In this week's episode, we are joined by Dr. Mark Bailey. Dr. Bailey shares his invaluable wisdom on many topics relating to science and medicine. First, we explore our fundamental question: What is health? This snowballs into a discussion on balance and how it's related to health.
Next, we look at the philosophical concept of looking upstream. Dr. Bailey shares how this is a valuable tool to be used in assessing scientific research, as well as our own health. Delving into more philosophical concepts, we discuss if there is an end to scientific research and methods to reduce reductionism.
We continue on the topic of navigating the vast and confusing scientific and health-related fields, with a note on the state of these fields. We then explore which interventions are useful and how even doing nothing can be a good 'intervention.'
Lastly, we explore the relationship between science and spirituality. Dr. Bailey shares some irreplaceable wisdom in his concluding remarks. Finally, we discuss Dr. Bailey's new book!
We hope you enjoy the episode!
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I ask all my guests at start, a standard question to get them to define health and what health means to them. I find this is a good way to get a little baseline of somewhere to work off. so, I want to ask you, what is your perspective on what Health is? What does it mean to you?
Dr Bailey
Well, it's changed a lot over the years because as you know I used to be a conventional doctor trained in the system and of course back then I was very focused on the allopathic model but to cut to the chase, I mean these days to us health really means a state of perfection. That our bodies have been created in this perfect image and they should always be trying to go back to that state. We should aim for nothing less than perfection in our state of wellbeing.
Liev
Yeah, very nice I agree. Seeking this this balance, right? Maybe you could speak on a little bit about what this balance is. How do you assess what the balance is? Is it a biochemical imbalance or energetical Imbalance? How would you describe that?
Dr Bailey
Yeah, well over the years I mean when I started out with my training, and through medical school and the basic sciences, how they were taught by the establishment. I mean we were essentially taught that the body was like a chemistry set. There was a series of biochemical reactions going on. It was a very reductionist type model and there was no room essentially for spiritual elements and there was actually very little room in the physical realm for even psychological elements. Most of the time in the work we did, it was considered that the things that would go wrong would be due to genetics or the chemistry inside your body, etc. Or there'd just be these so-called idiopathic or bad luck type things that would happen to you.
One feature of about the research that Sam and I do is that we always like to go, what we call, upstream. Looking for the source of problems, and as you know we became very well known for doing that with virology. When we kept on going further and further upstream, until we found that there didn't even seem to be viruses. They didn't seem to exist.
But in our general research and to health and wellbeing when we've gone upstream, we always get to the point where we arrive at the psychological state and the spiritual state. And how much of the physical state follows on from those two key principles. And we're not saying that physical things don't go wrong. You could be poisoned by things in the environment, you know metals, radiation, even what we've witnessed in recent years these sorts of psychological events on a mass scale can cause people to become unwell and manifest various physical symptoms. In my mind the more we learned about the body and health the less we actually knew about the details of how it works.
I think you're right on the money there with how you describe the sort of work that we do, is that we're very reluctant to jump to conclusions and say ‘oh yeah, we know how things work’. We're more likely to say, ‘actually we don't know the exact details of how the body works down at the molecular level etc.’ But we can make a lot of useful information and work out that you don't need to know all that stuff necessarily. You can have faith that the body and nature know what it’s doing. And if we just get out of the way and allow the terrain to do its thing, life is in this perfect balance, this perfect harmony.
A lot of people ask us, say look, clearly these traditional models, the medical models of health and that don't work, but what is your particular explanation for xyz? Then we just say, well we can show what's wrong with the old one, but we're not necessarily going to create our own model which could then lead people a stray as well. But we can point out that there are definite things you can do with the way you orientate yourself to the world and end up in a state of exceptional health. You know both spiritually, mentally, as well as physically.
Liev
Yeah, very well put. I couldn't agree more. I think being able to say that you don't know, is not only a necessary thing for a scientist or a doctor to have in their perspective, in their mind. Because it's quite a humble thing to say too in my in my opinion. To say that you don't know you're surrendering to the beauty and complexity of life in a way, maybe in a way honoring the creation in itself. It's been something that has certainly becoming more apparent in my mind is that the more I'm looking into things, I just don't think that we really know.
When you start uncovering some of the problems in virology, cell biology or biochemistry, you start looking for alternative models and often you could probably scrutinize them just the same as the one you just abandoned. So, I think that’s an important thing and that's one of the reasons why I really appreciate your guys' perspective because you're not jumping to any of these hasty conclusions, and I think that's important.
So, you mentioned how we're looking Upstream for something. I can't help but to think like that that resonates with me as a way to look for something. To look upstream, to look for the source is that where you were kind of getting at there?
