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Join Australia's leading comic speechmaker, Homer Papantonio, and renowned cardiologist, Dr. Ross Walker, for a podcast that blends humor and health in a way you’ve never heard before. "The Seriously Funny Wellbeing Podcast" delivers top-notch insights on wellness and well-being with a satirical twist. Get ready to laugh, learn, and live better—it's not for the faint-hearted!
Homer Papantonio (00:00.911)
Hi people, welcome to our podcast 16 of our seriously funny wellbeing show. With me as always is the finest and bestest cardiologist, health experts on the planet, Dr Ross Walker. Hi, Ross.
Ross Walker (00:15.16)
Yeah, I'd actually like to say the known universe. There's a guy in Alpha Centauri who thinks he's better than me, but I'm light years ahead of him. No doubt whatsoever. And look, just want to tell you, I heard some disturbing news the other day, Homer, that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went to a friend's place for dinner. the friend, and a number of people there, and the friend undercooked the turkey. And everybody at the dinner got sick.
Homer Papantonio (00:23.851)
Okay, and...
Homer Papantonio (00:29.176)
Hmm.
Homer Papantonio (00:35.449)
What?
Ross Walker (00:43.34)
So the man almost killed two stones with the one bird.
Homer Papantonio (00:48.367)
Beautiful bad joke to set things off. Ross, I'm continually amazed at the health statistics you throw at me, like the number of Aussies who simply don't exercise and eat the right food. So the most...
Ross Walker (00:52.586)
Absolutely.
Ross Walker (01:02.148)
That's 75 % of Australians and people living in the modern world don't do three to five hours of exercise per week, which should be two-thirds cardio, a third resistance training. Only 25 % of people do that and it is the second best drug on the planet after happiness.
Homer Papantonio (01:20.495)
So the most recent statistics, Ross, show that almost 65 % of Aussie adults and 25 % of children are overweight or obese and less than 7 % consume a healthy diet. That's a bleak assessment of the latest 2024 scorecard on Australia's growing obesity epidemic. And it is an epidemic detailing a dangerous backside, dangerous backside probably, on the fight.
Ross Walker (01:29.806)
Yep, that's right.
Homer Papantonio (01:50.029)
maybe a broad backside on the flight to improve nutrition and avoid chronic health conditions. So Ross, it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some Aussies wouldn't get any exercise at all.
Ross Walker (02:05.86)
A number of people do no exercise. mean, of the 75 % people are still doing some exercise, but it's not enough to meet the guidelines that are given to achieve good health, keep your weight down, good cardiovascular health. And tragically, probably about 10, 15 % of people do nothing, absolutely nothing.
Homer Papantonio (02:27.887)
Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back. So it is not only the quality of the food but of course the quantity. And Ross, interestingly, what you eat in private will show up in public. Did you know that? So let's move on to medical news. Sleep and stress.
Ross Walker (02:36.77)
Yeah, that's it.
Ross Walker (02:47.748)
No doubt. No doubt.
Ross Walker (02:55.362)
Yeah, this is an interesting thing that and and I found these statistics and some more statistics I'm throwing at you that 80 % of the modern population work in sedentary jobs. My job is toxic. I sit in my bum all day and that is toxic to do that. Now 80 % of people are now doing that. This is a study out of the US, University of South Florida, where they looked at a thousand people over 10 years and found that
Homer Papantonio (03:09.037)
Yes? Yeah.
Ross Walker (03:24.526)
People who have sedentary jobs, which is obviously most of us, have a 37 % increase in insomnia and a 66 % higher likelihood of needing catch-up sleep versus people who have non-sedentary jobs. And we're not just talking, we're talking about good sleep. We don't just talk about having the suggested seven to eight hours of good quality sleep per day, which a lot of people don't have.
So people who sleep less than six hours a day or more than nine hours a day have a marked increase in health risk. But there's also now the concept of sleep irregularity. So what time do you go to bed? What time do you wake up in the morning? Now, if there's an hours difference either side of that quite often, so what we call sleep irregularity, that's also associated with a marked increase in obesity, cardiovascular disease, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So we should be striving for that seven to eight hours of sleep on a regular basis, going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time. And this study is just showing beyond a doubt that our sedentary jobs and our poor sleep is having a huge effect on health.
Homer Papantonio (04:40.151)
Isn't it? So we almost need to find the sweet spot between energy, expenditures, stress, and that actually quite often brings off, brings on sleep. You probably sleep better, obviously, if you exercise well and look up.
Ross Walker (04:58.04)
Yeah, well we had a full session on sleep a few podcasts ago, but just to reiterate that because it is such an important topic. My second key to being healthy, I'll just go through those quickly. Number one is no addictions, number two is good sleep, number three is good eating and less of it, number four, second best drug on the planet as we've already mentioned, three to five hours every week of exercise, and most importantly happiness. So if you want good health, you shouldn't be saying I'll just focus on exercise. You should focus on the whole damn thing.
Homer Papantonio (05:02.381)
Yep.
Ross Walker (05:27.5)
And so sleep is very important and you want to try and get as good a sleep habit as possible, which means again, going to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, sleeping in a cool dark room, get all electronics out of the bedroom. And as you're inferring Homer, so rightly so, Dr. Papantonio, that the quality of your day will also determine the quality of your sleep and
vice versa, the quality of your sleep will also determine the quality of your day. So sleep is a vital part of it. And I said in that podcast that we should really divide our lives into thirds. So a third of active energy where you're out there working and doing your exercise, et cetera, a third of relaxation, and then a third for sleep throughout every 24 hour period.
Homer Papantonio (06:00.867)
Yeah, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (06:18.223)
Yeah, and don't exercise too close to bedtime, because it tends to keep you awake and blah blah blah. Future of medicine, prostate cancer therapy.
Ross Walker (06:22.37)
No. Yeah. Yeah.
