Will Dove 00:00 The events of the last three years have awakened many to the truth that big pharma does not have our best interests at heart. That their business model seeks only to create new lifetime consumers for their products. But toxic pharma has been around for much longer than that. For decades now unwitting doctors have been prescribing drugs for common conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and mental disorders at an ever-increasing rate. Drugs where there are no conclusive studies to show benefits, while many studies reveal the harms caused. Harms which include permanent organ damage and death. Dr. Richard Amerling has taught as a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and St. George’s University. He served recently as Associate Medical Director at America’s Frontline Doctors, and is currently the Principal Academic Officer at The Wellness Company. He is the author or co-author of over 70 peer reviewed papers, and was the American Kidney Fund Nephrologist of the Year in 2015. I was recently introduced to Dr. Amerling by our mutual friend, Dr. Mark Trozzi. Richard first discovered the harms of toxic pharmaceuticals in his work as a kidney specialist. Since then, he has educated himself on a wide range of drugs that do far more harm than good, if they do any good at all. Will Dove 01:32 Richard, welcome to the show. Dr. Richard Amerling 01:34 Thank you, Will. Sir, such a pleasure to be here. Will Dove 01:37 And thank you for taking the time to educate my audience on, yes, toxic pharmaceuticals as I made reference to you folks in my introduction. I had a conversation with Dr. Mark Trozzi, not long ago, and he introduced me to Richard as being the expert on this subject. So, Richard, I'm just going to hand you the floor. And please start educating us on these pharmaceuticals that really probably people shouldn't be taking. Dr. Richard Amerling 02:00 Right. Well, it goes beyond just the drugs themselves, obviously, because any drug can be useful in certain circumstances, and horribly toxic and others. What matters is the approach. And the formal approach to medicine, I believe is really harmful. What do I mean by that? Well, several things. One is they have a tendency to invent diseases for their drugs. I really do believe that COVID is an example of that. But there are others too, such as ADHD, which we can talk about. Osteope... osteopenia, it's another good one. Ah, well, high cholesterol, right? High cholesterol isn't a disease, right, but that that's what people treat with all these statin drugs. So the invention of disease, then the the extension of treatment models from one population to another, in other words, broadening the base of patients that are required, or, you know, should be taking their products. That's another one of their excellent, successful strategies to make fortunes. They also have commandeered this concept of so-called evidence-based medicine. This was a way of addressing clinical medical decision-making, by utilizing systematic reviews of so-called best evidence. And that became a fad and eventually was incorporated into the medical model wholly from the late 1990s and on. So this model currently dominates medicine, and it dominates at every level, including medical school. And I know that from experience because I was teaching in another school fairly recently. Well, what does evidence-based medicine mean really? Well, they categorise scientific evi... medical evidence based on certain pre-ordained criteria. And at the top of their hierarchy are the randomized clinical trials. This is a problem right away. And I'm not going to spend too much time getting into but these can easily be manufactured to support any notion. And Pharma is extremely expert at creating randomized controlled trials to sell their products. And that is, in fact what they do. And then they get them published, so the database upon which evidence-based medicine and guidelines that come from evidence-based medicine is founded, is corrupt. It's the corrupt medical literature because pharma controls what goes in and what doesn't go in. So clinicians looking at the literature to try to get an idea what's... what they should be doing with their patients are not going to get many good answers from examining the medical literature. And they, so they've co-opted evidence-based medicine to form guideline committees and the guideline committees are physicians who are mostly in the pay of industry; they are getting money from industry in the form of either speaking fees, consulting fees, research grants, etc. So they are beholden to industry and they are always going to be coming up with guidelines that favor their products. So the conflicts of interest are huge. They don't go away by stating them, right, they're still there, just stating them doesn't make them go away. So all these guidelines are, in my view, corrupt and worthless. So we should be trying to practice medicine the old way, pre-guidelines, pre-evidence-based medicine, by using our scientific understanding of human disease, clinical medicine, and empiric treatment, followed by observation of results. That is scientific medicine. You have a patient comes to you with a problem, you formulate a hypothesis about their diagnosis. You test this hypothesis, with various tests, perhaps, imaging procedures, maybe even biopsies, come up with a firm diagnosis, and then your treatment plan and you evaluate your results by subsequently following up on the patient. That scientific medicine. Will Dove 06:20 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 06:21 And a patient... a doctor's clinical experience that is developed over many years of practice is an invaluable part of medicine. Yet, it is relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of evidence and the evidence based medicine scheme. So that's a fundamental problem. And the randomized controlled trials, as I said, is easily manipulated, falsified, whatever, to create a desired outcome. And even if they're well done, they can only give you a probability of success. Right? In other words, if the treatment arm in a randomized control trial does somewhat better than the placebo arm, it's said that that proves the drug works. Well, did it work in everybody? Certainly not! Right? Will Dove 07:08 Right. Dr. Richard Amerling 07:09 There are certainly people in the treatment arm that didn't respond well. And in fact might have been harmed or even killed. But you don't see that right, you just see the positive bottom line result that this drug works. Dr. Richard Amerling 07:22 That's an incredibly simplistic and I think dangerous way to look at studies. And it cannot possibly be the basis for medical treatment decisions. Will Dove 07:22 Right. Will Dove 07:32 Right. Dr. Richard Amerling 07:33 In and of itself. You have to balance that information with your knowledge of how the drug works, let's say the patient in front of you. No randomized controlled trial has enough information to tell you how to treat your patient. You have to use your clinical judgment. And this is relegated to the lower level of the hierarchy, as I said, and clinical judgment is something that is acquired over the years. We try to teach in medical school, clinical reasoning, critical thinking toand clinical reason. It's a dying art. When I arrived at St. George's University, where I taught from 2016 to 2021. I found that they were not teaching this at all, at all. Students were being taught to memorize guidelines. This is how bad it was. I started to introduce critical thinking and clinical reasoning, and they had not seen it before. That's pretty scary. Will Dove 07:48 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 08:31 So let's... Will Dove 08:32 Now before... Dr. Richard Amerling 08:33 Yeah, but... Will Dove 08:34 Before we move on, Richard, there's a couple things I'd like to clarify on what you just said. Dr. Richard Amerling 08:37 Yep. Will Dove 08:38 First of all, talking about the evidence based medicine, the randomized controlled trials, I believe it was Mark Twain, who famously said, lies, damned lies, and statistics. And I've looked at some of these trials myself. And if they set up the parameters for the trial properly, they can pretty much get any result they want. But the real problem, as you've just pointed out, is even if the trial was well done, you're