How To Mix Honey & Vinegar for Overall Health with Dr. Marc Cohen, PhD on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger
In this episode of The Healers Café, Manon Bolliger, FCAH, RBHT (facilitator and retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice) chats with Dr. Marc Cohen, about the healing properties of honey and vinegar called Kombucha.
Highlights from today’s episode include:
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD
you can put honey and vinegar together and make oxymels, which are naturopathic form of medicine. They’re incredibly delicious, you get the sourness from the vinegar and the sweetness from the honey. And they’re incredible medicines, and they’re available to anybody, you can even make them at home.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD
There’s no other modern wound dressing that is superior to Manuka Honey, just straight on the skin straight from the beehive to your skin to your wound, you can put it straight on an open wound and non-healing wounds and, and also for acne and other skin conditions because it’s highly antimicrobial, but it actually destroys the pathogens.
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Dr Marc Cohen, PhD
As long as you go to your local beekeeper go its raw honey, apple cider vinegar, you can make at home. Kombucha vinegar. It’s actually easier to make, and most people don’t know about kombucha vinegar, but it’s more potent than apple cider vinegar, or balsamic or grape vinegar.
ABOUT DR MARC COHEN, PHD:
Brief bio for Professor Marc Cohen MBBS (Hons), PhD (TCM), PhD (Elec Eng), BMed Sci (Hons), FAMAC, FICAE Dr Marc is a medical doctor, university professor, author, poet, entrepreneur, wellness trailblazer and perpetual student of life, trying to co-create a culture of wellness. Dr Marc has been researching and practicing integrative medicine for more than 30 years and has spent more than half his career as a university professor teaching and researching wellness and contributing to the fields of nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, health retreats, fermentation, detoxification, bathing, water quality, saunas, hot springs, elite athletic performance, and flow states. Dr Marc has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and many books and technical texts on wellness and natural medicine including ‘Understanding the Global Spa Industry’ and the landmark text ‘Herbs and Natural Supplements: An Evidence-Based Guide’ along with the illustrated children’s books “Bing & Bang Begin” and “The Beautiful Mare and the Boy Who Gave Thanks”. Dr Marc is a Past Board Member of the Global Wellness Summit, Past President of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association, Founder of the Extreme Wellness Institute, Beautiful Water, and Pronoia Press, Co-Owner of Extremely Alive Wellness Tonics and Maruia Hot Springs and the Medical Director of the Peninsula Hot Springs Group, and Director of Research, Education and Product Development for Gather By. Dr Marc has lectured on the science behind the Wim Hof Method, and given inspiring, informative and uplifting presentations that inspire positive action at hundreds of conferences, festivals and events around the world. You can find him at www.drmarc.co.
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ABOUT MANON BOLLIGER, FCAH, RBHT
As a recently De-Registered board-certified naturopathic physician & in practice since 1992, I’ve seen an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.
My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books: ‘What Patients Don’t Say if Doctors Don’t Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship’ and ‘A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress’. I also teach BowenFirst™ Therapy through Bowen College and hold transformational workshops to achieve these goals.
So, when I share with you that LISTENING to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience”.
Mission: A Healer in Every Household!
For more great information to go to her weekly blog: http://bowencollege.com/blog.
For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips
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About The Healers Café:
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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction 00:04
Welcome to the Healers Café. Conversations on health and healing with Manon Bolliger. A retired and deregistered naturopathic physician with 30 plus years of experience. Here, you will discover engaging and informative conversations between experienced healers, covering all aspects of healing, the personal journey, the journey of the practitioner, and the amazing possibilities for our own body, and spirit.
Manon Bolliger 00:34
So welcome to the Healers Cafe. And today I have with me, Dr. M, Professor Mark Cohen. And he’s a medical doctor, university professor, author, poet, entrepreneur, wellness trailblazer and a perpetual student of life, trying to co create a culture of wellness. Now, there’s so many things you do and so many things that you could talk about. But I wanted to first of all, welcome you. And I know you do poetry, so any poem you would like to open this session? Oh,
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 01:20
Well, I mean, I’ve spent the last 40 plus years studying wellness, and I’m 38 years University, and I’ve summarized wellness into a recipe.
