#156: Udo’s Choice: Eating And Living Healthily With Udo Erasmus

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So, please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel. I feel really honored and very blessed to be in the seat today. I'm just taking a nice deep breath in this lovely afternoon air and again, feeling so fortunate. And I have a great guest today, somebody that actually, it's interestingly enough, I know for many, many years. We haven't seen each other in quite a number of years as well, so this is a bit of a reunion. That's happening, be happening live here for all of you. And it's somebody that is actually— I know him better now than I did then. It's an odd thing, but I know more about him and what he's been doing in the world than I did when we were collaborating in a mastermind some years back. So, I'll speak about him in glowing terms because he's done some really amazing things, and all of you will get to meet him in just a moment. The legendary— I love that— the legendary Udo Erasmus is a pioneer of the health and wellness industry, having created the flax oil and healthy fats movement. He's also the co-founder of Udo's Choice supplement brand, a global leader in cutting-edge health products, selling tens of millions of bottles of healthy oils, probiotics, and digestive enzymes. Udo is an accomplished author of multiple books, including Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, that sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide. Udo is also a speaker. He's presented on— much of his content's been presented in Tony Robbins events, at Deepak Chopra events. I know him, as I said, from some years ago when we participated in a wonderful mastermind that I had created and delivered through a company I was working for. And I just remember him as a really kind person, a kind-hearted, interesting man. And I'm thrilled that I get to spend some time with him now and all of you get to learn from him. So first of all, Udo, welcome to the show. Thanks for being with us.

I'm glad to be on. It is like a reunion.

It is a bit. What's something that's not part of that bio that I just read? And I love how it started with the legendary Udo Erasmus.

Well, I didn't say that.

It's whoever the marketing people are for you. They're doing a good job. But what's not written in that bio, Udo, that you would love for people to know about you?

Okay. I, well, lots of things. My first project when I left university was to start a nude beach. And the reason was, is I was studying biology and we're looking at everything about creatures. And one day it occurred to me that I'm ashamed of my body. And it's like, where the hell did that come from? Yeah. And then I figured, well, how do you fix it? Well, instead of going talking about it, I said, why don't you just get used to being naked in public? There was a beach Off the— the university's on a peninsula and sand cliffs go down to the water, down to the ocean. And so I went down to the beach down there and took my clothes off, sat behind a log, and if somebody came by, I would duck. And then pretty soon I'd be walking naked down the beach and somebody would come and I'd go and sit down behind the log again. And then it wasn't long before I started— I was walking naked down the beach and somebody came the other way and I would just keep walking. This is like a big confession.

I was just thinking that.

This is in the '60s, 1969. I had left university in 1968. I lived in a house with a lot of people. And one day we all got stoned on mescaline and went down to the beach. And when the tide was down, there was mudflats. So there's like mud that if you stood on it, you'd maybe go up to your knees in mud.

Right.

Just like organic mud. I don't know what it was. And it was messy, soft stuff. And we got— we were stoned on mescaline. We had hair down to our butts and we had big beards. And we started wrestling naked in the mud, like about 12 of us. And people came and people who were on the beach, they just gathered and watched because it was so profound for them. It was childlike and it wasn't weird.

And it wasn't sexual.

No, no, no. It was like 30-year-old kids playing. Totally playing like little kids.

And not self-conscious about their bodies.

No. So it was, no, it was just, we were just playing. And these guys, they were going, oh my God, I want to feel, be able to feel that free. And that's what began The Beach. I call it my social project. I'm pretty sure, although I have zero double-blind studies on this, when people get comfortable around how their body is, then they're less likely to do weird things with their body.

Interesting.

Sexual and in other ways.

It turned out to become a nude bathing beach?

Still there.

Still there.

Yeah, I know it's not on any of the travel guides for Vancouver, but if you come to Vancouver, you go to Wreck Beach, it's still there.

There should be like a little thing that says Udo's Naked Beach.

No, I— no, you know what, it's not that important to me that I be remembered. What I'd like is that whatever intuitions I have and whatever wisdom that comes out of my— if any, right? That becomes folk wisdom. Because if you think about it, like, I have a light here on my face, so there's a glass window and blinds and carpet and walls and all of this. If you asked me, well, who invented that? I don't have any idea. But I'm the beneficiary of other people in other times.

Yes.

In various places having done creative things and I'm the beneficiary of it. And I can be very grateful for all of that without remembering any of their names.

Yes.

And for most people it will be that way. And I don't expect that it'll be any different for me. But while I'm here, I want to do the best I can to turn this place into a place that works for 8 billion people and for the planet and for nature as well.

Yeah. I got to say this, Udo, maybe this is the 160-something episode of our show. And I've asked that question at least that many times of people, you know, what's not written in your bio that you'd love for people to know about you? That to me is the most interesting answer I've ever gotten. You get the prize, brother, because—

Thank you.

To create— to have started a nude sunbathing beach in Vancouver where the water, by the way, is quite chilly. I mean—

No, it's not bad. It's not bad.

Oh yeah, okay. Well, you Canadians are a little tougher anyway.

No, no, but no, I'll tell you why. There's a warm current It's called the Japanese Current. It goes up around Alaska, goes all the way down to the coast, and then before San Francisco, like north of San Francisco, it goes back into the ocean. And the water in Vancouver is warmer than the water in San Francisco because of that current. That's also why along the coast all the way up to Alaska, we get rain in winter instead of snow.

