7/9/21: Lifestyle and a broken healthcare system – Interview of Dr Peter Johnston by Andrew Alexander of “Creating a Vegan World” Youtube channel.
Transcript of the interview below:
people get so well and it just changes their life um and it it makes me
just really sad to see people essentially sleepwalking to a later life
of sickness and and pain and and potential surgeries and
potentially a shorter life not knowing what they don’t know um
so it really is powerful helping spread this this message that people can can take
take control of their health and not have to suffer with the burden of chronic disease and
obesity
hey everyone welcome back to creating a vegan world my name is andrew alexander and today we have a very special guest
it’s dr peter johnston and he is helping shift the health care system to be a more effective one where a lot of times
people end up in the hospitals they end up sick based on diet and lifestyle style choices so him and his
organizations are creating programs that help prevent this from happening in the first place so it reduces healthcare
costs overall less people get sick and i really think it’s the future of medicine and it’s really great to have you on
here so thanks andrew a privilege to be on your youtube channel and thank you for
reaching out to me definitely so if we want to start we just want to go into what is the problem we see in the world especially with the
healthcare system why do you see all the problems going on with there if you want to talk about that sure um
well the healthcare system evolved at a time when chronic disease was a lot less prevalent
in fact pretty uncommon amongst most ordinary working people the things that
that took people to hospital or to doctors back then were infectious diseases and and trauma accidents you
know breaking legs and things like that but as our affluence has increased so
has the caloric density of our diet and our lifestyles have worsened and so
it’s estimated that around 80 of people in hospitals today in the modern world are there because of
lifestyle what they put in their mouth what they do with their feet
um whether they smoke or take substances and those are avoidable conditions those
people shouldn’t be in hospital in an ideal world if they were if they were aware and helped and to
live a more healthy life and in a world which is more conducive
to good health what we live in today is been termed an obesogenic environment so
it’s pretty much all geared to to make people overweight and unwell um
and that’s not a conspiracy it’s just business there’s more profit to be had in people
buying rich hyper-processed foods for example there’s a lot more profit in
selling a pack of pringles than there is in potatoes
fruit and vegetables are perishable they don’t travel well they don’t store well they’re not addictive or hyper
stimulating people don’t crave them or binge on them but they’re the essence of
good health but manufacturers in the name of business are looking for
products that people will buy and buy again and again and they’re using salt fat sugar amongst
other things to make those foods addictive and craveable and
those rich rich foods are everywhere we turn from filling up with your car with gas
you’re surrounded by chocolate bars potato chips slurpees donuts hot dogs
soft drinks you name it to any cafe
the cabinets are full of rich attractive looking slices and sorbets and ham and
cheese croissant and the like and any shopping center the supermarkets are full of foods 90 of
which i wouldn’t eat or don’t recommend too processed you know they’ve had
junk added the fat salt and sugar preservatives stabilizers emulsifiers
flavorings anti-foaming agents you name it and they’ve had good stuff taken out like
fiber and water so aside from the produce section you
know even the supermarket is a hazardous place so everywhere we turn the environment is is
set up to make us fail and and it’s it’s not the fault of any one
person we actually we’re actually wired to want these high energy density foods
um we get a dopamine hit when we have rich foods um these
these this is what helped us survive through 99 of our evolution before we had farming and domesticated animals
when we were small tribes foraging for our food and didn’t know where our next meal was
coming from the biggest threats to us in those times were being someone else’s food
being caught by a tiger for example or not having enough food
if spring was late or there was a drought or there wasn’t you know the other animals
got the food before us um then we could we could go hungry for
quite a time so we we evolve this these this mechanism to give us a
pleasure a hit when through dopamine when we have rich foods it’s the same for reproduction we get pleasure from
having sex for the same reason it helps ensure the survival of the species
so i tell my patients there’s nothing wrong with them if they are craving and wanting to eat these you
know rich processed and ultra processed foods they’re doing exactly as programmed it’s
it just makes it very hard to survive in this world people need really good habits they need
good discipline they need to have a healthy home environment um it takes some real determination not
to slide back back into what what’s been described as a as a pleasure trap environment