Manon Bolliger 01:31
Okay
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 01:32
And it’s very simple. So, the recipe for wellness is simple, and it’s bathe in beautiful water. Prepare delicious food. Make the most of every breath. Dance through every mood. Tend to the soil beneath your feet. Embrace sunshine from above. Share your gifts with all the world and fill your life with love.
Manon Bolliger 02:00
Wow.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 02:01
Yeah, so wellness is simple. We make it complicated. And then we make industries out of this. And once you get to the essence, it’s actually quite simple. Follow that recipe and you’ll have …
Read more...
Manon Bolliger 02:11
Yeah, it sounds like and, and, you know, reach everybody, right? I love the way that of all of the things that that that’s the one that I…that I’ve connected to. I mean being a retired naturopath, a lot of them are natural to me. Well, beautiful.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 02:28
A friend of mine recently said I’ve created a new genre of poetry, which is naturopathic poetry. Because I’ve tried to summarize medical information. And its sort of accidental poetry, because a lot of this stuff just coming out as poetry. I didn’t intend it that way. I just wanted to summarize information.
Manon Bolliger 02:47
Yeah, well, and I think one of the things is that we tend to complicate things, you know, trying to understand how things work and then get into. And that’s actually what’s happened wrong in our profession as I’m a naturopath or I should say I was a naturopath since I have to give up my license. But it’s like, we’re trying to be something that we’re not. And we’re trying to complicate, you know, pathways that are very interesting, but the essence of naturopathy everyone can do and it’s accessible to everyone and really basic principles that everyone can benefit from. So why don’t you tell us a little bit how you got into all this, your journey, and then I don’t know where to start.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 03:38
I mean, it’s been a long journey. And actually, I got into it because I wanted to learn how I could have the happiest healthiest life myself. And I figured medicine would teach me that and I had this long academic journey through Western medicine, and I did an honors in physiology and psychology than a PhD in Chinese medicine. I did a second PhD in Electrical Computer Systems Engineering and became a professor and I wrote, I wrote this textbook here, which is like been the Bible for naturopaths for the last 20 years, and Australia has had four editions and its latest additions to volumes and 600-800 pages. So that was my education in herbs and supplements. And then I’ve been involved in and interested in the fun side of health. So bathing, and I’m doing a lot of work with hot springs around the world and sauna bathing and ice bathing and relaxation and creating a deployment right now on hydrothermal wellness. Done a lot of work with that the herbal medicine industry, In the lockdown, I created a company that makes living probiotic and Bucha vinegar where we take kombucha with 200 probiotic strains and we put in leaves, roots, flowers, fruits and fungi. And we select them on their properties and there’s a whole range of extremely alive tonics and yeah, I’m still evolving. Recently, it was only a couple of months ago, I’ve just joined the board and invested in a honey company that makes the world’s most potent manuka honey. And they do this by sample that the most potent flowers, the Leptospermum flowers, and they sample the nectar and found out which ones have the high DHA in the nectar. And now they grow plantations of these manuka honey forests. And I’m just my mind been blown about honey actually, because honey is such an incredible medicine. And the word medicine actually comes from made the same, the same origins. And you can put honey and vinegar together and make oxymels, which are naturopathic form of medicine. They’re incredibly delicious, you get the sourness from the vinegar and the sweetness from the honey. And they’re incredible medicines, and they’re available to anybody, you can even make them at home. And things like hot and cold bathing, which you can do at home. So, I’ve sort of coined this term, Ancient Future medicine. And I’m engaged in researching that right now. And all the things are available to our prehistoric ancestors and looking at those from a modern lens of advanced science, and actually bringing them to the world in a very simple way. So that’s all I’m doing at the moment.
