a patient story

Life after cancer

September 08, 2024 Daniel Baden ND Episode 49

All feedback and questions welcome

Cancer survivors often have a deep seated fear that the disease will return. Martin Gillespie (www.gemwellnesswarrior.com.au ) significantly reduced the return risk of his non-hodgkins lymphoma which has an extremely high rate of recurrance by changing his diet, lifestyle and mindset.

Martin Gillespie. How are you? I'm very well, thank you, sir. And seasonal greetings or greetings from the northern hemisphere to you and your listeners. Martin, when I first met you, you were a Sydney resident where you'd lived for 23 years and last year you moved back to Scotland. I did, yes. So there is a little story as to why I came back. I'm originally from Glasgow and I hadn't been back in Glasgow for about seven or eight years. Obviously, over those crazy few years, getting out of Australia, getting into any other country, was pretty hard. And I came back over the Christmas period to reconnect with family here and on the new year. On New Year's Eve, or as it's known in celtic language, on Hugmaney, I had the pleasure of meeting a girl for a cup of coffee who is now going to become my wife. It was a happy new year. It was a fantastic new year. So I moved for love. Oh, good. Well, there's no better reason, is there? Not at all. So it's all her fault, as I remind her on a daily basis. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, Martin, you've had an extraordinary life journey. You started, you know, in the corporate world and. And had worked a lot with the typical things that happen in the corporate world, finance, administration, all that sort of stuff, and you ended up, or you have ended up being someone who's fairly well known and very respected as a, for want of a better word, a wellness warrior. And you've, you know, even started your own organisation because you've had such a positive experience with what you've done, it seems as though you just want to tell everybody else what you went through and how you got there and how you're thriving. But the middle bit is what we haven't talked about yet. And the middle bit was the catalyst as to what caused this change of life, and that was cancer in 2012. But there's a bit of a story. There's a long story how you got to that cancer. So can we just talk about that for a moment? Sure. What were the first couple of years like before you got that diagnosis? So, to put it into perspective, I was living in Sydney. I was on that corporate bandwagon, as you rightly said. I was in senior sales positions in the wonderful world of cyber security. That was quite ironic. We were doing this recording when there was a global outage recently, so cyber was. I fell into 2004, 2005. It was incredible. And the energy and the fun that we were having, not just in Australia but across the globe, it also was a great career, very rewarding financially and intellectually and meeting some wonderful people. And I was married at the time, two kids in 2012. And I'm sitting like a lot of people. When you have that break time around Christmas, new year, that Australia sort of goes to sleep for five or six weeks, we enjoy the gorgeous lifestyle. And I had a goal, I was turning 42 that year and decided that I wanted to run another marathon. I've done several of them in the past, including Boston a couple of times. And I thought, 42 years on this planet, 42 kilometres, makes kind of sense. And it's also great to have that personal motivation and I had the support of my inner circle, but then if we all sort of fell off, and I alluded to the fact I had two young kids at the time. And for those parents who are out there on that treadmill of life, young parents, you go to work, you come home. It's very much like Groundhog day in many ways. You're caught in that vortex that every day is very similar and you're doing everything for your kids. You're also, dare I say, trying to put in the factors of looking after yourself. But you're running on empty. And empty is very. It can mean in different ways, it can be emotionally, spiritually, physically, you're tired, but you just think that this is normal. And for me, I go running and feel kind of lethargic, not on that kind of runner's high that you generally get after a run and you feel euphoric. I felt really sluggish and I just put it down to not sleeping enough or a little bit of stress. And we've all been in those positions. But in 2012, my goals to do the marathon hit big obstacles along the way. And in April of that year, my younger sister in Scotland lost her life at the age of 37 to breast cancer. We'd known that she was passing well, we knew that she was terminally ill. She was diagnosed four years prior with inflammatory breast cancer at the age of 32. And if I known, if I know, if I knew then what I know now about cancer, I think I could have helped in a different manner. But it was a gift and I'll explain a little bit of gift on cancer as we progress here. But six weeks after Denise's passing, my father was on a six foot wall around his house in Glasgow, chopping overhanging branches and he overstretched. And as he overstretched, he had a pair of garden secutors in his top pocket of his shirt and the blade of the Sekaters pierced from the heart and he bled to death. Then six months later, my marriage split up. So there's three big milestones, all within six or seven months of each other. And then in November 20, twelve, I was diagnosed with stage four non Hodgkins