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Rachel (00:00.373)
Ha!

Ahmad (00:01.258)
Yeah, so I was saying just before I pressed record button, I didn’t appreciate the studio would be this cold. So I’ve turned the heater on. Oh yeah, that feels nice. Oh God, I wish I could sit on it. And the problem is, because I do cold baths, I run quite cold for most of the day. It takes a lot to heat up. And as you know, because we were talking about this last week, I’ve given up coffee. So normally that would kind of warm me up. I don’t have that anymore. So now…

Rachel (00:10.766)
Hahaha

Rachel (00:29.81)
Yeah. Oh no.

Ahmad (00:30.87)
I’m a bit shivery. I’m a bit shivery.

Rachel (00:34.93)
Oh, I was just gonna say, I’m really getting into the cold therapy now as well. So that’s cool. Yes. Yeah. I’ve got one of those, um, I bought one of those like fairly inexpensive, just plunge things, so it sits in our backyard. And so I’m sure the neighbors all think I’m a bit strange when they look out and I’m there in my swimming costume at, I don’t know, seven in the morning, getting into this strange looking bucket thing that you just sit in for a while.

Ahmad (00:39.052)
Really?

Ahmad (00:42.55)
What are you doing?

Rachel (01:04.162)
So yeah, that’s what I’m doing.

Ahmad (01:05.586)
I love it. And because you’re up in Edinburgh, it’s bloody freezing all year round. I mean, what temperature is the water now?

Rachel (01:13.114)
Oh, I haven’t actually checked, but this morning I did chicken out and I thought I’ll do it later on. I’m not doing it first thing because I think I did it yesterday morning and it was, I don’t know, it was about five, six degrees outside, I think. So yeah, it’s going to become more challenging. Oh, gosh, I did not too long. So maybe just about six, eight weeks, something like that.

Ahmad (01:26.646)
And how long do you do it for?

Yeah.

Ahmad (01:37.034)
No, no, as in like, how long are you actually in the bucket thing for?

Rachel (01:41.454)
Oh, I see. Oh, it depends. It depends how cold it is. But I think the longest I’ve done is about 20 minutes. So I’m working it out. Oh. Oh, really?

Ahmad (01:52.265)
Whoa. 20.

That’s a long time! I wish I had 20 minutes. Yeah.

Rachel (02:00.711)
Not at seven degrees. Oh well. Yeah, that can be a challenge.

Ahmad (02:06.57)
Yeah, so I do about five minutes, I do about five minutes. But when the temperature gets down, just the tap water coming out, but it’s cold. I mean, it’s normally about under 10 degrees, like nine. In the summer, I add ice, but like now, now I think it’s about nine, 10 degrees. And the lowest it’s got is about three degrees in winter and that.

Rachel (02:12.359)
Okay, and is that ice?

Rachel (02:28.undefined)
Okay.

Ahmad (02:32.902)
I could only do for about three minutes, two, three minutes. Normally I’m in for five minutes quite comfortably, but I was like, yeah, it’s getting like rainbows in my fingers and everything. I need to get out.

Rachel (02:46.454)
Yeah, yeah, my hands were a bit stiff yesterday, I didn’t notice that. So yeah, considerably colder.

Ahmad (02:50.23)
So why are you… Yeah, why are you doing it?

Rachel (02:55.91)
Oh gosh, I’m getting really interested in all this quantum health stuff. And I’m already fascinated as it is with mitochondria and just mitochondrial health. So there’s just so many benefits to cold therapy. And I think particularly as a psychiatrist in relation to stress management and anxiety management, and also if you’re looking for a bit of a dopamine hit, it can be really, really helpful. So I tend to talk about it now with patients, particularly if they have depression.

Um, cause like, cause I had a lady recently and she was saying that she usually eats a healthy diet, but, um, in the context of being depressed, she was just snacking on chocolate biscuits and coffee and she was obviously doing things to try to get a dopamine hit because of depression being a bit of a dopamine deficient state. So, so yeah, I’m kind of partly exploring for myself, but also for, for everybody else too.

Ahmad (03:50.786)
Do you do anything in particular as a little routine? So for me, I have a really hot shower and then I go straight into the cold bath and everyone knows don’t disturb daddy. Because the problem is in my house with little kids, they’ll come in, they’ll come in just, where’s daddy? Daddy, daddy never gets a time out on his own. So it’s like, where’s daddy? And we don’t lock the doors, so they come in and like, daddy, what’s going on? I’m like, no, it’s more cold bath time. So they kind of know that. So.

Rachel (04:02.154)
No.

Ahmad (04:20.254)
I get left alone and I play some music and it’s the same thing again and again.

Rachel (04:29.451)
Uh-huh. So what I’ve actually been doing, and I’m not saying this to suck up at all, but yesterday morning, I think it was, I was sitting listening to one of your latest podcasts and it was just being broadcast on Light Speaker for my mobile. And I think it was about half six in the morning. So when I was already in there, I was thinking, oh, I hope it’s not going to wake the neighbors up. But like some people, if they’re out early in the gardens, they’re going to get a dose of reality about what’s going on these days.

Ahmad (04:56.326)
I love it. Okay, okay. We all have our little things. That’s great. So yeah, I always say to my patients as well, no one comes out of a cold bath unhappy. Everything just seems wonderful when you come out.

Rachel (04:58.498)
Ha ha.

Rachel (05:09.782)
No.

Rachel (05:14.494)
Yeah, I mean, I’ve had, I’ve used it later in the day after a really stressful day. And you know, when you get a bit of a stress headache or things have just really built up over the course of a day and I always feel like a new person after I come out, you know, it would be my one go to, to manage those kind of issues. Definitely.

Ahmad (05:33.486)
I might try that. So I’ve always just done it in the morning. But I think you’re right. And I found like, for example, just dealing with my three kids, you know, arguing or taking ages to get ready. You know, it’s funny, I get up really early, I start making breakfast, make pack lunch, do everything for them first. You know, the little one clean his bottom, whatever. And, you know, I send the kids up, right, get ready. I’m looking at the clock, we’ve got plenty of time, 55 minutes.

Rachel (05:38.125)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (06:01.514)
I go up like 15 minutes before we were meant to leave. And they were just sitting around naked playing or whatever with their doll. I’m like, what’s going on? Ah! But I find if I do a cold bath, I’m just a bit more Zen-like. I’m like a Buddha. I’m like, everyone, come on, we’re leaving now. You have to get ready. There’s no ah. So I definitely find it helps. It just keeps you calmer. And it works for most of the day for me.

Rachel (06:08.046)
Thank you.

Ahmad (06:28.886)
But if June later on the day I am feeling a bit stressed or anything, I think I will definitely try. I haven’t tried it like that. I think this is important what we’re talking about, Rachel, because I don’t think anyone is immune to, you know, anxiety and feeling low or down. You know, it can affect everyone no matter how resilient you are. I think the only people that doesn’t really affect are psychopaths cause they don’t give a shit about anything. You know, they’re just like,

Rachel (06:30.157)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (06:59.88)
Yeah, they only get anxious when their own personal position has been threatened. Isn’t that right? Yeah, you’re right.

Ahmad (07:05.899)
Mm. Yeah. But for everyone else, we-

Rachel (07:13.046)
Yeah, yeah, it can affect everybody. Like no exception. I would agree. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, instead of hot showers, I’ve been really getting into sauna routines as well. So that’s the other, the other side of it. So, uh, yeah, I were just recently, I’ve just got like a mobile sauna type at home thing, nothing fancy and built in, although that would be the ultimate dream, but, uh, yeah, I’ve just been, just been trying to up my…

Ahmad (07:18.566)
No exception.

Rachel (07:41.69)
detoxification game more recently. So that’s really nice to do, combine sauna with cold therapy.

Ahmad (07:49.33)
I love sauna. There’s nowhere in our house that we could put a sauna. We live in a tiny cottage and I don’t have any money for that. What the hell is a mobile, what is a mobile sauna? For me, a mobile sauna would be like layering up and sitting in a, in a sleeping bag with a whole water bottle.

Rachel (08:00.91)
So you guys.

Rachel (08:09.218)
Well, yeah, you do get sleeping bag saunas, although I’ve tried one of those and it just didn’t get hot enough for me. So it’s just essentially a portable. So I don’t know if mobile was maybe mobile wasn’t the right word. But yeah, just a portable sauna thing that you can pack away. That gets pretty hot. It gets a good sweat going. So, yeah, there’s lots of them out there in the market.

Ahmad (08:16.371)
Okay?

Ahmad (08:19.67)
Boom.

Ahmad (08:30.846)
Cool. I might look into that. I did not know that. I did not know that. So listen, tell me, Rachel Brown, Dr. Rachel Brown, consultant psychiatrist. You know, you’re quite well known. Everybody knows about you. It’s funny. I’m chatting to people and they’re like, oh, yeah, I’m going to be having a podcast with Dr. Rachel Brown. Oh, I know her. She’s a carnivore shrink. I’m like, yeah, follow her. You’re quite popular.

Rachel (08:37.922)
Oh.

Rachel (08:46.304)
Really?

Rachel (08:52.59)
Oh, dear. That’s good to hear. I’m not sure I was aware of that, but yeah, that’s nice to hear. I sometimes feel like the message isn’t getting out.

Ahmad (09:02.367)
No, seriously.

So no, it’s definitely getting out. So I wanted to get the guy who co-set up Hunter and Gather. They do all these seed oil free whatever condiments. We have them all, all the olive oils, avocado oils, mayonnaise, it’s delicious. And I mentioned to him, oh yeah, I know Dr. Rachel Brand, she’s gonna be coming to my podcast. And he was like, oh, Carnival Shrink, I know her. But there you go.

Rachel (09:15.986)
Oh yes.

Rachel (09:22.186)
Yeah, they’re awesome. Amazing. Yeah.

Ahmad (09:36.03)
And everyone like

Rachel (09:36.351)
Actually, yeah, I think that’s… Yeah, he contacted me not all that long ago, just on social media, and was just being encouraging about the messages and putting out there, which was nice. But when I was keto years ago, I don’t know how much of the stuff I must have bought there in terms of their avocado mayo, but it’s really good stuff, really good stuff to use. And so that’s funny.

