September 2, 2025 • 32 mins
Your immune system isn't just a shield against disease—it's your body's secret weapon for healing, maintenance, and even mental wellbeing. Dr. Charles Akle, with over 50 years of medical experience ranging from surgical oncology to transplantation, reveals the extraordinary hidden powers of immunity that modern medicine is only beginning to understand.
The conversation takes us on a fascinating journey through the interconnected web of immunity, from surprising revelations about the brain-gut axis to groundbreaking cancer treatments. Did you know that 35% of your brain consists of immune cells? Or that simply looking at sick people triggers measurable immune responses in your body? These discoveries are transforming how we understand health and disease.
Dr. Akle shares compelling research comparing city dwellers to rural residents, explaining why urbanites suffer more from chronic inflammation and stress. This environmental disconnect—what he calls missing our "old friends" in nature—has profound implications for everything from allergies to mental health. The solution isn't complicated: reconnecting with natural environments, embracing dietary diversity, and understanding the critical role of sleep in immune maintenance.
The most practical insights come from Dr. Akle's evidence-based recommendations on fiber intake (aim for 30g daily), the benefits of Mediterranean-style eating, and why we should reconsider our approach to supplements. His perspective challenges the "more is better" mentality while offering accessible ways to support your body's natural healing abilities—what he playfully calls your "Wolverine factor."
Ready to harness the full potential of your immune system? Listen now to discover how this ancient biological network might be the key to addressing modern health challenges from cancer to post-viral syndromes and beyond. Your body already possesses remarkable healing abilities—it's time to learn how to activate them.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to another podcast of Living a Full Life.
We have a very special guestthis week, Dr Charles Ackle, out
from the UK.
Thanks for being with us today,Doc.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Great, great pleasure .
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes, we were talking in the green room and you've got
a long history in the medicalfield.
You've seen a lot of things andtoday we're going to talk about
the all-encompassing world ofthe immune system field.
You've seen a lot of things andtoday we're going to talk about
the all-encompassing world ofthe immune system and I'm so
grateful that you're herebecause I've been saying the
immune system on and off, for Ithink every third podcast.
The immune system comes intoplay when we talk about health
(00:35):
and wellness.
And here you are, in thetrenches in disease, in
pathology, for for years you'reonly 49 years old, but even all
these years where this has beenhappening, you've been doing
this and I'm just grateful foryour insights in this and your
experience.
So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you very much.
I wish I were 49 years old butI'm reasonably well-preserved.
I mean, I started medicalschool in 1970, which is 55
years ago, so it's a long longtime.
But I was always interested inimmunology and the reason was,
of course, in the 70s it wasabout kidney and liver
(01:14):
transplantation.
That was what it was all aboutand the fact that you reject
donor organs and how to dealwith rejection, and we got lots
of stories.
We could do another wholepodcast on that.
And I worked on thetransplantation of pancreatic
islets these are the bits of thepancreas that deal with sugar
(01:34):
metabolism and diabetes.
And that was where my surgicalinterest.
But basically I was a redblooded surgeon.
I treated cancer, mainlygastrointestinal cancer and
gastrointestinal diseases, andwe never really understood the
full impact of the immune system.
And secondly, more recentlywe've now begun to understand
(01:57):
the role of the microbiome as aninteraction and this whole
thing of the gut-brain axis, andI'll try and clarify that in a
minute.
But the immune system is thefundamental of all our living
structures.
If you think about it, it's oneof the oldest preserved
entities.
In most organisms there's animmune activation.
(02:17):
It defends us, so it fights offinfection, whether it's viral,
bacterial.
Whatever it repairs the damagethat occurs if you cut yourself.
The immune system is whatrepairs you and heals it and
sorts it all out.
Not very well in man, I mean.
If we were all axolotls, youknow the little Mexican
(02:38):
salamander.
You can cut its tail off andit'll grow a new one, or a leg.
It'll grow a new leg.
We're getting there.
You know the day will come whenyou'll be able to grow a new
leg.
But that's all about immunology.
That's the immunology that doesthat.
And then there's the maintenance, and the maintenance is
something that's veryinteresting because you need to
maintain any good set ofmachinery.
You know, if you don't maintainyour car, it falls to bits
(03:00):
fairly quickly, and so if youdon't maintain yourself, you
will degenerate and basicallyrot.
And whether that's not cleaningup your brain processes when
you're asleep during the night,which is part of what the immune
system does.
And that's why sleep is soimportant, because that's your
downtime, when the immune systemcan get on and work and clean
up all the rubbish that'saccrued there.
(03:22):
And that link between repair,maintenance and defence is
absolutely fundamental andthat's why it's so complicated
and there are so many differentengineers, soldiers, designers,
and I always think it's amazinganybody survives and things
don't go wrong.
It's that complicated and whatwe try as human beings is to try
(03:46):
and reduce it to reduct,reductioid absurdum, which is,
you know, to an absurd level.
So if, if one of somethingworks, 10 of something works 10
times better doesn't happen thatway.
And I remember, um, my interestin, in in this aspect of the gut
brainbrain axis really occurredbecause I operated on somebody
years ago, saved him and he wasa billionaire and he thought I
(04:11):
had something to do with it anddidn't realize it was all to do
with his immune system and thehigher authority, not me.
And I took this money to aprofessor of cancer oncology in
a major university in the UK andsaid look, here's, here's 15
million dollars.
That's what it was.
Then he said oh, wow, wow,thank you.
(04:31):
This is for cancer research,yeah, but you have to look at
the immunology of cancer now.
Just to put that in context,that was in 2009, only 15 years
ago, and his response and thatof the other doctors and
consultants who were with himand professors was what's
immunology got to do with cancer?
(04:52):
It doesn't work.
And I nearly hit the floorbecause of my experience with
transplantation.
We knew, for example, that withtransplanted organs, if you
transplanted enough materialfrom the donor, that with
transplanted organs, if youtransplanted enough material
from the donor and there was alittle cancer in the skin, for
example, of the recipient, thedonor cells would kill the
cancer.
(05:12):
So I knew from personalexperience that the sort of
graft versus host reaction thatyou get is actually beneficial
for killing off cancers, andactually a lot of the way that
that happens is probably avariation of that
graft-versus-hertz reaction.
So that was I thought, well,look, I'll go and do it myself.
And then I started studying it,which is why I haven't retired.
(05:34):
I mean, I'm coming up to 73years of age but I'm still going
strong and the brain's stillthere somewhere, I think, and
it's the cancer that has alwaysdriven me.
But it's just the tip of aniceberg.
All the other things thatfollow well-being, coping, etc.
(05:55):
Come from that.
So we started working on anatural way of maintaining and
hosting your immune system andthen actually an organism that
would help to trigger a cancerresponse.
We started originally with BCG.
Bcg stands for BacillusCalmet-Guerin, very French, and
it's the vaccine fortuberculosis, right, and it's
(06:16):
been used for decades to try andboost the immune system so that
it will then attack a cancer orhelp some other immune-related
condition.