going to end up with a statistic, very, is not a doctor patient relationship. And what's being done, as I can see it, with the pharmaceutical medical industry right now is that that statistic is saying, well, now we can take that and we can apply it to everybody who fits in this particular group. Dr. Richard Amerling 09:19 That's right. And that's what they use to market their drugs. They use these statistical studies and then amplified by guideline committees that gives them the authority by the imprimatur of some august committee that says we should... this is how you should treat this and that right. And we've never really had that before. This is a recent phenomenon. When I studied medicine, we didn't have any of that stuff. We had just real science, clinical medicine. And I thought that was more than enough. And what I'm trying to do now is to bring back real science and ethics, by the way, into clinical medicine, and help patients again, instead of treating their numbers. I mean, that's really what medicine has become. And it's quite an industry. Pharma is incredibly successful. They're so rich and so powerful. They have so much control over the process, from medical school, to conferences, to exams to board certifications. It's all in one way or another, corrupted by pharma money and pharma. Very bad situation. Will Dove 10:25 Now, you had also, earlier, you had made reference to the strategy of taking a drug that was being used for one group and then broadening the base, supplying that drug to other groups. Can you give us some examples of that? Dr. Richard Amerling 10:36 Oh, sure. Well, I mean, the most obvious ones are the constant ratcheting down of what is considered normal, or optimal, let's say cholesterol, LDL, LDL cholesterol, or normal or optimal blood pressure. The lower they can get these numbers, the more millions of people are ensnared in the sign in the pharma morass of more and more drugs to get to those impossible numbers. And by the way, virtually meaningless. And in the cholesterol issue. You know, the LDL cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease and does not predict heart disease. It's a real scam. Will Dove 11:19 Yes, yes. And I agree with you completely. In fact, my mother, my brother are both on medications for high cholesterol. 15 years ago, my doctor tried to put me on it. I went and did my homework, and I discovered that if you have low inflammatories, and high levels of the good cholesterol, and I'm forgetting now which one that is. LDL.. Dr. Richard Amerling 11:39 The HDL. Will Dove 11:40 HDL, right. That's actually a predictor that you're going to live a longer, healthier life. And I had them test my inflammatories along with my cholesterol levels, and sure enough, what they find: I have high HDL, low low inflammatories. Here I am now almost 60. I'm in perfect health, and I'm not taking any of their drugs. Dr. Richard Amerling 12:00 Right, the LDL cholesterol I think is a meaningless number. I don't even recommend measuring that at this point. My LDL cholesterol is off the charts, high, by the way, and when my doctor checks it on the few occasions that I allowed him to, he gets chest pain, you know, looking at my numbers, but I don't, and I don't have heart disease and my LDL cholesterol is very high. But I also have a high HDL, which is good cholesterol, and very low triglycerides, and that is the key. If your triglyceride to HDL ratio is low, you have, you are in good metabolic health. And that is much more important than LDL measurement, which to me is meaningless, at this point. Will Dove 12:43 Right. So, Richard, please, let's get into some specific pharmaceuticals now that you feel are at the very least being overprescribed, and I don't want to put words in your mouth that, you know, shouldn't be used but overprescribed. Dr. Richard Amerling 12:57 All right. Well, you know, the other aspect of broadening the population base that needs drugs is this whole concept of chronic disease management. Now, you know, drugs are useful for short-term issue. And they're not all bad, right? I can't just paint with a broad brush here. So if you get sick, you have a bacterial infection, you get on a course of antibiotics, that helps clear it up quickly. That's to say, that's great. You know, that's a good indication. The long term chronic disease industry includes hypertension, diabetes, type 2 diabetes, that is, osteoporosis, is, you know, bone disease issue, and all of the psychia.. so called psychiatric disorders, these are all chronic diseases, so, so said, that require lifetime treatment. That's the, that's the medical model. You get diagnosed with hypertension, your doctor gonna tell you, you need to take these drugs forever. You get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, your doctor will tell you, this is a progressive, chronic disease, you're going to be on insulin or whatever drugs forever. And by the way, you're going to have a lot of complications. The cholesterol issue is such a scam; there's so much written about this now. I mean, I recommend Malcolm Kendrick's book. There's papers galore by eminent scientists debunking so much of the statin literature. The whole idea that cholesterol is toxic is an absurdity. Frankly, cholesterol is a is a crucially important molecule that virtually every cell in your body has the ability to synthesize. Why would we have this complex biochemical machine just to synthesize cholesterol if it weren't vitally important? The answer is it is vitally important. We need it. It's an essential component of cell membranes, the very stuff of life, esen... essential component of the central nervous system. It's essential in the immune system. And it's a precursor for vitamin D, which we know is essential. And all the steroid hormones, including sex hormones, and cortisol, and aldosterone. The step at which the synthesis is interrupted with statins is very early in the pathway biochemically, I mean, look it up. And therefore other substances that come out of that pathway are also blocked, such as dolichols, which are important energy mediators, and coenzyme Q10, here a crucially important cofactor in energy metabolism, mitochondrial function. So when you just look at the biochemistry of cholesterol, you would say to yourself, stay away from this pathway, do not interfere with the synthesis of cholesterol. And as far as I'm concerned, that's as far as we need to go. We don't need RCTs of these drugs, because I know that they cannot possibly be helpful, and they're almost certainly going to be harmful. Well, that didn't stop that. That point of view obviously did not prevail. And they manufactured and marketed these statin medications to lower cholesterol. And again, high cholesterol is not a disease, right? It's just a number, not a disease. It's said to be a risk factor for heart disease; that's unproven. So that's a, it's a bogus notions to begin with. But they did dozens of studies, and you cannot really find studies that show reductions in all quarters and all cause mortality with these drugs. And I don't even believe the studies, right. I think that if we actually have the source data for these studies, they will look a whole lot worse. The source data, by the way, for the statin trials, is being closely held by a group in the UK, the CTT, the Cholesterol Trialist whatever. And they will not release it to outside investigators. So that's very suspicious, isn't that? I mean, Will Dove 17:11 Indeed it is. Will Dove 17:13 So we've got this drug, statins, that hundreds of millions of people around the world are taking, where the literature that is available shows that at the very least, it probably doesn't help at all and might actually, you know, make things worse. And so in regards to that, what side effects are people getting... going to get from taking the statins? Dr. Richard Amerling 17:33 Now there are many and severe, okay, ranging from just muscle pain to actual myositis, meaning, you know, inflammation of muscles. muscle breakdown, which is called rhabdomyolysis, which can be fatal, can cause kidney failure, nerve damage, all sorts of neuropathies, brain fog, dementia. Heart failure, I believe, is a manifestation of coenzyme Q deficiency caused by statins. We've had an epidemic of heart failure. Now if the statins were actually preventing heart attacks, we should have seen