Ahmad (10:02.402)
So now that you’re carnivore, carnivore shrink, does that mean you don’t have things like olive oil and avocado oil?

Rachel (10:13.462)
Um, yeah, I don’t tend to include that stuff in my diet, although I would say I’m not, I’m not completely dogmatic. So I wouldn’t be averse to trying something now and then if somebody put it in front of me, but it’s just that I’m not really generally using that stuff day to day in my own diet. Um, so, and it’s the same with, um, you know, certain low carb fruits or, um, there was someone in your podcast the other day, I’ve forgotten their name, but I love medicinal mushrooms.

So I definitely think plants have their role and I often think of plants as medicine. So I’m not averse to including things as need be. But yeah, the mainstay of my diet is around animal foods.

Ahmad (10:56.758)
Yeah. So I’m, I’m like you then I’m very, I’m not complete absolute on this or that, but having spoken to like Barbara Wilkinson who’s into herbal medicine, the herbal society, you really appreciate the role that plants play in medicine through the ages, through millennia and, and the drugs and everything. And it’s, and just to say all plants are bad and evil. This is like, no, there’s like, there’s good, cause I know like people like

Rachel (11:18.24)
Oh yeah.

Ahmad (11:25.73)
Paul Saladino and other Anthony Chaffee talks about all the defense chemicals and toxins, but there’s definitely a role for plants in our diet and in our health. But when it comes to like, what is our evolutionary diet, I think it really is meat-based. So I’m heavy on that. So for my…

Rachel (11:25.803)
No.

Rachel (11:39.592)
Oh, for sure.

Rachel (11:50.538)
Yeah, agreed. And I was just going to say, I think of plants as the original medicine, weren’t they, before Rockefellers and the sort of modern medical system with all of its corruption. But I’ll try not to talk too much about that. But you know the drill.

Ahmad (11:53.154)
Carry on.

Ahmad (12:12.29)
We should talk a little bit about it. So how does it feel being a mainstream consultant psychiatrist, practicing, you know, in the NHS? Do you ever think we over medicalize and all these protocols and guidelines are misplaced?

Rachel (12:15.554)
Okay.

Rachel (12:31.43)
Oh, for sure. Yeah, being honest, it feels quite uncomfortable, especially with having studied functional medicine and just always having had an inclination to have a preference for natural treatments and holistic health and trying to address root cause of illness. I really don’t think that modern medicine does that well at all. And there are many, many examples.

in just allopathic medicine where we’re not really addressing the underlying cause of illness whatsoever. And I don’t know about how you feel about your training, but I very much feel as though I was just taught pattern recognition and to make diagnoses, to then go on to prescribe pharmaceuticals. And modern medicine, in my view, is a bit of an echo chamber. So most mainstream colleagues.

their first thoughts when we’re, like say we go to a lecture and we’re discovering a new underlying potential cause for certain mental disorders. Some of the first thoughts of people and that they go to is, oh, maybe pharma will make a new drug for this or maybe pharma will come out with a different drug for that. And I think we really under-emphasize lifestyle interventions and just getting the basics down properly. So yeah, so uncomfortable and…

The NHS is being dismantled in front of our eyes. That’s another aspect of being in the NHS that makes it a stressful and difficult place to be.

Ahmad (14:08.694)
Yeah, 100%. So let’s focus on that latter topic. I think too many people, again, there’s too many sacred cows. They have this idea that this NHS is this wonderful treasure, national treasure, and it’s owned by the state, by the people, and it’s free. And it’s none of those. It’s not freeing. We pay a lot of money for it. A lot of it’s actually privatized. Very little of it is national state assets anymore.

Rachel (14:29.112)
No.

Rachel (14:35.214)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (14:37.994)
much of it’s PFI or contracted out to private organizations. And it’s been done and run in such a way that’s broken the back of the morale of the frontline doctors and nurses. And it’s crippled their critical thinking and these central policies and guidelines coming down are essentially dictates that strip away that individualized patient doctor care. That’s what the way I see it. Um, so let’s not.

Rachel (15:06.724)
Yeah, I don’t disagree.

Ahmad (15:10.382)
It’s sad, isn’t it?

Rachel (15:10.838)
I mean, I, so I, oh yeah, it’s incredibly sad. And well, I’ve been a consultant since 2011 in the NHS, but then obviously been sort of graduated 2003, working in psychiatry since 2004. And I cannot recall a time that was any worse than how things are now in terms of having enough resource and staff and staff morale. And yeah, there’s so many different.

reasons as to why that’s the case but I think it all factors into what we’re seeing happening in front of our eyes.

Ahmad (15:46.402)
Yeah. And about root cause, yeah, there are very few things that we were taught about root cause. I think one of the things that really attracted me about orthopedic surgery was, I kind of saw the root cause, the bus drove into the bicycle rider and fell off and then he broke his femur. You know, it was kind of obvious what the cause was, the root cause, you know, there was always some root cause, some trauma or something.

Rachel (16:04.822)
Thank you.

Ahmad (16:13.586)
And I can, I really, I really just love that. Like I could never do rheumatology because like what causes shogun disease, what causes rheumatology, this rheumatological problem, this rheumatoid arthritis, what causes psoriatic arthritis, what causes it? And no one has an answer, but everyone has the treatment, which is steroids or, you know, methotrexate or some other kind of disease modifying agent. No one had like any idea why it happened. And a lot of the medical kind of conditions.

Rachel (16:33.222)
Oh.

Ahmad (16:43.37)
And diseases were like that. And that really drove me mad. I was like, but there must be something driving it. So that’s why I kind of gravitated towards trauma because I just love the fact it was this obvious, you know, this is a problem and this is, you know, the solutions that we can offer. And when it comes to psychiatry, I’ve got family members who are psychiatrists and they can never tell me like why things happen, like why do people get schizophrenia, why do they get depression? It was just, you don’t know, it’s chemical imbalances.

Rachel (17:14.283)
Yeah

Ahmad (17:15.428)
What is going on there? Apart from the fact that their problem is that they’re not taking the latest antidepressant or anxiolytic, what is actually really causing their problem?

Rachel (17:24.139)
I’m sorry.

Rachel (17:28.542)
Okay, for a start, it’s not a chemical imbalance. So that absolutely drives me insane that phrase that is just repeated like dogma over and over and over again. I am used to people just saying, oh, it’s really complex when it comes to mental health. And it’s not untrue, but it’s a bit of a get out excuse really, when people say that to people who are struggling.

Gosh, there are things we don’t know, but I think there’s a lot more that we do know now. And so much of it comes back to all of our bodily systems that all work together. So one of my pet hates in modern medicine is just the different silos that we’re all put into in allopathic medicine. So a neurologist deals with people who have seizures and a psychiatrist deals with people who feel sad. But at the end of the day, they’re both dealing with underlying dysfunctions of the brain.

And there are so many connections in the body. So like from a functional medicine perspective, my view is that everything comes back to mitochondrial health, but also gut health. And you mentioned of rheumatoid arthritis and all this sort of rheumatology issues, which are essentially all autoimmune disorders. Again, all of this comes back to gut health.

Ahmad (18:22.455)
Mmm.

Rachel (18:46.038)
as well. And I think we know a lot more these days about gut health with all the microbiome research that’s been going on. But certainly there’s lots that we still don’t know. But what we can say is that there are clear connections between the guts and the brain. So the vagus nerve connects them, there’s signaling that goes back and forth. And in terms of neurological signaling that happens between the brain and the gut and vice versa, but also immune mediators.

other hormonal cascades, there are other ways that the gut and the brain communicate to each other. And this gets into the realm of food, because what we put into our guts comes in direct contact with our gut cell wall, but all of the microbes that reside in our microbiome, and essentially, I think the microbes are running the show. So it’s probably not us that it’s really running things and

If we put foods in there such as gluten, for example, it can give you leaky guts. And if you have leaky gut, you get like LPS endotoxemia. So bacterial products that cross over the gut wall into the systemic bloodstream and you get an immune response. And this provokes inflammation and it can provoke inflammation in the brain via altering the permeability of your blood brain barrier. And then microbes and toxins can pass over into the brain and cause inflammation there.

And then that’s where you get tipped off neurotransmitter cascades, so different pathways that might then become dysfunctional or out of balance. And then we know that metabolic health is a huge thing because we also know that sugar is inflammatory and it can also contribute to dysfunction in different neurotransmitter pathways, such as ending up with far too much glutamate, which is…

excitatory, so that can make people feel agitated or cognitively knocked off, and then not having enough GABA, which is the relaxation neurotransmitter. So there are just so many different mechanisms, and I think a lot of the research these days is showing that particularly in Alzheimer’s disease, 80% of people have insulin resistance. So they’ve lived with chronically high levels of insulin for many years.

Rachel (20:59.746)
without knowing it, we don’t do the right tests in the NHS. So if you check a random fasting glucose or an HbA1c level, that’s only gonna really show if your blood glucose has started to rise, but you can be in a very high insulin state and unless you’re checking your fasting insulin level, you wouldn’t know that you have a problem with insulin levels until you develop Frank type two diabetes, which would be end stage insulin resistance. And so yeah, there’s just so many different connections.

Ahmad (21:18.123)
Mmm.

Ahmad (21:29.86)
is

Rachel (21:30.07)
And yeah, even, even like stress can give you leaky guts. So we know from animal studies that even just a psychological stressor directly impacts on the gut. And this just shows us communication that happens between the gut and the brain. That’s fascinating.

Ahmad (21:46.842)
It’s like a spider’s web. Everything is linked. It’s at some, like you said, in some respects, it’s kind of simple but complicated at the same time. It’s simple when you start thinking holistically. It’s simple when you start thinking there’s multiple factors at play and it’s not unknown, cause unknown. You know.

Rachel (21:51.947)
I’ll see you later.

Rachel (22:08.834)
Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, that’s something, gosh, I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed being in mainstream psychiatry in terms of when we diagnose people with functional disorders, which basically means we don’t know what the cause is. And there are theories about it being a sort of somatic physical representation of repressed emotions or whatever sort of gobbledygook people want to sort of interpret that as, but.

