Better Than a Superfood

Hi, this is Dr. Daniels, and you are listening to Healing with Dr. Daniels. This is the Sunday, November 21st, 2021 edition, and today's title is Better Than a Superfood.

Now, I get many requests for natural remedies and cures, so today I'm going to share a very powerful remedy that people often overlook—one that is free for all. And as always, think happens.

But first, an update on Mom. Mom is doing great! She is celebrating her 90th birthday, and the whole family came together for the celebration—a good time was had by all. She’s just chilling along. I talked to her and asked, "Well, Mom, how’s it looking? Are you aiming for the big 1-0-0, or are you just going to take it a year at a time, day at a time?" She didn’t tell me, but she laughed—she thought that was pretty funny. She’s really doing great, getting around more with her walker, and everyone is confident that she’s going to be able to join everyone at the dinner table for Thanksgiving.

This is big news because this person came home comatose from hospice with instructions basically to die, and the family was given the usual morphine and instructed to administer it early and often. Of course, that’s not what we did. So, Mom is now getting a second chance at life, so to speak, and she gets to make her new life happen however she wants. She’s really excited about it.

Next up is Vitality Capsules. We had our customer appreciation webinar—yay! Thank you to all the customers who were able to make it. For those who couldn’t, there’s a recording that will be sent out to you. Yes, that was really great—I missed everyone, and it was nice to say hello. I do appreciate each and every customer—that’s how we keep the lights on.

Vitality Capsules is the daily cleanser that’s comfortable enough for everyday use. Check it out at vitalitycycles.com. We have extra strength and regular. Yay! Check it out and see which one is best for you.

Now, onto my progress—yay! Getting older is getting more exciting every day. Last time we checked, I was a yellow belt in Taekwondo, which I still am. I’m getting better with my kicks, and stronger. Classes are going better—the teacher is very happy with my progress. I’m pretty happy too because I can see the progress with my legs getting stronger. I’m able to walk better with my savage dogs in the morning. I get around much more agilely and flexibly. It’s great! I would strongly recommend Taekwondo to anyone of any age.

My gymnastics and calisthenics are also progressing. For anyone who gets involved in increasing physical activity, there will be times when you don’t see improvement that you can show someone, but you’ll feel a difference in your everyday life—you’re able to do common, everyday things around the house more easily, without having to think about it or put it off or figure out who could do it for you. The number of things I’m able to easily do around the house has tremendously increased. We’re going to talk more about that today.

And then, of course, we’re going to take our turpentine. We didn’t do that last week—at least not on camera. So, let’s see what we’ve got here. We’re going to start with the important white sugar—yay, white sugar! I recommend cane sugar because, to my knowledge, it has not yet been genetically modified. I use a teaspoon—this is an American teaspoon, it’s five grams, five cc’s. Take our sugar, put our spoon in. You want just a little bit of a rounded teaspoon—where I live, it’s humid, so the sugar cakes. That’s about the amount of sugar you want.

Then we have turpentine. You must label your turpentine. It’s important to know that, hey, it’s turpentine—it’s not some kind of recreational beverage. This is serious stuff. I like to take half a teaspoon. My cc dropper happens to be 2.5 cc’s right there. Dip our dropper in the bottle, squeeze the bulb, suck it up. As you can see, I sucked up just a little too much—I’m going to squeeze that out and get it just right there at the neck. Bam, done. We’re going to squeeze it onto the sugar, all of it out there. Done. You know you’ve got it right when part of the sugar turns a little gray, but it’s important that part of the sugar doesn’t.

Now, for the water. You want to chase it down—you don’t want it to sit in your mouth or throat. You want to get it all the way down, like a little lower than your sternum, so it’s firmly in your stomach. I’m going to refill this glass because I drank it all. It’s normal to have occasional burping, and yes, when you burp, it will taste like turpentine. If you don’t like that, take turpentine at night, so you’re sleeping while you’re burping, and you don’t notice it.