lymphoma. Now, the journey to get diagnosed was also a real pathway of, what am I doing? Because at that time, like a lot of men in their late thirties and early forties, we don't cheque in with doctors, we don't cheque in with medical practitioners. We are impervious. We are super men. A lot of men just don't want to know because they don't know how. To deal with it, don't want to know and they don't, you know, whilst in the australian mindset, they'll stand around a barbecue with a beer in their hand and go, you all right, mate? Yeah, I'm all right. So we don't really talk about our emotions and our emotions of being healthy. There are certain circles that do do it. Now, I know that you're a keen cyclist and I'm a keen runner. So you have that tribe that if you're feeling flat, they kind of know that and go, mate, are you okay? But there's not enough of that and I don't. And regardless of what corporate environment you're in, there is not enough of that going on. Now. To be diagnosed with cancer, I was. The only symptoms that I could feel, apart from feeling tired, was I had a lump in my neck, just under my jaw and typical unawareness, if that makes sense. You're looking at your face every day in the mirror, you're brushing your teeth. And I could push this little ball in and then later on it would just pop out a few hours later. And I thought that this was a dental problem because of where it was located. Makes kind of sense. And I went to see a dentist and they did a lot of checking in my mouth and pleasurely they said, there's nothing wrong with your mouth, you don't have a big mouth. And I kind of gave them a hug, taken that compliment. But they did say, your body isn't reacting the way it should do. Can we suggest you go and see a good general practitioner? And it was the foresight of a good general practitioner based in Sydney that said, I don't know what's wrong. But we need to get a lot of tests done with you. And that opened a new vocabulary. Dangle. I'm not medically at that stage. I wasn't medically aware of work as I am now. But it opened new language to things like CT scans, ultrasounds, PET scans, even cardio scans. And that's when the fear sort of started kicking in. You don't get these unless there is something that they're looking for. Something that needle in a haystack and a bit that kind of made me realise there was something seriously wrong, was Martin, we need to get a biopsy on a part of your body. And that's when I really hit home and went, I'm scared. What is this? But I guess you were also going home to an environment that wasn't conducive to support. At the same time, you were in a tough marital position. You're in a tough marital position. I was leaving the family home. We were selling the family home. You've gone through separation, you've got two young kids and you're putting on several masks every day. You must have been feeling very alone at this point. Extremely alone. And in typical fashion, I did not ask for any help. I was too proud to ask for help. I was suffering in silence. A lot of people do that and it's probably one of the most important things you can do, because everybody wants to help each other at the end of the day, is my honest belief. So what is it, do you think, that stops people, particularly men, from asking for help? Several factors, Daniel. One, ego, and secondly, the lack of understanding of both asking and being willing to receive. Can you explain that further? Sure. When we're kids, we go to a playground. We might not know anybody who's playing there. And you and I are a little bit older than many others. We remember those seesaw that was in the playground. If you don't know any kids, you jump on one side and you will shout out to a stranger, come play with me. And that stranger will come on the other side and allow you to go high and low and the joy of being up and down. We just love when we're six years old or seven year old in that playground. But we lose that mentality as we age because men think that they can fix everything apart from when it comes to their emotional well being. That's true. I know we're going to talk about this a little later, but is that what your programme, your gem programme, is working towards? Helping people understand about asking for help and accepting that help. Yes. So part of the programme that I deliver is taking a lot of the medical knowledge and putting it into layman's terms to allow people to find their pathway for healthy thriving. Does that mean everyone's got their own unique pathway they need to find, and you're just facilitating them trying to help. Them find that without shadow, without now taking it further. If you look at, you know, people will talk about their genetics. My father was like this, my mother had this disease. Etcetera. Personalised care is where it's really at, if that makes sense. And personalised care is looking at your holistic mindset, from your gut health to your brain to your mentality. And if you start looking at them and caring for them the way that you would care for the size of the swimming pool you have or what suburb your house is located, you will change your life to having a far better and richer health span without intervention of medication. Yeah, I agree. So you got the diagnosis. You got diagnosed with stage four, which is suggesting that it was quite significant in your body already, and you started a treatment programme which involved chemotherapeutics, prednisone and monoclonal antibody therapy. How did that go for you? So