Episode 058 – Living with Covid, dealing with fear around Covid, philosophy of integrated medicine, living with other illnesses and more – with Dr Wendy Denning

Harms: Hello it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show and today on the show we are excited to be joined by a renowned guest. 

On the show we bring in select guests who are experts in their field and also connect with the deep dive nature of the Seekardo show. 

Now bringing it to the present moment where we want to focus today in particular, and learn from and gain insights from our guests’ expertise is by facing a tough subject head on which is the stark reality that Covid may not be going away. 

Which raises a big question: how we can learn to live with Covid.

Dr Ro: Hi everybody and again, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. 

I am extremely excited particularly as it’s taken probably six months to arrange this podcast to get our lovely guest in. She is a good friend of mine and I think you’re going to fall in love with her. 

First of all we have Dr Wendy Denning, who is basically in my mind the best doctor in the country. She’s a GP in Harley Street for those of you that know this is a very prestigious Street for a lot of specialists and practitioners, she’s been in this field for over 25 years and she co-presented a very successful Channel 5 ITV series called the diet doctors inside out that. She’s been named in Tatler’s top 200 doctors three years in a row and is featured regularly in the media over the last 10 years. Wendy is a strong advocate of functional and integrative medicine. 

She set up the health doctors clinic in 2007, bringing together practitioners from many different complimentary specialities. She was one of the first doctors to offer intravenous IV vitamin and mineral therapy in this country, the United Kingdom and to embrace bioidentical hormone therapy. She is well known for unravelling complex medical conditions and for coaching her patients to take better care of themselves. 

On a personal level I’ve known Wendy for a long time. 

What I love about this person, this beautiful woman is that she’s constantly learning, constantly growing. I was privileged to have her in the audience with me on several of my own personal development events to the point where I got to know her so well, and I realised just how influential she was. 

I managed to persuade Wendy to come back and speak at a few of our health events we used to run with her lovely husband as well, and that was amazing. She’s passionate, she’s extremely honest, she’s an amazing mum, unbelievably hard-working. I get messages from her sometimes really late when she is finished working with her clients and everyone I know has either met her or dealt with her, although yes in her head she’s incredibly smart and knowledgeable she just seems to flow from a place of the heart.

Wendy all I can say is it is a pleasure to have you here because you bring something different to the table. It’s not just your experience, but this real passion and authenticity about how you show up.

Wendy: Thank you, that’s such a nice introduction it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Dr Ro: I meant every word and I think you and I have been through a journey over the years. Most people don’t know your story. Could you take us back on a bit of the journey and how does somebody get to where you are? 

How does Wendy Denning become Wendy Denning the woman she is today doing all the amazing things you are with your patients, what’s the journey?

Wendy: It is a long journey back and it goes back to when I was about eight years old. 

At that time I was chatting to my father about going into medicine and I wanted to be a nurse and he said you’re never going to be a nurse. You want to use your brain and not that nurses don’t, but I was top of the class, so he was really trying to give me a sense of what I could really achieve with all of the things that I have and he said you’ll be a much better doctor than a nurse. 

I never looked back on that point really and I was put off because in those days it wasn’t a profession for women. 

I was advised to become a dentist or some other 9-to-5 job and every time I looked at another job I was like I don’t want to do this. I was very grateful to him, setting me on a trajectory of what I could achieve and standing behind me and just helping me get to that point. It really has been the greatest privilege of my life to be a doctor because people have shared their journeys, their fears, their celebrations, anxieties. 

They shared so much personal stuff with me and to be able to make a difference in people’s lives in that way is a privilege. I think that many people don’t have such a privileged position in some ways and I think, of course, what goes with it is responsibility. 

The responsibility of caring for people, taking their lives and their concerns seriously, trying to guide them to do the best for themselves and I think that has been the guiding light with all of this. But it does go back a very long way. I went into medicine with the integrated model in mind. I was brought up in those days there was no such thing as organic. If you wanted to get organic fruit and vegetables you got them from the local health store. 

We would have a salad every day. I was brought up with brown rice, limit sugar in the house and I was brought up with supplements. I went into medical school with that concept of the integrated model. My father worked in the London business School. He was much more on the business side of things and the practical side of things and he always said to me if you want to be taken seriously as an integrated practitioner you need to have very traditional traits. That was really, really helpful and it’s what I went ahead and did. 

I trained at university college hospital, I then got into the GP training scheme in Oxford. One of the things I had was I wanted to travel with medicine and in fact I left the country shortly thereafter and went off, that was for personal reasons. My marriage broke down and I was invited to come to Canada and I spent 10 years working and living in Canada and working in the health service there and loved it actually. 

That’s where I got my training in this country and some experience with a couple of years and then a lot more experience in Canada. What brought me back to this country was my father’s illness coming back. I didn’t feel it was right for me to be looking after the world and not my own father, so I came back to look after him. On the way back I went off and did volunteer work in India. 

I worked on a mobile hospital and those very life changing opportunities in many ways because I got an opportunity to see how lucky we are in this country with our health.

Dr Ro: Along this way all these different experiences were shaping up your belief systems, values were any big decisions being made internally? 

Or did that compound over time?

Wendy: There was an aha moment actually. 

The interesting thing in Canada was you got paid for the number of patients you saw and in this country you’re paid as a GP for the number of people you have on your books. I think the Canadian health services, absolutely phenomenal. But like all health services they aren’t perfect and one day I was going through the patients and people coming in. They want a drug you give them the drug they leave and I just looked at this and thought I can’t do this anymore. 

I really can’t do this anymore. This is not what I set myself up to be. I realised that I was really a front for the drug companies because they needed to turn people through in a very short space of time. I wasn’t really giving them a functional approach. 

I was thinking how can I give them something to go away with and get out of their symptoms. Invariably it was a drug and that’s the problem with very limited time and after that I really couldn’t go back to that practice of medicine in that way because I felt that I wasn’t really practising the level I wanted to practice at. I will give you a drug if you need a drug. If you’ve got a chest infection I will be the first to give you an antibiotic. 

In fact yesterday I was convincing a young girl with a bladder infection who rang me three times in one day trying to decide whether she wanted antibiotics, I was the one pushing the antibiotics. Not to say I won’t give a drug, it’s just so often there are other things to do and you need time to explain those and to educate people, to assist them in being able to do some of those things.

Dr Ro: You came back from India then what happened next?

Wendy: I came back I was lucky enough to be invited to work with Dr Arley, I was invited to work with him and he set up the first integrated medical centre in this country and it’s quite a funny story because I went to meet him and he offered me a job a year later, I said I have no intention of coming back to this country and that’s very kind of you. 

But a year later I was back in. 

What was great about him was he attracted a great following of really top practitioners, who were their game and that was osteopaths, acupuncturists, healers and reiki masters and physios and you name it he had someone in that category, ayurvedic practitioners. He set up this centre and it was so exciting and as time went on, things changed and I stayed with him for seven, eight years and then I set up my own centre. I hand picked the practitioners and I then went to set up my own clinic.