And do you know what?
The first dose works quite well.
I mean.
As a student I rememberinjecting malignant melanoma
rather horrible skin cancer andputting BCG around it, and the
(06:37):
first time you did it you got aterrific response.
Second time not so good.
Third time you made it worse,because BCG, like tuberculosis,
is a bad boy.
You know they're street gangtype people, they're not decent
mycobacteria.
Whereas we're surrounded bymycobacteria in our environment,
(06:58):
in the soil, in the earth,there's probably 180 other
species minimum of mycobacteriawhich are entirely benign and
which trigger and tune regularlyour immune response.
We get constant exposure and weget a constant upgrade in
what's going on to our immunesystem.
Did you know worms also do that?
(07:19):
Infections with worms have thatsame effect.
I had this interest inulcerative colitis, a rather
nasty gut problem, and wormswill actually help Crohn's
disease and ulcerative colitisfor a while.
And trying to persuade patientsto eat worms is not so easy.
But they'll take themycobacteria.
(07:39):
So there's an interesting pieceof work that goes on in that
way, which we won't get to.
But the point is that yournatural environment is critical
in terms of stimulating yourimmune system and it almost
certainly does it through themicrobiome in your gut.
So one of the pieces of work wedid we were doing lung cancer
study and giving this back tohim.
(08:01):
We didn't know how the immunesystem worked in cancer.
To tell you the truth, this wasmany years ago 10 years ago and
that's a long time.
In immunological,immuno-oncology and what the
main consultant, mary O'Brien atthe Marsden, which is, like our
MD Anderson, you know, one ofthe top memorials, whatever
(08:22):
equivalent what they noticed wasthat the patients who received
the mycobacterium to boost theirimmunity in lung cancer were
happy, they coped, they hadresilience, they didn't get
infections in the winter.
You couldn't blind the studybecause the minute the patient
walked into the room you couldtell that they were on it.
(08:42):
They didn't live particularlyany longer because we didn't
understand how the thing workedand the adjuvant effect and all
that which we can go into, butprobably not in huge detail.
But this was extraordinary andthis prompted Professor Chris
Lowry, who is based in Boulder,colorado, is a professor of
(09:02):
neuroscience, brilliantscientist, to look and see.
Well, why are these people sohappy?
And in his experimental models,which was rats and mice.
They gave them themycobacterium and, sure enough,
what happened was they got aboost in their serotonergic
activity.
So they started secreting a lotmore serotonin into the brain.
(09:23):
And serotonin, as you well know, people know it as the happy
molecule.
It's the thing that gives you,you know, and it's one factor.
Further study over the years byChris and all sorts of
extraordinary people StefanReber et cetera in Germany have
shown that it's mediated throughcontrol of immune responses in
(09:44):
the brain.
That it's mediated throughcontrol of immune responses in
the brain.
I mean, even five years ago,most doctors would tell you the
brain hasn't got an immunesystem, which is stupid really,
when you think.
I mean, doctors are supposed tobe very clever, but as a doctor
I can be as rude as I likeabout them.
They really can be very, veryentrenched in their ideas.
35% of the brain is made up ofimmune cells.
(10:06):
How can you tell me that there'sno immune system going on in
the brain?
It's idiotic, isn't it?
You know, whoever put it thereput it there for a reason.
So the point is that it's thecontrol of immunity and
inflammation in the brain thatthen improves the whole business
of the mood and control andeverything works a lot better.
In the same way that if you getinflammation triggering
(10:30):
somewhere else, it affects thebrain.
Bad stress to the brain causesinflammation and affects
everything else.
I know you're an expert onCOVID and other things.
You've only got to have a doseof bad flu and you feel like
somebody's hit you with a youknow sledgehammer right or
baseball bat.
You feel awful.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I like how you highlighted the immune system
from the brain.
I mean, people always said thebrain controls the immune system
.
But in all, a newer piece ofresearch for me.
You know I'm in my 40s now butthey've just found a new sacral
plexus and the dental industryhas found a new dental facial
plexus, micro plexus, throughmicro scanning that we can do
(11:16):
and they're like what are allthese nerves?
So we're going to have all thesenew nerves labeled soon with
all the new modern names.
But we're still learning more.
And it's always been said thatthe brain controls the immune
system, even though, when wetally up the number of cells,
the mesenteric system is largerthan the brain, which is
unbelievable.
So which one is the brain?
Is it the gut or is?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
it, the brain?
They both are.
The truth is, you're talkingabout an entire organism.
I mean, it's like a jellyfishif you can break it up into
individual little polyps, but ifyou put the whole together, the
sum of the parts are greater.
But here's a fascinating pieceof work that came out literally
three or four weeks ago and waspublished in Nature.
I don't make these things up.
I don't believe in touchy-feelyscience.
(11:58):
I'm a hard-nosed scientist.
I want data, and there's apaper came out in Nature showing
that if you look at sick people, you boost your immune system.
How extraordinary is that.
Did you know that?
So what they did was they putgoggles and showed avatars of
(12:20):
sick people and what have you?
And they measured the immuneresponses, particularly in the
gut, and boom up they go.
So all you have to do with thebrain is look at somebody who's
sick and your own system beginsto trigger the defense process.
Well, how fantastic is that?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
right.
Is that why nurses andhospitals are all so healthy?
I mean, that's all they do allday, right?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, but that's probably because they have
compassion, they get it and say,okay, I'm going to deal with
this.
And, by the way, there's adifference between acute and
chronic inflammation which weneed to maybe address.
And I suppose the best way oflooking at that is the
experiment that Stefan Reber andChris Lowry did, which was to
look at city boys againstcountry lads.
(13:03):
And the city boys had never hadany exposure to animals, didn't
have pets or anything like that.
They were basically working inoffices all day.
The guys in the farms, theywere working with animals or
cowboys, whatever, and what theydid was they took these two
separate cohorts, 20 in each,and they did a psychological
(13:24):
stress test.
It's called the TRIO stresstest, but basically you stand
them up in front of a couple ofpeople with white coats and you
scare them.
You ask them stupid questions,questions, and they have to do
calculations in their head.
They get a bit flustered andyou measure their immune system
uh responses, the basic ones,il6 and tnf, alpha and all those
cortisol, adrenaline.
So you do the basic stuff andwhat's extraordinary is that the
(13:48):
country lads um, they get a bigspike in adrenaline and
everything else.
Their immune responses shoot up.
But once the stress is over,within a matter of hours,
they're normal.
When you do the city boys, theyshoot up nothing like as high
and they take a lot longer to goback to normal.
In fact, they're probablyalways slightly elevated, and
(14:10):
that's the difference between anacute response and chronic
response.
So the way you can think ofthis is when we were animals,
you know, developing on thesavannah, if you like, in Africa
, if a lion came to get you, youhad an acute response and you
either sat there and got eatenor you ran like hell.
