Professor Jules Pretty joins me to discuss the inseparable link between our health and the health of our environment. He shares what sustainability is to him, how we can implicate it in our societies and the potential impact that can have on us as individuals. We discuss GDP and whether it is truly a good measurement of success, we also discuss the true cost of food, sustainable agriculture and the benefits that natural spaces have on our lives.

Selected Links from the Episode

Professor Jules Pretty website

Professor Jules Pretty books

Professor Jules Pretty 2010 paper - What is the best dose of nature and green exercise for improving mental health? A multi-study analysis

Professor Jules Pretty 2010 paper - The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture

Unstress episode with Prof. Paul R. Ehrlich on global challenges

Unstress episode with Joel Salatin on farming

Unstress episode with Dr. Charles Massey on regenerative agriculture 

Unstress episode with Allan Savory

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress” where each week we explore what it means to think holistically. Not a New Age philosophy just happens to be the way our bodies and the planet work and also what stresses us as individuals and the planet. The tools you already know are inseparable and also where we explore another piece of the puzzle, our modern world. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich.

Now the words “sustainability” and “diversity” keep cropping up. A few weeks ago, we explored the Green Revolution and what a GDP (gross domestic product) actually says about the health of the country and more importantly about how happy and healthy its inhabitants are.

My guest today is Professor Jules Pretty – OBE. He's an author and academic whose work focuses on sustainable agriculture and the relationship between people, nature and the land. He is a professor of environment and society as well as deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Essex in the UK.

Jules writes on the importance and relevance of nature for people. His research focuses on green exercise, nature and health. His 2010 papers ‘dose of nature’ and ‘hundred top questions for agriculture and food’ received considerable coverage in a claim worldwide. Now we won't get a chance to go through all hundred questions today, but we do cover a few and then some other issues. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Professor Jules Pretty.

Download the PDF transcription

Welcome to the show Jules.

Professor Jules Pretty: Very nice to be on Ron.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Jules, you are a professor of Environment and Science and you've written books and done a great deal of research over the years. I wonder if you could give our listeners a sort of a brief of your own journey, a story of your own journey.

Professor Jules Pretty: It is about the kind of relationship between us and nature, between people in the planet, the individual things that we can do as well as the sort of larger policy things that can afford to happen. The concern is kind of obvious really. Our consumption patterns across the world are using up resources more rapidly than the world can supply them and unless we make some changes it's going to put us in a pretty difficult pickle if we aren't already there already.

Over many years I've worked on kind of food systems, on sustainable agriculture, as one part of the picture of trying to produce the things we need, the food we need whilst not harming or damaging the planet.

On the other side, there's a range of work and writing that I've done around the importance of nature in our lives. Both the kind of fundamental concept of that but also the kind of more direct benefits on the health of us being in natural places and looking after them and having some effective benefits from that on each of us.

There's a range of things that tie together but it's really about our relationships wit...

Professor Jules Pretty discusses the inseparable link between our health and the health of our environment. He shares what sustainability is to him, how we can implicate it in our societies and the potential impact that can have on us as individuals. We discuss GDP and whether it is truly a good measurement of success, we also discuss the true cost of food, sustainable agriculture and the benefits that natural spaces have on our lives.

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

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WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Professor Jules Pretty discusses the inseparable link between our health and the health of our environment. He shares what sustainability is to him, how we can implicate it in our societies and the potential impact that can have on us as individuals. We discuss GDP and whether it is truly a good measurement of success, we also discuss the true cost of food, sustainable agriculture and the benefits that natural spaces have on our lives.

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

-----

WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

Dr. Robert Rountree joins me to discuss the importance of gut health. He explains how gut issues can influence other conditions in the body, how we know if something isn’t right and what we can do to improve our gut health. He also discusses the difference between integrative and functional medicine, while providing some simple and practical tips to improving your health.

Selected Links from the Episode

Institute of Functional Medicine website

Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM) website

Unstress episode with Joel Salatin on farming

Unstress episode with Dr. Charles Massey on regenerative agriculture

Unstress episode with Allan Savory

'My symptoms' app

Medical Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ)

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. The gut is the second brain. The gut is the site of a great deal of the immune system. We've got more microbes in our body or on our body than human cells. There's a microbiome in the mouth, there's a microbiome in the gut, probiotics, prebiotics, the dangers of antibiotics leaky gut.

Listen, if you've read or heard anything about health, physical or mental then the issue of gut health is front and centre. My guest today is Dr. Robert Rountree. Now, Bob has been providing a unique combination of traditional family medicine, nutritional herbal medicine and mind-body therapy in Boulder, Colorado in the USA. He's been doing that since 1983.