When I was first seeing patients I did a lot of training.

I still do a lot of training. I mean, I’m constantly going to conferences and we have to do 50 hours of continuing professional education every year and I’m always doing at least three times that amount because I enjoy it. In fact if anything I’ve had to limit myself and I am the mother of three children and it’s not fair on them to be rushing off. 

For instance a lot of my patients were going off to a Chinese practitioner and I said to my husband I’m off to do a Chinese course this weekend and he said that’s great I’ll come with you and we both stayed for two years and finished our training in chinese acupuncture.

Harms: There was a point in your story where you spoke about and I’m going to use my language the conventional medical world, you said you just couldn’t practice this way anymore. How did that form and how did you make the decision to pivot away? 

Bearing in mind in the context of security you had the income, job as you were climbing the professional ladder in that sense, then you made a decision to step away from that. That couldn’t have been easy. 

What was the process there? 

What was that big tug of war occuring?

Wendy: I think the tug of war was I always wanted to do integrated medicine and I was the first woman president of the clinical society at my medical school and I also was running a group that brought in all sorts of practitioners. 

All the people I’ve talked about were coming in to speak to the medical students and that was the first two years. I was really returning to that, returning to you know where I wanted to practice. There’s never an optimal time; it’s a bit like having a baby. There’s never a really optimal time to make a change. I think that was always on the cards and it was just one of those aha moments where I just thought no I can’t do this, I need to be working doing what I want to do and what I came to do. 

I observed that when I came back to work as a GP as when I came back the first year back I can remember it because I only earned £11,000 in the first year. So that was quite a drop in salary and during that time I worked as a locum GP here and there and I second guessed myself did I really want to go back and be a GP? 

I think I felt I would burn out quickly as a GP and I certainly observed that in some of my fellow GPs. The case that people had to work and sometimes the lack of appreciation of the patients of taking an alternative route actually.

Harms: It feels like a disconnect between the patient and the GP.

Wendy: Yeah and I thought I was not brought into this world and I need to do what I was meant to do which is to get out there, educate and help people to be the best version of themselves health wise.

Dr Ro: It is a great message from you, Wendy. I think that’s why Harms asked the question if you had the courage to follow those values, not compromise those values for money, et cetera, which is a great message. 

How did the TV show come about the diet doctors?

Wendy: As many of these opportunities are in life. I think it’s very interesting. I put out to the world I was ready to take a bigger role and I didn’t deliver leaflets to people, I just put an intention into the world that I was ready to take this up to the next level and within a year out of the blue somebody came to me and said were interviewing 12 people for the show and would you like to be one of them? 

I said yeah, I think the show worked because I had chemistry with Vicky. He was the nutritionist on the show. We’d never met before but typically we were the ladies when we first met and we were doing our makeup and we had a great chat and a laugh and this was the first meeting we had and we knew we would get on and it was simply great fun working with her.

Dr Ro: Thinking even back when it started that message you’re getting out is now one today that people are still only discovering now. So it just shows you we’ve got to continually educate people through different media.

Wendy: We had a medical reunion and people came up to me and said you haven’t changed in your beliefs and I was like yes! The interesting thing actually doing that TV show on camera in front of 30 million people was a jump and I realised I was actually not at all concerned what patients were thinking as I knew that I was offering something to them they weren’t necessarily getting anywhere else, I was quite concerned about how other colleagues in the profession would see my concerns.

Harms: That sort of links back to the values that Ro spoke about and brings me onto my next question which is all of these in life and professional experiences that you’ve gone through.

Is that what formed your philosophy when it comes to medicine comes to health and this may be a good time to define the listeners who may not be aware, what is integrated medicine, integrated healthcare and what is your philosophy at present and going forward with the kind patients you connect with?

Wendy: Integrative medicine is the concept of body functioning in dynamic equilibrium. It works together; you cannot separate the heart from the gut. 

When you are looking at a patient’s body you have to look how do they communicate with each other and the medical model is set up to divide the body up and the only people look more holistically are GPs and that’s one of the reasons I went into GP because the GPs are looking at it holistically. 

But the training unfortunately in conventional medicine doesn’t tend to link the parts of the body very well. I don’t think it’s as good as linking how if you have got diarrhoea why do you get heart palpitations? 

You’re always looking at the mind body connection and I think that is well represented in the medical profession but I think the actual how the body functions together, what impact drugs have on the body, what impact supplements have on the body, nutrition and lifestyle all these things are coming into your body and the body has to process them out so it’s looking at how they interact inside your body.

In the space when it is relevant, very relevant today it’s also the space of what thoughts you have and how that impacts you. It’s that integrated model looking at mind, body, spirit also on a physical level how does the whole-body work together.

Harms: Has the reaction to that description changed in two areas, one the clients that you’re seeing in terms of their openness to it but also the profession as a whole? Because if you made that statement 25 years ago you might have had a different reaction.

Wendy: It’s still an issue for some areas of the profession. To give you an example in my own family right now my daughter has a weight issue but she’s also got an issue with her heels so I take her to see the endocrinologist saying she can’t exercise at the moment and they said, that’s not my concern. I said she’s going to have a weight issue if she can’t exercise, it is your concern actually. No, that belongs to another department. Part of that is training and compartmentalising of a service.

Harms: That’s the system they’ve been educated in. You mention the kind of way professionals are educated. It is in that kind of way: let’s split the body up into different sections and you just learn about that one element, which would then mean they don’t know how it connects. Even in that example it seems obvious to us with a narrow focus it’s probably not obvious to practitioners as an example.

Dr Ro: What I find fascinating is it transcends across different areas. I was at a dentist maybe four months ago and I was having a conversation about different toothpastes alternatives to mainstream toothpaste and the dentist was like, no you need to be brushing with this. 

I said what about this, this and this and I don’t know if it was whether she was resistant to me suggesting something or she couldn’t be bothered to go look into it, but it was really interesting just like a brick wall. It was almost pooh-poohing of anything that wasn’t produced through a manufactured process. It is frustrating I didn’t get into a big one with her but I do see it across different fields as well.

Unfortunately, it is there.

Can we talk about living with Covid today and we are recording this now. It has been about a year since I experienced the full capacity of what it’s doing, talk to us from your perspective? Harms opened really well and we’ve got to accept it is now with us.

Wendy: I think the concept of Covid is that no one thought it would go on this long. When we first went into lockdown the concept was it will all be over but the thing is, if you read back through history books, which I think are really interesting my father loved history and you read back over the Spanish flu, the biggest wave in the Spanish flu was the second wave.

In a way that’s reassuring because we are past the second wave and we are now going on to our third wave and we will have a third wave in my opinion. 

The question is what will it look like? 

One of the things we’ve done is a massive social experiment. It may be the best thing or the worst thing we’ve done, we just don’t know if it’s the vaccine programme. It looks like it will be such a good thing for opening up communities and getting people back to life. I don’t think I can go back to normal life because I think life has fundamentally changed as a result of that. I put it in the category of 9/11. 