a lower incidence of heart failure, 'cause that, that's the major driver of heart failure, these heart attacks. If the heart attacks are going down because of the statins, we should see fewer patients with heart failure. Instead, we had an epidemic of heart failure. So to me, this is indirect evidence that statins are causing heart failure. The other main trick that pharma flies to all these studies, is what's called the relative risk reduction. And that's how they market their drugs, very obviously. And what does that mean? Well, let's say you have a trial, and the placebo arm has a cardiac event rate, let's not even say death. And they do composite cardiac events. Because they they don't, they're infrequent right there, most of these paid people don't get heart attacks, or severe disease. They have a combined cardiac event rate of 3% in the placebo arm, but 2% in the treatment arm. So you will say well, that's not an impressive result, is it? It's a 1% absolute risk reduction with the treatment arm, but they then divide one by three, and they get the relative risk reduction. And that's now it's 33%. So that sounds very impressive. Who wouldn't take a drug that reduces your risk of a heart attack 33%? But people have the idea that it's an actual 33%, when it's only a relative risk reduction. Will Dove 19:38 Yes. Will Dove 19:38 Yeah. Dr. Richard Amerling 19:38 And many doctors are unaware of this trick. It's scary, but they just, you know, they buy the the advertising. You know, the drug reps in the, in the [unintelligible] comes in and says you must look at this result 33% lower incidence of heart events with our wonder wonder drug here. How can you not be prescribing this doctor? You know, and of course they take their prescription pads out and they start writing. It's a total scam. Dr. Richard Amerling 19:43 It's a 1% absolute risk reduction, which is clinically meaningless. Right? And we have to balance that Will Dove 20:16 1%. In statistics, that's, that's within the margin of error. That's nothing that that's totally meaningless, as you said... Dr. Richard Amerling 20:22 It is. Will Dove 20:23 It tells you nothing. It and it I think this also brings us back to those, those trials that we talked about, where sometimes they cherry pick the people who are in each group, Dr. Richard Amerling 20:35 Oh they do, they do... Will Dove 20:37 In order to get a better result. Dr. Richard Amerling 20:38 Right. And they pre-screen for those who they feel are likely to have an adverse reaction. Right. So they decrease their adverse event rate. The adverse events are always downplayed in these studies, always. And I don't trust them at all. We know from our clinical experience that the incidence of myositis, for example, is very high, 15-20%. I mean, these drugs have to be harmful, just from their mechanism of action, because blocking cholesterol synthesis is such a bad idea. The brain has its own cholesterol machinery to make their own cholesterol, the brain, because br... cholesterol is so essential to synaptic function and brain function. Well, if your statin gets through the blood brain barrier as several do, including Lipitor, you're going to inhibit that pathway in the brain. Brain fog is a very common manifestation of statins, as is dementia. I think statins are probably the leading cause of dementia today. Will Dove 21:39 You made reference, it was just two minutes, to myositis. Would you please briefly explain what that is? Dr. Richard Amerling 21:43 It's just inflammation of muscle. Right and you... muscle pain is part of that. But also leaking enzymes such as creatine, creatine kinase, which is a specific muscle enzyme, into the blood, it's a marker for that, but it can go very far to, frankly, breakdown of muscle, massive breakdown of muscle, which we call rhabdomyolysis. And the myoglobin, which is released from muscle that's, that has been broken down in a large way, can poison the kidney and you get acute kidney failure. Will Dove 22:16 Right. Dr. Richard Amerling 22:16 This is life threatening. There have been deaths. In fact, there was a statin on the market many years ago called Baycol, which was hailed as a wonder drug because it was so effective. at such a low dose, like half a milligram or a milligram was very effective in lowering cholesterol. While they had such a high rate of rhabdomyolysis, with this drug, they had to pull it off the market. Will Dove 22:41 Richard, I want to ask a very minor question about the statutes before hopefully, we can move on to some other pharmaceuticals. And I'm going to ask this question, even though I think it seems minor because I know there's a lot of people out there who suffer from migraine headaches. And the story I'm gonna come up with here is my wife did for many years, usually, she'd have two or three of them every month. And then about a year ago, she started taking CO q 10. And those headaches have almost entirely disappeared. So I have to ask, is migraines one of the side effects of taking statins, because it's interfering with the CO Q10? Dr. Richard Amerling 23:13 Well, it it may be. I would have to look on the list of side effects, which are, which is very long, right? So it would not be, would not surprise me at all, if migraines were up there. Yeah, no, these are harmful drugs. And, you know, doctors should be carefully evaluating the risk-benefit ratio of everything that they do, frankly, and certainly every drug that they prescribe, and that they prescribe for long term. And that's what most of these prescriptions are. They're really lifetime prescriptions. For most offices, most doctors offices will say you're, you're on this forever. Well, what's the risk-benefit ratio? Well, this is something that patients should go out and ask their doctor next time they try to prescribe them something like a statin. Ask your doctor the following question. What disease are you treating? Number one? Because if they're just gonna say, Well, you know, I'm not sure you know, I think you're healthy. But you have this high cholesterol? Well, that's not a disease, right? You should walk out right there as far as I'm concerned. And then what is my chance of having death or some serious outcome from this disease? And, you know, ask for a real number. You know, what are my chances of dying, let's say over the next two or three years or five years, and they probably will know that number one, then as to what extent does this drug you're giving me reduce my chances of having this bad outcome? And not in relative terms, but in absolute terms? And they probably won't know how to answer that right. And then finally ask them, what are the major adverse reaction side effects of this drug? And what are the incidents and what are my chances of having one? Again, there probably won't be able to answer that one very well either. But these are the things that all doctors should consider when they prescribe any drugs And rarely do they consider these things. That's very, you know, interesting indictment of modern medicine [unintelligible]. Will Dove 25:07 Alright. Other pharmaceuticals. Dr. Richard Amerling 25:10 Okay, so the list is long. One of my pet peeves in medicine is the treatment of osteoporosis. I have had a long interest in bone disease and it goes back to even before medical school. But in medical school, I had the honor of working with one of the great bone experts in the world, Charles Nagant de Deuxchaisnes, who wrote the definitive article on Paget's disease and bone when he was a research fellow at Harvard. I mean, he, this guy was brilliant. And he was a lovely, lovely guy. And I got to study with him. And I worked with him, I used to do translations for him into English. His English was excellent, but he wanted me to really, you know, make it perfect. So I got to know him very well. And I remember even back then, and this is in the 70s, these drugs were out there that were called bisphosphonates, okay. These drugs are analogs of a chemical, naturally occurring chemical in the in the body pyrophosphate. Pyrophosphate is a key player in bone synthesis. And if the drug, the drug looks like this pyrophosphate, it gets taken up by specialized cells in the bone, whose job it is to reabsorb bone. Now, bone is continuously being reabsorbed and re-formed. So your skeleton is in a constant state of renewal, that you literally are rebuilding