(14:31):
It's probably why some africanrunners are the greatest runners
on the planet, because there isone who actually used to get
lions to chase him there's, Ithink it was kipikano or
somebody.
He actually used to say I hadto go and herd my, my parents,
goats and things, and the lionwould come through and boy could
I run.
Okay, and so they.
So that's acute and there's abeginning, middle and an end to
(14:52):
that, and when it's finished youget on with your life.
The problem is if you then moveto living in a forest and
behind every tree there's a bear, and I gather there's a big
problem with bears in Canada,america at the moment attacking
people, but it's saying behindevery tree there could be a bear
.
And every time you think, oh myGod, there's going to be a bear
(15:13):
, oh, there's a bear, oh there'sa bear.
You never relax, you neversettle down and become normal.
So you become chronicallyinflamed because your brain
affects it.
And this is fascinating to mebecause it shows that living,
modern living in an urban junglewith concrete, no fresh air, no
(15:35):
fresh spaces, no exposure toanimals, is not doing us any
good.
And the food that we eat is notideal in the rural environment
Sorry, the urban environment.
The rural environment is betterif you're eating decent food.
So this acute versus chronicinflammation is actually very
(15:56):
important.
But what I told you aboutlooking at a sick person and
triggering an immune response isextraordinary.
The counterpart to this is thatagain within the last two years
, there have been studies againpublished in major journals
which show that when you treatmalignant melanoma this is
particularly malignant melanomaif you treat malignant melanoma
(16:18):
with immune therapy, about 50%of the patients are cured, which
is fantastic, because I used tooperate on malignant melanomas
and we were lucky to get 5%five-year survival with the
advanced case.
Now lucky to get 5% five-yearsurvival with the advanced case.
Now they've got a 50% five-yearsurvival.
It's fantastic, but 50% don'trespond.
(16:38):
Why so?
Some clever people?
Doctors took feces, they did afecal transplant, a microbial
transplant from responders thosewho'd benefited and put it into
the non-responders.
And 30% of those responded.
I read that study.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You remember that study?
Yeah, and if you take it fromhealthy people, a healthy donor,
you get a 50% response rate.
Well to me, that sort of worksin the other direction.
They feel better, their immuneresponse is restored.
Well to me, that sort of worksin the other direction.
They feel better, their immuneresponse is restored.
And so fecal transplantation isagain another big interest of
(17:23):
mine.
It can become a fad, it has tobe done very carefully.
But when you consider howimportant your microbial milieu
and it's to do with diversity,uh and, and that every day a
paper comes out saying thisbacteria does that and that
bacteria does this and that, I,I, I think my experience in life
(17:44):
is that, um, when you see thatyou know that there's something
not quite right.
Um, if you look at the tube mapin in, I think, there's the
metro, you would call it in NewYork, or the underground in
London you have a tube map withlots of stations all linked by
railways, and if you knock outone station, people just take
(18:07):
another route.
And it's the same in biologicalsystems.
Biological systems are like amap and they all cross over.
If you hit one system only,eventually that system will
repair itself and fix itself.
You have to knock out the keystations, and the typical
example was the terrorist attackin London in 2005, where Oxford
(18:31):
Circus, which is a very centralunderground station, was
knocked out Within a matter ofdays.
The whole system was workingperfectly well because people
just went around it.
You need to knock out the bigstations, and that's the same in
cancer, to some extent inautoimmune disorders, aging
processes that we talk about,and you know it's like
(18:53):
supplements.
We want this supplement, thatsupplement, the other
supplements.
I have a fairly dim view of alot of supplements, except two
or three.
Vitamin D, I think, has gotenough data behind it to support
its effect and I think I haveto tell you it's the only one I
take of that.
(19:14):
Of those vitamins, I do nottake vitamin E, for example,
because, again, people think,well, if one vitamin is good, 10
must be better.
Vitamin E was shown to increasethe risk of prostate cancer.
This is paper back in 2011,.
We've known this, so you needto be careful.
But vitamin D, undoubtedly, Ithink, is a good thing, so long
(19:34):
as you don't overdo it.
You mustn't overdose becauseyou can injure yourself.
I like the omega-3s.
I know you've spokenextensively about how important
the omega factors are.
I think they are relevant, Ithink they're good for the brain
, but, again, you should betrying to get these with your
natural diet, not necessarilyhaving to take your, your fiber,
your, your, your, your pills,and fiber, by the way, being a
(19:57):
very important factor.
We've, we've forgotten about theword supplements.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I think we've lost the definition of what that
means.
It's to supplement a healthydiet.
A healthy diet and I think youknow, you're in Europe they do
well better with the food there.
Here it's tough running apractice here, and in Canada,
and my parents being immigrantsfrom Italy and Greece, it's a
vast difference when it comes todiet.
So a supplement here, the veryAmerican mentality is well, if
(20:26):
one's good for me, 175 is evenbetter, and that's the issue you
know.
So what?
Now we're getting into somesubstance here for the listeners
.
Well, this is fantasticinformation.
What do I do when?
What do I do?
Do I need a fecal transplant?
Do I have to go to myneighbor's house?
What you know, what they're allthinking, all these things and
(20:46):
what we see undoubtedly from theyoung kids that we take care of
all the way from the age offour and up, is dysbiosis of the
gut.
Everyone is coming back becausewe do stool testing, we do
fecal testing, that's how we getour numbers, and it's dysbiosis
all over the place and we tellthem if we don't fix the bottom
(21:07):
part of the glacier, the bottompart of sorry, the iceberg, this
tip of the symptoms that you'recoming in, I just don't even
know if we're going to get there.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Exactly, and it's more of an issue because of
these things like post-viralsyndrome.
Again, it's something I learnedin my practice that it was very
unfashionable 30, 40 years ago.
You'd see somebody get a viralillness and unless it was
something like hepatitis B orwhatever, or everybody would say
, oh well, they always get sickfor months afterwards.
(21:35):
Afterwards, the medicalprofession did not think of
post-viral syndrome.
Whether you want to call itfibromyalgia, you want to call
it, you know it has many, many,many different names, but
basically it's a post-infectiveyuck.
You just feel awful, you getthe sort of arthritic pains.
It's all very nonspecific andvery difficult to measure
(21:58):
because you're not, they're notmeasuring the, the immune
responses.
If you measure the correctimmune responses, you, you pick
it up immediately.
And so this business of thesupplements and things.
I think you're right.
I think in america part of theproblem is that the fast food
system which was born in a wayin america has not helped the
population, because there areproblems with obesity which lead
(22:20):
to diabetes, which lead to theincrease in cancer.
You know, americans should bethe longest living, healthiest
people on the planet and they'renot, and part of that is
because of this business of notlooking after themselves with
the diet, and rubbish in,rubbish out is what it is.
So I think ultra processedfoods of the wrong kind.
(22:40):
And, by the way, is what again?
So I think ultra processedfoods of the wrong kind, and, by
the way, I'm not against allultra processed foods.