There are some things that fundamentally changed at 9/11 and some things will fundamentally change due to Covid. 

Least being how often people go to the office, that is probably the biggest change but there are going to be many. In the medical profession we were before Covid people asking me because they could have follow-up appointments online, by telephone and our insurers were not very happy with us doing that many online or telephone calls because they felt it wasn’t a proper consultation as they thought we should see the patient. 

Well they had to throw that one right out. That’s a good thing in a way so long as you don’t lose the skills of examining patients or looking at patients and being with patients and there’s a lot of non-verbal information you get from patients, which is last on phone call and may or may not be got on a video call. But certainly if you’re just discussing blood test results or going over results in general you don’t actually have to be in the same room. 

That’s what I mean about things that have fundamentally changed. I don’t think we will go back to what we were before. Throughout Covid I’ve been seeing patients beginning in June 2021 back in the office seeing patients and doing video calls as well to follow up. I think we are going to have to change how we look at life. 

One of the things that people really enjoyed in the first lot was not running around, and in the same way not like headless chickens. I think many people enjoy the quietness that comes into their lives. I think people are still trying to refine that but the quietness became too quiet and led to people being socially isolated and led to increased mental health. Which I think we are going to have to address.

Coming back to the point I think the point is you have to get out of the world now, we have to get out to see people live our lives and we are going to have to acknowledge that there is still this Covid aspect like flu may still be there. For me as a doctor and the medicine I practice is absolutely about looking after your health. 

If I had a message out there, we have to take responsibility for our health, mental health, emotional and physical health. How best to do that is to really be looking after ourselves and that includes getting enough sleep watching how much we drink and how much exercise we’re getting, how much time we have for ourselves, time for our family so that we are really living. If we expect to have optimal health and we are out there, staying up late drinking a lot of alcohol, eating pizza every night we are not going to be putting our bodies in the best state to fight this virus.

Also if we were to get the virus we are not in a good state to get over it and I think those are things we need to really start embracing. 

I think we cannot expect the vaccine to do the work that we need to do for ourselves.

Dr Ro: I wrote down a word which you said, responsibility and I think what’s happened to all of us as a collective is by default, by force, by lack of power the responsibility it looks like it just got taken away from us by the fact that we were told we have to do this, this and this. 

It’s just the fact that we were instructed and the instruction if you didn’t adhere to it came with fines, so the responsibility has been taken away and now medically the responsibility has been taken away because there’s a vaccination. 

How do we now after spending a year and a half or how do you explain to patients that you may have given away your responsibility for a while, but how do you empower them to take that responsibility back knowing the way information comes at us is the vaccine will solve it. 

Whatever we say as an authority or as a government or the system that will solve it, how do we transition back and take back our responsibility?

Wendy: I think we take that back by reminding people that the vaccine was never intended to stop people getting Covid, it’s great if it does but actually the real thing is that the vaccine was put out there to protect vulnerable people. We are going to see people getting Covid who have the vaccine and who haven’t.

There are people out there who can’t vaccinate for all sorts of reasons or they don’t want to have the vaccine and there’s those that are lining up at the door but will still be vulnerable. I can say that because I’ve been testing people to see what their response to the vaccine has been and it varies. We really have to come back and say what is it that actually protects us from any virus, or any illness and that is our health. 

Our immune system and how we do life is what protects us, so we just have to start engaging with that and I know that that is easier said than done for people who’ve got limited financial resources, health conditions, stresses on their lives that make taking their own health seriously more difficult. 

But in the end we do have to re-engage.

Dr Ro: We all have to accept this is the underlying message. It’s here. We have to live with it. There is a big element of responsibility, but I think the bridge from the experience of living with Covid to okay I’ll take back responsibility. 

How can I handle and look after my health and illness? The bridge across that is dealing with fear in between that. Can we talk into that space? 

Harms and I were out the other day. We were walking along the street and literally somebody. It was an elderly lady. She stopped in horror and we stopped and she walked around us and to cross the street and it showed me even now people are still extremely fearful because they just don’t know. This lack of knowing is creating even more fear. Can we talk about that fear and the fear around Covid and what you have seen?

Wendy: I had a patient in my office this week that has been doubly vaccinated and is fearful and at the moment because of everything I social distance in my office and when I’m talking to patients because it’s hard to talk with the mask on we keep six feet apart and when I’m coming up to examine the patient I put my mask back on again. 

She didn’t want to take her mask off because she was fearful even with that social distance and it reminded me of where the mindset is of people. It’s on TV and radio conversations they’ve seen so much about you’re going to get Covid and you’re going to be in hospital and you could die. I will speak on a personal level here. 

I had Covid in November and one of the things we need to understand is viral load matters and I got it from my husband who was travelling and he wasn’t very unwell because he got it in passing from travelling. 

Whereas in our house he had a cold and he didn’t really have many other symptoms, so we were certain it wasn’t Covid until I came down unwell, but I was tired when I came down. I take full responsibility, I was sleep deprived and tired. I was quite unwell and when it came to day 10 all of these thoughts came into my head because we’d been listening to the media and my biggest fear was that I was going to end up in hospital like Boris. I’ve never been fearful, I’ve always assumed that I would get better with whatever it was, and I don’t get ill very often so it was a shock to the system. 

But truthfully what kicked in was the fear and I had it again with a patient this weekend. He was so afraid and another patient ended up with a psychiatrist with Covid, so where is that fear coming from as I’m not a fearful person and it’s coming from that constant message which is, you’ve got to be worried. 

You’ll end up like people in the ICU. What are the statistics of ending up in the ICU or going to hospital? Particularly now with the vaccine what are the statistics? It is minuscule. 

Yes we might be ill for a longer period of time than we thought and that’s a shock for many people I think because we’re used to being sick and then taking something and getting back with our lives. We just crack on and the number of people I see where they get something and I’m like what are you doing for yourself? 

You need to be resting. Your body’s calling for rest. 

We can’t be taking medications to make us feel better, and then not doing the things the body is calling for us to do to get us better.

Dr Ro: It’s interesting to hear what you’re saying about fear because as time I’ve known you we’ve both had two beautiful daughters born naturally no drugs, hypnobirthing.

When my first was born Savannah, my lovely partner Stina would wear this badge. I don’t want to hear your birthing stories. When we were trying to find the appropriate place for the birth as it was the first baby we wanted to have it at home but the suggestion was we didn’t so we were looking for a birthing centre we had to go to one I think it was Hereford from memory. 

They took us into the main birthing area and it was actually more conventional and as we walked in we were with about eight other parents and the nurse said this is where the drugs will be put into you because potentially you’re going to be in a have amount of pain so you’re going to want to be drugged up. 

As soon as we heard that we looked at each other we just turned and walked out and said we’re not ever coming into this space because you could see the other women’s faces and our experience, certainly Stina’s of the birth was completely opposite to that. she just didn’t want to hear other people’s experiences because she knew that would unconsciously start to trigger fear in her, which is what you’re describing here. 