Dr Bailey
Yeah, definitely and you know classic example was really yeah late 2019, early 2020. At which point, I'd actually exited medicine in 2016 so you know I was very suspicious of the allopathic paradigm. I was never really quite happy with it. I was trying to find a way to work within the system doing something that I was happy with but never found it really. So up to 16 years of clinical practice I got out in 2016. Then with the onset of this covid scam, Sam and I just, we knew something was wrong and at this stage.
I'd been out of medicine for three or four years and it really struck us, that when something doesn't make sense with the information that's readily being provided to you. So you know they're telling people that there's this novel virus, that there's this new disease, that the world's in a pandemic, etc. And it doesn't stack up with your own observations, it's a mistake to keep accepting the information that's being fed to you.
So, the mainstream sources or even some of the alternative ones, they keep presenting the material within the certain paradigm. For us, we didn't have a background at the start of 2020 in virology, but we thought we better actually go on the search here for what this is all about because it doesn't make sense within the terms of the case numbers, and the responses that they were doing, and what they were proposing was going to happen, etc. So really for us, It was starting to look at scientific references, and this this is such a big area people need to know about. Just because you read a headline, or somebody says something, and says this study showed that, that doesn't mean that at all. Often, the headline of the study, or the abstract, or what people think the study said, is not the case at all.
First of all, we started with world health organization documents and looked up some of those and they talked about novel viruses and coronaviruses. So, we looked at those papers and if there were references, because sometimes there weren't references at all. And we started reading these papers. This is funny because we went back to the textbooks and we'd say this is the definition of say a virus, that it's a replication competent particle. It's got a protein shell and some genetic material inside and that it's the cause of disease. And we started looking at these papers which claimed to discover such things and found that although the headline of the paper and the abstract claimed that this is what they'd found when you read the entire paper. It was apparent that that's not what they had found at all that they were jumping to conclusions. There were these huge gaps in logic that they were using and we thought okay well maybe it's just 1 or 2 times, that they've made a mistake. And then started looking at hundreds of papers, eventually thousands and realizing that this was the theme. It wasn't just with things like viruses. It was with a lot of stuff.
We'd been taught antibiotics. We just started asking questions. when we were working within the system we were told, you have this pneumonia, you give this antibiotic and it fixes the pneumonia and you're better. We started thinking well where is the pivotal paper that established that, or the pivotal evidence. And we just went on a search. And time and time again, we couldn't find these papers and despite the fact that we were taught this. Even our textbooks were misleading because they made these claims. But then they didn't have scientific papers to back them up.
So, one thing led to another, and we just kept doing this and every time someone said look there's this virus, or there's this particular disease, or this is caused by this, or this is the genetic problem. Just say okay, that's what you say, but we'll go back and do a full trawl of PubMed and the other scientific databases and see if we can actually find this. And shockingly, so many times, you just can't find the evidence, it's amazing. So that's what we mean.
And I think the upstream philosophy, it's really useful, not only for just verifying scientific facts but it's actually useful in a whole lot of other ways, of being healthy. of saying you know if you might look at your diet and say, ‘maybe my diet's not that great’. But then you have to say, ‘well why is my diet not that great?’ There's more to it than that. Can I just not be bothered, looking into my food sources? or is it that I feel I shouldn't spend that much money on getting purified water? or you know there's a whole lot of other things. And often if you go higher, higher and higher. You'll reach a much better understanding of how everything works not only in this world but also with your own body.
Liev
Great, very well put. But sometimes I wonder if there is no end going upstream. When I think of science and how we look at science from the modern perspective. We make these very surface claims which would be biology and it all builds upon itself right? So, you have biology, which is based on chemistry, chemistry on physics, physics on mathematics. I quite enjoy the study of mathematics. Even in physics now we're getting into quantum mechanics and all these nuanced ways of approaching the world. We're so far away from what we're claiming in biology, but that's a whole different thing. But it all builds upon these very small things. At one point we thought the atom was the smallest, then then we could go smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Sometimes I'm like well science is always producing an answer wherever it looks. I think that's kind of interesting to consider.
So even when you're looking at the literature, because it's like okay well if you're conducting a study, there is a way to get the results you want just on how you do the study as well, right? How you process the data, that's a big problem now too. I was looking into the reproducibility crisis in the literature. That there's so much literature that's unable to be reproduced and I think this is an immense problem in the literature. But I'll get back to my main point there, when we're looking you can go deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and so I feel like when I'm looking for the root cause, is it if you're eating too much food or is there a gluttony aspect to it right? Does it come down to emotion? So I’d like to know your thoughts on where does it stop? Does it stop in the physical? How can you go deeper than that? How do you kind of look at that?
