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We've been receiving loads of emails from our SuperFeast community wanting to know what they can do to turn their immune system on and keep it fortified. Recently Mason caught up with our favourite functional Naturopath, Dan Sipple, to discuss go-to herbs, minerals, foods, and lifestyle practices to increase the body's immunological capacity. Embodying health sovereignty in a time of COVID has become quite a contentious topic; Who would have thought that trusting the body's immune system could become so politicised? Regardless of how you sit with the whole vaccinated/unvaccinated approach to the virus, bolstering the immune system is something (hopefully) most of us can agree is essential. People are now thinking about their immune system in ways they never have before, and we are here to offer guidance in any way we can. 

 

Imagine a society where mainstream consensus was to value and trust the body's natural immune system over pharmaceutical drugs. Imagine a world where superior herbs and medicinal mushrooms were mandated, subsidised, and heavily endorsed to keep us all thriving and truly living our best lives. To quote John Lenon 'imagine all the people living life in peace' (instead of fear); We are here for this vision. Tune in to hear Mason and Dan explore all the ways they would reinforce and support people's immune systems if they were to (hypothetically speaking) dictate all members of society take part in an Immune MAXzine. Where empowered sovereign health is the goal, and we live with reverence for Mother Nature's unassailable healing intelligence. This episode is packed full (and I mean full) of expert knowledge to have you feeling equipped and in an embodied state of health. We're advocating less divisiveness, more connection, and holistic health for everyone. Don't miss it.

 

"The amount of experiential clinical data that we have is overwhelming, and it's so overwhelmingly effective. If we really wanted to protect the population, Astragalus would be rolled out and would become a national treasure. Perhaps we could find an Australian-based tonic herb that works similarly? At the moment we don't know because the herbal tradition in Australia has a very different approach and was documented in a very different way. At the same time, we could be on the hunt for the adaptogens within the Australian system".

 

- Mason Taylor

 

 

Mason and Dan discuss:

 

• What is immunity? 
• Microbiome analyses.
• The skins microbiome.
• Strengthening the Wei Qi shield.
• Colostrum for the immune system.
• Herbs for long-term immune regulation.
• Dietary applications for the immune system.
• Medicinal mushrooms for the immune system.
• Arming the immune system in acute situations.
• Astragalus for lung, spleen, and surface immunity.
• The effects of stress and sleep on the immune system.
• How the immune system is influenced by the microbiome.
• What causes the immune system to become dysregulated?
• Lifestyle practices to increase your immunological capacity.

  

Who is Dan Sipple?

 

Naturopath Dan Sipple believes that establishing optimum bulletproof health is best achieved through a pro-active, functional, holistic approach that allows one to truly thrive. His approach utilises cutting-edge evidence-based medicine applied through modalities such as herbal nutrition & medicine, with a strong focus on environmental health and longevity.
Dan specialises in the areas of Immune / Gastrointestinal / Hormonal health and utilise functional diagnostic labs such as uBiome, Nutripath, Laverty, and Clinipath Pathology to assist in locating the imbalances contributing to the patient's condition. From here, he aims to create an individualised protocol designed to address root dysfunction and create bulletproof health.

 

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST 

 

Resources:

Dan Website
Dan Instagram
Gut Health Podcast 1
Gut Health Podcast 2

 

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Check Out The Transcript Here:

 

Mason Taylor: (00:04)

Hey man, welcome back.

 

Dan Sipple: (00:06)

Thanks buddy. Good to be here.

 

Mason Taylor: (00:08)

Yeah, good to be looking at your face digitally. Yeah, I think it's been a while since we've had a catch up. We've definitely talked about immunity before but there's just been a little tweak in the consciousness lately where all of a sudden collectively with what's going on in the world with COVID everyone's thinking about immunity much more than they ever have I feel on a collective nature and then there's a number of people that are allowing themselves because immunity is like a... You can't separate the immune system from the rest of the body and I feel like there's panic when people think about their immune system being something that's strong enough or not strong enough with or without natural medicine, with or without a vaccine so on and so forth.

 

Mason Taylor: (00:56)

I feel like there's a really nice moving away into more of a perception of what immunity is and then the word immunity can kind of fall away and people can connect to the whole nature of their system and how there is the body's capacity to protect itself with efficacy based on your personal constitution. I guess there's just a real... There's a variance there in terms of if you want your immune system to be strong you're in a more reductionist... Having a reductionist kind of like vitamin and nutrient and mineral supplementation which can be super beneficial and goes from vaccines, drugs to isolates and those kinds of things to real hard core intentionalized personalization lifestyle based immunity and then eventually the body's capacity to stay in harmony and flow and stay protected. Then the capacity for... It's like a family fire as well. You're stoking the fire of your own capacity for your genome to stay really healthy and expressed and I don't even like the word healthy in that context because it implies unhealthy and-

 

Dan Sipple: (02:05)

Yeah, I agree.

 

Mason Taylor: (02:06)

I guess I'm really stoked to jump in with you. I don't know where we're going to go just exploring. We've got a lot of people asking what they can do for their immune system during this time, got a lot of people saying get on the zinc and vitamin C and D's and all that kind of stuff. Want to jump into that with you and then a lot of people are asking what they can do if they're not going to get vaccinated, a lot of people saying I'm getting vaccinated. What can I do in conjunction with it and I don't think that's probably our place to really talk to too much rather than just generally talking about health and immunity but I think it's relevant no matter where you are on the spectrum. Got a very wide community listening and definitely want to be inclusive in this context when we're talking about immunity but yeah, how are you feeling about it all? What's happening clinically for you? What are people worried about? What are they asking for and do you see an evolution in the way people are relating to their immune system and their capacity to protect themselves from last year to this year?

