An Herbal, Plant-Medicine Based Approach To Managing COVID Vaccination Risks, New & Emerging Vaccines (NovaVaxx, Covaxin & Vaxxinity), Bias Against Herbal Medicine & More With Donnie Yance

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, take over. They're really trying to assist, maximize our innate healing capacity and to think in terms that no matter how much we try to get rid of them, they keep coming back. I have a mug that says celebrate dandelions. If you can't feed them, eat them. And yet it's also the primary herb in um, bio, the main herb that they you use to clot the blood in emergency situations.

Help performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well folks, it's. It's been some time Since I interviewed Dr. Matthew Cook on my podcast about COVID and vaccines. Surprisingly I haven't been shadow banned or canceled or nothing's pulled down yet. But I don't know, I'm gonna, I'm doing another podcast about vaccines today with a really, really interesting guy named Donnie Yance. He's a very prolific writer and knee deep in the research on all this stuff and really well informed and I think balanced guy. I don't like to interview the people who are like full on black and white, great reset frickin. Like you know aliens are gonna pop out of your head if you get the vaccine. Nor do I like to interview the people who are just like yeah, jumps through every single hoop is set out there for you by the government. I like for us to just be well informed and make well informed decisions like the adults that we are and not thinking black and white terms. Or as a previous podcast guest of mine, Joel Green said, baby talk, right? Like carrots are good for you. Carrots are bad for you. Eggs are good for you. Eggs are bad for you. Vaccines are good for you. Vaccines are bad for you. It's a much more nuanced discussion than that. Hey folks, one other thing. After I recorded this episode with Donnie, he actually sent over just an epic, epic PowerPoint in which he laid out some really, really fantastic, not only pre and post vaccine based strategies, but also a really, really impressive presentation that he gave on target. It's like a 300 page presentation I converted into PDF for you and I embedded it in the show notes for today. I've been going through it on my Kindle. It's excellent. I think it's kind of like the episode I did with Matt Cook where he gave me the PDF with the pre and post vaccine support strategies which you can find@bengreenfulfitness.com Cook if you go to the show notes for today's podcast@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Donnie I will link to a wonderful PDF he sent me. It's in the resources section. If you scroll down in the show notes, it should be simple for you to find, but it embedded right there. It's called targeting Covid 2021. So I think you'll really dig that and I hope it's helpful for you. Well, folks, my guest on today's podcast, his name is Donald, although he goes by Donnie. Donnie, right. Donald.

I do for the most part.

All right, so not like the duck, but Donnie. Donnie Yance. You know, I've been reading some of the things that Donnie has had to write, particularly since the COVID pandemic kind of emerged, because he has some really interesting takes as an herbologist and a clinical nutritionist and really I think is pretty steeped in a lot of the data, which is what I really appreciate about him and the research behind everything from vaccinations to Covid and beyond. He actually has a medical clinic and a whole medical system of care called Mederi Madeiri, not Medairi Mederi. Right? Donnie?

Yeah, Medire.

Yeah. And he also has a couple of books. One called Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer and Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism, which is a book about herbs and natural compounds for stress and aging and chronic illness. And I'll link to his books and also the website for his clinic if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Donnie and I'll also link to a whole host of articles that he has written that are just fabulous about everything from managing the risk of blood clots and other possible side effects of COVID 19 vaccines to weighing the risk to benefit ratio to some of the emerging vaccinations which I actually want to ask Donnie about, like Novavax and Covaxin and vaccinity and some of these new COVID 19 vaccines that are on the horizon. And I should tell you guys, for those of you listening who may have heard me interview Dr. Matthew Cook, which kind of turned out to be a little bit of a controversial show where he talked about COVID and vaccines and wound up getting a lot of comments because I realized some of this stuff can be quite an opinionated and divisive field to a certain extent, this particular topic, even though I don't think it should be, I think we should just be able to speak as adults without scapegoating or another. But anyways, if you listen to that podcast with Dr. Matthew Cook, there were definitely a lot of points brought up that many of you wanted to know. More about. I will be doing a follow up episode with Dr. Cook, but I would have been remiss not to have chatted with Donnie a little bit just because some of the stuff that he's written about all of this is just so good. So, Donnie, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks Ben, for having me on and thank you so much for the work you do.

Yeah, and we were just not to get sidelined too much. We were chatting just a little bit before we got on. And you are, as I am, a fan of and love music, correct?

Yeah, yeah. I'm a musician. I'm a bass player predominantly, maybe jazz background, but I played every kind of music. I still play regularly as a bass player. And I just put out an entire CD of all my music. It's called Heaven Awaits. And a lot of the music is bass melody driven and it's 10 songs on it. I've written all of them. And even though they're kind of maybe jazz, slightly pop, maybe a little bit funkish, they're all very easy on the ear to listen to. And all the songs are very spiritually based as well for me. And it's very soothing music and very different because me being a bass player and the music being bass melody driven, it's very interesting. Like this title track, song called Heaven Awaits has actually got unison bass melody with a clarinet, which I don't think has ever been done before. And I'm actually even composing, just. I just can't stop composing. So I have five new songs. So I'm on my way to do a second CD as well. Lyrics or instrumentation only it's all instrumentation. I do have one song I just wrote called Love for Love, which is kind of based on song of songs from the Bible. And I somebody working on lyrics for that, although I have already an instrumental version of that song. But people can listen to my music on any of the downloads, whether it be Spotify or they can go to Donnie Yance here now. And my name is D O N N I E for those who want to know the spelling of Donnie so that they can hear my music on that. And Gino Pinelli wrote one of the songs. So maybe some of the people in your audience will know who Gino Pinelli is. But for me, he's the greatest musician, singer, songwriter on the planet and he had a lot of hit songs in the 70s and 80s and we've become very close and good friends, which is kind of miraculous.

Gino Pinelli, actually, I feel embarrassed. I haven't heard of Gino Pinelli. But how do you spell Gino Pinelli's name?

Gino Benelli, with a V, V, A, N, N, I, L, L, A Benelli. And I'm sure a good amount of your audience will know who he is or at least will know some of his hit songs that he had. Like, I just want to stop and tell you how I feel about you. But he's gone on to do, I think, 26 albums and he's world renowned and his music is just so amazing in every way. So anyway, I was very blessed to have him write a song called Hope Alley that's also on my cd.