Manon Bolliger 04:47
To really, like enjoy this, you know, and it’s not…it’s not work when you when you actually enjoy that the everything that’s being produced by Earth, and then how easy it is for us to incorporate it. So, one thing about honey I and I’m wondering, you’ve written hundreds of papers. So, I’ve been told and read that now it’s very difficult to get honey that isn’t full of pesticides, because of all the spraying. And I was thinking do honeybees have a mechanism where they can deal with that? So, it isn’t in their honey? Or? That was a question.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 07:01
Well, they actually say that about a third of all the honey in the world is counterfeit. It’s not even real honey, sugar syrup or corn syrup, they feed it to the bees that dilute it. So, there’s this whole counterfeit ring, which is bigger than the counterfeit olive oil industry. There’s a massive counterfeit honey industry. And then we also have this incredible tragedy of Colony collapse. So, bee populations around the world are collapsing. And that’s due to pesticides and electromagnetic radiation and climate destruction. And just it’s not healthy to track bees around to crops to monoculture crops. These are like humans; they need a diverse diet. They need you know, pollen sources with high protein that’s diverse, they need different nectar sources they need that all year round. And because with modern agriculture as a monoculture, they’ll flower for a few weeks, like the biggest pollination event in the world is the almond pollination in California. And that requires all the bees in America all the commercial beehives, 2 million beehives approximately go to California for three weeks. But then after the flowering has happened. It’s like a desert for the bees. So, they have to be trucked around the country that then support the bees and bees have a very strong sense of geography. They now know exactly which flowers where and when you track them around. That’s not good for them, but when you mix them together, they spread varroa misin and, you know different viruses and, and then they can go to crops that have been sprayed and they bring the pesticides back. And that can actually also kill the bees. So, we were in the sort of crisis at the moment with modern agriculture, and we’re losing our pollinators.
Manon Bolliger 08:38
Yeah
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 08:38
And I’ve just started working with a company based in Dallona in Byron Bay, Australia, and they’ve come up with a concept called the medicinal honey forest. So rather than moving the bees around to the crops, they actually plant crops around the bees. And they designed the different plants and we’re based on the Leptospermum which is where we get manuka honey from and there’s 87 species of Leptospermum in Australia, as opposed to only one species in New Zealand. A lot of people think manuka honey is from New Zealand. Well, there is one species of Leptospermum in New Zealand that went there about 600 years ago, there’s 87 species in Australia we hit so we have very potent manuka honey here. And if we plant not just Maluka, not just Leptospermum but other fodder plants for pollen and for nectar then things will flower all year round. We can keep the bees really healthy. And that’s the best defense just like keeping yourself healthy is the best defense against any other parasite or virus. If we keep the bees healthy, that’s the best defense. And also, we give them everything they need so they don’t have to travel you know, five kilometers in one direction as to travel five meters. So, we get a lot more honey we get healthy bees and making literally the world’s most potent honey. And then I’ve just come on to be Product Development Manager for this company Gather By and all the different products you can make from honey had been used literally millions of years. So, they actually say that honey is what made us human. Because honey is the highest carbohydrate source. It’s the highest natural energy source of any food in nature. And because the primate brain is very glucose hungry, honey not only gives us a big glucose ease, but it’s also a preservative so we can store energy. And honey is a preservative for anything else. So, you can put herbs or any other foods in honey and it will preserve it. And they she’s say that the first stone tools ever used by humans weren’t to hunt animals. So actually, there hunt hives, to cut into beehives, and get honey. So, honey has this really ancient history at least a million years before we were using fire, we were actually getting honey and honey still has this incredible potency internally and topically. It’s manuka honey is probably the best wound dressing you can have. There’s no other modern wound dressing that is superior to Manuka Honey, just straight on the skin straight from the beehive to your skin to your wound, you can put it straight on an open wound and non-healing wounds and, and also for acne and other skin conditions because it’s highly antimicrobial, but it actually destroys the pathogens. So topically, it’s amazing, but also internally and there’s a recent systematic review where if you have a gastric ulcer, manuka honey will, you know affect the helicobacter and improve your gut health and immune health and it’s got anti-inflammatory action. So yeah, honey, honey is a wonder. And we make a whole lot of products and, and it was sort of a bit funny. I’m an accidental poet, but I’m also an accidental company, creator and product creator. So, I created this kombucha vinegar company in the lockdown, because, you know, obviously Melbourne and we have the most lockdown city in the world. And