We're discussing metabolic health, metabolic healing, the kinship of different nutrients and minerals, and how an imbalance of certain nutrients and minerals such as copper, zinc, iron, and magnesium are at the root cause of a range of health conditions becoming prevalent in society.
In pursuit of health and healing, most people, at some point in their life, have been told by a doctor or healthcare practitioner that they need to take Vitamin C, D, and Iron supplements to bring their body back into a state of harmony. At some point in their life, many women will also be told they are anaemic.
In this episode, Dan breaks down how and why many people who have been diagnosed as anaemic are actually not, and how downsizing the number of synthetic supplements you take daily (a less is more approach)- could be the missing link in achieving health harmony. Dan discusses his health journey finding out he was copper anaemic, which lead him to researching the relationship between ceruloplasmin production, copper deficiency, tissue-stored iron, retinol, D3, and whole-food vitamin C.
We love having Dan frequent the SuperFeast pod; his non-dogmatic approach and devotion to upgrading his knowledge in health and vitality keep us inspired and on point. In this episode, Dan delivers accessible health protocols for acute situations and lifestyle maintenance and discusses what an ancestrally aligned diet looks like, and why our bodies thrive on them.
"It turns, out a lot of the time people aren't actually low in iron. It's just that so much of their iron is stuck in the tissue, and it looks deficient in the blood. So, what do they get? They get iron supplements. Which just compounds the whole problem. It creates more oxidative stress. No one's looking at copper. If anything, they've been told they have too much copper, right? So you can see how that conundrum just accelerates and accelerates. And you end up with this more inflammatory, more oxidative stress type of picture over time, which eventually leads to chronic fatigue".
- Dan Sipple
Mason and Dan discuss:
- Anaemia.
- Zinc deficiency.
- Copper anaemia
- Pyrrole disorder.
- Metabolic health.
- Metabolic healing.
- Ancestral nutrition.
- Bioavailable copper.
- Autoimmune disorders.
- DHEA supplementation.
- The Importance of retinol.
- Hemochromatosis in men.
- Terrain theory vs germ theory.
- Copper deficiency symptoms.
- The difference between retinol and beta carotene.
- The relationship between retinol and D3 supplements.
- Whole food vitamin C vs ascorbic acid and liposomal C.
Who Dan Sipple?
Dan Sipple also known as The Functional Naturopath is based on the south coast of NSW and has a special interest in gut health, immune dysfunction, pro-metabolic health, mineral rebalancing & hormones.
Dan has been in the health and wellness arena for over a decade and blends traditional herbal medicine systems and knowledge with cutting-edge functional and integrative testing to best facilitate a patient's journey to peak wellness.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST
Resources:
Autoimmunity and Medicinal Mushrooms (EP#18)
Optimising Your Gut Bacteria with Dan Sipple (EP#68)
How to Turn Your Immune System On with Dan Sipple (EP#131)
Resources mentioned in the podcast:
Morley Robbins - Cure Your Fatigue (book)
Ray Peat- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness of Life
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Check Out The Transcript Here:
Mason: (00:00)
Our favourite naturopath. Hello.
Dan Sipple: (00:03)
Hey, buddy. How are you doing?
Mason: (00:04)
I'm good. How are you?
Dan Sipple: (00:05)
Doing well. Waiting for this rain to finish up, but apart from that, I'm good.
Mason: (00:09)
Yeah. We're in... I don't know when people are going to be listening to this. Someone might be listening to this 50 years from now. It might be the super irrelevant weather update, but we're just waiting for our big dump tonight. We've apparently got another... What do they call it? A rain bomb coming.
Dan Sipple: (00:25)
How many more rain bombs can we take at this point?
Mason: (00:27)
Well, I don't know. Actually, I'm not going to go there.
Dan Sipple: (00:30)
Yeah, we won't go.
Mason: (00:34)
I'm really excited to be having this chat with you today. So, do you mind giving people a little quick synopsis of what we're going to be chatting about today?
Dan Sipple: (00:46)
Yeah. Just, I guess, around the sort of topic of metabolic health and metabolic healing, and a sort of field that's emerging in the complementary health space and mainstream, I suppose, you could call it, just around the dance between different nutrients and minerals, and how a sort of symphony of different nutrients is probably at the root cause of a lot of conditions that both allopathic and complementary medicine hasn't shed so much light on till present. But it turns out, a lot of the sort of conditions that we do tend to see and deal with are rooted in this sort of, I guess, call it an imbalance of certain key nutrients and minerals such as copper, iron, zinc, magnesium. And I think just shedding more light on an array of particular nutrients and nutraceuticals and minerals that we don't so much hear about, which we'll get into obviously.
Dan Sipple: (01:45)
And a lot of people will be familiar with them. Some listeners, I'm sure, won't have heard some of the stuff we'll bring up. So, we'll aim to sort of try and educate and talk to the different carrier proteins and mitochondrial aids and things like that, that make it relevant for this type of conversation. But in practise, for myself, I can definitely see how over the last sort of four or five years, I've needed to really look back at these sort of teachings and understand better how that's going to affect my patient's long-term health, and how getting into certain nitty-gritty pockets of health is good and has its sort of place. But ultimately, zooming back at this sort of metabolic healing, if you call it that, is the key, I think, to a longer term sort of plan rather than focusing in on, as we were saying before we hit the record button, with little niche conditions like stealth infections, or pyrrole disorder, or MTHFR, or this or that. Yeah.
Mason: (02:45)
Awesome. I guess, I get excited when I chat to you and try and put a thousand words when I should be using 10. But there's an intention we often talk about at SuperFeast, with yourself and I, that I don't know if I explicitly make aware to people that one of the reasons we have conversations... I really enjoy living in that space of, say, the classical conversation, the Taoist space or the nature-based space where I resist in 80% of the time going... I don't resist. For 80% of the time, I sit within a non... Gosh, in a more unified terminology, speaking the language of nature and relating to my body and the way of feeling and instinct and maybe metaphor, rather than going into constantly thinking about reductionist terms, reductionist concepts, like testosterone or single minerals.
Dan Sipple: (03:45)
Right.
Mason: (03:45)
But living in that space, perpetually, it just eventually gets a little bit grey and can get a little bit monotonous. And it kind of also, let's just say, leaves opportunity on the table when we do have so many beautiful arts and clinicians in little institutions that are going into specialisation, especially within the naturopathic space like you are, where there's so much opportunity. And especially when there's someone like yourself and there's many others trying to hold that centred space of not being pulled off into extreme dogma which, you can see at its excesses, happens in reductionist medicine like in allopathic specialisation where there's just no room, right or wrong, this way or the highway. I think I, firstly, want to get everyone... There're many practitioners doing this, but when you're talking to Dan, just recognise what it takes for him to stay convicted and holding his own two feet, sovereign feet, while navigating this landscape of reductionism, of little dogmatic sects within. It takes a lot of energy.
Mason: (05:00)
And you'll perhaps pick up why Dan uses particular little bits of terminology, and why he will hold a particular space and not venture into a particular space also. So I wanted to acknowledge you for that, and just remind... We talk about it often for people. I wish for you to be able to speak both languages or acknowledge both languages. I don't speak the language of metabolic, say, minerals and mitochondria like you do. But for me, to be able to hold myself and acknowledge that conversation, it does make me more specialised. And ultimately, since I dip in and out, it gives me the greater capacity to use what's available during this time, therefore, probably have greater success in reaching my goal, which is becoming just a badass Shen abundant scallywag elder. But that's really what I want everyone to get from this is learn... Because since productionism is so prevalent, how do you hold yourself in your space and utilise that practitioner/clinician space so that you come out the other side still really strong and have a strong boundary?
Dan Sipple: (06:15)
Yeah, very well said.
Mason: (06:18)
So with that, it's interesting, this conversation. People might think we're talking about a bunch of unrelated things. But there's kind of what we're talking about, there is a renaissance in naturopathy and in this... Even in the Health Freak, the online health influencer or just fringe health-obsessed people, which we've both been there, where you quickly start waving the flag for a bit of counterculture that is happening within the clinical space or within the anatomical, or whatever it is space. So, I see what we're talking about today is a school of thinking that has especially emerged, and I first became aware of it talking... I was at a talk of [Truth Calkins 00:07:07] probably about 10 years ago, when he was first talking about the horrendous effects of iron supplementation and calcium supplementation.
Mason: (07:18)
He was talking about how it's the two stupidest ones yet, they're the ones we have in nursing homes at hospitals, and talking about going and donating blood in order to remove, for lack of a better word, I'll let you correct, toxic blood and toxic iron buildup because it's probably the only way. That was my opening to what is now become this real counterculture school. We're just talking about copper, retinol, vitamin D supplementation is in this one little bubble or school. And now that it's really taking shape and taking form, I think people are going to hear about it a lot more. This is when Dan and I are like, "We've got to get on chat about it. Because how do you partake in that conversation without becoming a devotee, without it pulling you into identifying with them?"