yeah i think the first step is awareness where even like myself i’m aware of these things but the same time if i see
chips like they’re just i’m like craving it like the deeper driver despite my
willpower wanting healthier so that’s the hard part and i think even before that not even being aware of it because when i grew up
outside of new york city it’s like you go to the supermarket there’s the shelves and like you just there’s so much stuff put into the food those
additives that we don’t even realize it and it takes awareness then the willpower
than the know-how to do that and then i was talking before you said like 80 of
people more or less end up in the hospital system because of this so what are their like system-wide i guess
downfalls are there i know in the u.s there’s the healthcare premium costs where i think it’s on average i was paying
like 300 385 per month just for the health insurance premium whereas i’m sure in australia it’s
like recycled into tax money is there other like side effects at the society level that um you see from this
well the us so-called health care system i would
call our modern health care systems actually sickness care systems and i can explain that later but the us system
is much more privatized than anywhere else in the in the western world um
and is the most expensive system in the world it’s it’s approaching 20 of gdp
and with this tsunami of obesity and chronic disease it’s likely to bankrupt the us
um the health health insurance companies in the us and here have a direct stake in
wanting people to be more healthy and they are making some efforts in that area
but on the other hand in the us where you have privately run hospitals
they have an incentive to have more customers and so actually don’t want people to be more
healthy and that’s that’s actually another insidious part about the current system and status quo
in that a lot of people are making a lot of money from things as they are with people getting overweight and unwell the
pharmaceutical industries the processed food industries
medical specialists who do procedures
food manu a lot of restaurants and food manufacturers so this
the the profit motive for having people eat more fruit and vegetables have more broccoli and carrots and go for a walk
every day it’s not really big money to be made in that no one’s going to get rich from
people taking on board that advice so um it does save the health insurance
companies some money and they have health promotion people and they’re making more moves in this area i i see
in australia but it’s still pretty small um so there’s if you like there’s a
financial and political inertia maintaining the current status quo
i’m sure some of the politicians know what needs to be done but
they’re taking election money from these large vested interest groups you know
the animal food industry the processed food industry the pharmaceutical industry
there’s some trillion dollar industries and the broccoli or carrot industries don’t
have that kind of clout absolutely yeah as you know i interviewed some
people in politics on my channel and just the way to make the shift there’s there’s some people in there fighting
the good fight but for the vast majority it’s it’s an uphill battle so i guess i’m going to shift it a little bit what
is the solution for all this so you mentioned there’s a three week study you did and then i guess at the
macro level like what is the solution to fix the healthcare system in your opinion
well it’s it’s multifaceted the information about what makes people
unwell and overweight is becoming more easy to find through documentaries
through social media through news articles through more books and recipe books and bookshops and
word of mouth through family members more and more people are figuring out that
a plant-based diet ticks a lot of boxes it’s better for their health it’s better
for the environment it’s better for the animals it reduces our pandemic risk it can address
the hunger of the 600 million people who are underfed still
it ticks so many boxes so this is growing like topsy-turvy i’ve
been fully plant-based for 30 years and it was a very rare thing back then and i had to
explain to people what vegan was i once was asked was i a trekkie
someone someone didn’t you know was that confused so
things are changing fast um [Music] but people it’s still a tough journey
for people even once they realize what to do because they they can still be seduced by these
pleasure trap foods which are everywhere um and people becoming
vegan which is great um but unlike when i started 30 years ago
there are vegan junk foods everywhere we turn you can buy vegan ice creams vegan chocolate vegan
donuts you name it rich salty oily vegan fake meats
vegan cheeses these things are better for the environment and better for the animals
and the reducing the risk of pandemics through intensive animal agriculture which is like a petri dish for breeding
more pandemics [Music]
so being becoming vegan is a wonderful huge step
and it’s still difficult because most people’s friends and family aren’t but it’s certainly a lot more common
everybody knows someone who’s got a vegan in the family now
but the next step really is to eat healthy plant foods and and minimize or avoid those rich hyper-stimulating
processed vegan foods and to eat guadalajara what i call whole food plant-based
