Kidney cancer; I'll think about it

Rob Prior has a highly trained scientific and curious mind. When diagnosed with kidney cancer he applied his logic and intuition and decided to reject all standard cancer treatment. Rob chose to relentlessly pursue a holistic approach. He really wanted to live well and keep his kidney.  11 years later Rob loves telling his story and devotes his time to coaching others.  Have a listen and think about what it would take for you to follow your own path to health.  Rob Prior's book  "The Healing Power of Cancer" available from his website, www.robprior.net  is a fascinating read.

Transcript

0:02

More and more people are choosing natural and holistic medicine because of the real and sustainable results achieved. A patient story discusses the healing journey that real people have experienced and how it has changed their lives. Rob Pryor, for many years I've walked past your premises and you're a hero in education in this part of the world, Sydney, because I know of many kids that have gone through your college and certainly benefited from your mathematics tutorials and education. So delighted to finally meet you because I've just seen your name on the wall for many years and hello, how are you? I'm very well, thanks, Daniel, and thanks for your kind words. You have a fascinating story. In 2013, you were diagnosed with renal cancer, or kidney cancer, and you made an amazing decision. And I say it's amazing. It's not amazing to you now, probably with the aid of retrospective vision, but in how society views cancer, it will be amazing for so many people because I don't know what the number is, but I'm guessing 95 or maybe 99% of the community who get diagnosed with cancer will just to some degree follow the doctor's orders. They'll either go the full hog into chemo, radio surgery, or they'll have some sort of general medical approach with a bit of natural medicine thrown in. But you denied yourself of all medical attention and you followed a holistic route, and that's what we're here to talk about. And I know you have a very strong science background. Rob, what is your science degrees in? Well, my majors were in pure mathematics and computer science, but I did study. That answers your question, but for what it's worth, well, you have to study chemistry, physics, biology in your. At least in the first year. I don't know if it's when I was studying at the University of Sydney, that was compulsory. So that gave me just a general understanding and appreciation of way those sciences work. Running free with this one, that the most impressionable subject I studied was history and philosophy of science, which I just loved. It was founded. I was fortunate that it was the first year that the department was launched was run by a fellow called Doctor Langham, Doctor Ian Langham. So he was the founder, he was the lecturer, he wrote the materials, conducted the tutorials, he marked our homework and exam papers. He was pretty much the department. He might have had a couple of assistants, but most importantly, he got us to question the prevailing knowledge and wisdom, think outside the box and explore different paradigms. And how science works is questioning and saying, well, maybe our explanations of the way things work are not correct or maybe they're somewhat correct, but there are better theories and explanations that lie waiting to be discovered. And so I found that fascinating, that it wasn't just memorizing what was fed to us and then regurgitating it in the exams. It was about truly developing your thinking processes. So, to cut a long story short, by the time it came to my cancer diagnosis, I didn't just accept what was being fed to me, and neither did I reject it out of hand, because that would be equally foolish. I just wanted to consider my options, consider the possibilities, and make a decision as to what I think was the most safe and effective way to proceed. So that subject, I don't know, maybe I might have been more accepting of what the doctors were recommending. I've listened to your audiobook, the healing power of cancer, and I guess you go through many, many topics. It's a great read or a great listen for anyone that's interested in the topic, because you just cover so much in it. And one of the areas that highlights for me in it is that it kind of ties in where I feel that we are heading in a modern world, and that is in the battle for hearts and minds and marketing dollars. We're being forced out of the processes of critical thinking, I feel. And we're asked to react to marketing bytes or pr bites or little images on YouTube or whatever, rather than thinking through the issues. But also, there's a battle going on for truSt. And this is nowhere stronger in my mind than it is in health. And we're asked, if you're faced with a critical condition, to just trust the science. And the question really is, who do we trust in the science? And can we trust that the science is correct at this time? And it's a really complicated question. I like science and I believe in science, but got to, I guess, look at every particular scientific explanation and say, well, who's behind it? Where's the money coming from? And, you know, and I say this with the background of knowing that I think it was over 2 million journal articles were attracted last year from some publishers. And so these articles go out, they say, do this and that, take this drug, use that drug, take this vaccine, and everyone does, and then the article gets retracted. It's just quite extraordinary what we've got ourselves into. But somehow you, Rob, put all that aside and you followed your intuition, and that's something worth exploring, I think. Yeah, I mean, we all take our own way of thinking for granted. You just think, this is the way I see the world. Doesn't everybody else see it the same way, until someone like you comes along, Daniel, and says, well, no, everybody else does not think the way that I think, you know. And it was an evolutionary process over a long period of time that, you know, if you go back before my university studies, my father would encourage me to question everything. And when I asked him questions, he would respond with another question to guide me towards my own discovery of the answer, which developed my thought process. So rather than give it to me on a silver platter, it say, well, what do you think? What have you observed? What does that suggest to you? Is there another possible explanation? Do those two explanations reconcile with each other or they contradict him to each other? I mean, he was a very learned man. He was very good at science and physics at school. He joined the army, where he was very scientific in his