a friend of mine had a kombucha company, when she did two research studies on that kombucha showed that it has two and a half times the poly phenols of green tea, and 200 probiotic strains. And then we did a study where we showed if you have the kombucha with a meal, it reduces your blood sugar by 20% After the meal compared to diet soft drink or soda water. And that was the first ever published human clinical trial of kombucha we published earlier this year. And just recently, the second study ever done on kombucha came out was done in Georgetown University and they gave a glass of kombucha that’s 220 meals every day to diabetic patients for a month. And they found out one month of glass a day actually reduced their blood sugar and gave them much better blood sugar control. So that was amazing to learn about kombucha and the kombucha vinegar, which is makes it shelf stable. But then I’ve just, I’m just learning about the oxymels. And I’ve never heard the word oxymel before. You know, I’m supposed to be an expert on natural medicine guy. Right, right literally wrote the textbook on herbs and supplements. But I’ve never heard the word oxymel. So oxymel is oxy, which is acid and male which is honey, and its vinegar and honey together. And every single medical tradition, the ancient Greeks and Chinese and Ayurvedic and Egyptians and Babylonians, Assyrians, they all used oxymels, vinegar and honey, and then you can put herbs in it, and it becomes this incredibly delicious. It’s like liquid candy, that it’s really really potent as a medicine internally. But it’s also there was a study just published this year, showing that you can use it topically. And that you can have honey and vinegar that by themselves aren’t inhibitory concentration for bacteria of the pathogens on the skin. But if you mix them together, you actually get a bactericide effect at levels that individually they wouldn’t do anything. So, oxymels can be used topically as well as internally. And the thing is, they’re delicious. And people make them at home all you need is a source of raw honey. I mean, we use the world’s most potent Mulika honey, but you can. As long as you go to your local beekeeper go its raw honey, apple cider vinegar, you can make at home. Kombucha vinegar. It’s actually easier to make, and most people don’t know about kombucha vinegar, but it’s more potent than apple cider vinegar, or balsamic or grape vinegar. So how to make it from like so let’s say from the kombucha? So actually,you make kombucha and you neglect it and just leave it just leave it for six months or four or five months and it will ferment out and all the sugar and the alcohol will get fed into the way and will be become very strong in in acids. Aceto vector makes acetic acid and Gluconic vector which is sort of a holy grail makes glucuronic acid and Gluconic acid. So just making kombucha yourself and then deleting it you get this incredibly rich kombucha vinegar and tea only making kombucha from tea and sugar. But tea has more poly phenols than apples or grapes. And we make most vinegar from apples or grapes because they have their own sugar and they naturally ferment. But if so with tea you have to add sugar. And you can either add sugar in the form of you know, we use organic or biodynamic raw sugar, but you can add honey and it becomes Jun. JUN. And that’s just honey and tea that’s fermented. And because tea is so high in poly phenols, it makes a much healthier vinegar, then even apple cider vinegar. And what we discovered and was really surprising when we do it. And we published this physical chemical and messaging ohmic analysis of the kombucha, we found that it actually has more polyphenols in the green tea we started with, which means that the bacteria and yeast the scoby, the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, and making new poly phenols with the fermentation process, so they’re actually bio activating the tea, and the healthy chemicals within the green tea. And you can do this at home. We make it in bottles, and when you add leaves, roots, flowers, fruits and fungi and we design that for your gut or your brain or your hormones and we have one called the flu shot, which has all the all the herbs that are proactive against COVID and the flu, but that that weren’t there or the really bitter, pungent herbs. So, if you had the flu shot by itself, it’s like a punch in the face of business. It’s Andrew Graphis and Artemisia Annua in a wormwood and horseradish and echinacea and Rishi and elderberry, elderflower, Tulsi, ASTRA garlands as well, he’s really pungent, potent herbs. So, it’s very bitter but the bitter flavor is actually really good for us. And most people don’t get enough bitterness in their diet, or they do they get bitter from chocolate or coffee. Right, that’s the main source of bitter in the modern world, not bitter greens, which is really healthy or bitter herbs which are often medicinal. You have bitter, it helps balance sweet cravings. So, you know, if you’re a sweet tooth have some more bitter in your life, and you’ll reduce the sweet cravings. Bitter also prepares a liver for digestion, and it opens, it opens up the palate. So that’s why people have digestive bitters before a meal opens up your palates and means you’ve enjoyed your food more, you’ll get more flavor out of your food, it activates the liver, so you’ll digest your food better, and you tend to eat less and be more satisfied. And also, if you’re having it with kombucha it reduces blood sugar after the meal, so you don’t get that high and low insulin and, and sort of a crash after the meal. So having a little shot of some bitters before a meal, it was a really traditional thing to do.