We’re going to put our sugar away, turpentine away, and that brings us to shilajit—yay, shilajit! Shilajit is a black, tar-like substance. I’m going to pull the top off here—black tar, icky. This has been composted over thousands of years, and it’s a super concentrate of trace minerals. The reason shilajit is so important to the modern diet is that people nowadays poop, flush their waste down into the streams or oceans, which flushes out trace minerals with them. These minerals are supposed to be recycled. You use the poop to fertilize your plants, you eat the plants and get the minerals, and the cycle continues. In modern society, this cycle is broken, and the feces go out to the ocean, and the plants are fertilized with just NPK—that’s only three minerals: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. This means the diet is necessarily deficient in trace minerals, even if you’re eating all-natural food.

So, what do we do? We take shilajit. There’s a lot of goo on this cap, so I’m going to use that. The daily dose is 200 milligrams, and I’m getting it on this chopstick because that’s easier for me. You can use any device—a metal spatula, whatever. That’s about 100 milligrams—we can do better than that. I’m going to get a little more from this cap. There’s a lot on here, and it’s just not sticking to the chopstick. That’s better. That’s pretty close to 200 milligrams, which, by the way, is about a quarter of a quarter teaspoon. Here we go. I’m going to put it in the water—bam! As you can see, it doesn’t readily dissolve, but we don’t stress ourselves. We just let it sit there, and we’ll take that after the show.

Now, onto today’s topic: Better Than a Superfood. As I said, I get lots of requests for natural remedies and cures and recipes, so today I’m going to share a very powerful remedy that people overlook, and it’s free for everyone—free as in you don’t have to dig into your pocket and pull out dollar bills.

As I get on in years, my quality of mind, quality of life, peace, happiness, and joy become much more important. What’s that got to do with health? Well, your brain uses 20% of your body’s energy, but it only represents 2% of your weight at best. This means that your brain, by weight, uses 10 times as much energy as the rest of your body. So, you can see that if you increase your brain’s demand for energy, you’ll have less energy left for the rest of your body. If you increase that demand high enough, one of your other vital organs—maybe your heart, maybe your lungs—will give out. And that’s it—lights off, lights out.

With stress, your brain uses far more energy and nutrients. If the stress is so great that your brain uses, say, five times as much of its usual energy, there’s none left for any vital organs—so much that it literally kills you by consuming the nutrients you need to keep your body alive. This is serious. This is where the sad but true sayings come from: "He died of grief," "He worried himself to death," "Stress kills." They’re all true.

So, simply reducing the amount of energy and nutrients that your brain expends on stress will lengthen your life and improve your health—even more than any superfood you could possibly purchase, obtain, or grow. Why? Because every single nutrient in your body—from B vitamins to trace minerals to calories—is depleted by stress. There’s no one superfood that replaces every last nutrient in your body. This is why decreasing your stress is so powerful.

This is where the practice of quieting your mind and meditation comes from. I tried that. However, I found a better way. I found that eliminating non-productive mental activity, like stress, worked great and allowed me to use my mind for fun stuff and productive stuff, as well as allowing the rest of my body to be stronger and more capable. When I focused on my day and the moments when I felt stress or just a slight mental or emotional discomfort, I realized that I was ignoring my personal happiness. Yes, I needed to say yes to my personal happiness and convenience. This was news to me since I had been programmed to sacrifice my happiness and convenience for everyone, even strangers, and even for people I had never met. How bizarre is that? For example, during the 90-hour work weeks of study during medical school, I would study 90 hours a week, putting my whole life on hold, enduring incredible stress in anticipation of helping people I had not even met.

This new practice has increased my joy and happiness and reduced procrastination, by the way, and helped me feel better physically and have more energy for daily activities that I enjoy and have to do. I’ll give you examples and hopefully, you’ll find them helpful.

This is an example of a day that started off bad and could easily have gone worse. I got up on that day and slept later than I planned, and I got a message saying, "Hey, I can deliver those ankle weights you need—they’re fixed, and I can just drop them off. I’m in the area." But I didn’t receive the message until an hour after it was sent. So, stress—I got up late. Stress—I got the message an hour late. Stress—I might not get my ankle weights. Then, I was getting ready to do a podcast. I knew if I said, "Come on over," it could be anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours, and I would miss my two-hour window to do the podcast, tape, and upload the show because the connection might not hold. You can see this stress was really snowballing. As I was getting more and more stressed and feeling more and more uncomfortable, I asked myself, "Well, what would be the easiest situation for me? How could I get my ankle weights, tape the podcast, and have an easy day?"