understanding of what happened. I'm not a fan of warfare, obviously, but I think he had a very precise, logical mind, which he then imparted to me, taught me mathematics. But when he taught me mathematics, he wouldn't say, here's how you do it. Step 1234, and bingo, there's your answer. He would say, what are they asking you to find? And I answer. He'd say, okay, that's good. Do you have any ideas? And I'd say, an idea? And I'd say, am I right? He'd say, well, let's find out. He wouldn't tell me, yes, you're right or you're wrong. He'd say, let's try your idea to solve this mathematical problem, and we'll see if it works. If it works, then obviously, that's right. If it doesn't work, you're going to learn from the mistakes. You're going to learn either way. And so it was a wonderful way to learn mathematics, which got me to think. Whereas even in mathematics, there are school teachers who will say, here's a question, and when you see this, you do step 1234, and that's how you do it. Now, here's a different question. The method's slightly different. You do steps 1235, and there's your answer. That's not how I was brought up. And then when it came to university, as I said, I adored that subject. History and philosophy, of science, particularly. Well, history and the philosophy and the whole mindset, the way of thinking. But then also going along with that. And this was all unconscious experiences. In my teenage years, when I get a headache, initially, I take headache tablets like many people do. But then I started to think, gee, you know, these chemicals these artificial substances I'm taking, I wonder what they do to my body, to my liver, my kidney, my gallbladder, my pancreas, my spleen. And biology is not my expertise, and medicine is not my expertise. But health was not my expertise back then. It is now, but not then. But I just instinctively, I thought, this cannot be good for me. I wonder if there's an alternative. And then someone said that I heard somewhere that apparently about 80% of headaches come. 80% of headaches come from neck tension. So I did neck stretching exercises, and I found that that would relieve the tension and the headache would go away. I thought, well, that's interesting. I didn't have to take a tablet. And then somebody else said, well, if you get ice blocks in a face washer put at the base of your neck, the headache might disappear. So when the neck stretching didn't work, I'd try that. And then often worked. I thought, this is really good. It's natural. I'm not doing any harm to my body. Later on, I learned about meditation. I found that could prevent headaches, that a lot of headaches come because you're worrying about things, but if you meditate, you stop worrying, you start to accept that there are problems, do have solutions, and that it's all going to be okay. And that, you know, I heard some of you piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. I heard that 97, 98% of the things that people worry about never come into existence. So we're worrying for nothing. All we're doing is upsetting ourselves, spoiling our quality of life. So again, I thought, well, meditation's got to be the way to go, which I do daily to this day, 365 days a year in my is a long answer to your question. In my twenties, I became skeptical about antibiotics because I started to hear, this is just apocryphal information coming to me, just gossip and people who aren't really experts just saying stuff. But I listened, and I considered it. I didn't believe it. I didn't reject it. People were saying that antibiotics can diminish your immune system. And short term, yes, they have a good effect. Often, usually long term, they're damaging. So I thought, oh, I don't want that. I want to live a long and healthy life. I wonder what the alternative is. So I started to look into alternatives, that when you get a cold or flu, there are simple things like lemon, ginger, turmeric, which have a wonderful healing effect and are not to be underestimated, not to be sneezed at, and then also someone said, well, actually, you can sweat it out, get into a hot bath for as long as you can, and sweat like crazy, and it'll sweat out the bugs and the toxins. So I tried that, and that worked. Somebody else said, get into a bed and put too many doonas on it, like quilt covers, and then sweat it out. So already my mind was thinking upon these lines, but not consciously, and I wasn't threading it together as a way of being a way of thinking. So by the time it got to my cancer diagnosis, it wasn't so out of the box for me to think, well, this guy wants to remove a kidney. That sounds really drastic, that sounds heavy. And then someone who I have enormous respect for, a psychotherapist actually called Michael Adamides, said to me, don't do the surgery. It's very dangerous, and they'll tell you that your body can function perfectly well on one kidney. He said, but personally, he said, I don't believe it. He said, we've got two kidneys for a very good reason. So that got me thinking. So just all these people and things that I'd seen, I was piecing it together like a jigsaw. But I think the, the problem is too many people just trust people who are supposedly in a position of authority. And I'm skeptical about the word expert. I mean, who's an expert? Are you an expert? Am I an expert? Or doctors are experts? Well, an expert is someone who tells the truth, and not just for monetary gain. So I thought, well, maybe I'm a bit of an expert. Maybe I could become an expert. Maybe I can learn about this. So, anyway, long answer to your question. Holistic answer. Thank you. I understand everything you've said, and I understand that you were fortunate to be exposed to your father and other people. That steered you along a path of critical thinking, which I love. Critical thinking. And there's another course of prior education, mate. Run some critical thinking courses. I would love that, and I would be there myself. We can do a podcast on it, or if it's a group thing, I'd love to be part of it. Okay, excellent. Often, and I've certainly had many patients myself, and I've been involved as a secondary advisor and many other cancer cases. Many people who are rational thinkers and good thinkers, when exposed to a serious threat to their life, there's a level of panic that goes in. And with that panic often comes a loss of personal trust, self trust. And people are often quite okay about handing over their belief systems to somebody else to look after them, because that panic creates a level of confusion. So you are a somewhat unique beast because you have been able to steer through that and still maintain your. Hmm, I don't know what the right word is. Your. Your intellectual