your body, not just your skeleton, but your body every day, you're always making new cells. And that's why nutrition is so important, because you have to give the body what it needs to make new cells, which is mostly protein, and fat and salt water. Well, these drugs interfere with the cells and in fact, may cause them to die off. If you cannot reabsorb old bone, you cannot make new bone. So you are paralyzing the process that we call bone remodeling. And these drugs all do that. And that is supposed to help your bone? I'm sorry, no, these are bone poisons. The data on there, so again, my approach is basic science. I want, I know how the drug works. I know how bone is formed. I know the histology of bone. And I know that if you poison these cells, you're going to get weakened bone and certain results when you do a bone biopsy will show up. Well, when you look at the literature on the use of these drugs, and osteoporosis, and these are widely prescribed. Tens of millions of women are given these drugs and men, too, but mostly, mostly postmenopausal women, then I know that they're not only not going to be effective, but that they are harmful. And when you look at the studies, they're, again, they're very weak. Actual fracture reduction is in the 1-2% range. And again, they magnify this by using relative risk reduction for fracture effect. Will Dove 28:20 Now I have, I have to ask, I'm sorry, because you started by talking about a drug for osteoporosis that was commonly prescribed in the 70s. But then, a little bit later you said all of these drugs are interfering with the reabsorption of old bone? So are you talking just about those ones in the 70s? Are we talking about all these osteoporosis drugs? Dr. Richard Amerling 28:40 All the drugs, but those, the bisphosphonate class has been around from the 70s. It was only recently started with, to be used with osteoporosis. But had, you know, this is an example of a drug searching for an indication. Or there was no good indication for the drugs. Because they're bone poisons. Frank, frankly, I mean, they are... Will Dove 28:59 Yeah, I'm sorry. You're leaving me kind of speechless here. What? What fantasy studies do they base the idea that a drug that interferes with the reabsorption of old bone is going to help to treat osteoporosis? Dr. Richard Amerling 29:13 Well, so there are bone density studies. Now the bone density measurement is a problematic measure. And then I it's just too complicated to get into for this discussion. But to base treatment decisions on bone density measurements is a can of worms right there. Okay. And that's what a lot of the studies look at. They look at a surrogate marker for bone health, which is bone density. Bone density doesn't tell you about the architecture of bone. It's just, it's a rough number. It's a crude number. And frankly, if you turn off bone remodeling, you have less deposition of the precursor of bone, it's called osteoid. It's a special protein that the the osteoblasts secrete. You have less of that and relatively more bone. So, the density actually may increase with the measurement. But that does not mean that your bones are getting stronger. So they use a surrogate out out outcome or surrogate in one of the studies and they say, this is increasing bone density so therefore must be good, and your bones will be stronger. That is simply not true. You, the bone density does not give you actual bone volume or bone architecture. And both are crucial. Not only that, but your bone is subject to various stresses. Right. Bones, stresses on bone are what cause bone to grow and strengthen. So, areas where you stress bone, such as the femur, when you walk or at the hip, when you walk, they get reinforced. This is amazing mechanism whereby the stresses produce increased bone formation. And that's a normal part of bone, histology and bone, you know, biochemistry. Well, if you're a 90 pound woman, you don't need a very strong sturdy skeleton to carry your weight around. If you're a 200 pound man you do. If you're a 200 pound woman, you do need a very strong skeleton to carry that weight around. And for the most part, the skeleton mass increases this weight. Well, do they normalize the T-scores in the Z-scores for body weight? They don't. Right. So you can't really even use these as a point of reference. The only important measurement in bone is a bone biopsy, and they never do them in the treatment of osteoporosis. Never. It's an invasive procedure, right? So I understand why they don't do it, preferably. But they're using all these surrogate markers and treating based on that without any real understanding of what's going on in the actual bone. So that's, that's a major problem, Will Dove 31:51 Richard, in your opinion, then, what should the people be doing to prevent osteoporosis as they grow older? Dr. Richard Amerling 31:58 Okay, well, I'll get to that in a minute. But I want to point out that these drugs are far from benign, okay. So, for a trivial improvement in bone density and trivial fracture reduction - which I don't even believe, frankly - from the studies, you have serious side effects. One of them is very severe esophagitis, right, really bad reflux esophagitis. The other that is a fearsome complication is what is called the AFF, the atypical femur fracture. So the typical osteoporosis fracture is a prolapsed vertebrae, or a fracture of the hip, a certain type of bone that is susceptible to osteoporosis. The atypical femur fracture is in the thick part of the leg bone, and is not an osteoporotic fracture. This is a fracture that is entirely due to the drug, to the drug causing a failure of bone remodeling and bone fragility over time. So this is, if you had one of these, that would be enough of, enough reason, from my point of view, to never prescribe the drug and to withdraw them from the market. They ignore it. They just sweep it under the rug. If they will, it's rare. You know, most people are getting benefits from the drug. It's simply not true. So the osteoporosis scam is major. It's harming lots of people. And I believe these drugs should be withdrawn and if anyone is watching, and they're on those drugs, just stop them. Okay. Hopefully they won't come after you for practicing medicine via zoom. But I feel strongly enough these are harmful, that you're better off not taking them. And also the diagnosis of os- osteopenia, which is, technically means, less bone than normal, right? Osteoporosis is thin, porous bone. Osteopenia is less dense bone than should be normal, is based entirely on these bone density measurements. And it was a disease that didn't exist until I think was the 50s or 60s when the WHO convened a committee and they said let's let's try to do something with these people that have low bone density scores, and they came up with the idea of osteopenia. So osteopenia is a manufactured disease again, it serves to increase the number of people who are prescribed drugs that they had a full marketing campaign associated with this to get bone density machines small bone density machines into lots of doctors offices around the country, so they would become aware of this whole bone issue and and overdiagnose and overtreat with these drugs which are so toxic. But you asked what what do I recommend? Well, I recommend first and foremost, exercise, okay, walking, weight bearing exercise, any thing that builds muscle builds the bone that's associated with those muscles. So if you're lifting weight, you're strengthening your bones. If you're doing squats with weights, you're definitely strengthening your your skeleton. All exercise does this to a large extent except, sadly, swimming, which is you know, you're in a weightless environment. So you're not soliciting any of the anti-gravity, muscles or the bones, right, your bones, you know, waste. This is the pri-, the primary limitation in extended space travel, it's bone loss, you know, this has been known forever. Well, so healthy diet, you need lots of protein, bone is manufactured from protein. It's a protein matrix that is secreted, and that is calcified. So without that protein matrix, you're not going to make much bone. So you need to eat a lot of protein in your body. You need to get adequate, but not excessive calcium, this idea that calcium is somehow miraculously going to strengthen your bones is completely bogus. In fact, too much