I think there’s a lot of gaslighting that goes on in medicine and people, people not being believed or, or doctors not necessarily understanding what the root cause is. So then if they can’t pigeonhole you into a certain diagnosis and they just, it then gets labeled as default as being a functional disorder. When actually, and I agree with you, I think when you start to look at things holistically, the body’s incredibly complex, but actually the solutions to take care of all health issues are fairly simple. And,

multitasking and can take care of many different symptoms of all different sort of bodily system dysfunctions. So yeah, so things like getting your diet right and your fasting windows and your cold therapy and your detoxification regimes. There’s just so many simple things that people can do that can really tackle a lot of the underlying causes of different illnesses, if not all of them.

Ahmad (23:33.758)
Yeah. So I’m going to do a little recap. So the recap is the guts really important. So I think I’ve heard that there’s more nerves around the gut than anywhere else in the body apart from the brain and central nervous system. So that’s quite a lot of nerves hanging around in the neighborhood. And then you have a lot of neurotransmitters actually made in the gut 50%, 70%, I think for serotonin and dopamine. And then

Rachel (23:49.142)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (23:57.518)
Oh yeah.

Ahmad (24:00.862)
So essentially your gut biome and your guts really important. And, and what your gut biome is, is really dependent on what you eat. So whatever you feed your gut, that will reflect your gut biome and the healthier and more varied your gut biome, the healthier and more varied, you know, your gut will be in your immune system and your happy hormones. And then, you know, you’re more resilient that way. Now let’s go, let’s go back a bit, right? What about things like.

Rachel (24:25.015)
Yeah.

Ahmad (24:29.838)
past trauma and ancestral trauma. Say your dad was an alcoholic and your mom was stressed and then during the pregnancy, you know, you’re going through all of that and then you’re born. Will you suffer from some of that anxiety and stress that your parents had? Is that past food, epigenetics or anything like that? Does that affect an influence?

Rachel (24:52.786)
Oh, yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure it can be and also sort of adverse childhood experiences. And we know your body sets up a different stress response. So often people end up having a more exaggerated stress response in the body. So that’s all to do with your HPA axis, axis and sort of cortisol responses and stress hormones. So it’s difficult, I think.

I’m just trying to reflect, I think in all the years I’ve been practicing mainstream psychiatry, sometimes that message gets lost or isn’t even known about. So people just have more of a simplistic overview. So they equate an adverse childhood experience with somebody not managing stress as effectively as maybe the next person would. But I think when you step back and take more of a holistic perspective, we can actually dial down into why that might be. And it’s not just all in somebody’s head. And it’s not just that they…

It’s not as simple necessarily as just learning better coping strategies. It can be actually about putting lifestyle measures in to lower your stress hormones and thinking about targeting things at that level.

Ahmad (26:04.234)
Yeah. I, I think there is, I definitely kind of subscribed to some kind of like generational trauma. I’ve seen it so many times, patients and like, and there’s an example, I know someone who, whose grandfather had a really tough time in the second world war. POW saw horrific things, came back was never the same. And then that, that parent

Rachel (26:14.062)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (26:33.89)
then grew up in a very, you know, cold, kind of stressed environment. Cause you know, the dad was aloof and stressed out himself. Child was sent off to boarding school, didn’t like it, you know, had anxiety and stress there. And then by the time they have a child, the grandchild, they’re, they’re stressed. They’ve got anxiety and I just feel like it passes on and you kind of have to break the cycle and you can, I’m not saying.

that it’s there and it’s permanent, it’s fixed. I just feel like your environment can shape things and then make you more, like the tipping point can be, like the threshold is lower. So you then have to add in a lot of like resilient measures and coping strategies to make sure that you don’t get swamped over by depression or anxiety. I don’t know if it’s making any sense, what I’m saying.

Rachel (27:28.374)
No, I think that makes perfect sense. I don’t know that I’ve got anything more to add to that. I think you’ve said it perfectly. Yeah, yeah.

Ahmad (27:37.922)
So let’s talk about some of the common mental health problems because again, just as a clinician, I’ve kind of seen an epidemic explosion across all age groups. It doesn’t even target one particular group. It’s every aspect, every decade of the demographics. People suffering from anxiety is a big one. And then I think the next one is depression. I think anxiety for me is the

The biggest thing I see, people are very anxious. And then depression is a very close second. So.

What is driving that? And then how, I mean, that’s a big question, I know. And I’ve got theories, but I really wanna hear what you think. And then what would you say like for anxiety and depression, these two big ones, apart from popping a pill, what would you advise like listeners how to deal with that? Big questions, I know. Over to you.

Rachel (28:24.363)
Yeah, yeah.

Rachel (28:39.342)
Okay. Oh yeah, big question. So, thanks. So the first thing that comes to mind in terms of exploding anxiety and depression rates, I just, I, it’s been going on for a long time, but I suppose my brain automatically goes to the last three years and isolation. So the, the emotion of feeling isolated,

is one of the most toxic emotions ever, if not the most toxic emotion. And I think what’s happened in the last three years in terms of lockdowns and just the deliberate isolation of people that has had such a profound effect, I would say, on people’s mental health and well-being. But I don’t know. I don’t know how far reaching the implications of that are going to be. So obviously, we’ve come out of the other side of

the sort of nonsense of the last three years. But I still see people day in and day out who are still affected by everything that went on. People who’ve been too afraid to come out of their homes since the original lockdown. People obviously walking around still with material over their face, jumping away from people in supermarkets. I think there’s been a huge amount of fear and isolation and that’s very big for people.

and people have lost their businesses and had suicides and just everything else that you can think of in terms of what’s happened since 2020. So that’s one aspect. I think it’s difficult because social factors come into it and the breakdown of family units and just general support that people have. So I think there’s less community these days.

And again, that adds into the isolation theme. So that can be absolutely hugely destructive for people and their mental wellbeing and their mental health. And then you come more onto the modern environments. So our light exposures are all terrible as a whole these days. So we’re indoor living, surrounded by toxins, left, right and center in the environment. We’re being

Rachel (31:06.018)
We’re being exposed to toxins in just so many different ways. So whether it’s even when you’re outside in the environment, glyphosate and other fertilizers and pesticides that are being used and then the stuff that they’re spraying in the sky. And heavy metals that we’re exposed to in different medications. And then also pharmaceuticals that…

directly impact on mitochondrial function. So there’s all of those issues that are going on as well. I think we don’t detox very well. So that’s why the sauna routines are so important is to try and get some of this stuff out of us. Because when I think about the number of antibiotic courses I’ve had in my lifetime and the injections that I’ve had over the years in terms of having to go to medical school and Hep B and flu injections and all of those.

and all the aluminium that you’re exposed to and other heavy metal toxicities, then it’s just so important for people to trying to be detoxing from that sort of stuff. And then there’s our lifestyle choices. So not just light, but our food choices. So most people are living on just highly processed seed oil ridden processed food.

And it’s amazing really, when you think about human evolution and what we likely evolved on eating. So that was mostly meat, animal-based diet, and then the whole agenda and push for veganism these days and plant-based processed rubbish. And it’s interesting when you look back, because I don’t know about you, but I just feel like all of that processed junk is entirely normalized.

And it’s such a societal and cultural issue. It’s advertised left, right and center. Children are hooked on sugar, which is a drug from a very young age. And really people have very little chance because the government guidelines are fraudulent essentially. So going back to the 70s when they produced the food pyramids and the Harvard scientists were paid off by

Rachel (33:22.678)
people in the sugar industry to put carbs and grains and processed foods as the mainstay recommendations for people’s diets. People were bombarded with that message, left, right and center. And it’s just extremely difficult for anyone to know how to make the right choices, because I think we’ve been given the wrong message for decades.

Ahmad (33:46.001)
100%

Rachel (33:47.062)
I’m sure there’s other things as well, but…

Ahmad (33:49.59)
The fact that giving poison is now deemed, you know, a treat. Oh, let’s go down to this fast food joint for a treat. Like what? And some people will be like, poison is a very strong word. Yeah, it’s low dose. You know, it’s a low dose poison. You know, it’s still poison. It’s not good for you. It’s full of garbage and things that aren’t healthy for you. Why would you why would you why would you call that a treat?

Rachel (34:02.21)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (34:12.65)
Yeah. But they have

I mean, the wealth of the big food industry far surpasses that of the pharmaceutical industry even. And we know that they have people employed specifically to make the foods more addictive because there are certain people who’ve whistle blown on the industry and spoken about how it was their job to think of strategies to make the foods more addictive for people, you know, in terms of the ratios of sugar or carb and fat and, and to make food ultra palatable.

And that drives hyperphagia or overeating. And so there was a, I think there was a clear agenda to get people addicted to all of that. Yeah.

Ahmad (34:53.538)
For sure. For sure. 100%. It’s just like the agenda of advertising is just complete lies and deceit and it’s psychological manipulation. Advertising is just psychological manipulation to make you buy something you don’t need. And then, you know, the big food is exactly the same to make you eat food that’s not nutritious and not good for you and to consume it in vast quantities. And it really is worrying the trend that we’re seeing and we’re just becoming sick.

Rachel (35:02.199)
Oh yeah.

Rachel (35:18.551)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (35:23.342)
Just everywhere you look, people are sick. And the biggest challenge for me as a father is trying to educate my children. I have to tell them, like, you know, every single time there’s a birthday, and there’s many birthdays, you know, in a classroom, in a year, they all come out with these little sweets. And my kids now know to give me the sweet and I put it in the bin. But, you know, I have to keep reminding them, like, we’re doing this because this is full of garbage and I don’t want you to eat this garbage.

Rachel (35:44.11)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (35:47.702)
Ugh.

Ahmad (35:53.535)
And I think they’re getting it. I think they’re getting it.

Rachel (35:54.55)
Yeah, yeah, I mean…

Rachel (35:58.922)
Yeah, one of my biggest regrets was just kind of going along with things and not wanting to, so my son’s 11 now and feeling like I didn’t want him to be out of place and letting him eat all of that junk at people’s parties and so on when he was much younger. Although I have to say, I think they learn a lot by example. And it wasn’t that long ago, he said to me, Oh mum, I want to be keto. In fact, there was one day he said to me, he wanted to be carnivore.