Some ultra processed foods arefantastic and if you think of
you you mentioned your greek anditalian ancestry some of the
fermented food, the yogurts uh,you know the germans with their
sauerkraut, the kimchi, allthese other things, these, these
are all processed foods andactually they're very, very good
(23:01):
for you.
But the Mediterranean diet is.
I don't think there's anyquestion that things like olive
oil, fresh fruits, seasonalvegetables, all that sort of
stuff is good for you because itfeeds your microbiome.
And fiber, which I touched onearlier, is one thing that is
very missing, particularly inthe Western diet, because that
(23:22):
is the food which most of thebacteria in our gut depend on,
and they produce all sorts ofthings that we need.
A lot of vitamins, for example,are produced by bacteria.
There's even material that isvery like Wegovy.
You know the SGP1.
It's a diabetic thing, I knowit is, but people are using it
(23:42):
for weight loss, etc.
You produce that naturally ifyou've got the right milieu, the
right environment.
So farm your microbiome issomething I teach, and I think
that the way to do that is totry and look at your food and
eat sensibly and I'm sure you'vegot several podcasts where
(24:03):
you've gone through it in greatdetail.
But there's a lot out there.
But fiber, probiotics,mediterranean type diet, these
are all big factors.
If you must take a supplement,for sure vitamin D, and it's got
to be taken all year round, as,again, I think you've taught.
I think the omega-3s are verygood.
(24:23):
I like natural honey, yourlocal honey, and you should feed
your children peanut butter andnatural honey because then they
won't get allergies.
They'll have exposure to thelocal bacteria and antigens and
things that are around them, thepollen that is around them.
I like garlic, I like butthat's the Mediterranean thing,
(24:45):
if you like, on it.
I like a bit of red wine.
I have to tell you Again,that's probably a bit naughty,
but again, in moderation.
It's that business that youknow, half a glass of wine or
quarter of a bottle of wine aday is going to be really good
for you.
Two bottles is going to killyou, right?
I mean, it's just going to bereasonable, just like anything.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Now, when it comes to fiber, 30 grams of fiber per
day should be continuousthroughout the day.
So a scoop of Metamucil is notfiber.
That's not how we get our fiberin, and the average American
gets about six grams of fiberper day.
So I'm just giving you somenumbers there and the listeners
(25:27):
I mean you can track this on allthe apps now.
You just put in a daily recordyour diet for three days, watch
what happens, look where you'reover getting and where you're
under getting, and you'll seefiber quite low.
And it's because we're noteating our fibrous vegetables
and our fibrous fruits there yougo, and and that's the point
that there's our new trend.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
There are two new trends that seem to be happening
in in our business.
One is, uh, fiber maxing thatpeople are now beginning to take
almost too much fiber, whichisn't necessarily good for again
, it's that business of you knowoverdoing things.
But 50, 30 grams fantastic, 50,okay, but more than that
probably you're not doing itright.
(26:07):
So you need to look at fiber.
Metamucil is okay, even if it'sonly to show you what can be
achieved in terms of comfort tothe bowels.
All my patients with piles orirritable bowel syndrome all
benefited from having some fiberfor the gut to work on.
But ultimately you need thenatural stuff and if you can't
tolerate wheat because you mightbe wheat intolerant, there's
(26:29):
oat fiber.
There's a zillion kinds ofcellulosic material that you can
take naturally without havingto worry about it, naturally,
without having to worry about it.
The other thing, by the way,thinking of the brain is I just
saw this the other day AIpsychosis, as we're sort of free
ranging artificial intelligencepsychosis, and that is that
(26:50):
people now are living in a verystrange world.
There are some people who seemto have made friends and fallen
in love with their chatbots andcan't live without them, and I
think the label is AI psychosisand they are in all sorts of
trouble because they don't getout, they don't sleep, they
don't.
They've got blue light shiningall over them during the night,
(27:10):
They've got screen fatigue andit's not doing them any good.
I bet you, if you were tomeasure their immune responses,
they'd be absolutely atrocious.
And again, people need to takecontrol of their own lives and
that means your diet, your mood,your sleep.
Now, pollution is another thingI know you've talked about.
(27:32):
Pollution is a huge problem andprobably not a great deal that
we as individuals can do otherthan not to smoke, for example,
and avoid chemicals.
These are obvious things.
But air pollution is a bigproblem in cities.
Move to the country Exercise, Alack of exercise is a problem,
and particularly in a countryatmosphere.
(27:54):
So in Scandinavia again you mayhave read the Scandinavians now
have, particularly in Finland,in the children's playgrounds at
school they have forestmaterial, all the spare forest
leaves and trees.
They chunter up and put them onthe ground of the playground to
the mud and soil and wood andleaf material, and you know the
(28:21):
effect on those kids in terms oftheir allergic responses and
mood is fantastic.
It's something like a 30 to 40percent benefit in this.
So go for a walk, get a dog Imean, if you have an animal,
that interrelationship with yourmicrobiome is actually also
very beneficial.
(28:41):
Don't be too clean.
Wash your hands.
Of course you don't want to behandling dog poo and stuff with
the children.
Clean your hands, but on theother hand, don't worry too much
if your kid rolls around in themud and gets a bit dirty or
whatever.
These are natural ways oftrying to boost your immunity.
Whatever.
These are natural ways oftrying to boost your immunity.
(29:03):
And it's the immune system thatis your secret weapon.
That's your Wolverine factor.
I think I can show my age.
I know about Wolverine.
I love Wolverine because he'sgot this healing factor right.
So think of the immune systemas a slightly slower version
Don't do this at home, you know,but it's a slower version of
the Wolverine factor.
(29:23):
And then you have a bit of anidea of the power of the immune
system that already existswithin us.
You need to make use of it.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, thanks, dr Ackle.
I mean just shifting theconsciousness towards the
greater reality of what healthis and where it really comes
from.
That's been my mission is asdoctors, in any particular field
, it's our job to take apart themachine and become very hyper
focused in the one system thatwe're specialized in, and it's
(29:54):
very easy to just turn that intoa machine of parts, and we're
not.
We don't work that way with.
We're not, we're not.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I'm a great believer in the natural environment and
dealing with things naturally,and that walk in the woods and
exposure to your environmentalold friends, as we call them, is
why we developed imi.
Imi is a capsule containingolive oil, which is good for you
, and it has this mycobacteriacalled mycobacterium aurum that
(30:22):
we we have, and it's it worksorally as an immunoadjuvant, an
immuno stimulator, if you liketo try and to try and replace
what is missing when you don'tgo for your walk in the woods
and you not got exposure to yourmud and and environment.
If you look at our website,imico, uh, you'll, you'll be
(30:43):
able to find out where you canget hold of some.
It's a dollar a day, which is,we think, affordable.
We, we, I don't like the idea ofmy fellow human being having to
pay a lot of money for what isa a natural process that they
should have, but it's the onlyway we can supply this material.
