Terminal to Triathlon with Mark Bryant

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Tribathlon podcast finding out how ordinary people do extraordinary things.

In the hospital room. When I had the stem cell transplant, I drew a mind map and on there was what was life going to look like after cancer. And on there was an ironman that was Mark Bryant.

And this episode is terminal to triathlon. And this week I invited back Phoebe Liebling, nutritionist and former podcast guest, back to be my guest co host. So, Phoebe Liebling, thank you so much for coming back to the podcast and I'm really looking forward to chatting to you about all things nutrition and health related. So welcome back.

Why thank you for having me back. It's a privilege to be asked for a second time.

Well, there was so much good content in that first podcast that I thought just diving into a little bit more would be really useful for people and I want to, I want to start things. Well, I suppose actually. What have you been up to since you were on the podcast last time? Is anything significant changed? Have you been, you've been doing anything amazing in your business or in your personal life?

My goodness, a lot has happened. I think that the biggest and most exciting thing that I've done is get back into sort of the, the real human person thing. So I took or, well, me and a couple of others took a group down to Cornwall and we went for a week and we did a retreat, but we wanted to, we wanted to make it specific because I don't know if people have heard the previous podcast, but I'm quite detail orientated. So what we wanted to offer was a real insight into how nervous system function impacts gut health and therefore your systemic wellbeing. So we did things like functional gut testing and blood testing and food intolerance testing all before the guests actually came down. And then we took them well, we basically designed the menus that they would then eat over the course of the week around their body's needs specifically for them. They also saw me individually for consults, which is great fun. And then what we did was we changed their different stimuli so we would do things like change their morning activity and we changed the kind of the formats of the structure of the meals they were eating over the course of the day and different macronutrients that depending on the kind of activity they've done so that they could very obviously see when out of their own environment and us being totally in charge of the impact of that nervous system balance on how they then felt. And it was just the most fascinating experience for me to kind of be immersed in it with them. And they all loved it. I was completely washed out by the end of it because obviously it's 247 and I was cooking and I was doing consultations. But my. It was so much fun. I actually can't wait for the next one.

And when will the next one be?

We are aiming to do them on seasonal change, so we'll do two to three of the long ones per year and then we're going to do hopefully three, three shorter kind of three day resets, like long weekends that we'll do close to London rather than sort of down in the depths of Cornwall, which is gorgeous. But we'll offer them out to, to make them a little bit more approachable and kind of dot those in throughout the year as well.

They sound fantastic. Yeah. And I think doing, you know, it's all very well doing stuff online, isn't it? But getting back in the room with people is just, you know.

Yeah.

Totally different. So. Yeah, I can see that would be. That would be brilliant. And one of the things that we were chatting beforehand, we were talking about protein powders and now protein powders apparently aren't all equal. So for. So why aren't they equal? And what should those people that are very health conscious be looking at in their. For their protein powder? And particularly the endurance athlete.

Sure. So I think the thing is, no product, well, no product range is really created equal these days and a lot will hide behind very snazzy fancy marketing and beautiful packages and all that kind of stuff. And then I go along and I turn the packet around and go, I don't care what you put on the front, I want to see what you put on the back. A lot of the time we will see additions of things like maltodextrin will have sweeteners so that they can say that they are sugar free. But in actual fact, especially when it comes to somebody who's doing endurance, you need to think about how sweeteners impact your insulin sensitivity. So your ability really to harness energy from the food that you're eating or the extra bits that you're taking on. And also the impact on your gut bacteria, because gut bacteria are so much cleverer than us. They outnumber us trillions to one. And if they're unhappy, our whole body is going to be unhappy. And they really don't like things like sweeteners. It really depends on what you're using the protein powder for and whether you're going for something like a dairy based, so whey based one, or if you're a plant Based person, athlete, whatever you're doing. The plant based one is a different question because you want to make sure you're getting a complete amino acid profile. If it's a plant based source, nothing. Even though things like pea protein and hemp protein claim to be complete complete, they're not going to have the abundance of all of those amino acids at levels that you would get from a dairy protein. So I was for a mixed base and I tend to say try and go for something that's organic, that's as natural as possible. Fine if it's got something like a little bit of raw cacao powder in it, but try not to go for anything that's sweetened or overly complicated and then put it into something that has real food ingredients to give it a flavor and a palatability and that kind of stuff. So, yes, be very savvy and be very mean about that ingredients list. Look for less is more in this situation.

Well, obviously. So we've been working. You've been working on my gut health for the last few months with actually phenomenal success. So I'm very grateful for that. Uh, but you've had me particularly working with motion protein powder, haven't you? What is it about that? And you, you made me drop the ones I was using previously who remain nameless, but I actually can't remember what they're called anyway, so. So what is it that makes motion such a good quality one? Is it the blend of what's in there? You know, tell me about motion.

So the one that we were using with you was their peanut butter one, which is a plant based one. And the thing about motion is they are. Well, they were created and are curated by an ex Commonwealth swimmer, Joe, and his partner Charlie. So he knows what you need for optimal performance. And so everything is organic and they're also conscious of things like the sustainability. So everything's in compostable packaging, which I think is a really important thing anyway for us. But what they've done in that protein is they have given you a mix of protein bases and they've looked at things. So the, the amino acid profile is complete and there's nothing in there. There's no binding agents, there's no sweeteners. It is one of those things that we did discuss that you will always find an element of chalkiness with a. Yeah.

Not quite as tasty as some, is it?

Well, this is it. When you take out something like emulsifying sunflower oil, which is hugely inflammatory, or you take out the banana powder and the Berry powder and the stevia and everything else that you can find in all of the other bits that you might pick up, you are going to be left with something that is a. It's a basic plant based protein powder. So you just have to be savvy about what you then mix it with to make it delicious, which you now can do.

And I've been refining it over time and it has, has worked out how to have it and, and still have it delicious. But actually, ultimately, I think most endurance athletes would probably agree with this. I would rather know that I'm having something less tasty, but that's better for me than something that I think, oh, that was like having a milkshake down at McDonald's and knowing full well that it's not actually doing me a lot of good.

And I think with you, I think the obvious thing that we saw was the actual. It wasn't just that the flavor profile was not as enjoyable. The consequences downstream weren't as particularly preferable for anybody to enjoy. And if you are trying to compete at a really high level, the worst thing that you can have is an upset stomach or feeling like you aren't. You aren't able to perform at the level you would like to be because your body isn't quite as happy as it would want to be. And I personally, I really like the taste of the motion one. So let's not downplay that. They are. They don't taste bad.

No, they don't.

Then you're used to, it's like the processed food thing. If you're used to very sweet, salty food and then you give somebody, I don't know, like a homemade burger, they're going to be thinking that McDonald's tastes better until they get used to the fact that that's what food should taste like.

Yeah. And you actually. So I was having the blueberry one as well as the spiced chocolate one as well to try as well as the peanut one. And you actually recommended some specific powders that you could add to that to flavor that were also adding goodness as well into the smoothie, weren't you? So what were those all about?

So I got you to try the haskat berry powder, which is fantastic. And it's one of those perfect examples of how we talk about antioxidants. So antioxidants are the compounds that a plant will produce to protect itself. And the thing about haskat berries is they're grown in places like Nova Scotia where the terrain and the environment is really tough. So they have something ridiculous. Like 8 to 10 times more antioxidants than blueberries. And you also get a lower sugar amount because it's not as warm, so you don't develop those sugar crystals within the fruit. So very simply for you, the benefit was that we were adding in more antioxidants, which means that you'll recover more quickly. You're getting huge amounts of vitamin C, which again is really important for connective tissue synthesis. And you're getting a flavour of a really intense berry with much less sugar and the convenience of it. So we did that one. I don't know if I got you down the route of chlorella, which is one of my favorites as well, which is really high in things like B12. It's a very deep green algae and so it's again harnessing those photosensitive pigments in those sort of single celled organisms. That's really good. And it's also rich in plant based protein too. So lots of different things. But that was a little bit. That's more of the, the dark green group. I don't think we quite got there. I think we decided to do like fresh and berry. Ish.

Yes. Well, no, we did, but we, we didn't know we didn't get the chlorella one. We definitely did the berry one and we did a chocolate one that was cacao with cacao flavanols. It sounded really good, but it tasted good. But I don't know what was the. Again, what was the reasoning behind that one?