Mason: (08:06)
Here's another thing that I can use to be correct and be right, and go against the fossilised ossified narrative of naturopathy and allopathic medicine. But how do you stay centred? And just see, this is a process that always happens. Things go too institutionalised, too rigid. Perhaps there are some people, corporations that, or higher than a corporation, use it and have actually sinister intentions, maybe, maybe not. But then, there's a breakaway of the natural to bring order. It's the yin and yang cycle. It's going to be never ending and I wanted to... I think, it's the correct time for people to learn how to navigate this one, and the fact that this is going to happen again and again. So, let's jump in.
Dan Sipple: (08:50)
Yeah, definitely. That's interesting about Truth Calkins. I had no idea that he was the initiator of that. But that was probably around the same time that I come across Molly Robbins who now sort of heads up the Root Cause Protocol work, and was super, super forthcoming about the toxic effects of iron, and how we live in an iron-fortified universe essentially, iron fortification since the 1940s, a world where in naturopathic and allopathic medicine, iron synthetics are heavily pushed alongside things like ascorbic acid. And we can get into the potential problems down the road a little bit. But yeah, I sort of really sunk my teeth into it. I think it was a first sort thing for me, and this is probably why it's stuck, because I was labelled with the typical, "Oh, you've got pyrrole disorder. You've got that genetic thing, and you're going to lose zinc and B6, and da, da, da, da."
Dan Sipple: (09:46)
And on paper, sure you look at all the symptoms, you look at your blood, and you're like, "This makes sense." So, you get on that train. Suddenly, you're on a compounded script or a pyrrole sort of specific supplement, and you ride that out. And for a lot of people, including myself, nothing changes if anything gets worse. So, what I actually did way, way sort of back in the day now is become copper anaemic through that process. And I was working with an integrated doctor at the time, and it got to a point where I was like, "But doc, look at the copper. We're looking at the zinc and we're trying to drive that up. I understand that. But look at the copper, it's just going down and down and down and down." And he was like, "Yeah, copper's toxic."
Dan Sipple: (10:27)
I'm like, "Okay. Right. But let's look at that sort of serum copper reading, which is now underneath the Western reference value range, and it was just continuing to deplete." And it got to a point where I was on 150 milligrammes of zinc, which is... Now, when I look at that, I'm just like, "That's horrendous," thinking of what it did to the metabolic machinery of my body and cells and everything. That's getting a little bit further into it, but that's essentially where the sort of imbalance happened for me. So, at that point, I started looking into copper deficiency symptoms, and understanding that how copper was actually not the bad guy. So, it's like we've been trained and misled around iron being amazing and copper being this toxic demon mineral type of scenario. And that was born out of, I believe, Carl Pfeiffer's work in the 1970s.
Mason: (11:26)
Yeah. I remember.
Dan Sipple: (11:26)
That ring a bell? Yeah.
Mason: (11:27)
Yeah. Well, I remember around the time I was hearing from Truth, hearing someone also talk about that copper, zinc connection, and blaming copper for zinc. Maybe I've got it wrong. I'm always dyslexic with this, and saying, "There's a protocol to eat 40 apricots in order to cleanse the copper," or some shit like that. And I was like, "Jesus Christ." And then, I thought about the Harry David quote that apricots are a low percentage fruit, one in 40 is good. And I'm like, "And I'm going to have to suffer through 39 shitty apricots to do some weird thing in my copper?" Anyway.
Dan Sipple: (12:04)
Yeah. Well, that's it. You look at those things. You look back at that now, and just go, "Well, how nature-like identical is that? How does that fit into a natural ecosystem?" It doesn't, like a pyroluria supplement at that extreme high amount of nutrients just doesn't. You can't access that in nature. It doesn't resonate. So, when I look at this now as opposed to five, six years ago, it's very clear to me now. At the time though, it wasn't, and that's I think because of a lot of training and industry pushing, and the brands are amazing at that. It's like you almost get a little bit of a brainwashing.
Mason: (12:39)
Can I speak to that very quickly?
Dan Sipple: (12:41)
Yeah.
Mason: (12:43)
I'm not going to try and speak to everyone else necessarily. I'll just speak to my own process, and maybe everyone gets something about how to relate to a practitioner, how to relate to a doctor. So, you are talking about someone, I assume, they were highly-specialised, highly-trained that something around the narrative allowed them to bypass answering your question, and they just bypassed your concern with, "Hey, I've got conviction because the way it's currently done right now is [inaudible 00:13:13]." Everyone knows that that's a term... that's what doctors do. I've just been looking a lot into what doctors say around birth, and just how quickly they can bypass having any responsible inquiry. Just being aware, just because... It's just about being on your toes, I've been a little bit more engaged. I guess, when you're talking with a practitioner, that's the first thing that just jumped out and been like...
Mason: (13:34)
And how do you hear when they go and sit back onto a talking point, like someone in the media would? You can... It doesn't mean they're wrong. It doesn't mean everything else they say is wrong or bad, but you can tell when they go away from the natural into the ossified scripture of their current leaning. And that's the first skill you can develop. And if you can do it without hostility or without your own self trying to become right or wrong, but just trying to gain great understanding, it's a beautiful space to hold when you are talking to a practitioner and get better at hearing the difference between the quality of their response.
Dan Sipple: (14:14)
Yeah. And if it doesn't feel right, if you've got, like in my case, a practitioner pushing one single nutrient to excess like that, at the demise of another, that should ring massive alarm bells. But for me, it didn't at the time. I ran with it, because that's what was being pushed. It was flooded throughout the industry at the time, that and MTHFR. Anyway, cutting a long story short, copper anaemia came about. I started learning about the importance of copper and how it shouldn't be demonised, and how it's more about the balance of a lot of the minerals and nutrients we actually don't hear so much about. So, these are things like magnesium, retinol, which is animal-derived vitamin A, the importance of the copper-carrying proteins, ceruloplasmin, which I'd never even heard a mention of through uni, not once.
Mason: (15:04)
I'm not familiar with that.
Dan Sipple: (15:05)
Yeah. So, upwards of 90% of a person's copper in their body should be down to this carrier protein, ceruloplasmin, to make it bioavailable. That's what we call bioavailable copper. But what we have is a lot of people who have been told that they're copper-toxic because their serum copper when they get a blood test might be really high. But the doctors aren't necessarily [inaudible 00:15:26] not looking at that ceruloplasmin protein, because if that's low... So if you say you've got a low ceruloplasmin and a really high serum copper, well, you don't have much bound copper. You've got a lot of this free-floating copper. And that's where I think a lot of these practitioners got it in their heads that that copper is toxic and needs to be flushed out of the system when, really, it just needs to be bound to its carrier protein properly, not detoxified. Right. [crosstalk 00:15:55]. What's that?
Mason: (15:56)
40 apricots.
Dan Sipple: (15:59)
I hadn't heard of that one. It's pretty funny.
Mason: (16:02)
I haven't heard it since. And I've looked it up and can't find anything, so it must have been quackery.
Dan Sipple: (16:07)
Yeah. Good old [inaudible 00:16:08]. Yeah. So, I kind of kept my eye on this space throughout those years and into my early infancy as a naturopath, but I wasn't strictly practising that way. I was still sort of questioning it, a little bit, and just keeping my eyes on it, I think. Probably in the last 18 to 24 months, it started gaining momentum which I was happy to see. A lot more practitioners on board with it promoting the importance of, "Hey, maybe you should question that iron supplement that the doctor told you to just take forever, all that zinc supplement," and that classic trio, which has just been so popularised because of the world events of the last two years, of ascorbic acid, iron, zinc and D3.
Mason: (16:51)
I think you're right, actually. I saw that rise come up when you have that classic, the liposomal vitamin C, zinc, and vitamin D. That's what you do. That's the protocol.
Dan Sipple: (17:07)
That's the protocol. Yeah.
Mason: (17:09)
[crosstalk 00:17:09] unchecked, and everyone was like... Naturopaths were all like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And all the natural [inaudible 00:17:13] were like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I was kind of the opinion of like, "Yeah, cool. Little short term, little acute smash... Everyone's been..." But I've been, for quite a while, off all of those supplements, not really knowing why. I've just been like, "[inaudible 00:17:27]."
Dan Sipple: (17:26)
Yeah. Good. That's good.
Mason: (17:29)
And then, I saw there were a few pockets at that point going against the narrative, especially maybe not so many practitioners. But I saw a few personality, online personalities.