In addition to writing numerous book chapters and magazine articles, he's co-authors of five books on integrative and nutritional medicine and he travels the world teaching doctors. He's on the teaching faculty of the Institute of Functional Medicine which I truly believe is changing the face of healthcare and medicine globally. I met him in Melbourne earlier this year when he was a keynote speaker for the annual conference for the Australasian College of nutritional and environmental medicine - ACNEM, where he really presented some great stuff on gut health. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Bob Rountree.

Download the PDF transcription

Welcome to the show Bob.

Dr. Robert Rountree: Hi there.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Bob we met in Australia when you were out giving some great lectures for the Australasian College of nutritional and environmental medicine and I wanted to talk to you today about gut but before we did I just wanted to get a little bit of about your own journey because I'm guessing that nutrition wasn't a big part of your initial medical training. How did you come to this point in your life where you are actually teaching the doctors?

Dr. Robert Rountree: Yeah, I think it's an understatement to say nutrition wasn't part of my training. I grew up in the southern United States in Alabama and I basically grew up eating the worst kind of diet you can imagine. Lots of fried foods and pork chops and gravy mashed potatoes that sort of thing. I had no clue what nutrition was all about really until my freshman year in college I went off to Massachusetts and got exposed to a whole different mindset. I actually became a vegetarian for a few years there.

That was kind of my first foray into understanding that there might be something to do with the effect of how you eat on your body. Then somebody gave me a book by Paul Twitchell called “Herbs the magic healers” and it was a really fascinating book that talked about all different kinds of herbal medicines and how they could be used to treat chronic illness, how people had different metabolic types that might respond to different kind of herbs and diets. That really started me on my journey.

That's really why I went to medical school. I read the book and I thought “Well, I don't know what kind of future there would be if I wanted to be a herbalist”. I was 19 at the time and there really just wasn't much in the way of an opportunity for that path.

Dr Robert Rountree joins me to discuss the importance of gut health. He explains how gut issues can influence other conditions in the body, how we know if something isn’t right and what we can do to improve our gut health. He also discusses the difference between integrative and functional medicine, while providing some simple and practical tips for improving your health.

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

-----

WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Robert Rountree joins me to discuss the importance of gut health. He explains how gut issues can influence other conditions in the body, how we know if something isn’t right and what we can do to improve our gut health. He also discusses the difference between integrative and functional medicine, while providing some simple and practical tips for improving your health.

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

-----

WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

Dr Ian Billinghurst joins me to discuss the many parallels between our own health and the health of domesticated animals, our pets. Dr Ian Billinghurst is a nutritionist, agricultural scientist, veterinary surgeon, lecturer, nutritional consult and author. We discuss his newest book, ‘Pointing the Bone at Cancer’, a book that provides a solution for a disease that is striking with increased frequency and severity. We discuss cancer as a metabolic disease and the use of targeted nutritional therapy in treating it, in both humans and pets.

For more information on Dr Ian Billinghurst: https://drianbillinghurst.com/

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

-----

WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Ian Billinghurst joins me to discuss the many parallels between our own health and the health of domesticated animals, our pets. Dr Ian Billinghurst is a nutritionist, agricultural scientist, veterinary surgeon, lecturer, nutritional consult and author. We discuss his newest book, ‘Pointing the Bone at Cancer’, a book that provides a solution for a disease that is striking with increased frequency and severity. We discuss cancer as a metabolic disease and the use of targeted nutritional therapy in treating it, in both humans and pets.

For more information on Dr Ian Billinghurst: https://drianbillinghurst.com/

You can also watch this episode at www.DrRonEhrlich.com.

-----

WANT TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH? Join me in my online health programs.

-----

CONNECT WITH ME

You can ask questions via social media using my Instagram or Facebook or YouTube page.

Dr Ian Billinghurst joins me to discuss the many parallels between our own health and the health of domesticated animals, our pets. Dr Ian Billinghurst is a nutritionist, agricultural scientist, veterinary surgeon, lecturer, nutritional consult and author. We discuss his newest book, ‘Pointing the Bone at Cancer’, a book that provides a solution for a disease that is striking with increased frequency and severity. We discuss cancer as a metabolic disease and the use of targeted nutritional therapy in treating it, in both humans and pets.

Selected Links from the Episode

Dr. Ian Billinghurst website

Dr. Ian Billinghurst books

Pointing the Bone at Cancer

Give Your Dog a Bone

The BARF Diet

Grow Your Pups with Bones

Dr. Ron blog post on mitochondria

Unstress episode with Prof. Thomas Seyfried on cancer as a metabolic disease

Unstress episode with Prof. Dominic D'Agostino on keto nutrition

Unstress episode with Cliff Harvey on carbohydrate and ketogenic appropriate diets

Unstress episode with Dr. Ross Walker on cholesterol

Unstress episode with Dr. Terry Wahls on food as medicine

Unstress episode with Dr. Bruce Lipton on epigenetics

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”, I’m Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Animals are an important part of our lives. They always have been. Whether we're talking about going back in time to the beginning of the human journey and our relationship with animals as a food source or more recently in human history as a domesticated animal and companion. We've got lots to learn about them and from them and in many ways their health is a reflection of our own health.