 

Dan Sipple: (03:06)

Yeah, great question. I definitely am seeing it sort of in nearly every discussion and every consultation now. I think if there's anything good that's coming out of it is that people are thinking about their immune systems in a way they probably haven't been aware of before and so hopefully today we can just sort of dive into the different arms of immunity and discuss how different botanicals and nutrients and probiotics and dietary applications work to influence the immune system at large. Obviously full disclosure, I'm not an immunologist, I'm not a virologist, I'm a naturopath so I have a, I suppose a limited understanding but I'm I'm also super, super passionate about the immune system in general but yeah, it definitely does come up more and more as time goes on with the pandemic and everything and what everyone's going through. I think a conversation needs to be extended out into those areas because it is getting attention in terms of the zinc, the vitamin D. It would be good if it had more attention. I still think we need to push for a light on those areas because I'm still aware of different media releases and different practitioners and everything that are telling people you can't do anything for your immune system.

 

Dan Sipple: (04:26)

It's static which is complete nonsense as far as I'm concerned because we've got good clinical data, lots of research, a test tube and animal studies and human studies to say how different nutrients and botanical extracts influence what blood cell for example influence [crosstalk 00:04:45]-

 

Mason Taylor: (04:44)

Those people, the science is so clear on that. You can get a white blood analysis before and after taking mushrooms and see the activity and do that with a plethora of other things. You have a sauna behind you, you know? It's been clinically proven of how capacitated the immune system becomes and whether that's from directly on the immune system itself or because the nervous system is effective and it's able to go into a rest and digest place and then therefore have more efficacy. It doesn't matter. Those people have been compromised. I think we know that now.

 

Dan Sipple: (05:15)

And people see through it too, which is good. Again, if there's anything that's good that's coming out of it people that are sitting on the fence or confused, even if you're on the side of you are going to go with the vaccination and that sort of [inaudible 00:05:33], cool. That's fine. If you're interested at the same time in what builds a healthy, strong immune system, fantastic. If you're not looking through that lens too then you damn sure want to be looking at those strategies with regards to how to regulate and boost your immune system too in my opinion.

 

Mason Taylor: (05:52)

Yeah.

 

Dan Sipple: (05:53)

Yeah, like I said it's just disappointing I suppose that still not one campaign, still not one release, any sort of attention on that side of medicine, I've heard nothing so far.

 

Mason Taylor: (06:07)

Let's just do a... We kind of all know, I think i have nausea, we know why that is. We know how reductionist it is, we know the system is for all that it's good for, it's completely, it's a machine and the machine has a lack of capacity for the natural and for nuance and also for anything long term. This is what spurred me on getting in touch with you to do this one today. I was just thinking about just in let's go down the rabbit hole and into the imagination that there was a task force that was brought on and it was like, "Look, okay we're going to do what we do best in [inaudible 00:06:54] and look for the reactionary one size fits all, force everyone to do this thing so we can get back which is the vaccine which is fine but we want this task force to be looking at the long term integrity of the health of our population and so one thing that I've kind of thought I don't know how people can still be slinging stones at anyone that says, "Well why don't we have a mass roll out of like mushrooms and vitamin C and all these... The subsidisation of all these things?"

 

Mason Taylor: (07:26)

It's too much of a complex thing for them to comprehend. It's not just a drug for everybody, it's like there's nuance and it's something that they have to do continuously not just think take once and think that you're going to be all hunky dorie although that's obviously not going to be the case going forward. We can see that now.

 

Dan Sipple: (07:45)

That's the western mentality right there, isn't it? The pill for an ill. It's not a long term strategy unlike the more naturopathic philosophy which I suppose is more lifestyle based than long term.

 

Mason Taylor: (08:00)

What would you say... I constantly think the thing that makes sense the most for me and if there was a task force brought in we've talked a lot about the microbiome. We don't have to go into the nuance here but if all of a sudden there was free testing offered for every single person within the population to go and get your microbiome analysed and get a full panel and free analysis. You can get digital analysis now and start training up naturopaths and naturopathic students on how to read this and give generic feedback and create databases for generic feedback. You can just look up you're out of range on this strain of bacteria, that needs to go down. This needs to go up and this is the way you do it and we're going to subsidise your prebiotics in order to get there.

 

Dan Sipple: (08:45)

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

 

Mason Taylor: (08:49)

Well, it's actually where you go, "These people are incompetent or sinister." Where you know that the data's very clear now. We know that one of the problems with passing on infection, whether it's influenza or whether it's COVID, we know part of it is that your immune system's not actually able to keep the infection under control and not able to manage its levels of inflammation.

 

Dan Sipple: (09:10)

Correct.

 

Mason Taylor: (09:11)

I'm definitely glad... I'm just a fan of looking at all this guys. I'm not saying black and white, I think it's fun, I think it's fun thinking about this. You naturally know that if you're able to manage those pathways and bring some greater intelligence to the body across the population, then you're going to get on top of this and at the beginning we knew that this was going to be long term and we knew it was because I was saying only when we get vaccination in place, blah, blah, blah. At the same time, you could go, "All right, let's hit some goals. Let's see. We know the data says that if these strains are elevated within the gut and you look at you can see across the population that those that we have chronically high amount of this, you'd be able to actually enlighten us to which strains they would be, say the type that lives off animal protein, excessive amounts of animal protein. You can have greater inflammation, you're going to have less tight junctures within the gut and therefore you know clinically that you're going to be more prone to viral infection.

 

Mason Taylor: (10:09)

You went, "Let's set some goals across the population and protect the microbial diversity within the population. Let's make sure that we up the indigenous microbes within the gut and you can also start supporting local... If they were actually wanting to localise our industry and not take it global, at that point you can start funnelling research into the particular compounds that we have off this land say and start localising the production of prebiotics, soil based prebiotic on the probiotic supplementation and all those that's clinically correct and then get everyone a free three month, every three months, free test. They can opt in or opt out and they can just get dropped that test, get it sent and they can see real time how they're moving in the direction where they're the foundation of their immune system, their gut is actually able to handle itself better and there would be legitimate... I think they could do studies as well but they would be legitimate logic there that we are going to stop the spread of anything virulent going through the community and the population if we did that.