Ross Walker (06:29.476)
Yeah, well you see, at the moment, the treatment of prostate cancer is either to have your prostate ripped out with a radical prostatectomy, what we call brachytherapy where they put little radiation beads in the prostate and that kills off the prostate, or to just watch it. And interestingly, a study out of the New England Journal of Medicine a couple of years ago looked at 1,500 men over the age of 55 with prostate cancer and followed them for 15 years.
splitting him into those three groups. And they found that after 15 years, 97 % of the entire population was still alive. Whether they had their prostate ripped out, whether they had radical, whether they had radiotherapy or whether they were just watched. So 97 % was still alive regardless. The only difference is the men who were watched had three times the rate of spread of the cancer. But
When you look at people who've had their prostate removed, many, many men in that situation are getting incontinence, are getting impotence, not all of them, not all, some do extremely well, but some don't. With the radiotherapy, there's often problems there as well, there's often some radiation proctitis, so men are left with chronic diarrhea with radiotherapy. But then when you don't do anything, when you just monitor people to make sure that things aren't increasing,
that still there is that higher risk, three times higher risk for spread. So we're always looking for better ways of managing prostate cancer. And here's something that I found fascinating. And this is again, at a University of Southern California in the US, where they're talking about steam therapy for prostate cancer. I'm not talking about inhaling steam, that this would be delivered via a catheter into the urethra and onto the prostate.
So they're talking about the fact that this steam therapy directed at prostate cancer cells may have the ability of killing off prostate cancer without a radical prostatectomy and therefore without all of the side effects of all of the treatments we're now offering.
Homer Papantonio (08:39.353)
So what's the correlation with steam and the therapy? Does the steam actually, is it temperature thing or? Okay.
Ross Walker (08:46.34)
Yeah, yeah, it's a temperature thing. that the steam directed at a prostate cancer cell can actually kill the prostate cancer cells without actually destroying the remaining prostate tissue. So it's just being trialed at the moment. There's some evidence in laboratory animals that it works, but it has to be trialed in humans. So this is a study that's starting and this is why I'm calling it the future of medicine. So if any men are listening to this and say, oh, I've just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, I want steam therapy.
I'm sorry, it's not available, but it may be something that in the future becomes standard of care for prostate cancer. And also, for men who are listening to this, who are tragically in the situation where the prostate cancer has spread into their bones and into other parts of the body, there's now a therapy that's becoming almost standard of care for that group of people, other than all of the medications that are moderately.
effective such as hormone therapy or hormone blocking therapy that's used and some of the chemotherapy agents. And this is called lutetium 177 PMSA. PSMA. PSMA. Sorry, can't get my piece mixed up right. Yeah, so that's prostate specific membrane antigen lutetium 177. Now what that is, is they tag this nuclear
Homer Papantonio (09:58.575)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's in English.
Ross Walker (10:13.728)
lutetium 177 to a PMSA antigen and it goes, it only seeks out the prostate cancer cells. So it's very specific for prostate cancer and almost it's a payload delivered into the prostate cancer cell of the lutetium. So the radiation just only kills the prostate cancer cell. And there's been men who've had dreadful spread everywhere given this treatment and it's just melted away the prostate cancer.
There's a lot of really exciting things happening in the prostate cancer space. That's why I brought up this particular article.
Homer Papantonio (10:43.663)
Wow.
Homer Papantonio (10:50.553)
So it's interesting with heat and temperature, even with exercise, there's a heat exercise regimen now. Ice baths, recovery, temperature does have a healing effect in a... Yep.
Ross Walker (11:09.274)
look, I don't think there's any doubt about that. Swings in temperature are very, important for the immune system. People, for example, who swim in water that's less than 20 degrees Celsius have much better immune systems. It's one of the treatments of long COVID is cold water swimming. That's very important. So as you say, ice baths, heat, et cetera. There's a lot of benefits there. For example, in Finland, where they have a lot of saunas, a study was done on men.
probably the same for women as well as it's just the study was specifically done on men. Men who had three saunas a week had a 30 % reduction in cardiovascular disease. But I think it's not just the heat and interestingly with exercise, when you exercise I think one of the keys for good health is what I call vasodilatation which is opening up arteries and so that's one of the benefits of exercise. It's pumping blood all around the body, less dementia because
You're flushing out all the crap in your head by pumping blood through the skull. And that's why I think we've mentioned on the show before, drugs like Viagra and Cialis, which are not just good to give men good erections, but they're also vasodilators everywhere. They open up every blood vessel in the body and pump and flush all the crap out, pump the blood through the body.
Homer Papantonio (12:28.943)
Professional cyclists now are training, they're actually wearing jumpers and riding in heat, like on a hot summer's day. Obviously, you've got to be hydrated because they say there's a correlation to that and increasing your VO2. Max, interesting, isn't it?
Ross Walker (12:48.472)
Yeah, yeah. So look, yeah, so it's heat, but it's also vasodilatation that's very important. So I just thought that was interesting. Okay.
Homer Papantonio (12:55.885)
Yep. Body of evidence, cancer and ageing.
Ross Walker (12:59.928)
Yeah, look, the greatest risk factor for cancer is being older. So if you're a 30-year-old heavy smoker as opposed to an 80-year-old non-smoker, the 80-year-old non-smoker has a much higher risk of lung cancer than the 30-year-old smoker, clearly. And why? Because they're getting older. But this is a really interesting study out of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the US, which is one of the world gold standard cancer centers. And this showed that
up to the age of 80, the cancer risk increases. But interestingly, when a person reaches 80 without cancer, then the cancer risk drops. Now, why is that? Because aging cells are different to younger cells. So I say all the time, Homer, and this is not a dad joke, but this is a dad comment, there are only three advantages of being over the age of 50. One is wisdom, two is grandchildren if you've got them.
And three, you lose the cancer risk for medical radiation. So for example, if you go off and have a CT scan at age 35, you slightly increase your risk for a cancer 15, 20 years down the track. But once you've hit 50, the risk is absolutely minimal if not absent because your cells change. But as we get older and older, the cells change even more and they become even less responsive. It's a bit like we're just talking about prostate cancer.