Dan Sipple: (17:39)
Are we allowed to talk names in this podcast of-
Mason: (17:43)
Yeah. I mean, I think so [crosstalk 00:17:46]. We don't get permission of... Yeah, of course.
Dan Sipple: (17:53)
Yeah. Because I think you and I had a conversation probably a year ago now about Matt Blackburn's work. He was one of the people who really took him all his work and really popularised it from-
Mason: (18:04)
Yeah, which is... I wanted to ask you about... I guess he got thrust from what I conceived, especially into that space because he was, I'd probably say, brave enough or whatever, audacious enough or whatever, to have a business revolving around DHEA supplementation. And then, getting into, from what I can understand... I mean, I don't know if I can say it. I doubt Matt's ever going to hear this podcast, but by all means, reach out. I'd be happy to have you on the podcast or something, if I butcher this. And then, it was like, "No." I think I got into Ray Pete's work [crosstalk 00:18:41], so I'm curious as to where Ray Peat and Morley... I think they were listening-
Dan Sipple: (18:45)
Overlap a little bit. Yeah. They overlap that they're not a hundred percent on the same path. But I know Morley, multiple times in podcast, has said, "If anytime, anyone can put me in a conversation with Ray Peat, I'll be there."
Mason: (18:58)
For some reason, it always surprises me that he's alive. It's one of those... It feels like all of the... because it's one of those naturopathic cults that has those little websites dedicated to them, that look like if websites had been created in the '70s, it would've been created in the '70s. And I feel like that's always of people like [inaudible 00:19:23]. I'm like, "Okay. So obviously, they passed away. But no, he hasn't." Yeah, I think that's Blackburn, especially. But that was, I guess, thrust through the fact that he was already going against the culture, and his own culture that he'd established around what he thought the benefits of DHEA supplementation to be, and getting into Ray Peat, having a split with his business partner because he wanted to dissolve all of those products.
Mason: (19:48)
And he went away, created another whole life more or less based on Ray Peat's work around mineralization, shilajit vitamin [crosstalk 00:20:00]. That's what we're talking about there. And then, he was probably... And there are quite a few others, but I guess he's a prominent one in the very fringe health community who was doing what you were saying, going against that zinc, ascorbic, vitamin D conversation, in the [inaudible 00:20:17] virus conversation.
Dan Sipple: (20:19)
Yes. And his whole thing is the calcification lipofuscin fibrosis, LCF protocol he calls that, which is neat. That's cool. I respect that and understand it. And do you remember how big calcification was a decade ago?
Mason: (20:37)
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:20:37] who really brought that forward, I think. There's a few books about it. But Robert Cassar, Dr. Cassar, the Gua Sha. He's now gone pretty carnivor. He went off [crosstalk 00:20:51].
Dan Sipple: (20:51)
Yeah. He's the complete opposite, so I'm told. Yeah.
Mason: (20:55)
Destroyed his gut, and then just started all of a sudden waving the banner for meat being the healing. But yeah, he was massive and probably a good example of over decalcification.
Dan Sipple: (21:08)
Yeah. And that's the thing, you got to recognise when... You got to call it out and recognise it if your dogma has gotten in the way of the truth. I like the place I'm in right now because it's so ancestrally kind of compatible. It doesn't feel nichey and fatty. It doesn't involve a crap load of synthetics. If anything, my dispensary is like a fourth of the size that it used to be, which I'm happy about, because less is more, right? And the more things we can get people doing on their own accord without breaking their budget, the better. Yeah, I mean, I still use magnesium is an example, vitamin E is an example of something that I'll use in a synthetic form. I'm not like a purist that everything has to be food-based or natural-based.
Dan Sipple: (21:53)
But as far as vitamin C goes, whole food sees where it's at for me now, and the patience and the results I'm getting are great. And that ties into the copper and iron dynamic, which we can get into. And really, really big on the retinol from the dietary perspective, but also supplementing with different organ-based supplements and getting into the diet form. So, like frozen liver, kidney, et cetera, if you can get your hands on good sources, and just education. The education's the biggest part of it, and trying to get away from these industry-pushed cocktails, which in the end only accelerate the amount of tissue down, iron push oxidative stress, lower copper undermine ceruloplasmin production. And if anyone is super interested in this stuff and you may have plugged it before, but the book, Cu-RE Your Fatigue by Morley Robbins, excellent book to really understand this stuff in great detail.
Mason: (22:51)
Well, let's jump in and just giving everyone another little heads up of that to be multidimensional, and remember that you can sit in a multitude of dimensions and spaces within your own life when you're approaching this conversation. And remember kind of what Dan and I discuss while sitting the majority of the time has been in that place where your lifestyle, your personal culture has been designed to keep you within that space of harmony. Then, I'd say, probably one beneath that is that maybe the Chinese or wisdom tradition like energies of food, and you can start utilising the seasons, and being like, "Right. That is a hot energy coming into that food. And I'll cool that off as I go into this season," so on and so forth. And then, but there's a lot of shit going on, and there's a lot of disruption of our instincts, and a lot of disruption of our own capacity to remember and know what harmony is. We're cultivating that sensitivity. So sometimes, when you come out of that and you go into a specialisation, maybe clinical setting where you get some panels and tests done.
Mason: (24:00)
Someone like Dan, what I can see you doing, Dan, is you are constantly trying to upgrade what you see the linchpins being. If I test these things, I know that I'm going to get results and see where there is an imbalance. And there's like a linchpin that's going to put a cascade of healing and harmony back through the rest of the body. So, maybe we use some specialised supplementation there. And then, we get people back into that space of maybe slight reductionism of energy, and then back to where your lifestyle, as it stands, keeps you in harmony. And every now and then, you come back and you check, you get your back and check like you have someone looking after you and just having your back. So with that, this is kind of like, I feel like we're in an exciting new place where we're learning and getting an upgrade of what those linchpins are clinically that we can test. And we also inform everyone not to use it as a stage term to get your dogmatic identity upgraded, just use it for you and your family.
Dan Sipple: (24:58)
Yeah, 100%. I'll still use a lot of functional testing in practise, no doubt. I'll probably use slightly less of it the further I get into what I do. But the functional testing is really good like you say. If you get someone who is really, really deep into the chronic illness trajectory, that's where I think it's really beneficial to run the organic acids, and look at the microbiome and blood panels, and those sort of things. And you get someone who come in whose relatively well, and I still might do blood panels on them, and just look at things like iron, and copper, and zinc, and ceruloplasmin, and vitamin D.
Dan Sipple: (25:36)
And vitamin D is a whole other topic, which I'm sure will touch on. But yeah, I think it might even sound a little bit boring, but it's just kind of like the importance of that foundational lifestyle stuff. I just don't think people do enough of it. We look to the supplements. We look to the more superficial stuff to get the job done. But until you learn to go to bed at 9:30 instead of 11:30, this isn't going to change. You can do antiparasitics to the world ends or whatever. You can take this till the cows come home, or whatever it is. You know what I mean? But it's just undoing a lot of lifestyle patterns a lot of the time.
Mason: (26:17)
I guess that's what we especially saw. I came out of that LA-based longevity scene. It was raw foodism or a lot of supplementation. And when I got inside of that, I wouldn't know if it's a cult. But anyway, once I got on the inner circle, I just saw that these were not sustainable lifestyles. And also, a lot of psychological trauma I imagine came from childhood, was being steam rolled over and turned into an identity in order to go forward within this little world, rather than dealt with and coming back to the simplicity and coming back to the basics. And therefore, everyone was constantly reaching outside of themselves. What's the newest fandangle practice or the Tibetan Rites? This special marine mineral thing and the best colostrum, and blah, blah, blah. It was just like, "Guys, you far out. You are living unsustainably, reaching outside of yourselves."
Dan Sipple: (27:18)
Yeah. I bet you wish you could go back, and go, "Guys, drink your raw milk. Get enough sleep. Take your organs, just leave it there."
Mason: (27:26)
I mean, but that's what you can see. That's what's become the counterculture to the raw food scene, and almost for some people excessively. When now, they live in... "What I do nonstop is put... I'm nonstop eating bison testicles and nonstop eating liver. And that's what I do." They're calling out veganism and they're calling out supplementations. And again, what is the common thing for everyone? They're either attention seeking. So, they're seeking to dominate. Or it's the opposite, where someone's more of an introvert and they're avoiding domination. So, they're hunting for the thing that's right, so that they can't be proven that they're wrong. Or it's a combination of two very unsustainable, if I think a little bit of therapy, non-cathartic exploration of their psychology. Maybe not just going for another Ayahuasca ceremony or whatever it is, maybe going for something a little bit more sustainable [crosstalk 00:28:26] tight and narrow.
