Most Replayed Moment: The Antibiotic Alternative Big Pharma Doesn't Want You To Know!

0:00Steven Bartlett:This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more.

0:17Simon Mills:Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you can save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. potential savings will vary not available in all states or situations

0:37Simon Mills:so there's sort of three things that i've i've been able to ascertain as risks of misuse or overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics which is the impact on the gut microbiome um the you're contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance and that's the main thing i guess even with the diseases you get you'll be slower to heal because you're less if you've got that resistance.

1:01Steven Bartlett:That is one of the things that we do see, particularly those who are long-term ill, you know, that they lose some of the healing capacity. And that's so much of the work I do is to aim to put some of that right. And there's links to colorectal cancers? Yeah, because we're talking about the microbiome, you see. So those are the cancers in the lower gut. And we know that the microbiome is a major factor in how well the gut is. So things like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis and cancer of the bowel, very closely linked to the state of the microbiome.

1:36Simon Mills:Okay. So are there alternatives on this table or in the world of plants to antibiotics that I should maybe also consider instead of just jumping straight to antibiotics for everything that I experience?

1:50Steven Bartlett:Yes. If you've got a serious gut or other infection, you may need the antibiotics so let's put that straight away but if you've got a cold flu virus a viral problem particularly the airways you a antibiotics will have no use at all and be as we just said they just add to the risk of more because every time you take an antibiotic you're growing a small population of that of the species of bacteria that's affected who are resistant to that is natural selection. You know, you have a thousand little bacteria, that's a small amount by their terms, and you kill 999 of them. The one that survives will then become two in 20 minutes and four in 40 minutes and suddenly become a new population.

2:44Steven Bartlett:And, you know, I duck that bullet. And so that group of bacteria will already be resistant. So we're creating resistance every time we use an antibiotic. So let's try and do something else, shall we? So let's say you've got a cold. You're feeling the cold. It's got a good name, by the way. So cold is one of the things you feel when you've got a cold. And that's interesting because in former times, we didn't have tests, we didn't have laboratories, we didn't have paramedics, we didn't have people poking things in you. All we could know is what it felt like. And when you've got a cold, you often feel cold and you feel chills and you want to wrap up and you want hot water or you want to have a hot bath.

3:30All that in the old language meant that you were cold

3:34Steven Bartlett:and what you needed to do was to heat up. Now, you take this fella. This is ginger. It's grown widely around the world. In its original Asian form, it was made extremely, around the time of the Romans. So popular was it. And ever since, all the ginger scents of this species has got to be going from rootstock because it no longer seeds itself. So this has been the most valuable natural commodity ever in its dried form worth more than its weight in gold. And, you know, the reason why all those Europeans ended up in Asia and running India and the Dutch and Indonesia and so on, It's because that's where these things came from.

4:20Steven Bartlett:That's where the spices came from. And so we decided, you know, like good capitalists, to go and control the business. So ginger became very popular over here because we don't have nothing like it over here. The nearest thing we got is horseradish, which I promise you is no substitute for this. So how do we use this? We've got a knob of ginger here about the size of your thumb. That's about a good dose. you grate it, fresh ginger into a mug. Can you do that for me? I've got a grater for you. So we've got here a piece of ginger as I say about the size of your thumb the thumb's a good measure because it's your measure so if you're a small person you'll have a small thumb but I'm a bigger person so I'm going to use and you literally, it's making a bit of a mess here but doing this at home you don't mind a bit of mess.

5:16Steven Bartlett:So you're literally grating and grates nicely, isn't it, into a mug. And let's say that was the whole thumb. I don't want to take up too much time on this. And then the one thing that works brilliantly with ginger is cinnamon. Now, this is cinnamon you buy in any shop. It comes in different forms. There's one from China called scassia, which looks like one big curled bark. if you look at this one you'll see that it's tightly wrapped with lots of little curl lots of little filaments in it that's the one you go for it's got it's more aromatic and you either grate that with if you've got a spice mill or you take a teaspoon of it um let's say there's a teaspoon full and you put that in your mug so that's ginger and cinnamon ginger and cinnamon And that's it.

6:15Steven Bartlett:Then you add your hot water.