Yeah.

Most of the time.

Because the water's warmer. It's almost like a Gulf Stream then. I hadn't heard—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a warm current. It comes from past Japan. It probably comes from the tropics.

So it's not nearly as crazy as it sounded.

No, no, no, no. This is not— well— I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Crazy in the terms of water, no.

It's just crazy enough. And I think that the way you led into that, this idea that we're not always comfortable in our own bodies, in our own skin, is actually a really deep, deep conversation to begin with.

Right. And then taking it on.

And then taking it on, doing something about it. Yeah. Wonderful. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment That more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. And inspiring others. And I think that's a good lead-in to what it is that you've been doing with your products. I'll say professionally, this has been what you've been up to. Yeah. But why don't you tell us a little bit about that? What was the inspiration? Because this community, Udo, is built of many, many people like yourself that have been entrepreneurs, that had entrepreneurial pursuits and dreams in their lives, some of which turned out well, some have not. I would imagine most, if not all, are still on that wheel. Looking to create something that does change the lives of thousands and millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people. Folks that have been in a number of good stores probably will recognize that brand, Udo's Choice. I know that the co-op— my dad's from Western— lives in Western Massachusetts now in the Berkshires. They have some food co-ops there. I remember seeing Udo's Choice as part of the things that they were carrying. And I'm not sure if it's in Sprouts or Jimbo's or any of these really—

Oh yeah, it's all in all those places.

Yeah, better places. So share how that all got started. What age? Give us the details.

Okay. I would say it came out of a conscious pivot. And what was the trigger for the conscious pivot was I got married and we had 3 kids and the marriage broke up and I was really upset and I wanted to kill something. So I took a job as a pesticide sprayer because I had taken a license to be a pesticide sprayer as part of a gardening job I had.

Hmm.

And I became a full-time pesticide sprayer and I was really careless. Walked barefoot through over the lawns I sprayed till the skin peeled off my feet. And people even asked me, aren't you worried you're going to get poisoned? I said, nah, I'm immune. This is like, I think people call that testosterone poisoning. Happens to young men until they get their first big—

It's the belief that you are superhuman or— Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nothing can kill you.

Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

Right.

And, uh, After doing that for 3 years, I got poisoned.

Duh.

Predictable outcome, right?

Predictable outcome. I thought you were going to tell us, oh, it never happened to me.

No, no, no. And I went to the doctor and I said, what do you have for pesticide poisoning? And she said, nothing. This is such a beautiful answer. That was the day the penny dropped for me that my health is my responsibility. And if I don't take care of it, maybe nobody's taking care of it. And out of that I started— and I had background in biological sciences from the University of BC, biochemistry, genetics. I had religious experiences of awe studying biology. I loved the topic. And I had left university and done all kinds of more like blue-collar jobs because I wanted to know what it felt like to be in the shoes of the people living like that. I don't know why, but that was because I didn't want to be any of those. I didn't want to have any of those jobs for life, but I wanted to know what it's like.

You wanted to understand. Yeah. I knew that about you the day that I met you. So this is funny that this is a reunion because you were always kind of a puzzling person to me, a little bit of an enigma. You didn't fit the stereotype of some of the people that were in those personal development trainings. You just were different. I'm sad that I say this now. Well, the good news is we're here today. I'm sad that you and I didn't get a chance then to talk at a level where I would have understood more of where you're—

You didn't have a podcast then.

You're very kind.

I was just waiting for you to grow up.

You just, you just let me off the hook. You're such a sweet man. All right, back to your story.

Okay, so I got into the journals to read the journals because I figured There must be— if I do the opposite of what I did to get it, then I should be able to reverse it. Disease is kind of like that. Where are you off and how do you get back on, right? So I was reading in the journals and I got stuck on— I was reading about everything and it was based on nutrition and health and nutrition and disease. Because if the body's made out of food, it's actually food, water, air, and light. But at that time I was thinking if the body's made out of food and something goes wrong, If you raise the standard of your food intake, you can rebuild 98% of your body within 1 year to that higher standard. That's what healing is about. The body's always turning over. Every year, 98% of the atoms of your body are removed and replaced. If you eat the same junk this year that you ate last year, you'll build the same junk body. But if you raise the standard because the junk diet isn't working for you anymore, You raise the standard, within 1 year, 98% of your body has been rebuilt to a higher standard. That's why healing is possible because it's always turning over.

It's that regeneration.

Yeah, body's a major construction site.

Yeah,

24/7, always something. You know, when you go in the shower and you wait in the shower long enough and you rub your skin, you know, stuff comes off. We used to call them sausages when we were little kids because they feel like little sausages on your skin. You know what I'm talking about?

I do. Yes.

Yeah. That's your body coming off, but it doesn't come off just from your skin. It also comes off from the, the inside lining of your digestive tract, which turns over every 4 days. So it's not like everything takes a year, but some of the fast-growing tissues— liver and— but especially the inside of the digestive tract— that tissue turns over every 4 days because there's so much going on there.

Hmm.

And you're drinking 12 times your body weight in water every year, right? So obviously that's all going through and washing through you. Drink more or the water is cleaner, it's going to do a better job in your body. So—

It's a filtration system.

So yeah, they say get a filter or be a filter, right?

Be a filter, right?