which is is pretty much what it describes eating whole plant foods um and minimal
minimal processed foods so [Music]
so there are people pushing on every front as you’ve explored in your youtube channel to to make sure societal change
and i think they all play valuable roles and we have to play to our strengths and our skills
um like i’m a health practitioner i’ve been spent many years studying biology and the human condition
as well as as well as politics as a political activist so i understand some of the dynamics of power and how to
change things but but i’m a health practitioner so that’s what i’m doing
absolutely and you mentioned there’s like a before or call there’s like a three-week study you did we took blood samples before people went plant-based
and after um can you talk a little bit more about the results of that and what you found yeah certainly um this was something i’d
been i’d been trying to do for about a decade i was aware that pcrm physicians
committee for responsible medicine had done such programs in the us
and i was working in health promotion community development type roles in
local government for a number of years and and working with some vulnerable populations and i was
trying to find a way to introduce a program like like this where we could give people a chance to test out eating
a super healthy diet for just a few weeks so three weeks was chosen because it was
we thought it was not too daunting but was long enough to get significant change in biomarkers and
people’s well-being objective and subjective and
an opportunity presented itself about 10 years down the track after you know tossing around and trying to
get this sort of program up and i jumped at it and um what we did was invite um staff at a
local government to participate and just put put up posters and communicated via the
workplace intranet and got a lot of interest people were really curious and so we offered them intensive
wrap around support to go 100 whole food plant-based overnight from a designated start date
and we we did subjective testing pre and post as well as biometric testing weight
height blood pressure taking blood tests pre and post
working with the gp colleague and um we’ve got tremendous results in three
weeks we’ve got an average 20 drop in total cholesterol and a 21 drop in
ldl cholesterol which is considered the significant and most dangerous measure
we’ve got an average weight loss of three kilos in just three weeks this was with over 80 people in five
different programs so hugely effective and the subjective changes were amazing people said they
felt better they felt more productive they had more energy their mood improved
um just amazing and ripple effects with family members you know kids when they took out the dairy kids acne disappeared
aches and pains and their joints disappeared migraines stopped one one woman had had
migraines for years and they stopped completely once she adopted this it’s just incredibly
rewarding to see these changes and i surveyed these people 18 months to two
years after they did the programs and the rate of retention of these healthy behaviors is
extraordinarily high people there’s nothing as powerful as feeling good when you’ve felt bad and so
the benefits they they gain through feeling better far outweigh any sense of loss of not having bacon
anymore or cheese for example or chocolate on a nightly basis so
people were pretty keen to continue this stuff and yeah so the reported retention was
really high so that was amazing experience um
yeah that’s amazing and like as you said like more and more in social media we’re
hearing the benefits of uh whole food plant-based diets and you’re you told me to interview someone
who did a larger study in new zealand so i’m looking forward to connecting with him and getting on the channel so um one
thing we kind of skipped over is your background and like what got you into this so i know you’re passionate about talking about that can you let us know
how it started and your transition along the way the work have you done yeah sure um well i grew up in new
zealand i was at your typical western diet lots of meat dairy eggs
vegetables we had a garden we grew fruit and veggies so we did have a lot of those my mum was a dietitian so
by those standards it was a balanced diet but at the time there was still a lot of
cancer and heart disease was a leading killer in fact a lot of heart disease back then because people like so much
saturated fat from the animal heavy diet new zealand was a real really huge producer of meat and dairy
and still is um and i even worked in shearing gangs when i was 16 17 18 over the summer
holidays and seven of us in a gang would eat a sheep per day
we worked 12 hour days 5 am to 5 pm and we would have a cook breakfast at seven and cook lunch midday and cook dinner
and all of those had huge amounts of meat and my job actually was to cut up
that carcass which was hanging in the shed sometimes i’d have to carve off
some parts where the flies had got to it but we would eat one of those carcasses a day
i i became vegetarian through a partner i met my first serious
girlfriend and she was the first vegetarian i ever met that i knew of i considered it kind of weird but
we were close we moved in together and uh and we agreed to cook vegetarian in