I think what we did was we did cacao and Ceylon cinnamon. So cacao is a stimulant, but in a different way to something like coffee. So it's very nourishing for the adrenal system. So again, what people tend to do when they are pushing themselves athletically is they're creating a stressor within the body and that's a performance enhancer. But if you then top that up with stimulants like coffee and sometimes even matcha, you can get a little bit too much of that adrenal pressure and then you find the energy sort of crashes a little bit later. Insulin sensitivity becomes a bit wonky, all the stuff we don't want to happen. So cacao is brilliant for gentle stimulation and clarity. Long term, it's great for things like heart health. And then also when you add it with saline cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon is an active component to keep those cells sensitive to the action of insulin. So you harness energy better from your food and also you get a nice light, sweet flavor. But without an actual sugar hit.

So well, it's just win, win. The smoothie tastes nicer and you're adding lots of goodies back into, into the diet. At the same time you mentioned in the recovering from injury and things like that, I was chatting to Claire Fudge, who's another former guest of the podcast, about the fact that I strained my calf muscle. And she was talking to me about using Omega 3 and kind of boosting Omega 3 to help help recover more quickly. Have you seen any research on this or what do you, what are your thoughts around that?

So Omega 3 is fantastic. When you have an injury, what you will have in terms of pain and discomfort is an inflammatory response going on in the body. And that's a very natural thing that should happen because if it didn't happen, we wouldn't heal. But a way of speeding that up and actually then getting rid of the waste products of that healing process is to use natural anti inflammatories like omega 3. So what you're encouraging is new flexibility in those new tissues because Omega 3 is the functional fat. And what you're actually looking for in this situation would be a higher EPA amount. So that would be coming from oily fish or derived from oily fish. And you'd want the higher sort of EPA amount. You'll still have DHA, which is the other form of Omega 3 that you get from animal sources. But you want the EPA up at about sort of one to two grams per day. The only time I would sort of not go that high is if somebody's actually healing from surgery because you don't want to create that anticoagulant action too soon after. So you want healing gently. I would say probably like 10 to 12 days after surgery, you can start adding in about a gram of Omega 3 per day. But before surgery or directly after a traumatic injury where there's a lot of bruising, you just wait for that bruising to go down the capillary walls to heal up and then you start to encourage the anti inflammatory process on the other side of the initial trauma.

And is, you know, we talked about vegan protein versus whey protein, but is animal or sort of oil, fish oil based omega 3 better than algae based omega 3? Or you know, can those people that want to stay away from fish and meat be okay with the algae based ones?

They can be okay. The thing about all of these, all of these things is when you go for a plant based source, there's always got to be an enzymatic conversion to get to the animal based or the one that we need because we aren't anatomically the same as plants. So we have to do some kind of enzymatic process to get there. With every enzymatic process there is a potential to be less effective at doing it than somebody else. So it's the same as certain people won't be able to absorb non heme iron, so they might need to top themselves up if they don't eat something like red meat. You just need to be aware of your unique individuality. If you feel like you have taken those things out and you're just using a vegan omega 3 and you feel like say you're getting a bit stiffer, you are getting a bit of aching jointy kind of stuff, maybe you just need to swap the form or you need to up the dosage to kind of front load that process so you get over the fact that the conversion is a bit slower. But you could also then add in additional dietary sources like cold pressed flaxseed oil, lots of whole hemp seeds or hemp oil chia seeds, and just make sure that your body never has to search for those nutrients. But in certain instances I would go to the fish oil and say in this case the therapeutic dosing needs to come from this bioavailable compound. But no, it's not a, it's not a be all and end all.

And what situations would would you say that fish oil would be better?

So if somebody has anything to do with nervous system dysfunction, you want to just get them to the point when they're using that therapeutic level, or if somebody has got really significant issues, things like oxidative stress in their body, so chronic pain, fibromyalgia kind of stuff, Ms. Autoimmunity to do with the neurological system, then I tend to go straight there. Or if they've got something like a compromisation of their intestinal lining because it's, they've got inflammatory bowel disease. And I just know that they need that quicker the less steps to the end point kind of thing.

Okay, brilliant. And you mentioned in the iron, what should an endurance athlete be thinking about when it comes to iron levels?

So iron is used for many things in the body, but the primary one that we probably want to think about is oxygenation of the blood. So when somebody is doing surreal endurance, they're going to be using up a lot of their iron, but they're also going to do things like turn over their intestines, the lining of their intestines, basically their enterocyte turnover will be faster, so their requirement for iron might be a little bit higher. The thing is, if you are doing a lot of endurance exercise, you are, like I said before, stimulating the stress response. If the stress response is heightened, it down regulates things like your stomach acid production. And in order to be able to harness iron from what you've eaten to then convert it to take it into the body, you need quite strong stomach acid. So either what you want to think about is really optimizing that digestive process. So being very careful about your habits around eating, not eating on the run, maybe using something like a little bit of apple cider vinegar in the food that you're eating, or having very bitter foods before you start eating, so that you make sure that everything that goes into your mouth gets sort of the maximum absorbed from it. Or you might just want to keep a check around when you are doing, say big races or big training sort of situations, that Maybe you're doing 8 to 10 weekly blood spot analysis just to check that your iron levels are not just your iron levels. So iron serum is one thing, but you also want to check your ferritin, your transferrin and your hemoglobin levels because that shows you the functionality of the iron in your body. Because it could be that your serum ion is fine, but your back pantry stores of ferritin are low, or your transferrin saturation, which is what's shuffling them between, is low or your hemoglobin is low. And we just don't want that to be a concern because if that's left unchecked, then you get issues further down, down line.

And is that all of that likely to affect the athlete's performance?

Yes. It would also affect things like recovery times and it can lead to issues with increased injury and that kind of stuff too. So especially also for female athletes, it's really important that you keep an eye on those kind of things. And so I would, if I have somebody who's a female endurance athlete and is performing quite a high level, I am so over the top with checking things like that iron, but also their thyroid levels, making sure that their adrenal system is really well nourish, because it's amazing to be able to compete at that level. But at the same point it is a burden. And you just need to make sure that everything is very happy so that we don't see issues with things like hormonal dysfunction or bone density problems or anything like that. But that's kind of slight tangent, but if you've got the Opportunity to then do a little bit of extra objective analysis and just make sure that everything is as excellent as you are when you're competing.

And last thing before we dive into the Mark Bryant interview, I can see an aura ring on your finger. What do you get out of having the or, for those people that don't know it, maybe explain what the aura ring does. I've just ordered mine. I've been toying with it for ages. I'm very excited about new tech. But tell me why you use an OURA ring and, you know, what benefits it's giving you.

So an OURA ring is a form of tracking device. The reason I really like it is the fact that it's quite sort of simple. It fits into my routine and it's not necessarily particularly obvious because I was wearing a root band for a while and I was just catching it on everything and it would get wet in the pool and then I'd take off and forget to put it back on again and anything like that. The reason I first got it was I have had issues with hormonal dysfunction for a long time and I'm always very interested in the plasticity of my nervous system. So one of the things that we look at with stuff like an OURA ring is your heart rate variability, which is the difference between your heartbeats. And that's always going to be slightly. It's going to be changeable over time. But if you imagine that the longer the gap between those heart beats, the more opportunity your body has to respond to things. So the calmer it is. So when we look at, when we look at heart rate variables, you want a high level and the higher it is, the more plastic and the more responsive in a good way your nervous system can be. It also looks at things like the cyclicity of your sleep and how much time you're spending in different sort of areas of your sleep cycle. Because we want to be kind of seeing between 4 to 6 little mirror image cycles of going through light REM and deep sleep. And your body does different things all throughout the night in those different stages of sleep. So I will use them with clients a lot of the time and say, well, you say that you're exhausted when you wake up in the morning, but you set nine hours. And if I look at your sleep cycle, that's because you spent the majority of it either in REM sleep or light sleep. So your body hasn't gone into deep sleep when it physically regenerates and you then are more likely to injure or you feel very sluggish or if you're not getting REM sleep and you're waking up feeling very brain dead, it's because your neurological system hasn't had its opportunity to take out its trash overnight. And it's very interesting when you look at things like trauma and emotional instability and that linked immune function, because what you'll often find find is that people will go from wakefulness straight into a deep sleep. And this is something that's a new area of interest for sort of trauma specialists that if you don't step down through those phases of sleep, your brain doesn't have its opportunity to emotionally process things from the day. So you kind of start to build up a store of those traumatic experiences and this can then lead to things like immune dysfunction later in life. But I mean, yes, that's getting a little bit nitpicky.

