Eating and Living Healthily With Udo Erasmus

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author.

Of Pivot and your host, Adam Markell.

The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and.

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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 Markell. 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 there's a bit of a reunion that's happening be happening live here for all of you. And, and it's, and it's somebody that is actually he's, he's. 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, we were collaborating in a Mastermind some years back. So I'll, I'll speak about him in, in glowing terms because he's done some really amazing things and all of you will get to meet him. 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 and 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, 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 that you would love for people to know about you?

Okay. Well, lots of things. My first project when I left university was to start a nude beach. And the reason why is I studying biology. And we're looking at everything about creatures and. And one day it occurred to me that I'm ashamed of my body. And it's like, where. Where the hell did that come from? 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? And so I. There was a beach off the university. The university is on a peninsula. And sand cliffs go down to the. 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. Pretty soon I'd be walking naked on the beach and somebody would come and I'd go and sit down behind the. Behind the log again. And then it wasn't long before I started what I was. I was walking naked down the beach and somebody came the other way, and I would just keep walking and I. And then we. This is like. This is like a big confession. I was just thinking is in the 60s, 1969, and I lived in. I had left university in 1968, and I lived in a house with a lot of people. And one day we all got stone and mescaline and went down to the beach. And when the tide was down, there was mud flats. 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 stone unmesculent. 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. They just gathered and watched because it was so profound for them, because it was. It was childlike and it wasn't weird.

Yeah. And it was.

And it was like. It was. No, no, no. It was. It was like 30 year old kids playing, right? Totally playing.

Like little kids and not self conscious about their bodies.

No, not. No. So it was. No, it was just, we were just playing and, 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. And I call it my social project. I'm sure, 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.

Did, did it turn out to become a nude. A nude bathing beach?

Still there.

Still there.

Yeah. No, it's not on any of the travel guides for Vancouver. But if you come to Vancouver, you, you go to Wreck Beach. It's still there.

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

No, I know. You know what? I don't. I'm not that. It's not that important to me that I be remembered. What I'd like, what I'd like is that whatever. What intuitions I have and whatever wisdom that comes out of my, if any. Right. That that becomes folk wisdom. Because if you think about it like I have a light here on my face and I, you know, there's a glass window and blinds and carpet and walls and all of this if you ask me. Well, who invented that? I don't have any idea. But I'm the beneficiary of other people in other times 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 I. And, and I. And for most people it will be that way and I don't expect that it'll be any different.

So they're.

But while I'm here, I want to do the best I can to turn this place into, 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 160something episode of our, of our show. And I've asked that question at least that many times of people. You know what's not. What's not written in your bio that you'd love for people to know about you. And that's the bet. That to me is the most interesting answer I've ever gotten. I get. You get the prize, brother, because.

Thank you.

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, down 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 we get. 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.

Because the water.

It's almost like a Gulf Stream then. I hadn't heard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It is a warm current. It comes from. It goes 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.

Not crazy and not crazy in terms of water.

No, it's just crazy enough. And I think that the way you. You led into that, this idea we're not always comfortable in our own bodies, in our own skin, is actually deep, deep conversation to begin.

And then taking it on.

And then taking it on, doing something about it.

Yeah.

Wonderful and inspiring and inspiring others. And I think that's a good lead in to what it is that you've been doing with your. With your products. I'll say professionally this has been what you've been up to, but why don't you tell us a little bit about that? What was the inspiration? Because we could.

Inspiration?

Yeah, the inspiration because this community, Udo, is built of many, many people like yourself that are. Had. Have been entrepreneurs that have had entrepreneurial pursuits and dreams in their lives, some of which have turned out well, some have not. Some are. I would imagine most, if not all are still on that. On that wheel look. Looking to create something that does change the lives of thousands and millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people. And you folks that have been in a number of good stores probably will recognize that brand. Udo's Choice. I know 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, you know, the things that they were carrying. And I'm not sure if it's in Sprouts or Jimbo's or any of these really?

Yeah, it's all in all those places.

Yeah. Better places. So share how that all got started. What age were you? 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 had three kids and I mean my wife had three kids. We had three kids.

Nice correction.

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 pesticides prayer as part of a gardening job I had and I became a full time pesticide sprayer. And I was really careless. Walked barefoot through the. 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. It's the belief that you are, are superhuman or.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nothing can kill you.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. And, and after doing that for three years, I got poisoned. Predictable outcome, right?

Predictable outcome. I thought you were going to tell us. It never happened to me.

No, no, no. And I went to the doctor and, and that, 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, physiology, all the. I had religious experiences of awe. Studying biology, I love the topic. And, 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. And then. Yeah, so it, so yeah, because I didn't want to be any of those, you know, I didn't want to have any of those jobs for life. But I wanted to know.

You wanted to understand.