There is really no point measuring PSAs in men over the age of 80, unless they've already had prostate cancer and you're just monitoring them. So if an 80 year old says, want to see how healthy my prostate is, you don't do a PSA because if you take out the prostates of most men over the age of 80, you'll probably find little traces of prostate cancer in them, which will never cause them any issues at all. So it's best left alone and not even diagnosed. So this is just.
Homer Papantonio (14:52.463)
It's really interesting that whole cancer thing isn't it, and aging, because we have got the chap who's the American version to yourself, Dr. William Lew, and he talks about eating to beat disease, obviously you've written some stuff along those lines too, but his main contention is that there's micro cancer cells that we all have, and that the immune system's main role is just to zap them.
And he talks about the role that diet plays in actually assisting in the zapping of those micro-cancer cells.
Ross Walker (15:21.465)
there.
Ross Walker (15:27.686)
yeah, you see, I'm not deriding anything that Dr. Lou's done, but that's just damn obvious. And the point is, everyone should be having two or three pieces of fruit per day, three to five servings of vegetables per day, and tragically only 5 % of people do that. And the reason we do that is not because it affects your cholesterol or helps you lose weight or anything at all like that, it keeps your immune system healthy. And we're all...
Homer Papantonio (15:34.019)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (15:54.499)
Yeah, yeah.
Ross Walker (15:56.386)
we're all creating every day little cancer cells mopped up straight away by the immune system. Damaged cells that aren't cancerous, but are still damaged cells releasing what we call inflammatory cytokines into the bloodstream. Again, the immune system says that shouldn't be there, get rid of that. As we get older, especially if we eat poorly, ultra processed foods, white death, which is refined carbohydrates, it pulverizes the poor immune system.
Homer Papantonio (16:22.831)
So do you think we'll ever get to the stage where the doctor of the future will be, instead of prescribing pharmaceutical drugs, will give you a prescription to the local fruit shop and say...
Ross Walker (16:36.312)
Well, you're looking at a doctor who already does that. I tell everybody they should be doing that. And so you see, people say, we shouldn't be eating this to prevent disease. No, but also we should be talking about what we should be eating. And that's where the fruits and vegetables should be the center of everyone's plate. And things like olive oil is one of the major components of the Mediterranean diet that really has strong health benefits. So it's all very, very interesting stuff.
Homer Papantonio (16:39.511)
Yes, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (16:49.774)
Hmm.
Homer Papantonio (16:54.414)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (17:04.599)
It's a good segue into controversies and Omega-3 supplements there, Ross.
Ross Walker (17:09.092)
Yeah, you see, and this is again a good segue into what we'll be talking about today. So that's why I had this as the semi-controversies is that if you believe conservative people in the medical profession, and I certainly don't, they will all tell you all you get from vitamins and supplements is expensive urine. And yes, of course you get expensive urine, but you also get very valuable, expensive blood.
which is exactly what you want. So what you don't need, of course, you urinate out. That's how the kidneys work. Whatever's excessive in the body, you either pass it out in your feces or you urinate it out or you sweat it out if you don't need it. But the question is, should or shouldn't we be taking supplements? That is the main topic for today. But this is just one study that was done on omega-3 supplementation. And they took 40, I think it was 33,
healthy volunteers over a 12 week protocol and gave them very high doses of a combination of EPA and DHA. And here's how more a lot of people get it wrong. They take a fish oil capsule, it's a thousand milligrams and they think they're getting Omega-3. No, they're not getting a thousand milligrams of Omega-3. They're only getting 180 milligrams of EPA DHA.
And there's been so many conflicting studies over the years to say that, this stuff doesn't work, or that stuff does work, or this helps me, this doesn't help me. And I think the public has an absolute right to be absolutely confused and completely bombarded by all this nonsense. What I try to do is put it in some perspective. Now, this study showed clearly
that what the omega-3, the big dose of omega-3, so you think 180 milligrams in one fish oil capsule, hell with all the capsules you've got to take to get up to the 2.7 grams of EPA and DHA in this particular study. But what this study showed was that what the EPA-DHA combination in a big dose was changing the LDL cholesterol. You see, and this is where we've spoken about this before.
Homer Papantonio (19:02.649)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ross Walker (19:25.622)
Everyone thinks LDL is bad, HDL is good when you talk about cholesterol. It's complete simplistic nonsense. LDL and HDL are divided into small bits and large bits. And here's where size is important. The larger your LDL, the larger HDL, the better it is for you. What the Omega 3 are doing are converting you from small LDL to large LDL, small HDL to large HDL. Not really changing the cholesterol that much at all.
And so this is showing that in these people that the change in the LDL cause much less inflammation in fat. And see, when someone has big abdominal obesity, it's not just an ugly lump of lard, it's an inflammatory organ that's causing all sorts of problems. And this is showing clearly that the omega-3s are actually helping the inflammation and helping fat metabolism and helping...
Homer Papantonio (20:11.951)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (20:23.822)
generally carbohydrate metabolism in type 2 diabetes.
Homer Papantonio (20:27.023)
It's a big area that whole Omega 3, and the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 is also important. Yeah.
Ross Walker (20:32.536)
Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. Because you see, when you take a lot of omega-6, which are more the vegetable oils, and the worst thing is hydrogenated vegetables, which create trans fats, which are very much linked to heart disease, not saturated fat, there's no link between saturated fat and taken heart disease. That's nonsense that's been dismissed by a major study called the PURE study. But...
And in fact, I wrote a book called The Cell Factor in 2002, that where I said in that, that there is no link between saturated fat and heart disease, but there is a strong link between trans fats and heart disease. And so when you have a lot of omega-3, you generate this thing called icosapentaenoic acid, which then thins the blood, opens the arteries up. When you have a lot of omega-6, especially if it's hydrogenated, you generate this thing called arachidonic acid.
which actually constricts the arteries and reduces blood flow and makes the platelets stickier so you get more clots. So it's good to have a much higher omega-3 to omega-6 intake.