But I suppose, and I suppose the ultimate question is, does the app that comes with youra ring kind of cut through a lot of the complexity and just give you tangible things that you can do with the data?

Of course. So yes, for somebody like me who's got all of the knowledge base behind it, I will take that quite easy to interpret data and go off on a tangent like I just did. But for somebody else on a day to day basis, it's a really nice way to understand what their body is doing doing without them noticing it. The one thing I do tend to suggest though, if people do have trackers, is that they don't look at their data first thing in the morning because we have this ability to be influenced by stuff that we see. So if you are working on something like your sleep state and you know that you aren't as well rested as you could be, but you're putting in good measures like sleep hygiene and not scrolling on your phone at night and doing all of that kind of thing, don't then look at your data first thing in the morning because you could feel vital and energetic and think, I'm going to leap outside into this gorgeous morning. And then if your data says that you haven't had as optimal asleep as you thought you would do, watch your mood and your energy drop. So I always use it as a marker to I guess interact with. But I would never look at my sleep data until at least after lunch.

Good, that sounds like very good advice that I will try and pay attention to. Phoebe, as always, loads of really brilliant insights there. But what we'll now do is dive into the interview with Mark Bryant and from terminal to triathlon Now Mark Bryant is a terminal cancer survivor who uses his own healing journey to help inspire, educate and empower other cancer patients on their own healing journeys. Since his terminal diagnosis six years ago when he actually claimed his own life insurance, Mark has been on this incredible journey of learning, recovery and more recently, endurance sport, including a half ironman distance triathlon that involved running up and down Snowdon. So I wanted to chat to Mark all things recovery and about how nutrition, understanding his emotions and spirituality have helped him go from terminal to triathlon. Plus how he plans to continue this journey with a Full Ironman in 2020. Mark is an inspiring guy. I've been lucky enough to know Mark for a number of years now, and I know you're going to absolutely love this interview with Mark Bryant on Terminal to Triathlon. Today's show is brought to you by Precision Hydration, who help athletes personalise their hydration and fueling stress strategies so that they can perform at their best. They work with a long list of incredible athletes, including multiple 70.3 champions Sam Appleton and Sarah Crowley. You check out their details@precisionhydration.com and that also includes details of their quick carb calculator to help you understand how much carbohydrate you need per hour to perform at your best. So trying to do for fueling what they've already done for hydration. And as a listener of the show, you can get 15% off your first order of electrolytes or fuel using the code Tribeathlon15 at the checkout. Mark, welcome to the Tribe Athlon podcast. Brilliant to see you again, my friend. It's been a long time since we first met, so it feels like a long time. I think we concluded probably about 2016, wasn't it? So it's really lovely to see you again and see you looking in amazing shape. So I'm so looking forward to chatting to you. Do you want to kick things off and tell. I always ask people to tell us their story. So typically that for most people on the podcast is how they got into ultra running, how they got into triathlon. But you have a much bigger story than the pre triathlon. So tell us your story about your journey from kind of finding out about terminal illness and your journey in beating terminals, which is an incredible journey.

Yeah, sure. So when we met, I think I just come back from a health institute in Florida, it was about six or eight weeks and I was really hugely enthused with raw foods and living foods and this whole sort of anti cancer lifestyle. I'd learned and if you rewind. A year and a half before that, June 2015, my hamster wheel suddenly fell off its spindle and I was told I had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It started out as chronic back pain and over a period of a couple of weeks just got tired, exhausted. It got to the point I took myself to the A E or I phoned in the ambulance whilst in a hotel in Yorkshire and I, yeah, the next day I woke up in a hazy morphine. At the time I was the managing director of a plumbing, heating and energy efficiency company. We had a couple hundred people working for us and yeah, navigating a very stressful time. And you know, I was thrown into what is called a full intensity stem cell transplant. So two months of conditioning, chemotherapy, followed by four days of full body radiation and then I had my brother's stem cells infused on September 17, 2015. Just six months later, I had a relapse and I said, don't tell me the revised prognosis, I'll just focus on getting well. And I've since discovered and the reason why we had a good connection that I soon discovered. I was considered terminal with six months to live. And I found that out about six months later. But I didn't pay much attention to it other than just seeing it as a transaction to claim my own life insurance. And so at the time when I met you, I was trying to decide what to do with that life insurance and we were, we had quite a few conversations around making the best decision for me, for my family. And you, you helped me massively from that point. So, yeah, so that's going back to then where am I now? Six years later, still in the, you know, still trying to work out what my, my mindset is around once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient. I don't, there is some truth in that, but I also feel that I can fully heal and that's the project that I still focus on probably the most internally and externally in trying to get well. So where did the triathlon come from? In my hotel room, in the hospital room when I had the stem cell transplant, I drew a mind map and on there was what was life going to look like after cancer? And on there was an ironman. And so I've had my sights on it and I now feel well enough. So recently, about a month and a half ago, completed the rock and equivalent to a half iron man and then I booked Ironman Island. So then I can take that off my bucket list.

So that will be, that will be what Seven years after your terminal diagnosis, is that right? Am I getting the maths right there?

April 16th. So forward.

Okay, so no. Yes. So it's actually six years.

Six and a bit years.

Won't you? Yeah. So let's take a step back a little bit. And so you were given a terminal diagnosis, but you initially didn't want to know that diagnosis, did you? Now, I suspect there's some Tony Robbins advice behind that, but explain why it was that you didn't want your diagnosis.

Purely because I'd heard someone else's story about. So one of Tony's trainers, I was at Joseph McClendon and he tells a story through his training about his mum getting diagnosed with cancer. And he raced across the airports to get to his mum before the doctors did and he tried to refrain them from telling her that she had X months to live. So I was always hesitant, from the moment I was diagnosed to ask the question I did at the very beginning because I was having a consultation to do with the radiotherapy. And the radiotherapy I had is the most toxic and high intense radiotherapy that any cancer patient is exposed to. And so I said, look, what's the likelihood of survival? He said, well, you're probably more likely to die from the treatment than you are the disease. And it was like a 50 50. It was 50 50. So I went into the, the treatment, having the stem cell transplant, knowing it was 5050. Yeah.

And did they, you know, obviously when you went back and said, I actually, I do want to know the prognosis because finish the finish the Joseph McClendon story and why it actually was so powerful for you to take that advice.

Because where focus goes, energy flows type scenario. And Tony tells another story about him learning to racing drive a car. And the racing drive instructor was telling him to don't look at the thing that you want to, um. Don't look at the thing you want to avoid. So he was, as he was flying around this bend, he was looking at the bend going, I don't want to hit the crash wall. And so his instructor forces his head to the opposite side to look at the direction he wants to go in. And so I always had that playing in my mind is like, you know, if there's a 98, if there's a 1% chance of success, all my energy is going to go towards that result. So I just focused all my. Channeled all my energy. I thought. When I got told in April 2016, my oncologist said, mark, look, the disease is coming back and I Said, look, don't tell me the right prognosis. So I had quite a few consultations in quite a short space of time because they were trying to decide what to do and so they were looking to put palliative care in place. I've since discovered the treatment I had was considered palliative and the likelihood of survival was less than six months. But all of my energy was focused on the solution, which was just to get well and through that. Despite the months and months of research I'd done leading up to that time, in terms of exploring lots of different natural and more of a holistic approach to recovery from disease, nothing had really stuck because everything I did was in the wake of the treatment that I was receiving through, you know, modern medicine. And it was literally, Mark, you got the disease coming back. A few days later I saw a naturopath and for the first time I switched. It was a massive, that was a massive shift in my self empowered or self belief that I could get through this because he showed me lots of causations in what could have preempted the cancer in the first place. Psychological, emotional, environmental and all the, you know, all the things that help create disease in the first place. And so it was at that point he gave me his prescription, which was to switch to raw food, 75% cooked foods, 25% juicing and daily coffee enemas to detoxify my system from all the medication that I'd had in the stem cell transplant. So that made sense. And so I went all in on that. And so I believed in that as much as I believed in the other. The other strategies I was using, which was targeted second line chemo and then some more of my brother's cells a few weeks later.

