came in very handy and there was this legacy of the whole decentralization experience in Kerala, where, you know, when Panjaitir Raj came out, Kerala was one state which went into full-fledged, full-throated devolution of responsibilities, powers and resources, which meant functionary, you transferred institutions. So the health institutions at the local level were transferred to local governments. And the local governments have 25% of the entire plan budget is available as funds for local governments to plan. And this is over and above the plans that they raised through internal resources, their taxation and licensing and all of that. So it needs to be seen that you had fairly empowered local governments which were at work here. So with this, what was it that the local governments were made to do? It helped, of course, that we had the chief minister and the opposition leader have addressed all the local governments in the state through video conferencing facility to get them to talk them through what was expected of them.  It was about, as Professor Isha said, you know, it was about, you know, as Professor Eepen had mentioned, to break the chain campaign, which was the physical dissensing. And so this sensitization, how you do break the chain campaign, mobilization of volunteers and targeting vulnerable groups. So you targeted the slum dweller, the fissures, migrant labor, and here we call them guest workers. So it'll be saying guest workers from our guest workers as well as their employers. And targeting senior citizens and people with co-morbidities, because they would be, they were seen as highly vulnerable communities. Targeting care homes and care providers, because again by virtue of, so Kerala has a very strong system, perhaps the strongest of palliative care, community-led palliative care. So targeting them because they would also be both the care, the person receiving care and the care giver were at risk. And then the delivery boys. So, you know, the restorers, the auto rickshaw drivers, the delivery boys, all of these people were also seen as points of high contact and therefore vulnerable. And messages had gone out on how you do the break the chain campaign with all of these people. So this is one very important intervention, early intervention that was done by local governments. And then of course, the NEPA based contact tracing, the aggressive structural response for contact tracing. So at that point of time, every person who was coming in from outside was, you know, you had their contacts identified. So the primary contacts and secondary contacts to give you a sense of proportion for every person who was identified as perhaps a suspect, their primary and secondary contacts were identified. And once these people turned positive, the others had to go into quarantine. So which meant that we were looking at about 70 to 80 people for one, every one suspect of positive case who was hospitalized. And at a point in time, we had gone up to more than 2.5 lakh people who are under home observation, voluntary observation. But this was done and this was monitored tracked by the local governments. How did they do it? They had rapid response teams on the ground and this was followed up by ward level committees. Now there are about 20,000 wards. So every ward basically had ward level committees. Of course in the early days, it was only about 20 to 30% of the wards of the state had to, had home isolation cases. Today, however, we've got, because we're doing daily tracking, 75% of all the wards of the state have ward level committees and have cases of home isolation and quarantine. That's the extent of quarantine we have. Right now the numbers are touching 1.2 lakh. So that's, you know, 120,000, over 120,000 people are under home quarantine today. So this data was also entered shared now.  They've been doing a lot of their work online. So once this happened, it was important and they, you know, the conversations, their meetings also started going online. Instead of doing regular physical meetings with people coming together physically, the meetings got to be online. Help tests were set up and phone numbers provided. So that kind of arrangement had been done. And this is, I'm talking about all, across all the local governments, urban rural, which is again the characteristic of the pandemic here, that we, you know, you don't really have an urban hotspot. Today we have about 102 hotspots of which only about five or six of them are urban. The rest of them are actually in the rural areas. So there is an urban rural continuum, which you would see here. So now looking at what was the lockdown responsive local governments. We would be talking of a doing a complete survey, local survey of vulnerable high risk persons, guest workers sitting above community kitchens, which he talked about managing the guest worker camps because once people started coming out, you looked at the guest workers camp. You did an assessment there. And then you also looked at where the facilities were not good or where they seem to be unhappy with it. They were moved to government facilities. We first provided them with food out of the community kitchen and realized that they didn't want food. They wanted provisions. So then we immediately shifted to provisions for them. The community kitchens also catered to stranded people and destitutes because the lockdown kept a lot, got a lot of, froze a lot of people midway. Handling all those people who didn't have an address earlier to go, taking them off the road, giving them, keeping them safe was important. Lifting abrasions and coordinating the entire food kit delivery, which was done to, which was available to most all Russian card holders. The distance response to because you had calls saying that I run out of medicine and I'm a kidney patient and I need my medicine. So organizing that the medicine supply, there could have been personal emergency, somebody at a depth somewhere was unable to travel. So working on that and also hunger calls. You might have from affluent