Homer Papantonio (21:40.879)
and also the quality of the Omega 3. Quite apart from the Mercury build up, there's always been a bit of a controversy around...
Ross Walker (21:53.006)
Yeah, but you see, this is the problem. If you eat fish from the Northern Hemisphere, unfortunately a lot of that fish has been caught in the heavy shipping lines. And so there's a lot of dioxins and methylmercury in those fish. Fish from the Southern Hemisphere doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of pollution. And also when you have capsules that are Australian. So here's the problem. You go to America, their supplements are made to food standards.
Homer Papantonio (22:05.199)
Okay.
Homer Papantonio (22:08.878)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (22:21.974)
in Australia, our supplements are made to pharmaceutical grade, so there's no contaminants. That's the difference. that's what I say for anyone listening to this, whether you're listening to this in Australia or anywhere else, the best supplements to buy are supplements made in Australia or New Zealand because they're made to pharmaceutical grade and there's no contaminants in
Homer Papantonio (22:26.457)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (22:44.559)
Okay, so again a good segue into what was the of this week's podcast is vitamin and mineral supplements. Micronutrients are also included in there, including vitamins. They play a pivotal role in maintaining overall health and wellbeing. So do you want to take it away from there, Ross? Okay.
Ross Walker (23:05.988)
Yeah, I do. And look, I want to put this in perspective. And we have spoken about this on numerous occasions. But I think repeating something that's really important is vital. So eventually it sinks in. Everybody's management homework is what I call 80, 10, 10. 80 % of those five keys that I've already mentioned, and that should be not negotiable for anyone. And I've been doing my job for 45 years. And I know the people who do the best
Homer Papantonio (23:17.379)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (23:23.757)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (23:34.628)
in my practice are people who follow the 80-10-10 rule. and tragically, only 10 % of people practice those five keys, only 10%. 10 % is the appropriate use of pharmaceutical drugs if you need them. And the final 10 % is the appropriate use of supplements. So I'll be talking with you in the next podcast about how to reverse heart disease. And it's the same thing, it's 80-10-10. But I'll get onto the
Homer Papantonio (23:44.781)
Yeah, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (24:00.355)
Yep. Yep.
Ross Walker (24:04.322)
the key points there when we get to that podcast. So what is the 10 %? Should we be supplementing? So I believe, look, if you live to your physiology, you don't need to supplement. So what's living to physiology? Living for 30, 40 years, wandering around a jungle with a spear. Of course you don't need to supplement that. You're to be dead by 40. What's the point of taking supplements? But no one lives like that anymore. We live in a completely different environment. We don't live...
Homer Papantonio (24:26.009)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (24:32.58)
in a natural environment when we're eating natural foods, we're moving all day to get food. The food's not always available. there's the acute feast to the kill and there's a couple of days where there's not a lot of food available. So there's a bit of famine for a few days. So everything's feast and famine, feast and famine, constant movement. The only stress you had in those days with the acute stress of the kill or the stress of avoiding being something else's lunch. But it sucks being a hunter gatherer, say, and you live 30, 40 years.
because you have your head ripped off by a saber-toothed or you die of some infection. Let's bring in the modern world. Modern world, we have exposure to food all the time. So breakfast, lunch, dinner, sit in our bums all day, it's no wonder we get overweight. Excuse me, not too much talking. We live in a world that is full of synthetic chemicals.
Homer Papantonio (25:24.153)
Yep.
Ross Walker (25:28.44)
So not just the synthetic chemicals in our food, just go outside and take a deep breath in any city. You're taking thousands of microdoses of synthetic chemicals into your lungs all day. The things you wash your clothes in, the chemicals on your plate and the dishwasher, et cetera, et cetera. There's chemicals everywhere and we're not supposed to be exposed to those chemicals. So we've got the chemicals, we've got an obesogenic society, we've got a sedentary society.
a society where we're also being exposed to small dose of radiation. So you and I at the moment are sitting in front of computers and it's been estimated that just by modern electronics and travel, we get exposed to mainly around, maybe around between five to 10 chest x-rays every year of radiation, even if you don't have any radiation from an x-ray. So it's five to 10 chest x-rays as well. And also we have chronic stress.
So the chronic, we're woken up in the morning by a thing called an alarm clock. So the alarm starts the second, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, you're awake and the stresses go through the day, the stress of travel, the stress of complex jobs, complex relationships. So that's not how we were designed physiologically to be. So what I'm saying is that don't say, you get all the nutrients you get from your food. And we've already mentioned only 5 % of people have two or three pieces of fruit per day.
three to five servings of vegetables per day. So we might be getting macronutrients, which is fat, sugar and protein, but we're not getting the micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, trace metals, which you get from your fruits and vegetables. But because of all of the extra stresses of the modern world, I think it's important to supplement. Now, this particular study that just came out late last year showed...
For example, in the global population, 68 % of the global population deficient in iodine, 67 % deficient in vitamin E, 66 % deficient in calcium, 65 % deficient in iron, and greater than 50 % inadequate intakes of riboflavin. There's vitamin B1, folate, vitamin C, vitamin B6.
Homer Papantonio (27:30.018)
Mmm.
Ross Walker (27:44.984)
and low levels of B3 thiamine and selenium. So I've just quoted a few of the vitamins and minerals and trace metals that we're not getting in a normal diet. And this is a global view of what's going on around the world.
Homer Papantonio (27:59.887)
So excuse my ignorance for a moment, do they have a patent on vitamins? They don't.
Ross Walker (28:10.724)
No, not at all. No one has a patent. And see, here's the problem. When a pharmaceutical company discovers a new drug that might do X, they have a patent on that. And then they spend millions, sometimes billions of dollars to develop that drug to market. And then they put it on the, so they have to then do a randomized controlled clinical trial, which costs millions of dollars to do. So to develop that drug is incredibly expensive.