it was really quite scary. And I have to say, it was the insight of my haematologist once he. He had explained, and you're right with what you said, I had stage four. Now, to put it into context, stage four meant that it was all over my body and in a vital organ, and for me, it was in my bone marrow. So every white blood cell I was producing had live cancer cells that were ripping through my body. And with it being blood cancer, you cannot operate. I didn't understand that, that you couldn't operate and just take a tumour out. It was riddled throughout every part of your physical body. But it was my haematologist in Sydney that said, martin, before you start chemotherapy, I suggest you go and see a counsellor. And this was in Royal North Shore in Sydney Hospital. And I walked into the. It was a cancer count. It was a psychologist specialising in cancer care. Some words that she said to me that have resonated in a lot of my healing journey. And she said, martin, welcome to new beginnings. She said, martin, you can get through this now. I'm getting through this with the tears in my eyes. And we are big boys, we don't. We learn not to cry. I was petrified. She gave me hope and she gave me the mindset to go. You're letting you have to let go of things allow the cancer treatment to come in to do its job and let it go and move on to something new. And it was really powerful. But so when you're in that sort. Of thought, wherever, where is your direction going? What were you thinking yet to let go of? Well, several things. One, relax. Two, stop overthinking. And three, I think the best way to describe where I was at that time and that when I talk about that time, I'm probably talking for about two years, because it's not just one phrase, one magic quick fix. There were highs and lows, I felt, to put into perspective, analogy, you know those front loader washing machines and you put your washing in and you think it's finished and you go to open the door and it can't open again. It's still got another cycle to go. I felt I was in that perpetual circle for about two and a half years because it's not easy. And as you rightly alluded, my intimate circle was collapsing around me at that time as well. So the loneliness was kicking in. And again I would share with some mates, some male mates in particular, I don't feel well, but it was also I didn't know how to express myself well enough. Unfortunately, a lot of people, and maybe men particularly, I'm not sure, don't know how to deal with the person with cancer. They don't want to say it, it scares them to talk to you about it. Did you have that experience? Were people sort of going, oh shit, that's no good, and running away? Or did you feel that people would embrace you or gave you what you needed? Very much so I remember a really good mate of mine and he came in to see me getting chemotherapy in the council ward and he's looking around for me and he had to ask one of the nurses, where's Martin Gillespie? And she said, that's him over there. And he went and he didn't tell me until later. He went, that's not my mate, he looks too unwell. So people have this, people still do have this reaction. As soon as you mentioned cancer and as you rightly said, stage four, you go, he's not going to make it, he's going to die or she's going to die. But there is something inside you. When you start understanding, in my opinion, when you start going, this is almost like getting a yellow card in soccer or rugby to go, you've got a chance to change your life, but you have to embrace some of the pain. First and try to avoid getting the red card. Yes, no, you can take the hit, take the penalty. And for me, one of the masks that I use to numb a lot of these emotions. And although I was seeking some professional help, I'm only human. And for me, one of the easiest helps was red wine. How much would you drink? I would be drinking on probably on a daily basis, at least one bottle of wine a night, sometimes two bottles of wine to numb the pain and numb the emotions. Does it help? Absolutely not. Knowing again, knowing what I know now, I ended up getting a thing called peripheral neuropathy. Now I know that you'll understand what that is. And in simple terms, it's like constant pins and needles in your fingers. Patients described to me as walking on broken glass. My kids were five and three at the time, or six and four. I couldn't play Lego with them because I could not connect two bits of Lego together. So drinking too much alcohol and very toxic drugs don't go, they don't work, they deplete you of every B vitamin under the sun. But you don't know this at the time. And I have to say, here we are, twelve years later, they still don't advocate this in the journey that people go through. They don't tell people not to drink, is that what you're saying? They don't tell people about the damaging impact of overconsumption of red wine and sugar has on cancer treatment? Absolutely. It really is quite shocking the things they don't tell you because the science is there to support it as well. The science is there fermentation, too much fermentation of glucose impacts cancer and other autoimmune diseases in your body. So you had your first doses of chemo. How did you physically respond to that. Besides saying a lot of anglo saxon words? It took me. I remember the very first session, it took me about nine or 10 hours, because again, my body was scared and I'm right handed, so I wanted everything in my left arm, because I thought if I lose the power of