dignity and autonomy and stay on course, which I think is. Is quite a unique aspect. So what I'd like to respond to that. I think you really hit upon something very significant here, Daniel, that I think when. I mean, when I got my diagnosis, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. But fortunately, I'd already taken up meditation by that point. I've learned the importance of deep breathing. I'd had therapy for mycolatomedes. I've learned to not let myself drown in the sort of quicksand of anxiety where you can spiral downwards to really maintain your composure and don't make rash decisions while you're in a state of fear and anxiety and apprehension. So, you know, I still was feeling that. You know, I wasn't exempt from that, but I was overwhelmed with anxiety. I had headaches, I was crying, I couldn't sleep. I was an emotional mess. So please don't think that everything. Oh, yeah, everything's cool. It was not cool. I really thought I was going to die. And I was in a lot of pain. And I had swelling and rashes and lumps and bumps and aches and pains. I mean, I was in a very bad way, but knew to navigate myself very calmly through it. So when the specialists were talking, I was listening carefully, suspending, agreeing with him or disagreeing, just listening, and then piecing it together even then and there. And I thought, he wants to remove this vital organ asap, as in next week. I don't know about that. I want to think about this. Maybe I will. Maybe there's another way. I just want to think about it. When I said, can I think about it? He said, yes, but I wouldn't think about it too long. Then I became more skeptical. Now, some people in that situation would think, gosh, he's the expert. And if he says, we need to move quickly, who am I to question that? I better do that. My life's at stake. It'd be foolish to delay this. I could be dead by next week or the week after. But fortunately, my whole life, it wasn't one thing. It was my whole emotional and intellectual development, up to the point, said to me, don't rush into it. It's like if you're buying a house, you don't buy the first house you see, and you don't agree to it then and there you think about it. You look at other houses, you look at the prices. You talk to different real estate agents who've got different vested interests. You talk to other people who've bought and sold. You get an architect's look at it. You really consider it because it's a major decision, and yet, which most people would do. And yet, when it comes to health, people don't seem to apply that same process. We need to move quickly. We need to operate next week. All right, let's do it. It's like, no, it's like, slow down. Read Rob Pryor's book, talk to Daniel Baden. It's like, talk to Ron Erlich. Like, seriously talk to people who've got different points of view and start to think about it. Because, and the thing Michael said to me is, you're not going to die anytime soon. This was really helpful advice. You've been spiraling down into illness for many months, probably years. You've been eating the wrong foods. You haven't been exercising. You've been a workaholic putting on weight. This is a long time to get to this point. And you'll be, won't die within the next six months, probably. You could go another year with no treatment at all. You're not in a good way, but you've got time to consider this. And that's the thing. Now, I can't give advice to other people out there, Daniel, that some people need to move more quickly than others. Other people have got more time to consider it. That's a personal decision. I don't give advice. What I mainly do is tell my story. This is what I did. This is what I thought. This was the result of my actions. But that was good advice, to not rush into it. And then, in fact, he said to me, this is getting way off your question. He said, there's an integrated doctor in Annandale who works in the same building as where I do my psychotherapy, and he's got a very good track record for curing people of cancer. So I thought that was interesting. Let's at least look into that, which I think is happening now with people who are getting cancer diagnosis. When they hear about my book, they think, well, let's at least read Rob's book. Maybe I won't agree with it, maybe it's unhelpful, maybe some of its helpful, but at least let's consider that. The main thing I wanted to say here is one of the early things that I did was to have psychotherapy counseling sessions with Michael to release the anxiety. This is the point I want to bring home, to release the anxiety so that I'm not having to deal with that, because that's clouding my thinking and I need to be calm and clear headed and take time to think about this. I've got. The anxiety is really that the emotional component needs to be addressed with. Even before the physical component, which I think most people don't do, they wouldn't think the emotional component is important. They'd think I'm terrified because I've got a cancer diagnosis, whereas I found out that is not the truth. I was terrified because I thought I was going to die, not because I had a cancer diagnosis. It's not the diagnosis itself that causes the anxiety. The very subtle but important distinction here. It was the diagnosis which triggered a belief that I was going to die, which I later figured out was because of society's conditioning that cancer is some sort of death sentence, which I believe it's not. I believe, I actually believe, if push comes to shove, that nobody or very few people should die from cancer. Now, how about that for an extreme statement? I believe if people got the right knowledge and take the right action and have faith in it and follow through, there is a very high chance for their survival through naturopathic means. That's a very extreme statement here, but I'm finding it to be true with the people that I coach these days. It's an interesting area. And the integrative or holistic doctor you found in Annandale and other, like, integrative doctors and naturopaths are actually, through bureaucratic process, not allowed to cure cancer. Naturopaths aren't allowed to treat cancer. And so it would seem to me that the cancer industry is fairly well segmented and owned by big pharma and other interested parties. So naturopaths dance around by saying, we don't treat cancer, we support people that have cancer. And you've got to use sort of language that appeases the government and the health departments. But, you know, even the integrative doctors walk on thin ice, really, because doctors that have experimented with reducing cancer doses or looked for any other, sorry, chemo doses, I should say, or have looked at other alternatives, really are