Except that was one conversation that wasn’t mass media in our faces every day, every week, even in the public. 

You were shouted at when Covid first you were walking on the street with your baby. 

Harms: I was loading the baby into the car and it was a middle-aged couple that had a go at us and I was taken back myself, but I think we are human beings and when the message is as constant and consistent, we can’t help but be fearful. It takes an extremely strong mindset which not everybody has to feel to make sure you protect yourself from that. 

Harms: Hello it’s Harms here and welcome to another episode of the Seekardo show and today on the show we are excited to be joined by a renowned guest. 

On the show we bring in select guests who are experts in their field and also connect with the deep dive nature of the Seekardo show. 

Now bringing it to the present moment where we want to focus today in particular, and learn from and gain insights from our guests’ expertise is by facing a tough subject head on which is the stark reality that Covid may not be going away. 

Which raises a big question: how we can learn to live with Covid.

Dr Ro: Hi everybody and again, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. 

I am extremely excited particularly as it’s taken probably six months to arrange this podcast to get our lovely guest in. She is a good friend of mine and I think you’re going to fall in love with her. 

First of all we have Dr Wendy Denning, who is basically in my mind the best doctor in the country. She’s a GP in Harley Street for those of you that know this is a very prestigious Street for a lot of specialists and practitioners, she’s been in this field for over 25 years and she co-presented a very successful Channel 5 ITV series called the diet doctors inside out that. She’s been named in Tatler’s top 200 doctors three years in a row and is featured regularly in the media over the last 10 years. Wendy is a strong advocate of functional and integrative medicine. 

She set up the health doctors clinic in 2007, bringing together practitioners from many different complimentary specialities. She was one of the first doctors to offer intravenous IV vitamin and mineral therapy in this country, the United Kingdom and to embrace bioidentical hormone therapy. She is well known for unravelling complex medical conditions and for coaching her patients to take better care of themselves. 

On a personal level I’ve known Wendy for a long time. 

What I love about this person, this beautiful woman is that she’s constantly learning, constantly growing. I was privileged to have her in the audience with me on several of my own personal development events to the point where I got to know her so well, and I realised just how influential she was. 

I managed to persuade Wendy to come back and speak at a few of our health events we used to run with her lovely husband as well, and that was amazing. She’s passionate, she’s extremely honest, she’s an amazing mum, unbelievably hard-working. I get messages from her sometimes really late when she is finished working with her clients and everyone I know has either met her or dealt with her, although yes in her head she’s incredibly smart and knowledgeable she just seems to flow from a place of the heart.

Wendy all I can say is it is a pleasure to have you here because you bring something different to the table. It’s not just your experience, but this real passion and authenticity about how you show up.

Wendy: Thank you, that’s such a nice introduction it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Dr Ro: I meant every word and I think you and I have been through a journey over the years. Most people don’t know your story. Could you take us back on a bit of the journey and how does somebody get to where you are? 

How does Wendy Denning become Wendy Denning the woman she is today doing all the amazing things you are with your patients, what’s the journey?

Wendy: It is a long journey back and it goes back to when I was about eight years old. 

At that time I was chatting to my father about going into medicine and I wanted to be a nurse and he said you’re never going to be a nurse. You want to use your brain and not that nurses don’t, but I was top of the class, so he was really trying to give me a sense of what I could really achieve with all of the things that I have and he said you’ll be a much better doctor than a nurse. 

I never looked back on that point really and I was put off because in those days it wasn’t a profession for women. 

I was advised to become a dentist or some other 9-to-5 job and every time I looked at another job I was like I don’t want to do this. I was very grateful to him, setting me on a trajectory of what I could achieve and standing behind me and just helping me get to that point. It really has been the greatest privilege of my life to be a doctor because people have shared their journeys, their fears, their celebrations, anxieties. 

They shared so much personal stuff with me and to be able to make a difference in people’s lives in that way is a privilege. I think that many people don’t have such a privileged position in some ways and I think, of course, what goes with it is responsibility. 

The responsibility of caring for people, taking their lives and their concerns seriously, trying to guide them to do the best for themselves and I think that has been the guiding light with all of this. But it does go back a very long way. I went into medicine with the integrated model in mind. I was brought up in those days there was no such thing as organic. If you wanted to get organic fruit and vegetables you got them from the local health store. 

We would have a salad every day. I was brought up with brown rice, limit sugar in the house and I was brought up with supplements. I went into medical school with that concept of the integrated model. My father worked in the London business School. He was much more on the business side of things and the practical side of things and he always said to me if you want to be taken seriously as an integrated practitioner you need to have very traditional traits. That was really, really helpful and it’s what I went ahead and did. 

I trained at university college hospital, I then got into the GP training scheme in Oxford. One of the things I had was I wanted to travel with medicine and in fact I left the country shortly thereafter and went off, that was for personal reasons. My marriage broke down and I was invited to come to Canada and I spent 10 years working and living in Canada and working in the health service there and loved it actually. 

That’s where I got my training in this country and some experience with a couple of years and then a lot more experience in Canada. What brought me back to this country was my father’s illness coming back. I didn’t feel it was right for me to be looking after the world and not my own father, so I came back to look after him. On the way back I went off and did volunteer work in India. 

I worked on a mobile hospital and those very life changing opportunities in many ways because I got an opportunity to see how lucky we are in this country with our health.

Dr Ro: Along this way all these different experiences were shaping up your belief systems, values were any big decisions being made internally? 

Or did that compound over time?

Wendy: There was an aha moment actually. 

The interesting thing in Canada was you got paid for the number of patients you saw and in this country you’re paid as a GP for the number of people you have on your books. I think the Canadian health services, absolutely phenomenal. But like all health services they aren’t perfect and one day I was going through the patients and people coming in. They want a drug you give them the drug they leave and I just looked at this and thought I can’t do this anymore. 

I really can’t do this anymore. This is not what I set myself up to be. I realised that I was really a front for the drug companies because they needed to turn people through in a very short space of time. I wasn’t really giving them a functional approach. 

I was thinking how can I give them something to go away with and get out of their symptoms. Invariably it was a drug and that’s the problem with very limited time and after that I really couldn’t go back to that practice of medicine in that way because I felt that I wasn’t really practising the level I wanted to practice at. I will give you a drug if you need a drug. If you’ve got a chest infection I will be the first to give you an antibiotic. 

In fact yesterday I was convincing a young girl with a bladder infection who rang me three times in one day trying to decide whether she wanted antibiotics, I was the one pushing the antibiotics. Not to say I won’t give a drug, it’s just so often there are other things to do and you need time to explain those and to educate people, to assist them in being able to do some of those things.

Dr Ro: You came back from India then what happened next?

Wendy: I came back I was lucky enough to be invited to work with Dr Arley, I was invited to work with him and he set up the first integrated medical centre in this country and it’s quite a funny story because I went to meet him and he offered me a job a year later, I said I have no intention of coming back to this country and that’s very kind of you. 