limb, I don't want it to be my dominant arm. But I remember very vividly the very first session, I'm lying in the bed, I'm getting it intravenously into my arm, but I didn't move my arm for about 3 hours. Then when I moved it, I could physically feel these toxins going through my body. And I was thinking, oh my God, and my heart started beating differently. But it was my mind that was playing games with me, if that makes sense. Yes, I was completely petrified, and I was also really scared of what's it going to be like over the next couple of days? And what was it like? So I do remember going home that night and just bursting into tears, going in bed and almost feeling as if there were little insects running up and down every blood cell in my body. And itchiness a fear. And not to sugarcoat anything, one of the biggest fears I had was, will I be able. If I need the bathroom, will I make it to the bathroom from my bed? Please don't take my dignity away from me. So you'd gone through several courses of chemo, and I read somewhere that you thought you went through about half a million dollars worth of, which is quite. Yeah, isn't it? But after two or three or five sessions, did you start to get used to it? So, yeah, I started listening to what was working for me. So I would go every second Wednesday for my chemotherapy and I would wake very early in the morning because the night before chemotherapy, I was kind of scared and you don't sleep that well. And I lived not very far from Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. I would get up really early and I would walk. I would drive down to the harbour bridge and walk over the harbour bridge and back. 530 in the morning. So that what worked for me, I was super tired when I was receiving chemotherapy. In fact, I slept through most of the sessions. My body was resting, therefore I didn't have that racing mindset of hell. What's going into me? Do you think that relaxation mode you're in assisted the efficacy of the drugs? Yes. Yes. Because I felt my body was in a more relaxed state, my mind was more relaxed. And you also, which I didn't realise when I was doing it, I didn't feel hungry, therefore I wasn't eating the muffins that they were giving me, the white bread sandwiches. I was almost in a fasted state and it felt I didn't have, as I mentioned to you there about the first session, second session, I didn't feel that anxiety creeping in. At some point, though, and I know you had, through your early training, some fundamental training in nutrition as part of other courses you had studied as a young person, younger person. At some point you decided to bring the thought around, better nutrition into your life. What triggered that thinking? So I went back to basics and there was actually a conversation with a dentist in Sydney, with somebody who had attended an acne conference. And I was getting so, again, getting some treatment into my mouth. And she said, martin, you should see if you can do these courses. They're very, very good. Apparently, and for some reason I got accepted to do the foundation courses. Now, I didn't do medicine at university. My first degree is in hotel management with nutrition, my master's is in international marketing. So I was on two different planets, if that makes sense. Yep. But I did. When I was at university, I did run a catering company and one of the ethos I had, I studied in a place in Aberdeen in Scotland, called Aberdeen, and Aberdeen is the oil capital of Europe. And I was really interested in what do you feed people out in the North Sea where you can't smoke, you can't drink, where food is more than just food. It's a productivity tool, it's a connection tool, and if you're not eating well, you're not going to be productive the following day. So I tapped into that intuitive mindset. But when I would go and seek some advice again in Sydney, all they would do is pull down the standard australian diet, which the euphemism is sad because it makes people sad. They wouldn't really give a monkeys around what chemotherapy regime that I was on to go, okay, you need to be mindful. Vincristine or vinblastin will deplete you of b twelve immediately because of the toxicity of it. Be really careful. So they didn't have that mind, that knowledge or they didn't share it with me to go, here's that personalised care. These are the five drugs you're going to get. Now, you mentioned predisone. If you're taking predisone, you have to be really mindful of what you're putting into your body. Now. I'm going, there's got to be a gap here. So I played around with it and the knowledge I was getting from clinicians was, apart from the standard australian diet, was the medical get out of jail card. Eat the mediterranean diet. Now, those who are unaware, there are 22 countries that cover the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean diet is a life insurance policy that medics use because they don't know anything about nutrition or very little. There's a handful that are evangelising and understanding, but I was told to eat ten vegetables a day, very little red meat and have five servings of fruits. Now, again, fruit is very high in fructose. When you go through chemotherapy, you don't want sugar, doesn't work. Lots of vegetables are high in starch and carbohydrates, they convert to sugar. So I started putting on a lot of weight and I'm going, this isn't working for me. So I slowly shifted my mindset to go, my body is crying out for something else, and that something else is red