 

Dan Sipple: (11:16)

That would be fantastic. We all know I think it's tricky to come out and say this I suppose but we all know that it's not really about health at the end of the day because if it was it'd be more drastic measures put in place to stop the sale of alcohol and fast food and exercise would be mandatory and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, in an ideal society that'd be great if they would subsidise those sorts of things. I think in addition to that panel's zinc status, like vitamin D status, like inflammatory markers above and beyond CRP and ESI which is what you get on a standard blood test if your doctor's willing to even look that far. Yeah, that's what I suppose what we more I guess integrative and naturopathic practitioners are more interested in those nuances with people's immune system and their integrity because it's not just about one type of blood cell or an antibody, you know? There's a lot of talk about antibodies at the moment because of the vaccination discussion.

 

Dan Sipple: (12:18)

Yeah, cool. What about natural killer cells? What about macro fighters? What about nutrifils? What about the microbiome? All of those things... What about sleep? What about stress? It's like how long's a piece of string? We know the immune system is a lot more complicated and complex above and beyond just B cells and antibodies.

 

Mason Taylor: (12:35)

Yeah. I had a couple of skits yet to get around to and I probably won't... Actually doing at the moment. I don't have time to do the skits unfortunately. I'll be good at my real job first and then eventually I will have my comedy career but just like the gag just being a security guard sitting in front of a pub and asking for a live blood analysis before you come in so we know you've actually taken your, what I call the immune maxine. Can you imagine? You imagine you're in charge of government. You go and find all these beautiful providers and you go and create this product that's full of... Or we can go into it, you know? I'm thinking full of mushrooms. We can go into sources of zinc and vitamin D. I'd love to do that with you but I've got the prebiotics in there, you got your colostrum in there so that when you can get that live blood analysis you can see where the... You can't discriminate against people that are immune compromised. They can of course go get tested and they can show that they are exempt from doing such thing.

 

Mason Taylor: (13:44)

Prove. Prove you've got the immunological capacity to handle a strain, be adaptive enough to handle infection and not pass it on. Not allow your system to get to the point where you can get hoodwinked by very intelligent virus very quickly which we know happens with the flu every single year. I feel kind of silly because I used to walk around looking at airports and national airports just going... You read enough of Stephen Buhna, you look enough at virology and bacterial infection, you go, "Our ancestors are just hopping and skipping through the plane and I was thinking... This is five years ago I remember having this thought really strong. We should have some parameters around people just travelling all over the world and just coughing and spluttering and like I used to put my jumper up as I'm getting into the airport. I'm the one putting it up over my nose and over my mouth and now here we are it's swung so far the other way I'm thinking with none of the actual understanding of what these things are and what viruses are and don't know if anyone actually understands what this virus is looking at those from where it came from.

 

Mason Taylor: (15:00)

It's not just an everyday jump from animal to human transmission which is easily traceable but it's nonetheless it's a stupid approach as we know looking at antibiotic... Sole antibiotic treatments is, it's a stupid way to go try and kill bacteria, kill the ancestors. As Buhna says, they're too smart. You're not going to do it. You're not going to beat them. Just give up. Just say we're looking at this immune maxine that everyone's going to be offered and given. We'll look at the one that's really acute. We want everyone's immune system not necessarily stimulated but in a short term kind of reactionary sense we want them all armed. What are you going in there?

 

Dan Sipple: (15:51)

Look, echinacea comes to mind straightaway. I think any naturopath I would think agree with that, that if there's any really good clinical efficacy with echinacea and it can be used long term too by the way but when it is early days initial infection, very short term, very acute high doses and not the echinacea by the way that you get from the chemist. We're talking obviously practitioner grade liquid one in one, one in two echinacea root. That is where it would shine. I'd probably be going in there with transfer factors, colostrum, a whopping big dose of vitamin C.

 

Mason Taylor: (16:30)

The colostrum's a huge one. I remember that paper that Daniel [Vitalis 00:16:35] used to talk about with the flu and the colostrum was three times more effective? It was a really decent-

 

Dan Sipple: (16:41)

Yeah, he's still quite big into colostrum. I haven't looked into his stuff for years and looked into it the other day in his range and there was the fine pollens and the deer antlers and this massive big-

 

Mason Taylor: (16:53)

Bag of colostrum.

 

Dan Sipple: (16:54)

Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor: (16:55)

I mean, if it was three times more effective than the flu vaccine at stopping the infection and the transmission of infection, I mean isn't that worth looking at? That's where it gets silly, you know? Just do both.

 

Dan Sipple: (17:07)

Oh, 100%.

 

Mason Taylor: (17:09)

Just do both. I'm so over it. Do you remember years ago we did that tour... Years ago when no jab no pay came in and I felt it. I've a lot of friends and single mothers who were just forced into a corner and now were going to have their money taken away unless their kids get jabbed. For better or worse. I'm not saying I'd agree or disagree although I do disagree at that kind of level of coercion and no nuance. I remember I just wrote I think in a blog or something like that, I was like, "Look, what about that and?" Why not that and-

 

Dan Sipple: (17:44)

Well it's just a conversation, isn't it?

 

Mason Taylor: (17:47)

And reishi mushroom and colostrum. Then do you remember when I did that tour as like four years ago now we did that tour and nothing about vaccines at all but the whole pro vaccine mob of The Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, they kind of just started writing hit pieces and they wrote one on me and they were saying this guy Mason Taylor thinks that these people should be taking reishi mushroom instead of vaccinating," which of course they're so programmed and they're just mobsters who get told who to go after and that's what they did. They called us at 5:00 in the morning trying to catch us off guard because they're awful people pretending to be a journalist. They just write these hit pieces without actually looking at any of the nuance and just like why is it an unreasonable thing to say as many people are saying right now go get the vaccine but then do all these other things as well. That gets of course the level because they don't have the capacity to hold two ideas at the same time because they lack intelligence. Not everyone. I've had lots of... I've had people on here that like really... They really enjoyed getting their vaccine but they have the capacity to realise that it's not going to do it alone.