Brilliant. And yeah, so Joseph, Joseph's mum went on to live instead of months, she went on to live years, didn't she?

Yeah.

And so do you think there is also, you know, there's clearly a psychology in that and I love one of Tony's best sayings is where focus goes, energy flows. Do you think it's also that when you hear a terminal diagnosis, it's the brain almost can't deal with it, it almost sort of starts to shut down early. Do you think that there is an element of that as well or is it just purely that that's where the attention goes?

I think that. Well, I didn't know I was considered terminal and it was only a few months later when I had some. I'd made massive progress in implementing and changing my lifestyle. So I felt really good about what I was doing. And the results were showing that I had an all clear bone marrow about six weeks after or eight weeks after I had the relapse. And that was really positive. So I thought it doesn't matter what was working. What mattered was I just had to carry on doing what I felt was best for me at the time. But then I got graph versus host in July, August 2016.

Explain what that is.

So that is where my brother's cells started attacking mine. And so there was this. So for me, like different people have different symptoms from what they call graph versus host. It's where my immune system was or his immune system was attacking mine. So I had gut issues. I couldn't really eat anything. I didn't feel like eating anything. I lost a lot of weight and I was just man down, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, you know, as a dad, didn't know where the mortgage was going to come from. In a few months time, the savings were running out. And it was in that moment of desperation when we'd had somebody come and value our family home and come and value a rental property that we had. And it was in that same day I sat there and thought, maybe my life insurance covers me for something other than death. And so I had to wait a whole week for my oncologist to come back from holiday. And he phoned me the day he landed and said, look, you know, I can confirm. Do you want me to write you off? Is what he said.

And how did you mentally prepare for that? Because at that point you now have gone from saying, I don't want to know the prognosis to I actually want a terminal prognosis in some ways. Clearly he's not going to give you one if it's not.

My mindset was always to get well. Most of my energy, most of my thinking was to get well like there was no other. Like the chance of not getting well was so small. Whereas what science would say is that the chance of my survival was so big that the survival was so small. Do you know what I mean? But because I guess I'd done the work, I'd ask the questions. I was always looking for solutions. I was at the time, it was a transaction. It was, hey, look, in some ways I felt slightly fraudulent that I was phoning three insurance companies and saying, hey, look, I'm considered terminal. If anybody has any thoughts, like, how difficult is the process? It's relatively straightforward. It's a phone call and then they take everything off your hands. So it wasn't like a big burden. Lots of paperwork, lots of forms. It was all dealt with between my oncologist, chief medical officer, and the insurance companies. So I had relatively little exposure to that. I'll give you another example a few months later. My. Because in my disease, you're not staged. Well, I don't think you are. But I definitely didn't ask the question. So I don't know. It was only this week when I sat. Well, I ran an event where I had another cancer patient there, and he, his partner asked what stage he was at and they told him he was at stage four. So it was only in that moment that I triggered that maybe I am. There is a staging in a blood cancer, you know, and so all I knew that was considered terminal. But give you an example, there was a book that was about severe illnesses that you could read to your kids, so to help the kids understand what illness is and how bad it can be. And in there, there was a little statement that says, terminal is the end. You know, terminal leads to death. And I was like, I'm not showing the kids that, you know, because my belief was I was going to get well, so I didn't want them. Like, I. My belief was terminal could be just the beginning. It's not the end. So it's. It's. It is. You know, we've got a very powerful storytelling system strapped to our shoulders, and it's really important. I think I'm finding it more difficult now than I was five years ago.

And it's interesting so, because you've now obviously talked about your podcast and the content of your podcast, but your whole branding now is terminal to triathlon, isn't it? So you've gone from avoiding the word terminal to actually embracing it and making it as part of the challenge. What was the. What was the thinking behind that?

It's a really good question. It's to show that terminal doesn't necessarily mean the end. Like, you know, I see so many people and I've come across so many people that when you get stuck in the. Not the system, you know, and there's not. And so my, My mission is to help empower cancer patients with their own healing journey. There's a lot you can do that. Unfortunately, the NHS private health care doesn't support. And so. And they, they don't. Depends who you speak to. Some of them discredit it. They say, well, you know, it doesn't matter what you eat, it doesn't matter about exercise. You know, they discredit the sort of the natural, more holistic approach to healing and recovery. Similar things with, dare I say it, the current situation that we're all in is where there's a, you know, there's not a lot of support to show the efficacy of getting well, getting fit, doing exercise, eating well. It's, yeah, that, you know, the, the sensible things to do are not spoken about as much as they should be.

Yeah, yeah, We've seen this firsthand with My daughter has a load of dentist, dental issues. She's got a tooth that's growing at 90 degrees to where it should be. And the traditional dentistry approach is we're going to take all those teeth out basically and really we've just seen specialist after specialist and kind of, I mean, I'm sure. Well, I know you've been on this incredible journey which we're now going to talk about, I think, but you, it opens up a whole different world, doesn't you? Just because the UK dentistry world works in this way doesn't mean even just other countries do that as standard, let alone, you know, looking at people around the peripheral.

So like well being preventative medicine versus reactive medicine. And the system is very reactive medicine, it's dealing with, it's trying to deal with the symptom and not the root cause. Whereas a functional medicine approach, a preventative medicine approach is looking at the whole person, not just the disease. So it's like how is the, you know, when you're trying to fix a car, you need to consider the whole car now because it's so electronic, it's wired, you know, there's so many different parts of the system that could fail. You know, when you run a company, a bigger company, you'll have a marketing director, a sales director, HR director, you'll have the CEO. And it's a bit like in a healing journey, you know, I had to learn that. I had to have a team to help me. So I've got my oncologist, he knows what he knows and he knows it well, but he doesn't understand functional medicine as well as much as a functional medicine practitioner. And in some ways he probably, you know, he has in the past discredited some of the, some of the stuff I've done. Like he, when I was going to fly to America, he said, you're wasting your kids inheritance. And that really hurt like for me to like, am I making a bad decision here? But by the time I got to America, I'd calmed down and just thought, look, if he has to catch me and we need to use his tools. We can use his tools. Yeah. But I'm going to trust the other people I've got in my team to use their tools because I think they're better tools for what I need right now. Does that mean.

Yeah, yeah, it does. And it must be an incredibly difficult decision to be spending that money that, you know, particularly when he's putting it in that way. It's really harsh. But you want to give yourself every, you know, the best inheritance your children can have is having a dad, isn't it? So ultimately you've got to put all of your effort into doing that. And, and I know that you're. One of the things I love about keeping up with your posts and everything else is that you've clearly been on a journey of learning different things. And I listening to your podcast, I think you, you kind of broke it up in one of your podcasts to. Initially it was more about sort of nutrition and the physical aspect, wasn't it? And then it was more about emotions and now it's going more towards spiritual. So I think probably one of the best places we could start is what outside of the traditional routes, you know, you've been to see this oncologist in the US rather than the uk. Why was that approach so different? And what. And then you've mentioned your live foods, which I know you were very much embracing when we first met. Tell me about some of those key things in that first stage that really made an impact. And I know it's difficult for you to say which one had the most significant impact, but I'm sure you know.

Some, I think high quality nutrition, you know, food. So living foods really, it is a sprouted food. So baby alfalfa, radish, broccoli, broccoli sprouts because they've got lots of sulforaphane in them. So I ended up growing a lot of the food I ate in my kitchen. You know, you can just grow sprouts on the worktop. And one of my first business endeavors during my cancer healing journey was teaching people about raw foods and living foods. So. And there were quite a few communities that support a more of a vegan plant based lifestyle when it comes to cancer recovery. And that's where I hung out with. And when you're in a community, you kind of, you adopt their thinking and you drop their lifestyle principles. So I really do think that massively helped my healing journey. You know, it helped my body heal. You know, when it comes to eating the plant based nutrition lifestyle, I really enjoyed it. My body enjoyed it. Like for other people that I met who went to the similar health institute or the same health institute, their bodies hated raw foods, they blew up, they had bloating. Whereas I was, you know, I really, I did really well with that lifestyle.

And do you still stick to that now?