families, senior citizens families who suddenly the maids stopped coming to work. Suddenly there was no ration. There was no food in the house. And they also needed to be responded to. So that kind of thing. So that kind of thing. So that kind of thing. Plus organizing the dispersant of social security pensions, which was mentioned. And then came the COVID care centers, which are a quarantine centers, you know, the inventorization, preparation, management of these centers. Under the ages of the local government. And now we are also getting ready for preparation of the first line treatment centers. In case there is a surge anywhere. We don't want the hospital systems to be overwhelmed and we don't want to be overwhelmed. So that's the nature of distribution of mass sanitizer. So, but also the disposal, because that is again a question of now you had a lot of biomedical waste, which is getting generated. And how do you dispose of that safely? Waste management, of course, plus the fact that we, you know, rents license fees, other dues had to be weighed, which meant that the local governments were eating very heavily into their own resources. And that's when the government decided to free up the government for all these purposes as well. Now, there's a post lockdown response also. You know, once the restrictions got lifted, people were suddenly hit with the realization that, you know, you could be in for food insecurity in the days to come. Kerala is a consumer state. It's dependent heavily on other states for food and food materials. So now we find that there is a huge audience out there, a target group out there who wants to cultivate in their homesteads. And so it has launched a program for food security and augmentation of local productivity. Hopefully that will also lead to employment generation, which is fellow land and homestead cultivation, focus on milk, egg, meat, inland fish production, value addition as well by way of activities, providing technical support systems to make all of this happen, converging the schemes of all these various departments under the ages of the local governments, augmentation of local procurement as well as the local market facilities. And we are expecting a huge influx of people from the Gulf, unemployed people, people who lost their jobs. So looking at absorption of this new unemployed and financially stressed people into productive activity. So all of that right now local governments are very seriously engaged with. So putting local governments on hold there and moving on to Kudumistri where does the Kudumistri network and the community network come into all of this. So to explain what Kudumistri is, it's a federated structure of self-help groups, we call them, we call them neighborhood groups, who have been federated at the ward level into area development societies and at the local development level as what is known as community development societies or CDS. And these are federated so it's all women run structures. So it's a, so 4.4 million women are in this network and that means 4.4 million families are linked and that which was what you were mentioning about 60% therefore of Kerala's families are in. One of the first things they did and the importance of Kudumistri and what makes it distinct from other similarly placed federations elsewhere is it's connected to the local governments. This is the only one federated structure which is completely immersed inside the local government. So the local government has, I mean they fill the grams of us they are part of the working groups of the local governments. The local governments use them, connect with them for various activities. So there is this huge synergy between the local community and the local government. One of the things that we've been trying to do is also to make them the citizen body, the voice of the citizen community, the rights orientation and make the local governments accountable to citizenship through a network of enabled women. So that's the, there is that very, very organic connection that the community network has and this presence of the community network to give an example is that 95%, we have about 20,000 wards both urban and rural and 95% of them have ward level structures of Kudumistri network. So that's how huge the spread is universal across the state. And there are also a large number of joint liability groups of women farmers. There is, and there are some community response systems. You have a something a volunteer system which you know it's a system of community health workers. You've got this Nehita Collinville which is community councillors. You've got gender resource persons out there. And so these networks have all come into the system of the local government response. And then you look at the frontline health worker, the ASHA, most of them are from the Kudumistri network. So there is again that connection which comes in. So when you look at the areas in which Kudumistri has been involved, one is the volunteer mobilization itself. So 78,000 women, 78,000 women are in have been mobilized as volunteers for various activities. And this is not counting the regular Kudumistri network. And these have been, this says it's about for every grand pajaya that is village body, village government, you've got about 50 women workers who have come out for volunteering. They come into local mass production distribution. They've helped in running of the community kitchens. They've helped in doing the home surveillance and connecting with people under isolation. They have done community counselling. They've also been involved with disinfection and base management. That is one area of activity. You've got community based surveys that you talked about. So be it senior citizen assessment or people under palliative care or people with morbidities, guest worker camps and facilities. And even the skill set survey of the guest workers that has been done by Kudumistri has been involved with this. The community surveillance that I talked about, very intensive participation on their