As a general rule, I think we could say that what is good for an animal's health is generally good for our health and most likely the health of the planet. My guest today is Dr. Ian Billinghurst. He's a nutritionist, an agricultural scientist, a veterinary surgeon an author, a lecturer, a nutritional consultant and a fascinating guy. In fact, his latest book is called “Pointing the bone at cancer”. There are so many interesting parallels here between our own health journey and those of our domesticated animals. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Ian Billingshurst.

Download the PDF transcription

Welcome to the show Ian.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst: Thank you very much. It’s good to be here.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: You've written this book “Pointing the bone at cancer” and it’s something we really want to talk about today obviously, but I wondered if you might share a bit of your own journey professionally, personally that got you to this point.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst: Well, yes, it's a long story, 74 years of age. It hasn't been a rapid journey. I started off at an agricultural high school then I did agricultural science at University where I learned a lot about the nutrition of farm animals and agronomy and there were my major subjects. And then I went and became ironically an agronomist at Orange Agricultural Research Station where we were looking at potatoes, which I now regard just as almost pure sugar when you look at them. But I didn't feel particularly satisfied in that role, so I entered the education sphere and went teaching for approximately four years during which time I did a DipEd. And in that period in the DipEd one of the most important books I read was by Karl Popper and it was the “Philosophy of science” and that was intriguing. That stayed with me for a long time and I won't go into that now because it's rather in-depth stuff.

But I was yearning to be something either a doctor or a veterinary surgeon and the reason I wanted to do that was because ironically again I was out as a young man in my early twenties, newly married actually and we were shooting rabbits and I rather enjoyed cutting them open after they had been shot and pulling their intestines out and dressing and feeding them to the dogs and to the family and all that sor...

Integrative cardiologist and physician, Dr Jason Kaplan joins me to discuss prevention for heart disease, a holistic approach to patient care and sports cardiology. Dr Kaplan combines principles of cardiovascular, nutritional, functional and mind-body medicine in his approach to health. He also shares some surprising insights into the cardio health of elite athletes and discusses the importance of exercise for our health.

Selected Links from the Episode

Dr Jason Kaplan website

Coronary Calcium Scan

Blackmores Sydney Running Festival

TMAO study from the New England Journal of Medicine

Unstress episode with Dr Ross Walker on heart health

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Hello and welcome to “Unstress”. I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Heart disease is still the number one killer and closely followed by cancer. Today we're going to get some great advice on both those and much more. My guest today is Dr. Jason Kaplan who specialises in sports cardiology, integrative and preventative cardiology.

Jason studied medicine at UNSW and graduated with honours. He went on to study internal medicine and then went on to complete additional advanced training in medical oncology and pharmacology before finally doing adult cardiology. But of course, learning never ends the more you learn the more you realise you need to learn. It's what makes health care and in fact life so interesting. But as you'll hear Jason then went on to take a more holistic integrative approach to patient care. Particularly those with multiple medical issues. I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Dr. Jason Kaplan.

Download the PDF transcription

Welcome to the show Jason.

Dr. Jason Kaplan: Thank you, Ron.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Jason you are a cardiologist and doctors have a very, very long journey at the best of times and specialists even longer. Can you give our listener a little bit of background as to your own journey to this point in time?

Dr. Jason Kaplan: Sure, to train in medicine it's usually five to six-year undergraduate degree in Australia though a lot more degrees are becoming post graduates and then you do what usually is two years of internship and residency and then to become a cardiologist or become a specialist position usually do around two to three years of training and adults internal medicine for various specialties.

I did that and then afterwards after my training in internal medicine, I spent some time doing medical oncology and also pharmacology before doing three years of advanced training. Three years just purely focusing on cardiology and in actual fact, the time spent in on oncology and pharmacology has put me in very good stead to be a cardiologist.

Having extra knowledge in areas of Medicine that you often don't get exposed to very often. It helps me to take care of patients in a better way and interestingly there's a very new emerging field called “cardio-oncology” which is one of the big growth areas. There's a lot of new treatment for cancer these days. These are drugs that are much better cure rates than traditional chemotherapy. They're more biologic and more targeted cancer therapies but some of them such as one we use for breast cancer called Herceptin actually has effects on the heart.

What's really interesting Ron is that more women will die from heart disease, than breast cancer in Australia and women will also develop complication from treatment for breast cancer more often will actually die from the breast cancer.

That time in oncology's meaning in very good stead, an extra experience. In pharmacology, we used all different fields of medicine and in cardiology, we use a lot of drugs to treat heart disease and it was a very helpful time spending time in that area.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: Gosh you really covered the two big ones there, haven't you? I mean heart disease and cancer are the two big killers. They're vying with each other. Is heart disease still…

Dr.