Oh, beautiful. So funny. You're a man after my own heart. And I'll hunt down your tracks and not only probably listen to him tonight because the evenings are when I like to immerse myself in music and new music, but I'll also put a link to your music in the show notes. And I was actually just working on a song this morning. I'm currently working on a few different songs, so I got a few lyrics written out this morning. My songs tend to be a little more spiritual as well. I have stuff on Soundcloud, but I was out on a walk yesterday morning thinking about just how beautiful nature is and how much colors speak to us and how God reveals himself to us through creation and thought, you know what? I should do a song all based on. On colors. So I wrote the first four lines this morning and I'm continuing work on it. The first four lines, I'll go real quick and then we'll get into the good stuff, then we'll get into medicine. But the first four lines are green. You are green like the greenest of herbs in the spring. Emerald leaves, dragon wings, Christmas trees. Red, you are red, like the crimson of shrubs in the fall. Red dwarf stars, brick red barns, scarlet hearts. Black, you are black like the ebony reaches of space, Deepest caves, empty graves, midnight lanes. White, you are white like the purest, most beautiful rose. Ivory bones, sun, bleached stones, Ooh, plains of snow. And that's. That's my first four lines. And I haven't put it to music.

Yet, but that's really beautiful, Ben. And I'll. I'll just say this. Today is the feast day of St. Francis. And so it's very apropos. I'm a. I'm actually a third order Franciscan, so I'm in the Franciscan order. And that was, you know, St. Francis is the patron saint of nature and of animals. And so there you go. And then I'll also say that all, every penny of the CD sales, even downloads, all goes to the foundation. So it all goes to the Madeiri Foundation. Everything.

Well, that's a perfect segue, man. You did that quite gracefully. The Madhi foundation and the name of your medical center is Madhi Medicine. What's the idea behind the title Madhi and how did you come to develop?

So Madiri literally means to heal and behold. It's the Latin word for that. And interesting because you said you write spiritual songs like the root word for health is Hal H A l which is also the root word to be whole and also the root word for holy. So I often tell people to be healthy means to be, to be whole and holy. So that's part of it. So the concept. So the Madeiri foundation is made up of three distinctive wings. One is the clinic itself where I work. And we have practitioners, we see patients, we have a compounding apothecary here. Where are you? At Ashland, Oregon. But we work with people all over the world. And then we have a. We're building a two year school that will open up next September to teach people Madhiri Care, Madhi Medicine, which is a whole systems model that I've developed and continue to develop. And so we will be opening that up and practitioners, it's for people to come and be trained in this whole system model, which is a model of unitive medicine, not just collaborative or integrative or alternative or complementary. So the idea is that the whole everything fits together in a unified way, in a purposeful way to better people's lives, either helping them live longer and or live better. And then we also have a research wing. So we're looking. We've been trying to do clinical research with large institutions, say Ohio State in a stage four breast cancer trial, the Children's Hospital of Orange County, Mercy Hospital, Sinai Hospital. And now we're looking to do a trial with a group of veterinarians in New Jersey with dogs with B cell lymphoma. So I know we're speaking more about the pandemic and around Covid, but my background and my special. Although the whole system of medicine is based on health optimization first and foremost, but my specialty is oncology, so I'll just go on to tell you. So you asked about care. The whole systems model is based on somewhat simple criteria. The idea is to how to maximize the health of the host, which is the person you work with or the patient. And then second and you would analyze that which is somewhat subjective, getting to know Your patient working through what I call hermeneutics, using various lenses, different parts, different ways to diagnose, different ways to analyze, and then always serving the whole with that. The second target area is the microenvironment, or in cancer it includes the tumor microenvironment, which is mostly analyzed throughout laboratory testing. And what you try to do is analyze that environment to make it the most conducive to health optimization, the least conducive to disease, or in the wake of disease, particularly cancer, there's a hijacking of that microenvironment. So now you're understanding how that disease intelligence has taken over that environment and you need to change that. And the third target area is the disease itself, which in cancer we're analyzing molecularly speaking, cellularly speaking, the disease itself, which would be cancer. So you're doing what would be called molecular profiling on a tumor to analyze the characteristics of that disease. And then you strategically start working to optimize health in the patient, alter the microenvironment and target the disease. It's a one, two step plan. And that's, you know, that's kind of in our toolboxes. So the toolboxes are botanical medicine, which is the soul of madiri care. So it's, you know, I'm an herbalist, nutritionist, you know, herbs, you know, are my love, you know, as far as, you know, God's pharmacy sitting right out there, God's humble pharmacy, as I like to say. And then the second toolbox is nutritional medicine, which is more supplemental medicine. The third is dietary medicine. The fourth is lifestyle medicine. The fifth is pharmaceutical medicine. How to utilize that toolbox in a unified way, not to just have it be standard of care medicine. And then you do this alongside. And the sixth toolbox is spiritual medicine. And that is both how you, how you as a practitioner utilize your own spirit and your own ability to use as much love and compassion and non fear to gather those clues and help them guide you. And then also how you address the spiritual needs of patients. So that's the six toolboxes. So that's an overview of. And then more technically speaking, it's called the eclectic triphasic medical system. But that's a mouthful. So we just say mediri care basically now is the more common name that we refer to it as.

That's interesting. Now this actually is something I find intriguing if, you know, for me as a meathead personal trainer or maybe a smart doc is listening in or something and they want to go learn more or even go through an educational system where they learn each of these six pillars of modern medicine. Do you have like some kind of a certification program or something someone could go on to for continued education?

Yes, we've had, we've, we've been, I've been doing for maybe 15 years these week long trainings and we've stopped doing that because of the, the building, the Mediri Academy. So starting next September we're opening the doors, but it will be a two year program and then yes, they'll be certified and we're looking for getting that accredited and maybe eventually being connected to an establishment with the Academy. So the week long trainings have been suspended to build this two year school, which is a pretty big undertaking. But all the modules and all the contents already created the platform has been formed that we're going to be using. So we're just on our way in preparation for next year launching the two year academy.

Okay, all right, got it. Well, I go to your website and read the articles that you put out@donnyance.com and so if I were to kind of like stay tuned to that website, are you going to make an announcement when you roll out that program? Because like I personally would be interested.

Yes, yes, we'll have it. I'll post it probably on thedanyantz.com but also for sure on the Mediri Center Madhi foundation website and then also on my product line website, Natura Health Products. It will also be there for Natura practitioners to see. So I'm sure between those three things, somehow you'll learn about the Academy.

Okay, all right, cool. I'll keep my finger on the pulse, so to speak. By the way, I really like how you highlighted the root word of health, being being. Hal, which has always reminded me, reminded me of like a, a halo. You know, we have all these words like whole and holy and hallow and heal and health and halo that are all derived from that word hal, which I think is like an old Anglo Saxon expression or Anglo Saxon word. But like, like when people would say hello, it was like may you be in good health is what that meant. And this whole idea, when you bring up like spiritual health as being a pillar of, of your practice, I mean, in my opinion, to be whole is to have health.

Right?