 

Mason Taylor: (18:58)

I think that's where I just want to preface it, that's where we're coming from so yeah, colostrum, do you want to tell everyone about the transfer factors and what the vibe is with them?

 

Dan Sipple: (19:09)

Yeah, so look as I understand its peptides transferred from bovine or chicken sources mostly bovine from what I understand that when transferred over to human host in this case I guess does transfer the immunological weaponry and memory that the source contained so that therefore when the host is then exposed to different antigens it has a much stronger chance of dealing with it effectively but in addition to the anti pathogenic action of it, it's more also about being used long term for immune regulation and that's a big piece I think that gets overlooked too is the regulation of the immune system is what's important here because it's not just, as I said earlier about the antibodies or one type of cell. The regulation is what's missing so we kind of zoom out from the COVID discussion and just talk about the fact that in today's kind of society, in contemporary society a lot of people by and large have dysregulated immune systems. That comes back down to a whole heap of factors which we can get into but I always collectively refer that as to like antigenic load. What's someone's antigenic load like? What does that mean? Well, it means what's pissing off someone's immune system. What's causing their immune system to create havoc and inflammation and collateral damage to their own ecosystem.

 

Dan Sipple: (20:37)

That can be dietary proteins coming through a leaky gut, that can be parasites, that can be different viruses and stealth infections. It can be weakened nutritional status. It can be stress all to my gut microbiome. That kind of yeah, that kind of conversation is where I'm at at the moment in terms of what can we also use so that when we do encounter a really gnarly infection that our immune system just doesn't absolutely blow a fuse.

 

Mason Taylor: (21:05)

You'd be wanting to basically you're in this task, say you're in this task force and they're like, "Listen, over the next five, 10 years we want the population of all Australians to be really fortified so we can slow down the spread of this thing. You'd have to start speculating in the beginning but because the immune system's evolved you're speculating in a general way but in a way that you know is inevitably involved, yeah. You'd be wanting to test people for Epstein Barr, see if there's any stealth infection in that kind of context parasitic load. You want to be looking at their leaky gut, so on and so forth to make sure they aren't walking around with something that perhaps is symptomatic and perhaps it's asymptomatic. Just because it's asymptomatic doesn't mean it's not going to cause harm to... In this instance cause harm to everyone else because you've got stealth infections that you're not looking at. You'd want to be making sure that people have the opportunity to test for those things so that then if they did get sick their immune system had the chance to catch onto it and they wouldn't become affected themselves.

 

Dan Sipple: (22:05)

Correct, but in doing all that this is the whole thing, that takes time, that takes resources, it takes patience, it takes more than spending seven minutes with a patient in a doctor's office, right? You can already see how nuanced it is and then when you look at it like that it's like well of course the powers that be want a quick fix, they want a quick intervention, that they can quickly roll out but it's a silly assumption to sort of present that that's going to be a long term solution because it ain't. The data's already showing that it isn't. If we model off other countries where they have high vaccination rates and yet high cases surely that's enough to kind of suggest that well, maybe the model that we have used isn't working and we've got to go back to the drawing board.

 

Dan Sipple: (22:52)

Yeah, for me being naturopathically changed... Trained, sorry and having, full disclaimer, having gone through all this myself 10, 12 years ago even before I became a naturopath and decided to study, I discovered all this over time and I remember there was a time when I'd learn about the interleukins and the T helper cells and all of that type of thing and got super obsessed about how herbal medicine and botanicals and everything influenced that because I thought, "Well, if we can influence these different arms of immunity then we've got a chance against autoimmune disease, allergies, parasites, immune deficiency, and all those things.

 

Dan Sipple: (23:32)

I'm still as passionate as I was then if not more. That's kind of where a lot of my work lies as a practitioner is dealing with I see all sorts of things of course but I see a lot of those people that were kind of like me, you know? Really caught in that stealth infection pattern where their immune systems just have become dysregulated. And it's not a quick fix. That's what I mean, it takes a lot of time and diligence and effort and money too. It's true, the functional testing and to get all that underway isn't easy and it's not cheap.

 

Mason Taylor: (24:06)

And you can see it's like that not being subsidised and that not being covered-

 

Dan Sipple: (24:10)

Exactly.

 

Mason Taylor: (24:11)

You can see the, not to say the word but you can see the agenda behind it. If you're a smart person and you follow the science you can see the science lead you back to this place inevitably. Let's look at the maxim again. We went for starting like with colostrum and where else did you go with it?

 

Dan Sipple: (24:35)

Yeah, I'm just thinking with the immune system getting those white blood cells primed I wouldn't so much in this scenario use the tonics. They're more for long term. I would want a quick, sharp, acute expansion and an attack of all those white cell troops so yeah, it's things like your echinacea root, your zinc, vitamin C. maitake mushroom might be a little bit more nuanced there.

 

Mason Taylor: (24:58)

Yeah, maitake... That's what keeps coming to mind for me, turkey tail-

 

Dan Sipple: (25:02)

Pigtail, maitake.

 

Mason Taylor: (25:03)

That's actually another one. Yep.

 

Dan Sipple: (25:04)

Yep. For sure. I'd keep it pretty basic in the acute. Longer term, different story. That's when I would probably expand it a bit more and zoom out.