part. And the neighborhood groups have been active in even communicating the medical needs of people who are not under observation. Senior citizens of people with morbidities in the locality, that information is reaching the local system through the Kudumistri network. It's one of the first things that Kudumistri did when the pandemic hit was to ensure that everybody in the network was connected to WhatsApp groups. So WhatsApp groups were created of the energies of the area development societies of the series, so that the information flow would be seamless, which was an incredible thing to do. So to start IEC activities, you needed to get into that. And then messages started going down through the neighborhood group network. We had, before the lockdown, we had actually planned for an entire discussion of what to do and not to do and how to get into coming into surveillance to understanding of COVID from all angles. Unfortunately, we couldn't organize that because the weekend that we planned the neighborhood group meetings was the day we had the first lockdown instruction from the central government followed almost immediately by the completely lockdown. So that didn't happen and therefore we had to switch into online mode almost immediately. The competitions, you know, the activities which Professor Epin was talking about, we've got a community of children also who are associated, we call them the Baal Sabhaas. And, you know, so keeping them engaged, getting them into activities, so TikTok, Vishu competitions, organizing them so that there was Manor Engine and Entertainment under lockdown and that there was also stress buster activities or something that the industry coordinated in a great way. And the series themselves, they had their own homegrown videos, they made their own songs, you had thousands of industry songs on how to, you know, take some popular songs and converting them into COVID response, that kind of activity. So after this comes the factor of economic activity and resilience, the, you know, the community kitchens have now closed, but the budget hotels remain. So the good industry has out of the community kitchens too, about 400 budget hotels have been, have sprouted across the state and we're hoping that in two months time that's going to touch thousands, that we'll have it all over the place, which is about making affordable food available to people and also to service institutional quarantine and home quarantine as and when required and any distress signal that comes up in collaboration with the local companies. The joint liability groups who have been geotagged and registered they have already been about doing fellow land survey and getting involved with the agricultural production activities. There's been an interest free loan 2000 crore loan which was and which was mentioned again by Professor Epin that has been mobilized that is targeting good industry the demand of good industry and so that interest the mobilization processing of application again all of this done online without without there they're being able to meet and they've gone to the banks now we're trying to get the banks to get the money out so that that work is ongoing right now now having said this I would just like to flag a few issues you know all this seems very nice and hunky-dory but there are of course concerns now one concern is that you know it's it's a thing we the state government and even the mission the good industry mission we all love to use good industry so it is an instrument that we use at our will it is cheap later and you know volunteers now I had a I heard about the joint liability groups farm produce having been given donated to the community kitchens and then I realized that you know these were people who were undergoing financial stress themselves and of course there must have been some level of coercion or pressure that ended up with them doing this so you are actually making them foot the bill and people who are already hit footing the bill so these are some of the dangers that you have of this kind of mobilization and control and association and you know we need to realize very often that this paves the way for somebody who's become a right-spaced organization to slip into becoming just you know an object of patronage and instrumentality and not and somewhere the agency is lost and it's important right now for us to ensure that the agency is something that we are able to to retain or refurbish there is the fact that we are also exposing them they are by virtue of putting them out there in the frontline we are also making them vulnerable so the state really needs to think in terms of insurance and protection and support for this which we haven't really done at this point of time and there is this multiple burden of work and performance which was mentioned by even so I'm not going into that further but one other issue you know working in the local self-governments and their strength has been something which has enabled convergence in Kerala across departments it's something which you find not happening most of the time because of the fact that there is very strict departmentalism and you know and controlled it's a command performance usually disaster management is generally a command performance and it is no matter what even here it ends up being a command performance but what command performances do is that they leave the ground open for command structures to come into place and it's very important to guard against that when we talk convergence the local governments are working on convergence but then there is a problem of association between various departments and various wings of government of the elected body and the various officers of the officers in the community and very often the burden of handling all that of managing all that falls on the community and that is an extremely severe stress point we know that we can see that fatigue and we are just wondering how do we you know how do we bring them out of this how do we keep them resilient in the words of again Professor Avin thank you