Right. In order to have perfect health, you have to be whole. And one part of being whole is actually having that spiritual health. I think there's a verse in, in Mark in the Bible that says, you know, as many as touched him were made whole like People who touched the great healer Jesus, you know, they're made whole, and that was part of restoring their health. But then, like, that whole word halo is interesting because I find halo is fascinating. If you actually look at a lot of old paintings and the whole idea of, like, people who were, you know, maybe of a holy superiority having almost like this visible circle of light around their heads, it's really interesting because there are certain people who can see the aura coming off someone, or you can use like gas discharge visualization cameras to see the light that might be coming off of someone. And you do often see someone in good spiritual health or someone emanating more emotions of peace and love and joy, actually producing more light, which when you. When you tie it into the biological. And the fact that our mitochondria can actually produce infrared light and, you know, the body doesn't just be. Its photoreceptors receive light, but also produces light. It is interesting that like, HAL is associated with, like a halo is associated with light is associated with wholeness, and it's something that can actually be kind of measured or felt. So it's interesting.

Yeah, that's really beautifully said. And in Madiri medicine, we have three distinctive energy networks. One is the spiritual force. So in the life force, there's the spiritual force. In Chinese medicine, it will be called shen, the spiritual nature. Then there's the essence, which is a look at the endocrine energy. So how the endocrine as a whole system is working. And then there's the vital force, which you mentioned before is like how we extrapolate energy. How does the mitochondrial get energy? From the food it takes in, from the air it breathes. The celestial energy is the air that we breathe in. The earthly energy is the food that we take in. So that makes up the vital force. And a big part of Madiri medicine is creating efficiency and building reserve and working at the molecular, cellular and organ system level to create robust health, to get the body to auto regulate better and auto organize better, because. And the beauty of plant medicines is that they synchronize and support health. They lend a helping hand, and that by bathing our bodies with plants, there's a relationship that takes place. Plants aren't trying to take over. They're really trying to assist and maximize our innate healing capacity to heal.

That's beautiful. The interesting part about the mitochondria, and I'll link to this in the show notes if folks go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Donnie is there is. I think it was Doug Wallace, who wrote an article in the Journal of Genetics about how the old traditional Chinese medicine or Eastern concept of qi or qi or life force or energy. I also have a nutritional supplements company called Ki on, and it's this idea that qi is actually the mitochondria and refers to mitochondrial biology. And I interviewed another guy named Frank Lippman, where we talked about this, and he uses this concept a lot in his practice as well, that the health of the mitochondria when it comes to optimized flow of energy through all chakras and meridians of the human body is just crucial. And that, you know, by optimizing your mitochondria, your mitochondrial density, your mitochondrial health, your mitochondrial efficiency, et cetera, you actually are increasing your life force energy and vice versa. By increasing your spiritual energy, for example, you're actually doing your mitochondria a pretty big favor as well. It's a whole like a concept of vital force or energy actually being key. Slash the mitochondria.

Yeah. And the thing about the spiritual component is like, for my patients, I often tell them that's the everlasting part of who we are. No matter what you do on the physical plane, eventually everybody's going to die. So the thought that this is survival tactics is wrong. The point that it is promoting life, which is different than survival. So we've already, you know, if you're spiritual minded and you know, particularly in a Christian domain, then we've already survived. And so what's the point? So it's like, so we're going like, now we're like trying to understand and like, why, why are we here and what is our purpose? And ultimately it comes down to how much love and goodness you can bring into the world. And that's the only, that's the single only purpose that we have in our unique, authentic way. And then again for me, by utilizing what God has left for us to utilize as medicine. And if people didn't believe in God, if they study plant medicines at the level we've gotten to know them, it's mind blowing how incredible plants are. They're way smarter than people. When you understand that if you're a plant, Ben, you cannot run away, you're being attacked, you cannot run away, and you cannot forage for water or for food. And they build such sophisticated ways of keeping themselves healthy and even thriving in the most harshest of environments. And through a concept of study called xenohormesis, which is the concept of the stress that a plant takes on to adapt and thrive in these harsh environments, including viruses and bacteria, that the compounds, what's called the secondary compounds, that they develop to again strengthen their life force, that when we ingest those plants, we capitalize on the stress that the plant underwent and we don't have to go through that same stress. It's like, really, it's so beyond what we can comprehend. It's like where science goes into theology and it's all one thing. And for me, it's just so beautiful and yet it's so humble at the same time. I mean, if there's. To me looking again through the lens of God, through a Christian lens, to see God be willing to come into the earth and not even have a place to be born, I mean, it's almost laughable. Mary and Joseph is running around a town and nobody will let Mary have a baby. She has to go out to some cave. But it's all to show humility. You know, it's just humility in that concept. And plants, you know, the weeds that we keep. Dandelion. How many millions of dollars do we spend trying to make our lawns look nice and kill dandelions?

And yet not me. I use it in my pesto.

They keep coming back. I'm Italian primarily, and so, yeah, I grew up with my grandmother picking dandelion greens. But to understand and they're one of the most nutrient dense foods on the face of the planet, and to think in terms that no matter how much we try to get rid of them, they keep coming back. I have a mug that says celebrate dandelions. If you can't feed them, eat them.

The whole idea of plants as being a part of a holistic approach to medicine is important, I think in light of COVID I mentioned that. I did a podcast interview with Dr. Matthew Cook and one of the more popular parts of that podcast was Matt shared and I'll share it again in the show notes of this recording that you and I are doing right now, Donnie, a whole bunch of pre and post vaccine support considerations. A document that he gives out to all of his patients who may be getting the vaccine to mitigate some of the potential for damage, you know, and that particular document goes into, gosh, everything from, you know, whole person support and spiritual health and hydrotherapy to, you know, mixed vitamin E, to copherols and tocotrienols, to pro resolving mediators, to a host of different peptides, you know, like thymosin alpha 1 and BPC157, to. To nad, to all these things that if you were going to get the vaccine you may want to think about doing to mitigate some of what appears to be the long term side effects. And it reminded me of an article that I read that you wrote against particularly managing the risk of blood clots as one of the side effects of the COVID vaccine. And I think it's probably not a secret out there that there's kind of a current flurry of concern about the link, the possible link, at least between blood clots and the vaccine. In this case, I think it's primarily the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. And this is why some people are even recommended to, you know, test things like their D dimer levels and their HSCRP levels prior to that particular vaccine to make sure that they don't have an unusual degree of blood clotting risk. As a part of, of that particular article where you were talking about, you know, how to ensure that you maintain proper viscosity and coagulation properties in the blood, you actually talked about how you in your own practice will recommend the use of certain plant based protocols as strategies to kind of manage the potential risk of vaccinations. And I think that might be a perfect place to illustrate how you would, for example, use plants as medicine in your practice in this case particularly relevant to vaccines. And you know, whether or not someone has decided they are or are not going to get a vaccine. What would you say are some of the, some of like the plant based approaches that you think are worthy of consideration if someone were to get vaccinated?