Right. But the point is it's always turning over. So then the question was, okay, what do I need to do to raise my standard? To rebuild my body to be healthier than it was when I got poisoned. Other than not spraying pesticides anymore, that was the obvious starting point.

Right.

And I got stuck on oils because oils are most sensitive nutrients. They need the most care. They're damaged by light, by oxygen, and by heat. They need the most care and we give them the least care. We throw them in the frying pan and we wait till they boil and then smoke. And you know, if you turn something into smoke, you've changed its chemistry. It's going to affect your body different. This was 1980 when I got poisoned. 1981, it was established that omega-3 is an essential nutrient, which means you can't make it in your body. You have to have it to live and be healthy, and you have to bring it in from outside. And if you don't get enough, you go down, your health goes down, and if you don't get enough long enough, you die. Yeah. Yeah. So this is like really important stuff. And if you're going down because you're not getting enough, but you bring enough back into the diet that's too low in it, then all the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed because life knows how to make your body work, provided you take responsibility right here to make sure that all of the building blocks land in your body in optimum amounts so that life can do its job. And I got excited. Then we found out 99% of the population doesn't get enough omega-3s for optimum health. Every cell needs them. They're essential. There are not a lot of good sources. They are super sensitive to damage, more sensitive than the other oils that we recommend, like 5 times more.

Yes. You're having this awareness for yourself as you're wanting to reverse— Yeah, yeah,

yeah. I'm just talking to myself at this point.

At this point, you're just going, okay, so I did something stupid. I realize that now, and can I actually reverse engineer the solution from what I did that didn't actually serve me?

And then when all of that happened, I say to people, I had an orgasm. Oh my God, if we could make oils with health in mind, and all that requires is protecting them from light, oxygen, heat, and bring back the omega-3s that are too low in almost everybody's diet, we could help so many people. And I went ballistic. That was like, I mean, I got so lit up. It's like, finally I found a purpose in my life. Finally I have something. Because I did lots of stuff and I never ever felt like there was anything I was doing that was really worth doing.

Yeah. What age are you at this point?

At this point, I'm approximately— yeah, yeah, yeah, 1980. So I was 38. I got poisoned when I was 38. And then I developed a method for making oils with health in mind because the industry didn't do that.

And it's interesting too, Udo, right, that you get out of a marriage, right, ends in a— as many of them do— with—

Unfavorably.

Unfavorably, mixed feelings, etc. So you decide, I need to kill something.

No, no, no, the feelings were very clear. I was pissed.

So you set out on a mission to kill things.

Yeah.

And ultimately you poison yourself in the process. The irony is pretty rich, right?

Of course. And that's what— I mean, what you sow, you reap. And karma, you know, karma's a bitch, right? You know that what you put out will come back. I mean, we live on a planet right now where we've done a lot of things that are coming back to us.

What we've done to the environment— You can't overlook this piece, right?

No, no, no.

Because this is self-awareness, right? That's why I'm pointing it out is that there's an element of anything that's going on in our lives. There's some great irony. There's things you can find tremendous humor in. And most of it makes a lot of sense, actually.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, because we've— what's going on in the planet that's messing it up, we did that.

We did it. Exactly. Mother Earth didn't do it.

And what's going on in our politics that's really Messed up, we're doing that.

It's all about us.

And what's not working in our health, we're doing that. And what's going on in relationships, we're doing that. We're all doing it to ourselves. So my view is we need a transformation, and the transformation is about getting back in line with nature and our nature.

Yeah.

And then we haven't given that much thought and we haven't given that much effort.

When was Udo's Choice birthed then? When? Okay.

So then So I got poisoned in '80. I had this epiphany in 1981. I then developed the methods for making oils with health in mind, and we put out flaxseed oil. I wrote a book because I thought what I was learning in my self-studies was stuff that wasn't— I never learned at university, and people can benefit from it. So I wrote a book that was published in '86. Flax oil came out in '86. I did that for 3 years. Flax oil is now a billion-dollar-a-year industry worldwide. And then I parted company— that's a whole other story I'm not gonna get into— with the company that I started. And I have no business background. That was all built on enthusiasm.

Right.

We were on fire for doing something. I had no question that I could get it done.

Yeah,

I didn't make much money on it because I wasn't thinking about money. It wasn't about money. I just wanted to do this thing that would help so many people.

Right.

Then I took a hiatus and I rewrote the book and I had written in '86. That came out in '93 as Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill. And Udo's Choice started in 1994. And why the blend was because I became omega-6 deficient on flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is a great source of omega— of the missing omega-3s, but it doesn't have enough omega-6. And I used it as the only oil in my diet. and became omega-6 deficient on it. And I said, well, if I don't want to make something where that can happen to people, so I need to balance it. And so we put good omega-6s in the blend. So it's a little less omega-3, a little more omega-6 to get the balance between the two right, which is important.

Yes.

And then we put it in glass because I learned that from the Encyclopedia of Plastics, that when you put oil in plastic, The plastic swells and plastic can leach into oil quicker than into water. So I said, well, I'm trying to help people with health. Let's use glass. So I made the change to glass and Udo's Oil is in glass, in a brown glass bottle, in a box, in the fridge, in the supplement section, in the health food store. Right? That's the needle in the haystack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right? We didn't cut any corners. And because this stuff is sensitive, When you cut corners, you lose the benefits. We didn't cut any corners. I made so many decisions, like business decisions and marketing decisions. I just like one after another. And I look back now and I say, what got into me? It was the enthusiasm, the inspiration that came out of seeing something clearly that is absolutely a gift to human beings.