And so what they do is they take say 5,000 people, they follow them for three to five years, give half the active ingredient, half the placebo. And then at the end of the time they say, okay, we've looked at this and of the 5,000 people, 150 had a heart attack on this pill, but 190 had a heart attack who were taking placebo. Therefore there was a 30 % reduction in heart disease or whatever. I'm just making these numbers up.
Homer Papantonio (29:08.611)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ross Walker (29:10.98)
And that 30 % is a relative risk. So it's not as if 30 % of the population had a heart attack and 70 % didn't. Nothing like that. It might be a 2 or 3 % risk of a heart attack and the 30 % reduction is a 3 % risk down to a 2.7 % risk. But the 30 % makes it sound more dramatic. Now with vitamins, minerals and trace minerals, there will never be and has never been randomized controlled trials to that level. There is one or two I guess.
exceptions that I'll bring up. But I don't believe you need the randomized controlled trials at that level of hard events with vitamin minerals and trace metals because they're food supplements. They're not heavy drugs that can have a heavy pharmaceutical and synthetic effect on our body. They're just really enhancing what you get in food. That's why we call them supplements. They're supplements to a healthy lifestyle. So for example, they did a study where they looked at
at a million people taking supplements and they found that there was about on average for people taking varying supplements around a 20 % reduction in different diseases. So that's relative risk reduction, except for in the overweight people of the smokers. So if you're fat or you smoke, don't take a supplement and think it's going to compensate because it doesn't work. you have to use the supplements as a supplement to a healthy lifestyle. End of story.
should you be taking in my view and why.
Homer Papantonio (30:43.279)
Before you go on to that, essentially what you're saying is that vitamins are like an insurance policy for yourself, essentially. And I like the analogy you draw between the racing car and the bicycle. the motor car represents the pharmaceutical industry. It'll get you there fairly quickly, but might explode when it gets there. Yeah, yeah.
Ross Walker (30:51.182)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (30:57.06)
Yep. Yep.
Ross Walker (31:08.758)
or no, you could crash and kill yourself. And that's why you must have seat belts and you must have safety mechanisms in the car and you must have road rules to make sure you drive carefully. That's what the pharmaceutical industry is. Whereas the supplement industry is like a bicycle, A to B much slower. But the important thing is just keep away from cars, wear a helmet and just be careful when you drive and you get the extra benefits of the exercise. So.
Homer Papantonio (31:25.539)
Not violent. Yep.
Ross Walker (31:35.042)
So, but you don't need the same heavy rules that you need for a car or the heavy safety.
Homer Papantonio (31:38.529)
and it'll get you there eventually but take longer. Okay.
Ross Walker (31:42.148)
Yeah, take longer. And that's the key. So let me then say, what should people be taking? And we had a whole segment a few months ago on the MTHFR gene, affects 50 % of the population and is really important in generating high quality DNA, high quality RNA, high quality protein, which are all the building blocks of how the body works. But
So here's the problem. Old style multivitamins were based around standard folic acid, which doesn't work in this situation because imagine there's the MTHFR gene directing the high quality DNA, RNA protein. Folic acid is just bumps into the MTHFR gene and can't get beyond it. So you then can't generate those high quality things. That's why I believe from about age 30, everyone should be taking a high quality multivitamin.
that has in it fourth generation folic acid, which I cannot say on a public what the name of the stuff is, but it's the five prime methyl tetrahydrofolate glucosamine salt. And there's tragically only one multivitamin in Australia that has that in it, or you can buy that glucosamine salt by itself. Now, I'll give you a very, very personal example of me. I have the worst mutation.
in the MTHFR gene called the C allele. I'm homozygote for the C allele, which means my mum and dad gave me the two worst alleles mutations in this gene. So unless I take this fourth generation folic acid, my folic acid bumps into the MTHFR gene, just builds up in the bloodstream. And when you get into your 60s and 70s, that folic acid can be toxic to your immune system, unless you take the one that I'm taking.
I think we should just scrap folic acid as a supplement and go to multivitamins that all have this glucosamine salt.
Homer Papantonio (33:45.999)
Can you derive that folic acid from a natural food source?
Ross Walker (33:50.028)
Of course you can know you derive folate from fruits and vegetables, especially leafy green fruits and vegetables. And that's a good thing to do as well. But I'm saying, especially if you're in my situation, when you're one in two people who have that mutation, you must be taking this high quality folic acid. So to me, there is only one multivitamin in Australia that people should be taking. I can't say the name of it. Sorry.
Homer Papantonio (33:54.189)
Okay. Okay.
Homer Papantonio (34:00.184)
Yeah.
Okay.
Homer Papantonio (34:18.735)
Okay.
Ross Walker (34:18.948)
But you can send an email in to us and we can give you the name of it. so that's, so from age 30, we should all be doing that for the rest of our days. So what's my evidence that even works? There's a little known university in America called Harvard. And Harvard have been doing for the last 30 years, the male physician's trial, the women's health study. And they,
Homer Papantonio (34:23.235)
Okay.
Ross Walker (34:44.534)
The different, with this studies, they've looked at all aspects of health. whether the people live the right sort of lifestyle, whether they take supplements, whether they take medications, they've just followed their health for 30 years. The sub study that looked at multivitamins basically showed, and this is even the old style folic acid, people who took a multivitamin every day up to 10 years did absolutely nothing.
But when you started to look at the data beyond 10 years, and this was a randomized controlled trial in the men, up to 10 years, an 8 % reduction in common cancers and cataracts. Now you go 8%, doesn't sound much, but when you're looking at 40,000 men over 10 years, 8 % is still pretty good just by taking a simple harmless multivitamin every day. Then they looked at the observational data in the women at 15 years. So I think something like 80,000 women at 15 years.
Homer Papantonio (35:33.613)
Yep.