Boy, this is, I'm gonna break this down a little bit. So one, let's just talk about the vaccine related blood clot issue. So one of the major inducers of that are that thrombocytopenia that happens precipitously. So some people get the vaccine and their platelet count drops precipitously and platelets are used to aggregate and usually clot. And so you would think, well, the numbers are dropping, so we should be bleed, these people should be bleeding, not clotting.

And Donnie, just real quick, when you're talking about people should be bleeding, not clotting, are you referring specifically to Johnson and Johnson or is this a risk with other vaccines as well?

It was first found in Johnson Johnson, but this risk is across the board with the MRNA as well as the DNA vaccine. So it's not unique to Johnson Johnson and it's still happening in people. So the drop in platelets, which is the thrombocytopenia, happens be to so quickly that the body, the innate intelligence of the body says, oh my gosh, what is happening to me? So they take those remaining platelets and super aggregate them, make them sticky as all can be in a salvage way to say, well, I better do this so I don't bleed and it overdoes it basically. And then you start clotting. So typically you don't want platelets too high, you don't want platelets too low. Just like the dynamic range for everything to be in and often too little or too much of the same thing has equal consequences. And so in this case the platelets would drop out. Now, getting back, generally speaking, then you assess, just like you said, you would assess the patient beforehand and know are they at risk for clots to begin with? Because people's terrain or environment, some people already have risk factors. And you would look at, like you said, from a laboratory standpoint. Well, D dimer. D dimer actually tests your body's breaking down of clots or fibrin. So the fibrin is the stringiness that's in the blood vessels. And the best marker for that is actually fibrinogen. So people that have high fibrinogen, high inflammatory markers, like you mentioned, C reactive protein. But even in the cbc, you can see inflammation in a plain old CBC by a neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio. Then you can look at people that have their blood type. Blood type A tends to clot a lot easier than say O and B is in between, it's intermediate. Or if they have different, like latent factor 5 or APOE 4, you know, there's all kinds of ways you can assess people that have different risks and then you can mitigate those risks specifically based on which risk factor they have. Obviously, if someone has metabolic syndrome and they're morbidly obese, part of that is this. There's just too much fat going on in their body. And so you need to do things that kind of mitigate that in changing their terrain. But as far as almost every plan I can think of is shown to discourage abnormal clotting in the body. Some do it by moving the blood. You know, you have blood invigorating blood, moving herbs, you have herbs that remove heat toxins. Like when people get Covid, they get the storm. When that occurs to them, they're producing amount of heat or slash inflammation. So part of the plants that we use for that are, you know, clearing heat or clearing heat toxins they're called. And so kind of mitigating inflammation. And many of those herbs, whether it be Plants like yarrow or scutellari or skullcap acril, skullcap or andrographis or feverfew rich in parthenolid. You know, these are kind of bitter in nature and they're cooling and they're specifically for that excess heat related condition. And they at the same time discourage platelet aggregation or leukotrin synthesis or prostaglandin imbalances, all these things that lead to the body then creating thrombos and embolisms and clots throughout. And so I don't know of any plant. Even what I would call foundational plants like adaptogens are shown to regulate rheology in the blood tonic herbs, whether it be the angelica sinensis, the dongwu. There's so many plants and some are more indicated for if someone is highly stressed and they're producing lots of stress hormones that also stiffens everything in the body and we stiffen up and so we need to relax the blood vessels sometimes. And people with hypertension, there are all kinds of ways with plant medicines and again the beauty of nature. Some of the plants that are the best at moving the blood, inhibiting thrombos also do the opposite when your body needs it. So Yarrow for example, which is a great blood mover, a diaphoretic, it's in a formula mine called Flu away, which is one of my primary support formulas for the early stage of COVID with laceria, with forsynthia, with boneset with elder flowers, elderberry propolis, a little ginger, eucalyptus. So those herbs are like clearing heat toxins. Some of them are part of traditional Chinese medicine, some of our part of eclectic physiomedicalism. They have long traditional usage, great scientific validation and they are modulatory in what they do with the rheology of the blood. So yarrow again removes heat toxins, clears heat, discourages abnormal platelet aggregation. It also is a hemostatic and so it's called soldierserv because during the civil war the soldiers would use it as a septic agent, throw it on bleeding wounds and all of a sudden they start clotting the same. In Chinese medicine, the herb natto ginseng, which is a primary cardiovascular herb used for heart health and the cardiovascular system to move the blood, which is in the ginseng family. And yet it's also the primary herb in umbyal, the main herb that you use to clot the blood in emergency situations.

Yeah, excuse me. I read and this was just before I was heavily considering the vaccine a few months ago I was planning on getting the Johnson and Johnson and for a variety of reasons didn't wind up getting it. But I was doing some research and in looking through your website came across some of your riding on quercetin and some of these fibrinolytic enzymes and the herbal formulations, particularly some of the blood moving herbs that you just talked about, like saffron and ginkgo and gotu kola, for example, or natto ginseng, as being beneficial for healthy blood flow and appropriate blood clotting function. Yarrow particularly stood out to me because you wrote a lot about the prolific effects of yarrow. It's the soldier's herb to staunch the bleeding of wounds. It grows like weeds on my property, and I often will use it as a natural mosquito repellent as well. You kind of rub it against the skin and it has this kind of nice herbal aroma that seems to drive away mosquitoes if you're, if you're out there without a mosquito repellent. And after reading your article, you know, in preparation, because I want to have on hand some of the things I'd need to mitigate some of the side effects of the vaccine. I went out and harvested a bunch of yarrow. And this was during, during the hot summer days of Spokane summer. And I dried it in the sunlight and then pulverized it in a blender and made this wonderful yarrow powder. I made so much of it that I'm still using it as a, as a seasoning on my salads and my smoothies and such. But yarrow alone is absolutely amazing. And I'll link to this article that you wrote entitled Managing the Risk of Blood Clots and Other Possible Side effects of the COVID 19 vaccines. But it's very interesting how many of these plants, even those that grow in our own backyard, can be used particularly for blood health. So I think that'll be a really important article for folks who are listening in to Tuck Away and Access, and I'll put it@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Donnie. And you know, I also wanted to ask you, Donnie, you know, When I interviewed Dr. Matt Cook, he was pretty bullish on these MRNA vaccines. And although he did admit that there were some issues with them, he encouraged everyone to get them. And, you know, you wrote an article entitled Weighing the Risk to benefit ratio of COVID 19 vaccines, a pretty recent article. And so I'm curious, when it comes to, for example, the MRNA vaccines, you know, do you have any particular concerns, for example, about those in general that you talk about. And you know, I also want to ask you, just so you know, about the health biomarker risk assessment that you recommended that people consider getting to assess whether or not they might be at higher risk for a deleterious side effect to a vaccine. But what's your take on these MRNA vaccines?