 

Mason Taylor: (25:13)

Okay, so we've got the immune maxim and then the maxim marathon. There's obviously going to be crossover. The way I see it, let's go a little bit into the nuance there. We keep on going on vitamin C and yeah, got to be onto vitamin C and so people are taking isolates, people are taking scorbix acid and then people are taking the lithosperic vitamin C and they're kind of good ones for the sprint, the maxim sprint when you have an outbreak and you go kind of, "All right, everyone we need you [inaudible 00:25:47]. We need to make sure you've got that echinacea in there. Maybe that's where you get the chi tonics like the astragalus. There's where I'd be coming from after having chats with my friends, my Chinese herbalist practitioner friends. They're saying you'd get astragalus always for the wei chi to put up the shield around yourself. [inaudible 00:26:10] getting in there and then they're also saying everyone should be on licorice, ginger and poreau just to augment the spleen because that just shows a major kink for this particular infection to get in and you can strengthen up that earth based system then you're going to have a much better potential to then have strong lungs metal element within the lungs and that puts up the wei chi shield so that you're less inclined to have that infection get into to begin with. Yeah so-

 

Dan Sipple: (26:40)

Just having a thought coming through man as you're saying that back to the acute hypothetical treatment, tincture, whatever you want to call it I'm thinking along those lines too. Chinese skullcap, one of my favourites and I'd probably use that too long term because it's got a great effect on those T red cells so when you've had the initial sprint and then you want to come back and tell the troops to chill out and calm down and get back in and ready for the next one and keep them healthy, yeah Chinese skullcap all the way, probably with the astragalus, those two as the prime-

 

Mason Taylor: (27:14)

[inaudible 00:27:14]?

 

Dan Sipple: (27:15)

Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor: (27:15)

Yeah, I definitely at the start of this I ordered a big bag for myself. Had never really taken it long term but when it all started going down I got onto that was the other recommendation, a good reminder. It's kind of like I've got sitting there. Got a big half a bag sitting there which I like coming out of winter it's like I'm enjoying putting it aside but for everyone in the northern hemisphere [inaudible 00:27:36] would be a good time to be getting onto those. Let's look, we've got the sprint and the marathon. I've been chatting to you a little bit about the nature of supplementation with say like vitamin C and zinc, how we can do it in a real kind of an isolated form versus what we're going to be skipping over to for the long term and the lifestyle term so we don't get stuck in isolation. Reduction isn't even when it's in the health based system so how would you differentiate the kind of the vitamin C types that were going in there?

 

Dan Sipple: (28:05)

Yeah, so for the person whose immune system's burnt out, they've seen chronic infections before and then they come along and they hit something like this, that's... I would use it in the acute and the long term with that type of person. Same with zinc. I think if you're pretty healthy so to speak in that kind of context and we're looking at something long term that's where the fat solubles A and D I think are really good because again, it comes back to more immune regulation and strength, yeah? Vitamin A and vitamin D naturally come in cod liver oil which is always a good thing to do, five to 10 mil a day. That's usually what I sort of prescribe as far as patients go. Colostrum which I said before. I definitely would use that long term just to keep all the sort of armies of the immune system well nourished. We've got the innate side of the immune system which gets excited when it first encounters a pathogen and if that isn't capable enough to counter it, that's when it has to call on the adaptive side. That adaptive side is what houses the T cells, the B cells which contain antibodies.

 

Dan Sipple: (29:09)

I'm doing a little series on Instagram at the moment all about T cells and that is what kind of makes up the T cell subsets so that's your TH1, TH2, these are just different armies of troops really for T cell responses, it gets quite sort of complex but it's cool to look at again how herbs influence different arms of immunity because people can also get stuck in patterns where their immune system stays skewed for whatever reason. Might be allergies and asthma and parasites can keep something called the TH2 cytokines polarised and when that happens it kind of imbalances other areas of the immune system so rather than it all being nice and even and ready to fire it can get skewed. Therefore, if that person then encounters a pathogen, they quite likely have a poorer response because that part of the immune system is deficient. You get me?

 

Mason Taylor: (30:03)

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Dan Sipple: (30:03)

Yeah. Mushrooms are fantastic for that exact scenario by the way.

 

Mason Taylor: (30:09)

Funny mushrooms. They're so good. I'm at this point and I don't even have to say it anymore, I've got everyone else going and saying it for me like it's just there's no point. There's no point in not being on mushrooms.

 

Dan Sipple: (30:20)

We're not talk about white button mushrooms or psychedelic mushrooms, people.

 

Mason Taylor: (30:25)

Chaga, turkey tail, reishi, maitake, shiitake-

 

Dan Sipple: (30:28)

Cordyceps.

 

Mason Taylor: (30:30)

[inaudible 00:30:30] cordyceps, lion's mane. They're all there. Yeah, that's like I think at the time we eventually were like everyone was just asking for a capsule from us. Even though we like the powder and being able to like... For me, I'm at the point just mega dosing just comes into relevance so often these days where I'm like I can just feel my body craving a heap teaspoon of chaga and then again in the afternoon. Then the capsules have made it pretty easy as well. Even though we've got to say it is a certain label dose but this is from my discretion, me going against the rules because we've got that as a listed medicine but for me I go against the rules and I'll double that and triple that regularly because you can get a sense of it and that's the beautiful thing about the mushrooms is they give you that feeling of protection within your body. You go, "Wow." You can sense the-

 

Dan Sipple: (31:26)

It's tangible, yeah.

 

Mason Taylor: (31:27)

Yeah, it's a tangible click up in activity and what I imagine is immunologic activity and that's why reishi's so great for people in the beginning especially in ashwagandha kind of falls into it as well because it's such a nervous system regulator that you can just drop into your body and get a sense of what you're actually feeling. That's why people get spiritual awakenings from reishi. It's not anything too woo woo, just the fact that you can get perception of your own self. You get perception of yourself and how you actually feel and how your nervous system feels, you unplug. That's the metaphorical unplugging from the matrix. You're not told how you feel, you actually, you get it. The mushrooms have got to be in there. I don't see any point in people not being on the mushrooms daily right now and it's another one like if you're actually wanting to protect people's... The cellular structure. You're actually trying to protect the treasures of the body. That would be and again, I'm biassed in that.