But he hasn’t done that and that’s okay, that’s fine. He is pretty much keto though. And after quite a while, it was just out of the blue, I think seeing what myself and my husbandy at home, he just decided he wanted to do that as well. And I think it’s helped as he’s gotten a bit older because he’s had a bit more of an interest in how he looks and wanting to build muscle and physique and really into football and all the sportsmen out there that children tend to look up to. So somebody like Erling Holland, for example.

I’m not into football whatsoever, but I know about him because of his sort of carnivore type lifestyle and intermittent fasting and cold therapy and all the biohacking that he does. So I think there are some really positive influences out there. But yeah, I think children learn best by example. And in fact, I’ve made an appointment fairly soon to go into my son’s school because he’s meant to be going away with school for five days in November. And when we went to the information evening,

I was almost late for it. I was stood at the back and then the teacher was talking about the different days, what their itinerary, what they’d be doing and then where they would be going for lunches and so it was like this day they can pick a sandwich for lunch and then this day, next day, we’re going to McDonald’s and I stood there thinking, oh, I’m gonna have to speak to them because I’m not okay about sending him away to just live on cereal and processed junk when he doesn’t do that at home.

So that’ll be an interesting conversation coming up.

Ahmad (37:59.606)
Good luck.

Rachel (38:02.05)
Thank you. I need a… Ha ha ha. I need a…

Ahmad (38:04.302)
You know, going back a bit, going back a bit, you talked about the first thing you kicked off was isolation. That’s really funny you should say that. I am, I spoke to someone called Travis Christofferson. I need to release the podcast this week sometime. I’ve done too many podcasts. They’re all backed up. And it was amazing. It was about cancer and health. And he talked about the importance of human connection. And

Rachel (38:24.952)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (38:32.798)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ahmad (38:33.162)
I think that’s what it is. And it’s not just communities and friendships, it’s family. You know, you talked about the family being broken up. I really do believe that. And the family unit isn’t what it used to be. It used to be really tight. Husband and wife were team and kids were taken care of. But nowadays, I hate to say this, again, just my observation, I’d probably say 80% of couples are not really happy or

what I would consider healthy marriage or partnership. And the children are very disconnected. They’re taken care of by nannies. They’re put into after-school clubs or whatever. Parents don’t spend much time with them. There’s a lot of screen time. And husbands and wives are both working like crazy people. They’re stressed out at work. Everywhere work is stressful. Demands being placed on them is ridiculous.

Rachel (39:16.11)
Yeah, screen time.

Ahmad (39:30.85)
They come home all wired up, tight, tight. And you know, men wanna go into their cave and watch TV and sports. Women wanna talk to someone, but the guy doesn’t wanna listen because he wants to get into his cave. And so you’ve got people just living together. I know, it’s just, but you see what I mean? Like what I’m trying to say is everyone is wired up, but they’re not.

Rachel (39:40.718)
Thanks for watching!

Rachel (39:46.442)
I thought a great man in their case.

Ahmad (39:56.642)
connected. And so they might be living under the same roof, but the kids are on their iPads or their phones in their rooms, husband and wives aren’t really talking to each other. They’re just going for the motion and it’s sad. And that’s, that’s not healthy. That’s not normal. And I think it’s because of the, but it’s engineered. It’s the stress, the time demands that are being placed in everyone. No one has me time. No one has reflection time. No one has

Rachel (40:09.058)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (40:13.726)
No. Oh no, it’s all.

Rachel (40:22.754)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (40:24.206)
time to pause and think and hug and just be a family. Do you know what I mean? And I think that’s a big thing.

Rachel (40:31.466)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s all about disconnection. And I don’t know about you, but certainly, you know, I’m not I’m not averse to a hug. I’m probably not the huggiest person in the world. But certainly, certainly during 2020. And during the lockdowns, I do remember distinctly thinking, God, I just want to I just want to give some of my friends a hug and really missing that side of things. And

Yeah, it’s just been crazy times, crazy times. But yeah, I agree with you. I think it might be about the long game and just driving, wearing people down slowly but surely. And yeah, I don’t want to sound too negative, but yeah, dysfunctional family units and dysfunctional health service, that’s just what’s coming into my head.

Ahmad (41:26.774)
It is. Well, I’m very much into hugs. I think hugs is what all the freedom movement people do when they greet someone, a fellow friend, you know.

Rachel (41:31.124)
No.

Rachel (41:36.51)
See, I think I’m more into them now. Yeah.

Ahmad (41:39.774)
Yeah, I mean, when we meet face to face again, you’re getting a hug, lady. You’re not getting a handshake. Or a fist bump. Do you want a fist bump, elbow bump? No. Whatever. Nah.

Rachel (41:44.414)
Yeah, that’s fine. I said, you know, I hate handshakes. I just think handshakes are really cringy. But I don’t know what my problem with them is. But yeah, I’m not the biggest fan of handshakes. And it’s nothing to do with it. Yeah. Cool.

Ahmad (42:01.978)
Oh, talking about funny handshakes, okay. Yeah, talking about cringeworthy handshakes. I used to get a lot of weird handshakes. Like weird kind of limp thumb over my thumb, like a really weak, weird. And I’d be like, I would say to the patient, what kind of handshake is that? Come on, give me a proper manly handshake. Well, what is this? And they would look at me like, you know, aghast.

Rachel (42:13.899)
Oh. Oh no.

Ahmad (42:31.422)
It was only years later I discovered that’s the Masonic handshake. That’s a Freemason handshake.

Rachel (42:38.946)
Oh. I did not know that. Okay. I’m all ears. Oh wow.

Ahmad (42:42.106)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m telling you right now, it’s not it. It’s I don’t like it. It’s a very uncomfortable handshake. It’s like, what are you doing? Don’t do this to me. I’m not in this club. No, give me a proper handshake.

Rachel (42:58.374)
Oh, there’s nothing worse than that. I, do you know what’s coming into my head is years ago when I was training, we had psychotherapy supervision and there was this amazing psychotherapist who’s just, do you know when somebody is just a brilliant teacher and you learn so much from them? And I remember we were just little junior trainees still trying to find our way in the world of sort of psychiatry and psychotherapy. And one of us asked the question, or should you shake your patient’s hand when they come into the room? And then he put on this big…

demonstration to us about, and I think he asked us to all shake his hands and then he was saying, just making a big display of, was that information that you really wanted or needed and saying about how intimate that can be in that sort of situation. And anyway, it’s just, it’s amazing what you can pick up on from a handshake, but the really weak handshakes, yeah, it almost sends shivers down my spine.

Maybe right, Lisa, that’s what you just said.

Ahmad (44:00.186)
Yeah, it would leave me very uncomfortable. Yeah. Anyway, moving on, moving on. So what made you move towards a carnivore diet? I take it you weren’t born carnivore. Like when did it happen? When did it happen and what motivated you?

Rachel (44:16.291)
Oh no, I was…

Rachel (44:21.662)
Okay, so July 2019 is when it happened. I’d been properly keto for two or three years before that. I forget now exact timescales, but I kind of been into low carb stuff for 20 odd years. Although I’d been in and out of it because I’ve got a raging sugar addiction, but didn’t really fully understand that until I went carnivore. And I decided to try carnivore just purely out of curiosity. So…

Ahmad (44:25.28)
Okay.

Rachel (44:51.186)
I didn’t feel like I had any major health issues at the time, but it was a keto influencer who I really respected her views, called Vanessa Spina. So someone I’d bought meal plans from before and followed a lot of her content on social media. And I think she was doing a carnivore experiment one day. And that’s when I first heard of it, when I looked at her dish of food on Instagram, and I thought, what on earth is she doing?

And then I just looked into it. So I watched a video where Michaela Peterson told her personal health story over the years and the huge benefits that she saw from a carnivore diet in terms of resolving autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and bipolar disorder and all sorts of different physical issues that she had. And then I also listened to one lecture from Sean Baker.

Ahmad (45:44.201)
Mmm.

Rachel (45:44.394)
where he was just really talking about how broken the nutritional epidemiological research base is. And I just thought, oh, I want to try this. And I’m a bit of an all or nothing person. So I just decided then and there I was doing it and didn’t think about it again, just did it. So that’s how I got into it. And then I just had so many health benefits that I wasn’t expecting that I’ve just never stopped doing it. So

Although I didn’t feel that I had any major health problems, it really revolutionized my relationship with food. So it brought me to a state for the first time in my life that I’d never experienced before, which was having complete satiety when you eat, being able to go for long periods of time without having to rely on having another meal. So it made fasting a lot easier.

and just having absolutely no preoccupation or food noise. So no, I just found that my thoughts were never occupied by what I was going to eat next. Whereas when I still had some carbohydrate in my diet, there was this constant preoccupation and thinking about food that would happen. And then also my immune health improved significantly. So I used to be somebody who, even when I was keto, I would have sort of…

Viral type illnesses, if I’m allowed to say that. I think about some of your customer base, but getting sick every so often and having sinusitis and those kinds of issues. And I think after I went carnivore, I don’t think I had a cold for at least a good couple of years and went all through 2020, 2021, working face to face with people and never feeling ill at all once.

Ahmad (47:37.422)
Do you know what?

Rachel (47:38.143)
There’s been other benefits as well.

Ahmad (47:41.038)
Everything you’ve just said kind of describes me. Really does. I had a very guilty relationship with food. I had a major sweet tooth. At the worst point, I was getting up in the middle of night having a bowl of cereal. It was really bad. Mm.

Rachel (47:57.254)
Oh, wow. Yeah, gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever done that. But I’ve certainly done many other things like I was a really big Sex and the City fan when it was out. So that kind of took me through my university days. And there’s a scene in it, where Miranda, I can’t remember, I think she’d been given a big chocolate cookie or some sort of, I think it was at the scene where she had a big

cookie, you know, those cookie cakes, where you can people can write happy birthday and stuff on them. And someone had written I love you on it. And then she didn’t really reciprocate that feeling. So she ended up eating half of it, feeling sick. And then she put the rest in the bin. And then later on, you see her fishing it out of the bin. And I’ve definitely done I’ve been in that situation before, not with a big chocolate cookie, but just other food where I felt out of control. And I thought, okay, I need to get rid of it now.