Dan Sipple: (28:27)
That's what I see a lot of too in practice is... I'm not definitely not against that type of medicine, plant medicine, but there are those types that will use that above anything. I feel like it's useful, and it should definitely be done under the right conditions, but it is a little bit almost of a trend that has kicked up where it's like, "I do this once a month and this is more powerful than anything I'm doing." It's like, "Yeah, but are you going to be saying that in a year's time? Is it sustainable?" I don't think so.
Mason: (29:00)
I mean, if I open up that can of worms, then I'm going to go on and on. But I will acknowledge what beautiful medicine, and what beautiful medicine when it's done. And you can feel the tethering and anchoring to the tens of thousands of years of tradition and integrity within that space. And a lot of people are lying to themselves about feeling that tethering. And again, people seeking for identity, seeking for quick healing, justification. They're just getting on and on. By the end of it, people are just getting on it, that's-
Dan Sipple: (29:36)
Yeah. That's what it feels like. But hey, good for you.
Mason: (29:41)
I've been there.
Dan Sipple: (29:42)
Yeah.
Mason: (29:42)
I've 100% been there, and then spent years coming back and taking parts that have been maybe a little bit... maybe have been weaved through healing for a while, and then gone into excess. And perhaps I got this potential for healing and evolution that I never would've got, but it didn't take away the fact that I to spend a long time bringing fractured parts of myself together and integrating it. And that word integration, well, it's very real. And the extent of what it takes to bring that integration together and integrate parts of your past and personality and yourself, it's completely... I kind of feel like the people teaching the healing of trauma right now, you might as well go and have an eight-year-old going into a preschool, trying to teach people how to get facilitated through the ages of three and four.
Mason: (30:37)
That's like the amount of people who have come out of the medicine circle, and now trying to teach integration and the healing of trauma in that ceremonial space. It's the equivalent of an eight-year-old, going and teaching three and four-year-olds how to move through that age successfully. Just watch out it's a snake pit with beautiful people, with beautiful intentions, but that's what I'll say. I'll put a cap on it there and let's dive into this world. I love it. I want to get a little bit more grounding in the understanding. I want to know it all. And again, it's hot, this iron stuff. So, let's talk about... Let's really start of what our ultimate aim and goal is from a metabolic perspective, if you don't mind.
Dan Sipple: (31:24)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it does... Iron is a big one because, like I mentioned earlier, that's been part of the fortification programme in a lot of developed nations since the '30s or '40s. So, we live in a world that is very iron-laden, and we have soils that are very copper deficient, even though people have been trained to believe that they're copper toxic. So that's the conundrum there, right? And copper, because of all that sort of dogma and training around that to believe that it's toxic, the beneficial role of it in terms of the mitochondria. So, it turns out that it's very, very crucial for yourselves to be able to produce ATP. So, you have a series of sort of steps in that conversion. One of the last steps they call Complex IV, and it's fully copper-dependent, but it's bioavailable copper-dependent. So, if you were someone like myself and countless other people out there, that have drowned their body in zinc, iron, and these sorts of things.
Dan Sipple: (32:27)
And they've gotten in a state where all their iron is stuck in their tissue, which just creates that reactive oxygen species, ROS, or oxidative stress for short, and copper deficiency, then you can't make energy or you make it very poorly. You make this dysfunctional ATP. And that's where your metabolic health starts to be essentially dysfunctional and wrecked from there. And then, it's hopefully a case of stumbling upon this and understanding that sort of... I mean, I should say too, there's other reasons why you can end up with broken mitochondria, right? Infections, stress, toxins, all that sort of stuff, too. But this is an area which is really overlooked, and that a lot of people can find themselves into because they've stayed on iron supplements, or they're eating a diet that's really deficient in retinol, and you need retinol that copper-carrying protein.
Mason: (33:20)
Can you explain what retinol is again?
Dan Sipple: (33:23)
Yeah. So, retinol is vitamin A from animal-based sources. It's not beta carotene, right? So, a lot of that vegan sort of community will say, "We get our vitamin A." And it's like, "No, you get beta carotene." And your body has to then try and convert that over to retinol. And it does that at the expense of things like zinc, which are already not getting enough of on a plant-based diet. That's another sort of pocket, but an ancestral diet. Ancestors had loads of retinol. They were using raw dairy. They were using the whole animal nose to tail. They were not deficient in retinol. Their soils were a lot higher too in trace minerals like magnesium. And it turns out magnesium, that is a really, really crucial part to them. We've all heard that over the years. I don't think there's any camp that'll argue about the benefits of magnesium, right? [crosstalk 00:34:10] And actually get people... What's that?
Mason: (34:13)
I was going to say maybe the form of magnesium is where-
Dan Sipple: (34:16)
Yeah. So again, a lot of nuance in the form. I get a lot of people these days making their own magnesium, which admittedly I did find out about through Matt Blackburn's work, at some point, and that's magnesium bicarbonate. And essentially, you use a SodaStream machine to convert a certain type of magnesium that you can buy really cheap, it turns out, and make your own. And that's really bioavailable. So, getting back to that sort of picture of depleted soils, really magnesium iodine and boron deplete. So, people can find themselves in this sort of web of chronic fatigue. Meanwhile, a lot of practitioners aren't looking in those areas. They might look at the stealth infections or pay too much attention to other areas, right? The microbiome, for example. All of those are good areas to look in, but now that I'm sort of aware of this stuff, like I say, in the last year or two, especially I really sort of found how many patients actually have just this metabolic dysfunction at the root of everything.
Dan Sipple: (35:18)
And Morley's a big advocate who will say, "When that's happening, when you've got rusty tissue, copper deficiencies, magnesium deficiencies, that's when the parasites wake up," as he says. That's when the viruses wake up. You're creating an environment for them to thrive. Right? And then suddenly, you get pockets of people who are just attacking the pathogens, and that's okay. You can do that short-term to lower the pathogen load. But if that underlying metabolic imbalance isn't dealt with, they'll just come back, and I've seen that heaps. I remember learning that and just feeling like really settled with that, just going, "Okay, cool. I like that." So if we can replete this imbalance and replete these minerals, which are just being lost and not talked about, that makes sense that we're changing the terrain, and this is what gets into terrain theory. There's a lot of people in this sort of metabolic space that talk about terrain theory. Some, I think, probably go a little bit too far with it, if I can say that. But yeah, that's another story. But yeah, it comes back to the terrain.
Mason: (36:19)
I mean, coming back to the terrain, someone asked me to do a podcast on this, and I thought it's perhaps just a better one to quickly touch base on because I don't know much to say about it other than this. I was talking to someone in the community, and I was saying it's ironic [inaudible 00:36:38]. When I used to get onto a plane, I used to put my shirt up or my scarf up, because I joke to myself, I don't want to breathe in what these virus, latent parasite having people-
Dan Sipple: (36:51)
These normies.
Mason: (36:55)
Yeah. And I'd get into my space, and I'd spray my things around me, and I'd wipe around me, and I wouldn't want to touch things in the airport, so on and so forth. And they said, "Oh, that really surprises me. I thought you were someone who would subscribe to terrain theory and not germ theory." And I was like, "Oh, don't you know that both of them exist?" And this is someone who's just come kind of like COVID had sparked them into realising that they have a sovereign terrain-based capacity. And I guess terrain theory is something that I was exposed to through Robert Cassar, who we were talking about earlier as well. Maybe excessively leaning in one direction, but I was like, "Well, no, let's go back into classical Chinese medicine." That is all about going if you are yin-yang Wu-Shen, your transformation cycle.
Mason: (37:42)
So if your chi is transforming with flow through each of the organ systems through yang and ying, yin and yang, and different degrees and expressions, and let's say, you have a terrain which can protect itself. But that doesn't mean you'd be disrespectful to the system and be aware that it's not as much as it is infinite. It also is finite in what it can do because it's yin and yang. And therefore, you still put a scarf on when the wind is coming in cold to stop that the wind invading in through your throat. You still make sure that your kidneys are nice and warm, so the cold doesn't invade them all through your feet. So, it's yes to both. So, I'll just put it... because I had someone who wanted me to talk about it. Now, that's my piece.
Dan Sipple: (38:32)
I back that up big time too, and it's something that I've not wanted to get into because there's just so much emotion behind that at the moment between terrain and germ theory, and it's intense.
Mason: (38:42)
Why don't we all just get along? I mean-
Dan Sipple: (38:48)
That's the age old question, right?