meat. So I started incorporating a lot more red meat and eliminating a lot of the vegetables and fruits that I was supposed to be taking. My health improved, my vibrancy improved, and then after about three years of post cancer treatment, I got a cheque in every three months with my haematologist. And he kept saying, martin, I don't agree with the lifestyle you're living, but your biomarkers do not lie to you should have relapsed at least twice by now. What the hell are you doing? And I was following a low carb ketogenic lifestyle where I always felt full. I was back running, I was back enjoying, bringing joy back into my life, which is another area of energetic wealth, and going, this is working, why are we not learning this stuff? And that was the ethos of starting my business to go. I'm gaining all this information. I retrained as a clinical nutritionist and I also retrained in a brilliant protocol, which I think you're aware of, the breast and protocol around Alzheimer's and dementia prevention, and also the impact of cognitive awareness. And I'm going, wait a minute, these are all related to inflammation in your gut. One of the biggest issues with non Hodgkin's lymphoma is the high recurrence rate. It's, it's quite extraordinary. And up to at least 40% of people with that diagnosis get it back again. And when you look at some of the causes of non Hodgkin's lymphoma, one of them is, yeah, it's all a bit wishy washy, to be honest, because no one really knows. But most papers and textbooks, medical textbooks, talk about a weakened immune system and some relationship to some sort of pathogenic infective agent, a virus or a bacteria, something along those lines. But one of the things that is never, ever talked about, which astonishes me, is stress, massive stress, because it's known in medical literature that massive stress can soften your immune system or invalidate your immune system to a great extent. That also allows more pathogenic infection as well. So they're connected. But, you know, you discovered this and why you've gone on to live such a healthy life for the last twelve years, because you also took on, aside from the counselling, meditation, traditional chinese medicine and other modalities that help you deal with that. Stressed stress is many things. To many people. It can be as awful as all the things you went through with the deaths in the family and your mother had passed away a couple of years earlier and all that sort of stuff. And work stresses as well. But, you know, it can be financial stress to some people. It can be relationship stress. There are many causes, but they just don't talk about it. So can we just have a little bit of a chat about your journey with stress and how you managed to find a way to move away from that stressful situation you're in? In terms of the family issues you had in your relationship breakdown, what really worked for you? Yeah, so several things worked for me. I mentioned the importance of asking for help and I went through a very acrimonious divorce where my kids were getting older, etcetera. And there are great tools. I'll do a call out here. There's a brilliant organisation in Sydney in particular, sorry, in Australia, not just in Sydney. Catholic care and catholic care run group sessions for separation, relationship breakdowns. And what worked for me, besides getting individual help now, I learned the importance of counselling. There are some brilliant modalities out there for counselling. And over the years, Daniel, I think I've seen about a dozen counsellors at different stages, because once you open that tap, you can understand how they can give you a little bit, that 1% or that 5% clarity that you can take, that can be individual to yourself. But the great thing about what catholic care works, in my opinion, is that it was in a group dynamics. So you learn to understand the impacts of things like how you say something, how it's received, why you say it and the emotion behind it. And it was a sort of eight or ten week programme and it was fantastic. Facilitated by social workers and counsellors. But highly recommend if you are going through that separation area in your life, because it also avoids you going to family court process, because the stress in family courts, regardless of which country you're in, is a toxic, highly stressful environment that the only winners are the lawyers. They don't really care about you, sorry to say. And I'm talking that from experience that I spent well into six figures on this. Right, avoid family court if you can, but also work with the tools that you have. And I think where we really need to drive home a massive aspect. Self care is not being selfish. If you value your self care, you will help lower your stressful load, not eliminate it, but you will lower your stressful load. You cannot be an. I beg anyone to say that they're snow white and they don't have any stress in their life. If you're looking at self care, you're not only looking at what you're eating, but also start taking awareness of lowering the toxic load of things like the chemicals you put onto your body on a daily basis. That's a massive impact on oxidative stress on your liver. If you take one of the most toxic aspects, and very seldom spoken about, is the washing powders we wash our clothes in and our garments in, or it might smell nice down that beautiful supermarket aisle, or they've got, oh, two for one or 15 litres of this product. Those products contain over 120 toxic elements in them.