Dr Bailey
Yeah, definitely and I think you raise a good point that there is I think with the reduction… and don't get me wrong when we go upstream, we're not looking to engage in reductionism. We're just trying to say where did this knowledge come from or how could we be sure that this would be a valid model, etc. And I agree when I was in medical practice, I did pursue at times that reductionist approach. Going how far have people taken this? If we've got diseases in the body. How far has it gone? and obviously it's gone down to the level of the Electron Microscope, where people are looking at things in the nanometer scale. Eventually it became apparent to me that the answers were not there at all.
At that realm people didn't even have any kind of control over what was happening. You know, not like the sense like you control what you can eat, or the thoughts that you might have, or the interactions you might have with your community. Those are all the sorts of things you can readily control. But down at this reductionist level. whatever model people come up with, whatever they say. They might say this is the model for the atoms, or this is the model for electric current, etc. We must remember that there's so much of that, that we can't control it anyway. These are the laws of nature or the laws of God. Whatever you want to call them, but they're not things that we can necessarily have any significant influence over at all.
And I think that's the Hubris that develops. It’s that people think that they can interfere with biology at that kind of level, when in fact, we have a related statement which is that nature doesn't make mistakes. It's not this thing that happens with us where suddenly, oh whoopsie nature has slipped up there and made a massive error and caused all these problems. It's always coming from us essentially, and it's always coming from a higher level. So, it's what we do with our own bodies. It's what we do with our environment. It's what we do and our interactions with other people that then have these physical manifestations and you may be able to see some of them with an Electron micrograph, but that doesn't mean that you can go down to that level and start manipulating things on that level.
There may be people watching us going, ‘Oh I know I work in a laboratory and I'm a molecular expert and in all this kind of stuff.’ Yes, I've been involved in all of that before and I just think it's a dead-end pathway going down to those molecular models particularly with complex things. With how the body works and how health works. now there may be an engineering aspect which work with some of these models. If somebody, an engineer is telling you what kind of steel you need for your bridge to support a certain amount of weight, then they may have models with how atoms interact with each other. But that's a different system than biology. I think we must be careful where we apply it.
So, to come back to your question. Yeah, I've been in that paradigm before and when I was looking at medical problems, health problems, I found that the reduction of stuff was a complete waste of time. In that aspect the reduction of stuff was almost downstream of what we wanted to do. And again, I think the upstream philosophy still applies. The upstream doesn't necessarily lead you to what's happening at the atomic level.
I mean sometimes it can lead you to what's happening on the nanoscale with the information they can give you, and that's an example of virology, because they're trying to say we've got evidence of this and that at the nanoscale. And you can say well even on their own model, it's incorrect. And their model might be wrong to begin with anyway.
If that makes sense, I think that Upstream doesn't necessarily lead you to a type of reductionism and probably like yourself, we've found that most of the time when it's dealing with health and community, and these important issues, the upstream arguments come back to really simple principles, living right, thinking, and a spiritual connection. And if you sort out those, it sounds all too easy, but if you constantly work on those things, the outcomes are amazing.
Liev
Yeah, very well put. So, I want to ask a big question. I want to know maybe for someone getting into this, where do you start? because now we have these 2 kinds of paradigms and maybe we'll kind of circle this into people who may want to work in medicine. What's the approach there? Because I'm sure many have been through their challenge, I'm sure you have as well, transitioning out of the system. Maybe we can address that a little bit if you if you have any advice to share. How do you begin getting to know this information? How do you get working in this field? I think that'd be valuable for the listener.
Dr Bailey
To cut to the chase, I think the medical system which is the Medico-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, is so broken, that you shouldn't go into it. With my own our own kids, we would not want them going to medical school or anything like that because we know that the models being captured. Everything's co-opted and it's virtually impossible to operate within that system in most countries. The United States and other countries have had a little bit more freedom, possibly, but are still under very strict control.
And it's a real problem because if you go outside of their paradigms. You'll be faced with prosecution basically, and taking away your license and all sorts of negative kind of things. So, that's it's a really hard one and I think if you're really interested in Health, You don't go into that system and even some of the other schools. Chiropractic, Osteo, Acupuncture, whatever you're looking at. A lot of those are under regulatory bodies now, which as you know are quite nefarious as well. I mean you only have to look at what happened during the Covid-19 era. A lot of these “natural health” people or “alternative health” people as they call them sometimes were going along with the Covid nonsense and a lot of that was due to the influence of the allopathic paradigm. Where for some reason even people who are supposedly doing more natural medicine are still somehow really impressed by the pseudoscience that comes out of allopathy. Just because of the way health practice is regulated these days, that it's come under the control of governments, and their various agencies and institutions. People are very controlled in what they can do.