Right.

Or to health, right?

And it's so interesting that you could live a life where, let's call it sort of 30, 40% of the entirety of a life, you're sort of lost and have no real true clarity of what's my purpose, what's my mission. Because people, I think, they don't necessarily understand that that could be the case. And some people will stay with the job or stay in something that they know isn't their true highest expression. Right. But they're afraid that if they leave that or give it up or start searching or seeking, they'll never find that thing.

Right.

And you're one of those examples of somebody who did. Yeah.

Yeah. And I didn't know that I would find it either.

No, of course you didn't. And it came out of a poisonous—

But let me talk just a minute about purpose. This was doing purpose. I was already pretty clear about being purpose because the purpose, in my view, the purpose of human life is to be fully present in it. So not doing anything necessarily, but to be fully present in it, to recognize by our own experience what an incredible gift it is for dust and water to have the human experience.

Yes.

And so I was already doing that. That hit me when I was 30. And I started doing a practice that I've now been doing for 47 years about every day taking some time, sitting still, shutting up, see how still I can get, see how deeply still I can get. See how long I can stay there and see what I discover in my own experience when I do that. And I do that every— pretty much every day, and I've been doing it for 47 years, and it gets better and better. You know, my body's getting older, but my experience is getting younger.

Udo, I don't know if you remember this from our days in the Mastermind, but when I was leading those trainings, I would share this one ritual that was really important to me that came out of a similar inquiry where the one thing I wanted to do was to consciously create my life experience. And so to do that, I thought, well, maybe it makes sense at the very beginning of the day when we've got a brand new day and don't know where anything's going to lead to, where anything's going to go. It's all unknown, but this is the starting point. Why not, as my grandmother would say, start on your right foot, put your right foot out?

Right.

And that just seemed to be to answer that question consciously, as you pointed out before we even started the recording, you know, the conscious pivot. Those pivots are our thoughts. There are so many things. They're not just what we do with our— for a living or in our business. But so can ask yourself, how do I want to experience myself being today?

Yeah.

And that process of creating conscious answer to that question is really profound. I mean, I'm sharing this now with all of our listeners to say tomorrow that could be the way you begin the day, to ask yourself that question. How do I want to experience this day? Because most people will not say, you know what, I want to experience this day, I want to be angry. I want to be resentful today. I want to spend, you know, sort of half of my day ruminating and thinking about my grievances from the past. It's laughable. No one ever starts their day thinking, what I really want to experience is other people just like being aggressive with me. And yet, without consciously saying that's how we want to experience life. Those things happen and we do spend time doing those things. And what I found is that when we start by saying, this is how I want to— what I want to experience today, it doesn't rule out the possibility that you won't get angry. It doesn't rule out the possibility that others won't be upset with you. But what I have found is that if my intention is to experience peace today,

Mm-hmm.

to experience the presence of God or the presence of spirit in everything I see and everyone I speak to, and all of my own thoughts. It's really surprising how often my day tracks that exact plan. And if I forget, and if I'm too busy to spend that time to set the coordinates, so to speak, the map, that I have a day that will spin out of control or just will land me in the ditch without even— not sort of consciously intending it.

So you took your You said your grandmother, get out of bed on the right side, on the right foot?

She would say, leave the house on the right foot. That was her way of saying—

Your grandmother?

My grandmother, yeah.

And you were a little kid and you took that seriously, and then you put your right foot out and you made sure that you were conscious it was the right foot. Wasn't that the ritual?

That's the ritual.

And it's—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I leave the house and I will sometimes walk back in the house if I feel like I've been I'm leaving the house unconsciously.

Yeah,

I'll come back in and leave.

Yeah,

with my right foot.

Yeah. Okay. So for me, there were 2 pieces to that. The one was I wanted to feel whole. I wanted to feel present. I wanted to be fully present in all of my being. That for me is the right foot.

Okay.

And then when I began, I would do that and I'd get into this beautiful place and then I'd get out of bed. Because I used to do it in bed. It's like I used to say, I want to check in to see if I'm still there. If I'm not there, no point in getting out of bed. Right. So I would get out of bed and then I'd throw on my clothes and go and do breakfast or whatever I was doing. And within seconds, I was already back out of that place that I so beautifully experienced when I was still. And then it occurred to me one day, damn it. I want to drag this place out into the world with me. I don't want to leave it behind in my bed. And the moment that became clear to me, it began to become possible too. But because I had never thought of it as a possibility, it had never happened before. Yeah. So that was for me was the second is to make that deliberate. So when you're talking about conscious pivots, that's what I think it means. You make a shift. Deliberately, and then it comes from insight. If I have no insights, I don't think I make any shifts.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Yeah. It's so interesting because habits are— when we speak about pivots, we often are talking about new rituals. And the reason we call them rituals is because it's a conscious thing versus something you just do like you brush your teeth. Without thinking about it.

And you can take rituals and make them unconscious too. Then it's like, what the hell am I doing this for?

Oh, running on auto. You were like a robot. Yeah, many of us operate from robots in a robotic way.

Right, so the point is being conscious.