By 09:

00 in the morning, most people have incorporated them onto their skin that sips into their bloodstream within 20 minutes. And you wonder why we're stressed. And it's a gradual process of lowering your toxic load, therefore to lower your stress levels. You know, when I used to lecture on this stuff some years ago, I used to say it was like a glass of water. And people, you can keep pouring toxins into the glass and no one really knows, but it gets to a point where it starts to overflow and that's where people get their symptoms. And I was still astonished to read a journal the other day where they were talking about another forever chemical that they are concerned about, and it's found in a lot of drugs, pharmaceutical drugs and these sorts of things, and they're saying, oh, it's such a small amount, don't worry about it. And another one which people will probably relate to is Teflon. So there's a condition called Teflon flu, which people who cook in Teflon get. Some people get sensitivity to it and get like flu like symptoms. And the article saying, oh, such small doses, don't worry about it. But it's the accumulation that's the message. I think it's so important to keep getting over to people. It's the accumulation of all of these chemicals. And underlying that might be some genetic factor, might be your exercise regime, might be the other foods you have in your diethyde, but there is this overall impact that all of these things have on a human being. And so that creates a lot of physiological stress, and of course that crosses over into the blood and into the brain and creates a lot of emotional stress as well. So I guess when you're dealing with a serious diagnosis like a cancer, you've got to step back and look at all of those factors in your life. This is my weird way of asking you a question. I wasn't making a sermon here. How do you feel about all of that. Is that the path you took? And is that what you feel helped you? Without shadow of a doubt. I mean, you luded earlier there around some literature that comes out regularly and you and I have access to some fabulous literature. I remember giving a talk at a golf course in Sydney. Now, one of the downsides, golf courses, you know, created in Scotland and given to the world. But be mindful of the amount of toxins that are sprayed in golf courses. Absolutely. Right now people don't realise, and there is a lot of good evidence correlating, if you're living near a golf course or you are a golfer, you have got a higher chance of a blood disorder. You might walk on a golf course for three or 4 hours. So please, when you're finished, bring an extra change of clothes, have a shower and try and eliminate those toxins off your body before you go anywhere else. And take some antioxidants. Take some antioxidants. Right. One of the key things I think that people automatically think, let's supplement, but let's look at what makes you ill in the first place. Let's eliminate a lot of the things such as, you know, in Australia, one of the common things people will do is they'll have the barbecue. What do they spray on the barbecue? Canola oil. You're causing rust in your gut. As soon as you spray that and put food onto it. You may have the best rib eye steaks that money can buy, but if you're spraying them with those toxins, they're damaging every part of your body as soon as you eat them. It's so hard to find the foods you love that don't use canola oil these days. And over the years I've noticed that the brand of olives I would buy, or, you know, the marinated feta that I would have bought for years, all of a sudden they're using canola oil instead of olive oil. And it's obviously, it's a cost thing, but you've really got to go back to even all the products you thought you knew well years ago and reread all of the labels because it just changes so quickly. It's incredible. There lies in the argument around organic vegetables and normal vegetables. In Australia, the vegetables that are sold in supermarket are at least twelve months old. A lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Yeah, a lot of them are. But if you are buying those vegetables, a simple little thing, invest in bicarbonated soda and take them home. Even your fruit, put them into the kitchen sink with a tablespoon of bicarbonated soda and try and wash off some of the chemicals that are on the skin. Now, again, you're lowering the toxic load, but you're not eliminating, because it is bloody hard to eliminate everything. So the two things, the two take home messages are really, you've got to lower the toxic load that you're exposed to through direct contact and what you breathe in. And at the same time, you have to try to maintain higher levels of personal health so you can deal with whatever toxins do get into your system. And so you've done that with your. With your own health, Martin. And twelve years later, you got through your non Hodgkin's lymphoma. You are not one of the