Mason: (38:49)
Well, I kind of sometimes sit back and think very silently. I know there's a lot of people doing this but I really like our relationship for the friendship that we have, but there's something really bubbling under the surface that I feel has a lot of impact. And it's likewise when I see it out there in conversation in many people, and that's when people who are creating a forging of two areas that have been fractured in trying to find a unification or a middle ground of how we can relate and talk, that's the same... That's by a fractional nature, it's showing that it's possible to take two fractured areas and perhaps possibly integrate them.
Mason: (39:32)
Maybe not lay them over the top each of other but find, and not even common ground. Just find how to relate those two extra parts. And if you can do it to a person's psyche, it means we can do it in our approach to healing perhaps. And I feel we have a non-conflict based conversation, which is maybe friction is good at times, but we're not looking for conflict in talking about how... If I'm sitting in that classical place where I'm sitting next to nature, and you and I delve further over that direction, then you sit delving into these mineral compounds and mitochondria, then where do they converge and what was perhaps excessively fractured come together and get some sewing done between them? So, I think there's something significant going on.
Dan Sipple: (40:20)
And I always think about the ancient traditions, and at the time that all of that was created with the herbal systems and the lifestyle systems. It's probably a broad stroke, but I suppose and I suspect that they didn't need to worry about these niche areas simply because they didn't have the modern agricultural issues with the soils, and the acid rains, and these metabolic conundrums that we are in now. So it's kind of like, we want to take everything from that time, from the herbal standpoint, the lifestyle standpoint, and understand that. But it's kind of like, we also need to mesh this in now too, because that's our time, that's 2022.
Dan Sipple: (40:57)
We need to understand that when we're born, we're already at a huge deficit, huge. Huge, like from the soils being depleted of these key nutrients five, six generations ago, we're so watered down from the moment we're born. And the download we're getting from [inaudible 00:41:17] is somewhat arguably already a deficient download. Yeah. So it's, I think, a good sort of system whereby, like you're saying, if we could combine both the best of both those worlds. But really acknowledging what's going on now and understanding the impact of the glyphosates, and the toxins, and the synthetic supplements, and those sorts of things, that's a really good way forward.
Mason: (41:44)
Yeah. And it comes back to why it's such an important relationship to be developing, why I want this community to learn how to work with naturopaths and practitioners without losing their sovereignty and their roots [inaudible 00:41:58] their own culture. All right. I'm going to try hard not to get macro philosophical again, and we'll just [inaudible 00:42:05] leave us into the nitty-gritty because I really want to learn some stuff for myself as well. And that rusty tissue that you just talked about, I mean, this is exactly what the [inaudible 00:42:18] talk about. That's just the efficiency of [inaudible 00:42:20]. This is just like you becoming oxidised, and then the calcification coming and making you heavy, rather than being light in your senior years, especially. So yeah, let's keep on moving.
Dan Sipple: (42:34)
You just reminded me. There's a scene in one of the X-Men, which I saw on Instagram a few months ago. I can't remember who the account it was. But it was where... I think it's Magneto. He was elevating two of these characters in the air. And someone had... It was very conspiratorial, but they were saying, "Look, even Hollywood understands this." Because in the script, Magneto was like, "Too much iron in your body, not enough magnesium." This is interesting.
Mason: (43:00)
Oh, that's when she... Jennifer Lawrence, whatever her name is, she injects the guard with iron, and then Magneto is in jail, and he's like, "You've got too much iron in your blood."
Dan Sipple: (43:15)
Yeah.
Mason: (43:15)
Yeah. Iron. All right.
Dan Sipple: (43:20)
It's interesting. Really interesting. Yeah, a little side anecdote there. But essentially like... And I think a lot of people hear that too, and they're like, "Okay, too much iron, not enough copper magnesium. Plant-based diet's got to be the best thing ever." And it's like, "No," because retinol is the key to regulate ceruloplasmin production. Bare with me here. Retinol, animal vitamin A is key to produce ceruloplasmin. Ceruloplasmin is what keeps copper working well. Copper working well will keep iron out of the tissue and in the blood. I'll repeat it. So, vitamin A, retinol, which we're all pretty deficient in when we're born. That is key to producing bioavailable copper because it helps ceruloplasmin and copper bound together. When you've got that, you've got functional iron, right? So, the iron will stay in the blood where you want it and prevent going in the tissue.
Dan Sipple: (44:15)
Because of you've all heard of this sort of anaemia. Everyone's anaemic, right? It turns out they're not. It's just that so much of their iron is stuck in the tissue, and it looks deficient in the blood. So, what do they get? They get iron supplements. That just compounds the whole problem. It creates more oxidative stress. No one's looking at copper. If anything, they've been told that they've got too much copper, right? So you can see how that conundrum just accelerates and accelerates. And you end up with this more inflammatory, more oxidative stress type of picture over time, and eventually chronic fatigue. And when I put this sort of stuff out, and a lot of other practitioners in the same camp, we get hammered with messages from people who have said, "I've been taking iron for 25 years, every day." It's like, "Where do we start?" It's huge.
Mason: (45:05)
You get conspiratorial there. Taking a holy sacrament every single day without question.
Dan Sipple: (45:10)
Right. Yeah. And I get even more worried when those same people are on a diet that is deficient in retinol and K2 and magnesium, because that's just such a quick path to autoimmunity, fatigue, brain fog, rust, all of those sorts of issues. So, you can see just by talking about it, how many of those themes sort of exist in a lot of people that are just ill, right? So, the majority of patients that have some sort of chronic illness, this stuff overlaps with when you actually try and look at it. If you don't go, "Right. Well, I'm just going to start with parasites. I'm going to start with whatever." Raising their zinc, for example. Instead, if you start with the metabolics. It's an accelerated way to get them on the healing path, I think
Mason: (46:04)
Just to indulge me in a very quick macro philosophical. I just had that same feeling that I think comes up a lot. It's kind of the equivalent on that path to enlightenment, Chop wood, Carry water. You constantly do your due diligence. You constantly do what's necessary in order to stay alive. You chop wood, you carry water. And in this instance of the health scene, that consistency is looking at like, "What do I need to do to keep myself healthy?" And along the way, as you're chopping wood and carrying water, you have moments of enlightenment. And you go, "My gosh, I've found the way." And then, the challenge is to let go of that and then just get back to work.
Mason: (46:43)
And what I just recognised in myself is feeling like, "Oh my gosh, that's... Oh my God, it's so important what you're talking about. This is like really something that now that I've got this, so much is not going to be going wrong." And that's kind of true. But just as much as you get that moment of enlightenment around this, be ready to let go... I just want to tell everyone, let go of it and then keep on integrating the wisdom or the information, and then just keep going. Don't stay thinking this is the way. Don't create a brand around it, and don't use it to push back against your former dogma or people as material to prove other people in your health ideological [inaudible 00:47:24].
Dan Sipple: (47:27)
Yeah, I completely agree, because you can get so far into this that it's become stressful. Because you've gone, "Oh fuck. Well, that means the last 10 years of my life, I've just been creating this demon, this massive imbalance. What do I do with that now?" So, hear it. If it resonates, awesome. But stay chill and take some magnesium.
Mason: (47:47)
All right. Well, let's start. Are we at the point where we can start looking at a little bit of the healing protocols?
Dan Sipple: (47:54)
Sure.
Mason: (47:55)
Maybe the acute ones versus the ongoing lifestyle [crosstalk 00:48:00] maintenance ones.
Dan Sipple: (48:01)
So for the blokes, I usually start them off with blood donation. I may also have no natural means of blood removal. And the amount of people, males, especially I should say, where I will find out that they've got genes for hemochromatosis, and it's just been overlooked or they've never had their iron checked. You do the iron reading in the [inaudible 00:48:22], in the hundreds, 300, 400, whatever. Start them off there, because that is just going to ask the body to pull out a whole heap of that tissue stored iron, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to replace the current blood iron, and move out that tissue iron. So, when you get a blood donation over the next sort of three months, the red blood cell cycle and all of those sort of mechanisms kick in. So, they'll kick out tissue bound iron, put it into the blood, and you've just eliminated a portion of that tissue [inaudible 00:48:52], and therefore oxidative stress potential-
Mason: (48:55)
[crosstalk 00:48:55] bloodletting?
Dan Sipple: (48:57)
Say again?
Mason: (48:58)
Like the old school blooding, has it gone [crosstalk 00:49:01]?
Dan Sipple: (49:00)
Who knows? I think [crosstalk 00:49:03]. Yeah, separate conversation.
Mason: (49:04)
Leaching, all that kind of stuff. Maybe there's a link.
Dan Sipple: (49:07)
Yeah.
Mason: (49:09)
Yeah. Sorry. Magnesium, I think were going to say.