under serious threat of losing their medical license if people complain. So it's a very tightly controlled environment that people work in, and you have to be quite brave as the practitioner, and you have to have your wits about you as the patient. Also, you're right, this man that I saw is not allowed to say that he can cure cancer. You may be right about. He can't say that he can treat cancer. He did say he can treat it and he did tell me he's got a very high success rate. But when it came to writing my book, I called him and said, I just wanted to clarify some details. And he said, oh, you're going to put me in the book? And I said, is that okay? He said, well, not really. I said, what if I use a pseudonym? He said, yeah, that might be okay. Sure. So I did. It was the only name in the book where I used a pseudonym for the person. I mean, the book's a story, it's an autobiography where I do name the real names of all the individuals concerned. So the GP, the specialist, the psychotherapist, all the different holistic practitioners, the people that I met who were succeeding in curing themselves of cancer by naturopathic means, which was an endless stream of people, and that gave me a lot of confidence. But the one name I changed was that integrated doctor. I kept his first name the same, but changed the surname because he was just very nervous about being investigated and possibly deregistered. Fair enough. I've certainly witnessed a number of doctors being struck off or losing their medical license for similar issues. But, Rob, back in 2013. Let's just wind back for a second here. Yep, that's it. Thank you for the sound effect. What were the early symptoms that took you to get looked at? Oh, boy. Okay, well, maybe I'll quote a little bit from my book because it's all expressed there. I could say it off the top of my head. By January 2013, my symptoms extended to nausea, fatigue, headaches, blotchy complexion, dark rings under my eyes, a massive reddish purple rash and itchiness on my lower left leg, a large lump on my back, severe stomach cramps in my lower right abdomen, 24/7 aching muscles, swelling of glands under my ears and arms and heart palpitations. Apart from that, Daniel, I was fine. So is that a set of symptoms that crept out on you over a period of time, or was it a very short over a period of time? Yeah, one by one, slowly. Are we talking years? No, probably throughout the year 2012, particularly the latter half of the year. I mean, look, as you said earlier, perhaps it was before we started the recording. You said, we're all getting older. And it's true. I'm in my sixties, getting older. And you start to notice the body's not what it used to be to do what you can to try and preserve and improve your health. There are things you can do. But some of it I put down just to aging. Things like fatigue. I thought, well, I'm getting older, which I later found out not to not be the case, that now I don't suffer from nausea or fatigue or any of it. I don't get headaches at all, ever. Nothing. Zero, zip, zilch. In fact, if I look at these symptoms now, I don't have any of these now. I don't have heart palpitations. I don't have swelling. But I thought it was the aging process, and then it got so bad, I thought, is this really what the aging process is about? Actually, I thought I had, at one point, a neurological disorder because I also had tremors. I don't know if I mentioned that, but my whole body was shaking, so I thought it was neurological. I had no idea it was cancer. It's so bad. And I avoided seeing a doctor till eventually I thought, you know what? I should get some testing and see what's going on here. Look, you talk about aging, but. And you mentioned this in your book, and I feel the same way. I still feel pretty amazing at my age, and I know that you do as well, and that is really a testament to exercise, healthy eating, and attitude. People I associate with in my age group feel really good. So you don't have to feel old because you are getting older, in my view. Yes, 100%, yes. And the things that you're speaking of will address not just cancer, of avoiding or curing it, but just a whole range of illnesses and symptoms if you really do the right. And many people think their diet is good, and I thought my diet was good before I met another particular man who actually was the owner of a produce store. But many people, you know, my diet was not good, and many people really need to look at their diet. And the first thing I would say is to go organic, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Sure. Look, and we just. We just need to be a little succinct with this, because. And if people want more details, they really probably should pick up a copy of your book, because you do go into a lot of details. But the abridged version is that you. You bumped into a naturopath who ran a store, and he directed you towards a very wholesome, organic type of diet, very high fruit and vegetable content, or not so much fruit, more vegetable and healthier eating, and also introduce you to a number of different supplementary type products, various detoxifying agents. And you took all that quite seriously, because I know a lot of people that seek holistic or alternative cancer care will do part of that. Often they go, oh, I tried some vitamins. Oh, I tried some detox therapies. Oh, I tried this. I tried that. Now, I've witnessed personally many, many patients that have recovered from cancer diagnosis and live a full and healthy life. But you took it to the, in my view, from what I've read, the absolute extreme and did absolutely everything. What a big change. And if I can say, I've met people who say to me, I had a friend who went the, what would you call it? Naturopathic road, and she died, or he died. So I don't really believe in it. But my response to that is, I suspect strongly they did not go far enough. But, you know, I'll start to quiz them. I'll say, and you asked me not to be too specific. So I'll just say, you know, I'd say to them, did they do. Well, I need to be specific. Did they do detoxification with bentonite clay, zeolite, diatomaceous earth? And they'll say to me, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. And I'll say to them, did they do far infrared saunas and colonic hydrotherapy? And then they'll say, I don't think so. Probably not. I'll say, well, there you go. This is the problem. They didn't go far enough. And the analogy that I like to use, Daniel, is I've been tutoring mathematics for 48 or 49 years now, and I've had students who say to me, I studied for that last mathematics exam, and I failed. I got 38%. And so I don't know if studying really works. I just think I'm no good at mathematics. And