that house because it was just easier for all the people sharing in that household and we had a great time trying
out new recipes and i would still meet elsewhere out of home but
12 months down the line i gagged on a ham roll at university and thought no i’m done i just
i stopped meeting fish from that point on 40 years ago
and and yeah i had no idea about the health issues or the environmental issues or the ethical issues i just
didn’t like it anymore from eating less at home um the the partner had never never lectured
or evangelized she just did her thing quietly and so i’m eternally grateful to her for
staring me in that direction but i started reading and devoured books at that point
like a diet for a small planet by francis malape which was really influential
and uh similar stuff but it wasn’t until a decade later that i found
john robbins amazing book diet for a new america
and he it was the first time i’d seen all the arguments laid out for the health the environment and the ethics
and that was a slam dunk for me i just said right i’m going vegan um and i moved to san francisco not long
after that and that made it easy because there were quite a few vegans in the community that i
lived with and hang out with so it that made it easier it’s a harder thing
to do on your own and i salute those people who make that change on their own but having community around you makes it
a lot easier so as i said earlier there weren’t vegan junk foods around then we couldn’t even
buy boxes of soy milk which is not a junk food i consider that a condiment that’s okay but we had to buy powder um
make it up with water it was pretty unpleasant and i it was you couldn’t find vegan chocolate or ice cream or
anything like that back then but i became aware of whole food plant-based and shifted to that quite a
few years ago because clearly i’m not getting any younger and i wanted
to maximize my chances of staying healthy for a long time so
yeah and i i have been a scientist i was a genetic engineer and did a post-doc in montreal
um but that went a bit pear-shaped due to a um
unpleasant work environment i’ll say i won’t say anymore but
i uh detoured into about a decade of political activism which was a amazing
education um and and still informs how i think about the world today and
and the directions i take and strategies um but i eventually i came back to
australia during that 10 years and did a master’s in nutrition and dietetics
and have continued to learn since then and
was awarded a fellowship in lifestyle medicine earlier this year which was a great
honor so and been doing other courses and you know coaching training and so forth like
that so that i can help people better really
amazing i’m learning in my career like i’m not in the medicine side of things i’m on nutrition but like marketing
business producing documentary it’s like continuous education’s always learning and learning and learning one of my
first mentors said like your real education starts after you get out of university like read books watch youtube
videos doing interviews like this and it’s funny you mentioned the uh the community like when you moved to san
francisco where having more people around you to sport you know like that’s how that’s what helped me go vegan in
the first place where i went to potlucks there’s like maybe 20 or 30 vegans there every saturday night
and just by being surrounded by that community that’s what brought it in and as i’m filming this documentary like
there’s the sociology side of things the community there’s the psychology there’s nutrition there’s even the religion side
of going vegan and all these different pieces playing together so it’s really interesting to see more stories like that
then um when it comes back to the shifting the healthcare system and what you’re working with what obstacles
do you see whether it’s at the government level the business level or how do we make the most impact through the system changes
what obstacles do you see well well to begin with just to set the scene as i said earlier i
i think what we have as a you call a healthcare system is better known better
named as a sickness care system because it does a fabulous job if you get an
infection or you have trauma break a leg or something they’ll patch you up and get you well
again and get you home but if you have chronic disease which is what most people in hospital have
it they generally don’t get you well they’ll say well you have type 2 diabetes you have
to take metformin you’ll be honest for life we have heart disease you need statins
to keep your cholesterol down you need blood pressure meds that’s the the motor software and out of
the system it’s it’s denarnish uses the analogy of
a sink overflowing and the doctors are mopping the floor frantically but they’re not looking behind them to turn
off the tap and and our cygnus care system is pretty much like that it’s it’s treating symptoms
with pills and procedures but it’s not addressing the upstream determinants which is why
lifestyle medicine is the way of the future because it’s focused on causes
and looking at okay why has this person become unwell or overweight what can we
do to address the way they’re living and support that person through education
and empowerment to change direction and take control of their life and their health
and it’s very empowering because in contrast to the the so-called health care system which