So, I think it's an interesting time. It's exciting, I think. People need to do their own thing to be honest, like Sam and I spend a lot of time just trying to provide information to the public to say that you don't actually need doctors, and the system. It was a funny thing, like to give you an example of when I quit medicine in 2016, up to that point of course I could prescribe any medication that I want. I had access to all of them. And for a brief moment in 2016, I thought oh I'm not going to have the right to have access to all of these pharmaceutical products that I used to have access to. And after, I didn't miss any of them. I don't take any of them. So there's nothing, it's really strange. It's helping other people understand that as well, you don't need those things.
Now don't get me wrong there’s some things like, emergencies if you have trauma and you've got terribly fractured bones or facial injuries, etc. Now the system is adept at dealing with those things. They can do life and limb-saving procedures. But let's be honest, that's.
That's less than 1% of the medical system. The vast majority of people are not turning up with bones sticking out of their arms, or flail chests and all this kind of stuff. People are going in because they have some sort of pain, or that they're struggling with movement, or that they’re shorter breath, they're getting headaches, or they're struggling psychologically. So, people are turning up to the medical system with all of those kinds of problems and the medical system is a terrible place to go.
We get asked, ‘well are all the doctors and on it?’ No, definitely not. But I used to work in that paradigm and once upon a time I was partially trapped as well, and I thought those models were a way that you could help people. And increasingly I just abandoned virtually all of the models. To the point today, where I'm not in clinical practice anymore and we don't tend to see patients. But the only sort of things that I would keep would be tending to acute wounds. We still use our old allopathic skills when it comes to wound care, etc. and acute events like that. But otherwise, we have completely abandoned all of it.
So yeah, I think it's tough because you get people thinking that ‘I want to become a doctor and help people’, etc. But I would say with the current situation, and it's got worse, obviously over about 100 years, as the systems become more and more captured. But it's not a health system and that's what people need to understand. It’s that health and medicine are different things. The medical system is its own paradigm, so it serves itself. It's got models which sometimes help people, as I say the acute kind of stuff. But most of the time it's a self-serving industrial complex which has got various vested interests such as the pharmaceutical industry, such as the medical testing, laboratory industries, and a whole lot of other associated stuff that that benefits from those medical models.
Liev
I'm curious. I wonder um your thoughts on what types of interventions would be appropriate for healing. It may be as simple as just doing nothing and sitting outside. I'd like to know maybe how far you can take it. Because it's no doubt that as a population we're sicker than ever, and we've gotten so far away from a natural way of living. I Wonder how far in your mind can you do you stretch it? I know Herbology has been used for a long period of time and now I don't think it is what it was in the past per se. I think oftentimes we use herbs quite allopathically and just think oh this ailment, this herb. Maybe you could expand on that a little bit. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all that.
Dr Bailey
Yeah, well the style of um health that we've developed is just a total way of living. And we get sent information from all around the world, etc. People become very passionate about one thing, like vitamin C. Or some sort of trace element, or something, and say oh if we take care of this, that will take care of all our health. Now what's amusing from our point of view is that we've been sent so many of these claims. That there's one thing that we're not doing right. But obviously they can't all be right because otherwise we'd have these conflicting models all in play all at the same time.
So, I think that also extends to thinking that if you are unwell, that there's one particular treatment that you can take, because often it's multifactorial. So, we moved away from, we were trained to identify disease within the allopathic system. So, we were told that there were these specific entities that happened like measles or mumps or in the current era Covid-19, all this kind of stuff. We were told there are these specific diseases, that have specific causes, and then there are specific treatments. We just look at that as a completely broken model now. And see it that the body just has various conditions that it can go into, and sometimes you get a runny nose and a cough, and sometimes you get a skin rash, sometimes you get diarrhea, sometimes you get sweating, etc.
Now all of these are just elementary techniques that the body has. Just trying to get rid of stuff, so waste products, toxins, various compounds that the body doesn't want in it, basically. We changed our views massively. There are certainly conditions that are specific, say scurvy for instance. Because humans are unable to produce vitamin C. We're one of the few animals in the world that can't produce our own vitamin C. So, you know your pets for instance, they can make their own vitamin C. So, if they get sick, or if they get bitten by a snake, or something bad poisoned them, their bodies go on to overtime making vitamin C to try and neutralize the toxin or get them well again, we can't do that.
So, for some interesting reason which may be biblical, you know the answers maybe there. It's really weird, but we can't produce our own vitamin C. So, there are conditions like scurvy where you can say okay well that person basically needs vitamin C, and they will get all of the effects of the scurvy, the bleeding gums, and the problems with their bones, etc. will come right? If we give them vitamin C to resolve their scurvy, so there are sometimes specific things like that.
But I think that's far less common, I think usually you've got a multifactorial thing going on. And we usually break it down to these really simple principles for people and say you have to address your diet. So, most people in develop countries, they eat too much, so too many calories for what they do. And those calories, what you might call empty calories. And refined foods, which are really depleted in nutrients. I remember Sam did a presentation, a video on vitamin C a few years back and we went through some of the takeaway products, and I think there was a Domino's pizza which had 0 vitamin C in it. Somehow, we managed to refine this thing so much that there was no nutritional value, virtually left in the product, so people were eating a pizza and you think it's got a variety of ingredients and but nutrients were 100 % lacking in that pizza. It was absolutely incredible and that's because everything's so refined and so processed.