Yeah, yeah. And so I knew that about you.

The day that I met you. This is funny that this is a reunion because you always, you were always kind of a puzzling person to me. A little, 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. And I'm sad that I say this now, but 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 understand 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 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, you know, there must be. If I do the opposite of what I did to get it, then I should be able to reverse it because it's 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 one 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 one 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, yeah. Body is 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. Well, that's your body coming off, but it doesn't come off just from your skin. It also comes off from the inside lining of your digestive tract, which. Which turns over every four 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 four days because it's so much there's so much going on there 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, you drink more or the water is cleaner you, it's going to do a better job in your body.

So, filtration system.

So, yeah, so what you, what you. Yeah, they say get a filter or be a filter.

Right, Be a filter.

Right. But, but the, but the point is it, it's always turning over. So then the question was, okay, what, what do I need to do to raise my standard to rebuild my body to be healthier than it was in when I got poisoned? You know, other than not spraying pesticides anymore, that was the, that was the obvious starting point, right. And I got stuck on oils because oils are our 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 and it's not, it's going to affect your body different. And I just got. And then it was, it was. 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. 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 body, your health goes down. And if you don't get enough long enough, you die. 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 reckon, like five times more.

Yes. So 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, going, okay, so I did something stupid. I realize that now, and I want. And can I actually reverse engineer the solution from what I did? That didn't actually serve me right.

And then. And then when. All while. When all of that happened, when I, you know, I just went. 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, bring back the Omega 3s that are too low in almost everybody's diet, we could help so many people. And I got. And I went ballistic. That was like. I mean, I got. 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, you know, I never ever felt like there was anything I was doing that was really worth doing.

Yeah. And what age are you at this point?

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

It's interesting too, Udo, right. That you get out of a marriage. Right. Ends. Ends in a. You know, as some. As many of them do, with unfavorably, unfavorably mixed feelings, etc. So you decide, I need to kill something.

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.

Yeah.

Well, the irony is pretty. Pretty rich, right?

Of course. Of course. And that's what, I mean, we. What you sow, you reap. And, you know, karma, you know, karma's a bitch, right? I mean, you know, you know, 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.

We can't get 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, you know, anything that's going on in our lives. There's. There's some great irony. There's.

Yeah.

Find tremendous humor and. And most of it makes a lot of sense, actually.

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. Because we've. What. What's going on in the planet that's messing it up. We did that.

We did it. Exactly.

Mother Earth 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, 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.

Yeah. Anyway, so when, when was Udo's Choice birthed? Then? When.

Okay, so then, so, 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 there should be. There must be people who can benefit from it. So I wrote a book that was published in 86. Flax oil came out in 86. Then we did that. I did that for three years. Flax oil is now a billion dollar a year industry worldwide. And then I parted company with the. That's a whole other story that I'm not going to 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.

And then I came. Then I took a hiatus and I rewrote the book that 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 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.

Yeah.

Let's not poison them. Yeah, yeah. So. So I made. So I made the change to glass. And Udos 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.

Right. And. And, and we did. And I. We didn't cut any corners. Like, 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. Who took me over? You know, what got into me? But it was. 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 one person, you know, 30, 40% of the. Of the entirety of a life. You're. You're sort of lost and have no real, you know, true clarity of what's my purpose, what's my mission? Because people, I think, you know, 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 right, their true highest expression, 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 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. Not doing anything necessarily, but to be fully present in it and to recognize by our own experience what an incredible gift it is for dust and water to have the human experience.

Yes.

Right. 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. 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 get 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 you. They're not just what we do with our, you know, for a living or business, but so you can ask yourself, how do I want to experience myself being today?

Yeah.

And that process of creating a 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, you know, all the people that have hurt me. It's laughable. No one ever starts their day thinking, you know, what I really want to experience is other people just like, you know, being aggressive with me. And yet without. 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 conscious, 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 those one won't be upset with you. But what I have found is that if my, if my intention is to experience peace today, to experience that the presence of God or the presence of spirit in everything I see. And everyone I speak to in 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. To set. 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, quote, consciously intending it. Right.

So you said your grandmother get out of bed on the right side.

She would say, leave the house on the right foot.

That was her way of saying your grandmother.

My grandmother.

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

That's the ritual. And.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I leave. I leave the house.

Yeah.

And I will sometimes walk back in the house if I feel like I've been. I'm leaving the house unconsciously.

Yeah.

Come back in and leave with my right foot.

Yeah. Okay. So for me, there were two pieces. Two 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 was that, for me, is the right foot.

Okay.

And when I. And. And then. 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, you know, 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. But so. So I would get out of bed, and then I'd throw on my plate on my clothes and go and do breakfast or whatever I was doing. And within seconds, I was already back out of that place.

Yeah.