Exactly, which is interesting because you go— I want to go to something else, which is the country, the world. There's no place pretty much on the planet right now that isn't in some way dealing with this pandemic, the coronavirus. And you and I, before we turned on the recording, we were talking about how important it is to develop resilience. And you were actually sharing with me about people that are healthy or consciously focused on their own sturdiness, their hardiness, their well-being, they'll fare well in the course of this thing that's going to play out and run its course. Mm-hmm. So talk a little bit about resilience because I mean, People right now are in fear. There's a lot of panic. Actually, Wall Street's totally panicked. And folks are frightened, I think, because they feel like this thing can kind of get them almost like a monster.

We have homework to do that the human race has not done for the last 200,000 years.

Everybody get a pen for this now.

Yeah, yeah. And the homework— we didn't get out on the right foot out of bed way back then.

The dinosaurs didn't.

No, no, the monkey.

The monkey didn't.

No, he got out of bed on the left foot.

On the left foot.

And has been screwing it up ever since. And what was that? Is that— I'll tell it as a personal story. When you're in your mother's womb, I call the womb the Buddha tank. In your mother's womb, there's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go. You're safe. Everything is taken care of. And there's not much to go out to because it's a muffled environment. In that place, because there's nothing to do, you hang out just floating around in this little tank, you know, while your body is being built without any conscious effort on your part. And in that place, your awareness is at rest inside, in its source, in life. And so you're present inside but absent outside. And you don't even know that there's a difference between the two. That comes when you get born. When you get born, everything changes. And now you have to get to know the world. So you're— the way life created us is your awareness comes out through your senses into the world of what I call the world of surfaces of things. And you have to get to know that world because you have to survive physically in it. And so in that process, your awareness goes from being present inside, absent outside, to being present outside, absent inside. Hmm. We are disconnected from ourselves in that process. And with that disconnection comes a discontent, a not feeling whole, something's missing.

An incomplete, yes.

An ache, a pain. And we feel that pain here. We call it heartache when somebody dumps us. We call it loneliness when we're looking for somebody. We call it emptiness when we have nothing to do to distract ourselves from it. We call it— I mean, I have 10 pages of different words that people call it. Yearning, striving.

Longing.

Longing. Yeah, all of that, right? And Adler said that— Adler, the psychologist— this is profound for a guy who said this in the, in the '20s or '30s. He said the innermost striving in every human being is is a striving to move from a felt minus to a felt plus. In other words, striving to feel better.

Hmm. Yes.

A striving for perfection and a striving for godlikeness. And then he answered it by saying, well, you know, being socially responsible and having— taking interest in the interest of others, that's what fulfills that longing. And I'm saying, no, that's not what fulfills that longing. What fulfills that longing is is you making the time to bring your awareness back to that place where it was before you were born. Because when you bring your awareness, there is your peace, there is your wholeness, there is your fulfillment, there is where your inspiration comes from, there's where your love lives, in that place inside in you. And that love is unconditional because it's life loving your body unconditionally. There is your model for unconditional love. When you're able to do that, when you're able to stay in that state while you're putzing around doing what you need to do, then you can bring that into everything that you're doing. And now you can be simultaneously present on the inside and the outside, not just either one or the other.

Yeah, it's beautiful, the visual of taking it with you, taking it out with you, because I think a lot of people know what it feels like to be At peace when they're praying or they're meditating or—

Right.

There's just some bit of stillness they've gotten. I think most happens in— this is my experience, I don't think I'm alone in this— that you enter that peaceful state and then you go out in the world and 2 hours later someone's beeping a horn at you at the light because you didn't hit your gas quickly enough and you've already got cortisol pumping up. You know, like me, I'm an old New Yorker. I live in Southern California now, but it's like As soon as that horn gets up, it's like I'm ready to get out of my car and—

Yeah, yeah, ready to do battle.

Oh yeah. So we have this building something like building consciousness or building presence.

Right.

The next moment we wreck it. So building and wrecking. And if you can imagine going to a job site, spend an entire day building something beautiful and then that evening take a wrecking ball to it and then have to start over again the next day.

So we have to do enough of that. that we become more interested in staying in our presence than to become the victim of somebody honking their horn behind us. Or do you know what I mean?

I do.

Why aren't you? So my question would be, why aren't you so in love with the beauty of your existence that if a bee buzzes over there or a car honks over there or somebody talks about a virus over there, You stay in your space because that's where your fulfillment lives. That's where everything you want, really want, everything is there. You already have all that. Why are you letting trivial trivialities pull you away from that? And that's because, and I would say you need to deepen your practice of stillness and you need to deepen your commitment to live from that place.

And I'll plus that by reminding our folks And myself and you, Udo, of what you said a moment ago, which is there is something different. And I haven't used what you just were describing a moment ago, but you were riffing on this idea of my grandmother's leave on the right foot. And here you are in stillness, and then 20 minutes later, it's as if it didn't even occur, like you didn't do it. Right. But that conscious decision to take it with you, to leave with it, to bring it with you.

To stay in it and to give it expression.

And give it expression. Well, listen, here's the good news about these things. You guys hear it and you get to try it on for size. That's what I'm going to do. For me, visual analogies or examples work well. And I'm going to couple— I'm going to do something we call like habit stacking. I'm going to stack Udo's example and my grandmother's because I've had that embedded for a long time and see if I can get a little extra mileage

Yeah, I'm sure you'll get extra mileage

out of my meditation practice.