Manon Bolliger 17:31
We were brought up that way you know and have dandelions in our salad. And it’s funny because none of us actually crave sugar. And so, you know, I thought oh, it’s because we don’t we prefer you know, bitters and astringent sour things and but maybe like you’re saying they’re related?
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 17:52
Well, yeah, I mean Chinese medicine, they talk about the five flavors, sweet, salty, spicy, sour and bitter. And you want to balance those and if you’re feel you’re craving one or more over the other, you might say oh, there’s an imbalance there and you can correct it just by changing your diet and the flavors you’re playing with. And I’ve been playing with that with product, so you’ve got the honey which is really sweet. Mind you can if you cement honey, you get mead but if you ferment honey and tea, you get Jordan and you can make Jordan vinegar so you can make sour honey, and then you can put herbs in honey and we are experimenting with different Australian botanical herbs, things like finger lime and strawberry Garman, Gumby Gumby and Kakadu Plum. We put that in the honey, but then you can mix the honey with the vinegar. That’s the vinegar sour, the honey sweet. Them you put bitter herbs in that. And they were even putting salty red algae Dunaliella Salina which is the most salt tolerant life form on Earth that forms in red salt lakes. That’s what makes pink likes pink. And these red algae. It’s salty and fatty. And you mix that with honey, and you’ve got this amazing combination of sugar, fat and salt, which is the food side has called the bliss point. So, you get a bliss point of it just satisfies your sugar, fat and salt cravings.
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Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 20:17
It Becomes really more efficient just a very small amount it’s really highly nutritious that’s the highest natural source of beta carotene and other correct Lloyd’s which these fat-soluble antioxidants that protect us from sunburn and support the immune system and IT pro vitamin A, but I’m potentially just delicious and I wouldn’t ever thought you’re mixing algae or seaweed with honey would be something to that would be great but it’s amazing.
Manon Bolliger 20:45
What’s the seaweed you mentioned?
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 20:47
It’s Dunaliella Salina so it’s the most salt tolerant life form on Earth. It’s a phytoplankton such a single celled organisms and to survive when seawater goes on salt flats and then evaporates and becomes very, very salty. And this normally green phytoplankton marine algae to protect itself from the sun and the salt it makes glycerol and fats to balance the osmotic pressure with the salt outside. And it produces very high levels of carotenoids. Which of these steps soluble antioxidants actually protect our skin from sun damage. So, it turns sort of red, and that’s what these pink Salt Lake’s and especially the reason why shrimp and flamingos are pink, that because this red algae at the bottom of the food chain.
Manon Bolliger 21:38
Wow, I didn’t know that. .
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 21:40
I’m just learning so much.
Manon Bolliger 21:44
So, while you were speaking, I was a thought came to me about what about, like they say with, you know, young babies or infants, you know, up past like six months, but never to give them honey, is this…is there a reason for that? Or is that a myth? From everything you’ve come up with.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 22:06
I mean, it’s good means in the best thing to give an incentive breast milk.
Manon Bolliger 22:10
Yes, no, no, that I agree.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 22:12
And that’s got all the fructooligosaccharides and supports the gut microbiome. Now, if you’re going to give an infant any sort of sugar, honey is probably the better, better sort if it’s raw honey, but it’s, you know, honey has such a high impact fructose glucose load that it’s, you know, it’s not a basic food for infants of mind you there are some tribes still today to get 80% of their calories from honey, the 100 tribes in Africa, and, you know, their honey hunters. So, honey has had a bad rap or, and that’s because a lot of it is counterfeit. It’s not it’s actually not real honey. But yeah, it’s not. It’s not infant food.