And then later on, the thought creeps back in, creeps back in, and then you find yourself actually getting food out of the bin. There’s all sorts of stuff that addiction makes you do.

Ahmad (48:59.99)
Yeah, I…

Yeah, I was addicted to food and I had a go to relationship with food. I’d feel sick afterwards and feel dirty and poor self worth. I’d find my mood did fluctuate. I was just not healthy and, you know, I was really, you know, in a bad way. Type two diabetic, fatty liver, blood all over the place, hypertension, overweight. And then I started with the intermittent fasting. And the great thing about intermittent fasting is

Rachel (49:09.857)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (49:13.536)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (49:32.258)
just really controls everything. It just stops this wild fluctuation and it kind of normalizes your insulin levels. And then naturally you start drifting towards one meal a day. So your eating window just starts to get smaller and smaller over time. And you get to the point where you’re like, I’m not really hungry. Why, you know, it’s a bit of a faff making two meals. I’m a bit lazy. I’d quite like to just make one meal a day. Thank you very much. And the idea when you’re really, you know, hyper insulin levels and

Rachel (49:57.876)
Yeah.

Ahmad (50:02.09)
you know, with this sugar craze addiction, you know, the idea of having one meal a day is just ridiculous. You know, you’re, cause you’re kind of eating 18 hours in the day, not, not the other way around. Um, but when you get rid of that hyperinsulin, insulinemia, and you get to the one meal a day kind of point, you naturally, I just found my sweet two started to go away and I didn’t really want, and if I did eat something sweet, I’d be like, Oh God, that’s disgusting. That’s so sickly sweet.

Rachel (50:11.226)
Oh. I can’t.

Ahmad (50:31.046)
And my wife started noticing it goes, wow, you’re, you don’t want that. I’m like, no, that’s too sweet for me. And I never, and I never used to speak like that. And then it got to a point where I found if I had carbs, like pizza or anything like that, I’d be really feeling bloated and I’d feel drowsy and just not in the game. And if I kept more carnivory, I felt very light and I felt strong and just

Rachel (50:40.206)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (51:00.314)
more stable. And like you said, the satiety was there. I felt full, but without the bloatiness. So without even knowing it, I’d sorry, without even knowing it, I just kind of have drifted towards carnivore, but I’m not absolute. You know, I will have a little bit, but it’s about 80%. That’s where I’m now.

Rachel (51:07.413)
Yeah, I…

Rachel (51:17.75)
Yeah, I was just, yeah, something that really amazes me is on carnivore, you could have quite a big meal and then just go and work out immediately afterwards. And it doesn’t affect you in the way that having other types of meals would prevent you from being able to work out. And I’m not, I’m not, I’m not a severe gym goer or anything, but I’ve certainly tested that out. And it’s definitely true. And you see other people really into fitness who

They just eat and they can sink a fair amount of meat in a meal and then just go off and work out without any bother with stitches or feeling sick. And yeah, I mean, when you were talking there, I was thinking I used to be the person who would get carrot cake and just eat the icing because I had such a sweet tooth. And it was a raging addiction. I am.

Ahmad (52:04.034)
Wow.

Rachel (52:07.842)
But Ahmed, the thing is I spent years, I must have bought every single book there is out in the market about emotional eating because I think when you’re a sugar burner and then this sort of dysfunctional relationship that people develop with food over the years, you can end up using it to manage stress and different emotions. And I used to think that I was an emotional eater, read every single book on the subject and nothing really helped. But when I went carnivore and it completely changed

my metabolism and took away any cravings for foods whatsoever, I suddenly realized that actually I hadn’t been an emotional eater all those years. It was just an addiction that sadly isn’t recognized enough these days.

Ahmad (52:51.67)
I still do crave food, certain foods. I’ll tell you what I crave. I crave meat. When I get to about 21 hours, which is when my window is about to close and I suddenly go, oh, it’s time to eat now. That’s actually when I get hungry, by the way. Unless someone tells me, I don’t even know. Like if I’m busy, I don’t even know I’m getting hungry. I mean, sometimes I’ll get a little hunger pang, it will literally disappear within a few minutes and it just comes and goes. And I…

I can easily bat it away. It’s not like I’m a hostage to it. Um, but then when, when I know it’s about time to eat and I should start preparing something, I just want me, I just want big play of me. So I’ve just, I’ve just had, um, three lamb cofters with three scrambled eggs and it was delish, you know, and it filled me up and, and I had a bit of dark chocolate, 70%. Um, and, and that’s it. I’m done now. You know, it wasn’t like, um, I wanted

Rachel (53:36.746)
Nice.

Ahmad (53:48.13)
pizza or bread or toast, which is what I used to really want. I wanted carbs, I wanted pasta and all that kind of stuff. Now it’s like, I want a big plate of meat and then I’m done. So I do crave that.

Rachel (53:59.863)
Thank you.

Rachel (54:03.562)
Yeah, that’s it. I mean, that just sounds like hunger to me. But I don’t know what your experience has been, but mine has been that in terms of clarifying the signals of either being hungry or being full, again, carnivore just took that to a whole new level for me as opposed to what keto had done. So keto really helped. But from my personal perspective, when I’m basing my diet around meat and animal foods, it’s very clear to me when I’ve had enough to eat.

And it’s also, you go hours and hours and hours not thinking about anything, not even necessarily noticing when hunger starts to come on. But then it’s also just very clear when you’re meant to eat again. And it just the relationship becomes extremely simple and straightforward. And yeah, I think that’s the beauty of it. As well.

Ahmad (54:52.454)
Yeah, I’m just looking at my time on my app. It’s loading the reception is a bit poor here. Yeah. 20 hours. That’s my average. And it’s just, it’s just consistent. And you know, I would never have thought I’d be able to fast 20 hours before. And it’s actually quite easy. Rachel is quite easy. So listen, can I ask you something? What is your weekly diet like? You know, what are the Browns eating in their household? When you say carnivore diet, just.

Rachel (55:04.03)
Nice.

Rachel (55:10.911)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (55:20.566)
No surprise.

Ahmad (55:21.85)
Sketch out roughly, what does that actually look like?

Rachel (55:26.562)
Sorry, I’m just laughing there because when you say the Browns, because sometimes my husband, he’s got a different surname to me, but sometimes delivery people just assume he’s got the same surname and they call him Mr. Brown and it really, really annoys him. So anyway. Yeah, so my preference when I can do it is to buy from local farm, local farms and trying to focus more on regenerative agriculture.

because although I don’t think everyone needs to do that, I think in a perfect world, that is what we should be aiming for. And actually the nutritional quality of the meat and the animal welfare and so on, it’s just so much better. So I order a lot of food from a farm down in the Scottish borders called Pelham Farm. And they do an amazing range of different sausages. Some of them are spiced, some aren’t, but none of them have any bread as fillers. They’re all…

you know, 99% meat with whatever spices are added to the recipe. So this morning, for example, I had pork sausages and scrambled eggs, and I’ve been typically eating two meals a day, so I won’t eat again until kind of early evening. And then it might be some lamb chops or ribeye steaks are favorite, but I do burgers. And I mean, I focus my diet around mid.

around red meat and that’s been another interesting part of the carnivore journey because in the beginning I started off with chicken and fish and so on and just over time I think it happens to a lot of people but I end up craving red meat and I don’t feel fully satisfied so I will get a lot more hungry if I haven’t had my red meat quota. I also think DHA is really important so

getting some sort of wild caught fish now and again, or I tend to include salmon roe. So that’s a really nice form of DHA. So I’ve been kind of making more of a conscious effort to include that as well. But essentially red meat, eggs, butter, ghee, some fish. And that’s it, pretty much.

Ahmad (57:44.542)
Very, very, very similar. So we, um, have lots of sausages as well. Um, beef sausages, lamb sausages and venison sausages. Um, I don’t eat pork. Um, originally it was religious and now it’s just cause I’m psychologically programmed not to eat pork, but I’ve heard lots of things from carnivores where they say all meats aren’t the same. And actually it’s very difficult to get good pork and chicken.

Rachel (57:58.295)
No, no, no.

Rachel (58:05.551)
Okay.

Ahmad (58:13.578)
because they’re fed grains and unhealthy diets themselves. And lamb is really good because it’s all pasture fed, especially in this country. And beef, pasture fed beef is great as well. So the grass fed, pasture fed beef, I mean, that’s just nutritionally so dense and so healthy for you. So, you know, I kind of like, you have, you know, if I do get meat, it’s from a local regenerative farm, it’s all free range organic chicken.

Rachel (58:17.475)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ahmad (58:42.058)
and the venison’s wild and it’s mixed with the beef fat, for example, in the sausages. And it’s just great. The meat quality is just so much better than what you get in the supermarket. The taste is just, you know, straight away. And I’ve actually stopped going out to restaurants, one, because I can’t afford it, but two, I just find it’s not as tasty. The steak that I can cook up at home is so much nicer than what I would get in a restaurant. That’s charging an absolute bomb for something that doesn’t even taste nice.

Rachel (59:07.115)
No.

Ahmad (59:10.102)
But yeah, I’ve definitely drifted towards the red meats. I’m like you, I find that, unless I have, and not even that, I used to be like, oh, you know, averse to fat, I’d be like, oh, you know, several years back, I’d be like, oh, don’t know how anybody can eat this fat. You know, I would have a beef fillet steak or whatever, just lean. Now I’m like, give me fat, I want a ribeye, and I love the fat, and I just, it’s really, I crave it, it’s like, ah, it’s great, I love it. And I get bone marrow as well.

Rachel (59:30.071)
Later.

Ahmad (59:37.074)
and roast the bone marrow. I love bone marrow gravy and bone marrow sauce. And my kids are like, dad, that’s so much fat. And I’m like, and do I look fat? And they’re like, no, I mean, this is a common myth. Fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar does. So I’m trying to teach my kids every day, just tell them all this stuff. But yeah, that’s what my dad’s like.