I'll say to them, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. I don't. I strongly disagree with this, or we need to look at this. How much study did you do? Well. Sorry, when did you start studying? A week before the exam. When were you notified about it? Oh, three weeks before the exam. Well, there's the first issue. Should have started three weeks before the exam. Did you do past practice exams? Yeah. How many did you do? One. Well, there's another issue. One's not enough. You need to do at least two or three. Did you do that one exam under exam conditions? Well, not really. I sort of took a break, got up for a cup of tea. I did it over two nights. I said, well, so you're talking about commitment. I'm talking about thank you along with an answer. They didn't go far enough. You know, study does work if you want to study, but, you know, also sometimes, I mean, you need to understand it. You can't just memorize things. It's. It's a whole plethora of attitude and actions that need to be taken to achieve that result over a period of time. It's the same with holistic healing. You can't just say, oh, I'll have some green juices and I'll do a bit of exercise. That's great, sure. But you need very precise information. There are certain things people put in juices. And I say, well, you shouldn't be putting that in. Like, that's got too much sugar. That's going to feed the fungal infection. Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of things missing from. They don't go far enough. And that was one of the motivations for writing the book. I find some of the juicing bars I see around the place quite alarming, to be honest, because you know how much fructose is involved in squashing down five apples into a juice, but you're. Better off eating one apple than squash five apples into a juice because you're getting five times the sugar. Exactly, exactly. Right. And with the apple, the time it takes you to eat it, by the time you've eaten one, you don't feel like eating a second apple. So that's good. That's as much. And it should be a green apple, not a red apple. But now we're getting specific again. Yeah, look, it's quite interesting because it's a whole societal expectation and or thinking process. And I've certainly come across many family members of patients who, who have passed away, unfortunately, who would say something like, you know, they went to the doctor and they did everything they could, but they died. Or the vice versa to that is, oh, they went for holistic medicine. They lived another three years and they wasted their time. They should have gone to the doctor, you know. So it's an expectation that if the doctor did everything they could and the person dies, well, that's what happened. But if you went to the naturopath, and even if you live three times longer and healthier, that's not good enough. And what a waste of time that was. So it's quite extraordinary. Something else I studied at university was logic. And there's a thing in logic called a non sequitur, which is where people say ABC leads to D, but that if you look at mathematics, ABC may not lead to D. It might say that D is a possibility, but in fact, e may be the most appropriate way to get to that solution. So I had a very. With a very highly trained, logical mind, I was able to reject a lot of things that were told to me and to work out, to navigate my way through it, to figure out what to believe and what not to believe. Not everyone's got that sort of mathematical and scientific background. No, no, that's right. So, Rob, you started changing your life, exercising, eating better, eating specific foods, taking the supplements. How hard was that for you to make that shift initially? And then after you made the shift, what were the first changes that you noticed? Well, the honest answer, it was easy for me to make the shifts. I know for many people it's not easy. They say, what I've got to give up. Alcohol and coffee and sugar and biscuits and cakes and ice cream. Are you serious? You're crazy. I can't do that. I love that stuff. For me, it was just a very pragmatic approach that I will do whatever I need to do to achieve this goal. I want to live, and I don't mind making sacrifices short term, maybe even long term. I want to live to 100 with perfect mental and physical health, and I'll do whatever it takes. I just need to get the right information. So that's the long and the short answer of it. It wasn't that hard. In fact, the night before my diagnosis, I went to my alcohol cupboard, is it called cabinet, and took the bottles across to the sink and emptied them down the sink with great gusto and a feeling of triumph. And this is before I knew anything about the fact that alcohol is high in sugar. The sugar feeds the cancer, so it's a road to death. I knew nothing about that. It's just I suspected this is not. This cannot be good for me. You know, you drink it when you're feeling lonely or you want to escape from life's problems. But the night before that diagnosis, I was so terrified of what I was facing, I thought, I'm going to put the wheels in action before I see this doctor. The thing that disappointed me and alarmed me is when I told the doctor that I quit alcohol the night before, the specialists were talking about. He didn't seem to care. And I thought, this is really weird. Like, surely she'd be commending me and saying, rob, this is terrific. You're already heading in the right direction. And when I asked him if coffee's okay, he said, well, there's conflicting evidence that some says it's harmful, some say it's okay. So if I were you, I wouldn't worry about it. Now, again, my background logic told me, if there's a potential risk, surely you would err on the side of caution and not drink coffee. I later found out that coffee is very bad for cancer patients. It's highly acidic and promotes the growth of infection. So, you know, not getting good advice there. But already I was starting to be suspicious by using my scientific background of what he's saying. Many people, again, don't have that background. He's the expert. He's got the long list of letters after his name. You've got to trust. If you can't trust that, who can. You trust with cancer and with people? I also find it's a little bit difficult to talk in absolutes. There was a study that came out just last week about coffee, in fact, helping people with certain types of cancer. And I think those types of cancers are probably around colon cancers, because coffee has a mild laxative like effect, and it's probably the one thing that's helping them go to the bathroom once a day. Now, I understand that the long term issues might be there with coffee, but the short term for those people may have