So, point number one is, not eating too many calories and making sure that it's high quality organic food rather than ultra refined rubbish. And obviously the dietary stuff includes water as well. So not mindlessly just drinking whatever comes your way and thinking that the water is fine, because you don't know what kind of contaminants are in it and stuff. So identifying a pure water source.
Second principle is exercise. I mean, we are designed to move and I always find it funny because I have a background as a professional athlete in the early two thousands. And people always say we're not really designed to run, I mean have you seen people running? And running well. I mean we absolutely, we're so well equipped to run. And I know there are animals on 4 legs that can run faster than us, but often they don't have the endurance that we have. When people are in really good shape, they can run all day and they can keep moving.
People move far too little these days, and spend way too much time in the office sitting down in Chairs. We're not designed to do that and getting outside has a whole lot of other benefits for your vision and things like that because you're not focused on something that's really close to you anymore. You're looking at things in the distance. And that's got some real benefits for keeping your vision strong as you get older, etc.
Three is healthy thinking. So, this is the psychological realm. And this is all of those thoughts that come into your mind of, ‘oh I've just been given some bad luck’ or ‘it's not fair that I don't have as much money as this guy, and I can't buy organic everything all the time.’ And so those kinds of negative thoughts will certainly lead to poor health outcomes. It's really hard to help people if their stuck in those negative thoughts. It doesn't really matter if you give them the best of everything. This is why you see people like, endless numbers of celebrities, who have all the resources they need. There's no shortage of money, there's no shortage of access to the best foods in the world, etc. and yet they become incredibly unhealthy because their psychological state and that they are in dealing with the fame, and probably thinking that it was going to be better than it was, leads to a totally destructive way of being. So it doesn't really matter that they can import water from France and get organic beef from New Zealand and all of that kind of stuff. It won't make a difference if their psychological state is poor.
The fourth one is the spiritual connection, which for some people is really hard. They don't have that background. And it depends, like I was raised in an environment that was atheist and what you might call hard science. Everything was based in looking for empirical evidence, etc. And it wasn't until later on that I appreciated the spiritual realm as well. And this is categorically different than some of the other things we're talking about. Because spiritual matters are a matter of faith. Which is different than say, using the scientific method to try and find out whether you can see if there are viruses or not, or trying to find out whether a particular drug does have any benefit for a certain disease, etc. those are things that we can test empirically. The spiritual realm is different because it is faith-based.
So, you know sometimes we get allegations, at Sam and myself, they say well we've noticed that when you look at a virology paper you dissect every single word, every single diagram, you just pull it to pieces basically, and show why it can't possibly be true. But then you accept God without seemingly any evidence. All I can say is that they're categorically different things and you shouldn't confuse the two. It's something that people have to work out for themselves.
One of the influences that Sam and I had was a New Zealand physician who was active, this is sort of 1930s to 1960s, so a long time ago. Like us, he started off as a conventional doctor. He was doing surgery prescribing medications and he just woke up one day and he felt god was talking to him saying aren't you ashamed of what you're doing? You're making material profits and you're using these medical techniques to enrich yourself. You're not improving the health of people. And here to complete change in his practice, he abandoned surgery, abandoned the drugs, etc. and started telling people from his own experience, that paradigm shift he had, from being sick, psychologically sick, and well to, developing that spiritual element. And for him, for the rest of his life, he always made it clear to patients that you have to have that spiritual connection. Otherwise, your health is a much more difficult road to get to.
So, coming back to what you were saying about whether there is particular things you can do, whether it's homeopathy, or particular natural treatments and stuff. I Definitely think there can be a place for all of that. But when it comes to what you are asking, how far can you take it, being your own physician if you like, I think you can take it pretty far. And most of the time if you take care of your eating, if you take care of your water, exercise, psychological side of things, and spiritual side, everything just flows on like you'll find.
And it's really difficult because sometimes you'll get people that will tell you, ‘oh no I'm taking care of everything and I've done everything and I'm still sick’. So, something you're telling me is wrong. And then say it comes down to something like their diet or exercise. You just ask can I have a look in your pantry. And I have a look in your cupboards just to see what kind of food you've got and they're like, ‘oh well, I don't usually eat these foods. They're just there for a special occasion’. Well, your shelves look pretty well stocked. So maybe there are things you could address. Or say they say, ‘oh I exercise regularly’. You ask them what they did and ‘oh I take the dog for a walk every day’. It turns out that that's like 5 minutes outside to go back inside again. You're like no, no, you need to go out for an hour, to go for a run, or go for a long walk or, do some exercise in some other form.