Dan Sipple: (49:12)
Yeah. And magnesium, because that is just, again, sort of something that I think we're all deficient in. Everyone's under stress. We're losing, we're burning that up more. They call that the magnesium burn rate. Different people have different rates of magnesium burn, and you can quickly acquire that I think based on someone's presentation and trauma history, and all those sorts of things. It's like, "Yeah, you are very, very, very magnesium deficient." So, starting lots of people off on that, I don't think anyone would argue with. And then, you can get onto the nuance of different types of magnesium. But I still use blends where the supplement or powder might have two or three different types. That's okay in my book, but I am starting to get people to make their own as well. So magnesium, we talked about the iron. Obviously, getting them off the things that are going to compound the issues.
Dan Sipple: (50:00)
So that's calcium supplements, toxic iron supplements. And by the way, I'm not against iron too. I want to make that pretty clear. We're not trying to say that one mineral is better than another, and that iron is this demonic thing. It's kind of like, we're just imbalanced, and the understanding of the relationship between these minerals is not spoken about. So, we end up with too much of some and not enough of others. Iron still has a role, right? But a lot of people are shocked to know that your body actually recycles iron. It's called the iron recycling system. And to 90% of your daily requirement is supposed to be just recycled. You only meant to need X amount through your diet daily.
Dan Sipple: (50:44)
So, starting them off with those sorts of dos and don'ts, and the Root Cause Protocol actually has... If anyone's listening and wants to find out, they've got a handbook on their website, and there's a neat little page where it's like, "Stop all of these and start these." It's not medical advice, but it's very broad. It's kind of like ascorbic acid supplements, iron as we talked about. Yeah. My memory is a little bit cloudy today, but there's a whole heap of them, and then there's a whole heap of starts too. Start looking at these things like iodine, and boron, and K2, and whole food, vitamin C. And the whole purpose of that is, I suppose, based around upregulating your production of ceruloplasmin and copper, and balancing your minerals and moving out the tissue-stored iron.
Dan Sipple: (51:29)
Because I think Morley says, "We live in a planet that's 35% iron. The food's been fortified if you've grown up in the '60, '70s, '80s, '90s, which we all have, we all ate cereal, loaded in [inaudible 00:51:41] and iron. It's a process I think of when you stumble onto this stuff, understanding, "Okay, is it too much iron or is it actually not enough?" And understanding where you fit in that, and obviously things like organ supplements. I use them because they're loaded in an amazing array of nutrients, but the standout to copper, retinol, the B vitamins, the CoQ10, and that sort of thing. But they contain iron too, right? So we still need it, but because you've got the copper there, you're balancing it. You're telling the body where to put that iron. Whereas, when you take a synthetic, it's fuel for parasites. It's fuel for stealth infections. And like I said, if the body's copper anaemic, you'll put that straight into your tissue.
Mason: (52:24)
I feel like that's what you can see you are going into a slight specialisation. And then we're quite often like, "Oh gosh, but how do we ensure that we don't have to live in that mental place where we're constantly thinking about that? How do I know [inaudible 00:52:37] too much or too little?" I guess the coming back, every now and then, to a practitioner cycle of testing can tell you. But then, you can also start seeing the results and start getting a feeling of what is [crosstalk 00:52:48], "Oh yeah, I did have excess iron. I felt this way." And now, I'm kind of moving in this direction. You can feel when you start getting a little bit... I don't know, when you start excessively stripping or detoxifying. And that's when, for me, if you take a step in the direction of, first of all, having no ideology around you, so your instincts are allowed to explore everything that's available.
Mason: (53:09)
And then moving, "I like the Chinese medicine moving with the seasons. And what particular foods, what particular animals, what particular cooking systems are relevant in that season," which you will find is... If you are going like, "Oh, I can't be bothered learning anything else." If you just dip your toe in and you feel it's quite instinctive and it's not that much of a change, then your lifestyle keeps you in that harmonious place. And after 10 years, you'll feel like, "I don't really need to go to that practitioner and get that testing so much anymore [crosstalk 00:53:39] feel for it."
Dan Sipple: (53:40)
And that's the goal, right? That's what I say to patients too. My goal is to make you independent of me and on as little as possible. And when you dip your toe into this stuff, it can feel overwhelming. But a lot of patients will say, "It actually feels right. Now they've explained it to me, that feels right. That resonates instead of being on four or five synthetic supplements, which doesn't feel right." Right? Even though it's naturopathic, it's synthetic.
Dan Sipple: (54:04)
It's a good space to see people sort of arrive at, where they're like, "I like the idea of taking whole food vitamin C or increasing it in my diet. Getting on more knowing that I'm getting K2 and E and retinol in my diet, and for all of those years before I wasn't." And they can really look back at that and understand and feel how deficient they might have been. And at a place where they're like, "This is good because I can control the majority of this now, just with my diet. I thought I could do that before with the way I was eating. I thought that was the key. But this feels much more nature identical."
Mason: (54:41)
Very much nature identical. I think the other distinction you were talking about when people, especially because I came from the vegan scene and the raw food scene, you see people heal maybe in one way or another there, and then don't listen and move beyond an ideology. They stay there and then they get sick, or they feel they're about to get sick or their constitution is... maybe they just feel their constitution is being weakened. So then they go, what is essentially another healing protocol, which is excessive organs, excessive ancestral focus, excessive animal that's... It's all about retinol. It's all about [inaudible 00:55:21]. It's all about natural animal fat derived [inaudible 00:55:24], and it's a beautiful phase.
Mason: (55:26)
That Western [inaudible 00:55:28] kind of dietary phase where you start getting the marrow and the teeth health back. But just remember there's a difference between being sick and staying there, and medicating yourself with that diet, and then that diet being integrated into what is a sustainable, beautiful, heartbeat of the home diet and lifestyle. But please just make sure you're not overly identified, guys. So many people stay sick, and go and get a tattoo of the new healing thing that they're getting and-
Dan Sipple: (56:03)
I haven't seen that yet. Is that what's happening?
Mason: (56:06)
I don't know. Just like that, I just don't and understand why... Again, getting a tattoo of a phase when you start getting connected to your ancestry and having that cathartic release of what you denied so long, it's like... But again, chop wood, carry water. Are you going to get moments of enlightenment? Maybe get your tap on your... You're going to have a tap on your soul path anyway, and maybe you get it on your body, but then keep going. Don't brand yourself. It's so boring and it's fun for a little bit. You make memes about it, and you bag out the other people to make sure that everyone's getting a lift up and [inaudible 00:56:40] able to come to independent thing, but keep going. Keep the process. Keep chopping wood, carry water. Move on. You don't need that identity. It is boring.
Dan Sipple: (56:50)
This is a social media's postmodern thing. This is-
Mason: (56:55)
Even before social media back in the day, that was all everyone would talk about, "How my little pocket's right, and we're up against this." And when you started to-
Dan Sipple: (57:05)
Even the raw days. Yeah.
Mason: (57:06)
Raw days, even back in the Truth Calkins kind of same. Maybe I don't know where he is at now, but it was just like all raw meat and anti candida, and it was all about being against that thing. And all these people at that time, whether they like it or not, I've been there many times, their is psychology is sick. And then they're trying to form a personal culture and diet and lifestyle still off the preface of being psychologically sick still, and making a healing diet, your long-term diet, that's supposed to have romance and fun and connectivity about it, does not happen. So, guys keep on moving.
Mason: (57:43)
The people you think are interesting in this health scene are so boring. Getting back and talking about them, that's what sparked it for me. I was having boring conversations with myself in the shower. I was like, "Yuck. I don't want to be like this." They are so benign, these extremists, so just keep on going, guys. Yeah, awesome. Let's go. I really can't stay away from macro philosophical. Thanks for bearing with me. All right. Well, let's keep on going down the rabbit hole, wherever you want to take it. Otherwise, I've got suggestions.
Dan Sipple: (58:18)
Well, the next piece, I think, just to sort of cap it, is we talked about C. We talked about iron. We talked about magnesium. Vitamin D3, this is a big one. And again, kind of like the iron, this metabolic space we're seeing emerge that are calling out vitamin B3 as a supplement is just that. It's about the supplement form. It's not saying vitamin D is bad. So, there's a lot of people that sort of kick up, and like, "Oh, what? You're against vitamin D?" It's like, "No, no, no, we're not." We're not against iron or vitamin D necessarily. We're against the synthetic versions of these things that are pushed, and over time create these imbalances. Right? And again, I've done that to myself probably 8, 9, 10 years ago. I remember when I was megadosing D3. But it was the industry thing.