I'm not in love with them and I'm not vaccinated. So I'll be frank and upfront with everyone, although I know that if I was in a high risk category I would strongly consider them and I would have to consider them just to be able to acclimate to society alone. And so I'm waiting for me personally, I certainly understand the pressure that everyone is under to get vaccinated. And I don't push my patients one way or the other. I leave it up to them. I provide as much clear data as I can for people to make decisions. The first thing I'll start with is that we have no long term data. So anything people that say that this is as safe as anything is wrong. There are a lot of people having adverse reactions, getting hospitalized, even dying at their vaccine. So to say that there's no risk is just not being honest. And that's the message we're being told. And it's harder to believe anything being truthful because there's so much stuff we're being told that is not truthful. So it's hard to understand when what we're being told is actually coming from a place of truth or. And so I struggle a lot with that, to be honest with you. I'm also concerned with the fact of variants possibly being formed through what's called selective pressure or to some degree vaccines, potentially causing mutations to occur more rapidly because of vaccines and also possibly getting a wider range of mutations because everything wants to survive. And so when you use something like an MRNA vaccine, which is a new technology which isn't even, it's a blueprint that's trying to tell your body based on information to make not even the actual spike protein, but, but a receptor to that protein. And so it's very susceptible to mutations and also possibly not working. And we've been finding that out with the delta variant and now the R1 variant, the vaccine supposedly aren't going to work at all against that variant. And so the delta variant, you see the vaccines waning every week more the incidence is happening around the world. First in Israel they found out, so they have the boosters that come out, but then what's the next wave of the virus hitting us will There be more boosters that come out and where are we going with all of this? So I'm not telling people not to or to. I'm just letting people know there is a risk to benefit ratio both in the short term. For example, if you're a boy between the ages of 12 and 25, the possibility of the vaccine inducing hospitalization is much greater than Covid itself. So, and that's clear as day. Yet nobody's being told this or offering this. So it's like just everyone just say, just get vaccinated, trust us. Well, I have photos from the 1940s and 50s of DDT saying just trust us. And DDD being sprayed, literally sprayed in children in playgrounds, all over their bodies and letting them breathe it in. And everyone knows that DDT is a carcinogenic, but yet back then we were told it's all safe. Or thalidomide was safe for pregnant women to take. And then we had tens and thousands of people or antidepressants were all right to take with tamoxifen. And there was a, you know, because of the CD2D6 enzyme, there was a problem with those two interacting and that in the, when I first got into this field, you know, literally in the late 1970s, you know, you know, all of a sudden cholesterol was the villain to heart disease. And everyone says, well, stop eating eggs and stop eating butter, but eat butter replacement. And there's just so much information that's not based in truth that we're being told. It's like, well, people make these big theoretical leaps that happens all the time. It's happening in cancer. We know that chemotherapy kills some cancer cells and does a good job in some setting, certain cells, and other times it doesn't work. When it does work, sometimes it works. And then the stem cell population, redifferentiates comes back out, is more resilient, more aggressive and resistance to that chemo. So we know all these things. And so again, everything's a risk to benefit ratio. So if we go to, you know, what I call, you know, is the health biomarker assessment, we can say, well, what is our risk? Are we morbidly obese? Because four out of five.

You mean like things we could test or know about our bodies to determine whether or not we might be at risk for more of the problematic side effects of the vaccine.

So then we can make an informed consent decision on the fact. Well, I know we don't know everything about vaccines. I know there's risk, but my risk of severe Covid or critical Covid or COVID Death is pretty high because of these factors. I better go take the vaccine because I don't Again, the risk to benefit ratio might be in favor of taking the vaccine, but that's not true for everyone. And so if you have a good body max index, if your hemoglobin A1C is in a good place, your fasting glucose and insulin are good, your CRP is good, if your neutrophil lymphocyte ratio is good, if your vitamin D levels are good, there's more research on vitamin D both in a setting of inhibiting Covid symptoms to inhibiting severe Covid to inhibiting critical Covid and also linked to death. And yet, and these are meta analysis, Cochrane reviewed studies, I mean the pyramid of research, there's nothing stronger than a Meta analysis of 28 pooled studies on vitamin D. It's so clear, yet nobody is saying anything yet. Venezuela, little poor country, is passing out kits to everyone because they can't afford the vaccines and the insurance that it comes with them. And so they have these ivermectin, vitamin D, zinc, vitamin C, Tylenol and aspirin kits that they give out to everyone now as their Covid kits. And so why are we ignoring all of this research that's so clear on zinc levels, vitamin D and even on some natural compounds? There's more research now on herbal medicine. None of these things can we say are treatments for Covid. All we can say is that supporting our bodies better with these seen based on all the science to give us a better chance. And that's what say so again herbal medicine, there's so much research now primarily coming out of China, but not just China, India, now Thailand, Africa on support of herbal medicine. But we hear nothing about it, nothing about the loss of taste and being linked to now zinc deficiency. And we already have zinc deficiency, we already have vitamin D, you get Covid, that little bit of zinc reserve is gone, like in a heartbeat. And now the most important nutrient to immune optimization is gone. And then you know, so and there are other factors, you know, you mentioned D dimer, fibrinogen, selenium range, Vitamin K is also important. So when we do all these, these risks and it's not just age, people say, you know, elderly people, frailty syndrome, which the older you get, the more frail you get, but not necessarily if you have good robust health. And when we assess health, just like in Chinese medicine, there's a masculine component to good health which is how strong you are, you're an athlete. So, you know, strength is really important. But even more important than strength is the feminine component to health, which has everything to do with moisture and flexibility and suppleness. That's why women outlive men. It's not enough to be strong. Strong is important. But as we get older, we're getting weaker, more catabolic, less anabolic, yet we're also losing our fluid. So we're all drying out. And the drying out component, the lack of moisture in our body, is equally, if not greater to why our health is declining as we get older. And so there's always in Chinese medicine, the concept of nourishing the yin and the yang as people get older. And you brought up before, like herbs like ginkgo and salvia and saffron, these are great blood movers. And as people get older, that life force, that candle, is lower. And so some of these plants really profuse the oxygen and the blood flow into the extremities, into the brain and throughout the body. And that's when they're really important to discouraging not just blood clots, but just oxygenating tissue. Again, we're creating efficiency. We don't want to give the body oxygen, we don't want to give the body hormones. We want to make how we use hormones better in our body. We don't want to give people testosterone and then block their cholesterol conversion to testosterone with statins. That's kind of what we do. We every hormone is made by cholesterol, so we're going to block your cholesterol. And now we're going to do hormone replacement therapy that's counter to common sense, first of all. And it's also not at all what we would do in a holistic setting to help support patients. We want to. So anyway, that was quite a bit.