But yeah, there's a lot of things where it's really hard, I think for people to accept that they are making mistakes with their life. You must accept this with your kids. When our oldest kids were little, they used to get illnesses and we'd just think back then, this is a decade or more ago, we'd think ‘oh well this is just bad luck’ or ‘The kids have “picked up” something’ or ‘nothing you can do because everyone just says they’re childhood illnesses, etc. Eventually we abandoned that kind of thinking and said ‘okay, well if our kids do get sick, that's a mistake that we've made, and we need to think of what we can do better’. And over time our kids just got healthier and healthier. And some of our kids have not had any kind of medical product in their entire lifetime, from the day they were born. And I'm talking not even creams on their skin. Not even the most basic cream that you might get in a pharmacy. We can honestly say from our own experience, if you do things right, you don't need any of them. It's amazing.
Our youngest, we've never even measured like how much he weighs. Because again this is the medicalization of life. You know something that the great Ivan Illich, I don't know if you're aware of his work, but it's really worth looking into. He said a long time ago that we're just medicalizing life. Basically, this is just normal life and people are like, say for instance, people start measuring their kids' weights and sizes and all this kind of stuff. And then they get worried because the kid's too small, or they're too big, or they're told there's probably a problem.
And I can tell you how refreshing it's been to subsequently have children and never ever get out a measuring tape or a scale for anything. Just saying that, well if we embrace healthy living the child will be healthy. And you can tell, I mean people have lost this ability seemingly to think or see what health is. They are so married to the medical system. This cradle to grave system. And they think they need to go to a doctor or some sort of medical facility to get advice and not realizing that's not the health system. That's the medico-pharmaceutical system and it has its own games and schemes that it's running.
Liev
Yeah, very well put. The psyche plays a central role. When you were pointing to this choosing what kind of interventions to use, if you're picking yourself, and you're confident in that, our mind is very powerful. I think that's really important to highlight. The spiritual component of course. I like the way you put that as well. I think if I could ask one final question, is there a case that science and spirituality should have a marriage, or merge. I've heard scientists speak of this, like Rupert Sheldrake, that science and religion or science and spirituality are not necessarily separate. And it certainly resonated with me. I don't view nature as separate from the spirit. So, I'd like to know your take on that.
Dr Bailey
Yeah, well I think it's this need that people have to categorize everything isn't it. That they think that things need to fit into a box. And nature and God don't care for that because whatever models we construct in this mortal realm, it's irrelevant to whatever you want to call it, the laws of God, or the laws of the universe, or the laws of nature, etc.
But as I said, we have to remember that a lot of science is based in empiricism. So it's what we can observe through our senses, which is limited of course. I mean they are amazing, don't get me wrong. The senses that we have are incredible and allow us to perceive a lot in nature and the world around us. But they do come with their limitations. So with empiricism, it's been useful for applications like the scientific method. But then there are aspects of spirituality which the application of empiricism is not so clear. Because you'll get people demanding that you do an experiment that involves God or some something like this. And it's not possible to construct it because you can't create a situation where you have independent variables, etc. that you could potentially control.
So yeah, it's an interesting question and I think there are things that we can know without empiricism and one example is just pure logic, basically. And we can work out through maxims, basically, that you can't refute. That we can actually come to conclusions about how things work without engaging in any form of empiricism. I mean it's a complex argument and people have tried to use the claim that doing things in your head is a form of idealism because it doesn't necessarily match to anything in reality. But I think it's an unfair charge because if you're claiming that you're going down the road in nihilism, where you're claiming that words don't have any meaning, that they are just sounds we've made up. In which case there'd be little point continuing any conversation, because you could say it's all relative and he's making noises, and he's making noises, and they might not even be talking about the same thing. I mean to me that's pointless, going down that road.
I spent a lot of time reading Austrian economics, like more than a decade ago. And I really appreciated how they applied pure logic to that methodology. So, the Austrian economists, they don't use empiricism to analyze economics. They're about the only school in the world that don't do that. So, they don't have diagrams and equations for economics, and you can actually see, they can show how it makes sense because economics comes down to human nature and human nature is based in what they call praxeology. It's the logic of action, of human action. And it's really amazing to see that you can work these things out without engaging in empiricism. So, that's just a little segue anyway, into knowing that we don't need empiricism to prove everything. That we can work out things in our own minds, without even having gone out in the world if you want to call it that.
So, the spiritual element is, I would just say, sometimes it's just helpful to ask people to think about it. For instance, when I was at medical school, we dissected brains, and they showed us all the pathways that they said existed and stuff. And of course, in that model there was no soul. It was just electrical connections, and you would ask them at which point we became conscious and they'd say ‘oh well, you know when there's x number of connections like you know when there's 100000000 connections, that's when consciousness developed’. And you're like what so if it lost one connection, you're not conscious anymore? or if it gains one suddenly you become… And it just made no sense.