Dan Sipple: (59:03)
It was so researched-backed, and it's webbed in the naturopathic philosophy and the understanding. And it's immunomodulating and if you've got auto-immunity, you need just so much more than the general whatever, who doesn't suffer from these things. And that I think is probably a big part of it. And the way that works is because D3, as a supplement, squashes the innate immune response for starters, which is why it's good for auto-immunity, so you get a symptomatic relief. Causes renal potassium wasting in the kidneys, which you never heard about when you were learning about vitamin D at school. And the big one for me is it depletes retinol. So, it comes back to that vitamin A dynamic. So, when you're taking D3, for every one unit of D3, you need 10 units of retinol to activate that. So if you're already running at a loss of vitamin A, retinol, and then you start taking D3, you can imagine how quickly you're going to deplete yourself of retinol. Right? And that's what I see happen all the time.
Mason: (01:00:06)
Is this industrial, not plant-based but vegan vitamin D, is that the same with the ones that are derived from, I think there's like lichen-based ones or-
Dan Sipple: (01:00:17)
All of it. All of them. Yep. All of them. They will deplete the retinol. They'll ask the body to use 10 times the amount of D3 coming in to activate that. And it's-
Mason: (01:00:29)
So, the validity in immune suppressing, interesting. But then, when you see it being used as a primary supplement-
Dan Sipple: (01:00:39)
A long-term immune modulation therapy. Yeah, that is what's it like.
Mason: (01:00:42)
Or even upping immunity. It's been seen people thinking through the brand, is it's going to increase immunity and make them better able to deal with infection.
Dan Sipple: (01:00:50)
Yeah, it doesn't do that. Nothing really upregulates immunity. Vitamin D, when it's naturally present in the body has an immune-regulating action. Right? And we want it, we want to get it from sunlight. So, again, I'm saying I'm not against vitamin D, I'm against vitamin D3 as a supplement, taking that, because it's a hormone for starters. I should have said that earlier. It's actually a hormone. We should call it hormone D. We shouldn't call it vitamin D.
Mason: (01:01:17)
But hormone replacement therapy.
Dan Sipple: (01:01:19)
Yeah. Well, it is. Yeah. And you can get it in supermarkets now. And it's like, "This is powerful stuff." And if you use it long-term, you can run into issues. You will promote calcification. Because when you start taking D3, you're asking your body to absorb more calcium. So, you can quickly run into calcification via D3. You can quickly deplete your retinol. When you're in that retinal deficient state, you can't make ceruloplasmin, which means you can can't regulate iron. You see how it sort of... It's a long-winded trajectory, but it has that long downstream effect down here. We tend to only think about like, "Oh, you can take too much zinc. It depletes copper. It takes too much iron. It depletes this."
Dan Sipple: (01:01:58)
But it's like, "No, no, you can have multiple stages of involvement there." So yeah, Morley and the Root Cause Protocol are quite big and heavy on being against D3 supplements for good reason, I feel. It's important to highlight. However though, it's still very crucial for the right reason. We still need it. We still encourage people to get it from sunlight through food. Cod liver oil, I still promote. So, five years ago, when I would've given D3, I give cod liver oil. So, it's got some natural D3 present in it, but guess what? It's got 10 times the amount of retinol in it. So, the body knows what to do with that 10 to 1 complex. It understands that.
Mason: (01:02:36)
Have you used any oil much? We haven't really done dove into that.
Dan Sipple: (01:02:39)
Not myself, no.
Mason: (01:02:41)
Any insight there, or are we-
Dan Sipple: (01:02:42)
No, sorry. I don't even know if that is just purely a fatty acid, or if it contains any of these fat soluble vitamins. Do you know?
Mason: (01:02:50)
Yeah. I mean, that's what the research shows, but it is like [inaudible 01:02:56].
Dan Sipple: (01:02:57)
Okay. Yeah, cool.
Mason: (01:02:58)
But yeah [crosstalk 01:03:00].
Dan Sipple: (01:03:00)
That makes sense.
Mason: (01:03:01)
Yeah, it makes sense. It's endemic to Australia, so kind of like I'm kind of leaning over towards... And I've been using it for probably five years and many people. It's one of those little industries that you can see again. It's like '70s, '80s kind of type websites built. You can know the person-
Dan Sipple: (01:03:19)
The little like... Yeah, Microsoft Word-looking table of contents hasn't been updated in God knows how long. You're like, "Yeah. There's some stuff in that vault."
Mason: (01:03:28)
That little animation of an emu just going [inaudible 01:03:31]. But anyway, I'm pretty sure I've got capsules there that have an [inaudible 01:03:41]. So it's-
Dan Sipple: (01:03:43)
I'll look into it, man.
Mason: (01:03:44)
Yeah. If you wouldn't mind, because that's what I've been taking and that, and then with the whole foods at C, just doing all that, the array of [inaudible 01:03:53]. I think we blew through that, so I don't know if you quickly wanted... because there's a lot of people who do take vitamin C daily. And I think right now, the one-two punch of people getting rocked, because maybe people aren't doing iron in this community, but it might be a lot. So, C that they're taking, they're like, "No, isn't this the best?" And they're also taking a really high vitamin D. They're like, "No, but I take D with K2." That's the kind of like the fringe where I see a lot of people in this community maybe at so-
Dan Sipple: (01:04:20)
Can I just got one more little piece on about the D, is I think it's important to say, is the testing for D is very controversial too. So, when you go and get a vitamin D blood test, they're only looking at one type of vitamin D, which is the storage vitamin D, which is called 25 hydroxy D. That's looking at your vitamin D stores, but your active vitamin D is 1,25 dihydroxy D. And it turns out, again, we didn't learn this in naturopathic school, but to understand someone's vitamin D status, we need to look at both of those super, super important. Why? Because when you go and get a vitamin D test, you're looking at storage, right? And a lot of the time, that will be low. But you can have low storage D and you are at active DB through the roof, particularly if you're taking it. So, it's like the iron thing. If a doctor looks at that and doesn't understand it or not looks at that, it goes, "Oh, you're D deficient. Take more D3." Meanwhile, the active D is through the roof, and you've got this inflammatory balance going on.
Mason: (01:05:18)
What a beautiful moment, I mean, in realisation for everyone as we chop wood, carry water, and as we are going to be for the next few decades, and being engaged with what's healthy, what's going to take us into harmony to have these moments of enlightenments, and these pops and these learns where we can adjust and make sure we do it without... have our cathartic moment of mourning or our moment of grief where we go, "Man, how do I do that to myself? How do I not know? Why did these people promote this?" Have that mourning and that moment of sadness, and then feel the value. This is [inaudible 01:05:53], and feel the value of what you are learning from this process.
Mason: (01:05:57)
And then, if you can get the [inaudible 01:05:59] of that, chop it, and let it drop down into the water to become wisdom and to learn from the experience, and then just get up and keep on going, chop wood, carry water. Beautiful. So the vitamin D have kind of got just in something that's kind of like, I guess, where iodized salt was where we used to recommend the people, "Just put it in the bin. Don't even try to use it. Don't even give it to the worms." What about vitamin C therapy? What about when you are getting acutely sick taking ascorbic acid or a liposomal C, is there ever a period where you are utilising that acutely?
Dan Sipple: (01:06:34)
None. Not anymore. And in those situations, I'm like, "[inaudible 01:06:39] K2 and organs and copper." Think of that, those sorts of things. Like white blood cells, neutrophils in particular, they require bioavailable copper. That's your first line of defence, whole food C, that's still serving your... that beneficial action of whole food C. And with whole food, you've got, tyrosinase, enzymes in it. You've got bioflavonoids, you've got the ascorbic acid, but it's all in the package, right? It's all in that. We sort of use the analogy of whole food C is the whole car. Ascorbic acid or liposomal C is just the shell of the car. So, when you hear that analogy, you can understand how the body, especially if it's getting massive downloads of it, is looking at that going, "We don't really know what to do with that, that doesn't..." I've not seen that before in the food that you eat from nature. It's simple.
Mason: (01:07:33)
I can feel, and I wonder how many people can feel it as well. There's a beautiful moment in this acknowledgement. It's a part of the process of coming back to slight localization or perhaps slightly less intervention. And if you can feel that the data is actually backing now that, "No, we don't need to go to extreme isolation." You can come back and it's not like a philosophical place you want to get to [inaudible 01:08:00] whole food eventually. It's more useful to the body. And as you do that, this thing about personal culture, it's a step in that direction where you are not as institutionally dependent. Not that it's good or bad, but it is a part of the process where, "Ah," you connect to something whole.
Mason: (01:08:16)
You can connect a little bit easier back to the process of harvest, and what it takes to get a freeze dried Kakadu plum versus that isolated ascorbic acid. It's something that you, as a culture, can have a relationship with. And then perhaps, eventually you're growing it, you're harvesting it, but nonetheless, a personal culture can emerge when you have a direct relationship with a little bit more where that supplement, that food, or where that nourishment is coming from. You can see it bulks out, fleshes out. It's got substance. And that's what we mean by moving in that direction of sovereignty, having family and your own culture, not being in institutionally dependent.