So take that back to the virus and the confusion about it.

Yes.

So what I'm saying is the reason why we're confused and why we're all over the map is because we haven't done our homework. The same homework that people didn't do 200,000 years ago, but we're up against having to do it now because we're being threatened by extinction if we don't make the changes.

It is. It's the threat of annihilation.

Yep. So how about this? I'm alive. Love how good that feels. Because I love how good it feels, I want to be around as long as I can. So I pay attention to what I do. The first thing is that when I turn on the television and everybody is all over the map about who should say what about what and what this virus is and blah blah blah blah blah, Why don't I just get slightly informed but without losing my connection to the beauty of my life? And then it starts— the virus starts to look different. Yes, it's about 30 times more lethal than flu. Its infectivity is a little less than flu. That's a good thing. And we've heard enough about them finding that it affects older people more. So I'm 77, so I should be freaking out. But it affects 77-year-old people or old people if they have pre-existing conditions like cardio and diabetes and kidney problems. And there were a couple of others.

Lung issues.

Well, immune issues, lung issues, of course. Yeah. And cancer and stuff like that. Well, guess what? At 77, I don't have any of those because I like being here and I pay attention. And I do certain things that are helpful. For instance, probably the single most effective thing you can do if you get the virus— that's also true for flu, and I do it and I hardly ever get one— is that you take digestive enzymes, you open them up in your mouth. They have to be enzymes that protease in them, which digests protein. And the enzyme in your mouth, when these viruses come out of your cells, digest the protein coat off the virus and put that virus out of commission. Now you're not getting told that on Fox or CNN because they haven't been paying attention. You're getting it from me because I have been paying attention and I've been paying attention for a while. So this is not like my quick cure for, for virus. What these enzymes do, aside from they putting viruses out of commission so your immune system doesn't have to deal with them, they also help digestion. And when digestion is In really good shape, then your immune system does not have to get involved in it. When you're not eating raw foods that have enzymes in them, or you're not taking enzymes to replace the ones you destroy when you cook the food, then your immune system has to get involved in digestion. That makes it less capable of doing all its other jobs. So the enzymes do 2 things. One is they, they knock off viruses, and the second one is they take a load off your digestive system and make your— Yeah. Immune system stronger therefore. Wow. No,

it's pretty tangible and something everybody can do. Anybody can do.

Yeah. And it beats complaining and worrying about the virus.

So we're talking about, for people that don't know, when you say digestive enzymes, are you meaning probiotics, prebiotics?

No, no, no, no, no. Digestive enzymes. They come in capsules. What I do is I could run and— I can run and show it to you.

Do you want

to use— you want to do it?

Well, I'll tell you what, this is going to be on YouTube. People that are listening right now listening to it going, oh, I can't see it. I can't see it anyway. So maybe just describe it for folks. Okay.

So it just comes in a little glass bottle.

This is something you find in a store, digestive enzymes.

Has a label on it. Yeah. Yeah. It has a Flora label on it. Used to have my label on it, but they took it off. That's a whole other story. And they're digestive enzymes. You want to get the ones that have the most protease in them. Bromelain is a protease, but there are also many other different proteases from other places.

And

then you take out a capsule or 2. I always use 2. Open it up. It's got powder inside it. You dump it in your mouth and then you swish it around your mouth.

What's the reason for doing that as opposed to just swallowing the tablet or the capsule?

Because the snot is here, here, and here. That's where the bugs are and your throat.

And your throat.

If you swallow the capsule, they end up in your stomach and they help with digestion. But up here, they're taking protein coats off the viruses and putting them out of commission before they even get in your cells.

Yeah.

So you want to start them— if you ate raw foods, the enzymes that help with digestion in the raw foods, they're working the moment you chew them up. So they start— digestion starts in your mouth.

Right.

But your salivary glands, they don't make a lot of protease. They mainly make starch-digesting enzymes. So you put them in here, you've done— you've made the food raw again, sort of. You haven't really, but you've made up for it. And because they— proteases digest the viruses, you're putting as many viruses as you can out of commission before they even get into your cells. And the more you put out of condition, the fewer there are to hurt you. So that's really, really smart. That's number one.

Really, really smart. Good. Hey, listen, I know people want to hear more. So

yeah, yeah. The second is I have a machine that makes water. It's called a Kangen machine.

I've got one of those too.

Yeah. And the Kangen machine, if you get the high-end machines, they make acid water that's pH 2.5.

Just gonna ask you about the importance of pH. That's great that you—

Okay, so pH 2.5, that's quite acidic. And so what I do with that is I get the acidic water and I have a little spray bottle and I spray the back of my throat with that acid water, the place where when you swallow it hurts when you get a cold.

Yeah, isn't that the pH level they use for cleaning things?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, pH level is— it's a sterilant.

Yeah,

it kills bacteria, viruses, and funguses. So you can use it for cleaning your countertop, you can use it for Cleaning your hands when you get the virus.

Yeah.

And I literally take that, I spray it on my face too, because if the virus lands on my face, it gets pH 2.5, right? And so what I do is I spray the back of my throat.

Mm-hmm.