Or that consciousness was a side effect if you like. If you look up people like Richard Dawkins claims that consciousness is just this useful side effect that happened when our brains got so complicated and had so many connections that this thing that we know as consciousness appeared. But if you have a look at how empiricism tries to explain consciousness. They get tangled up in themselves and when I say empiricism I mean like the traditional kind of medical models and scientific models that are prevalent in the world. But in terms of the marriage between science and spirituality, yeah, it's interesting and I can't see a reason why you'd automatically exclude them. But at the same time, as I say, I do view faith as categorically different from something like empiricism.
But always, one thing we say to people is, you can test God if you want. If you want to carry out your own experiment. It'll be N=1 because you can't really do it in a controlled setting with lots of people, I don't think it works out very well for people when they genuinely try it. So yeah, it's a tough one Live, and to me I'm and just happy to learn more about what other people have to say on that topic, because as you know, we've spent a lot of time breaking down those empirical models that are in operation, in health, in medicine and showing why they can't possibly be true.
Liev
Yeah, well beautiful answer and I appreciate the example you gave with the Austrian economics. It's something I want to look into, sounds really interesting.
Yeah, so any final thoughts from you?
Dr Bailey
Yeah, we just encouraged people to not take anything at face value, particularly the landscape now is so confused in this world. Where there's no shortage of information. It's absolutely everywhere. But the confusion is hitting all time record levels. Because people are looking at Facebook feeds, or Google searches, and thinking that they're getting accurate information and sometimes that's stopping them from looking any further. Even at the moment, we're in this situation with this this covid stuff, where there's a hundred different opinions on what's happened, and what's happening and stuff. And I think for the average person they listen to one person say something and then, ‘that makes sense’ and then they listen to someone say something completely different and they go ‘well that kind of makes sense too’. And they really get lost.
But it comes back to actually something you said earlier, which I think sometimes has relevance, a lot of relevance and is way more important. You don't always have to do anything. Sometimes you can just do nothing, and this is something. I discovered as a practitioner, when I was in that model as a conventional doctor, was that just because someone comes in the door and starts telling you something it doesn't mean you have to do something. It doesn't mean that you have to give medications, and run tests on them, and tell them that they might have a serious disease, etc. Sometimes it's fine just to say we probably don't really need to do anything here.
And I think for many people out there, they can do the same. Like if there's some headline saying, oh they've invented a new virus and it's leaked from the lab and stuff like this. I mean the worst thing to do is to get scared and think that ‘oh my goodness this is coming for me or this is another threat to my life, etc.’ Because those kinds of things, anything that makes you feel scared. You know sometimes that's an experience in real life like if you're about to stand on a snake, you should feel scared, because you don't want that thing to bite you. But if it's coming out of a Facebook feed and you can't actually see that it's got any relevance to what's happening in your house at that moment, then It's often best just to ignore it. I think for people, there's just way too much information out there, it's just so much noise.
With the way Sam and I operate, is to just try and reduce fear for people and say that you don't have all these external threats going on, etc. Most of the things that you're doing and that are causing ill health, are coming from within. It's the way you're living. It's the way you're reacting to the headlines. It's the way you are conducting your eating habits and exercise, etc.
To give you an example, I think it was Nassim Taleb who said that if you talk to the average American, they're worried about terrorism and they're not worried about diabetes. And you look in America and you go how many people have been the victims of terrorism. It's some ridiculously minute number like 0.000001 percent or something that you'll have anything bad happen to you because of some terrorist act they claim. And yet half of the population is going to end up with diabetes, and it will really make them sick and potentially kill them. But as Taleb pointed out, he said they worry so much about terrorism, that they don't see the very things that are killing them.
You could argue too that with random acts of terrorism, whether they come from the ground up, or from the government, as they often do. You often can't do much about those things whereas with diabetes. Virtually everyone, it's a lifestyle and they can modify their lifestyle and they won't get diabetes. So yeah, I think that's really important as those solid principles. You don't always have to do something when it comes to fear invoking headline or narrative that's being presented to you. If you really just concentrate on what's happening at your level. Get yourself well first and then you can look further later on.
It's very similar with what Sam and I have done. We’ve spent a long time learning about how to be healthy and how to live and once you've sorted that out on your own front, then you can start going out into the world and maybe talking to people and trying to help others and stuff. But instead, we live in this situation where people who have no idea about health, including doctors in the system, but just about everyone who operates a social media account is putting forward their opinions. When they haven't even sorted out their own health and yeah, they don't seem to have any… No, I'm sure, Liev, you already, you've taken the crucial step, which is to say maybe the mainstream models are wrong and we should look into this and start investigating other reasons why people get sick, etc. and I think that's really important.