That makes sense. And if I could kind of briefly summarize, when we look at what you may want to do if you were going to get vaccinated, some type of metabolic health assessment, you know, body mass index, hemoglobin, A1C, you know, your fasting insulin and a lipid profile along with C reactive protein, your vitamin D and vitamin K levels, your zinc levels, youryour white blood cells, particularly your neutrophil to lymphocyte ratios, fibrinogen, selenium and blood type. And, you know, that's not a super expensive panel to get just to see if you may want to make sure that you take care of of a few metabolic issues prior to getting a Vaccine and the MRNA vaccine. And I think you even noted this. You know, if you look at, for example, the recent Children's Hospital Philadelphia research, you know, the MRNA vaccines don't seem to have as high an expectation for long term negative side effects. You know, it seems like a lot of the negative side effects occur within six weeks of getting the vaccine. The MRNA in the vaccine, which I talked about in my podcast with Matt Cook, it breaks down really quickly. Your cells need a way to stop Mr. From making too many proteins or too much protein, so that doesn't seem to be as big an issue. And the MRNA stops making that protein for spike within like a week, regardless of the body's immune response to the protein, suggesting that it might be safe. But there's still a lot of long term side effects that we don't know about. And so that's one of the reasons I'm so on the fence about the MRNA Johnson Johnson is off the table for me just because, as I talked about in my podcast with Matt, it's derived from aborted fetal cell line tissue. And I just, I'm not comfortable with that as a pro life advocate. And so then we get into some of these other vaccines that seem to be coming down the pipeline right now. And you've written about some of them and thank you for doing that because I think we should keep our eyes on some of these others as well. Like a lot of people are talking about novavax, for example. What do you think about Novavax?

That's my favorite vaccine. And if it does, I mean, unfortunately it's gonna be approved. But so far our country hasn't bought any of it. New Zealand just bought a whole boatload. Japan's bought a ton of it. So a lot of these other countries are buying it knowing that it's the best vaccine by far, for numerous reasons. First of all, it's based on old vaccine technology that's been around for decades. And the mechanism that it works is. So it's this, this mimicker of the actual virus of COVID that we ingest with an adjuvant. And that adjuvant is called M matrix, which is a sapadin from a plant which is actually the plant that grows in Colombia, which is the soap bark plant, which has got the saponins, which a lot of the herbs that we take for tonic herbs. Ginseng is high in saponins, and there's even an herb called soapwort that has the same saponins in it. The Italian saponins are soapy compounds in plants and what the saponin does. So the mimicker of COVID that they've made gets inside our system and then once the immune system sees it, it's the adjuvant that activates the immune response. You get this great T and B cell response, you get this very robust full response by the immune system. And it also is shown, based on several phase 3 clinical trials to be incredibly safe, incredibly effective against all the variants and long lasting. And there's a good chance that we may get it as a, you know, some down the road as a, you know, quote unquote booster vaccine for the people that have already been vaccinated. But I've already said that I will, not that I feel that I personally need a vaccine. I'm personal very confident in the choices that I have and the ability to use plants to support my body and I've done it with hundreds of people. But I will do it just so I can acclimate to society.

Well, society acclimation is important then if you were elderly or immunocompromised, it's important to know about something like novavax as hopefully potentially being an option. Just because I've. I've seen the same thing as you have, Donnie. The vaccine appears to be safe. It appears to be associated with a pretty robust immune response, at least in healthy adults. The lion's share of the tests have been done on, I believe and correct me if I'm wrong, it's a two dose regimen like 21 days apart, kind of like the MRNA vaccines. And it seems especially, although I still don't like the idea of there being mandates about what I should put into my body, it seems like a pretty decent option.

I think so. I think that it's a great option. It's a lot less expensive, it doesn't need special refrigeration, all those other really important aspects to it. So I don't know why it's taking so long to be approved, to be honest with you, and why there is this. There's nothing mentioned in the CDC about it, there's just something fishy going on and I'm about to do a blog, although I am not a proponent of it for me personally or do I have it in supportive COVID protocols? I am just because I want people to see the truth on ivermectin and see how much good research there is on it. I compiled a whole bunch of research including multiple meta analysis research papers on ivermectin. So this week will be A blog, all on the research on Ivermectin and just to see, See. And I did it because I went recently, a couple weeks ago to the CDC booklet that they just put out on therapeutics and Covid and went to the Ivermectin section and I was appalled by what they wrote. Appalled. And I said, I've just got to. I gotta do something about this. It's like, for them, it's an embarrassment for them to cite three studies that were very poor studies and miss, like, all of this other research. It's like, again, I don't know what is going on right now, but it's just. There's just such. There's something very fishy going on. That's all I can say.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we could start to talk about Ivermectin, but we'd probably be here another few hours. And so what I'll do is I'll encourage everyone to go to your website and again, I'll link to it if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Donnie and read what you have to write about Ivermectin. My podcast guest, Dr. Matthew Cook, who I did a Covid podcast with a few weeks ago, was somewhat dismissive of Ivermectin based on claims that it might be unproven or that people are using veterinary formulations of it while bypassing advice on medication purity and appropriate dosing strategies. But I kind of like you dove in after that discussion, and I don't think that's necessarily true. And I'm pretty comfortable with Ivermectin. I had Covid and I took Ivermectin, and I don't know if it helped, but I took it. And so there's the Novavax, but there's two others, too. There's the covaxin. The covaxin is a recent new one that's like an inactive dead form of the virus that is injected again as two doses. What do you think about this covaxin one? That's another one that seems to be a reasonable choice.

Yeah. So the covaxin and the vaccinity are two others that I've talked about, and I also think that they're both very good. I haven't seen any phase 3 trials on Covaxin, and I haven't seen them ask for FDA approval. Where? Covavax has started asking in July and they keep getting delayed. So I think they're going to come at some point, but they're a little bit behind Novavax but they have great safety profile and high effectiveness in the 90s. But Novavax is the highest, most effective and also long lasting. I know of an early trial that was started almost a year ago now and still those people in the trial have robust immunity against all variants almost a year after. So again and the vaccinity is a peptide based vaccine and the nice thing that they claim in their vaccine technology is that they as mutations come out they can quickly manipulate the peptides and amino acid sequencing and make it adaptive. But it's interesting but again it's a little bit behind novavax. And so for me Novavax looks like the one that we'll be seeing at some point hopefully. And so that's why I'm kind of also you know, recommending that one for myself and my family.