I maybe I'll put a little in my mouth and swish it around. You have to be careful because it will dissolve your teeth if you do it a lot. But the biggest thing I do is I spray it up my nose and And then I suck it up, leave it in there. You can feel it. It kind of burns a little bit. And then I blow my nose and it literally is killing all the snot bugs in the snot. You know, that's like a graphic description, but I'm just trying to tell you what I'm actually doing.

Yeah. You're taking steps.

Yeah. And that's the second thing I do because they kill viruses. The acid kills viruses.

Right

now there's a limit to enzymes. If your tongue starts to tingle, You need to back off a little because enzymes will also digest your tongue.

So this 2 capsules.

Yeah.

Is this a once-a-day thing?

I do it whenever I feel like. When it's serious, I do it maybe 3 times a day.

Okay.

But you can do it more, but you have to back off if your tongue starts to tingle.

Got it.

Yeah, because enzymes will digest whatever protein they come in touch with, but the more snot you have and the more congested you are, the more of them you can take before your tongue tingles, which is also really interesting.

Yeah. Interesting.

Right? Then I snort the water back. Then I blow my nose. I'll do those 2 one after the other.

It's almost like a net— like a neti pot kind of a thing.

It's kind of like a neti pot. Yeah. Except I'm using acid water because if you're just putting water in the neti pot, you're cleaning out the stuff, but you're not killing the viruses.

Yeah. I don't know that I've ever— that I've done this right. But when I've done that, I've used Baking soda and—

In the neti pot?

Yeah. And sometimes I think hydrogen peroxide or something like that.

Yeah. Those will work too.

Yeah. Interesting. So that's the second. Do you have a third thing that you do?

I do. Now I forgot what it was. Oh, the third thing is no sugar.

Yeah.

And limit starches because when you take a teaspoon of sugar, you knock down your immune system to up to 5 to 8 hours. And why would you want to do that when you're trying to fight a virus that you're afraid of?

Is it the same with dairy? No? Because dairy is inflammatory for me anyway. I don't know.

Well, dairy has some sugar in it and dairy produces phlegm and phlegm is great stuff for critters. Yeah, so good idea, but the sugar I think is the worst thing. Eat green foods till they're coming out of your ears. There's some people use zinc if you're deficient in zinc and that compromises immune function. I think 15 milligrams is the recommended dosage. You can go up to— Of zinc? Of zinc, yeah. You can go up to 50 or 60 milligrams. That will help you in situations like this. You don't want to go over 100 because if you take too much zinc, then it becomes actually immune decreasing instead of immune enhancing. So zinc, vitamin C is also commonly used. You can gargle with salt water.

Do you love apple cider vinegar? Are you a fan of—

I'm a fan of it, but not for this, not for the virus, not specifically for the virus. Vitamin C, and you can swish your mouth with that as well. Magnesium. Magnesium is involved in every energy reaction in the body. The more energy you have, the more all of your cells can do their jobs. And then omega-3s for the same reason, but they need to be made with health in mind. So I'm not talking about a a pill of fish oil. I'm talking about omega-3s. I take about a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day.

Yeah.

And that's not specific to the virus, that's specific to increase the— increasing the body's ability to, to energize the cells. And we've measured 40 to 60% increase in stamina in athletes when they take a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day mixed in foods and intake spread out over the day. Spread out over the course of the day.

Omega-3.

Yeah, omega-3 and 6. Basically, Udo's Oil is what we did the studies on.

And these are oils, not oil in capsules?

No, not in capsules. This is— no, because you need 14 capsules to get a tablespoon, and if you need 2 to 4 tablespoons, you're talking about a lot of capsules.

Sure.

3 times more expensive, and the gelatin is not helpful.

Got it.

So, and never fry with oil like that. Because the better it is for you when it's fresh, the worse it becomes when you fry it because you're damaging the oil and it will then damage your health. So what else? Oh yeah, probiotics are not specific to the virus but specific to your immune system because they govern what goes on in your digestive tract with other critters. And there are a lot of unfriendly critters our digestive tract. They have to be balanced or they have to be kept in check with good critters. And don't take antibiotics because antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria and have no effect on helping kill viruses. They're completely ineffective against viruses and they're actually counterproductive because they mess up your microbiome in your digestive tract. More plant-based, less animal-based. Is also really good. The research is so clear now that if you want the longest life and the best health, you do it on a whole food. So we're not talking about sugar and margarine. We're talking whole foods, plant-based, plus vitamin B12 if you're gonna make it completely plant-based. But cut down on the things that are harder on the body.

Make it easier to break them down.

I'll tell you a little story. I had a friend I worked with and he had a sore on a bone on his wrist and And he showed it to me and he said, I've had this and it won't heal. What do you think that is? I said, I don't know. But I noticed that every day when we had dinner, we worked together, he would drink a glass of burgundy. So I said to him, why don't you see what happens if you don't drink? 2 weeks, no burgundy. See what happens. 2 weeks later, he showed it to me. It was completely healed. He said, how did you know it was the burgundy? I said, I didn't know. But I know that alcohol puts a load on your body. And if you just take off one load off your body, then your body will have a better ability to do what needs to be done.

Yes.

It just happened to be true. And the guy eventually— then he went back to taking his Burgundy and he eventually died of lupus where his, his immune system was destroying his blood cells faster than they could be replaced.

Yeah.

So, so he died of lupus. So he had lupus.

Yeah.