Liev
Yeah, that was great. That seems to be something that comes back over and over again. The fear is worse than whatever's happening. And you gave a good example that fear is not necessarily useless, when you're being chased by a bear or something. But there's a time and a place. You don't want it used against you. When your Facebook ads are scaring you and invoke a fear response, it's time to rethink things a little bit.
Dr Mark Bailey
Yeah, definitely and again, it comes back to those psychological and spiritual considerations of actually living life rather than living in this made-up realm of speculation about what might happen to you, etc. One of the reasons we became able to do this and not panic etc. once we worked out what was really going on, in 2020, we just said we have to be fearless basically. Because fear will definitely lead to bad outcomes. Because you're already living it, so it's happened basically. Whereas once you develop that fearlessness and say I will be taken care of as long as I walk this correct path that means everything.
And obviously you'll be well aware of this too. We've been very disappointed with a lot of the so-called health freedom leaders who take one fear model and then substitute it with their own fear model, and I don't think anyone's better off. Because if they say something like ‘oh no you don't need the vaccine but oh watch out there are bioweapons that are about to be released and stuff’ Again, it just it all comes back to the same pseudoscience that their citing. It's just their story is slightly different from the mainstream. So yeah, I think as you know that's why a lot of us who are in that, no virus camp, etc. really tell people that these fear narratives, they’re so destructive and you have to be careful of just being stuck in them continuously. People are thinking that there are going to be vaccines that spread around in the air and that there are going to be secret bioweapons that they release and stuff. And we just keep coming back to it and say look if they can't show it in their studies, that this is actually happening again. Then it's just one more fear narrative they’re putting at people.
Liev
Yeah, very well put. Couldn't agree more. This is perfect. The message that that I want to get across, and you're speaking it in perfect harmony there. So I appreciate that. I appreciate everything that you do. You’re a sound mind in all of this and it's great. I want you to now tell the listener how they can support you, I heard that you're just finishing up a book as well. So, maybe you can touch on that a little bit. And how they can support you and keep learning from you because honestly, you're one of the one of the best in my mind, of learning how to approach things, even just how to learn. So, please share.
Dr Mark Bailey
Yeah, no thanks Liev, I appreciate that. Yeah, so everything's available at drsambailey.com There's so much free stuff there, hundreds of videos, dozens of articles, PDF downloads. The vast majority of stuff is available for free. People have the option of joining the Dr. Sam community. That's just $5 a month, so either through the website directly or through substack. There's also the odyssey channel. And Sam still has a Youtube channel, although can't really post on it anymore. When she had less subscribers. She was able to post stuff. But once her channel got too big. They really started to censor it so we can virtually put nothing on her YouTube channel anymore. Occasional things go there. But yeah, you know how it works with the censorship, algorithms, etc.
So, we have a new book that hopefully will be released in the next couple of weeks. This book is called the final pandemic. And it blows apart the entire Covid-19 narrative. It also generalizes into all so-called infectious disease pandemics, and it explains how they're not a thing. That essentially it just comes back to testing and classification issues and how the public has absolutely nothing to worry about. It's a couple of hundred pages and the idea was to make it an easily accessible read because, one of Sam's other books that she co-authored, virus mania is that's quite a big book. You know it's way over 400 pages, etc. And so yeah, this is about half that size and it's really just punchy. Shows a lot of the recent events that took place in Covid-19, and just shows how silly they were. And explains just that this can't be the case.
And it's amazing, Liev, to look back at some of the stuff that they were doing in 2020, 2021 because now it's even more stupid looking than it was at the time. If people actually see it again, they'll be like ‘oh my goodness, how did I fall for this’. So people can keep an eye out for that. But as I say, drsambailey.com there's so much available there, we start to lose track of what's there as well. So, we've been fortunate that one of our viewers has put together a catalogue of all of our question-and-answer sessions that we do each month as well. Because we've covered hundreds and hundreds of questions from the public and we'll continue to do so.
Liev
Well, it's definitely much appreciated I know that, and it's very important. I'm looking forward to reading that book. I think you hit the perfect little niche in the literature that's out on terrain. I think a nice accessible book is perfect. I'm looking forward to it. I’ll definitely get that.
Dr Mark Bailey
Yeah, no, we'll keep in touch, and we'll make sure you get a copy because we've kept it entertaining as well. I mean it is serious material obviously, but people will see the comical side of things as well. And just say look you don't need to worry about this stuff. They're not making bioweapons and all this kind of stuff, but they do want to control you. That's definitely what they want.
Liev
That's great. Dr. Bailey thank you so much for coming on today.
Dr Bailey
Thank you.
Liev Dalton