 

Mason Taylor: (32:25)

There's so many things I'd be doing that that would be the first thing that would just be thrown out into the population completely subsidised a certain amount for everyone and then fully subsidised just start... The industry, that you could be creating, you're not going to... It might not work at the di dao mushrooms that I have but because there's a cap on the way that we can produce that. You can still do very decent large scale grown on wood mushrooms and you could... Again, you could be creating industry rather than destroying it right now and just what we know that's going to save so many people's immune systems.

 

Dan Sipple: (33:06)

Oh mate, even IHCC, the shiitake extract, you know?

 

Mason Taylor: (33:14)

You're right, that is the other one. This is where you can start going into the in that sprint. You can actually start going into the isolates that are coming out of them and isolate particular beta glucan's coming out of the mushrooms which makes sense and then when you go into marathon down the track. That's when you go back to di dao professionally full spectrum extraction.

 

Dan Sipple: (33:36)

Yeah, and astragalus there too as you said, that'd be the... I think that's one that you do feel... It's not a mushroom but it's again like that tangible feeling, that is something that every patient says that they feel, that uplift and that chi and that's what you want if you're running that marathon and if you have a burnt out what we call T cell senescence so in other words if your T cell are exhausted and burnt out and senescent that is I've never seen anything act more specific to that. There are other herbs that can compliment it but yeah, I'm just such a fan of that herb and the research just continues to sort of come out in favour of it. I just think it's fantastic. So lucky we've got that tool.

 

Mason Taylor: (34:19)

Yeah, that's one of the ones, the Taoists who the mushrooms are kind of spread out but astragalus was traditionally that one that was just quite available everywhere and it's like an honorary mushroom with its big blue [inaudible 00:34:30] and just its immunological adaptability. It's one of those ones in all accounts friends talking to Taoists, they say, "Yeah astragalus is the one I'll take every single day." Yeah, it does make sense and that's short term and long term. I mean you get onto that, that's why there's a reason we've said for the last I don't know, how long have I had astragalus? Like eight years? There's a reason I've said every single time we get to autumn you start smashing it. It's lung season. You start preparing your body for winter. It's the steel and it's a beautiful spleen tonic and it's a beautiful lung tonic and that's where you derive your surface immunity. That's where you derive your wei chi. Of course it makes sense to be getting onto that preventatively. Make no mistake guys, chi herbs, astragalus, the amount of data that there is on it and thousand upon thousands upon thousands of years of clinical usage, that much time of just like, the folklore behind it.

 

Mason Taylor: (35:33)

That amount of experiential clinical data that we have is so overwhelming and it's so overwhelmingly effective, if we really wanted to protect the population that herb would be rolled out and become a national treasure. Perhaps we could find an Australian based tonic herb at the moment we don't know because we don't have a similar type of herbal tradition in Australia to the Taoist tradition. It's a very different approach and it was documented in a very different way. At the same time we could be on the hunt for like the adaptogens within the Australian system and then that does bring me to the vitamin C. I can see liposomal vitamin C, an isolate of vitamin C being used in the sort sprint just to get that spike and [inaudible 00:36:23] to see what you're using as well in that instance but for me I'm getting to the point where I feel uncomfortable using them and going to a whole fruit, whole food vitamin C, like a freeze dried cacadoo plum, freeze dried davidson plum, getting finger lime in there. Especially those Australian botanicals. I'm feeling so fantastic and then it's got all the pigments thrown in there. There's all those polyfenals going in just like feeding the bacteria.

 

Dan Sipple: (36:54)

That's it.

 

Mason Taylor: (36:55)

Got the natural fibres. It's how I feel about doing an isolate of a mushroom which can be good clinically. First just get the whole thing. There's all these substances in there that we haven't identified that are going to help bring greater long term efficacy. I think that's where we need to go with the vitamin C's. Get the camu camu. Freeze dried camu camu in there.

 

Dan Sipple: (37:15)

Yes, 100%. Whole food vitamin C all the way. I think when you're out of the danger zone and if there's a useful semi long term... When by that I mean weeks, months potentially liposomal vitamin C. It's just in winter. Same as vitamin D. I've no problem with patients pumping those, couple of sprays under the tongue each day in winter and you can do it on and off in other months too but I think in those other months where your vitamin D stores are naturally going to raise you are going to be more outside, you're going to be exercising more, yada yada, I think that's... Yeah, it makes sense to sort of zoom out and use the whole plant extracts like you say because you're going to get that cross feeding with microbiome support which inevitably's going to influence the immune system at the end of the day anyway. So much from your microbiome... Sorry, so much of your immune system is influenced by your microbiome and they've shown that in rat studies where they'll compare rats the size of their spleen and thymus gland. Have I sent you this study? I don't think I have.

 

Dan Sipple: (38:16)

They wiped out the microbiomes of these poor, poor mice, right? Compared the size of their spleen and their thymus to the groups that hadn't and it was like obviously significantly different and then they replaced the microbiome, re injected it back into these rats. Boom, spleen starts growing, thymus starts growing.

 

Mason Taylor: (38:39)

Like a faecal transplant? How'd they inject it back in?

 

Dan Sipple: (38:41)

Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, it was a faecal transplant. This was done... Jason [Hurlac 00:38:45] put me onto this research. I think it was done a long, long time ago now but it was kind of I believe the initial sort of understanding around that time of how much gut bugs talked to the immune system. I see it man clinically. You see the patients, always one of them where at some point in their life the microbiome just gets absolutely trashed. The immune system goes down in response to it and once those bugs are gone, they're gone. Some species literally go extinct and we're what? Four or five generations now in antibiotic usage so we're already watered down, dwindled down when we start life. Like one course of antibiotics can do that let along 20 or 30 or 40 like some patients have come to me, they've got health issues by the time they're 20 or 30 or 40 and you're like, "How many antibiotic courses do you recon you've had in your life if you just had to guess?" If they're lucky it's five. Some people it's like 40. It's pretty devastating.

 

Mason Taylor: (39:47)

Yes.

 

Dan Sipple: (39:47)

Not to say that they don't have their use as well. There are times when antibiotics are useful.