calcium in the diet can turn off bone remodeling, and is dangerous and can actually end up in your arteries. So you want modest amounts of calcium in your diet, not the gram, or two grams, or three grams that some doctors recommend that's way, way, way too much. You know, you have a little bit of dairy in your diet, that's kind of plenty of calcium for you. Now, you also need vitamins, vitamin D, which, best source of which is the sun. But if you're in northern climes, you're not going to get much sun, especially over the winter. So vitamin D supplementation is important. And vitamin K2, right, and K2 is a much neglected but extremely important vitamin. It's a cofactor in the production of two extremely important proteins. One is called matrix Gla protein, GLA protein, which blocks the deposition of calcium in blood vessels. It inhibits what we call ectopic calcification, so it's going to keep the calcium where it ought to be, which is bone. And then the other protein, that is, to cofactor in is osteocalcin. Osteocalcin also moves the calcium into the bone forming cells, which is where you want it. So vitamin K2, a much neglected vitamin. It's not in many foods. Okay, so the best source is natto, which is this fermented soy product that the Japanese are fond of. And after that, I would say the yolks of pasture-raised chicken eggs, fermented cheeses like gouda and brie, and that's really most, most of the good sources. You know, fortunately, I like to eat these foods. I haven't tried natto though I'm thinking about it. And so that's... Will Dove 37:51 Just to avoid any confusion... Dr. Richard Amerling 37:53 Yeah. Will Dove 37:53 By natto, are you talking about nattokinase or is it something else? Dr. Richard Amerling 37:56 No. Natto is an actual food product... Dr. Richard Amerling 37:59 ...nattokinase comes from, right. So nattokinase comes from fermentation of soy. So Natto is the food that people eat actually in Japan in large quantities, that, that is the fermentation, fermentation product, but nattokinase comes from that fermentation. And, you know, nattokinase appears to be very beneficial in spike protein injury, [unintelligible] vaccine injuries, and may also be cardio-protective and that it has some properties to help it break down fibrin. You know, fibrin is the the essence of a blood clot. Ultimately, heart attacks for clots were blood clots in the coronary arteries. So if you can inhibit clot formation or accelerate clot breakdown, it's probably a good thing. Incidentally, this is circumstantial, but the Japanese have very low incidence of coronary artery disease. So they may be on to something. Will Dove 37:59 Okay. Will Dove 38:52 And I have to assume that for those who may not enjoy those foods, I do, but for some of our viewers who do not, I assume that they can get that vitamin K2 was as... Dr. Richard Amerling 39:04 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 39:05 Yes. Right. And vitamin A is also important as part of the cofactor process for the osteon calcium production. So we actually, I went out when we started the wellness company well over a year ago, I put together a little bone formula which contains all these things plus a little bit of calcium, some magnesium, and pretty much that is all you need to assure good healthy bone. But again, you can easily get it from that kind of a diet. I mean, I'd like to, the pastured eggs I've become a huge fan of, not only are they delicious, but they are loaded with vitamin A, D, K, E. Fabulous Will Dove 39:15 {unintelligible] Will Dove 39:45 Yes, I've been a nutrition nut my entire life. Eggs in general are a miracle food. Dr. Richard Amerling 39:51 They really are. Will Dove 39:52 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 39:52 They really are, and of course they're dem- they're demonized. Will Dove 39:56 Of course they are, because... Will Dove 39:57 Cholesterol! Cholesterol! Will Dove 39:58 Why would we want the pharmaceutical and medi- medical industries to be telling us to eat something that's actually good for us. So, Richard, okay, so now we've talked about statins for the high cholesterol, we've talked about the osteoporosis drugs and how the harms that they cause... what else is on your list? Dr. Richard Amerling 40:14 Well, a huge one. There. Let. I'll do two more, because I think these are really big. One is the, it's the entire treatment approach to type 2 diabetes, which is heavily pharma-influenced and pharma-based. So, by type 2, diabetes is a misnomer. The disease that your treating is actually the metabolic syndrome. But calling it type 2 diabetes opens the door to treating it like type 1 diabetes, and that is exactly what they do. Their goal in and when I say they, I mean the industry, I mean, the nutrition industry, I mean, the endocrine people, the endocrine societies, diabetes societies, their goal is to bring your hemoglobin a1C, which is an indicator of your, you know, chronic blood sugar level, say over a couple of months before you get the blood test, they want to bring that number down as low as possible. That's their goal of treatment. And that comes from treatment of type 1 diabetes, that was the treatment model for type 1 diabetes. It's not even clear that that's a good model. And that disease, type 1 diabetes, differs from type 2, and that type 1s have low or zero insulin. So they are in a totally different category, type 2, the patients have high insulin, that they have insulin resistance. So the insulin keeps going up and up and up, try to overcome the insulin resistance and get the blood sugar from the blood into the cells. If it goes into the cells, it's almost always going in, in the form of adipose fat, right? That triglycerides getting you fatter and fatter. And the treatment of type 2 diabetes in aiming to push down the blood sugar, in fact, pushes more energy in the form of sugar, glycogen or fat into your cells, making you less and less healthy, more and more overweight. Will Dove 42:23 Yes. And so I'm sure you're aware of this book, fat chance by Dr. Robert Lustig. I read that book years ago. And folks, if you want to understand what Richard is talking about, and I love how you said it, no, it's not type 2 diabetes, it's chronic metabolic syndrome. And when people understand the processes and their bodies that are causing this chronic metabolic syndrome, you've got the tools to turn it off to repair that damage and stop it from happening. You don't need medications, you just need to fix your diet. So that book Fat Chance by Dr. Robert Lustig, I highly recommend it. He explains chronic metabolic syndrome very clearly. Dr. Richard Amerling 42:58 Yeah, Lustig is great. I like him a lot. He's a pediatric endocrinologist. He has a lecture that is up still up on YouTube, I think it's probably the most viewed medical lecture of all time, where he talks about fructose and the metabolic syndrome. And it's just so brilliant, so everybody should watch it. It's kind of a life changing talk, especially and then he does explain it technically. But if you can follow the technical stuff, see how the fructose component of sugar is largely the culprit in the metabolic syndrome. And I think there's there's a huge amount and logic there and all but also, all carbohydrates eventually are sugar. And if you overload your system with carbohydrates, you're going to eventually develop insulin resistance and high insulin level and you have the metabolic syndrome. That's hyperglycemia. High blood sugar is simply a late manifestation of the metabolic syndrome. But they are treating that like it's the disease. No, the high blood sugar is just a symptom. It is not the disease, the disease is the metabolic syndrome. And if you're just focused on that sugar level, you are not going to help those patients. In fact, you're going to harm them. And that's sadly, that's the standard of care right now, is to treat that number. Why? Because it suits the pharma model that sells more products, you're gonna need two, three drugs to get that insulin, get that sugar level down, including insulin. Insulin is a harmful drug in type 2 diabetes, because they are already hyperinsulinemic. They already have high insulin level, and you're going to make it even higher, to try to get their blood sugar down. It's total insanity. Will Dove 44:44 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 44:45 So