is quite disempowering you you’re a passive recipient and people in white coats who treat you
you know that might talk over you they might they might treat you as a human and talk to you but your
your control of the decisions is minimal you’ll you’re told you have diabetes you
need this medication or your arteries blocked you’re going to need a stent or a bypass
that’s quite disempowering as especially if you’re not told that there’s any alternative which generally you’re not
and that’s what motivates and drives me and upsets me because people
people have a right to know that there’s another route that they don’t have to have these
potentially harmful medications or procedures that have risks and downsides
like a drug never does just one thing there are always ripple effects and side
effects um and it’s not getting the person well
like like diabetes is not caused by a metformin deficiency um high cholesterol is not caused by a
statin deficiency these things are lifestyle induced so it just makes so much sense to to
address the lifestyle so the
the barriers that you ask about are multiple um
doctors are not taught nutrition at medical school and dietitians are not generally taught
about plant-based nutrition to any extent or at all i certainly wasn’t i was i was a vegan when i went and
studied my masters in nutrition but i was one of two in the whole class
[Music] and so that’s a barrier because the practitioners who people were are
going to in many cases are not aware of these these um solutions to illness and having seen the
power of of a plant-based lifestyle and other positive lifestyle measures
they haven’t doctors haven’t ever had to de-prescribe medicines they’re not
taught de-prescribing so this is challenging to people and
medical professionals are highly esteemed people who are looked up to it’s a very high status job and even
more so if you’re a specialist so it’s a it’s kind of a
swallowing the pride situation for people to go i did all this training and i’ve been in
practice for 10 20 years and now i have to realize i was wrong and i could have helped these
people i mean that’s that’s there could be a very humbling
um change of position for many people i can understand that they might not
be open to going there you know we have confirmation bias [Music]
and and so there’s this inertia in the system but i think the changes coming from below um
like i was recently privileged to be invited to speak at a medical student annual conference
here in melbourne and by an organizer who was whole food plant-based
so um it’s a generational shift is happening and more and more people are
becoming aware of this and it’s it’s kind of like the old saying all roads
point to rome all roads lead to rome um [Music] any angle you look at it you know the
environmental reports are more and more suggesting we need to eat less animal food
the the information is becoming harder to ignore around the health changes and
more and more doctors are seeing patients who find the stuff and get well the patients may look go online and
look up how can i reverse my diabetes and find a plant-based dietitian or doctor
and then they might go back to their normal gp and if the gp is curious they’ll go what did you do how did you do that um
some of them are not curious they’ll say look that’s a miracle or i don’t i don’t care what you did but keep doing it um
and that’s pretty sad but in in some ways you could argue that
practitioners have a duty of care to to offer people a known treatment
and in most cases today that’s not being offered because the practitioner for whatever
reason isn’t aware that that’s a treatment or they might have heard of it and discounted it
but as the as the weight of evidence of more and more people
changing their lives and getting well becomes more apparent and more and more research is published
showing the power of this um you mentioned my friend and colleague luke wilson who
had a powerful study published um the broad study with population in in gisborne new
zealand who had lots of obesity and diabetes and heart disease and they got incredible results
things like that are starting to make waves um the truth is a stubborn thing if you
like it’s it’s inevitable that this is going to make
its way more and more into into broader professional and public consciousness
so i hope that it accelerates and it is it is seemingly accelerating
from what i can tell um but the other barrier that that is holding
things back is reimbursement and as as dean ornish has has rightly observed reimbursement
determines practice and if something can’t be reimbursed then
it’s very hard to to offer that as a service because at the moment doctors are remunerated
for short sessions and generally that involves a prescription
or referral to a specialist which might involve more prescriptions and maybe procedures
but the kind of lifestyle intervention that’s needed takes more time and our consultation is just the
beginning um often it takes you know dozens of hours of working with a person to help
um help them adopt a new lifestyle and all the habits and skills needed the
knowledge etc so it’s it’s a valuable investment like um
[Music] we we have a lifestyle medicine program coming up which
which is going to be all online so it’s a bit cheaper but we can offer that at a bit under a thousand dollars