No, I'm more of, I'm adopting more of a metabolic approach to cancer recovery and so integrating, or I added about two years ago, meat, fish, dairy, not, not so much dairy, meat and fish back into my lifestyle. Trying to, you know, oysters nose to tail when it comes to. So trying to remember how my mum used to prepare liver and. Yeah, so more of a. I don't know, I call it biodynamic. Trying to do the right thing, not just for my health but also for the planet. How do we eat more sustainably? And I think there's a lot of confusion around that. For a lot of people like, you know, is plant based nutrition the most healthful for the planet? You've got one group of people that says it is, then on the flip side you've got other people that are saying that, you know, I wish there was some kind of halfway house that says, look, this is the way we can all live sustainably together, animals and humans. So yeah, so, so I'm. Yeah, so that's what I'm doing now is just trying to make it more of a holistic lifestyle for my family as well because preparing two meals every day, you know, every sit in, it's a lot of work. You know, when I'm sitting down eating one thing and my kids are eating another. So I've tried to over the last couple of years sort of re. Establish my relationship with all foods.

And do you still grow your own foods to sort of incorporate into that?

I've still got the sprouter, I've still got all the stuff. It's time, you know, when I was full time recovery, I was juicing every day, I was growing, you know, it takes time to grow the living foods when I was the only one and Fiona sometimes was eating a lot of it. So the last couple of months I've been buying some in. But at the moment I've stopped for the last couple of weeks.

So I know when we, when you were staying in the hotel for. So we were on public speaker training when we, when we met, weren't we? And I remember you telling me about the logistics of kind of living on a live food diet while you spent four or five days in a hotel. And it was, it must have Been really, really difficult to maintain.

Yeah, I mean, with raw foods you just ask the hotel for salad and there's a salad card and that's, that's kind of what you eat every day. And then you've got chia seeds and porridge and oats. But yeah, so, I mean, food is really interesting. I was at an event a few years ago in Monaco and there was. Jasmine Helmsley was there. She's, you know, she's been quite prolific in the modeling world and she's been quite prolific in the wellbeing world as well. And she's written a book called east to West. So she was talking about more of an ayurvedic lifestyle. And the next day I was talking about raw foods. So this very intimate event that I was at and I was speaking at, it was sort of 30 people there and there was one message about it's all about your gut, but your gut energy. And, you know, it's more of a sort of a Chinese and Eastern sort of framework to healing. Vita pata. Have you heard, you know, like, I can't remember his name now. But anyway, so she had a very different lifestyle strategy to what I was talking about. And I was like, how am I going to blend into that? And I had a chat with the next day about, you know, food, because food holds so much energy and emotion, does it, in terms of making a good decision and consciously eating the food. And she said a really, not a really powerful comment that stuck with me. It's not what we eat about how we feel about what we eat, you know. And so for a few years it was like, Mark, if you eat meat, you're going to die. And then I saw from sort of the very extreme people that I hung around with in terms of that cancer, very vegan centric lifestyle. And then I go to a health conference in London and there was an amazing doctor called Dr. Nasha Winters and she talked about her Recovery from cancer 17 years Previous where she was considered terminal with a few weeks to live. And she managed to recover and she now teaches a more functional approach to cancer recovery. So it was her, in her book, she had all the elements that I had, which is, you know, sprouted foods, broccoli sprouts, nose to tail. And so she, in her book, she talks about sort of the, the nutritional strategy she uses, which included meat. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So, yeah, so I've opened my mind to trying and seeing what fits and works for me at the moment.

And so other than diet and kind of going to the US to find the best oncologist that can help you. Was there anything else in that first stage around the physical elements of recovery that you identified that was really powerful?

I do think a period of detoxification was really powerful with the raw food strategy. You know, I think that massively helped my immune system recover. It was a lot of high quality nutrients that my body loved. Lots of juicing, lots of enemas. So I think that period of detoxification is amazing. There's another guy called Crispy Cancer. His protocol is exclusively raw for three months with a view to adding other things back in after that. So I do think there's some, you know, some strong efficacy for plant based phase of detoxification. You know, I definitely found that was powerful. Then that first phase, when I first went to America for three weeks before I met you, that was the first time I had therapy. You know, I was the CEO, I can solve any problem type mindset. And then the first one of the things you get on the three week transformation program in Florida is two therapy sessions. So the therapist starts asking me questions and one of the things I picked up is like, why don't I ever express anger? And I was like, oh, this is, you know, so then, then you start to dig deep and start trying to untangle, you know, the psychological parts of healing. And so that, that was a, that was a big step in that direction and started to open up. And what I, what I focus on is how can I feel fully, you know, and so, yeah, so I've done loads of different work around that, which is healing workshops, healing circles. And I just threw myself all in on these types of things to see what I could learn through that.

And what did you learn through that whole emotional piece in terms of, you know, you obviously, I know, I know exactly what you're like in terms of doing courses and reading books. And, you know, you're brilliant at playing full out once you've, once you've found something that I think is important. So what did you learn?

I think trauma and I think there was definitely the precursor to my disease was an emotional stress pressure. And so unraveling that is still an ongoing journey. And I'd love to say that there was this one thing that flicked the switch and I was, you know, I was a million dollars and I could go out and crush any goal that I wanted to crush because I've got this unlimited source of energy. I wish it was that straightforward. It's not. For instance, I'm going on a workshop in two weeks time. It's called Nobleman. It's a space held by, I think like 40, 50 women for a group of men. And it's held in the feminine. And so like energetically, there was no, in all the healing workshops that I'd been to, there was no. I was sitting there and I wasn't the guy that had been abused. I wasn't the guy that had lived through a war. I wasn't a guy, you know, it's, I'm, I'm like, well, why do I still feel like this? Like why, why do I feel a little bit broken in some ways when I haven't had that level of trauma, you know, but, and so, so, yeah, so that, that piece of the jigsaw. And what's interesting is like the programming that we live with today is, is based on our, specifically our early life experience. Yeah. And so somehow I've developed some programming that I'm just trying to figure out how to rewire at the moment, you know, and I'm doing some deep work with a therapist at the moment, which is some of the deepest work I've done. And yeah, so. So that part of my psychological, emotional healing journey is still, still very, very raw in some ways, if that makes sense. And I do think that that has played a significant part in my healing journey because I've opened up the doors that hurt, you know, like why, why didn't I cry? Or why haven't I cried and expressed grief as much as I could have done or should have done? Because at some energetic level that's blocking me to experience more love in my life and joy. Yeah. Like there's something holding on. I can feel it energetically in my heart. And so, you know, my quest to feel more fully is still ongoing.

Yeah, I think I can relate to that. And when you say you don't express anger, I'm better at expressing anger, but I know I'm not very good at expressing a lot of emotions. And I think that's, that's probably. It's not exclusively a male thing, is it? But it's more of a male thing than a female thing.

And yeah.

And so we. Have you found any ways that have helped you kind of embrace those emotions better?

The deeper, the more I go into this type of work and I think body centered work is important. Like just sitting, talking is, is, can become a little bit superficial because you're not creating a shift because the memories are stored in the body. Yeah. So you know, with Tony Robbins, you're doing Quite a lot of expressive stuff. And you know, and it's, to some degree, it's, it's relatively surface because, you know, his program massively helped me develop the right mindset to deal with a big challenge. But to heal some of the more sensitive parts of my programming, it's, it's taken deeper work. So the more. So, yeah, so there was a course in America, for instance, that's called the Living Course. And it was a three day course, but that was centered around mum and dad. And I did a piece on my dad on that particular event. But we got to express anger in full. We got four guys holding you back. So if there's a, if you watch a documentary called the Work on Netflix, it's about this type of work that I'm talking about taken into penitentiaries in America. So there's a big growing movement of men's work in the uk, Men Without Masks, the Powerful Man Project. I've not done Men Without Masks, something I've got on my roadmap for next year. And so, yeah, so some of those, some of the. More. Yeah, so it's just, it's hard to explain and I guess unless you do an Ironman, it's hard to explain what it feels like to do it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. And so moving from that, moving into that third phase where you're now saying it's, it's more about spirituality, your focus is kind of leading more towards that. Is that, does that mean religious to you or is that, does that mean something else to you?