these hypoglycemic drugs, which are a huge business, I mean, probably trillion dollar worldwide business in terms of the whole diabetes industry, is almost certainly a trillion dollar industry, when we talk about all the drugs, or all the nutrition advice that is so wrong, the blood sugar monitoring equipment and the finger sticks and the continuous glucose monitoring, this is a huge business. And we could upset that very easily by just getting people on a healthy diet, because the whole thing goes away. Diabetes reversal is easy. It's easy. I've done this for my, most of my career, you change the diet, you fix the diet, you get the patients to accept that they're going to be changing their lifestyle. Or you can even talk about this as a diet change. It's just a lifestyle change, you're going to be eating healthy food, whole food, you're going to cut down on sugar, you're going to avoid vegetable oils, that's another toxic product in the food. And you're going to be eating infrequently. You're going to give up snacking, and then you can reverse your type 2 diabetes, and you'll be healthy again. Will Dove 45:57 Yes, and folk... Dr. Richard Amerling 45:58 And then you... Will Dove 45:59 Sorry, just to briefly interrupt, Richard. Folks for more information on that, a few months ago, I interviewed Dr. Paul Marik of the FLCCC. He had type 2 diabetes, quote, for about 20 years, cured himself in the space of a few months when he learned what Richard is talking about right now. Dr. Richard Amerling 46:15 Right. Diet. Will Dove 46:16 ...the symptoms... Dr. Richard Amerling 46:16 I know, I'm very happy for Paul, I followed that whole thing. I think he's, he's done wonders. And everybody can, right, everybody can, and let's throw into this mix the whole concept of intermittent fasting, which is a hugely powerful health tool. And no matter what your diet is, if you stop eating for a certain amount of time, you're going to shed weight and you're going to get metabolically healthy again. You know, I grew up, I'm dating myself in the 50s, and 60s, 70s, etc. So I remember when people were all slim. I talked to young people about this, and they look at me, and they can't really quite wrap their head around what I'm saying. Will Dove 47:00 Yeah, yeah, I know, we grew up in a time when a size 12 was fat. Dr. Richard Amerling 47:05 Yeah. Dr. Richard Amerling 47:06 Yeah, yeah. So there's been a sea change in the metabolic health and the waistline of the American and Western populations in general. But America is the worst by far. And it's all due to changes in the food environment that were pushed by the government, by the dietary guidelines in the food pyramid and all that stuff, created an epidemic of obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, that is still going on. And this is why our health as a nation is declining, and was declining, even pre COVID, the life expectancy was going down. So it's not only the fact that we're creating the disease by pushing this very harmful diet, but we were then in mistreating it by going after the wrong target. Looking at the sugar level, as opposed to the insulin level, we should know targeting low insulin in the treatment of metabolic syndrome, yet, hardly any doctors even measure insulin level. So you people out there, you're you're you're struggling with this disease, you shouldn't be. Go to your doctor, demand that they check your insulin level and tell them that they want yet you want to reverse your disease, you don't want to be taking insulin and these further drugs for your whole life. It's absurd. You're going to end up with every complication in the book, including we'll go blind, we'll have very bad heart and vascular disease, and you may have kidney failure, and get.. and end up on dialysis, This is no laughing matter. This is a totally reversible disease that is being horrifically mistreated by the majority of physicians out there following the pharma-based approach. Will Dove 47:06 Now that's... Will Dove 48:54 Yes. Now you had said you had two more. Dr. Richard Amerling 48:57 So, right. Will Dove 48:58 That was one. Dr. Richard Amerling 48:59 Yeah. So guys, I mean, insulin, what a horrible thing. I mean, really, just as a, as an aside, drugs that are approved by the FDA. And I by the way, I've lost all faith in the FDA, they, their approval to me means nothing, they are a complete industry, the captured rubber stamp at this point. So FDA approval means absolutely zero to me. Back in the old days, if you had a drug that was indicated and approved for a certain diseased state, if you wanted to use it for another diseased state, well, doctors were free to do that, of course, but for a pharmaceutical company to market it for that other indication, they would have to first go to the FDA and submit new studies showing that it was safe and effective against that new disease. So when type 1, insulin was initially being used for type 1 diabetes, no problem with that, you need insulin, you have to give something, you should should give as little as possible, but you should give some. When they wanted to to use insulin to treat Type 2 Diabetes, the FDA should have said, Show us the studies, do the studies that show that it is safe and effective for this new indication. And then we'll give you the approval, you can market it for that. No studies were ever done that I'm aware of, to validate type 2, insulin for type 2 diabetes. My view is, had they been done, they would have failed, they would have shown harm, because that's the implication from other studies that have been done going forward, such as the Accord trial. So that's the diabetes, insulin, all these hypoglycemic drugs, get away from them, run away, get healthy again, reverse your disease. The last I want to talk about are the psychiatric drugs. These are a complete and utter scam and disaster. I recommend reading two books. One is by Peter Breggin. Where he, go, go to his website and see what I'm talking about. He, he has written the bible on deprescribing psych medication. Peter Breggin is a personal friend and a groundbreaking psychiatrist who pushed back against stuff like frontal lobotomies,... Will Dove 51:17 Yes. Dr. Richard Amerling 51:17 ...and he was a foe of the psychopharmacological...pharmacologic approach to mental disorders from the beginning. Will Dove 51:25 This is someone great. Peter and Ginger are amazing researchers. I interviewed Peter some time ago. Dr. Richard Amerling 51:30 They are, they are. they aretruly Will Dove 51:30 They really do their homework. Dr. Richard Amerling 51:33 They're real, they're real heroes. And, and I, you know, suggest going to Peter's site and checking, checking out what he's written about this. But another book that I found to be extremely useful is by Robert Whitaker, called Anatomy of an Epidemic. Because he reviews, he's a journalist, science journalist. And of course, science journalists have done a huge service to the medical profession because they're outsiders. And they have a unique perspective. And they're not biased and they're not tainted by pharma. And they're not paid off by pharma, right. They're really independent. So, science journalist Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz, and Robert Whitaker, strongly recommended. So he looked at every psychiatric disorder and the, every psychiatric drug that is being prescribed and over prescribed. And the bottom line is this: there is no justification for the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness. This is something that was created more or less out of whole cloth by psychiatry, organized psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, in collusion with Big Pharma, because pharma had all these drugs that they wanted to use, but they needed medical justification. Psychiatry was sort of the ugly duckling in the medical profession, because it was, it had such a weak science base, frankly. So they were happy to jump on a bandwagon of this chemical imbalance notion of mental disorder and mental disease, which has never been demonstrated. And the idea that you can fix a mental disease, the brain is enormously complicated, right? That the neurotransmitters, the, the systems to bring them into the synapse, to take them up to, to degrade them, to keep the synaptic system working is so elegant and so complicated, that to mess around with this with