Rachel (59:38.7)
Nice.

Rachel (59:48.372)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (59:55.825)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (59:59.282)
I think, yeah, I mean, that sounds perfect. I just think the average person wouldn’t believe how many calories you can take in, in the form of fat and protein and not put on weight. In fact, for lots of people tend to lose weight when they ditch the carbs from their diet. And I wouldn’t have believed it myself. So I had a history of really calorie constricting during my, calorie restricting during my teenage years. And, you know, during the nineties,

fat is bad, low fat era, and I remember living on fat free yogurts and 100 calorie things. It was just horrendous. I sometimes just laugh to myself and think what would the 90s version of myself think of me now when I’m chowing down on lots of fat from fatty red meat. I used to include cream in my diet and in fact when I went keto that was a really big thing for me. I used to get frozen raspberries.

and organic pouring cream and then just pour it over and mix it all together. And it made this really incredibly delicious, almost like raspberry ice cream. And I remember when I first started thinking, I’m just going to balloon. I’m going to put on loads of weight doing this with the amount of cream I was eating. And in fact, just the opposite happened. That was after I had my son. So, yeah, that’s what makes me think of.

Ahmad (01:01:10.26)
Hmm

Ahmad (01:01:19.178)
Yeah, well, I’m the same. Like I’m just so happy. Like all the fats and I’ve almost got a six pack. I’m like, what? Can’t believe I’m 48. First time in my life. You know, it’s like, what the hell? This is great. I just, so whatever it is, it’s definitely working. So I’m totally with you there. I just feel like people need to understand that processed food is really bad. A lot of people say as well, carnivore diet is very expensive. I would argue it’s not. I mean, for example, me having one meal a day,

Rachel (01:01:26.926)
I’m sorry.

Ahmad (01:01:47.306)
I didn’t tell you, I have a lot of, um, mints. So like, you know, and you make beef patties out of that and mince, mince doesn’t, isn’t that expensive. Like if you buy just the mince and make it into beef patties and fried eggs on the side, I’ll really fill you up. And it’s not that expensive. And it’s that one meal a day. I think vegetables are more expensive and they go off and they rot in your fridge. You know, the rotting drawer that you’ve got, you know, it’s just like, you know, I’m tired of the rotting drawer. You know, you’re like, oh, it’s gone at a date and you’re just throwing it out. And, um,

Rachel (01:01:53.726)
Yeah.

Rachel (01:01:59.139)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:02:08.406)
Yeah, it’s a good experience.

Ahmad (01:02:16.886)
So all the, and all these meals, like three meals of junk food, I think are more expensive than one healthy meal. I just think you need to just get your head around that. And it’s not, not as not more expensive at all. The other thing as well is, you know, um, just people need to learn to cook as well, just get back to basics and cook things from scratch. I think that’s important. You know,

Rachel (01:02:30.402)
Definitely.

Rachel (01:02:39.69)
Mm hmm. But I mean, it’s just super easy because years ago when I went through a vegetarian phase, I was doing all sorts of elaborate recipes and cooking from scratch. And the end, like terrible, such as a real regret of mine that I did that. But hey, we all live and learn. But yeah, the cooking is just really simple now. So I’m such a lazy, a lazy chef these days. So it’s like quick sear of a steak or.

or stick something in the air fryer or in the pan. And it’s just really straightforward and easy, easy peasy.

Ahmad (01:03:13.29)
Yeah. So I know, um, had Isabella Cooper here is into mitochondria health. I don’t know if you ever heard of her and I asked her, what did she, what do you eat? And she said, she gets this casserole pot and she puts this like leg of lamb in there and she cooks it slowly over 24 hours and no seasoning, no water, no nothing. It just cooks in its own water and fat. And then she adds a bit of seasoning at the end and that’s it. And she says, absolutely delicious. And that’s all I want to eat.

That’s how simple her meal is. And I was like, wow. And she was just like you, she was like, I’m very lazy. Can’t be bothered with all this other stuff. I was like, wow, interesting.

Rachel (01:03:44.034)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:03:52.803)
Yeah, yeah.

I mean, definitely from a mitochondrial perspective, fat and protein is, is healthier in terms of we get more energy out of our mitochondria from and more structured water or easy water that a lot of people refer to as in terms of exclusion zone water. So you get most from fat, a bit less from protein and then carbs. I can’t remember the exact figures, but you’re probably going down to about 50, 55 percent or thereabouts.

in terms of the amount of structured water that the body produces. So I think once you start to really dial down into what’s happening at the level of the mitochondria, then all becomes clear about how we should be living and what we should be putting into our bodies. So yeah, interesting. And there’s lots of interesting stuff coming up about deuterium now in relation to food and mitochondria. So I’ve got a really good friend in the quantum biology.

Ahmad (01:04:40.566)
100%

Rachel (01:04:54.198)
uh field so she influences me a lot in terms of sharing just scientific studies and anecdotes and certainly fats are the optimum fuel when it comes to lowering your levels of deuterium and avoiding deuterium which can be detrimental for mitochondrial function and definitely grass-fed meat yeah lower deuterium as well and needing to avoid

Ahmad (01:05:13.763)
I’ve heard.

Ahmad (01:05:17.058)
Sorry, I was going to say I have hair.

I’ve heard about Deuterium and I really don’t know much about it and I need to look more into it.

Rachel (01:05:27.306)
Okay, yeah, I mean, it’s just heavy hydrogen, and it basically blocks up one of the complexes in the electron transport chain. So it’s the ATPase and it doesn’t like too much deuterium. And honestly, the more I learn, and the more I read, the more I have ethical and moral dilemmas about continuing to practice.

allopathic medicine because many of the treatments we give are very detrimental to mitochondrial health and especially in mental health. In terms of the way research is going and what we appear to know now about the importance of mitochondria, just in terms of production of neurotransmitters and neurotransmission, nerve communication within the brain, it’s absolutely vital.

And now I find myself questioning what I’m doing day to day in allopathic medicine, because I’m actively, I mean, the main approach is prescribed drugs. And a lot of these drugs are really deleterious for mitochondrial function, but a lot of drugs are actually deuterated as well. So they have deuterium added to them. And then the mind starts to boggle about, yes, yes.

Ahmad (01:06:39.107)
Really?

Ahmad (01:06:43.938)
Like which ones?

Rachel (01:06:46.81)
Oh, gosh, I think most probably I’m still going down that rabbit hole, but it’s I don’t know if I’m going to get this right. But the drug industry uses it to. I don’t think it’s to do with bioavailability, but it basically improves the performance of the drug. I should have read about that before I came on. I’ve forgotten the exact details, but it’s definitely a deliberate addition to medications to improve the performance of the medication. But.

But as we learn more and more in this quantum biology field, then that suggests to me that makes medications even more detrimental overall for our health. So, yeah.

Ahmad (01:07:27.894)
It’s a big statement where you’re saying, you’re questioning your role and position in allopathic medicine. I have that sometimes. I look around me at my colleagues and I think, I’ve got nothing in common with you. I don’t share your views on COVID. I don’t share your views on the COVID vaccines. I don’t share your views on vaccines. I don’t share your views on mandates.

Rachel (01:07:37.559)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:07:46.879)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:07:54.214)
Thank you.

Ahmad (01:07:55.242)
I don’t share your views and staying quiet and ignoring what you’re seeing and what’s happening. I don’t share your views. I don’t share your ethics and morals. And then I look at the way they practice and it’s incentive driven by doing more interventions, not treating patients holistically, because it takes time and doctors don’t have time. But rather than put their foot down and say, sorry, I was gonna say, rather than put their foot down and say,

Rachel (01:07:56.706)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:08:21.11)
But also…

Ahmad (01:08:25.302)
this is wrong. We need to practice medicine properly and we need half an hour with our patients and we will not accept five or 10 minute consultations. They just acquiesce and cut corners and do treat patients in five, 10 minutes and get stressed in the process. And also the patient gets shortchanged. And so I, I’m surrounded by my colleagues and I just feel like, I feel like I don’t fit.

Rachel (01:08:35.33)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:08:39.149)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:08:53.003)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:08:53.154)
I feel like I have more in common with you than most of my colleagues.

Rachel (01:08:58.154)
Yeah. Thank you. I was just going to say I’m completely with you on that. I don’t disagree with anything that you just said there. And yeah, I frequently feel quite alone amongst colleagues in terms of lots of people are lining up to get more jabs. There are constant emails coming around about the vaccination drive in the local NHS.

board where I work, including, you know, really wanting to hit the message home for pregnant women to be getting the jab. And I just with every fiber of my being, I’m really struggling with being complicit with that. And do you, but do you just stay quiet? Where do you go though? Because the NHS is such a bureaucratic, unwieldy sort of organization.

And these are emails coming from the head of public health, public health directors. And then spent the last three years just working amongst colleagues who have taken, I don’t know how many injections and been off, been off with COVID, don’t know how many times. And it’s hard not to feel like, am I the crazy one or is everybody else in here? Because…

There are people like me who chose not to take the injection and I’ve never been off and I had antibodies when I checked and I never felt ill. And I’ve had some colleagues ranting at me sounding like they were crazy for want of a better word. I remember one ranting at me about how as she couldn’t live with herself if she brought COVID into the hospital and infected all of her patients, and then she’d probably take it home and her cat would get it and it would mutate and her cat would be cat zero.

This was in the midst of everything that was going on and I stood there and the more she talked, the more I was stood looking at her thinking, you’re not, you’re not sounding very unwell, you’re sounding a bit unhinged. And I sincerely think because I work in an open plan office, there were certain people who just, there was a variation of reactions, you know, in terms of how many people were using hand sanitizer and how often and how many people were wedded to their masks.

Rachel (01:11:20.574)
and for how long on their own outside in the car on their own. But I sincerely think there would have been one or two colleagues had they found out that I hadn’t taken the injections, that they would have ousted me from that bit of the office because the fear was so prominent in terms of the fear narrative. And, yeah, I’ve forgotten now what you were saying, but yeah, I’m definitely in your camp and feel very alone.