Manon Bolliger 22:53
Cause I was wondering, too. Now, there’s been a recent study, Well, recently, about a year now here now that a lot of the newborns are born without a functioning flora. In response to the mothers who, unfortunately, took this thing.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 23:15
Most people don’t have a functioning flora. And that’s because, you know, we’ve got chlorine in our water. We’ve got pesticides on our food, we take antibiotics, we eat dead ferments. I mean, most of the foods we eat in the modern world are fermented foods. So, if you think about your bread and cheese, and wine and beer, and coffee, and chocolate, they’re all fermented foods, but they’re dead ferments. There’s no living bacteria in them anymore. And if you think about our ancestors before refrigeration, and even traditional cuisines, they would have eaten something living with every meal. And usually it’s a side of pickles, or kimchi, or sauerkraut or living yogurt or was something that’s alive because fermentation was a basic food preserving method. But it meant we were constantly eating probiotics and prebiotics and post biotics, and we’ve lost that. So, most people, really their gut flora is decimated and having chlorinate in a chlorinated water that affects them. And I was just reading a fairly recent study that says that it’s our skin microbiome is also being affected. And when I went to medical school more than 30 years ago, we were told that the skin surface area was 1.8 square meters, and that the size of a single bed if you can if you spread the skin out, and they use that for burns calculations and things. But recently, there was a study published in Nature that said, Well, if you count all the little dips that the skin makes all the sweat plans and sebaceous glands, you got 2 million sweat glands and where the skin goes down and up again, if you count that if you spread that out it’s about 30 square meters, and in the little dips in your skin, that’s where your skin makes natural oils. And those oils feed good bacteria that protect us from pathogens. And those oils also protect our skin from drying out and protect our skin from sun damage. So, they show that that those natural oils, prevent wrinkles prevent sun damage and prevent infections. Yet most people in the modern world bathe every day in chlorinated water. And the reason why they use chlorine if they don’t want to have big public outbreaks of typhoid or cholera, and the reason why they use chlorine is the chlorine is so toxic and so potent, that it’ll kill bacteria at point five parts per million, which is the level where it comes out of your tap, which means you’re waging war on your skin bacteria every day, and also that chlorine will oxidize the natural oils in your skin and dry it out. Which means you have to put moisturizes on your skin and protect your skin from the sun. Whereas your skin has its own natural protection. You think our ancestors use moisturizers or had sunscreen, they had the natural oils that because we’re stripping away oil natural oils, then we’re stripping away our natural defense against sun wrinkles, skin cancers and infections. And it’s a bit of a tragedy really, and it’s the same in our gaps because we’re eating, drinking chlorinated water, eating pesticides, not eating living foods, having antibiotics, most people and then we’re having cesarian birth. And, you know, the good midwives would doesn’t sound great, but you know, they put a finger up the mother’s rectum and then wipe the baby’s mouth with it and inoculate the child with fecal flora. That doesn’t happen anymore. And then we’re giving anti antibiotics and all sorts of toxic medicines to our infants. And then we’re just losing that connection with nature. And we’re also not going out into the soil where we you know, nature bathing and exchanging bacteria and DNA with the soil and the trees. So, we really lost touch with nature. And I think we can regain that.
Manon Bolliger 27:00
Well, I certainly hope so. Because I, the incubator babies of the future that are genetically modified to be I don’t know what living GMOs that are made, you know, to all the likings of certain people. It’s not tempting. But tell us a little bit more about water, because I have noticed that, you know, if you have a well, you know, you’re lucky, you’re sort of on top of it. But if you’re stuck with municipal water, I’ve noticed, because I’m very, very sensitive to everything, so I just can’t drink it. But now I feel it, it smells, it’s gotten, they must have increased the amounts.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 27:45
It depends on which area you’re living in. But usually, your water comes pre poisoned. With at least two sort of very potent poisons. You’ve got fluoride, which is a neurotoxin, you’ve got chlorine, which is just a biocide, which just kills life. And then depending on where you live, it’s going through pipes and distribution system that could be you know, more than 100 years old that’s laced with biofilm that’s got all sorts of outflow of petrochemicals and pesticides and, and pharmaceuticals and a whole range of what they call emerging contaminants. And that’s on top of, you know, heavy metals and all sorts of toxic elements in your water distribution system. And yeah, it’s not what it water once was. So, if you have a well, and even though it’s you know, depending on where you live, you know, you need to check your well water, because there is arsenic and even radioactive elements that can come up with well, water.