This is the first step: you have to ask yourself what would be easiest, and then visualize the ideal. So I visualized having both. I sent a message, "Hey, sorry I missed your message, but could you come in the afternoon?" And what did she say? She said, "That’s perfect. How about 3 p.m.?" Immediately, all the stress went away because now I could get my ankle weights, tape the podcast, upload the podcast, and I didn’t have to feel bad about sleeping later than I wanted to. The whole stress ball immediately disappeared. Rather than magnifying the guilt of sleeping in or adding the stress of waiting and not knowing when she would come and missing my opportunity to tape the podcast, I messaged her back with a simple request, and she came back with something that—boom—no stress. She came at 3 p.m., I got my great ankle weights, I could exercise, and continue my progress towards even more athletic achievements, like staying out of a wheelchair and staying strong and able to walk independently. So, I really thought of the outcome that would be most comfortable for me, visualized it, and invited her to join my peaceful day.

Try this when you feel stressed: visualize what would be your ideal situation and say yes to the stress-free vision.

Here’s another example—the stress of procrastination. There are all these anti-procrastination programs online, and I think they miss the point. I’ll give you an example in my life of something that really snowballed out of proportion, and how this simple exercise of visualizing what would be ideal and making simple changes made a world of difference. Again, this is a first-world problem, but I’m sure you can think of similar examples in your life.

I realized that I was putting things off—simple things like clearing off a table or filling a jug with water or washing a hand-washable shirt or blouse that would take two minutes. This meant that a blouse I liked, I could only wear once every month or two. How is it that I could wash five loads of laundry a week, fold them up, put them away, and I couldn’t wash a simple blouse that would take two minutes? It sounds trivial, but when you put together 20 of these little things, pretty soon you can’t get anything done.

So, I stopped and thought, "Why was I not washing this blouse?" The blouse was too delicate for the washer—it needed to be washed in soap that was five feet from the sink. Okay, we could move the soap. The floor in front of the utility sink was blocked by things, and the utility sink was filled with stuff I no longer needed and was going to give away. So, in order to wash this blouse, I had to walk 10 more feet outside to the hose, get a small clean bucket, in order to do a two-minute task. Or, I had to reach three feet over all this stuff, rotate to the left, stand on one foot as I washed the blouse. Well, even at an agile 64, that was a major inconvenience. So, I visualized my ideal, which was to walk to the sink, wash the blouse, and hang it up. I realized I had actually created the situation and all the obstructions in my way, and this was creating not only procrastination but stress.

I called someone to get the stuff I did not need, moved the soap closer to the sink, and now I’m able to clean the hand washables. The bonus is, it’s easier to mop the floors. That was also the sink I would ordinarily just put the bucket in to wash the floors. So, now I mop the floors more often, I have a blouse I can wear whenever I want to, and I have clean floors in the house.

You might say, "So what?" Well, it’s not obvious until you remove these stress creators from your life that they’re draining you of energy. This energy drain is what causes illness. If you can spot the small stresses and remove them, your brain will not rob other organs of valuable nutrients, thus creating disease.

A lot of times, people think of getting rid of big stresses—quitting your job, divorcing your spouse. Back up, back up, back up. If you focus on the smaller stressors in your life, you might find that, yeah, these big stresses are a problem, but if you can remove 5, 10, 20 smaller stressors, you might find what you thought was a big stress actually becomes quite manageable—or that it wasn’t a stress at all. Or, if you do decide you need to remove that big stress, it becomes much easier to do.

So, if you decide to switch jobs, for example, it’s much easier to do when you have a mental capacity—a brain that is not being stressed or burdened by all these other things.

This is the link between stress and disease. Understanding this is even more important than any herbal formula or superfood because it allows your body to always have a wide range of nutrients and energy on tap so that it can repair and maintain your whole body. This creates a situation where disease simply does not happen. No superfood can provide the full range of nutrients that can be conserved by reducing stress.

So go for it—notice that these small changes do not involve any inconvenience or change for others. Just visualize your stress-free situation and say yes to moving towards it. I’ve deliberately picked easy steps—you’ll find that as you address these small things, the bigger stresses will become easier to handle or just melt away. Give it a try. Your health will improve because you’ll have more nutrients for other vital organs.