That I so beautifully experienced when I. 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. So that was, for me, was the second, is to make that deliberate. So when you're talking about conscious pivots, you know, that's what I think it means. You. You make a. You make a shift deliberately, and then it comes from insight. And if I have no insights, I Don't think I make any shifts.

Yeah, it's so interesting, Udo, because habits are a pivot. 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. So thank you. Thank you for.

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

Oh, running on. You were like a robot.

Yeah, yeah.

And many of us operate from a robots, you know, like a robot in a robotic way.

Right. The point. So the point is being conscious.

Exactly. Which is interesting because you go, well, you know what? Let's. I want to go to something else, which is that the country, the world, you know, there's no place pretty much on the planet right now that isn't in some way dealing with this new, this pandemic, the coronavirus. And you and I, before we turn on the. On the recording, we were talking about how important it is to. To develop resilience. And you were actually sharing with me about, you know, people that are healthy, are consciously focused on their own. 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. So talk a little bit about resilience because, I mean, this is, this is a. You know, people right now are in fear. There's a lot of panic. Actually. Wall Street's totally panicked.

I see.

Yeah. And folks are, you know, are frightened, I think, because they feel like this thing can kind of get them almost like, you know, like a monster. What's your view?

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

Okay, everybody get a pen for this now.

Yeah, yeah. And the homework. You know, we got out. 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.

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. And 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, 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, it's. 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. We are disconnected from ourselves in that process. And with that disconnection comes a discontent and 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. The Adler, the psychologist is a profound. For a guy who said this in the. In the 20s or 30s, he said the innermost striving in every human being is a striving to move from a felt minus to a felt plus. In other words, striving to feel better. A striving for perfection and a striving for God likeness. And then he answered it by saying, well, you know, being socially responsible and having. Taking interest in 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 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, there is your peace, there's your wholeness, there's your fulfillment there. There's 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 that.

The.

The visual of. 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 in, when they're. When they're praying or they're meditating or right there, just some. Some bit of stillness they've gotten. And. And what I think most happens, and at least 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 two hours later, you know, someone's. Someone's beeping a horn at you at the light, because you didn't. You didn't hit your gas quickly enough, and you're 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 that horn gets up, it's like I'm ready to get out of. And, you know.

Yeah, yeah, you're ready to do battle.

Oh, yeah. And so. So we have this. This building. Building something like building consciousness or building presence. Right the next moment we wreck it. So building and wrecking. And if you 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. Then 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. Because why.

Why aren't you so. Why? 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 all. That's where everything you want, really want everything is there. You already have all that. Why are you laying letting. Why are you letting trivialities pull you away from that? And that's because. And I would say you want it. 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 this. There's. There's something different. And I haven't. I haven't used what you just were describing a moment ago, but you were riffing on this idea of my grandmother's, you know, leave, leave on the right foot. And here you are in stillness. And then, you know, 20 minutes later, it's as if it didn't even occur. Like you didn't do it, but that conscious decision to take it with you, to leave with it, to bring it.

With you, to stay in it and to do. 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 in a 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. 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 extinct. You know, we're being threatened by extinction if we don't make the changes it is.

It's the threat of revelation.

Yeah. So. 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 television and everybody is. Is. 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?

Yes.

And then you start. And then this starts. The virus starts to look different. Yes. It's about 30 times more lethal than flu. The. Its infectivity is a little less than flu. So that. 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, I should be freaking out. But it affects, affects 77 year old people or old people, you know, if they have preconsisting conditions like cardio and diabetes and kidney problems. And there were a couple 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. 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 have protease in them which digests protein, 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 gaining 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. This is a, this is. And what did, what the, 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, 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 two things. One is they, they knock off viruses. And the second one is they take a load off your digestive system and make your immune system stronger. Therefore. Wow. That, that's.

No, it's pretty tangible. And so, you know. Yeah, everybody can do, Anybody can do.

Yeah. And it, 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, you meaning probiotics, prebiotics?

No, no, no, no, no. Digestive enzymes, they're, they're, they're, they come in capsules. What I do is I could run and I can run and get. Show it to you. 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.

Okay.

Right now. Listening to it.

Okay.

I can't see it. I can't see it. Anyway, so maybe just describe it for.

Okay. So it just comes in a little, in a little, in a little glass bottle.

This is something you find in a store.

Digestive has a label on it. Yeah, yeah, it has a floral 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 you take out a capsule or two, I always use two. You 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 capsules?

Well, because, because the snot is here, here and here. That's where the bugs are, you know. And, and your throat.

And your throat.

Well, if you, 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. And if you ate raw foods, the enzymes that help with digestion in the raw foods, they're working, 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 those, you put them in here. You've done, you've, you've made the food raw again, sort of. You haven't really, but you've, you've, you've made up for it. And because they, the proteases digest the protein, digest the enzyme. Sorry, 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.