Manon Bolliger 28:46
Yeah.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 28:47
And water is. It’s the basis of life. I was fortunate I went to, in 2016, I spoke at the International Conference on the physics, chemistry and biology of water, which Gerald Pollack runs, and that was in Bulgaria, and learnt a lot about water there. And there are 72 Scientific anomalies that we just don’t understand about water. So, water is a whole new frontier of science. But what we do know is that water is such a small molecule compared to all the other molecules in our body. That if you count the molecules in your body, you’re 99.99% water molecules. So, you’re two thirds water by volume or by mass, but in terms of the molecules, collagen and proteins and nucleic acids are massive, and waters tiny. So, when 99.9% water yet in biochemistry and in medicine in general, we focus on the .001% of the chemist…the molecule, and we neglect the water that we made from. And if you’re going to do one thing to improve your health and improve the quality of the water that you’re bathing in, and the water that you’re drinking. And there was a really interesting study done in the late 1990s where they were looking at the chlorinated water. And they’re measuring the disinfection byproducts, so that trihalomethanes and all these toxic byproducts from chlorine in the bloodstream. And they compared drinking two liters of chlorinated water. And when you do that, it doesn’t…these byproducts don’t appear in your bloodstream. And that’s because the liver filters them out. So, it’s not good for your liver and might contribute to fatty liver and things like that. But the liver does filter them out. But if you have a hot shower or a hot bath, and they should just the skin contact with water, where they had people breathing fresh air, but in skin contact with the chlorinated bathwater, that chlorine went straight through the dermal barrier, and bypass the liver went into the blood. And then they did another thing where people were in the bath with a little broken plastic wetsuit on, so they weren’t touching the water, but they were breathing the air from the bath, and just breathing the air, you absorb the chlorine and chlorine, of course, it’s volatile. So, if you have a hot bath, it just becomes volatile into the air. And then you breathe that in and bypasses the liver again and goes straight into the bloodstream. Yet, when they measure that dose of chlorine that is acceptable for humans, they don’t count, dermal and inhalation absorption, they only count ingestion.
Manon Bolliger 31:18
So, what are the systems or ways that you’re familiar with or that you recommend to diminish or remove those, those …
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 31:31
The best way is to have a natural source of water. And just best of course. If you’re if you’re stuck with an if you can afford it, a whole house water filter is the best, best thing you can do. So, filtering all the water, you’re bathing and you . And if you can’t afford that, there’s some little tricks you can do. So, if you’ve got a bath, if you fill the bathtub with hot water, like hotter than you can normally stand, put the fan on and just wait 20 minutes. I mean, those 20 minutes with the fan on the chlorine will evaporate. And after 20 minutes, you’ll still have a hot bath. But it’ll be relatively chlorine free. And that’s a good way to avoid that chlorine without having to go to the expense of a whole house water filter or moving to somewhere where you can get natural, pristine water.
Manon Bolliger 32:24
And as far as like filters, does charcoal do the trick, or do we need a lot more?