But a year later I was back in. 

What was great about him was he attracted a great following of really top practitioners, who were their game and that was osteopaths, acupuncturists, healers and reiki masters and physios and you name it he had someone in that category, ayurvedic practitioners. He set up this centre and it was so exciting and as time went on, things changed and I stayed with him for seven, eight years and then I set up my own centre. I hand picked the practitioners and I then went to set up my own clinic.

When I was first seeing patients I did a lot of training.

I still do a lot of training. I mean, I’m constantly going to conferences and we have to do 50 hours of continuing professional education every year and I’m always doing at least three times that amount because I enjoy it. In fact if anything I’ve had to limit myself and I am the mother of three children and it’s not fair on them to be rushing off. 

For instance a lot of my patients were going off to a Chinese practitioner and I said to my husband I’m off to do a Chinese course this weekend and he said that’s great I’ll come with you and we both stayed for two years and finished our training in chinese acupuncture.

Harms: There was a point in your story where you spoke about and I’m going to use my language the conventional medical world, you said you just couldn’t practice this way anymore. How did that form and how did you make the decision to pivot away? 

Bearing in mind in the context of security you had the income, job as you were climbing the professional ladder in that sense, then you made a decision to step away from that. That couldn’t have been easy. 

What was the process there? 

What was that big tug of war occuring?

Wendy: I think the tug of war was I always wanted to do integrated medicine and I was the first woman president of the clinical society at my medical school and I also was running a group that brought in all sorts of practitioners. 

All the people I’ve talked about were coming in to speak to the medical students and that was the first two years. I was really returning to that, returning to you know where I wanted to practice. There’s never an optimal time; it’s a bit like having a baby. There’s never a really optimal time to make a change. I think that was always on the cards and it was just one of those aha moments where I just thought no I can’t do this, I need to be working doing what I want to do and what I came to do. 

I observed that when I came back to work as a GP as when I came back the first year back I can remember it because I only earned £11,000 in the first year. So that was quite a drop in salary and during that time I worked as a locum GP here and there and I second guessed myself did I really want to go back and be a GP? 

I think I felt I would burn out quickly as a GP and I certainly observed that in some of my fellow GPs. The case that people had to work and sometimes the lack of appreciation of the patients of taking an alternative route actually.

Harms: It feels like a disconnect between the patient and the GP.

Wendy: Yeah and I thought I was not brought into this world and I need to do what I was meant to do which is to get out there, educate and help people to be the best version of themselves health wise.

Dr Ro: It is a great message from you, Wendy. I think that’s why Harms asked the question if you had the courage to follow those values, not compromise those values for money, et cetera, which is a great message. 

How did the TV show come about the diet doctors?

Wendy: As many of these opportunities are in life. I think it’s very interesting. I put out to the world I was ready to take a bigger role and I didn’t deliver leaflets to people, I just put an intention into the world that I was ready to take this up to the next level and within a year out of the blue somebody came to me and said were interviewing 12 people for the show and would you like to be one of them? 

I said yeah, I think the show worked because I had chemistry with Vicky. He was the nutritionist on the show. We’d never met before but typically we were the ladies when we first met and we were doing our makeup and we had a great chat and a laugh and this was the first meeting we had and we knew we would get on and it was simply great fun working with her.

Dr Ro: Thinking even back when it started that message you’re getting out is now one today that people are still only discovering now. So it just shows you we’ve got to continually educate people through different media.

Wendy: We had a medical reunion and people came up to me and said you haven’t changed in your beliefs and I was like yes! The interesting thing actually doing that TV show on camera in front of 30 million people was a jump and I realised I was actually not at all concerned what patients were thinking as I knew that I was offering something to them they weren’t necessarily getting anywhere else, I was quite concerned about how other colleagues in the profession would see my concerns.

Harms: That sort of links back to the values that Ro spoke about and brings me onto my next question which is all of these in life and professional experiences that you’ve gone through.

Is that what formed your philosophy when it comes to medicine comes to health and this may be a good time to define the listeners who may not be aware, what is integrated medicine, integrated healthcare and what is your philosophy at present and going forward with the kind patients you connect with?

Wendy: Integrative medicine is the concept of body functioning in dynamic equilibrium. It works together; you cannot separate the heart from the gut. 

When you are looking at a patient’s body you have to look how do they communicate with each other and the medical model is set up to divide the body up and the only people look more holistically are GPs and that’s one of the reasons I went into GP because the GPs are looking at it holistically. 

But the training unfortunately in conventional medicine doesn’t tend to link the parts of the body very well. I don’t think it’s as good as linking how if you have got diarrhoea why do you get heart palpitations? 

You’re always looking at the mind body connection and I think that is well represented in the medical profession but I think the actual how the body functions together, what impact drugs have on the body, what impact supplements have on the body, nutrition and lifestyle all these things are coming into your body and the body has to process them out so it’s looking at how they interact inside your body.

In the space when it is relevant, very relevant today it’s also the space of what thoughts you have and how that impacts you. It’s that integrated model looking at mind, body, spirit also on a physical level how does the whole-body work together.

Harms: Has the reaction to that description changed in two areas, one the clients that you’re seeing in terms of their openness to it but also the profession as a whole? Because if you made that statement 25 years ago you might have had a different reaction.

Wendy: It’s still an issue for some areas of the profession. To give you an example in my own family right now my daughter has a weight issue but she’s also got an issue with her heels so I take her to see the endocrinologist saying she can’t exercise at the moment and they said, that’s not my concern. I said she’s going to have a weight issue if she can’t exercise, it is your concern actually. No, that belongs to another department. Part of that is training and compartmentalising of a service.

Harms: That’s the system they’ve been educated in. You mention the kind of way professionals are educated. It is in that kind of way: let’s split the body up into different sections and you just learn about that one element, which would then mean they don’t know how it connects. Even in that example it seems obvious to us with a narrow focus it’s probably not obvious to practitioners as an example.

Dr Ro: What I find fascinating is it transcends across different areas. I was at a dentist maybe four months ago and I was having a conversation about different toothpastes alternatives to mainstream toothpaste and the dentist was like, no you need to be brushing with this. 

I said what about this, this and this and I don’t know if it was whether she was resistant to me suggesting something or she couldn’t be bothered to go look into it, but it was really interesting just like a brick wall. It was almost pooh-poohing of anything that wasn’t produced through a manufactured process. It is frustrating I didn’t get into a big one with her but I do see it across different fields as well.

Unfortunately, it is there.

Can we talk about living with Covid today and we are recording this now. It has been about a year since I experienced the full capacity of what it’s doing, talk to us from your perspective? Harms opened really well and we’ve got to accept it is now with us.

Harms: I’ve got a question back to you Wendy you which is in the patients you’re seeing, especially in the younger generation what are you observing in terms of fear around Covid? 

What is young people’s attitude towards Covid and even health in general, have you seen trends or suddenly a shift for example, have the younger generation always been blasé about health and then all of a sudden now they’re in a panic mode. 