Yeah, I know, I know. Vaccinity. I'm not sure how many people vaccinity has been tested on thus far but I think covaxin they had like what, like 7 million different patients that have been dosed at least to the date that we're talking right now with like adverse events that were no greater than a placebo group and you know, pretty easy vaccine to transport and to store. And I think it's made it through phase three clinical trials if I'm not mistaken in India it could be.

I haven't seen as much push for approval for that vaccine as I have novavax. But if it does make its way before novavax, I would probably seriously consider that one as well for all the same reasons.

Yeah, like if I had to get vaccinated right now and I wouldn't be doing so because I'm convinced that it's necessary for my own health. But, but you know, let's say that it allowed, you know, people around me like the elderly or the immunocompromised to be more safe. It allowed for, you know, some of the travel and societal implications to become a little bit easier. I wouldi would probably a do a lot of kind of like thethe plant based remedies, the pre screening and then also some of like thethe peptide and the medical modalities that I talked about with Dr. Matt Cook for managing side effects and I would probably get Novavax. I mean that's kinda where I'm at right now. I don't, I don't believe there's anywhere in the US you could get it right now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

No, I don't think that there is any. But you have to understand Ben. For me, first of all, I'm 62. I've had one trip to the doctor in my life to have my tonsils taken out at four, which again was standard of care back then is a prophylactic so you don't get tonsillitis. And now obviously they stopped doing that. And again, this is the kind of mindset that we're, that we're dealing with when it comes to safety and what's always right to do. But I've never had. I went my whole life with being an herbalist and relying on herbal medicine and herbs to maximize my health. And again, I've been in the field. I've been a clinician for close to 35 years. I've been in the field since about 1976 where I ran. Worked in a natural food store in Stamford, Connecticut. So I'm in a little bit different position that a lot of people still have somewhat of a reliance or a tendency. Well, I better take the antibiotic just in case. Although I know these herbs are good for me it's the other way around. It's like I have such faith in herbs and what they can do and see it on a daily basis that I'm in a little bit different place when it comes to how we want to. Not to say that there isn't a great place for pharmaceutical medicine and conventional medicine. It's a beautiful toolbox when used correctly. And it really is additive often to everything else. But in this case, I think to be honest with you, herbal medicine is amazingly helpful when it comes to viruses. And I think it's a shame that we're as a country just ignoring the research over and over and over again, pretending like it doesn't exist at all and showing no interest in it whatsoever. And then I was going to say propolis and course. Oh, I know what I was going to say that the. When you asked me before about people getting vaccinated and supportive. So I tend to. You mentioned quercetin. So I want to say quercetin is an amazing isolated compound from food and plants that has a great immune modulatory effect and particularly reduces some of the potential mast cell related conditions both with vaccines and with COVID by you know, some of that eosinophil related issues like mast cells and that kind of inflammatory almost over immune response, whether it be rashes. I had one, one person that I work with who took the vaccine and they got like a rosacea rash all over their face and that had to be dealt with. So quercetin I think is a very good foundational formula, zinc, vitamin D. And then when people do get go in to get their vaccine, I'll often do that. That kind of flu ish kind of remedy flew away for a couple of days. And then generally adaptogens and tonic herbs overall I give as a general what I call root system. So when I think in terms of health, a lot of with the concept of adaptogens and root system medicine is to normalize, be nonspecific and non toxic and build robustness, autoregulation and auto organization. So you know, to the body be better at what it naturally does. That's what we do. We're really support to that.

Yeah, yeah. And what' swhat's kind of, I guess concerning would be, you know, the fact that despite a lot of these herbal drugs being something that can support allopathic medicine and vaccinations and the like or be used as standalone remedies, you know, the Lancet had that article last year, you know, about, about caution around herbal drugs used to treat COVID 19, you know, and of course the, the author argued that thousands of years of usage and faith cannot be taken as evidence for efficacy of traditional herbs. But you know, at the same time, if it's been safely and successfully used for hundreds or thousands of years and tested on literally billions of people and written about in historical medical textbooks, like, we should at least pay a little bit of attention to it and you know, even open ourselves up to the idea of using ourselves as case studies or at least working with someone like you who knows how to use these herbs responsibly. Because yeah, just like a medication, St. John's Wort or whatever, you overuse that you can get serotonin syndrome. But at the same time we should not completely dismiss these in an era of like extremist, rational, logical scientism that basically says, oh, if it can't be isolated and put into a double blind clinical research study, we should just basically go nowhere near it. I think that any of these things should be approached with an open mind. I think there's a great deal of scientific bias right now against herbal medicine, particularly when it relates to Covid. And that's why I wanted to get you on the show and at least share with people some of the options that are out there. Not as a way of saying that you shouldn't get a vaccine. And as I think you and I have noted, we're very open minded, especially when something that is safe enough for us to be comfortable about comes out but you know, also consider the fact that just like if you break your leg, you want to get it set, you want to go to the hospital, and you might even need some antibiotics and you might need somesome other allopathic medicine remedies. You know, that's not to say that a little bit of sunshine and grounding and earthing and maybe a comfrey poultice and, you know, stepping up your mineral intake, et cetera, might not also be helpful. Right. There's no reason we can't do both.