Ross Walker (35:42.286)
who did or didn't take a multivitamin for 15 years showed a 25 % reduction in breast cancer, 23 % reduction in cardiovascular disease, and wait for this one, a whopping 75 % reduction in bowel cancer in the women who took a multivitamin every day compared to the women who didn't take a multivitamin every day. Now the argument used there by some doctors, and I think this is flawed, is that the women who took the multivitamin
It was just a marker of being more health conscious. So if they're conscious enough to take a multivitamin every day, they'll be more conscious to exercise and eat better, et cetera. But so what? Do all those things and take the multivitamin and get that 75 % reduction in bowel cancer. It's a pretty good result. Then they looked at the 20 year data in the male doctors taking a multivitamin every day. Now, which anally retentive neurotic would take a multivitamin every day for 20 years? You're looking at one, Homer.
Homer Papantonio (36:22.767)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (36:41.465)
Yeah, and then, yeah.
Ross Walker (36:42.2)
And they found that in those doctors who did that, a 44 % reduction in cardiovascular disease just by taking a multivitamin every day.
Homer Papantonio (36:52.559)
So would you agree that the primary source of your vitamin and minerals has to be from diet and food? And then, as an extension to that, it's almost like, again, like an insurance policy, you've got to take a specific amount of vitamins and minerals that are almost empirically proven to work over time. A long, long period of time.
Ross Walker (36:59.309)
No doubt.
Ross Walker (37:15.246)
Yeah, but over a long period of time, but you've got to do it every day and don't ever see them as a replacement. They're called supplements. What are they supplements to? A healthy diet. So that's the first thing, multivitamin from about age 30. And I think around age 30, taking some form of omega-3. So again, there's a little known institution in America called the Mayo Clinic. And the Mayo Clinic have been publishing a lot of incredible work for
Homer Papantonio (37:38.679)
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Ross Walker (37:45.038)
for many, many years. In the Mayo Clinic proceedings a few years ago, they did a meta-analysis of all the omega-3 studies, and they showed that up to five years taking omega-3s every day didn't do much for most people. When they looked at the data beyond five years, there was about a 20 % reduction in cardiovascular disease. So I think from about age 30, you should be taking some form of omega-3. Probably the simplest thing to do is take a krill, 1,000 milligrams a day.
Homer Papantonio (37:57.337)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (38:12.92)
But whatever suits you, I don't care as long as you're taking something. So that's 30. So when should you start taking other stuff? Well, I think in my very biased view, and I do the research on this, and I'm an honorary Calabrian citizen because of my services to the bergamot fruit, everyone should be taking a thing called BJE 100, which is a bergamot product. There are quite a few bergamot products on the market that don't cut the mustard.
this BJA100 that I have an association with. So I've got to declare my interest here. I don't own the company, but I do all the research for the company. So I do have that association with the company. And we have published over 20 papers in the peer reviewed literature showing the incredible metabolic benefits of this bergamot product, the BJA100. So for example, what that does is have a profound effect on
cholesterol, it doesn't lower cholesterol levels, it converts you from small LDL to large LDL, small HDL to large HDL, reduces your risk for diabetes, fatty liver, Alzheimer's disease, and it also suppresses cancer stem cells from a study published out of the University of Manchester, our lab in Italy. So that has enormous benefits and I think from age 50, everyone over the age of 50 should be taking that particular BGE100.
twice a day, I can't mention the product of course, for the rest of their life.
Homer Papantonio (39:41.644)
more mandarins and oranges.
Ross Walker (39:44.288)
No, no, no, no, no, no, should also have mandarins and oranges, but there is not the polyphenols plant chemicals in standard oranges are in small doses compared to the huge doses in the the tablets that you take the BGA 100. So that's there. So what about anything else? Well, that's entirely up to what's happening to you over the age of 50. Because you see, one of the things that happens at 50 at age 50 is the hormones are going south in men and women.
Homer Papantonio (39:48.013)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Homer Papantonio (39:58.444)
Okay.
Ross Walker (40:14.294)
And then after your hormones go south, the risk for degenerative diseases starts to increase. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, type two diabetes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So then you look at specifically where your issues are occurring. So for example, many people in their 50s, 60s and 70s are getting high blood pressure. So there is a supplement called chioleic garlic.
Homer Papantonio (40:25.731)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (40:43.279)
Mm-hmm.
Ross Walker (40:44.036)
Two capsules of that in the morning, I can't mention the product, but two capsules of that in the morning can help control blood pressure. A mate of mine called Matt Budoff, who's probably the top preventative cardiologist in the US, he did a study on four capsules a day of chirolic garlic and he reversed heart disease, pulled the fat out of the arteries. We'll be talking about that in the next podcast. So a couple of chirolic garlics in the morning. Then you look at say something like osteoporosis.
Homer Papantonio (40:56.131)
Yep.
Ross Walker (41:13.22)
People who are starting to get osteopenic and 25 % of postmenopausal women, 5 % of men over the age of 65 have a degree of osteopenia or osteoporosis. so people say, well, what about taking oral calcium in the form of calcium carbonate? Well, there's no evidence at all that that helps osteoporosis, bone fracture, but vitamin K2 in a dose of 180 micrograms day takes the calcium out of your arteries.
Homer Papantonio (41:24.089)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (41:41.316)
and puts it back in your bones and keeping your vitamin D levels around 100, because a third of Australians have vitamin D below 50, that also helps for osteoporosis. Now, one of my favorite supplements is a thing called Ubiquinol. Ubiquinol, 150 milligrams a day, is the active version of coenzyme Q10.
Homer Papantonio (41:58.383)
Mmm.
Ross Walker (42:04.694)
And all patients say taking a statin drug, and that's one in three people over the age of 45 in America, for example, are taking statins. Statins pulverize coenzyme Q10 levels in the mitochondria. The ubiquinol helps counter that.
Homer Papantonio (42:20.057)
So interestingly, Ross, I look at it a little bit differently. You look at it from an age perspective. I look at it from me being a health nut, from an activity perspective, the amount of strenuous exercise that I do, and all those supplements you mention.
I think are beneficial to me without going to it. were, Marilyn and I were watching this thing on Netflix yesterday about this guy in America who just, is a squillionaire who has just gone completely overboard with the amount of vitamins and everything, he gets everything tested and I'm just looking at this and saying, get a life mate.