these psych... psychiatric drugs, I think is a grievous mistake. So you do not have a mental chemical imbalance until you start taking psychiatric drugs, and I'm talking about all of them, with benzos, the SSRIs for depression, the tricyclics for depression, the so-called antipsychotics, the stimulants Ritalin, Adderall. ADHD, I mean, he talks, they have a whole chapter on ADHD. This is a total scam. Years ago at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons where I'm past president, we had as a as a lecturer at our annual meeting, the guy who first described ADHD. He came in and talked about how it was a beginning and how this was a very rare disorder affecting a tiny handful of young boys. And suddenly, every kid has it. Right? It's, it's a manipulation. Will Dove 54:35 Yes, and it's, it's a two fold problem. I'd like your comment on this. Will Dove 54:38 As I said, because I, this is something I've looked into myself. And as you said, decades ago, ADHD basically didn't exist. But now suddenly, just about every kid out there is being diagnosed ADHD. And so as I see it, it's two things. One, it's the increasing amount of sugar in the diet, which has made it very difficult for kids to concentrate, to think straight. Dr. Richard Amerling 54:38 Yeah. Dr. Richard Amerling 54:59 Yes. Will Dove 55:00 But, two, it's also, it's become this this, this catch all way of dealing with a difficult child in the classroom. Well, you know, kid's disrupting me right now. So we'll label him HDA ADHD and they'll put him on drugs that'll shut him up. He's just been a normal kid. Dr. Richard Amerling 55:16 Oh true. So true. Yeah, I agree, the sugar, stuff is toxic, right? That's clear. And of course, they feed them sugar all throughout the day at school, do they not, right? They're snacking constantly. Will Dove 55:31 My wife was a teacher for 27 years. And it was, it was horrifying to her., the snacks that they would bring in. Dr. Richard Amerling 55:38 Yes. Will Dove 55:38 It's all sugar. Dr. Richard Amerling 55:39 It's all sugar. Yeah. Sugar and canola oil mean a lethal combination. And you're wondering we're seeing childhood obesity now for the first time. Kids were never obese. There was one fat kid in an entire school. Right? And he got picked on which is unfortunate. But they were rare. Okay, if now if you're slim, you're rare. It's been a complete reversal. Yeah, so the the ADHD a total scam. Adderall is a product of Shire Pharmaceutical, who clearly wanted to develop a market for their drug. That's another another example of invention of a disease to sell a drug. They have this long acting stimulant. This is speed. This is like methamphetamine. And but it's long acting and, yeah, any kid is going to have a response to it. Are they going to be cured of this imaginary disease? No, of course not. Do grades go up with ADHD? No one's really been able to show with the treatment of ADHD and has been able to show their long term results are dismal. These drugs are highly cardiotoxic. Right? Imagine a stimulant. So your heart is always speeding at 100. That's horrible. Right? Your heart has to rest. You know, these kids are going to get high output heart failure. Frankly, that's my view, they're going to end up with high output heart failure, and they stay on them. When I was teaching in medical school, at least a quarter of the class was on Ritalin. That's huge. That's huge. And were they better for it? No, of course not, of course not. So that's the SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Increase brain serotonin level like this is going to cure depression. It's an absurdity. It's an absurdity, I think that such a gross manipulation of, you know, neurotransmitters is going to have a salutary effect. Again, you're playing around with extremely complicated machinery that we don't really understand. Will Dove 57:34 Right. Dr. Richard Amerling 57:34 No one really understands how the brain works. Will Dove 57:37 According to things that I've read, you know, recently, serotonin is not the antidepressant neurotransmitter, that's really not exactly what it does. And of course, it's part of the catecholamines. So if you affect serotonin, you're gonna affect the rest of them like dopamine and norepinephrine, there's no way you can't, because they're all linked together. And so as you made this statement, when you started talking about all of these anti psychotics, and all these other drugs that they're shoving into people, supposedly for mental illness, the balances of neurotransmitters in the brain are extremely delicate. You start messing around with those, I don't see how it can't have deleterious effects. Dr. Richard Amerling 58:12 Exactly right, you, as I said, you create the chemical imbalance, you're not treating a chemical imbalance, you're creating one with the drugs. And then once you do that, it's very hard to get all of them. Because your brain adapts, your brain will down-regulate certain receptors, for example, up-regulate other receptors. And before you know it, you are physically dependent on that chemical new you that you created with the drug. And it's going to be very hard and slow to get off the drugs, it can be done and it should be done. I'm just saying it's unnecessarily difficult. And of course, when you try to come off of them, and you have a bad reaction, your doctor, your so-called psychiatrists, many of whom really don't deserve a medical degree, frankly, is going to tell you Well, that's your recurrent disease. Right? You have to go back on the drug. No, this is the withdrawal syndrome with a drug that you gave me. And I'm now stuck on. There's no long term efficacy or safety data for any of these drugs. The antidepressants create, net, you know, again, you can create a study to and for any kind of outcome you want. If you're looking at a depression scale, well, what does a couple of points up or down really mean on a depression scale. But that's their endpoint, right? That's what they're looking at as an endpoint. Never end these drugs. The SSRIs clearly increased suicide. And this is now a blackbox warning on the drug. This is undeniable. And they increased homicide. And Peter Breggin and others have made the case that these are responsible for many of these mass shootings, the school shootings, these kids are on these drugs. They're horrific. And just think about it. You're a psychiatrist treating somebody for depression, the major risk in depression is suicide. Why would you give them a drug that increases their risk of suicide? It's completely stupid. Yet, that's what's being done. And the drugs are being given out for all sorts of indications, not just depression, but you know, social anxiety to social anxiety disorder, they keep making up these new diseases. Again, it all comes down to healthy living, healthy diet. Getting out, having some exercise, let the kids out and have play hour again, right. I mean, we used to run around like maniacs during our lunch breaks. When I was in school, you had a little lunch [unintelligible] in a brown paper bag, no snacks, right? We didn't get force fed snacks and little, you know, sugar bombs in boxes that they call fruit juice. No, none of that was around back then. And fortunately, you know, somehow I made it through. Will Dove 1:01:04 And yes, look at us, and we're fine. Now I'm gonna hit a couple of general questions for you, Richard. But are there any more specific things in regards to Dawson pharmaceuticals you'd like to talk about before I asked those questions? Dr. Richard Amerling 1:01:15 Oh, gosh, I have to let's see. I mean, I covered the major ones there. You know, I'm a nephrologist. So in the dialysis arena, and chronic kidney disease arena, there are a couple of big candidates, where toxic medications that have been over marketed by pharma, based on numbers again, that I could get into, such as erythropoietin and recombinant erythropoietin to boost blood counts. They've also been pushed in the oncology sphere to treat the anemia associated with chemotherapy. Again, this is a horrific misuse of a drug. The rationale for using erythropoietin in patients with chronic kidney disease is that they are presumably erythropoietin deficient. Because that hormone is made predominantly by the kidney. If you just have the anemia from chemotherapy, nothing to do with erythropoietin, giving erythropoietin as a