Our experience with dealingwith cancer and other agents
(31:04):
shows us that this stuffactually can work extremely well
.
You've got to keep taking itbecause you need to have
constant contact with yourenvironment and stimulation, so
that's really the only othersupplement I take.
In fact, it's the onlysupplement I always take and I
recommend it.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Makes sense and make sure to go check that out, and
they can just go to imico, right?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Exactly Not com or co anything else.
Yeah, it's really easy.
There's some really good blogs,Not as good as yours, but
there's plenty of informationthere.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
No, it's great.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
That's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us.
This was phenomenal and maybecross paths again.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I hope you'll invite me again.
There's so much to I mean, I'vebeen around for so long.
There's so much to discuss andI hope the message got through.
Keep it simple, keep it healthy.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Thanks, Dr Eccle.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
God bless.
Welcome to another podcast of Living a Full Life.
We have a very special guestthis week, Dr Charles Ackle, out
from the UK.
Thanks for being with us today,Doc.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Great, great pleasure .
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes, we were talking in the green room and you've got
a long history in the medicalfield.
You've seen a lot of things andtoday we're going to talk about
the all-encompassing world ofthe immune system field.
You've seen a lot of things andtoday we're going to talk about
the all-encompassing world ofthe immune system and I'm so
grateful that you're herebecause I've been saying the
immune system on and off, for Ithink every third podcast.
The immune system comes intoplay when we talk about health
(00:35):
and wellness.
And here you are, in thetrenches in disease, in
pathology, for for years you'reonly 49 years old, but even all
these years where this has beenhappening, you've been doing
this and I'm just grateful foryour insights in this and your
experience.
So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thank you very much.
I wish I were 49 years old butI'm reasonably well-preserved.
I mean, I started medicalschool in 1970, which is 55
years ago, so it's a long longtime.
But I was always interested inimmunology and the reason was,
of course, in the 70s it wasabout kidney and liver
(01:14):
transplantation.
That was what it was all aboutand the fact that you reject
donor organs and how to dealwith rejection, and we got lots
of stories.
We could do another wholepodcast on that.
And I worked on thetransplantation of pancreatic
islets these are the bits of thepancreas that deal with sugar
(01:34):
metabolism and diabetes.
And that was where my surgicalinterest.
But basically I was a redblooded surgeon.
I treated cancer, mainlygastrointestinal cancer and
gastrointestinal diseases, andwe never really understood the
full impact of the immune system.
And secondly, more recentlywe've now begun to understand
(01:57):
the role of the microbiome as aninteraction and this whole
thing of the gut-brain axis, andI'll try and clarify that in a
minute.
But the immune system is thefundamental of all our living
structures.
If you think about it, it's oneof the oldest preserved
entities.
In most organisms there's animmune activation.
(02:17):
It defends us, so it fights offinfection, whether it's viral,
bacterial.
Whatever it repairs the damagethat occurs if you cut yourself.
The immune system is whatrepairs you and heals it and
sorts it all out.
Not very well in man, I mean.
If we were all axolotls, youknow the little Mexican
(02:38):
salamander.
You can cut its tail off andit'll grow a new one, or a leg.
It'll grow a new leg.
We're getting there.
You know the day will come whenyou'll be able to grow a new
leg.
But that's all about immunology.
That's the immunology that doesthat.
And then there's the maintenance, and the maintenance is
something that's veryinteresting because you need to
maintain any good set ofmachinery.
You know, if you don't maintainyour car, it falls to bits
(03:00):
fairly quickly, and so if youdon't maintain yourself, you
will degenerate and basicallyrot.
And whether that's not cleaningup your brain processes when
you're asleep during the night,which is part of what the immune
system does.
And that's why sleep is soimportant, because that's your
downtime, when the immune systemcan get on and work and clean
up all the rubbish that'saccrued there.
(03:22):
And that link between repair,maintenance and defence is
absolutely fundamental andthat's why it's so complicated
and there are so many differentengineers, soldiers, designers,
and I always think it's amazinganybody survives and things
don't go wrong.
It's that complicated and whatwe try as human beings is to try
(03:46):
and reduce it to reduct,reductioid absurdum, which is,
you know, to an absurd level.
So if, if one of somethingworks, 10 of something works 10
times better doesn't happen thatway.
And I remember, um, my interestin, in in this aspect of the gut
brainbrain axis really occurredbecause I operated on somebody
years ago, saved him and he wasa billionaire and he thought I
(04:11):
had something to do with it anddidn't realize it was all to do
with his immune system and thehigher authority, not me.
And I took this money to aprofessor of cancer oncology in
a major university in the UK andsaid look, here's, here's 15
million dollars.
That's what it was.
Then he said oh, wow, wow,thank you.
(04:31):
This is for cancer research,yeah, but you have to look at
the immunology of cancer now.
Just to put that in context,that was in 2009, only 15 years
ago, and his response and thatof the other doctors and
consultants who were with himand professors was what's
immunology got to do with cancer?
(04:52):
It doesn't work.
And I nearly hit the floorbecause of my experience with
transplantation.
We knew, for example, that withtransplanted organs, if you
transplanted enough materialfrom the donor, that with
transplanted organs, if youtransplanted enough material
from the donor and there was alittle cancer in the skin, for
example, of the recipient, thedonor cells would kill the
cancer.
(05:12):
So I knew from personalexperience that the sort of
graft versus host reaction thatyou get is actually beneficial
for killing off cancers, andactually a lot of the way that
that happens is probably avariation of that
graft-versus-hertz reaction.
So that was I thought, well,look, I'll go and do it myself.
And then I started studying it,which is why I haven't retired.
(05:34):
I mean, I'm coming up to 73years of age but I'm still going
strong and the brain's stillthere somewhere, I think, and
it's the cancer that has alwaysdriven me.
But it's just the tip of aniceberg.
All the other things thatfollow well-being, coping, etc.
(05:55):
Come from that.
So we started working on anatural way of maintaining and
hosting your immune system andthen actually an organism that
would help to trigger a cancerresponse.
We started originally with BCG.
Bcg stands for BacillusCalmet-Guerin, very French, and
it's the vaccine fortuberculosis, right, and it's
(06:16):
been used for decades to try andboost the immune system so that
it will then attack a cancer orhelp some other immune-related
condition.
And do you know what?
The first dose works quite well.
I mean.
As a student I rememberinjecting malignant melanoma
rather horrible skin cancer andputting BCG around it, and the
(06:37):
first time you did it you got aterrific response.
Second time not so good.
Third time you made it worse,because BCG, like tuberculosis,
is a bad boy.
You know they're street gangtype people, they're not decent
mycobacteria.
Whereas we're surrounded bymycobacteria in our environment,
(06:58):
in the soil, in the earth,there's probably 180 other
species minimum of mycobacteriawhich are entirely benign and
which trigger and tune regularlyour immune response.
We get constant exposure and weget a constant upgrade in
what's going on to our immunesystem.
Did you know worms also do that?
