#129 Lessons from the Edge with Aldo Kane

Today I’m thrilled to have Professor David Nutt on the podcast, an expert on drugs, and how they work on the brain. He trained as a psychiatrist, and for almost 50 years his research has focused on new drug treatments for anxiety, depression and addiction.Today we’re going to be diving into the world of psychedelics such as LSD, Psilocybin and Ketamine. We discuss the history of psychedelics and why they were banned in the first place, despite having a relatively good safety profile, how these drugs work and the mechanism on the brain, the default mode network (DMN) and the latest research looking at its efficacy and role in a multitude of conditions.You can check out his latest book “Psychedelics” and try his revolutionary alternative to alcohol that we mention on the podcast, sentia spirits, online.I’m really excited for you to hear this podcast, it’s rare that he has the time to dedicate a whole hour in his packed schedule, so please enjoy my conversation with Professor Nutt.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

30 Aug 20231h 9min

That’s the topic of conversation on todays podcast and I’ll be talking about:What pesticides are designed to do and why we should be aiming to reduce our exposureShopping tipsThe most pesticide sprayed foodsWhich foods in different categories that I tend to buy organicHow to reduce our chemical exposure🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

23 Aug 20231h 10min

Do we eat too much sugar? This is a question I pose myself, as I like to trick myself into thinking that because I eat so well the majority of the time it makes up for my sweet tooth. But actually when I review my eating habits, I always choose dessert, I tend to snack a lot during the day and I eat way too much ‘healthy’ chocolate.And perhaps after hearing Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, talk on the subject today, you might be inclined to review your sugar intake yourself.Dr. Lustig has become a leading public health authority on the impact sugar has on fueling the diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome epidemics, and on addressing changes in the food environment to reverse these chronic diseases.Today we talk about why excess sugar is so bad for our health, what the benefits of cutting our sugar intake could be, why there is nothing wrong with fruit, the differences between sugars, the blood tests we should be ordering and of course why a calorie is not necessarily a calorie.Dr Lustig also reveals some incredibly exciting research that he and friend of the podcast Dr Rachel Gow have collaborated on, where they re-engineered ultraprocessed food to be metabolically healthy. Could this be the answer to a public health crisis? Only time will tell.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet me Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

16 Aug 20231h 1min

There is growing recognition that many mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, poor cognition and memory (as well as physical issues), are the results of the high prevalence of trauma, post-traumatic stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and that only by addressing trauma and rebalancing the nervous system can we address these mental and physical health issues successfully and sustainably.What I wanted to know from my guest today Benjamin Fry, a leading psychotherapist in the UK, was what are the signs someone has unhealed trauma in their life? And how can someone heal from that trauma without the use of supplements, medications or psychedelics?Throughout my medical career I’ve suspected the role of trauma in the root cause of patients conditions beyond the diagnoses of a typical mental health illness like anxiety and depression, but actually in AI conditions such as IBD and even type 1 diabetes and so to have the opportunity to explore some of these ideas with Ben was a pleasure.Today we discuss internal threats, perception, gratitude and how we can reframe our natural negative dispositions and why we reflect and respond to trauma differently.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

9 Aug 20231h 13min

Can an algorithm help us eat better? That’s the question I’ll be discussing with my guest today, Professor Eran Segal, a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS), heading a lab with computational biologists and experimental scientists who have extensive experience in machine learning and computational biology allowing them to decipher how something as complex as diet, interacts with something infinitely more complex … us.Our genes, microbes, and unique environments are obviously going to impact how we respond to different foods and diets and Professor Segal is on a mission to figure out how we can use his favouroite tool, algorithms, to help us eat according to our unique biology.We first dive into our unique blood sugar responses and their seminal paper published in Cell that demonstrated the drastically different responses we all have and potential reasons why. How we calculate GI and GL index and what’s wrong these, what happens when we have high blood sugar excursions (after a high refined carb meal for example) and the dangers of gameifying our diet too much.Plus we look into the future with the Human Phenotype Project, the role of faecal transplants and I invite Professor to give us a snapshot of how we practice nutritional self-care in the future with all the ‘omics’.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2 Aug 20231h 8min