 

Mason Taylor: (39:55)

I mean this is again... It's like I feel you and thank you for saying that but it's also like of course. You start talking about this and I know we weren't going to even talk about this myopic approach and the vaccine going into it but at some point I think everyone needs to grow up and become a little bit more mature and remember that it's like with antibiotics. It's like you go, because you're bringing up an irresponsible usage of a drug that's saved a lot of people and you know you've had to say that little disclaimer because you know people's hearing, the cult like hearing will be there or the immature way of hearing it is going... I'm not saying you're saying this, I'm saying this.

 

Dan Sipple: (40:36)

Oh no, yes.

 

Mason Taylor: (40:37)

Is going to be, "Well if they've done this and they've done that how dare you badmouth something." It's the same with the vaccines. How dare you to badmouth this. It's like it's that full tribal... It's an immature way of your reacting. It's like if someone was to tell you they're taking it personally it's like rather than being in a community where you're able to actually to have some criticism based upon yourself which I'm coming from someone who doesn't like criticism at all but I've definitely appreciated and work on it, someone says to me, "It's amazing when you get really passionate and you get frustrated about things in the world but you know what? The excess of that frustration, it can be a little bit detrimental to yourself and those around you." That's like, that's the equivalent of having say, "Hey, a little bit of excess antibiotic, it's actually not that great for the people of the population and it's actually going to be really detrimental when we get these resistant bacteria and then eventually we do have these resistant viruses as we know. It's like, "How dare you? No, my frustration is done this for me and it's done that for me and how dare you question it. That's sacred to me. That's sacred. You're not allowed to touch that."

 

Mason Taylor: (41:42)

Same thing so I mean it's a challenge for everyone listening to remember the Scott Fitzgerald quote, "The sign of true intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still function." If you are reacting one way or another or if you find yourself defensive, you're finding your way to seem progressive but you watch your internal dialogue, look for the gathering evidence. If you're trying to gather evidence rather than stay in a forward moving progressive, sometimes and I don't know and actually be, I don't know. You don't sit in the middle but when you are in the middle of two conversations, you're not fence sitting but you're able to handle the complex nuance within the conversation and if you can do that you can start peeking through and seeing these little sides of truth and you'd never try and just rest on one ultimate truth and I think that's what we definitely need to be doing here and I think in that sense let's go back to our maxims what are you putting in there? I know we got the 40 vegetables that we're trying to have every week as the rule for [inaudible 00:42:49]. I think it's great advice.

 

Dan Sipple: (42:51)

Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor: (42:52)

All different types of pigments and fibres and the appropriate amount of protein, appropriate amount of legumes. Kind of those ratios we discuss in the other podcast in order to how to get your microbial diversity up. What are those little extras? I know originally you liked Organify, red Organify to get the pigments in and get the gut kind of going up. What else are you liking in there?

 

Dan Sipple: (43:16)

Depending on if I look at someone's microbiome and there's certain species that need nourishing that will determine if I go down that path with either red polyphenols or blue or combination.

 

Mason Taylor: (43:28)

What about across the population if you're just speculating?

 

Dan Sipple: (43:30)

It's more diet in that case. It's more just diversity in your diet, stop eating six vegetables per week and try and hit 40 different species, you know? I think even more zoomed out from that though unless nuance is the effect of stress and sleep on the immune system. Those, they're huge at the moment man. The patients that I'm seeing that are that torn and twisted and stressed and confused as a result of what's going on it's like that's immune deficiency right there. Stress disables immunity, period. If we're having the conversation about immune intelligence and immune capacity, it's like well we have to be talking about sleep. Are you sleeping right now or are you going to bed and scrolling through your phone and getting triggered by all this shit because most people are, right? It's not easy to just turn it off either you want to be informed regardless of which lens you're looking through. You want to know what's going on. That is a tricky thing to navigate but I have to obviously continually read or write that the importance nature time, slowing down, stress and yes, sleep on the immune system. The immune system recharges through the night.

 

Dan Sipple: (44:36)

It's like hormones so if you're not sleeping your immune system is regardless of what... I've seen people on the best protocols. You can't fault it but stressed to the max and not sleeping and it's just like, "That stuff's not even..." it might be having some protective effect than without but it's definitely not putting you in a prime spot where your goals are sort of orientated. Again, disclaimer. That's been me in the past as well for sure.

 

Mason Taylor: (45:04)

I mean, this is what I thought at the beginning. Imagine if immediately... I think the biggest step that they did was they took the six free mental health plans sessions from six to 10 sessions or something like that and then started educating about a little bit about like here's the helpline, here's lifeline, so on and so forth. Here's Beyond Blue. The only thing that made sense to me to go above and beyond, can you imagine if we just... I know this is full speculation and sometimes I like flying to Neverland and go, all right. We know that sleep and stress... We know we've got markers that can measure those. Something as simple as like I don't know, like an [inaudible 00:45:51] and there's apps. If you're in this technological place. I know a lot of people listening to this are like, "I don't want to be using technology, I don't want Bluetooth on me," but I'm talking about mass wide rollout. If you were put in charge of getting the help of our population up and able to handle this and stop the decimation that this is having on families, the decimation this is having on small businesses. Just the decimation this is having.

 

Mason Taylor: (46:17)

People not appreciating the fact that, all right, cool. Some lives have been saved but what about those moments of like young families lives where we put this much stress at the beginning of what's already a stressful journey and then that completely gets them tripping over for a few years, that impacts their life forever. There's no measurement-

 

Dan Sipple: (46:33)

As if life isn't stressful enough as it is for most families, right, financially, socially?

 

Mason Taylor: (46:39)

I wonder if people would then go, "This is a violation of my rights," if you go, "Hi everyone, we're going to educate you on how to sleep better and we're going to... Again, we're going to subsidise and we're going to just, you know we're going to create some good internal business and create some money for smaller operators and we're going to get everyone on sleep markers and we're going to start incentivizing you to get those markers variable to you and rewarding you and stop bringing a pride in through our nation around optimising our sleep. We start by creating nonjudgement but hey everyone here's the education. Here's exactly what we know and then we're going to start allowing you to get... Reward yourself as you go along in that process and optimise your sleep. Can you imagine the insane amount of health and just how much our medical system would be alleviated long term if we did something like that?