Ross Walker (42:54.052)
Yeah, yeah, I Yeah, I know who you're talking about.
Ross Walker (43:02.83)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, see, that's what I say to my patients. You should be smelling the roses, not analyzing the damn things.
Homer Papantonio (43:10.307)
But interestingly, what you were saying there about, I take chioleic garlic, I take four tablets a day, I take coenzyme Q10 because of the effect it has on...
Ross Walker (43:21.358)
hopefully ubiquinol. Yes.
Homer Papantonio (43:22.721)
Ubiquinol, vitamin K12 I take, sorry K2, vitamin C, magnesium, and of course the jury's not out with the mega threes. I'll take a combination of krill and fish oil. Because of the mental benefits too, improving mood and stuff. Yep.
Ross Walker (43:25.956)
K2, K2, not 12.
Ross Walker (43:31.852)
Yep.
Ross Walker (43:39.064)
Yeah, I looked at the, yeah, the, there's enormous benefits with all these things. But as I, as I said, right at the start of this discussion, it's still only 10 % of your management. Don't see it as the key. And I'll finish off because I could keep going for hours on this, we haven't got time, but I'll finish off with a story of a woman came in to see me and and Homer, as you know, I'm not known for my subtlety and this shows you how.
Homer Papantonio (43:58.884)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (44:09.304)
completely unsubtle I am. So this woman came to see me and she was telling me she was treating her endometrial cancer with apricot kernels. She also went on to tell me that she refused to take blood pressure pills despite the fact that her blood pressure was very high. Then she plonks 20 supplements on the table and says, but doctor, I'm taking all of these as if this was a badge of honor. And I said,
Homer Papantonio (44:11.139)
You want?
Ross Walker (44:36.918)
Let's talk about the elephant in the room, you, because she was morbidly obese. And I mean, really, the supplements, she's refusing good medical therapy for her blood pressure and endometrial cancer, but she thinks the supplements are going to be a savior. That is medical nonsense. So what is the savior to everybody? And I'll finish off with this because it's a really important message. 80 %
Homer Papantonio (44:42.669)
Okay.
Ross Walker (45:06.254)
how you look after yourself. 10 % medical therapy if you need it, and many people don't and are still given pills when they shouldn't be, and 10 % supplements. the supplements are there as a good supplement to healthy living, but don't ever forget the healthy living. That's the important thing.
Homer Papantonio (45:21.839)
Okay, but I've got to ask you if all things being equal and you had patients that were just say at a certain level of fitness and everything else, if you were forced to not administer any pharmaceutical intervention
Could you have a similar effect purely by prescribing vitamins and supplements? Would it just take longer or it just wouldn't work?
Ross Walker (45:53.828)
No, no, no. Look, look, I say all the time, vitamin supplements make healthy people healthier. But people with diseases, makes the medical treatment work better. That's my view. But all of us, whether we have a disease or whether we're very healthy, should be practicing those five keys. That is the key of everyone's management. The others are adjuncts to that. So a healthy lifestyle, four times more powerful.
Homer Papantonio (46:08.803)
Yep.
Ross Walker (46:21.966)
than any pharmaceutical preparations or medical intervention or any supplements you can take. So no, I would never see supplements as a replacement for appropriate medical therapy. The concern I have is that many people in my view are being given inappropriate medical therapy who don't need it, but there are many people who do need pharmaceutical drugs and don't ever walk away from that that is irresponsible.
Homer Papantonio (46:47.651)
Yeah, and in emergency situations, drug intervention, yeah. You don't go spraying alfalfa sprouts for someone who's had a cardiac, yeah.
Ross Walker (46:55.812)
I say this all the time, you're having a heart attack. Don't sit there and meditate or go to your naturopath and I'm not knocking naturopaths. Get to a hospital, get a stent in, that's the management.
Homer Papantonio (46:59.298)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (47:03.095)
You
Okay, that was very interesting and it certainly, it's a big area in that whole bottom. So we've got questions from our listeners. We've got, Brian from Nusa asks, I've heard that we all have micro cancer scales floating around in our body and our immune system zaps these at a microscopic, we spoke about this before, at a microscopic level before they get bigger.
Ross Walker (47:13.038)
Huge.
Homer Papantonio (47:36.213)
So can we use food as medicine to bolster our immune system and how does the immune system do this?
Ross Walker (47:45.348)
Yeah, well, we've already answered the answer. It's a definite yes. How does the immune system do it? Very, very straightforward. There is, I say all the time that well over 90 % of illnesses start in the gut and almost everyone living in the modern world has a degree of gut dysbiosis. So we have about 40 trillion human cells in our body and somewhere between 40 to 100 trillion
Homer Papantonio (47:50.137)
Yep.
Ross Walker (48:14.456)
bacterial cells. So you've got to have a symbiosis between those two things. So when you have your fruits and vegetables, what you're doing is you're feeding healthy food into healthy gut bacteria. When you have your ultra-process crap masquerading as food or your white death, the refined carbohydrates masquerading as food, you're feeding sugars and synthetic chemicals and killing off the healthy bacteria.
and bringing in pathogenic bacteria. So the way your immune system is improved, because 70 % of the immune system lives in the gut, is in the gut, is by creating healthy gut bacteria that feed healthy prebiotics, which is the food that the bacteria eat, the probiotics, which are the healthy bacteria, and the postbiotics, which are the chemicals secreted by healthy bacteria that then work to make your immune system then...
release all of the important chemicals that help them kill off the cancer cells and the invading pathogenic bacteria and viruses, et cetera. And interestingly, during the COVID pandemic, I said right from the start of the pandemic and all through the pandemic that what COVID was doing in the vast majority of cases, would tipping people over the edge who are already on the precipice. So COVID hit the extremely old.
the extremely ill with other conditions and the extremely fat people who are very overweight. They're the main people who develop COVID. Now, sure, people are going to say, oh, look, I had a 30 year old brother who was incredibly thin and healthy and did all the right things and got dreadful COVID and now he's got long COVID, et cetera. Yeah, that occurs rarely, but 95 to 98 % of people who develop severe problems with COVID, very old, very sick, very fat. that's...