All righty, now for questions. Let’s go find them. Oh my gosh, I found them! I’m so proud of myself. Let’s see—let’s find one.

Dr. Daniels, if an underweight person, a person 30 pounds underweight, has an autoimmune disease and has to do a seven-day water fast, what can he do if he’s underweight?

A1: Okay, so if you are underweight, you should not do a water fast—certainly not for seven days. If you are underweight, you are better served by addressing your underweight situation. If you are 30 pounds underweight, guaranteed 100%, you are malnourished—no doubt about it. You’re malnourished. This might be a big factor in your illness. So, what I would do is first correct the 30-pound underweight issue. It’s a bad idea for someone who is underweight to do a water fast because the water fast further depletes nutrients. The way the water fast works is it dissolves connective tissue and fat, thus rinsing out nutrients. Someone who’s 30 pounds underweight is literally going to flush themselves down the drain and out of their body during the fasting process. So, what I would do is recommend that the person gain at least 10 pounds before even attempting the fast because that’s probably what they’re going to lose potentially in the seven-day water fast.

Is it okay to eat a portion of cow brain every day?

A2: I don’t think so. I would say a portion of cow brain is about two ounces. If you eat that every day, somewhere around day 10, your body will say, "Enough of that!" So, take a break. Traditionally, the practice of eating cow brain ranged from anywhere from twice a year to once a month. If you multiply how many years you’ve been alive, that’s how many cow brain portions you’ve missed. So, I think it’s reasonable to eat cow brain every day—say two ounces every day—and keep doing it until your body says, "Enough." Then you can pause and notice what things got better or were relieved when you ate the cow brain. If any of those things show up again, eat more. That’s one way of doing it. Another way is to take a week every month or two and eat cow brain, say, two ounces every day for that week. That’s the way I do it.

Is cow brain easily digested? Absolutely not. It’s not easily digested—don’t take cow brain lightly. If you’re going to eat cow brain, you’ve got to eat it with carbs, a cooked vegetable, and a raw vegetable, along with at least a quart of water. If you don’t, you’ll likely experience incredible chest pain radiating everywhere, and you’ll be ready to call for help when you really just needed to eat some vegetables and drink a quart of water with your cow brain. So, don’t just nibble on cow brain.

Have you ever spoken about smallpox, and is it a disease?

A3: Smallpox is a disease of contaminated water. If you’re drinking distilled water like I recommend, your chance of getting smallpox is zero. The other source of smallpox is sharing a toilet with someone else who has smallpox. If you have your own private toilet, drink distilled water, and wash your hands before you eat, your chances of getting smallpox are zero—nada, nothing. Don’t worry about it, you’re good.

A lot of these disease-specific concerns and interventions can all be addressed by simple practices. It’s well known that diseases are spread by water, food, and poor hygiene. The water problem can be handled by just filtering your water, purifying your water—distilled water—easy beans, done. The food problem can be handled by washing your food, cooking your food, and having frequent bowel movements so any parasite that gets in through your food just goes right out the other end.

The fecal-oral route, sharing bathrooms—nowadays, especially in the United States, it’s easy to have your own private bathroom. All these so-called contagious diseases, we don’t need to worry about them. That’s really what caused the eradication of smallpox—the advent of indoor plumbing, of people no longer sharing a public toilet with thousands of other people.

In the 1800s, it was common to have literally an outhouse in the neighborhood that was shared with hundreds of other people. This is why things like measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, whatever, were easily transmitted. Now that most people have indoor toilets, or even if they do have an outhouse, it’s used by maybe a few family members—it’s not shared with hundreds of other people. These things are not a problem.

The only way they could become a problem is if, say, smallpox or polio is introduced through some change in cultural practice. Maybe it’s decided to add something to the drinking water, for example. If that happens, you’ve got that covered by just purifying your water. Maybe it’s decided that thing will be added to injectables, pharmaceutical agents, or bottled beverages. All these things can be handled just by distilling your own water. If you want to drink a beverage, make your own—it’s easy enough.

That brings us to the end of today’s episode. And remember, stress—get rid of it, poco a poco, that’s Spanish for bit by bit, and it is better than a superfood. And always, think happens.