What have you observed in the younger generation? 

Is there a genuine difference between the attitude of the young to the more older generation who may instantly feel like because I’m older my immune system is weak, basically whatever the media is telling us that’s what they feel their path will be.

Wendy: In some ways I direct that question back to you and the people you mix with but what I will say is firstly there’s a group in the under 40s there’s been a shift in people taking care of themselves. 

I’ve got stepsons that are in that age and I think it’s wonderful they come and actually lecture to my husband and I about how to eat. I find it fantastic because when I came into their lives they were teenagers and now I feel it’s turned full circle. They’re very much engaging with good health practices. 

Now whether that’s widespread or not is hard for me to really judge.

Dr Ro: I’m sure that’s passed down from just the way you live as well.

Wendy: It’s wonderful that we’ve gone full circle. It gives me a lot of faith in my own children. Hopefully all the resistance one encounters in the teenage years will dissipate.

Dr Ro: Harms, you’re in a different generation, what are you seeing at the moment?

Harms: I think my gut feeling aligns with what Wendy is saying. 

What I’ve seen in my social circles is people of my generation are a lot more health aware. I say that because of some fantastic role models that exist in the world, especially in the sports field. It’s like you want to be an athlete like Cristiano Ronaldo, he publicly moved the soda company’s bottle so he has been interviewed after the game he moved the soda bottle out of the frame which he got into trouble with and moved the water bottle in front of him and said aqua.

This is somebody who is at the top of his game, iconic, people of our generation think he is the best of the best and if that is the message what it leaves us with is we want to be like that. 

I think that kind of messaging because of the advantages and the pros of social media, the fact that we can get information so readily available, is when something magical like that happens, it does now spread that message.

I will say that there is a smaller sub- segment who again, it’s inevitable who give into the marketing message of the junk food, takeaway style living the fast food the instant gratification. I think that’s less than maybe a different generation. 

I think people are now aware of their health and if anything I don’t know if this is true, but I hope this is that the generation are seeing and living through Covid so hopefully their mindset is I need to be protected for when something like this happens again. Because we had mers, SARS now Covid some things going to happen again. 

I hope the message will carry on. 

Let’s protect our bodies so when something like this happens again we’re not giving away our responsibility. 

That’s my observation and it’s interesting that it’s in alignment with what Wendy is seeing more of in terms of family life as well.

Dr Ro: Wrapping up on fear is there an underlying message here, if I was your client and I said I was watching the news and heard this. If coming with that type of fear what would you be saying to me sensibly, what would be a simple message to help me shift that focus? 

Knowing I trust you, what would be a Wendy Denning message to me?

Wendy: I would say constantly listening to the news is probably going to be something you should avoid if you’re really engaging with fear, because the problem is it’s a very negative message that is coming to us. 

We don’t hear about success stories, we hear about this one is rising, this many people are going into hospital we’ve got daily statistics. What we don’t hear about is all the people who sailed through different ages and it’s wonderful to hear about those things we just don’t hear enough about. 

I think we don’t hear enough about it because there is that social control going on, which is if we keep people in a fear based mindset, then we can push them towards what we want to do as a society. I don’t believe in people being engaged at that level, I think we need to be engaged at the level of this is what we need to as a society to protect ourselves rather than all the fear stuff.

Dr Ro: It goes back to what you talked about earlier about the mind, body, connection and yes it’s recognised in the medical profession. 

Those of us in the field of human development, human evolution and getting people to go through growth there is a direct relationship there, but when it’s constantly coming at us it’s almost like an adrenal burnout to some extent on a macro level, because it is constant.

Wendy: That is why you have to step out of it and maybe listen to the news once a week or once a day. I think daily is too much actually.

Dr Ro: We have a local health shop and I was really surprised they got a security guard in to make sure people were coming in with a mask on. That’s pretty scary when you get to that point and it does start to make you feel like we’re under martial law.

Wendy: I think there are a lot more things we can do. I think we engage more with fear. 

I talked about sleep deprivation when I got Covid and I take full responsibility for that, so getting enough sleep. Studies show that people who are sleep deprived are more vulnerable to Covid. 

We know that exercise boosts our immune system so get out and exercise. The other thing about exercise if you’re that being out in nature always makes you feel less anxious. There’s a grounding that goes on and you see that life goes on, the plants come up and they go down. 

There is a cycle of life, so I think that’s very important. I think limiting alcohol and I really want to stress this because alcohol has been massively on the increase in this country as a result of lockdown. I find that fascinating. 

Alcohol consumption has gone down in France and it down and in a few other countries. France is a good example of this because what that tells you is that the French are drinking in a different way and I know that the Dutch do, my husband is Dutch. If we’re out he might have two or three glasses because he likes the taste of wine but he doesn’t go. I’m just going to numb my feelings with alcohol. It’s not that we can’t enjoy alcohol but what are we using it for? Are we using it to numb our feelings and if so, we need to watch that because alcohol will lower your immune system, deplete vital minerals and the things needed for our immune system. 

One of the things we know is that patients in the ICU are low in Zinc and vitamin D. 

Everyone needs vitamin D. We don’t get enough sunshine in this country, particularly if you’ve got any colour of skin you’ve got even more of a problem in this country.

Dr Ro: That’s absolutely true. 

I think a lot of people with dark skin don’t realise that and we’ve upped our doses in the last year. Just adding to that as well what’s your thoughts on digital media and screen time, does that fall into your view in terms of looking after ourselves mentally?

Wendy: Absolutely because it stops us exercising. I think people have been much more on their screens since lockdown and in fact that’s been a real problem. You are vulnerable to all messages coming in but you also don’t sleep as well. 

Evidence suggests if you’re on the screen late at night before you go to sleep that impacts your sleep your mind is turning over with all this information. 

It’s information overload and not just talking about Covid information just talking generally and then your body has to process that overnight. 

That’s when your mind does a filing system and puts it all in categories and places so that you start the next day relatively fresh.

Harms: The problem is people have a lot of junk information coming in, so how many filing cabinets do you have to sort the junk?

Harms: I’ve got a question back to you Wendy you which is in the patients you’re seeing, especially in the younger generation what are you observing in terms of fear around Covid? 

What is young people’s attitude towards Covid and even health in general, have you seen trends or suddenly a shift for example, have the younger generation always been blasé about health and then all of a sudden now they’re in a panic mode. 

What have you observed in the younger generation? 

Is there a genuine difference between the attitude of the young to the more older generation who may instantly feel like because I’m older my immune system is weak, basically whatever the media is telling us that’s what they feel their path will be.

Wendy: In some ways I direct that question back to you and the people you mix with but what I will say is firstly there’s a group in the under 40s there’s been a shift in people taking care of themselves. 

I’ve got stepsons that are in that age and I think it’s wonderful they come and actually lecture to my husband and I about how to eat. I find it fantastic because when I came into their lives they were teenagers and now I feel it’s turned full circle. They’re very much engaging with good health practices. 