6:23Steven Bartlett:You're going for real, aren't you? I'm going for the real one. Good on you. At this point, a sieve is useful. Why?

6:32Simon Mills:What for?

6:32Steven Bartlett:Because it's going to be full of... Oh, bits. Bits. And then let's say this is a nice Japanese green tea mug, but let's say this is your mug and we'll pour a little bit in there. You see all the stuff that you leave behind? Oh, yeah. Okay.

6:57Steven Bartlett:And if you don't mind sharing a mug.

7:03Steven Bartlett:So what's in here? This is...

7:04Simon Mills:Just ginger and cinnamon. Just ginger and cinnamon? It's fairly weak. Oh, it is nice though. It's nice, isn't it?

7:11Steven Bartlett:It is nice. Now, can you feel it warming already?

7:14Simon Mills:Yes, straight away. Yeah. It's really nice.

7:16Steven Bartlett:Yeah. Now, you see, what's happening there is that you... I mean, ginger is an example of a group of remedies, which includes turmeric, by the way, and that's other root, the other root there. Oh, this one, yeah. That's turmeric. It's normally seen in a yellow powder. We might talk about that later. And black pepper and chilies. We've got a chili here. which when you take them, you think you're burning your mouth, don't you? The interesting thing is that there's no burning. You can actually have full madras level chili and no harm will be done to your lining because there's no burning going on.

8:03Steven Bartlett:What you're doing is you're stimulating the pain fibers. so you've got pain fibers all the way through the lining of the mouth when you take a hot thing like ginger it's stimulating the pain fibers and immediately there's a what we call a reflex response which opens up the blood vessels it's called hyperemia more blood and the vessels lining these mucosa the ones that you just swallowed and including a little bit up in the nasal passages are opening up, the mucus cells producing mucus will loosen up and you get more runny mucus, which is helping to flush through the grot on the mucosa. And the main thing you feel is the warmth.

8:53Steven Bartlett:And if you're dealing with something down here in the lungs, you'll actually start bringing up more gunk up the airways. There's a natural escalator that the body uses to get stuff out of the lungs. That's stimulated. And the mixture of cinnamon and ginger was created, I think, in heaven. I mean, I think there's such a natural compliment. And anybody can do that. And the point about it is that it's warming. And in the old days, that was the key thing. And it didn't matter if you had a headache or a joint pain or a menstrual cramp. If you wanted to put a hot water bottle on it or heat it up, then that was a cold problem.

9:39And putting a heating medicine would begin to make a difference. So you can use the same thing if you have a headache and you want to put a hot pack on it.

9:47Steven Bartlett:If you've got a menstrual cramp and you want to put a hot water bottle on it. If you've got a joint pain and you want to put a heating liniment on it, you can use the same thing. Ginger or cinnamon? Just because it's heating. And that's simple, old medicine.

10:05Simon Mills:So when you're experiencing different types of pain or a cold, then cinnamon and ginger are good?

10:12Steven Bartlett:Well, only if it responds to heat. Now, if you want to put an ice pack on, I mean, the old doctors, when someone came with a migraine would say, tell me, would you prefer a hot pack or an ice pack for your migraine? And migraine sufferers generally split 70-30, preferring heat to 70. But a third of people with migraines actually want a cold pack. You don't use ginger for that. You use cooling remedies, which we might come on to later.

10:42Simon Mills:Okay. My girlfriend, she drinks ginger tea all the time, almost every day. Yeah, she likes the heat. She likes the heat. Yeah.

10:51Steven Bartlett:She drinks it before bed as well. It can help with sleep if that's the way it goes. I mean, people are different. And there are some people who can't take ginger at all because their stomach objects or because it literally heats them up too much. They get stimulated by it. But that's where the individuality comes in.

11:14Simon Mills:Okay. So any condition where I might be looking for heat, ginger and cinnamon? First place to go. First place to go.

11:21Steven Bartlett:Yeah. If you want it to be Tex-Mex, you can take the chilies. As well. Well, we think of them as a much more extreme version of the heating and remind ourselves it was only when Europeans discovered Americas that chilies became used over here. Can you imagine an Italian meal without tomatoes and chilies? But in the old days, there were none of those because they all came from America. But, yeah, chilies were the American equivalent of ginger, used for the same purpose. So if someone comes to you and they say, Simon, when should I use chilies as a form of medication, what would you say? First of all, I don't know yet.