statistics that got the recurrence. And how are you feeling? I'm feeling fantastic. I really am. I'm feeling blessed and I'm feeling that excited, if that makes sense. But I also want to put a little bit of frustration in there. You've just met a new lovely lady. Of course you're excited. I have, yes. That's going pretty well, I would say. But I also would like to stress a little bit here that if you and I had a dollar for everyone that says that they're healthy, we'll be extremely wealthy individuals. The interpretation of health that people have. Please do yourself a favour, start reading labels. And one other thing that I would. I want to take you on around the stress component, the impact of cortisol. Now, you live in Australia, I'm now living in Glasgow. Glasgow in Gaelic means deer green place. There are more parks in Glasgow than any other western city in the world. Start learning to breathe properly and lowering your cortisol load by breathing properly every day. Yeah. Really simple, effective tool. If you start doing it, your kids will start doing it, your grandchildren will start doing it and your health span will improve astronomically. One of the handy hints around that is also to breathe through your nose. You produce 70% of your nitric oxide through nasal breathing. Isn't that amazing? And nitric oxide is one of your key anti inflammatory, naturally produced by your own body. Anti inflammatory substances. So very cool. And we've mentioned a lot of this conversation around men's health. I've got a bit of a call out to men listening to this, and even if it's females listening to this, we all have our unique DNA footprint. And that is the day that we are born. Your birthday. My suggestion to men is, on your birthday, give yourself one of the best gifts. Cheque in with a good integrative dentist, a good natural doctor who understands lifestyle medicine, and a health coach. Do that at least once a year. Tell your partner you're doing it and ask her to come with you. That ripple impact of your partner telling her mates, you telling your mates can help break down that prejudice and stigma that we're too big to ask for help. Yeah, good point. Martin, what are you up to now? Feel free to promote yourself here because what you do is important. So I'm really interested in what you do and how people can get in touch with you. Sure. So I work with corporates. I go to corporates and run well being workshops for about an hour and hour and a half at a time over a set period to get this engagement of people talking and understanding what health is about. Now, I don't have all the answers, but having cured myself of stage four cancer, having well read and backed up with good evidence based research, I can allow people to take those first steps to reclaim what their most valuable asset in life is, and that's their metabolic health. I also operate on a one on one basis where I take the breast and protocol, which is a 36 step protocol, but dare I say, bastardise it and customise it into what can work for you. So I mentioned we tapped on a little bit around supplements. We tapped on about oral health, the importance of these and to the why, and my third little project that I'm involved in at the moment, I'm writing a kids book on metabolic health, why nutrition is important, why sleep is important, movement and self love. If we can teach the kids to start saying things like, can we have celery tonight? Because celery looks like the bones of my body. Can we have grapes? Because I want big lungs. Because when you cut the grapes, they look like your lungs. If you cut carrots, they look like the iris in your eyes. Teaching kids that these are important pathways to be healthy, I'm wondering what you're. Going to do with Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts are. It's one of my funniest topics. I love talking about, don't know about that one. It's about getting that curiosity and those aimed at kids. It also does allow parents and grown ups to go. I didn't know that. I want to know more. Great, mate. That's fantastic. It's got to start early. What's your website? So, my website is jemwellnesswarrior.com dot au. It's gem g e m wellness. Wellnesswarrior.com dot au. Although I'm based in Glasgow. I do operate across the globe. I'm certified to do that, which is. Which is great. And really all I'm trying to do is you. Each and every single one of us has the tools to be healthy. I just want to try and coach you to get there. Yeah. Wonderful, mate. What a great story. Thank you. And you're genuine in what you're teaching because you've been through such an extensive journey yourself. And I think it's so important to have that experience that you've gone through personally and be able to share where you've been and where you're going with it. And that makes it very relatable to a lot of people. So well done. Good on you and thank you for your time. Thanks, Daniel. It's been a pleasure, my friends. Okay, take care.