So this is your number.

That's number one.

Really, really smart. Good.

Number one.

Hey, listen, I know nothing. People want to hear more?

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.

Yeah. I was just going to 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, I get the acidic water and I have a little spray bottle and I spray the back of my throat with that acid water. You know the place where when you swallow, it hurts when you get a cold.

Yeah.

You know.

You know, isn't that the PH level they use for cleaning things?

Yeah, yeah. No, no PH level, is it. It's a, it's a sterilant.

Yeah.

Like, it kills, 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, you get the virus.

Yeah.

And I literally take that. I spray it on my face, too, because if the, 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. I, maybe I'll put a little in my mouth and swish it around. But 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 then I suck it up, leave it in there. You can feel it. It kind. 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. No, as you know, that's like graphic description. But I'm just trying to tell you what I'm actually doing.

Yeah, you're taking, you're taking steps.

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

Right.

Now you can. 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, these two, these two capsules.

Yeah.

Is this a once a day thing? Is it, is it less frequent than.

I do it. I do it whenever. I do it whenever I feel like, when it's, when it's serious, I'll do it maybe three times a day.

Okay.

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

Got it?

Yeah. Because enzymes will digest whatever protein they come and come in touch with. And they. And the. But the more, 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. And so the so and then so what? Then I snort the water back, then I blow my nose, and I'll do that about this. I'll do those two, one after the other.

It's almost 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 done this. Right. But when I've done that, I've used baking soda and.

In the netty pot. Yeah.

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

Yeah, those will work too. Yeah.

Interesting. So that's the second. You have a third thing that you do.

Yeah, I do. No, Forgot what it was. Oh, the third thing is no sugar.

Yeah. This is the part that people hate to hear.

No. And limit starches. Because when you take a teaspoon of sugar, you knock down your immune system to up to five to eight 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? Because dairy is inflammatory.

For me, anyway, dairy has some sugar in it, and dairy produces phlegm. And phlegm is great stuff for the. For critters. Yeah. So. 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. Zinc if you're deficient in zinc, and that compromises immune function. But if you can. I think 15 milligrams is the recommended dosage. You can go up to. 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. 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 am. I'm a fan of it. But not for this. Not. Not for. Not for the virus. Not specifically for the virus. Okay.

And then vitamin C. Yeah, yeah, that.

Vitamin C. And you can. 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 3 is for the same reason. But they need to be made with health in mind. So I'm not talking about a pill of fish oil. I'm talking about, I'm talking about omega 3s. I take about a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day. And that's not specific. Specific to the virus. That's specific to increase the easing, increasing the body's ability 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 of 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 two to four tablespoons, you're talking about a lot of capsules.

Sure.

Three times more expensive. And the gelatin is not helpful.

Got it.

So, and, and, and never, 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, you're damaging the oil and it will then damage your health. So what else? Oh yeah, probiotics. 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 in 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. So there's, it's. 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 going to make it completely plant based, but cut down on the things that are harder on the body.

You know, it's like make it easier to break them down.

Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you a little story. I had a friend I worked with and he had a sore on, right on his, on that, on A bone on his wrist, 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? You know, two weeks, no burgundy. See what happens? Two 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. If. And. 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 he. 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, an autoimmune and.

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

Udo, 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 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. You. 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, there are specific. If you. If you want to look at all of. If you want to look at all of the different ways that the body falls apart, all comes back to mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are the 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. Helpful. Vitamin B3 is helpful. Niacin, flush niacin or non flush niacin. Anything that makes, 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 hard working organs like liver and kidneys that will deteriorate quicker because of their being so hardworking.

Dr. Sure. Exactly. They're exhausted or depleted. So what are some of the foods? Just really in the 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, you know 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.

All of those.

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 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 this the best, best easily available source is nutritional yeasts. Any, any of those, those products. You also get some in grains but of course I'm saying grains taken 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? Well and if you have a house in a yard, tear up your, tear up your lawn and grow your own, grow it yourself. Then you know what's on them. Then you know there's pesticides on. Only if you put them on.

Exactly.

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

Yeah.

Right. So. And then, you know, live your life. Live your life like it. 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. 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 an. 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 are consciously doing that. So you have. 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 when, as you get better at it, you end up finding out you need less sleep, when you can get more stillness. So any. Anything, you know, and the virus, if the virus is something that, 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 landing that, doing what I would say is a gold medal job of putting us on our two 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. Um, and. 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. If that's what we're seeking to take from it.

If that. 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 and probably really wanting more as well. So, as always, there'll be notes, show notes, which include links to the company that Udo. The 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@adammarkel.com podcast leave a comment there. You can email us@teamadammarkel.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.

Yeah, it's a pleasure, everybody. Be resilient out there. Do something as Udo has suggested. You know, take that. 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. And I know for me, those four 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.

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