Homer Papantonio (50:06.425)
So to what degree do antibiotics wipe out gut bacteria and how quickly can this gut bacteria be restored?
Ross Walker (50:15.62)
Yeah, antibiotics wipe out gut bacteria very quickly. And the more antibiotics you have, the more damage your gut bacteria is. That's one of the reasons why most people have significant gut dysbiosis. if you then continue with your fruit and vegetables, which again, I'll tell you another story. I had a man who came to see me with a 30 year history of chronic fatigue syndrome. so he'd been managed by doctors for 30 years. And I said to him,
I said, look, you've got serious gut dysbiosis. We need to fix your gut up and hopefully that'll help your fatigue. So the first thing we need to do is get you onto two or three pieces of fruit per day, three to five servings of vegetables. he goes, oh, doctor, I don't like fruit and vegetables. And I said, what? He said, oh, don't, no, I don't eat them. just don't eat them. So I mean, what can you do? If he's not prepared to do something that's gonna make him feel better.
Homer Papantonio (50:58.895)
Face I could have said, yeah.
Ross Walker (51:12.984)
I mean, the guy drags himself out of bed every day and drags himself around in life and he refuses to do the best therapy here, which is the fruit and vegetable. you can, and I think this is a general principle for all conditions, all trauma to the body.
Homer Papantonio (51:13.22)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (51:29.453)
What do you say to that guy? Do you say to him, look, you're going to die? You're going to die?
Ross Walker (51:36.484)
No, I don't say you're going to die. just say, look, this is my advice to you. It's your body. You do with your body what you like. Walker rule number two of medicine is the patients, the one with the disease. It's not my problem. It's not my problem. It's their problem. I give them advice. If they want to listen, that's that's their issue. so that so and so in terms of quickly, let me let me just finish what I was going to say that
Homer Papantonio (51:42.862)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (51:49.155)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (51:55.405)
Yeah. No, but what about fecal, fecal, okay. Yeah.
Ross Walker (52:04.802)
This is a general principle for everyone listening. When you have any insult to your body, whether it's antibiotics, whether it's a serious illness, whether it's an operation, it takes your body about three months to get over that. Whether it's COVID. So when I have a patient's bypass, I say to them, after about three months, you can start swinging a golf club, but six months, you can swing an ax, not because of your heart, but to get the sternum healed. But it takes...
Homer Papantonio (52:17.198)
Yep.
Homer Papantonio (52:30.51)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (52:32.864)
Any insult, so you get pneumonia. A mate of mine is a professor of medicine, had pneumonia. And after two months, he was still feeling lousy. He said, Ross, I don't get this. He said, I had pneumonia two months ago. I'm still, I said, hang on a minute. It takes you three months for your body to get back to where it is. So if you've had any insult to your body, don't expect that things are gonna repair under three months. So fruit and vegetables, well, try biotics, which is the best way of doing it, on top of the fruit and vegetables.
and avoid all the toxins like the ultra processed foods, et cetera. And here's another thing, I'll throw in the hygiene hypothesis. This whole world has become too sterile, always stupid hand sanitizers. And look, when you go to the bathroom, you should wash your hands when you finish at the bathroom. They did a study at an infectious diseases conference and they put these medical students as the
Homer Papantonio (53:14.723)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Ross Walker (53:31.972)
toilet orderlies pretending to be there and they're taking a survey of how many infectious diseases doctors wash their hands after going to the bathroom. 30%. It's outrageous. So you go to the bathroom, wash your hands with soap, you don't need the sanitizer, wash your hands with soap, sing to yourself in your head happy birthday. By the time it takes you to have happy birthday, that's how long you should be washing your hands for, with soap. But these sanitizing nonsense completely changes the healthy gut bacteria.
Homer Papantonio (53:34.671)
you
Homer Papantonio (53:42.372)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (53:59.951)
Yeah, yeah, and very quickly, fecal, how do they, for healthy gut bacteria, because there's another doc on Netflix at the moment about this lady going overboard about how antibiotics destroy your system and the only way of restoring it to its full glory is to somehow, what, orally take fecal? How do you do it?
Ross Walker (54:23.928)
No,
Homer Papantonio (54:29.143)
Yes. Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (54:34.818)
Yeah.
Ross Walker (54:53.348)
that you can swallow as well that are full of fecal healthy bacteria. So that's how they do it. Well, it's been, for example, there's a thing called Clostridium difficile, which is a very nasty antibiotic associated diarrhea. So antibiotics kill off the healthy bacteria that Clostridium difficile grows in. And they're using a fecal microbiome transplant to cure it. And it's probably the best treatment for it.
Homer Papantonio (54:58.893)
And is that the way of the future?
Homer Papantonio (55:04.697)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (55:12.878)
Yeah.
Homer Papantonio (55:22.669)
Last question, I'm 63-year-old female concerned about my breast cysts that have just popped up. In fact, six or seven in each breast. Is this common?
Ross Walker (55:33.624)
Yep. very good. Breast cysts are incredibly common and they just need to be monitored, regular mammography, just to make sure there's no evidence of underlying cancer. But there's no association between breast cysts and cancer, just that breast cancer is relatively common. One in nine women get breast cancer throughout their life and breast cysts are very common. Probably it's the same proportion, but it doesn't mean breast cysts, breast cancer go together. They don't.
Homer Papantonio (55:59.897)
Okay, and I think that winds up this session. Have you got a farewell joke, by any chance?
Ross Walker (56:02.628)
it does.
Ross Walker (56:06.286)
Farewell, Jake. Yeah, look, yeah, this is a beauty. So at a restaurant, a woman says to the waiter, look, we don't eat eggs, meat, fish, dairy or gluten. What would you recommend? The waiter says a taxi.
Homer Papantonio (56:21.007)
And on that note, it's bye from me and thank you.
Ross Walker (56:25.25)
And bye for me.