per person and we can divert um people who are very sick in through
that program from the need for cardiac bypass surgery for example which
might cost over fifty thousand dollars and is not without significant risks
um and if the person doesn’t change their lifestyle those bypassed
vessels replaced in the heart can also block up as will stance so
it’s not even a long-term fix and in fact the research shows that stents have
no impact on on survival rate and and length of survival
post the uh the stent um so so what we can do is more time
intensive but because we can do it in groups which adds the extra power of peer support
which we talked about earlier but it means it’s a whole lot more cost effective so
again i see it as a no-brainer that things will shift this way eventually but we still need to persuade
the different levels of government that this is something that we should be funded um
i’m i deeply believe that health care is a human right along like alongside housing and
education um and and that it shouldn’t be a commodity as
it is in the us largely so although the programs we’re setting up
and delivering uh uh fee for service at the moment it’s be only because we have to pay for our time
we’re not doing this to get rich um but i see this inevitably as something
that will be publicly funded and and therefore available to people who may not be able to afford our
programs at the moment and that that saddens me that there are people who would benefit from this but
who who won’t have the the money or perhaps even the time to do this
um [Music] some health insurance companies in workplaces in the us are actually
funding their staff to do immersion retreats or to go to places like true north
health centre because they see that sending a staff member who’s overweight and or unwell
on a seven day immersion retreat for example which might cost five or six thousand or more in the us
is a really valuable investment because the in the us where the workplace pays the health insurance
premiums that can be a massive saving to that employer so there’s
slightly different dynamics and drivers in the us system um employers here don’t pay health care
costs for for staff although they do pay the price of reduced productivity
and there’s an australian study which shows that the healthiest employees
in a workplace can be up to 300 more productive than the least healthy
so that was the that was a pitch we made in the local government where i
ran these programs it was all based around productivity and
and that’s a serious argument employers should take note because there’s a lot of
lost time through absenteeism and even presenteeism through people who are
functioning way below their their optimum capacity just because
they’re unwell um we know in australia that almost every working age adult has multiple risk
factors for chronic disease if they don’t already have chronic disease so
the and the employers that support staff in this way are also
going to benefit from increased engagement and loyalty um potentially a lot less staff turnover
um also attracting the best and brightest because they they they’re demonstrating they really
take employee health seriously so
there are some drivers for change but until we can get state or federal funding of programs
like these then it’s going to be challenging to make it pay um
and we’re we’re cutting the cost of our programs that i’m running with colleagues as low as we can
um but it’s still challenging to make these things run cost effectively and and
yeah anyway more questions absolutely um maybe a little bit more
about where people would find your programs but you mentioned one thing i guess earlier where it’s like
my emma hurst interview she’s an mp in the government in new south wales in sydney australia and during my interview
with her she said like change happens at the individual level in terms of veganism there’s a streak to
activists the cubes of truth then the businesses pick up so they create more plant-based things based on
demand and then it’s not until later down the road when the businesses and the individuals like enough people
change before people like current government could really make change and like because the
constituents aren’t aware of it so it seems like based on what we talked about before where there’s the individuals waking up being
aware then businesses and clinics and doctors and organizations like yours
making the change here and it’s like the government comes next and it’s not really
the we don’t want to rely on them to make the change for us so that’s a really big takeaway i got from
all my interviews here do you want to expand more um about i guess your specific programs where
people could find you and more stuff like that yeah sure um and and i think you’ve
summed it up correctly in terms of the the change process i think it’s always much more powerful when
change comes from below from the community i don’t think we can expect governments
to lead on this they’re too beholden to the status quo and the very big cashed up
industries as discussed earlier the animal ag pharmaceutical industries etc
even our peak medical bodies have got a lot of power and and as dr michael greger has
mentioned in his talks the american medical association opposed the the first