nonspecific boost to the blood-making machinery is in fact harmful. It's like the blood doping that they do for the Tour de France, you know, this is going to hurt you ultimately, right? Even though you might win a race here and there. So that's another drug of abuse. Vitamin D in that dialysis patients setting is also way overused and has created diseased states in that population. Again, I don't want to get into the weeds because it would involve some discussion. But those are some other examples that come to mind. Will Dove 1:02:46 Right. Now, Richard, we started this interview by talking about statins, and how doctors are prescribing these things, just without a thought. And so the the general question that I have is, you know, all of these toxic pharmaceuticals are harmful. I knew the statins, were useless at best, harmful at worst. I'm not even a doctor. I just knew because my doctor tried to shove them on me 15 years ago when I went and did my homework before I said yes to putting anything in my body. So the question I have is, how do we end up with his entire medical community of doctors who don't know these things? Who don't know that these drugs are harmful? Who don't know that type 2 diabetes is in actual fact, chronic metabolic syndrome? Dr. Richard Amerling 1:03:33 Well, it's medical education, okay, which is completely dominated by pharma, by industry, at every level, and all that they are taught these days in medical school are the [unintelligible] approach in medicine, prescribe, prescribe, prescribe. I remember when I was down at St. George's University, I saw circulated the exam questions for a pharmacology exam talking about type 2 treatment of type 2 diabetes. And it was simply a recitation of all the different drugs and products used for type 2 diabetes. And I knew the Pharm Professor pretty well. And I emailed him I said, you know, Leo, I hope you're aware that type 2 diabetes is completely reversible by diet. I've never gotten an answer from him. But again, that is the that is the medical approach. Identify not even a disease anymore, but risk factors for disease, such as cholesterol, which is a bogus risk factor as as we discussed, or hemoglobin a1c a manifestation of an underlying syndrome that you're not even treating, but making worse and just hammer it with a drug. And so you get that number looking good. And that is what qualifies as good medical care these days. And that is what the students are being taught and that is what they're being tested on in the standardized tests that they need to pass to become licensed and certified, etc. And if they don't follow the party line and come up with the right answers, well, they're going to fail those exams, so they won't get their residencies and they won't get their certifications. So pharma controls the educational process. They control conference makeup, they control who gets on the speaker list. I know this [unintelligible] because, true confession, I was, I won't say a pharma whore, but I was close I was what they call a key opinion leader back in the days, in my early days in nephrology, cheerleading for companies like Amgen that makes erythropoietin, and they were a wonderful startup company, we all loved them. But they went away at Big Pharma, and they became pretty awful. So I know that's how it works, you get on their good list on their A list, and all of a sudden, you're getting invitations to speak at the national conferences. And you say, Wow, this is great. I've hit the big time, right? No, no, you're, you're just, you know, doing their bidding, and you're giving the content that they want to be given. And if you cross them, you're off the list. And I know, this happened to me, and it's happened to other doctors who I know. It's very real, they, you, there's a blacklist and you're on the blacklist, you never get invited again to speak at a major conference. Will Dove 1:06:20 Right? So, for my last question, Richard. And this is, hah, I'm sorry, I'm gonna try to hold myself back, folks, because I, I could rant for a long time on this, I'm gonna try to restrict this just to what Richard and I have been talking about. The way that they get people is they start with something that you know is true. And then they draw from that a conclusion that sounds like it should be true. So let's use an example here. Everybody knows insulin controls blood sugar. So if they tell you that you're a type 2 diabetic, and you've developed insulin resistance, then it seems logical to you that if they give you more insulin, it will compensate for that, when of course you do not understand is that just going to cause more damage. So obviously, people don't have the years that it would take to study disease states and pharmaceuticals and all of the side effects that come from that. And where I'm going with this is, so you need a trusted professional, someone who will have that one on one relationship with you. And much earlier in the interview, you suggested that there were several questions a person should be asking their doctor, I think that bears repeating at this point, because folks, if your doctor can't answer these questions, you need a better doctor. Right? Dr. Richard Amerling 1:07:29 And I'll put in a shameless plug for The Wellness Company. And we've opened up in Canada now to I'm sure you know, Mark has told you, but we have a group of doctors that we train. And so they are in line with how I see medicine, which is that it's mostly diet related disease and and pharma complications, right, we're mostly seeing drug related injuries, basically, a huge cause of increased hospital admissions. So the question is, you need to ask your doctor, what disease are you treating with Agent X? What are my chances of dying or having a serious health outcome from this disease? What does this drug do for my chances? Does it decrease them and by, if so by how much? And not in relative terms in absolute terms, I don't want to hear, you know, bogus relative risk reduction numbers. And your doctor is probably not even going to know how to answer those two questions. And then ask what are the harms associated with the disease? And what are my chances of getting any of these reactions? What are the serious complications? This is what used to be called informed consent. Unless your doctor can tell you these, these, can answer these questions satisfactorily, you don't have real informed consent and informed consent is the bedrock one of the bedrock principles of medical ethics. And we are focused at wellness company on restoring medical ethics, keeping the patient first and foremost, not being subjected to outside influences such as bribes from big pharma. We're not being subjected to influences by third party payers. We don't accept third party payment. We want patients to do well. That's our prime focus. We're not we don't care about social factors, right? We're we don't care about race. We don't care about gender. There are two genders, by the way [unintelligible] but there are only two genders. We don't play that game. We want our patients to do well. And that's our focus. We're not we're not treating the environment, we're not treating race relations, okay, we're just treating our patient. And that's what has to come back to medicine. The patient-physician relationship is where healing occurs. And without that, there is nothing, then you might as well have a bot or an AI agent take your history and prescribe something for you and that's where we're headed. Hopefully we're not there yet completely. Will Dove 1:09:57 That's what the WHO wants if they get their way. Dr. Richard Amerling 1:09:59 The WHO, yes. Do everything opposite from what the WHO suggests. Their latest missive on restricting salt is a disaster. Salt should not be restricted unless you're one of the very few people that have end stage kidney disease, heart disease or liver disease. Everybody else should eat as much salt as they want. And not steroids not going to kill you. It's actually very healthy for you Will Dove 1:10:23 Alright. Richard, thank you so much for giving us your time, for sharing your knowledge on this. And I'm sure that many of the viewers will take this to heart and start at the very least asking questions about the drugs that are being shoved into their body. Dr. Richard Amerling 1:10:36 I hope so. Great talking with you, Will, let's do it again.