But my point is that anything you do, and one of them is not worrying, because fundamentally your body will check out one day. Is it now or is it later? You don't know. But worrying doesn't extend your life. Worrying shortens it. Right? So enjoy your life. And the more you enjoy your life, and then the more you take things out of your life detrimental to it. Then the more likely you are to do well under these circumstances, under any circumstances.

This has been wonderful. I want to ask you one thing about liver and kidney function because I hear that a lot as well. That's a vulnerable point for a lot of people. So what would you say is things that people can do to fortify their liver, their kidneys? And obviously you just mentioned alcohol, and we know that alcohol is not something that's good for the liver.

Yeah, everything that is helpful for dealing with the virus is also—

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to Go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

Helpful for liver and kidney function.

Oh, that's good.

Because it's all made out of the same stuff.

So this is prophylactic then. This is something you don't have to necessarily wait showing some signs or symptoms,

right,

of being not well to be doing some of these things.

Now, they're specific if you want to look at all of the different ways that the body falls apart. All comes back to mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are places in your cells where your energy is made. You want to keep those strong. They have some requirements, and some of them I already mentioned: magnesium, coenzyme Q10, the reduced form is helpful, vitamin B3 is helpful, niacin, flush niacin or non-flush niacin. Anything that increases your body's ability to turn food into energy and makes that energy available to your cells will be helpful to the very hardworking organs like liver and kidneys that will deteriorate quicker because of their being so hardworking.

Sure, exactly. They're exhausted or depleted. So what are some of the foods, just really in a couple of minutes we've got left here, Udo, what are some foods that are natural sources of niacin or flush niacin or Magnesium or things, because I mean, people can take supplements.

Yeah,

but that's not the best way to get these things if possible, right? Yeah,

green foods, source of magnesium.

Yeah, so we're talking spinach and cucumber and broccoli and celery.

All of it, and green peppers and yeah, all of it, all the veggies that grandma said you should eat.

Exactly.

And eating them raw. Is better than eating them boiled or steamed. And boiled and steamed is better than eating them fried. Okay, because you're in with fried, you're creating toxic molecules. Every toxic molecule that gets in your body takes up a lot of energy.

We're green drink people. So we just blend them all up.

Yeah, for B vitamins, probably the best easily available source is nutritional yeasts, any of those products. You also get some in grains, but of course I'm saying grains, take it more easy on it. Grains also get a lot of Roundup in them, glyphosate, because they use glyphosate to desiccate them so that they can harvest them all at the same time. But nobody's talking about that much. Obviously you want to go organic, right? Mm-hmm. And if you have a house and a yard, tear up your lawn and grow your own damn vegetables.

Grow it yourself.

Because then you know what's on them. Then you know there's pesticides on them only if you put them on.

Exactly.

I'm a big proponent of growing as much food as you can on your windowsill and in your garden. And why? Because transportation— we're talking about what's good for your health. That's the freshest food you're gonna get because you literally can take it out of the garden, eat it. And your fresh vegetables from the grocery stores are maybe 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 14 days old.

Yeah,

right. And then live your life like it was worth it. Because it is. But then you have to spend the time, get your rest, right? If you're stressed out and you're not getting your rest, that's hard on everything. So to actually sit down, you know, you get more rest from sitting still awake for an hour than you get from an hour of sleep. Because in your hour of sleep, your mind rambles through all your crazy stuff that you have. When you're deliberately awake and focus on just being present, being awake, you're consciously doing that. You have control over that. And when you get good at it, because it takes practice, because we're not that good at it because we don't practice. We practice going out. We don't practice going in. But as you get better at it, you end up finding out you need less sleep when you can get more stillness. So if the virus is something that pivots you to taking the beauty, the magnificence of your life a little more seriously, then it's a good thing.

Absolutely. You know what, Udo, that's the perfect segue into how we will exit the show. But the landing that, doing what I would say is a gold medal job of Putting us on our 2 feet at the end of that with what is there to be utilized. That's one great alchemy example that you've given us, how you could take something that people are really upset and rightly so that we'd be concerned and look at the creative opportunity in that for our living a better life overall. And that, that could be in many ways the ripple effect if that's what we're seeking to take from it.

Yeah, if that's what we do with it.

Yeah, for sure. So Udo, I have so enjoyed reuniting with you for this show.

Me too.

What a blessing. What a blessing. And I know people are absolutely loving it, probably really wanting more as well. So as always, there'll be show notes which include links to the company that Udo— products and things that Udo has been sharing with the world for so many years. So show notes will include more information about Udo and his companies and the products. We'd love to get your comments as always. So please Leave those at adamarkel.com/podcast. Leave a comment there. You can email us at team@adamarkel.com as well, questions for Udo or for myself. And you can follow us as always and continue the conversation on Facebook and all the other social channels. But I have so enjoyed this, Udo. Thank you so much.

Thanks for doing this.

It's a pleasure. Everybody, be resilient out there. Do something as Udo has suggested. Take that opportunity to be more conscious. Experience yourself being someone that is so in love with life, in love with life really, that you just want to keep going. You'll see that so many forces of nature, miracles even, will sort of come to your aid because that's your true intention. Yes. And I know for me, those 4 simple words are the way I start the day and I remind myself every day that I truly do Love my life. And I hope that's the same for all of you. So, I'll say ciao for now. Udo, again, thank you so much.

All right. Thank you.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.