some benefit. It would be nice if we could identify in that study how that coffee is helping those people short term and switch them out to more fiber in their diet, in the science, understand why things are or are not working, and see if we can find a better way forward. Well, I can't comment on the benefit of coffee because I don't have that knowledge or expertise. But the two people who became my mentors, one for about a couple of months, and then the other one for the best part of a year, advised me to not drink the coffee. So there was a level of trust there, even though I say it's important to think things through logically and consider your options. I did have two people I felt I could trust, and that's a big deal. Once you find someone you can trust, you can follow their advice, pretty much most of it. And it worked. So my trust proved to be correct. I just felt that if there's a risk, I wasn't willing to take that risk. Rob, I probably, in this podcast series interviewed, I'm thinking maybe up to 20 people with various types of cancers. And one of the common themes that I feel that I've come across is, and I know you touched on it in your books as well, was around mental attributes that humans do or do not have. And that may be the ability to forgive, but more importantly, the ability to self love, self appreciate. And I'm wondering if you could just talk to that a little bit with yourself, how you identified what your personal issues might be from a mental health point of view, and how you dealt with those. Okay, you've opened the can of worms there, so let's do that. It's a big can. Modern medicine tends to treat the human body as in a mechanistic way, like a motor car. Now, with a motor car, if you're informed that your transmission, say, has rusted, you can't fix that rust, and the car can't fix itself. All you can do is to remove that component and replace it with a brand new component, and that will fix it. And that's a good solution. But the human body is not like a motor car. It is a self healing organism. A remarkable, extraordinary self healing organism. And so it is, we've been taught that it's capable of healing itself from simple things like a cold or flu. We know that we get better within a few days. If our immune system is good, or if you cut yourself, we know that it forms a clot and then the scab. The scab eventually falls off and you're back to normal. We know that. But we've been conditioned by society, the media, doctors, to believe that it cannot cure itself of something as drastic as cancer. I do not agree with that at all. I believe it is perfectly capable of curing itself from cancer by holistic means if you give it the right support, the way that we did. To address your question, the way that we differ from motor car is where mind, body, spirit, we're not just body, and they all work together synergistically. And the impact that the emotions have on our body is massive. I would say 60% of the secret to my recovery was by addressing the emotional issues. And 30, or approximately 30 or 40% was due to all the dietary stuff and detoxification that we were talking about earlier. So I'm so glad you've come onto this. In the initial stages, anyone with cancer needs to look at their diet and detox and all those sort of physical things. 100%. When I coach people, that's usually the first thing I do, because it's easy to deal with, and usually they're fairly willing to adopt it. And it's pretty much. It's got a lot to do with gut health. It's pretty much the same for all people. To improve your gut health, which builds your immune system to fight off the infection. The emotional component is more difficult for most people you're talking about forgiveness. Many people, I'd say pretty much everyone with cancer. There's some emotional trigger that needs to be addressed. But a lot of it has been suppressed early in life. Maybe childhood issues, teenage issues. In my case, it was childhood and teenage and a birth trauma where I was choking on my mother's amniotic fluid and I couldn't breathe. Now imagine how I can't remember it, obviously not consciously, but imagine how traumatic that is for a baby. It actually shapes your worldview, it shapes your personality of who you become. But when we meet people who are just afraid of making decisions and afraid of what to do and who to trust and how to go about it, we've got to be a bit sympathetic towards them, I think, because you can trace it back to their history. You know, were their parents alcoholics? Were they physically abusive? Were they. Were they verbally abusive? Was there physical abuse? Was there, you know, maybe things that weren't even the parents fault where they fell off their bike when they were very young and cut themselves severely and they're bleeding and in pain. They're just also. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things that can happen to people which cause them to be traumatized. So I had 6 hours of psychotherapy with this Michael Adamides fellow that I was talking about, which cleared not only gangs. So first of all, his first duty, his first mission was to clear the current anxiety I was feeling about dying. I really thought I was dying. In fact, when I walked into his clinic for the first session, I broke down crying before I could even speak. He said, what's this all about? I said, I believe I think I'm going to die. And he said to me, you are not going to die slowly and with that sort of emphasis. And he said, well, not anytime soon. Eventually, perhaps in a long, long time. Yes, we're all going to die. He said, but you're not going to die soon. I said, how do you know that with such confidence? He said, just intuitively, Rob, look, you've seen the integrative doctor last week. You've seen me to deal with the emotional components. You've already started. You quit the alcohol, you're already doing a lot of good things. You're onto it, you're taking responsibility, you're stepping up to the plate. Knowing you, you're going to keep investigating, learning more, doing more. He said, you're on the road to recovery already. I said, oh, it makes me feel so relieved to hear you say that because I believed him. See, I had faith in him. But even that was starting to eliminate the anxiety. Then he traced it back to two recent things, and I may as well be specific. One was the serious financial difficulties that my educational business was in. I was losing money. The last two or three years, I was losing one hundred thousand dollars to one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year. That was traumatic after having made countless, well, I might as well say millions of dollars. We probably grossed over $100 million in the whole