I think it's a big question for a lot of us to some degree, in the fact that I think belief system is an important part of healing in human existence and community. And one of the questions I had there, because what happened was I did three weeks and then about six months later, after I met you in the February, March, April time, I went back to Florida to work with my oncologist. And when I went back there, I had six weeks with him. And then I went back three more times. So I had 26 weeks in total in America. No family, no kids, just me. And the second, third and fourth time I went, I literally only had to see my oncologist for an hour a day, whereas the first time I went, I was there at the hospital all day. So that gave me a lot of time to go and explore all these different modalities of work, meditation. And one of the phases I went through was like, oh my God, this guy, Crispy cancer. He talks about the Bible. I don't have any spiritual practice. Do I need to be religious to get well? So, so, yeah, so that, that opened a whole flow of questions about what that meant to me. And so I explored those questions and I've, at the moment, I've taken more of a shamanic view, more of an energetic and emotional view. And, yeah, still trying to work that bit out. And I think a lot of people nowadays, you know, I love the fact that some of our local neighbors, they go to church every Sunday. There's a community, there's a sense of belonging, and I think that's really important, you know, in society nowadays. A lot of us perhaps use the gym for that sense of community, sense of belonging. And it's like we're switching from. There's a great book by Jamie Wheel called Recapture the Rapture, and he's talking about this shift of consciousness, moving from, you know, meaning. He's a lot better at putting this, like, meaning 1.0, meaning 2.0. What does meaning 3.0 look like? And that's something that we've all got to try and, you know, consider what, what, what's important to humanity in the years to come. Mo Gawda is a good guy. He's quite spiritual, you know, I love his stuff. Have you come across him?

No, I haven't, actually.

He's written a book on happiness, so, you know, I'm still working that piece of the jigsaw out. And, yeah, it's.

It's a constant journey, isn't it?

It is a constant journey, yeah. So, you know, I've dabbled in psychedelics and that's, you know, I did. I've done some plant medicine ceremonies, I've done. Tried some microdosing at different points of my healing journey and so.

And did they help or not?

I think they did, yeah, they did. They did massively help. They humbled me to life, definitely. Right.

And on that note, I was going to ask about. I remember seeing a documentary about the use of cannabinoids to help cancer sufferers. It was a documentary in the us, but have you kind of used that as part of your.

I know there's a growing movement of people that I've come across who have used CBD with THC in particular, so like a 5050 blend. But I was so into the nutritional aspect of the healing journey. And when I tried to add that in, because I had the family, I had lots going on, you know, to do that, that type of strategy, deeply, you're literally out your mind. For two or three months. And by the time I'd got to that, I was probably a year and a half, two years down the line. And then when I did embrace some of it, I got fed up of throwing whiteies. I threw a really horrible one and it was a really freaky time. And I had to like, you know how to wake Fiona up and say, look, I just feel horrendous. It was like being back at university. So I decided that maybe I don't need that. I'll just keep on putting wheatgrass up my bum. Excellent.

And so when it comes to then triathlon, you know, when I started triathlon, it was after I'd done the whole Tony Robbins thing and I was being super healthy. And it was like the next. The exercise was after the, the diet for me. And then, and so then I started looking at, right, okay, so I need to fuel myself through the triathlon. And I'm looking at these energy gels going, well, this looks like some sort of chemistry experiment. And this goes completely against all the stuff I've been preaching for, you know, the last two or three years. How do you fuel your longer distance triathlons?

That's a really good question because, um, I've softened up with nutrition recently. And obviously when I started to look at these fueling strategy for the rock that I've just done is the first time I've looked at fuel for endurance running. And yeah, it's full of it's sugar, isn't it? And sugar for a cancer patient is not generally great news. So what I realize is that when you do exercise, it show it shuffles the glucose into your, into your muscles. So it, so I started testing my glucose levels as and when I was doing these training sessions. So I still, you know, I've got a glucose monitor at home. So I went out for a ride last Sunday. I think it was three hours. Took some fuel with me, which was just tailwind. Yeah, so I took some trail tailwind. Um, and I came back tested and I was about 5, which was low, you know, 5 on my glucose monitor. So. So, yeah, so it's a really like being a triathlete versus a cancer patient is probably not the best thing to do when it comes to that, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think, I think. You know, my, what's been interesting on my learning journey throughout this podcast is that when I speak to nutritionists and the like, they actually suggest that you're taking on that level of glucose while you're exercising is not such a bad thing. Because you use it up immediately. It's the. But whether that, you know, ties in with what your health focuses, I'm not quite so sure.

But.

But then also, there are plenty of alternatives out there. So, you know, Tailwind is one that gets mentioned a few times. But Spring Energy gels are trying to get me back into the UK at the moment. Brexit has put a stop.

They're still sugar, aren't they? Tailwind is still sugar.

Yeah, tailwind. But I think it. I think it's considered slightly better. I'm not sure. I actually have never used Tailwind personally. But. But yes, Spring Energy is more like baby food, is kind of blitzed up brown. Brown rice and things like that. And the ultra runners use that quite a lot. And then there's kind of different brands that are trying to focus on more real foods, isn't there?

At the bottom of the rock, I made some rice pudding.

Oh, okay.

And so. And then I. Instead of buying Ambrosia, which my training buddy did, he just bought two tins of Ambrosia. I was stressing putting locally grown honey into my. Into my. And some almond milk that I'd made. And so I made my own. Yeah.

Wow. And how did you. So how did you. When did you take your ambrosia, your homemade ambrosia, and when. And how did you carry it?

Because it was a rock. We were up and down the mountain, the Snowden, and so we had a bag that was taken to the bottom of the mountain. And so it was in my bag at the bottom of the mountain. That's where the rice pudding was. So I had half of it on the way when I was transitioning from the bike to the run. Then I had the other half when I transitioned from the. From the run back to the bike.

Okay, fantastic. And have you got any more plan? Have you just that given what you learned by doing the rock, have you. Have you got any more plans yet for how you're gonna fuel the Ironman? Or is that still going to be working progress?

Yeah, I was asking some of the, like, how do you take that much fuel on a bike when you're on it for five or six, you know, six, seven hours or whatever, how long it takes. Um, and so I haven't. So in Bolton, when one of our coaches, he. He did that race and he said that they had feed stations. Um, so. Yeah, but he got so bored of gels that he got gut problems at the end of it. Um, so I think for me, it's probably going to make sure that I've got some decent, decent food on the way around. Um, and that whatever is offered is I'll take on because I think fuel is such a massive part of it. Like, on the second, I don't think I had enough electrolytes. I didn't have enough salts. So I was getting cramp when I got on the bike on this on the way home. And I had some gels, Vela Forte ones with electrolytes in them. So I ended up eating. I just had to eat them to get rid of the cramp, even though I didn't think I needed the energy at the time. But it was the only source of salt I had on me.

Well, I can highly recommend, given that the podcast is sponsored by precision hydration, I can highly recommend doing their online sweat test or even better going and doing a. I've done both the online one and in person, the actual sweat test. Amazingly, the online one predicted pretty much pretty accurately the results.

John. John. He did the precision nutrient hydration. So he. He told me about that this week. So I'm like, okay, these are all things I've got to sort out in the next six months.

Because when you go up to the Ironman distance, those electrolytes are going to become even more important.

Particularly, yeah, it was a really hot day. It was a really hot day. So I was covered in salt. You could see it. And I was just.

That probably means you're a salty sweater. And then it's also about the amount of salt. In fact, if you want to learn more about that, the podcast episode with Andy Blow of Precision Hydration will give you the full lowdown on that. And in terms of endurance training, how do you think this has helped or has it helped or hindered your. Your cancer and recovery?