(07:19):
Infections with worms have thatsame effect.
I had this interest inulcerative colitis, a rather
nasty gut problem, and wormswill actually help Crohn's
disease and ulcerative colitisfor a while.
And trying to persuade patientsto eat worms is not so easy.
But they'll take themycobacteria.
(07:39):
So there's an interesting pieceof work that goes on in that
way, which we won't get to.
But the point is that yournatural environment is critical
in terms of stimulating yourimmune system and it almost
certainly does it through themicrobiome in your gut.
So one of the pieces of work wedid we were doing lung cancer
study and giving this back tohim.
(08:01):
We didn't know how the immunesystem worked in cancer.
To tell you the truth, this wasmany years ago 10 years ago and
that's a long time.
In immunological,immuno-oncology and what the
main consultant, mary O'Brien atthe Marsden, which is, like our
MD Anderson, you know, one ofthe top memorials, whatever
(08:22):
equivalent what they noticed wasthat the patients who received
the mycobacterium to boost theirimmunity in lung cancer were
happy, they coped, they hadresilience, they didn't get
infections in the winter.
You couldn't blind the studybecause the minute the patient
walked into the room you couldtell that they were on it.
(08:42):
They didn't live particularlyany longer because we didn't
understand how the thing workedand the adjuvant effect and all
that which we can go into, butprobably not in huge detail.
But this was extraordinary andthis prompted Professor Chris
Lowry, who is based in Boulder,colorado, is a professor of
(09:02):
neuroscience, brilliantscientist, to look and see.
Well, why are these people sohappy?
And in his experimental models,which was rats and mice.
They gave them themycobacterium and, sure enough,
what happened was they got aboost in their serotonergic
activity.
So they started secreting a lotmore serotonin into the brain.
(09:23):
And serotonin, as you well know, people know it as the happy
molecule.
It's the thing that gives you,you know, and it's one factor.
Further study over the years byChris and all sorts of
extraordinary people StefanReber et cetera in Germany have
shown that it's mediated throughcontrol of immune responses in
(09:44):
the brain.
That it's mediated throughcontrol of immune responses in
the brain.
I mean, even five years ago,most doctors would tell you the
brain hasn't got an immunesystem, which is stupid really,
when you think.
I mean, doctors are supposed tobe very clever, but as a doctor
I can be as rude as I likeabout them.
They really can be very, veryentrenched in their ideas.
35% of the brain is made up ofimmune cells.
(10:06):
How can you tell me that there'sno immune system going on in
the brain?
It's idiotic, isn't it?
You know, whoever put it thereput it there for a reason.
So the point is that it's thecontrol of immunity and
inflammation in the brain thatthen improves the whole business
of the mood and control andeverything works a lot better.
In the same way that if you getinflammation triggering
(10:30):
somewhere else, it affects thebrain.
Bad stress to the brain causesinflammation and affects
everything else.
I know you're an expert onCOVID and other things.
You've only got to have a doseof bad flu and you feel like
somebody's hit you with a youknow sledgehammer right or
baseball bat.
You feel awful.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I like how you highlighted the immune system
from the brain.
I mean, people always said thebrain controls the immune system
.
But in all, a newer piece ofresearch for me.
You know I'm in my 40s now butthey've just found a new sacral
plexus and the dental industryhas found a new dental facial
plexus, micro plexus, throughmicro scanning that we can do
(11:16):
and they're like what are allthese nerves?
So we're going to have all thesenew nerves labeled soon with
all the new modern names.
But we're still learning more.
And it's always been said thatthe brain controls the immune
system, even though, when wetally up the number of cells,
the mesenteric system is largerthan the brain, which is
unbelievable.
So which one is the brain?
Is it the gut or is?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
it, the brain?
They both are.
The truth is, you're talkingabout an entire organism.
I mean, it's like a jellyfishif you can break it up into
individual little polyps, but ifyou put the whole together, the
sum of the parts are greater.
But here's a fascinating pieceof work that came out literally
three or four weeks ago and waspublished in Nature.
I don't make these things up.
I don't believe in touchy-feelyscience.
(11:58):
I'm a hard-nosed scientist.
I want data, and there's apaper came out in Nature showing
that if you look at sick people, you boost your immune system.
How extraordinary is that.
Did you know that?
So what they did was they putgoggles and showed avatars of
(12:20):
sick people and what have you?
And they measured the immuneresponses, particularly in the
gut, and boom up they go.
So all you have to do with thebrain is look at somebody who's
sick and your own system beginsto trigger the defense process.
Well, how fantastic is that?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
right.
Is that why nurses andhospitals are all so healthy?
I mean, that's all they do allday, right?
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, but that's probably because they have
compassion, they get it and say,okay, I'm going to deal with
this.
And, by the way, there's adifference between acute and
chronic inflammation which weneed to maybe address.
And I suppose the best way oflooking at that is the
experiment that Stefan Reber andChris Lowry did, which was to
look at city boys againstcountry lads.
(13:03):
And the city boys had never hadany exposure to animals, didn't
have pets or anything like that.
They were basically working inoffices all day.
The guys in the farms, theywere working with animals or
cowboys, whatever, and what theydid was they took these two
separate cohorts, 20 in each,and they did a psychological
(13:24):
stress test.
It's called the TRIO stresstest, but basically you stand
them up in front of a couple ofpeople with white coats and you
scare them.
You ask them stupid questions,questions, and they have to do
calculations in their head.
They get a bit flustered andyou measure their immune system
uh responses, the basic ones,il6 and tnf, alpha and all those
cortisol, adrenaline.
So you do the basic stuff andwhat's extraordinary is that the
(13:48):
country lads um, they get a bigspike in adrenaline and
everything else.
Their immune responses shoot up.
But once the stress is over,within a matter of hours,
they're normal.
When you do the city boys, theyshoot up nothing like as high
and they take a lot longer to goback to normal.
In fact, they're probablyalways slightly elevated, and
(14:10):
that's the difference between anacute response and chronic
response.
So the way you can think ofthis is when we were animals,
you know, developing on thesavannah, if you like, in Africa
, if a lion came to get you, youhad an acute response and you
either sat there and got eatenor you ran like hell.
(14:31):
It's probably why some africanrunners are the greatest runners
on the planet, because there isone who actually used to get
lions to chase him there's, Ithink it was kipikano or
somebody.
He actually used to say I hadto go and herd my, my parents,
goats and things, and the lionwould come through and boy could
I run.
Okay, and so they.
So that's acute and there's abeginning, middle and an end to
(14:52):
that, and when it's finished youget on with your life.
The problem is if you then moveto living in a forest and
behind every tree there's a bear, and I gather there's a big
problem with bears in Canada,america at the moment attacking
people, but it's saying behindevery tree there could be a bear
.
And every time you think, oh myGod, there's going to be a bear
(15:13):
, oh, there's a bear, oh there'sa bear.
You never relax, you neversettle down and become normal.
So you become chronicallyinflamed because your brain
affects it.