course of running that educational business. Hugely successful. You've heard about it. Everybody in the eastern suburbs or throughout Sydney had heard about my colleges. Now we're losing money. Imagine how stressful that is. Like, I was trying to maintain a brave face, but deep down I was very upset and I couldn't tell anyone because if you tell the parents, they're not going to enroll their kids, they're going to think, I'm not going to enroll my money. And I couldn't lose my money because you go bankrupt, which we eventually did. I had to close it down. But everyone got, everyone who paid money upfront ahead got that was I, what's the word? Reimbursed them. I made good then, even to the point of selling my house just to do the right thing by people. And then the other traumatic thing that needed to be dealt with was the death of my father one month before the diagnosis. And he said, these two things have pushed you over the edge. Your health was already spiraling downwards. But the thing that pushed you over the edge to bring about this cancer diagnosis was those two things, financial difficulties, massive financial stress and the death of my father. So he dealt with that. But one of the difficulties with it, I had great resentment towards my father because he was ex military, in a very harsh taskmaster. More than that, he could be quite. He could yell at us and be verbally abusive, usually not physically abusive, but verbally. And I've suppressed my resentment because we've got a tendency to do that. You don't want to openly be angry at your father because your mum and your dad, your lifeline, your life source, they protect you when you're a child and a teenager. They put the roof over your head, the food on the table, education, clothes, the whole shebang. You depend upon them, so you don't want to be angry at them. Twenty four seven. And Michael helped me to forgive my father, to realize that he was a. There's a long answer to question. I'm not good at short answers. I've worked that out. I realized that my father was a product of his upbringing, but he grew up during the second world war, so there's all that trauma. And my father's parents, my grandparents grew up in the first world war and the Great Depression, and imagine the trauma that all brought about them. And that gets passed down through the genes and through the upbringing, what do you call it? Nature and nurture. So I started to think, right, so that's what made him the person that he became. So I thought, well, gee, I can't. I can't hold a grudge and resentment towards him when it really was something that was kind of out of his control. And then Michael said, listen, you're not forgiving him for his benefit. He's dead anyway. You're forgiving him for your benefit, for your healing. You're determined to heal. You need to do this. This is essential. Robert. I was lucky to have someone who put it so simple and clearly to me, this is vital for your survival. If you don't deal with this, you may not make it through. And this is what I have to try and convince people I'm coaching. Sometimes they'll say, oh, I'll get to the emotional stuff later, and I'll say to them, well, I'd rather do it with you sooner rather than later. We need to look at whatever traumas you go, oh, I don't want to talk about them. They're too painful. Okay. It's your choice, but I'm trying to help you here. And there's the issue. You should release this stuff. Very brilliant techniques. And there's other people I've been to who are just wonderful. I've spoken to a couple of people that had stage four brain cancers, glioblastomas, who found forgiveness and found self love. And here they are many years later, and we are told you cannot recover from those types of cancers. It's. Well, that's another. Human nature is extraordinary, isn't it? It's just extraordinary. So you keep opening more cans of worms. I've got serious issues with any doctors who say you've got a terminal disease or you've got three to six months to live, or it's very rare, we don't have a treatment for it. I don't agree with any of this. I don't even know if there is such a thing as terminal cancer. I don't think there is. Is my suspicion not absolute, 100% sure, but I'm 99.9% sure there is no such thing as terminal cancer. I believe it's a manipulative term or actually, in the case of terminal cancer, I think it's a way of doctors letting themselves off the hook that we don't quite know how to treat this. So if this person dies, we can say, well, look, it was terminal, we did what we could, we put them into palliative care. I don't subscribe to it. So many people that have supposedly had terminal cancer have achieved what you just mentioned, of living for years and years and years. Yeah, and also. Go ahead. I do believe, though, that in many situations, doctors do form an important part of cancer care, particularly with some patients that I've come across over the years whose tumor is just so massive that it's pushing against so many organs, it's cutting off blood and nerve supply, and they go in for surgery and get as much of it removed as they can. And I personally think, and I'm happy to hear your opinion, but I personally think that has saved those people's lives. And then we look at what natural medicine can do to support them ongoingly, but that sometimes those tumors are so big, when you look at the logic of their chance of survival and reducing the size of that tumor versus how long it would take to get through a dietary change and exercise routine, that sort of thing, I do see some positives there. I agree with what you've said, actually. Totally. I think as a last resort for someone where it is so large, everything that you described, it's a good short term get out of jail card, I suppose you could call it that, will then give them some time to then look into the change. Naturopathic mind, body, spirit, path, change of diet, detoxification, the whole shebang. Because it's not a cure. I do not believe that the slash, the burn, or the poison is a cure. They're all temporary fixes that can get the person out of trouble for a little while and then they've got a quick start. Get on to, I think, what I did, which is to really look at treating the root cause, which is both, which are basically to simplify insults upon the mind and body. So the modern processed foods are toxic and even non organic, which I'm talking about, sprayed foods have been sprayed with pesticides are dangerous and are causing a downward spiral illness. They're going to get off that stuff onto natural, organic produce and the right choice of foods there and juicing and gain the knowledge of which things. In fact, there are certain foods which have got proven