Oh, mate, I wish I knew. Like, with my cancer, it's. There's. There's a. There's all clear, as in we can't detect the disease, but they can only detect down to 1 in 10,000 cells. So that is really good news. It doesn't mean it's gone, but it's. It's. We can't see it because we've got trillions of cells, right? So that's number one. The next one is POQR positive on the outer range. We can see the disease marker Philadelphia chromosome, but we can't count it. There's not enough to quantify based on the cell counts we've got. If it gets to 0.01% 1 in 10,000, then that's quantifiable. And we. And it's considered relapse. So when I had the relapse it was at 19%. So if I've had like 18 bone marrows in the last five, six years, I've had this last year, I've had two all clears, which is amazing news, you know. And so it's the first year I've had an all clear. When my back in 2016, my oncologist in England, or 17, just after I met you and I decided to go to America, it was poqr and that's what stimulated the offer of a full month on chemotherapy in the uk. So that's the way that the modern medical system view it, is that, oh, look, if it's there, what we're going to do is treat it in the hope that we can get rid of it because it's likely to come back. And I took the decision to go to America. I took one bone marrow, two bone marrows in February, March, April, and after the third one, when I'd worked out if I had what it cost to ship a dead body back from America and all these decisions I had to make, I decided to go to America on the 1st of May and do my first round of treatment with my oncologist. When I came back to England, I had a bone marrow test, it was pod, it was all clear. And my oncologist came back to me and he said, my oncologist came back to me and said, what do I know? This is a guy in the uk. So that spurred me on to go back and have round two, round three, round four. Then the financial stuff got out of kilter. So going back to your question, it's a million dollar question, like, what if money wasn't a problem, I would go back to America beginning of next year, do another six weeks of treatment, that's £100,000 including the travel and everything else. And then I can measure my immune system. He's the only one that can measure immune system. Then I can say that my immune system's working better, he's working well and we don't have to do any more round of treatment. But until I go back there, I don't know. And there's no way of testing that in the uk, which is a bit frustrating. So to some level, I've just got to carry on doing what I'm doing. Like it's working. I'm. Well, the training, I'm improving, I'm getting stronger. So, you know, under the surface things are working well. And so I'm Going to continue to do this and see where it takes me.

And how do you think the endurance training has helped you from a psychological point of view? Obviously the physical point of view is.

Difficult but I realized how much I whinge inside to be honest with you. It was such an interesting journey when I did the with the rock because it was a really rough day on the water and it was tougher than I had predicted. So even though we'd swam what I thought was the route, the boy was a lot further out than I'd expected and the wind created a swell and a chop so it was really, really, really horrible conditions. So, so there was a lot of doubt going am I, am I, Should I be doing this? Shouldn't I be doing this? Because I've got this whole cancer conversation going on my head, my jeopardizing myself. But anyway we got, I got out the water, got on the bike and I came out like 42nd out of 100. So I did quite well on the swim and then got on the bike and there was all these old people passing me because it's not my strongest thing because I still rebuilding my body after my, after my treatment. And so I had a lot of internal chatter then going oh my God, you know, look at all these people flying past me. Then I got on the mountain. Yeah, it was just a lot of inner chatter and then I finished it and I looked really well at the end of it. It was really interesting because what goes on underneath is not what people see on the outside. Yeah. And I think that's really, that's what it taught me is that depth of separation. So I do feel it's massively helping me carve out a new part of my character, a new part of my potential. You know, sitting on a bike for three hours in your own head is great. I love it. It's a reset. It's a re defrag, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. It does me the world of good. I know. And so after this Ironman, have you got any big plans for what happens after that? I know you've booked which, which event have you booked?

14Th of August, Ironman in Ireland. And so there's nothing that for me is just is going to be a bucket list item. That's a tick. So where does terminal triathlon go after that? I fancy some kind of mountaineering thing. Yeah. Being in nature like I live in North Wales and I look at the mountains and there's a calling to get into the mountains, to get into wilderness. Yeah, yeah.

Oh Brilliant. And you're fantastic at going off and finding different courses. And it's where we, where we met initially, finding books. You've mentioned several books. I've been scribbling away here already. Are there any books that you haven't mentioned yet that you think have been. And also courses, obviously you mentioned the Tony Robbins one, which I think you're referring to. Unleash the Power Within, I'm assuming. Are there any other courses or books that you found to be really helpful that you find yourself recommending to others?

Books wise, Cancer is the Jay McLelland how to starve Cancer. And so basically you've got modern medicine, you've got sort of like an off label drug strategy because metabolically you can block the pathways of cancer. So not just a fuel of sugar, but fats and proteins as well. So her book is really, really good. And there are now doctors in the UK prescribing off label drugs to metabolically block the proliferation of cancer cell regrowth. So. And then you've got all the natural and holistic stuff as well. So her book is a really good bridge of that. And yeah, and she's had an amazing healing journey. Like. Wow. Yeah. So that's one book I refer people to. And she's got an online course and so definitely highly recommend that course as well for anybody that's been diagnosed with cancer. Brilliant. Yeah. Emotional healing wise, there's no. In the uk, Men Without Masks is really good. Craig White, he runs that program and there's a really good book if you're into sort of more spiritual shamanism type stuff. Anna Hunt, Shaman in Stilettos is quite a really good read. So I'm gonna, I'm doing some work with her at the moment in a couple of weeks time. And then I've heard the Nobleman Project and the Noble Woman Project in the Isle of Wight is really good, but I'll tell you in about two weeks time how good that is.

Fantastic. That's awesome. There's so much good research there. And I know your mission is to help other people that are on a similar journey to yourself. Do you want to tell us about, you know, how you're going about that? Obviously you've got the Terminal to Triathlon podcast, which I've been really enjoying, but what else have you. I know you're great at organizing courses of your own. So what, what are you doing at the moment to help people in a similar situation?

There's a, there's a decision that's waiting to happen at the moment and so the original reason I launched Terminal to Triathlon was to help build awareness, help educate and empower cancer patients through the. Through the podcast, and also raise money to help me and other cancer patients on their continued healing journey. That part of it hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped. And so I'm just looking at sort of rethinking a strategy around that that I'm going to launch in the run up to Christmas, which is effectively a GoFundMe campaign. And 60% of the money will go directly to other cancer patients and projects that I know of in the UK aimed at helping people that have been diagnosed with cancer outside of what the NHS can offer. And then I want to go and do another round of treatment with my oncologist in America. That's what I want to do. Yeah, I think it's the best, I think it will create, give me the best chances. I've tried to build the mindset that maybe I can just do it on my own in the uk. Like, what happens if that's a bad decision? Like, I can't, I can't. You know, I've got a guy in America who I trust and he says, look, Mark, I can help you and it's a sensible thing to do. Like, it's non toxic, it's non. It's personalized medicine to me and it. And yeah, and I think it would be a good thing to react. I've tried the last 18 months to think maybe I don't need to do it, but the longer I get away, I feel a little bit more vulnerable, if that makes sense. And there's no one in the UK that says, look, Mark, I think this is the best strategy. When I've got somebody there saying, look, I think this could help.

Still, I suppose what you're also doing with that approach is bringing awareness back to the uk. If it works for you, then this is something that should be adopted within the uk, isn't.

Absolutely is. And I, and my oncologist over there, he harvests healthy stem cells so those that can afford it can go over there and harvest their young stem cells. So you, at 40, if you got ill at 55 or 60, could save yourself with your own immune system, because. Yeah, and so that's one of the other arms of his business is the regenerative medicine side, which is where, where you're using stem cells. You know, there's a huge industry around harvesting umbilical cords cells, but you only get a few cells, you don't get a lot so what his. And I don't know why more people aren't doing it. It's because there's certain controls with the FDA and stuff. But his protocol is harvest your young immune system at least when you get to 18. And so that's the other thing that I'm really passionate about, is that I've got this vision of me having my cells harvested and saying, look, Mark, you've banked your healthy stem cells and so if you get ILL Again in 55, in 10, 15 years time, you can call young Mark back to save you, not have someone else's cells.

That is incredible, isn't it? And what's the cost of going and doing that?

I think the harvesting process is, I think between 30 and $50,000 and then it's a couple of thousand a year to hold your stem cells.

Right, okay. Yeah, but that is, I mean, yeah. Wow, that is incredible.

I know a few people in the UK that have, that have done it. They've flown all the way over to Florida to do it. But he's a very unique, wonderful man. He's, he's done some work with Tony Robbins and so yeah, I trust him and I think that's a very important part of healing, is trust.

Yeah. Well. And you know, when, when you can see it working for you, then you, why, why wouldn't you? And I think that's an, Is that an aurora ring on your finger? I can see.

Use the aura ring. Yeah.

So you know, with all of the things like, you know, DNA testing and analysis and kind of analyze, you know, using that to predict what you should or shouldn't be eating and then the aura ring helping you with sleep and all that sort of stuff. Is there any one thing there that you think, you know in sort of this amazing, amazingly fast developing health technology piece that you find really powerful.

Sometimes like knowing is a bad thing. Do you know what I mean? Like once, you know, you can't unknowing and that frustrates me sometimes. Like just imagine if I could walk down the street like a normal human. But like, what's a normal human? I was like asking myself that question the other day. There's, there's not really like I tried, I've tried to increase my hrv. Like that's the only thing sleep quality and HRV is important. It's a bit of an accountability buddy which says that don't use tech after 9 o' clock and get some good, you know, it's just accountability to get the sleep routines. Well, interestingly, my HRV has been low, I would consider low. And so I tried mouth taping last week.