And this is fascinating to mebecause it shows that living,
modern living in an urban junglewith concrete, no fresh air, no
(15:35):
fresh spaces, no exposure toanimals, is not doing us any
good.
And the food that we eat is notideal in the rural environment
Sorry, the urban environment.
The rural environment is betterif you're eating decent food.
So this acute versus chronicinflammation is actually very
(15:56):
important.
But what I told you aboutlooking at a sick person and
triggering an immune response isextraordinary.
The counterpart to this is thatagain within the last two years
, there have been studies againpublished in major journals
which show that when you treatmalignant melanoma this is
particularly malignant melanomaif you treat malignant melanoma
(16:18):
with immune therapy, about 50%of the patients are cured, which
is fantastic, because I used tooperate on malignant melanomas
and we were lucky to get 5%five-year survival with the
advanced case.
Now lucky to get 5% five-yearsurvival with the advanced case.
Now they've got a 50% five-yearsurvival.
It's fantastic, but 50% don'trespond.
(16:38):
Why so?
Some clever people?
Doctors took feces, they did afecal transplant, a microbial
transplant from responders thosewho'd benefited and put it into
the non-responders.
And 30% of those responded.
I read that study.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
You remember that study?
Yeah, and if you take it fromhealthy people, a healthy donor,
you get a 50% response rate.
Well to me, that sort of worksin the other direction.
They feel better, their immuneresponse is restored.
Well to me, that sort of worksin the other direction.
They feel better, their immuneresponse is restored.
And so fecal transplantation isagain another big interest of
(17:23):
mine.
It can become a fad, it has tobe done very carefully.
But when you consider howimportant your microbial milieu
and it's to do with diversity,uh and, and that every day a
paper comes out saying thisbacteria does that and that
bacteria does this and that, I,I, I think my experience in life
(17:44):
is that, um, when you see thatyou know that there's something
not quite right.
Um, if you look at the tube mapin in, I think, there's the
metro, you would call it in NewYork, or the underground in
London you have a tube map withlots of stations all linked by
railways, and if you knock outone station, people just take
(18:07):
another route.
And it's the same in biologicalsystems.
Biological systems are like amap and they all cross over.
If you hit one system only,eventually that system will
repair itself and fix itself.
You have to knock out the keystations, and the typical
example was the terrorist attackin London in 2005, where Oxford
(18:31):
Circus, which is a very centralunderground station, was
knocked out Within a matter ofdays.
The whole system was workingperfectly well because people
just went around it.
You need to knock out the bigstations, and that's the same in
cancer, to some extent inautoimmune disorders, aging
processes that we talk about,and you know it's like
(18:53):
supplements.
We want this supplement, thatsupplement, the other
supplements.
I have a fairly dim view of alot of supplements, except two
or three.
Vitamin D, I think, has gotenough data behind it to support
its effect and I think I haveto tell you it's the only one I
take of that.
(19:14):
Of those vitamins, I do nottake vitamin E, for example,
because, again, people think,well, if one vitamin is good, 10
must be better.
Vitamin E was shown to increasethe risk of prostate cancer.
This is paper back in 2011,.
We've known this, so you needto be careful.
But vitamin D, undoubtedly, Ithink, is a good thing, so long
(19:34):
as you don't overdo it.
You mustn't overdose becauseyou can injure yourself.
I like the omega-3s.
I know you've spokenextensively about how important
the omega factors are.
I think they are relevant, Ithink they're good for the brain
, but, again, you should betrying to get these with your
natural diet, not necessarilyhaving to take your, your fiber,
your, your, your, your pills,and fiber, by the way, being a
(19:57):
very important factor.
We've, we've forgotten about theword supplements.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I think we've lost the definition of what that
means.
It's to supplement a healthydiet.
A healthy diet and I think youknow, you're in Europe they do
well better with the food there.
Here it's tough running apractice here, and in Canada,
and my parents being immigrantsfrom Italy and Greece, it's a
vast difference when it comes todiet.
So a supplement here, the veryAmerican mentality is well, if
(20:26):
one's good for me, 175 is evenbetter, and that's the issue you
know.
So what?
Now we're getting into somesubstance here for the listeners
.
Well, this is fantasticinformation.
What do I do when?
What do I do?
Do I need a fecal transplant?
Do I have to go to myneighbor's house?
What you know, what they're allthinking, all these things and
(20:46):
what we see undoubtedly from theyoung kids that we take care of
all the way from the age offour and up, is dysbiosis of the
gut.
Everyone is coming back becausewe do stool testing, we do
fecal testing, that's how we getour numbers, and it's dysbiosis
all over the place and we tellthem if we don't fix the bottom
(21:07):
part of the glacier, the bottompart of sorry, the iceberg, this
tip of the symptoms that you'recoming in, I just don't even
know if we're going to get there.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Exactly, and it's more of an issue because of
these things like post-viralsyndrome.
Again, it's something I learnedin my practice that it was very
unfashionable 30, 40 years ago.
You'd see somebody get a viralillness and unless it was
something like hepatitis B orwhatever, or everybody would say
, oh well, they always get sickfor months afterwards.
(21:35):
Afterwards, the medicalprofession did not think of
post-viral syndrome.
Whether you want to call itfibromyalgia, you want to call
it, you know it has many, many,many different names, but
basically it's a post-infectiveyuck.
You just feel awful, you getthe sort of arthritic pains.
It's all very nonspecific andvery difficult to measure
(21:58):
because you're not, they're notmeasuring the, the immune
responses.
If you measure the correctimmune responses, you, you pick
it up immediately.
And so this business of thesupplements and things.
I think you're right.
I think in america part of theproblem is that the fast food
system which was born in a wayin america has not helped the
population, because there areproblems with obesity which lead
(22:20):
to diabetes, which lead to theincrease in cancer.
You know, americans should bethe longest living, healthiest
people on the planet and they'renot, and part of that is
because of this business of notlooking after themselves with
the diet, and rubbish in,rubbish out is what it is.
So I think ultra processedfoods of the wrong kind.
(22:40):
And, by the way, is what again?
So I think ultra processedfoods of the wrong kind, and, by
the way, I'm not against allultra processed foods.
Some ultra processed foods arefantastic and if you think of
you you mentioned your greek anditalian ancestry some of the
fermented food, the yogurts uh,you know the germans with their
sauerkraut, the kimchi, allthese other things, these, these
are all processed foods andactually they're very, very good
(23:01):
for you.
But the Mediterranean diet is.
I don't think there's anyquestion that things like olive
oil, fresh fruits, seasonalvegetables, all that sort of
stuff is good for you because itfeeds your microbiome.
And fiber, which I touched onearlier, is one thing that is
very missing, particularly inthe Western diet, because that
(23:22):
is the food which most of thebacteria in our gut depend on,
and they produce all sorts ofthings that we need.
A lot of vitamins, for example,are produced by bacteria.
There's even material that isvery like Wegovy.