Ahmad (01:11:42.53)
So, so-

Do your colleagues know you’ve not had the shots?

Rachel (01:11:47.823)
Thank you.

I, as some do, so like a lot of nursing staff I work with do. Um, so we’ve got a team office where a lot of our nursing staff stay. And I’m friendlier with some than others. And, um, there was one CPN and the secretary I work with who never took anything either, and the three of us have had our own narrative going the last three years and talking about, you know, different evidence that was coming out and coming, um, coming to the forum, maybe not in mainstream, but in other media outlets.

But I’m not all that close with some of the consultants that I work directly next to where my desk is. So I honestly can’t remember, I think maybe one or two, no, but I didn’t have explicit discussions with the others at the time. Apart from this one who was going on about Cat Zero, because the reason the conversation started was she was telling me, oh, phone up because you can get your appointment now to go and get your vaccination. And I’d said to her, I’m not sure I’m going to take that. And then that’s what triggered off this.

conversation about her cat mutating and so on.

Ahmad (01:12:51.374)
What the hell, what the hell. But like, you must, sorry you’re saying.

Rachel (01:12:55.126)
And then other colleagues, sorry, I was just going to say colleagues who wouldn’t open doors, like, I had one colleague who was kicking doors open, not touching them with their hands. And yeah, I mean, it’s just been quite a sight to behold, to be honest.

Ahmad (01:13:10.19)
and he’s a psychiatrist.

Rachel (01:13:13.355)
Yes.

Ahmad (01:13:14.126)
They’re treating people with mental health problems.

Rachel (01:13:18.954)
Yes.

Ahmad (01:13:20.11)
That’s kind of worrying. Okay. How do you fit in with all these people? Surely they must know that you treat people differently. I mean, do you give everyone pills the moment you can give them pills? Or do you try and treat them holistically? Do you get into trouble? I mean, do people think you’re different and you’re a bit weird or you just get on with it?

Rachel (01:13:24.184)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:13:46.59)
Oh, probably. I don’t know. So a lot of them have known me for quite a number of years and I’d hope that they know, or they have some respect for me as a clinician. But I’m sure a lot of them think it’s a bit wacky what I’m doing now using ketogenic diets with patients and recommending people look at adopting a ketogenic diet for their mental health. And I’ve had a few difficulties with some just…

interfering a bit with patients that I’m doing that with as in suddenly asking them what they’re eating and then telling the patient it’s unhealthy. So yeah, there are difficulties. I work in a crisis service. So historically we have been fairly quick to escalate medications.

But my practice has definitely changed over the years, particularly the last few years, and I definitely focus a lot more on lifestyle interventions for people when that’s possible. Sometimes somebody is acutely psychotic and really in a difficult, a bad way to take in new information that’s not always possible. And certainly when I can, I do. And it’s difficult to see a way forward for this.

Because in the NHS, I’m thinking because as much as I would like, and I’m trying to develop a metabolic psychiatry service where I am locally, I also worry about our regulators and being at risk, if I’m honest, in terms of being targeted for focusing more on lifestyle measures as opposed to pharmaceuticals, because there does seem to be a bit of a pattern out there of

Our regulator not particularly taking kindly to people using naturopathic… naturopathic medicine.

Ahmad (01:15:37.014)
No, anything that basically goes against the government narrative. You know, you, you mentioned keto, um, keto, keto isn’t wacky, wacky. Keto was used to treat people with epileptic seizures. Keto has been used in the past quite extensively, but it’s just something, you know, that’s kind of like gone into the history books. So I don’t think it’s that crazy. And I think food is medicine and keto is great for brain health. And there’s the best fuel for brain.

Rachel (01:15:41.944)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:15:50.793)
Yeah.

Ahmad (01:16:07.126)
metabolism. So I don’t see why, unfortunately, your colleagues don’t really appreciate that there is a role to play in your diet in terms of mental health problems, which, you know, is arising from the brain at the end of the day. Let’s talk about things like schizophrenia and like you said, psychotic illnesses. I mean, I can see anxiety and depression being treated with lifestyle changes and some things you can’t change though. You know, if you’ve got

Rachel (01:16:18.754)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:16:37.014)
If you’re in debt, if your family members died or killed themselves, I mean, that’s going to cause you to get a bit depressed. I mean, I guess clinical depression is different from getting depressed, but certain things around you environmentally, you can’t change even with lifestyle factors. What about things like schizophrenia and these kind of, you know, real major illnesses? How much can you control that for your diet and lifestyle factors?

Rachel (01:17:01.74)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:17:08.018)
I think there’s huge potential for people to control even conditions like schizophrenia using diet and lifestyle measures. So there’s definitely case reports out there of people. So I think there was one of someone with schizoaffective disorder, which is essentially a bit of a crossover of schizophrenia with bipolar disorder. And I think they’d been unwell and symptomatic with hallucinations for decades and on all sorts of treatments. And this was a study from decades ago.

quite an old one now. But anyway, when they were put on a ketogenic diet, they eventually managed to come off medication and were symptom free following decades of symptoms and only partially effective medications. People contact me quite frequently on social media. So I know people who have had a lot of success using keto or carnivore and then other people who’ve used interventions.

Ahmad (01:17:53.526)
Wow.

Rachel (01:18:05.854)
such as niacin or different B vitamins. And again, another person I know of who was symptomatic with schizophrenia, who was doing a ketogenic diet, but still symptomatic, and they went down a functional medicine assessment route and ended up treating underlying gut infections and then symptoms resolved that way. So I think there’s huge potential in all of that.

Ahmad (01:18:28.982)
Amazing. Problem is you won’t get very many studies being funded for this because there’s no money in it. And pharma will only fund things to their advantage. That’s one of the problems. And people turn around and say, Dr. Rachel Brown talked about a case report. That’s not evidence. Where’s the randomized double blinded study? And I think the problem is that’s now like a cop out. People’s, anything that works that

Rachel (01:18:48.519)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:18:57.122)
hasn’t been proven with a randomized double-blinded placebo controlled study is basically a sham and just hocus pocus wacary. Whereas actually a lot of good stuff is done and we don’t have the evidence. But big pharma can pay for these studies and yeah, there’s no conflict of interest there and they’re not fudging the numbers and the statistics, wink wink. Anyway,

You know, we’ve talked about how diet and lifestyle can improve mental health. What about the other way around? What happens with all these vegans out there? What’s happening with them? Are they at risk of having problems? Are all these vegans, all these woke people, all these angry activists, are they, are they like at risk of developing mental health problems because they’re vegan?

Rachel (01:19:24.909)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:19:49.918)
I would say so, yes. So I would never recommend for somebody’s mental health for them to go on a vegan or even necessarily a vegetarian diet because there are going to be certain nutrients that are deficient and you know, like B12 for example, but DHA and that particular omega-3, so important for brain health. Cholesterol is absolutely vital because it makes up so much of our brain.

Ahmad (01:20:17.974)
Big bad cholesterol?

Rachel (01:20:18.686)
But then there are you know, big bad cholesterol. I mean, we’ve been lied to on so many different ones, haven’t we? Do you know, I often come back to if they lied about food, then what else have they lied about? That’s often I don’t know why that just resonates with me, but I’ve just often thought if they can lie about that, then what else can they lie about? Sorry, I’ve forgotten what the original the original thought was there.

Ahmad (01:20:47.906)
Vegan, vegan, vegan. Are vegan, are you susceptible to mental health problems being vegan?

Rachel (01:20:48.334)
question. Oh yes.

Rachel (01:20:55.962)
Yeah, but you know, there are so many nutrients in red meat, particularly, that have such a profound effect at reducing oxidative stress in the brain. So things like carnitine and carnosine and ubiquinone and antherine and creatine as well. There are certain nutrients like that, that just do not exist in plant foods. And so unless you specifically target those and supplement them,

I think you’re just really setting yourself up to, for failure really in terms of

Ahmad (01:21:27.202)
Do you have?

Do you have more inflammation in your brain with like vegan plant-based foods and processed foods?

Rachel (01:21:37.194)
I would assume so, but I don’t know if we have any studies to show that off the top of my head. But certainly if you have a lot of seed oils in your diet, so if you’re having a lot of inflammatory linoleic acids, so an omega-6, that gets into your brain and your brain burns it as fuel, even though it’s not designed to, and that increases oxidative stress. So that increases inflammation. And I think a lot of people…

Ahmad (01:22:03.159)
So can.

Rachel (01:22:03.178)
sorry, omega three to omega six ratios are really off and that promotes inflammation and then carbohydrates promote inflammation. And then there are additives to food like carrageenan is one example where they use that in studies to induce inflammation and that’s added to so many different processed foods. And so there’s so many different avenues for inflammation to be sparked in the body.

Ahmad (01:22:06.453)
Mm.

Ahmad (01:22:10.456)
Mmm.

Ahmad (01:22:27.694)
So this is now a weird one. So Kellogg and the Seventh Day Adventists, way back, pushed the food thing where they wanted people to have more plant-based carbohydrate cereals. They wanted to curb sexual urges and passions. They wanted to nullify them. How effective and true is that? Does eating meat make you more red-blooded and passionate and wanna get into bed?

Rachel (01:22:35.796)
Yeah.

Rachel (01:22:47.052)
Yep.

Ahmad (01:22:57.306)
If that’s the case, is it also the true, the opposite, whereas if you’re vegan, you lose the passion, you lose the desire and you lose those urges.

Rachel (01:22:58.306)
Ha ha ha!

Rachel (01:23:10.614)
I think different people are probably going to have different experiences there. And I think there are different ways of doing a vegan diet. So for people who are doing whole foods and keeping it clean and not having, not relying on processed foods and lots of soy, sort of soy, fake cheese, and those kinds of foods. I think, I think some people will notice health improvements. And I think that will be because they remove more inflammatory things from their diet, like seed oils.

and some of the more processed just junk food that contributes to inflammation and presumably has knock-on effects in terms of libido and so on. I mean, I absolutely agree about the whole Kellogg thing and the invention of cereals and saying breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And they had a very clear agenda for why that should be just like you said, in terms of reducing libido. So…

I just don’t know if there’s any specific studies that I could think of where that’s been shown. But certainly what you hear from people who are going keto or carnivore is that all aspects of health improve and hormonal health is just one aspect of that. And that includes libido.