If you're looking to master a new soccer skill, in this video, I'll show you how to do an Elastico. In this video, I'm going to show you how to do an Elastico, a Flip Flap, a Ronaldinho, whatever you call it. There's a few different names for it, but I want to talk about how to do this skill and more importantly, when to actually do this type of skill because as I always talk about in my skill videos and I have to start out saying this, don't get caught up in flashy skills that look good in practice or look good by yourself, but they don't work in a game. This skill has a bit of flash, but it can also be effective. So if you master it in a match, you can do it in the right situations. So let's just talk about the basic version. I think it would be an outside touch to an inside touch. So there's two touches here, but to make it look really good. And what you want is you're trying to turn those two touches into one touch. So I'm pushing the bowl away with the outside. When I get to the full extension, I'm trying to get it with the inside. I'm trying to slap it on the other side of the bowl with the inside. I'm trying to shift him that way. And as he goes that way, my touch goes the other way. Okay, so that would be the first version. And again, a couple of things to help you do this more effectively. So I'm trying to push it away and bring it back. But also, hey what's up, I hope you're finding this content helpful. Watch this all the way to the end if you want to find out which subscriber got this video's special shout out. The bend in the knees. If I'm doing this standing up like this, it's difficult for me to get back around the ball and bring it to where I want to go in the opposite direction. If I get my body more on top of it, I push it and then I can cut it. I'm on top of it. I'm going to have a better change of direction. And I'm going to be able to get away from the defender easier. So just focus on getting on top of the ball more rather than up here. And start slow, start slow, but the better you get, the quicker you want to make it. But a good way to start is just kind of tapping the ball back and forth. And you'll make mistakes, come back. But building comfort is just kind of on one foot, inside, outside. And then over time, you're going to have that a little quicker. So as I said in the beginning, there's a couple different ways you can do this. I believe this is elastical. I don't know if this is the same, but it's the same type of touch. It's a double touch. You're turning two touches into one. So I'll put this in the same video. This one, just like inside, outside, or outside, inside, it's the same outside, inside, inside, outside. Okay. But again, this is better if I'm on top of it. Because even if I do have a bad touch, it doesn't work out how I want. Just like that. At least I'm on top of the ball. If I'm up here with my body positioning and I lose it, I can't get there quick enough.  And look where, that's a bad touch. Look where my body's ending up though. I'm out here outside of the ball. I'm not on top of it like this, okay? So is there another one? I mean realistically, we used to mess around with this. This is a trap guys. You can get caught in doing all these fancy skills. They're fun to practice. But in the game, do they work? It's like a triple, triple elastical, one, two, three. So you're doing, you're combining those two into one, one, two, three. But again, if you're going to do this, don't just do it on a spot because that does nothing. He's going to just stand there. Even though you did a bit, a good bit of skill, he's just going to stand there and tackle you. You want a little more range on your touches to get him moving. But again, you got to have a lot of confidence and good technique to actually do that in the game. Okay, so keep those in mind. Keep the technique in mind. Let's talk about where to actually use this skill. So personally, I would not use this skill when you're running at someone. If you're in the midfield, first of all, be smart where you use your skills. Yes, it's good that you can beat players all over the pitch, but it depends on the type of skill you use. For me, this is more of a standstill skill. I'm not going to dribble at him with speed and try to do that touch. I mean, it's possible, but it's difficult. You're much more likely to beat someone if you're just using your speed to your advantage where I believe, and I'll try it one more time. It's possible, but it's tough to do where I believe this is more valuable is when you receive the ball and maybe you're in the corner and now suddenly I'm at a standstill. I'm in this position here and I have to shift him because when we're both standing still, it's easy for him to defend me. If I'm running with speed and he's standing still, I have the advantage. But if we're both standing still, I have to do something to shift him. So that's where a move like that could be beneficial. So I would use it more in this situation like a standstill we're here rather than running at speed. Okay guys, but a couple of different ways to do this skill. And you see, I always like to practice with both feet, but whatever happens, whenever you make a skill, this part is good, but most of us will perform this good piece of technique and we even shift him. But after that, we don't get away. We're slow in our movement. Remember, technique is one thing, movement is another. So you're slow in your technique.  So after every bit of skill, I want to see quickly accelerate, change position, even if you have that bad touch. If you have the bad touch and the skill didn't go how you wanted, but you were quick, then you're going to get away from more players. So keep those ideas in mind. This is how I do an Elastico. And I hope you found this video helpful. This is the featured subscriber for this video. If you'd like to be featured in future videos, hit that like button, drop a comment below, and let me know how my videos have helped you improve and achieve more in this sport.