You know the SGP1.
It's a diabetic thing, I knowit is, but people are using it
(23:42):
for weight loss, etc.
You produce that naturally ifyou've got the right milieu, the
right environment.
So farm your microbiome issomething I teach, and I think
that the way to do that is totry and look at your food and
eat sensibly and I'm sure you'vegot several podcasts where
(24:03):
you've gone through it in greatdetail.
But there's a lot out there.
But fiber, probiotics,mediterranean type diet, these
are all big factors.
If you must take a supplement,for sure vitamin D, and it's got
to be taken all year round, as,again, I think you've taught.
I think the omega-3s are verygood.
(24:23):
I like natural honey, yourlocal honey, and you should feed
your children peanut butter andnatural honey because then they
won't get allergies.
They'll have exposure to thelocal bacteria and antigens and
things that are around them, thepollen that is around them.
I like garlic, I like butthat's the Mediterranean thing,
(24:45):
if you like, on it.
I like a bit of red wine.
I have to tell you Again,that's probably a bit naughty,
but again, in moderation.
It's that business that youknow, half a glass of wine or
quarter of a bottle of wine aday is going to be really good
for you.
Two bottles is going to killyou, right?
I mean, it's just going to bereasonable, just like anything.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Now, when it comes to fiber, 30 grams of fiber per
day should be continuousthroughout the day.
So a scoop of Metamucil is notfiber.
That's not how we get our fiberin, and the average American
gets about six grams of fiberper day.
So I'm just giving you somenumbers there and the listeners
(25:27):
I mean you can track this on allthe apps now.
You just put in a daily recordyour diet for three days, watch
what happens, look where you'reover getting and where you're
under getting, and you'll seefiber quite low.
And it's because we're noteating our fibrous vegetables
and our fibrous fruits there yougo, and and that's the point
that there's our new trend.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
There are two new trends that seem to be happening
in in our business.
One is, uh, fiber maxing thatpeople are now beginning to take
almost too much fiber, whichisn't necessarily good for again
, it's that business of you knowoverdoing things.
But 50, 30 grams fantastic, 50,okay, but more than that
probably you're not doing itright.
(26:07):
So you need to look at fiber.
Metamucil is okay, even if it'sonly to show you what can be
achieved in terms of comfort tothe bowels.
All my patients with piles orirritable bowel syndrome all
benefited from having some fiberfor the gut to work on.
But ultimately you need thenatural stuff and if you can't
tolerate wheat because you mightbe wheat intolerant, there's
(26:29):
oat fiber.
There's a zillion kinds ofcellulosic material that you can
take naturally without havingto worry about it, naturally,
without having to worry about it.
The other thing, by the way,thinking of the brain is I just
saw this the other day AIpsychosis, as we're sort of free
ranging artificial intelligencepsychosis, and that is that
(26:50):
people now are living in a verystrange world.
There are some people who seemto have made friends and fallen
in love with their chatbots andcan't live without them, and I
think the label is AI psychosisand they are in all sorts of
trouble because they don't getout, they don't sleep, they
don't.
They've got blue light shiningall over them during the night,
(27:10):
They've got screen fatigue andit's not doing them any good.
I bet you, if you were tomeasure their immune responses,
they'd be absolutely atrocious.
And again, people need to takecontrol of their own lives and
that means your diet, your mood,your sleep.
Now, pollution is another thingI know you've talked about.
(27:32):
Pollution is a huge problem andprobably not a great deal that
we as individuals can do otherthan not to smoke, for example,
and avoid chemicals.
These are obvious things.
But air pollution is a bigproblem in cities.
Move to the country Exercise, Alack of exercise is a problem,
and particularly in a countryatmosphere.
(27:54):
So in Scandinavia again you mayhave read the Scandinavians now
have, particularly in Finland,in the children's playgrounds at
school they have forestmaterial, all the spare forest
leaves and trees.
They chunter up and put them onthe ground of the playground to
the mud and soil and wood andleaf material, and you know the
(28:21):
effect on those kids in terms oftheir allergic responses and
mood is fantastic.
It's something like a 30 to 40percent benefit in this.
So go for a walk, get a dog Imean, if you have an animal,
that interrelationship with yourmicrobiome is actually also
very beneficial.
(28:41):
Don't be too clean.
Wash your hands.
Of course you don't want to behandling dog poo and stuff with
the children.
Clean your hands, but on theother hand, don't worry too much
if your kid rolls around in themud and gets a bit dirty or
whatever.
These are natural ways oftrying to boost your immunity.
Whatever.
These are natural ways oftrying to boost your immunity.
(29:03):
And it's the immune system thatis your secret weapon.
That's your Wolverine factor.
I think I can show my age.
I know about Wolverine.
I love Wolverine because he'sgot this healing factor right.
So think of the immune systemas a slightly slower version
Don't do this at home, you know,but it's a slower version of
the Wolverine factor.
(29:23):
And then you have a bit of anidea of the power of the immune
system that already existswithin us.
You need to make use of it.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, thanks, dr Ackle.
I mean just shifting theconsciousness towards the
greater reality of what healthis and where it really comes
from.
That's been my mission is asdoctors, in any particular field
, it's our job to take apart themachine and become very hyper
focused in the one system thatwe're specialized in, and it's
(29:54):
very easy to just turn that intoa machine of parts, and we're
not.
We don't work that way with.
We're not, we're not.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I'm a great believer in the natural environment and
dealing with things naturally,and that walk in the woods and
exposure to your environmentalold friends, as we call them, is
why we developed imi.
Imi is a capsule containingolive oil, which is good for you
, and it has this mycobacteriacalled mycobacterium aurum that
(30:22):
we we have, and it's it worksorally as an immunoadjuvant, an
immuno stimulator, if you liketo try and to try and replace
what is missing when you don'tgo for your walk in the woods
and you not got exposure to yourmud and and environment.
If you look at our website,imico, uh, you'll, you'll be
(30:43):
able to find out where you canget hold of some.
It's a dollar a day, which is,we think, affordable.
We, we, I don't like the idea ofmy fellow human being having to
pay a lot of money for what isa a natural process that they
should have, but it's the onlyway we can supply this material.
Our experience with dealingwith cancer and other agents
(31:04):
shows us that this stuffactually can work extremely well
.
You've got to keep taking itbecause you need to have
constant contact with yourenvironment and stimulation, so
that's really the only othersupplement I take.
In fact, it's the onlysupplement I always take and I
recommend it.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Makes sense and make sure to go check that out, and
they can just go to imico, right?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Exactly Not com or co anything else.
Yeah, it's really easy.
There's some really good blogs,Not as good as yours, but
there's plenty of informationthere.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
No, it's great.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
That's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us.
This was phenomenal and maybecross paths again.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I hope you'll invite me again.
There's so much to I mean, I'vebeen around for so long.
There's so much to discuss andI hope the message got through.
Keep it simple, keep it healthy.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Thanks, Dr Eccle.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
God bless.
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