Dan Sipple: (01:08:57)
Well said.
Mason: (01:09:00)
What else have we not uncovered here? I just was thinking about that. I was thinking about the whole season, and I was like, "Oh wow, it's beautiful." And I was thinking about sunlight. Even though I've been doing all these things, and not been taking those supplements, it just was a moment of a moment of realisation, as well as oysters in terms of... I felt, "Wow, this stuff is not real substance. Is it taking me to the direction I want?" And I had a little bit of anxiety kind of just come off me just then, which is really-
Dan Sipple: (01:09:29)
That's what I see happen with the patients, too. It's like they get to this point where it clicks, and they just breathe, and they're like, "Oh, that feels so much better than being on a million fricking supplements every morning and every night," which I've been doing for years, from all these practitioners. Well-intended, but maybe not looking into these sorts of areas. And oysters, I'm glad you brought that up because the zinc piece is important. Again, it's not like zinc is bad, copper is good, because they compete. You need both. And we want to look at... We want to get away from the zinc picolinates of 200 milligrammes per tablet, and start looking at what's the best whole foods source of zinc next to animal-derived protein and meat sources, which is oysters.
Dan Sipple: (01:10:08)
And the thing I love about them is I see a lot of thyroid patients. And with oysters, you've got that great blend of, yes, it's super high in zinc, but it's got the copper there too. And it's also got the iodine selenium. So just an awesome whole food option for someone who is on the more sluggish end of the thyroid spectrum, has this metabolic imbalance going on. And similar to how you ask me with, is there still a case where you will prescribe short-term zinc or ascorbic acid? It's like, "No, there isn't." I won't use synthetic zinc. I'll use oysters, and I'll try and optimise the diet for zinc, first.
Mason: (01:10:46)
Oh, you might use like an oyster supplement?
Dan Sipple: (01:10:48)
Yes.
Mason: (01:10:50)
I mean, we're on an ongoing journey, I guess. And this is the other thing with the [inaudible 01:10:56] channel, is it tries to get perfect. It's like, "Okay. So if I do this and that, and I'm taking the supplement, and then..." But you still know that there are people out there going, "Yes, but there are problems if you do a liver supplement or an oyster supplement." It's like, "Yeah, but we're not..." I'm going for good enough, not perfect.
Dan Sipple: (01:11:10)
Yeah, that's right.
Mason: (01:11:13)
Yeah.
Dan Sipple: (01:11:13)
It just relieves a massive amount of pressure, and it doesn't feel so scripted and protocolized. It just feels so... It doesn't feel so divorced from what our ancestors did because they would've prioritised, and they did prioritise these sorts of foods in all facets of life. But particularly, for infants in the growing stages, pregnant women, couples wanting to conceive. So it makes sense, they're biocompatible.
Mason: (01:11:39)
You know what's helped me? I've constantly got a monkey on my back when people say ancestors. Not that I think it's a bad thing to be looking to, but I've gone, "Why does this feel out of balance?" And it comes back to the [inaudible 01:11:53] theory of anything in excess. And what I've found excessively right now is everyone's been trying to heal off, some of you'd say, the madness of dietary culture, and allopathic naturopathic extremism is we've gone. And we've looked to the past and we've gone, "What do we need to do to be in alignment with our ancestors?" And we've been doing it for so long that it's come excessively. And so we haven't done... And how do we need to build our lives right now, so our descendants can thrive and heal.
Mason: (01:12:22)
And to have that jewel look back and then look at who is going to be your descendant, and to ensure that they have the capacity in this evolving world to thrive and have a personal family culture that you are building in right now. That's going to be your legacy. It's not your genes. It's the legacy, as well as the culture, food culture, the relationships you have with your body and the world around you, into the future. It gives me a good perspective and gives me a good compass, and make sure that I have a balance between past and future that allows me to stay a little bit more balanced in harmony in the present.
Dan Sipple: (01:12:56)
Yeah. Yeah, me too. Well said.
Mason: (01:12:59)
Well, look, we've covered a lot. God, we got chunky. I'd probably say this was perhaps one of the most enlightening chats for myself personally, probably, in the fact that I've been giving myself the advice as you go along in that chop wood, carry water to, "And now drop it, mate, and keep on going forward." This isn't [inaudible 01:13:23] isn't anything for your identity to like, "Mate, just keep on going."
Dan Sipple: (01:13:29)
No, if anything, it's getting away from all that. That's what I feel. you don't need to brag about it and promote it, and it's not a diet. It really isn't. It's stripped so far back from that. It's more common sense.
Mason: (01:13:42)
Any last little tidbits, or just in terms if you look at your life and how this distinction is impacting you or your patients, or the way you're going to be going forward? Or have you kind of feel like you've said it all?
Dan Sipple: (01:13:56)
As I said earlier, I mean, it's really rewarding now to be in a place where you can see the relief on patient's faces, because things have been simplified. And I'm doing a lot more on the education side of things, like content, that's the awesome thing about today's day and age amongst all the rubbish is that we can put content out. And if that content is right or it resonates, and it gets someone out of their dogma, that's [inaudible 01:14:21]. That's a really rewarding sort of space to be in. And that's reflected now in a lot of patients, which I'm super stoked about. And I've arrived, I think, in my sort of training at this place now. But like you said, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop here, and say, "This is the [inaudible 01:14:38], and none of it is medical advice either." It's just been really good to get away from the synthetic industry-pushed agenda, and to understand how many limitations it has and zoom out from it.
Mason: (01:14:54)
I feel like a beautiful dangle for our next conversation and one that's emerging. And I guess where there's like a nice bit of conflict, which is something I've learned in business recently. If you look at [inaudible 01:15:09] there's good business books or anyone, wanting to jump into that, like a side of things, Patrick Lencioni, or however you pronounce his last name. He's got a beautiful array of books and one called Death by Meeting, and teaches you, in a meeting, you should be mining for the conflict because... And this is anyone in a really beautiful, sustainable cultured business. We'll show you this. We'll go looking for the conflict, because it shows us where the opportunity for conversation [inaudible 01:15:36] and to build [inaudible 01:15:38].
Mason: (01:15:38)
And I guess where I see a conflict and I want to move towards is the one around DHA, EPA, fish oils, essential fatty acids, that may have been a fallacy. How cod liver oil... So let's not go into it, but I did touch on it. And I know you are in the middle of that conversation, and feeling the nature of that conflict [crosstalk 01:16:06], and it's perhaps something we can talk about next time. And for people that want to know, you can go to Morley. We've given you Matt Blackburn. We've given you Morley. We've given you Ray Peat. These are places you can dive into getting context of the source for us, and then you could probably go back further for where this conversation has come from, which is something we wish to do is lead the evidence for how we've arrived here.
Dan Sipple: (01:16:33)
Yeah, definitely, man. That'd be fun. And maybe a dairy conversation too, between conventional and raw. That'd be a nice little topic to squeeze in there. Maybe you could do both in the one.
Mason: (01:16:46)
[inaudible 01:16:46]. All right. I think that's the name right there. Yeah, beautiful. Well, dude, I really appreciate it. I feel like these conversations when I do have them in autumn, I am naturally in that flow of chi of organically, naturally the chi brings a metal edge and just goes and cuts away naturally stuff I'm not needing, but-
Dan Sipple: (01:17:09)
Peel it away, right?
Mason: (01:17:10)
[crosstalk 01:17:10]. Yeah. The barnacles, it suck it on. And beautiful thing is as that happens, the water becomes less putrid and drops down, and next becomes deep waters, and hopefully a little bit of sagey wisdom. Yeah. It is beautiful times we have.
Dan Sipple: (01:17:26)
Macro philosophical Mason, I'll have to start calling you.
Mason: (01:17:29)
I can't help myself. It's just too good. I appreciate you, yourself and everyone tolerating me. And as always, everyone jump over The Functional Naturopath. I'm glad to see you being more active on Instagram.
Dan Sipple: (01:17:48)
Yeah. I'm trying man. It's something that this year I'm like, "Got to do that. Got to start pushing it out a bit more." That's fun.
Mason: (01:17:55)
Yeah. I mean, everyone jump on there, and then [inaudible 01:17:59] to go live more, and just drop little bits more. And then, as always, go over to functionalnaturopath.com. Yeah. [inaudible 01:18:07] but if you want to jump on the waiting list to become a patient of Dan's, you can do that as well.
Dan Sipple: (01:18:17)
Thank you, brother. That was good. That was fun.
Mason: (01:18:19)
Thank you. See you next time.