um director general’s warning against smoking when it first came out but they were shown at the time to be taking
large donations from the tobacco industry so yeah there’s this
government is not going to be the first to lead on this but they will sniff the wind and see if there’s change coming
from below um [Music] but i
i subscribe to the thinking of people like john dewey who said government is the shadow cast by big business
it’s not where the real power is at the power is these trillion dollar corporations
you can who can generally make or break governments and we’ve seen that in australia when government tried to
increase royalties on mining for example or change laws around our gambling
businesses and in both cases the government ran away with its tail between its legs after
getting a hiding from these industries um it really shows where the power is so
we have to keep building change from below um but governments understand economics as well like if we can put it
to them that we can deliver a program like this for one thousand or three thousand or four
thousand compared to fifty thousand dollars for a bypass and ongoing huge costs
then that’s that’s a no-brainer for for economists um so the programs that my colleagues and i
are offering i’m working with um my friends and colleagues dr malcolm mackay a malcolm a melbourne plant-based gp and
his partner jenny cameron who’s a nutritionist and health coach
we are offering a 10-week um lifestyle medicine programs to to
give people support in all the domains of health to get well and to take control of their health and
to empower them so that includes nutrition obviously but
support around exercise sleep substance use
stress management social connection purpose things like that
so all the key domains of health and well-being and we have a parallel
program which is a compressed version so people can either take the 10-week program at three or
four hours a week or they can do an intensive seven-day immersion program
and the next one is late november out in the beautiful yarra valley
and that includes the same content as the 10-week course but compressed so cooking classes nutrition classes
gen walks in the bush yoga meditation stress reduction etc
education around getting good sleep managing your stress managing substance use etc
complementing those we offer webinars and seminars
e-newsletters individual consultations with ourselves or the other
practitioners we’re working with the exercise teacher the the yoga teacher the cooking instructor
all of the people can get individual consultations in addition
we’re also offering the workplace health programs um so it’s we’re aiming it as a suite of
options to suit any person with with their time and their budget
as much as possible as i said earlier it would be ideal if these things were all supported by the government and were
were publicly funded and at no cost but unfortunately we have to cover our
costs and so there is a fee for these but we
basically wanting to get runs on the board we will gather more data as we go
and have more of a powerful case to present to to governments
to say this is working this is something you should fund and we we also aim to gather data to get
research publications um all of us are in private practice as
well um so we’re seeing this on a one-to-one basis
the power of these changes that these things can make um i’ve helped people reverse diabetes
i’ve helped people reverse rheumatoid arthritis sinusitis all kinds of
chronic conditions people have got relief from pain and suffering and got well
i had a patient email me a couple of weeks ago saying i first saw him in mid-september last year
so what about nine months ago he said he and his wife had each lost 35 kilos
and were feeling fantastic and he sent me before and after photos and he now looks like a normal healthy
person with a normal weight so amazing it’s just incredibly rewarding doing this work
um because it’s people get so well and it just changes
their life um and it it makes me just
really sad to see people essentially sleepwalking to a later life
of sickness and and pain and and potential surgeries and
potentially a shorter life not knowing what they don’t know um
so it really is powerful helping spread this this message that people can can take
take control of their health and not have to suffer with the burden of chronic disease and
obesity um it’s so fulfilling
um [Music] yeah anyway yeah it sounds like amazing work that
you do where just when you describe it right there that sums everything up where i just picture like people could
go in they could go to a seven day retreat it’s kind of like a vacation they surround themselves with positive people they could enjoy learn new things
and come out transformed and i still from my experience like it’s like the three-week window or like a one-week
window when you put yourself in a new environment it kind of like shatters your reality breaks you out of your habits and then you’re on your way
to keep going up from there so what’s your website where people could go to find more information about this
um we have a new website just launching today in fact um
called melbournelifestylemedicine.com.eiu so you can find us there and the suite
of programs and information much more detail about what the programs are and detail about
us how to contact us etc [Music]
you