 

Dan Sipple: (47:33)

Oh, 100%. I remember someone saying years ago that I can't remember, it was literally like 10 years ago it was in a documentary and then some fellow was like, "Imagine if we had a crisis of health." It's just like, "Yeah." Lot of businesses are going to go down, a lot of corporations are going to lose out, you know? Yeah, it comes back to what you said at the end of the day not to get conspiratorial at all because that's not the objective of the conversation but it's like, "We know that there is an agenda."

 

Mason Taylor: (48:00)

Yeah, of course.

 

Dan Sipple: (48:01)

Because if there wasn't these things would be in the headlines and they would be campaigns towards bringing them to the forefront so yeah, those-

 

Mason Taylor: (48:10)

As soon as anyone says it's too expensive we know they're full of crap now because look at how much money... How much debt we've been willing to just to go into and I'm not saying that's right or wrong. The other just those, yeah the measurements on stress. I mean, you've got the sauna behind you, we've got the capacity to go and utilise indigenous healing modalities revolving around meditation, going walkabout, connecting with nature. There could be this mass rollout of free information taking pride the same way that's like throughout China you'll se tai chi being done in the park and it's a part of their culture. This could've been an opportunity for Australian culture to go beyond just basically boozing at the pub and barbecues which I love both of them. I think they're wonderful but can you just imagine the cultivation of national pride as well as everything else. If everyone else wants to go down the medical intervention route as well that's like absolutely do it. Can you imagine though if they rolled out meditation? Started the subsidisation of [inaudible 00:49:24] practises? Can you imagine, and you can do it at home. Mass education just all of a sudden bring subsidising of the media outlets if they'd start. Give them perks if they start taking on pro bono advertising of particular elements of how to de stress the body through meditation courses.

 

Mason Taylor: (49:47)

Getting a buddy, through yoga ninjas. Start producing fire infrared saunas here in Australia. Go get Sebastian producing the new... He's got new aurora ones that just like little domes. It's a local company, start getting those produced and start putting those in houses. Start moving them around through the community and start showing people with their little band or whatever it is with have a little Bluetooth and it's hooked up. I know then everyone will go, "I don't want my data... I don't want the government having my data of my sleep markers and my stress markers but regardless looking at a macro scheme here and it might see pie in the sky but I guess-

 

Dan Sipple: (50:31)

Oh man. Sorry to cut you off.

 

Mason Taylor: (50:31)

You're good.

 

Dan Sipple: (50:31)

Even subsidising growing your own food in your own backyard, man, something so simple.

 

Mason Taylor: (50:39)

This, we know it's a golden opportunity for if you're a huge business. We know what this would be a golden opportunity for if you were an actual human oriented and focused government. We know what it would be a huge opportunity for if you weren't selfish and stupid and you could think laterally and you weren't just a talking head and there's so many people raring up and it's dangerous. The lessons I always got from my dad... Sent my dad the samurai, just passed recently. He's like, "One thing you keep your head down long enough that you don't pop up against the grass and get your head taken off too early." Stay down and move with stealth and then pop up when it's absolutely necessary, do what you have to do and then go back down and move but it's-

 

Dan Sipple: (51:36)

And they're making it hard to stay down.

 

Mason Taylor: (51:38)

They're making it hard to stay down just because it's so blatant. I think for when everyone was to say what we've talked about here and I guess a lot of the point of this conversation is we've talked a little bit about immunity which also talking about a reality that worth manifesting and we're needing to do these kinds of things ourselves which we are doing. Trying to hopefully move away from the idea that it's taboo to start taking responsibility for your immune system and start doing things in conjunction to one another. Obviously it is. I said, "Why don't you guys give children and the mums if you say no jab, no pay, no welfare for single parents.

 

Mason Taylor: (52:20)

Why wouldn't you give them reishi as well if we know that reishi mushroom has been proven to be that good to the immune system and they can't handle that level of nuance that they need to go on the attack basically." If you can't handle that level of conversation or if you're able, then well we know they can't have that level of conversation, I guess all I'm saying is we know now we're going to have to be the ones to carry that much nuance but it's also worth remembering that you don't want to be like them and find your identity based on creating opposition. I think that's what's also kind of I think going to get people being less effective and being hysterical and sticking their head up too early.

 

Dan Sipple: (53:06)

100%, 100%.

 

Mason Taylor: (53:07)

What they're doing here is they're not... I know it feels threatening for a lot of people on both sides. It feels threatening to people on both sides and if you are in that state of feeling threatened, first of all you're putting everyone in danger because your immunological health is going to go down because you're stressed. First of all, stop it. Stop being selfish. The other point is there is a middle ground in order to be effective and there is no right answer in how to get in. Other people are like, "You have to get jabbed. You have to get up and come and march otherwise you consent." Do those things, by all means but I would recommend for everyone to stay within your own body. Stay within your own capacity to fuel who you are and don't fall into that finger pointing identity and that tribalism. You can still take action but-

 

Dan Sipple: (53:58)

Doesn't have to be promoted necessarily just like in your own backyard, you know?

 

Mason Taylor: (54:04)

This is going to be long term. This is long term stuff going on. You're going to have to start getting actioners and as you said, it's a good time to start getting into growing your own food. It's a really good time for cultivating... Appreciating the localization of your community and really start in placing a lot of value on the connections that you have made, the genuine connections that you have made, friends and family because yeah, community can be a house of cards sometimes especially when it's polarising things like this so you've got to nourish those golden relationships and not just the ones that seem ideologically driven. Yeah, I found my tribe. I found my tribe. They believe the same things I believe. It's lik