cancer fighting properties. So they've got to learn what those are and step those up and they've got to treat the emotional issues and then you're actually treating the root cause. And I believe, and I'll write it back to myself with what I did. I believe the cancer cannot come back. I'm going to be that definitive. I'm now eleven years since diagnosis. I'm feeling on top of the world. I swim the length of Bondo beach as often as I can. I live across the road. I run one or two or three lengths to Bondo beach, depending on how I'm feeling on the day, and pretty good for someone who's getting close to 70, and that is a cure. And so therefore, can I say, I do not get tested now, am I advocating for other people? Not at all. There is a legal and an ethical risk I put myself at if I start to advocate that. No, I'm just telling my story honestly. I don't need testing because I cannot imagine my understanding of what I did and how it works is so profound that I do not believe it's possible for cancer to come back because I've removed those insults from my life. Even to the point of putting a radiation diffuser on the back of my phone pyramids, which, if it's an audio podcast, people won't see it. But this pyramid I bought actually diffuses the electro radiation in the air. I turn the Wi Fi off at night. So just, just going to those sorts of devices and for one of a better word, gadgets. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but, you know, there's a lot of information that's put out on the Internet about various gadgets that will block EMF and all that sort of stuff. Applying your scientific mind to those gadgets, are you convinced or are you buying the story? I'm buying the story is the honest answer. I don't have the scientific background to prove or disprove it, but this is where intuition comes into play, Daniel, and I'm glad we got to this point. Now, what's intuition? It's a gut feeling. It's a 6th sense that something is right or wrong. Now, this is getting into a very blurry sort of area that someone says, well, my intuition told me I should trust the doctors and do the chemotherapy, and then I will say, well, my intuition told me I should not do the surgery, which was recommended to me, but I should go the mind body spirit road that I went. How do you. And then the question arises, how do you sharpen your intuition so that it's reliable? Because I think what some people call intuition is actually their fears. It's their conditioning. It's not intuition at all. So it's a very deep and mysterious and massive area to explore. I meditate 365 days a year, and what I do took me years to get to this point where I am able to release fears from my body and distinguish truth from fiction. And where my meditation guides me towards good decisions, good financial decisions, good decisions as to who to associate who and what to trust. It's a compass that guides me in my life. And a lot of that comes with experience and life experience and personal experience, I think, also helps build a basis of intuition. Absolutely. And working towards that and being aware, how precious intuition is, you know, you know, the feeling where you think, I don't trust this person. I think they're going to. They might rip me off. I don't think I want to purchase from this person. I might do in the dosh. I might lose the money. You know, we all make mistakes. But if you can learn mistakes and not learn by becoming paralyzed and in fear, but becoming wiser and making good, wise, calm decisions. Rob, I need to start winding this up, and it's been an amazing discussion with you, but my audiobook, seven and a half hours. We've got six and a half hours to go. There are three critical aspects to the discussion, which I just want to highlight as words you said, which I find so, so important. And one of them is allowing yourself to. For critical thinking. One of them is allowing yourself time to think, and one of them is around taking responsibility. And for me, that is a. An important trinity of giving yourself a good base for understanding where to go, building some intuition, and thinking about whatever dietary lifestyle changes you can make to set yourself the best opportunity for survival and being able to thrive as you can. What do you think? Oh, you summed it up beautifully. Very wise, I guess you'd call it advice to your listeners. Yeah, I can't improve on that. I can't top that. Yep. Okay. They're the take homes. So, Rob, just to finish off mate, I think people that have been diagnosed with some awful condition doesn't have to be cancer, because your book talks about good health and. And how to achieve good health. And, you know, that can also apply to any chronic condition, to be honest. Where do people. Or how do people find your book? My book is available exclusively through my website. There's nowhere else you can get it except for me in person, which is a bit tricky sometimes, especially if you live in another country. It's available at my website, which is. Robprier.net, so it's robprior.net. Thank you so much, Rob. It's been people are welcome to reach out to me, ask some questions. I'm happy to have a brief chat with people free of charge. I do charge for the coaching, but for a brief introductory chat, no charge. If they've got questions, happy to chat. Because really, this is a labor of love. I'm passionate about what I do. I think naturopathic healing offers so much. I think I personally believe it's the safest and most effective way to proceed with, as you said, not just cancer, but chronic illnesses like, you know, eczema, psoriasis, shingles, lupus, you know, allergies, leaky gut, bronchitis, tonsillitis. Just so. Long list. Because, you know, once you've got gut health in particular, and mind health and mental and emotional health, almost anything is possible in the body's ability to heal itself. Yeah, well, you're absolutely right and certainly witnessed that for the last 35 years myself. Rob, thanks mate, and wish you well. If you enjoyed that as much as I did, then we're on the same page. Good on you, mate. Take it easy. Thanks, Daniel. If you feel that this story could be of benefit to you or someone you know, please like it and share it. If you have a health story yourself and feel that sharing it might make a difference to another person, please head over to our website, apatientstory.com. We would love to hear from you. And as a reminder, in this podcast and on our website, the information provided relates to the specific health requirements of an individual and may not relate to your health circumstances or that of another person. Please do not make any changes to your treatment without consulting your health professional. Thank you.