Exactly. You know, you mentioned like all the historical usage and. And if you could see in back of me, you'll see hundreds and hundreds of textbooks that I have on herbal medicine that validate the historical usage both, not just folk medicine, but systems of medicine that have written materia medicas on plants. Both, of course we know of traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine, but people don't realize that our own country had great systems of medicine, eclectic medicine and physiomedicalism and Thompsonianism that were thriving 100 years ago, even in this country. And they wrote great medical textbooks. But then if you combine them with now what we do have enough research on these plants when it comes to their potential and possible benefits. When we look at them as they relate to Covid, we should really be taking this more seriously because there are now clinical trials on herbal medicine. A lot are in a setting of. In supportive, around conventional treatments, but not entirely just that. And then we have certainly a lot of animal research as well to support the usage. So when you combine historical usage with the modern scientific research we have, you know, it's clear that again, look at risk to benefit ratio. What is the risk of some of these, of using some of these things? Very, very tiny. If used in a sensible way, what is the potential benefit? And so again, we have where there is potential benefit, we certainly can't say anything is a quote unquote treatment or cure for Covid, but we can at least say there is potential benefit from utilizing these substances as a way to support our innate healing ability. And again, it's sad that we're completely. And I probably accumulate more data than anybody in the world when it comes. Every single plant that I use, Ben, I write a personal monograph on. Some of them have as many as 500 citations to just on that one plant. And I probably have 400 plants that I have written monographs on that I add to constantly same with nutrients. So I have a massive library of data and scientific papers. And so for me it's easy if you say, donnie, send me the latest on cumulative data you have on vitamin D and Covid. I can send it like a snap of a finger, like an email. So it's one thing to say things, it's another thing to actually compile the data and let people just review it for themselves and just see this is what we have. And so when people say science, here's what you have. And then when you often look for someone to say something else, like you mentioned St. John's Wort. And I don't know anyone that's ever had serotonin syndrome from St. John's Wort. But certainly anything can be abused in a dosage way. I mean, even water can be. It's called drowning. And, and Ben Franklin said a place for everything, everything in its place. And so I'm not saying you can't abuse using herbal medicine. But St. John's wort is much maligned often for what we call the classic drug to herb interaction. Not to take it with drugs, but a lot of it isn't necessarily truthful. What happens, Ben, is that you say, well, this herb up regulates this particular hepatic enzyme pathway. So say 3A4. The most relative pathway of how our body detoxifies various drugs. And so pharmacogenetics is that we're all born differently and that enzyme works differently in each of us and that everything in life affects how well we might detoxify. But for whatever reason, the bias of herbs is that if they see anything, even an in vitro paper that says St. John's Wort up regulates this enzyme or other herbs do, therefore right away, that's a validation not to combine an herb drug interaction, which is always talked about as being negative. When all I do is do that. And it's often way positive. Herbs and drugs are actually really good together, to be honest with you. But they take. And so then you go one step further. So St. John's Wort, at a certain dosage they standardize extract 900 to 1600 milligrams, which again, I'm more of a combining kind of herbalist. I don't rely on single plants. I do medley of plants. Just like a great diet diversity is what's really great when it comes to plant medicines as well. But if you take St. John's Wort, say with the classic examples IREA, TECAN or CPT11, a common chemotherapeutic drug, it definitely has the potential to increase the clearance of that drug. So in other words, the drug will clear out of your body faster, your blood levels will go down. But every woman says, well right away you can see that's don't take St. John's Wort. And there needs to be caution, perhaps, but when you look deeper at the research, there's not a single single study, not one study has shown that St. John's Wort reduces the tumericidal effect of Irea tecan. So when they took St. John's Wort it cleared out of the system faster, but it didn't reduce the net effect. And so optimally you still got the same, or in some research better effects as an anti tumor agent would be, and yet less toxicity because your body was able to eliminate it quicker. So you can't make a theory, you can't go, you know, you can't look at pharmacokinetics and equate that to pharmacodynamics. Just like when you look at research, all research has to be looked at with the three Rs. The three Rs are rigor, repetition and robustness. You know, that's and every, you know, and that's why I said the Cochrane Review meta analysis, that's the tip of the pyramid. That's almost like God Almighty saying this is truthful. Because they'll review 20, 30, 50 different papers, analyze and throw half of them out because they weren't well done. And then they make a very conservative conclusion. And so when they review herbal medicine and Covid they gave favorable effects, yet nothing was said about it anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, well it's one of those things where I think there's always going to be a little bit of bias. But fortunately there's folks like you who are aggregating a lot of this data and helping us dig through it. And I would recommend that everyone consider visiting Donnie's website, which I'll link to in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Donnie where you can also leave your questions and your comments and your feedback about this entire issue and your own tips to share. You know, I think that personally, if I could throw one last thought in there and then we're probably gonna have to wrap up. You know, I suspect that like a well researched, well designed vaccine combined with a good lifestyle, a lot of these herbal remedies and nutrition adjustments that Donnie writes about and that I've talked about in the past is something that I think could result in even higher levels of immunity than say natural immunity potentially. And I also think that with a lot of these variants coming out Delta and lambda and MU etc. That we do have to consider relying upon more than just getting the shot and walking away and having our hot dog and coke and sitting inside all day under Wi Fi if we really want to make sure that we as a herd, so to speak, are able to stay robust enough to develop some amount of immunity to these emerging variants. And so that's a whole different landscape. Delta and lambda and MU, etc. But I just have a hunch, and the more people I interview, the more I think that the natural immunity approach is good. When a good vaccine comes out, it's probably going to be even better than just natural immunity. You throw in all these other things that Donnie and I were talking about and we don't need to live in a spirit of fear. And furthermore, regardless of someone's stance on this, if you're a full on dyed in the wool, get the Pfizer and Moderna, you know, no questions asked, get the booster shot. Or you're one of those people who feels that there's somebody sitting in a giant glass skyscraper somewhere, rubbing their hands together like Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons, planning our entire demise in a great global reset. Regardless of which category you fall into, I need to remind everyone, approach your discussions about this topic, approach your arguments about this topic, approach your expression of your thoughts about this topic in a spirit of full peace and love and joy and forgiveness and the recognition and acknowledgement that we're all human beings on this planet, we are not arch enemies of one another and these are simply ideas that we are sharing with one another. Yes, with high stakes, yes, with even death at stake. But please, please, please be kind and be open minded as you engage in this discussion with others, whether it's on my platform or elsewhere. And it's simply going to make everything that much more magical and positive and joyful when we're talking about something that, yes, is concerning. But why do we need to introduce even more fear or scapegoating into the discussion? So please approach all of this with a spirit of peace and love and joy and forgiveness. And Donnie, before I let you go, can I ask you a favor?

Yes.

Okay. You have this album, Heaven Awaits on Spotify. Would you be game if I were to hook my audio producer up with your favorite track on that album for me to play people out with a little bit of music by Donnie Yance?

Oh, of course.

What's your favorite song on your new album? Heaven Awaits? Is it Heaven Awaits? Probably.

That's my most meditative song on there, but that would be a hard call. I mean, I really. I really like all of them. So you can just pick it, whatever one, and it's gonna be fine by me.

All right, I'm gonna listen to your. Because I like to. I like to listen to a lot of, like, uplifting spiritual stuff in the mornings as I'm stretching and having my coffee and stuff. So I'll listen to your album tomorrow morning, and I'll pick a good song to play people out with. But in the meantime, Donnie, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.

It was really wonderful. Hopefully we can do it again. And God bless you. And your message is so beautiful and so right on. And just having people having more kindness and more compassion, more understanding, as St. Francis learn to understand rather than be understood is a really important part. And we're all in this together. The motto of Madiri medicine is together we heal. So. So it's a very unified message.

I love it. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Donnie Yance signing out from BenGreenfulFitness.com Donnie, that's D O N N I E. Have an amazing week. And here we go with the.

Sa.

Sa.

Sat.