Ahmad (01:24:24.594)
The reason why I’m saying this is, I don’t see many carnivores who are confused about their sexuality or their gender. I don’t see many carnivores who are depressed or unhappy and on antidepressants. All the carnivores that I know are very happy, very passionate, in great relationships and happy bunnies. And we have an explosion of people with gender,

Rachel (01:24:33.378)
So.

Rachel (01:24:43.566)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:24:47.694)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:24:50.706)
identity crisis is confused about sexuality. Maybe they don’t have the desire and then they’re confused. Maybe they don’t fancy the opposite sex, you know, because they’re meant to, you know, I don’t know, they’re, they’re non-binary, you know, but maybe the reason why they’re getting all these problems is because of their diet. And equally, maybe it’s got something to do with the medication. So, you know, I recently found out about PSSD. I did a podcast. I was totally unaware of this condition.

post serotonin uptake inhibitor, you know, sexual dysfunction, but it’s not just sexual. But I didn’t know it numbed them and they didn’t feel anything sexually. They didn’t, they had numbness in their genitals, they had cognitive problems, you know, and, and I wonder whether that’s even driving some of this gender identity thing. Cause if you don’t feel anything, like you literally feel nothing that yeah, maybe that’s why they think they’re non-binary.

Rachel (01:25:34.326)
Mm-hmm.

Ahmad (01:25:47.15)
because they’re not attracted to men, they’re not attracted to women, there’s no sexual fire in there, there’s nothing, there’s nothing. And I just wonder whether this is what’s all linked, because I see all these problems on that side. I don’t see problems with these problems in people who are carnivore. And I’m just wondering what’s going on here.

Rachel (01:26:07.946)
Oh, yeah, good question. I would say very good question. And I suppose that’s combined with the narrative that’s being pushed in terms of the non-binary stuff and gender, gender roles and gender variations. Years ago in my training, so my last year of training, I spent a year doing the gender dysphoria clinic. So assessing people and being involved in assessments for.

and people who wanted to go through a change. But back then it was you were trans male or trans female. And it really did open my eyes and changed my views on that particular issue. By the time I’d done that clinic for a year and seen various people. But it bears no resemblance to what I see now in terms of people wanting to be gender neutral or just the amount of.

Ahmad (01:26:50.998)
In what way?

Rachel (01:27:04.374)
obviously biological males walking down the street wearing female dresses and so on and not necessarily they don’t necessarily appear as though they want to be fully in the gender role so they’re not making any changes to body hair or trying to present more as a female it’s just very blatantly obvious that they’re male but they’re happening to be wearing a dress and

And it really does boggle my mind, excuse me, because it’s just so far removed from what was going on in what year would that have been? 2010 it must have been when I did that clinic. It’s almost unrecognizable to me what’s going on now.

Ahmad (01:27:49.23)
Wow, just 13 years. Crazy, crazy. Anyway, we’ve been talking for an hour and a half. I could easily talk to you for longer. I’ve messed you around a few times with this podcast scheduling. I have to apologize for that, Dr. Rachel Brown. Dr. Rachel Brown, where can people find you? If they want a book of consultation, a holistic functional medicine, a nice psychiatric appointment, whatever, where would they want to find you? An ethical doctor like you.

Rachel (01:27:57.422)
Bye. Yes.

Rachel (01:28:08.546)
Not at all.

Rachel (01:28:21.194)
Thank you. Yeah, so my new website, it’s just drrachelsbrown.com. And there’s lots of information on there now and people can book directly via that website. I’m also still active on Instagram, so carnivore shrink, I’m going to keep doing stuff there. So people sometimes get in touch that way, but the website is probably the quickest way to book in.

Ahmad (01:28:46.318)
So being an honest doctor and very transparent, I should let the listeners know that I think of you as a very good friend, Dr. Rachel Brand. No, I mean that you’re one of the very small group of people that I trust, who I think is ethical, decent, kind, and considerate and caring, just a good soul. And you know what, I feel blessed.

Rachel (01:28:57.227)
Oh, thank you.

Ahmad (01:29:16.15)
that we connected and we met. I don’t even know how we did that. How do we did that? Was it for Instagram or something? I don’t know. I met you at the PHA thing.

Rachel (01:29:22.89)
Yeah, I think you just messaged me randomly one day. It must have been on Instagram, I think. But yeah, I’m just going to say the feeling’s mutual, Ahmed. And I just, I often feel bad because I don’t feel like I’ve spoken out very much the last few years, but I also had a GMC thing going on, which isn’t a full excuse, but it definitely factored in. But I just have so much admiration and respect for you and what you’re doing on this podcast. And…

Ahmad (01:29:34.761)
Mm.

Rachel (01:29:52.002)
trying to get the truth out there to people in amongst very difficult circumstances. So, so yeah, I just want you to know I fully support you and what you’re doing and really appreciate. So I, I just, I don’t manage to listen to all your podcasts, but they really relieved a long journey, car journey I had to do. And I just listened back to back. We’re on a six hour drive heading somewhere to meet a very famous doctor that we both know.

Ahmad (01:30:02.498)
God bless you.

Rachel (01:30:19.878)
who’s probably the mother of functional medicine in the UK. And then when I was driving home, I listened to five or six more podcasts. And it’s just so important to get that stuff out there.

Ahmad (01:30:32.298)
Yeah, well, I’m actually going to see Sarah Myhill next week and spend three, four days. She’s invited me over and I love her. She is such a good egg. And I think of her as a mentor. She’s like a mentor. She’s such a good human being as well. And we’re quite lucky and blessed to know her for sure, for sure. And I think this is going to open up a new chapter in my life, practicing functional medicine. I think the fact that you’re investigated by the GMC is a badge of honor, young lady. I think.

Rachel (01:30:37.388)
I’m sorry.

Rachel (01:30:41.334)
Yeah, it’s amazing.

Rachel (01:30:49.27)
Yes.

Rachel (01:30:56.683)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:31:01.566)
No.

Ahmad (01:31:02.078)
It’s now obvious that the best doctors are investigated by the GMC. So there you go. And yeah, the, yeah, the GMC wrote back to me recently and, um, cause I asked, am I under any complaint or investigation? And they wrote back saying you’re under no investigation. Um, but yeah, I’m having problems at my work. We’ll see what happens there, but currently I’m suspended and it’s, it was a bit nerve wracking. So again, talking about,

Rachel (01:31:08.479)
We’re in that club together.

Rachel (01:31:25.975)
Hmm.

Ahmad (01:31:32.09)
stress and anxiety, you know, despite the fact that I’ve suffered a lot in my life. And I think I’ve got tough from it. It did knock me for six, you know, two, three weeks. I was like, Oh my God, how am I going to pay my bills on my mortgage? I’ve got a really bad cold. And then I was just worn down. I’ve picked myself up. I’ve picked myself up. And I’m concentrating on, like all you said, you know, connections, you know, family time.

Rachel (01:31:52.59)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:32:00.822)
Yeah.

Ahmad (01:32:01.41)
friends, loved ones, getting out in the sunlight, exercising, my cold baths, getting good sleep. Sleep is important and it’s really helped. And even though the future is still uncertain, I know I just feel hopeful. I feel like everything happens for a reason. I’m just gonna be okay. I need to trust in God and it’ll be okay. Right, listen, can I ask you something? You’re 175, you’ve lived a great carnivore life.

Rachel (01:32:10.74)
Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Rachel (01:32:22.146)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ahmad (01:32:31.382)
You’ve got your family, your grandchildren all around you. What words of wisdom and advice would you impart in them, health or otherwise?

Rachel (01:32:31.927)
I’m sorry.

Rachel (01:32:42.178)
I would just tell them to question everything and to do their own research because I think the times in which we are living are very deceptive in many ways and I think you can’t just automatically trust the experts. It’s so important for people to do their own research and try to uncover whatever it is maybe.

in terms of what’s most important for them and for their situation and for their family. And I think also it’s about following your own true path and just being aware of. You know, I’ve probably been guilty of not following my intuition at times in the past, but just paying attention to that little voice, if something doesn’t sit right with you and giving yourself the space to reflect on it and try to work out where it is that you’re being drawn.

Ahmad (01:33:12.246)
Mm.

Rachel (01:33:36.91)
towards because I think, I don’t know, it’s just a personal thing. I think the journey that you’re on is probably a spiritual journey and I feel a bit similar myself in terms of what’s going on with me now career-wise and direction in life. So all of that’s really important.

Ahmad (01:33:53.002)
Amen. Definitely follow your gut instinct, 100%. Rachel, listen, I’m definitely gonna have you back talking next year sometime if you don’t mind. I think you’ve got so many good things to say, so many good things to say. And I also wanna hear how your journey is going. You know, I think it’s gonna be very exciting. Like me, you’re definitely on a journey. And everyone listening, thank you so much for listening. And to…

Rachel (01:33:57.196)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel (01:34:04.499)
Okay, thank you.

Rachel (01:34:12.403)
Okay.

Rachel (01:34:17.203)
Indeed.

Ahmad (01:34:21.462)
Then now I’ve broken through to the 300 mark, my 300 paid subscribers at three pound 50 a month. Thank you so much. You’re taking some of the pressure off me, but it’s still definitely not enough guys to look after my family and pay the bills and replace my lost income. I need more than that kind of support. There’s 30,000 listeners now a week and 1400 of you are now subscribers to the sub stack. If you can.

Please subscribe. It’s just three pound 50 a month, 35 pounds a year. It’s not very much. And you’re supporting me to speak up and spread the love and the knowledge. Okay folks? So dig deep, especially you Brits. God almighty, you’re fricking tight, tight. And to the Americans and the Australians in particular, I love you loads and the Canadians. God bless you. You guys have been the biggest subscribers and I really thank you for that. Appreciate it. Yeah, Brits, come on.

Dig deep. Rachel, thank you so much.

Rachel (01:35:25.078)
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Ahmad (01:35:28.118)
Rachel I really enjoyed that. That was amazing.