Oh yes, after James Nestor's book, yeah.

I tried mouth taping and that, that shot my HRV up super high, as in mouth taping at night when I went to sleep. But then I've had a bit of a cold the last week and so I'll be looking forward to when I'm 100% and then I'll see my HRV get over 100.

Excellent. Mark, there is so much brilliant stuff in that podcast, but more than anything is an incredibly inspiring story. It's incredible. It's been incredibly inspiring for me to watch you on this journey. It is absolutely mind blowing what you're doing and what you are planning to do next year as well. So I can't wait to see you nail that iron man and continue helping other people in on the same journey. So thank you so much for joining me, mate.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

If you want to find out more about Mark, best place to go to is his website, which is terminal2triathlon.com and if you want to find him on social media, Instagram is his preferred platform. And on there he is Terminal two triathlon. So what did you make of the interview with Mark, Phoebe?

I thought it was fantastic and I just, I really like certain things that he pulled up. Obviously there are certain, there are bits in there which I don't think are going to be things that everyone kind of immediately inputs into their daily routine. But this idea of preventative rather than firefighting medicine is something that I just hope more people will come around to because we have this great power to sort of take charge of our own health and it's very empowering. It's what I do on a day to day basis. And yes, I love making people feel better, but at the same point I like it more when people just sort of say, I feel so in control and I just feel more emotionally stable about it. And yeah, similarly, similarly to what Mark was saying, growing sprouts in your kitchen, you're going to harness those foods at their most nutritious stage because they're growing, they've liberated all of their energy stores. So grab some seeds, grab an old kilt, like a little mason jar and a piece of muslin cloth and we can all be sprouting in our kitchen and sprinkling things everywhere. And it's just a nice thing to be able to do, isn't it?

Well, it is. What sort of, from a gut point of view is that sort of approach to your diet, a really good thing.

So the living nutrition sort of sprouting kind of stuff. Absolutely. And I think that especially with the sway towards people wanting to be. I don't use the word plant based so much, I use plant focused because I think that what we want to be doing is not saying, right, well, we must eliminate things from our diet. We can just add more in. And a lot of people when they start adding in more plant foods, the reason they will get digestive upset is because they're eating much more fiber than they would have done. But if you take. This probably sound a bit odd, if you take something like a bean or chickpea or lentil, when we get it dry in a supermarket, think about that as a tree with bark. Whereas if you. And so that bark is the armor that those things put around themselves to help them get to their next place of growth. But if we actually start to sprout something, it's thinking that it's in its new place of growth so it lets down its guard and it will then actually start to liberate those energy stores. So the armor is the bit that we react to digestively. So if we can sprout things, we get rid of the armor, we don't feel windy and gassy and we get more nutrition. So absolutely get, get plants when they're alive and we get more from them and less digestive perturbance.

And is that related to. I remember reading, is it Dr. Stephen Grundy's book the Plant Paradox where he talks a lot about lectins? Is that linked to lectins with that armor and the bark around it, or.

Is that something totally different, Something slightly different because he talks about certain foods just being completely contraindicated for us to ever be eating, which again can be quite limiting. And I have, I have intermittent thoughts about that book. We're talking more about things like saponins and phytic acid and that kind of stuff. And the important thing there is again, I think in the intro what we were talking about certain things influencing the uptake of other nutrients. In a plant focused or a more plant based diet, you have to be quite careful about not overloading on those inhibitory compounds because then you can find that you're not taking up enough of those nutrients to then convert them to then get your optimal sort of functional nutrition levels. So yeah, things like soaking and sprouting are quite big for those bits.

And were there any other bits of the conversation that really stood out for you?

I really liked his bit about nose tail eating and the biodynamic thing, because there is a, there's a lot about sustainability in our world at the moment and I think that that's quite important. But there is also an argument for regenerative farming and actually how we need to kind of foster diversity within our world. And if we are going to be picking things, then make sure that we don't waste anything and we use the whole food. So as an example, I will get a lot of people who will have things like pasture raised liver, but they will have that once or twice a month and they will use that as their nutritious kind of inclusion. But they won't necessarily, they won't go out and eat poor quality red meat. So they would eat, they would choose to eat animal products at home where they can control what they're buying. But then when they go out, they're totally plant based. And it's just about those little tweaks that we can all make to just looking after our world and then it will look after us right back. We can't be healthy on an unhealthy planet. I think somebody said to me once and just rings true.

It does sound like that sounds like excellent advice. And I think that's the general principles I see. You know, I've seen some people switching Thailand to vegan, but actually that presents a whole load of different challenges. Whereas people tending the, the people I'm speaking to tend to be really cutting down on meat and fish. But when they do enjoy meat and fish, it's local, it's high quality, it's, you know, the sauce and therefore that's got to be that for me is the approach I take. And it, it's, you know, and I feel like when I'm by the sea I want to be eating fish. When I'm inland I want to be eating some meat, but eating lot, interspersed with lots and lots of really good vegetables and multiple colors and all that sort of stuff. And that seems to be the approach that more and more people are taking, which has got to be good for the planet, hasn't it?

In that.

Less but higher quality is the right way forward. And do you think with all of your nutritional expertise, do you think the approach that Mark took with regards to his, his diet did help him overcome a terminal diagnosis?

Absolutely. I think that what he has very obviously shown is the idea that you can use diet as a therapy, but then you evolve it over time. So again, what people will see as almost exclusionist or too difficult or too Effort intensive. He got sort of offered this opportunity to take control of his health and he put a lot of time and effort into doing that because he faced the sort of potential of not being around if he didn't do that. And there are different grades of this, you don't have to go as far as he did. But by using your diet as a therapeutic tool, you can then get to the stage where you can maintain it and be a lot more flexible. He will obviously never go back to eating things like, or I don't know if he did in the first place, eating processed foods or anything like that. He now has a foundation from which he eats in the same way. I think that I would never be able to go back to how I ate in my teens. But that's because we have the knowledge base behind it. And similarly, all the clients who come through my doors I think leave and they have new habits built in. But once you interact with your food in a different way, and I think this is the other thing, just as pure example about eating meat, once you evolve your mindset about what a meal should look like, we've always been educated to think like meat and two veg or that sort of protein is the big bit on the plate and the vegetables are almost the garnish. When you start to evolve to see actually that the vegetables are the foundation from which you then add a good quality portion of protein, whatever that is, and then you add carbohydrates on top. It's just, it's a relearning and a reworking and that's sort of what we're all kind of doing. And yes, no, for me, food is therapy always. It is the fundamental form of medicine.

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing that I thought was really interesting in chatting to Mark, which I knew I'd find interesting from Chattington previously, is the whole psychological piece in terms of, you know, I don't want to know my diagnosis because it puts, you know, I'm in a better position to recover if I don't. But then also having the challenge of. But actually being life insurance would be really helpful at the moment. So anyway, he was, you know, he's a very inspiring guy and yeah, I just can't wait to see him complete his ironman next year.

I mean, my goodness, it is brilliant, isn't it?

So, Phoebe, thank you so much for joining me again as my guest co host. If people want to find out more about your future Cornish retreats and the smaller retreats, where are they best to find you?

So I have a clinical newsletter which goes out once a month and that always has our events and things in it. So if they go to my website, which is naturalnourishment, me and scroll all the way down to the footer because we didn't want to have one of those banners that just obliterates the page as you go onto every single one of them. There's a little signup box and that's a quick way just to keep up with what's going on. Or I'm all over Instagram wittering away, which is underscore naturalnourishment.

You are definitely all over Instagram, but the content you put out on Instagram is really, really good. So I'm learning a lot from it. So, Phoebe, great to catch up again, as you know, as always, lovely to see you and for everybody else, keep on training. If you've enjoyed this triathlon podcast, please do go to Apple Podcasts and rate it and review it. It massively helps us to deliver a better podcast. It helps people find it as well. So, yeah, go to Apple Podcasts, give us some feedback, give us a rating and a review, and please share it with your friends because ultimately that's what allows us to keep to delivering more and more of these podcasts. And don't forget to download the tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete, and to build your tribe.