12:12Steven Bartlett:And, you know, if I'm dealing with someone at a distance, you know, online or on the phone or something, and they say, you know, what should I try? I said, the first thing to do is you figure it out. You can start with herbal teas. You aren't, are you?

12:27Simon Mills:I'm going to drop it into here. Is that a bad idea?

12:31Steven Bartlett:Yeah, no, go for it. But you should notice that should be quite a hot one. I will suggest that they start with herbal teas because herbal teas are a very low dose, but they'll allow you to figure out what suits you. and you can divide as I was hinting at earlier old medicines were often divided into those that were more warming that we would now call stimulating circulation and more cooling which we would now translate as stimulating digestion and depending on which of those you prefer would really give me a clue so if you were looking at warming remedies it could be ginger tea it could be fennel tea you know that's a warming remedy or it could be cinnamon or any of the spices.

13:19Steven Bartlett:Cardamom is one of my favourites, by the way. I use cardamom. This is the cardamom pods inside are little black seeds. Absolutely lovely taste. Do you know him? Do you know cardamom? Have you tried it? Not really, no. Oh, have a bite of that. Do I just bite the seed? Yeah, just bite into it. You don't just get a hint of the taste. in many parts of the Mideast, cardamom is one of the main flavours, things like coffee and so on. Reminds me of, oh, I was going to say Indian food. Yes, used a lot in India. And in China, it's a convalescent tonic. So they use it when people are building up their digestion after being ill for a long time.

14:02Steven Bartlett:They will often use cardamom. It's one of my favourite remedies for that. When people really run low, their digestion isn't functioning. It has appeared in one or two of these stories I've got here because I prefer that to most of the other spices when I need warming, as I said before, but also sustaining and nourishing. So you ask them, do you prefer teas that are warming or would you like something more cooling? Now, one of the most cooling remedies that people know about is this, which is mint. That's spearmint. The best one is peppermint. It's got a lovely smell, isn't it? Yeah. That has always been thought of as cooling.

14:50Steven Bartlett:And it's a simple test. Would you prefer ginger or peppermint tea? And already you're beginning to narrow things down a bit. The main cooling remedies throughout history from the very beginning. And in every part of the world, you'll find them saying exactly the same thing. The main cooling remedies, so-called, are the bitters. And they taste rarely bitter.

15:17Simon Mills:When you say cooling, you mean I feel hot, so I want something to cool me down. That's right. And there's certain conditions where I will feel, I'll feel hot. Fever. Fever.

15:27Steven Bartlett:And they were often used to fever, manage fever. and what happened you remember when we were young we were told if you've had a big meal don't go swimming you weren't told that I can't swim so but that was one of the things some of us in my generation at least always remember we were told if you've got a big meal it's not a good idea to go swimming because the blood's moving into the digestion and you won't get as much as you want when you need it in the limbs and that's you know it's true when you are digesting a lot of blood investment shall we call it is going into the digestive system because there's a lot of work needed to break down this food turn it into something useful it is an investment you put a lot in get much more out but what it means is is that um uh digestion is all about i'm just being a bit loose here with language but it's not a bad language it's like bringing blood into the core when you've got a fever the blood's all charging around and your body temperature's going up which is great because fever actually is a defense measure you know when our body temperature rises by a couple of degrees our white blood cells the ones that are doing the leg work two or three times as active so fever is what the body uses when it needs to bring out the big guys, bring out the fight.

16:57Steven Bartlett:There's a slight design problem. It's almost as though, you know, the creator put a purposeful fault in the system because a lot of fever comes from the gut. You know, you get gut infections. You know, that's one of the main places. And at that moment, all the blood's going out here and you want more of it going in, more digestion, if you like. So when you take a bitter, when you're taking a bitter, you're actually triggering taste buds up here. A bitter? A bitter, something that tastes bitter. Are there any plants that are bitter? Yeah, bitter plants are very common and were highly valued in the old world.