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 32:32
Water filtration is a really complicated thing. In fact, it’s one of these things that um, again, I accidentally created a water filter company. For many years I was talking about toxicity with my patients, and I’m a big fan of Bill Mollison, who was a founder of permaculture. And he said, When you get the basic things, right, other things go right by themselves. And when you get the basic things wrong, it’s really hard to play catch up. And water is one of the most basic things in our life, I was really passionate about having good water for my patients. So, I went down the rabbit hole. And this is when I was studying water, and I was speaking at water conferences. And because I wanted to find which water filter could I recommend to my patients. And it’s complicated. And you know, so my patients was asked me what’s the best water filter on sale? It’s complicated. Like you’ve got two PhDs and a medical degree if you can’t work it out, how are we supposed to work it out. So fair enough. Okay. So, I spent quite a bit of time trying to work it out and I sourced, what I thought was…well I was just trying to find that filter, I could refer it but there wasn’t one to actually source the best components. And there was a Russian technology, which involves activated charcoal, but then also an eco-polymer that it’s covered with an ion exchange resin, so that not just…so activated carbon will remove chlorine and the odor. But it won’t remove a lot of heavy metals, radioactive elements and things like pharmaceuticals and pesticides and these emerging contaminants. And there’s and it’s very, very hard to remove fluoride. Once you put fluoride into water, it’s really hard to remove. There are three ways to do that, you can either distill the water and boiling it, you can use reverse osmosis, which is expensive, it wastes a lot of water and you have to store it and use a lot of energy or activated alumina, which requires a very long contact time with the water and it’s not sustainable takes up you have to clean it very very often. So, we had to remove fluoride but the other the other emerging contaminants, heavy metals, etc. are quite able to be removed and with a flow rate that you can actually put it on your whole house. So, I’ve created I’ve got a company called Beautiful Water. The Beautiful Water CEO is my company that makes domestic water filtration and I really set it up for my patients and for me for myself because I wanted to filtration myself.
Manon Bolliger 34:55
So, we’ll I don’t have those links. But would you be able to send us that?
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 35:00
So, if people go to, I’ve got my own website, Dr. Marc, just DrMarc.co And all my links and companies and stuff, the executive converged company, I write children’s books. So, you know, doing Honey, I’ve got lots of different things going on.
Manon Bolliger 35:17
My goodness, this was like a wealth of information and passion all in one.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 35:22
Yeah well, I mean, I’ve just, I don’t work, I just do what I do. And curiosity leads me that way. And, you know, I was really passionate trying to help people during the pandemic. And when I told you I was an accidental poet. So, for more than 30 years, I was a professor and Doctor studying integrative medicine. And at the start of the pandemic, I was trying to think what are the things people can do at home, that require very little cost very little training, and very little equipment, that have research evidence that they reduce anxiety and fear, and that they improve immunity. So, this was a brief I gave myself I started writing down all these different, you know, natural sort of treatments and thinking their lifestyle and activities you could do. And it turned into a poem. And I call this poem The World of Wellness. And there were 50 different activities in this poem, and I’ve actually referenced them so you can go to my website, and you can click on the activity, and it will take you to the research behind each of the activities. So, this is, I call it the World of Wellness, but I say t’s how to go from wired and tired to children fulfilled, or how to go from stressed and depressed to joyfully blessed. Since its the World of Wellness. Hold someone’s hand, gaze into their eyes. Go barefoot in nature, bask in Sunrise. Choose a dance partner and go find your groove. Do tai chi or yoga, mindfully move. Share a massage, enjoy Healing Touch. Focus on one thing, and don’t think too much. Make time for a hobby. Play Chess, fly a kite. Make use of your hand, draw, paint, sew or write. help someone in need. Donate to a cause. Play games, meditate. Read stuff from bookstores. Turn off your screens and get a good sleep. Declutter. Spark joy and love what you keep. Dig around in a garden, pick up a guitar. Slip into a bathtub sauna or spa. Care for a pet. Take up a sport. Go on vacation and make your home a resort. Lie in a hammock relieve pent up stress. Relax and do nothing. And then do even less. Laugh out loud. Share a joke. Give someone a kiss. Say a prayer. Chant a mantra and follow your bliss.
Manon Bolliger 38:07
Wow. That’s great.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 38:11
It’s simple. These things aren’t complicated.
Manon Bolliger 38:15
Well, thank you so much for spending…our times are different zones but spending the time together very inspiring. And that will definitely put your website out there so people can follow all these things. And also, we haven’t had time to talk about breathing and Wim Hof. But it’ll all be there, right?
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 38:37
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of content I think more than 100 scientific papers I’ve written they’re all on my website and my children’s board from my poetry’s there. People yeah please explore.
Manon Bolliger 38:49
Thank you very much Marc.
Dr Marc Cohen, PhD 38:51
That’s a pleasure. That was really fun. Thank you.
ENDING: 41:33
Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.