Merlin Willcox, may have the answer to.Today, we’re diving into the world of therapeutic herbs and spices. Travelling across generations and cultures from around the world to discuss traditional medicine practices, whether they hold up to scientific scrutiny and if these herbs and spices have a place in our drug cabinets as well as our kitchens.Dr Willcox has worked as a GP in the NHS since 2003 and currently works in a practice in Oxford. His research interests at the University of Southampton include global health, clinical trials of herbal medicines, and improving care for vulnerable people.Dr Willcox has researched different aspects of primary health care in low-income countries, with a particular focus on child health, malaria and traditional medicines.He has been involved in several clinical trials of herbal medicines in Uganda, Madagascar, Mali and the UK and coordinates the RITAM network (Research Initiative on Traditional Antimalarial Methods).We’re talking about a bunch of compounds today including moringa, ginseng, cinnamon, nigella, fenugreek, psyllium and will be discussing their potential mechanism of action plus the evidence for them. But please, if you are thinking of supplementing or trying these items, particularly if you have a condition or take pharmaceuticals, please do discuss this with your physician.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

26 Juli 20231h 6min

Today Simon Mills is back on the podcast, he’s a complementary health pioneer from the inception of the term in 1979, and later in the fields of integrated health, selfcare and social prescription.Today we talk about specific spices to start getting into your diet and why. We talk about turmeric and the potential mechanism of action in the gut, cayenne pepper, rosemary, sage, ginger and many more! As well as if spices can be prebiotics and whether they have a role in preventing diabetes and dementia.Simon graduated from University of Cambridge with a degree in medical sciences and has been a herbal practitioner in Exeter since 1977. He was Special Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee 2000 report on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. In 2016 he was appointed as Herbal Strategist at Pukka Herbs, leading new initiatives, clinical research, and most recently reducing antibiotic demand which is something we touch on today.Within herbal medicine, he established the first Masters programme in the USA, writing seminal textbooks, and publishing research including randomised controlled clinical trials.🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

19 Juli 20231h 1min

Dr Sheri Dewan is on the show today, a full-time, board-certified neurosurgeon practicing in Chicago, who is one of roughly 200 board-certified women neurosurgeons in the United States. And today we’re talking about her journey into neurosurgery, that’s she’s penned in a fantastic book “Cutting a Path”.And despite the very specific experience of her journey to becoming a specialist surgeon in a male dominated field, battling gender and ethnic barriers, her story is one that I think many people can connect with. Being a medic, a mother, a mentor and a human. Sheri shares the highs and tragedies of her work whilst juggling her role outside the hospital. She gives us an insight into her coping strategies that she’s developed throughout her career, including that of mindful moments, yoga and even manifesting. (something that I thought to be quite unusual and that challenges the preconception of the stoic neurosurgeon who has hardened themselves to the reality of the job and removes the emotion from their day to day)I hope you leave todays conversation feeling inspired to do your own work on continually questioning purpose and practicing reflection as a blueprint for both working and living more fully.You can find Dr Sheri Dewans book in all good bookstores, it’s a wonderfully honest and refreshing read that I thoroughly enjoyed!(Trigger Warning : We mention child bereavement on the show today)https://www.childbereavementuk.org/ (08000288840)🎬 Watch the podcast on YouTube here📱 Download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for freeYou can download The Doctor’s Kitchen app for free to get access to all of our recipes, with specific suggestions tailored to your health needs and new recipes added every month. We’ve had some amazing feedback so far and we have new features being added all the time - check it out with a 14 day free trial too.Do check out this week’s “Eat, Listen, Read” newsletter, that you can subscribe to on our website - where I send you a recipe to cook as well as some mindfully curated media to help you have a healthier, happier week.🥗 Join the newsletter and 7 day meal plan📷 Follow on Instagram🐦 Tweet meWe would love to get your feedback on the subject matter of these episodes - please do let me know on our social media pages (Instagram, Facebook & Twitter) what you think,and give us a 5* rating on your podcast player if you enjoyed today’s episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12 Juli 20231h 3min