Now whether that’s widespread or not is hard for me to really judge.

Dr Ro: I’m sure that’s passed down from just the way you live as well.

Wendy: It’s wonderful that we’ve gone full circle. It gives me a lot of faith in my own children. Hopefully all the resistance one encounters in the teenage years will dissipate.

Dr Ro: Harms, you’re in a different generation, what are you seeing at the moment?

Harms: I think my gut feeling aligns with what Wendy is saying. 

What I’ve seen in my social circles is people of my generation are a lot more health aware. I say that because of some fantastic role models that exist in the world, especially in the sports field. It’s like you want to be an athlete like Cristiano Ronaldo, he publicly moved the soda company’s bottle so he has been interviewed after the game he moved the soda bottle out of the frame which he got into trouble with and moved the water bottle in front of him and said aqua.

This is somebody who is at the top of his game, iconic, people of our generation think he is the best of the best and if that is the message what it leaves us with is we want to be like that. 

I think that kind of messaging because of the advantages and the pros of social media, the fact that we can get information so readily available, is when something magical like that happens, it does now spread that message.

I will say that there is a smaller sub- segment who again, it’s inevitable who give into the marketing message of the junk food, takeaway style living the fast food the instant gratification. I think that’s less than maybe a different generation. 

I think people are now aware of their health and if anything I don’t know if this is true, but I hope this is that the generation are seeing and living through Covid so hopefully their mindset is I need to be protected for when something like this happens again. Because we had mers, SARS now Covid some things going to happen again. 

I hope the message will carry on. 

Let’s protect our bodies so when something like this happens again we’re not giving away our responsibility. 

That’s my observation and it’s interesting that it’s in alignment with what Wendy is seeing more of in terms of family life as well.

Dr Ro: Can we talk about living with illness? 

I remember when my stepfather, who is now 87 years old, got bronchitis and he was really ill and was probably out for seven, eight, nine days or so. Very frail, but the sort of reaction my mum had this my dad had because it wasn’t new to us and he just laid in bed and rested. So when I hear Covid today I just wonder how we will be talking about it in 10 years, because it’s new, but there’s so much illness around it. 

Can we talk about living with illness in general and people’s relationship with it?

Wendy: That encompasses different things.

I talked a lot about looking after the body, but it also encompasses our view of ourselves. I remember years ago being at the American holistic medical Association conference in the late 90s and I remember there being a woman who was in a wheelchair and she had a progressive neuromuscular condition. She was one of the more powerful speakers that was there and she said I had to learn to love my body and we were looking at her thinking how can you do that with a body like that? 

If I’m being brutally honest, it was so fabulous because she just said I broke my body down and I looked in the mirror and I just fell in love with a certain part of my body that day. I was just waiting and kept looking at my body until I fell in love with it and she said I kept doing that process. By the end of it I fell in love with my body. 

I bring that out because we don’t know what challenges are going to be in this life.

We are going to be presented with challenges maybe psychological, physical challenges, emotional challenges, whatever but we are going to have to engage with them and actually that’s part of being a human. 

The challenge is to see our way through and come through the other side and it does require us to engage with illness and it may require us to spend longer in bed.

Like that woman, some of the most inspiring people I’ve met over the years have been people who have either got through a health challenge all still living with a health challenge and they’ve learned to manage it and these are some of the most inspiring people. 

My aunt was one of those women. 

She was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and polio when she was a child she has a deformed arm. She had subsequent health challenges as life went on. She was one of the most productive and inspiring women that you will meet because she learnt to manage herself within her limitations and be the best version of herself as time went on. And to accept this might have come as a result of that okay, so how am I going to manage this? 

Osteoporosis for instance, came in later because of the thyroid condition not to be outdone, she became one of the key members of the osteoporosis society, one of the key advocates for it educating people on how best to deal with it.

Harms: Those are two fantastic examples of somebody who is living with illness, but they have acknowledged it and their self-value is high, they have a great self-worth, which is a phenomenal message. 

But in contrast do you think people who are not ill think that illness is equivalent to being weak and turning up into society in a weak way?

That’s my kind of feeling or thinking that when somebody thinks somebody is ill, it’s that instant reaction that person is weak. 

Note that the question you asked was living with illness if I would underline the word living they’re still living, the two examples you gave of an amazing life with what we would class as illness. 

Do you think that the word weakness plays a role in people’s perception and how can we shift that?

Wendy: It can do and there is always a moment with any illness when you feel weak and that is the time for reflection. I feel that any illness brings us to our knees and makes us re-evaluate our lives. I can speak about patients with cancer. 

Some of the cancer patients I see are some of the healthiest people once they’ve had a cancer diagnosis actually because they really do all the things that they know they should’ve done years ago. If you saw them walking on the street you wouldn’t know they’ve got cancer, because they look so healthy.

I think all illnesses are a time for resetting the system and yes, we all feel like there’s a moment where we’d all like to give up and curl up but we have to move through that. I think the point you made is an interesting one is what societal changes and I think society has really engaged with some of that concept of weakness where the understanding of people being disabled, getting out in the workplace there’s a lot of provision for it. I find that there’s still a lot of work to do. 

I was listening to the radio yesterday and was hearing about an MP not being granted her proper maternity leave, despite the fact that she’s an MP and that’s because the rules don’t allow that. 

There’s still work to be done in terms of laws in terms of provisions out in society and people said she’s not the only one. 

So we still need to keep fighting that flag. I think it needs to be done on an individual level as well. You have to engage with the fact that no one is perfect in any way shape or form, and that imperfection is the human state and therefore we have relative degrees of weakness or strength and we have to maximise our areas of strength.

Dr Ro:  As you were talking I wrote down some key messages coming out living with illness. 

Number one is to accept that it’s there. Sometimes we do get ill. It’s not necessarily a measure of weakness of the question, it’s more a case of accepting it now. I’ve written down here rest and reset meaning a chance to reflect, and as you quite openly said maybe I was just burning the candle out at too many ends which does not surprise me and then Covid knocks on the door as we’ve got a person not looking after themselves. 

It is part of the human state and condition and let’s take responsibility for this instead of looking elsewhere, blaming something else, or taking a drug for it instantly. I’m not saying don’t take a drug but are there other things that we can do responsibly? 

Is that a sensible summary of what you’re sharing?

Wendy: Yeha and what are your thoughts? 

As they determine how you show yourself. I decided then healing was the way forward. On day 10 I needed to do a healing reset and basically the healer said to me, if you loved yourself unconditionally how would you treat yourself? 

That was so powerful. I’ve been re-engaging with that.

Dr Ro: Even the concept of accepting that illness is part of human state I know we do our best to move away from it by eating healthy, but the fact is, if it does come along if people aren’t careful the constant living in fear of maybe getting this sort of feeling sick that in itself becomes a self-prophecy. 

Because fear itself then lowers the immune system biologically. 

From your perspective as a doctor just a few examples of what it does to the body is that feeling of fear.

Wendy: I think it paralyses us, I think that’s number one. 

We can be so fearful that we can’t actually do the things that we should be doing for ourselves, it’s a bit like a deer in headlights. I think it leads us into activities like alcohol that numb the body. We don’t want to feel the fear anymore so we go off and we get drunk or we take pills, something else that the body has to deal with rather than dealing with what it should be dealing with. 

Also it depletes the body of minerals and that’s just on a practical level it uses a lot of energy in the body. If you look at someone who is fearful their mind is going ten to the dozen and that is all generated by the body producing neurochemicals to keep it going and that depletes the body. I think it changes the neurotransmitter’s balance in the body. 

It has an effect on our digestive system, it constricts our blood vessels. That flight and fight is part of the fear mechanism so we go into the fight and flight situation, so none of things work as effectively as they might do it puts an increased risk of all sorts of things.

Dr Ro: As you’re describing it in my mind I’m thinking about the compound effect of this, especially with a lack of sleep. What you’ve described there you see in a person’s face, a sense of exhaustion, the fatigue, skin is slightly grey, off-colour.

Harms: It sounds like a domino effect. It starts with fear.

It self-perpetuates.

Wendy: To the point where it actually can impact fertility, long-term memory storage in the brain the more you’re fearful the more compounding. I knew a woman who had cancer and was coming to the end of her life and she just said to me, I’m so afraid of dying. I found it deeply distressing actually to see her to be honest because we are all going to die and to have someone I felt so deeply saddened by her stay because I thought this is an awful way to end your life being because we are all going to die.

It wasn’t really the process of dying, it was death. I can understand the process. 

I think most of us are a little afraid of how we will die, no one wants to die in tragic circumstances with a lot of pain. It is that overwhelming fear there was no way of really getting out of the concept of fear and I thought she’s going to take this to her death bed and it’s just such a pity.

Dr Ro: On a personal level I had a really huge insight talking to you two, three years ago because my mum had experienced progressive heart failure as you described it to me afterwards and I understood the full extent to what you meant after. 

Being me I was trying to fix whatever I could and wanting to bring my belief systems and values of what I thought she could do to improve the situation. I was kind of resistant to what the doctors were saying. I needed to talk to somebody that could sit on both sides of that fence. I ended up in tears and my fear was growing inside me about what might happen to my mum and 

I still remember you describing to me your mums on that path. 

You can’t necessarily force her to make a decision she does want to do and if you do that, that might create more stress for her and your words of wisdom to me were maybe just accept that she’s making choices and just let her know that you’re not going to judge her because I was getting quite frustrated.

That fear was building up in me and making me feel rundown and I could feel my immune system dropping because I was worried about her and that message of acceptance, I wrote a letter to her in the end and just said look I am sorry I’ve been very pushy it’s because I love you et cetera. 

That release for me emotionally I slept so well the next night.

Wendy: We have to let our children and a certain point live their paths, we have to let our parents live their paths. 

I get these calls all the time from parents grown children excruciatingly watching a particular path of their child, an older child post 18 taking a particular path. 

The impact they can have on that. How do they sit with it and it can be excruciating but it is part of that acceptance of letting people as we don’t know what people’s experiences need to be in this life. We have to be understanding but if they take that path, they have to take responsibility. They must take responsibility for that choice.

Dr Ro: Are you able to share some practical things that the listeners can implement now whether it’s in terms of their mental health dealing with the situation right now, illness or in terms of practical things they can do to improve their health? 

What would be some simple steps they could do?

Wendy: I’d start with intention and I’ll quote from hypocrites, “A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings.” 

That’s got to be the case because everything flows from intention and if we don’t hold a high intention for our health, we won’t honour our health and everything most flows from that. If I have one wish for Covid is that people just recognise that they must take their own health more seriously and not put it in the hands of other people. 

Sometimes you have to hand bits and pieces over. You can take responsibility for what you do prior and post an operation so you put yourself in that state for the operation and you look after yourself in the best way after the operation. You work together with the surgeon to get the very best out of the operation. 

That’s what I would hope for really is that people would think about things we’ve talked about and they would look at their sleep patterns. They look at their exercise patterns, thought patterns, how they’re eating and work on the 80/20 rule. 

Which is if you do the right things 80% of the time you can afford to do naughty things 20% of the time.

With supplements 50% of the population is Zinc deficiency and we know it is important for the immune system. In March 2020 you couldn’t buy Zinc to save your life in this country and I was really thrilled with that because it meant people got the message that it was useful. 

Vitamin D, C and C is the most strong antiviral agent out there. I was taking 10 g vitamin C throughout my Covid illness and I want to say that because if we do the right things when we’ve got Covid and we don’t have to worry about long Covid. 

I think we do need to be doing the right thing, so that when we do get an illness if we allow our body to heal properly we don’t have to worry about consequences. 

Then finally rest and I think the rest is something that in this society, we don’t honour enough. We don’t have enough space for it. Sunday historically was the day of rest and it’s not anymore.

Dr Ro: People are working longer days and any space they do have is filled with digital media and that’s not a disengagement that’s still keeping the brain busy, plus we have got blue light on all the stuff we’ve talked about.

Harms: I think it’s an important message for entrepreneurs, go-getters, people who aim to wake up at 5 am and wake all the way to ten and that’s the kind of environment or that’s the way to get ahead. So I think it is an important message for our listeners where rest is that final fundamental step.

Dr Ro: Something that we talked about years and years ago when I used to run health events and I like it is a quick win by just wondering if you still have the same view on it and that is something like Celtic sea salt sprinkled in water. 

Can you just explain the benefit of that for anyone that wants a quick when from that side.

Wendy: Hydration of the body is one of the most important things we do for ourselves as we’re constantly losing water and our body is 80% so we do need to keep that water content up. 

I think the body doesn’t function well when it’s not got the right mineral content, everyone’s focused on vitamin D and C but actually having the right mineral content is actually more important. If you’re able to drink and you’re taking in your minerals as you’re drinking then you’ve kind of got a win-win situation.

Dr Ro: In terms of how they might take that some people take tablets et cetera one thing that we do is sprinkle that with either Himalayan sea salt but I remember a conversation with you about Celtic sea some years ago and that’s what we switched to. 

Just a sprinkle of that into your water doesn’t have to be hugely salty, but that’s quite a quick win for people.

Wendy: We’re not talking about table salt but Celtic or Himalayan.

Dr Ro: I want to say thank you so much for coming on and giving up your time because I know how many people take up your time. It’s been amazing.

Wendy over to you with a final message: there’s a lot of wisdom, knowledge, experience. Personal life and in the profession that you’re in, the expertise that you have, is there a final message you want to leave listeners with?

Wendy: Probably my final message is to have faith that we will come through to the other side and we will learn as a society, the lessons that we needed to learn as a result of this illness. On a personal level that there will be growth as a result of this but mainly have faith that we will come together.

Harms: That’s the final message for the listeners. 

Thank you Wendy, that’s myself and Ro signing out. We shall see you in the next episode.