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Dr. Zach Bush: How the Microbiome Affects Metabolism, Brain Health, and Chronic Disease · hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic

• [00:00:00] Dr. Zach Bush: We've contributed to a 10,000-fold increase in the rate of extinction on the planet over the last 50 years. [00:00:05] Wow. And so that 10,000x on extinction events of species is what we [00:00:10] need to escape because right now we're online to go extinct over this next 100 years or so at our [00:00:15] current biologic collapse rate. [00:00:16] Dr. Zach Bush: And so we're all addicted to our work or to substances or for this, we're missing [00:00:20] the bigger point. We only have one human problem. It's nature deficit disorder. [00:00:23] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:00:24] Dr. Zach Bush: And that nature [00:00:25] deficit disorder has led to this decline in metabolic function because we kept separating ourselves with our [00:00:30] technologies from nature itself. [00:00:30] Dr. Zach Bush: We need to get away from this external pursuit of health, and we need to [00:00:35] become internal generators. [00:00:36] Dr. Taz: Unfortunately, we have walked a journey that has made us [00:00:40] sick, made our planet sick as well. But I think if we can all come together and turn it around, then we can have a different [00:00:45] outcome for sure. [00:00:45] Dr. Zach Bush: You have to be in community to really fundamentally heal. [00:00:48] Dr. Taz: Wow. [00:00:48] Dr. Zach Bush: And it's so powerful when we [00:00:50] empower each other, not as doctors and nurses, but as a small community. What if we could heal each other [00:00:55] by being witness to one another? [00:00:56] Dr. Taz: Mm. My next guest is guaranteed to blow [00:01:00] your mind. Get ready to rethink everything, how we think about health and [00:01:05] wellness and life and our planet, how it's all connected, and so much more. [00:01:09] Dr. Taz: [00:01:10] Please welcome Zach Bush, Dr. Bush, to the show. He's a [00:01:15] specialist in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care, but he is better known and [00:01:20] internationally recognized as an educator and thought leader on the microbiome as it [00:01:25] relates to health, disease, and food systems. He founded Seraphic Group [00:01:30] and the nonprofit Farmer's Footprint to develop root cause solutions for human and [00:01:35] ecological health. [00:01:36] Dr. Taz: His passion for education reaches across many disciplines, [00:01:40] including topics such as the role of soil and water ecosystems in human genomics, [00:01:45] immunity, and gut and brain health. His education has highlighted the need for a [00:01:50] radical departure from chemical farming and pharmacy, and his ongoing continued [00:01:55] efforts are providing a path for consumers, farmers, and mega industries to [00:02:00] work together for a healthy future for the people and our planet. [00:02:04] Dr. Taz: Please join me [00:02:05] in welcoming Dr. Zach Bush to the show. I am beyond thrilled to have you on the [00:02:10] show. I have admired your work for years, and I think you are such [00:02:15] an instrumental voice in where we need to head in terms of health and [00:02:20] planetary health and how to bring those two ideas together. So welcome. [00:02:23] Dr. Taz: Thank you so much for having me on. Can't wait to have you [00:02:25] here. So there are so many things I wanna talk to you about, but before we jump in, [00:02:30] maybe just for somebody brand new into our space- Mm-hmm ... of holistic [00:02:35] health and planetary health, maybe just give us a little blip of how you went [00:02:40] from MD physician, just like me- [00:02:42] Dr. Zach Bush: Mm-hmm [00:02:43] Dr. Taz: into this space. What [00:02:45] was the spark? What happened? Mm. And then we'll jump in from there. [00:02:48] Dr. Zach Bush: Beautiful. There may have [00:02:50] been a seed planted before it all happened, but the seed was, uh, working with a group of international midwives [00:02:55] birthing babies in the Philippines when I was very young, and I was heading into engineering school and then [00:03:00] took a year off and, and headed, uh, to the Philippines and had this experience there for six months, [00:03:05] and that once you've seen what you see, you can't unsee it and that kind of- Mm [00:03:08] Dr. Zach Bush: moment. And so suddenly I [00:03:10] was like engineering looked b- like something that was gonna be boring compared to what I had just witnessed. And so, [00:03:15] um, that, that phenomenon of birth is such a, an [00:03:20] unspoken miracle and something that's overlooked, I think, in our society radically these [00:03:25] days. And the opportunity to kind of play in that space of the generation of life, the [00:03:30] witnessing of life coming into the world, uh, was something I just couldn't escape. [00:03:33] Dr. Zach Bush: And so it took me from thinking I didn't [00:03:35] like school and wasn't a good student- Mm-hmm. Right ... to something where I was, like, ready to apply myself in any way, I think. [00:03:40] And, uh, so I went from kind of an average student to trying to get through pre-med [00:03:45] and all of that, and, uh, eventually into medical school. [00:03:49] Dr. Zach Bush: Slippery [00:03:50] slope there into thinking, you know, I want... I, since I was mostly a blue collar kid growing up building [00:03:55] houses, cars, things like that, I thought I would be a surgeon because it was decent working with my hands- Yeah ... and [00:04:00] tools. Yeah, absolutely. And that seemed obvious. And then somehow for some, some unknown reason, surgery [00:04:05] was just profoundly boring for me. [00:04:06] Dr. Zach Bush: I found myself just a lot of standing around waiting- Yep ... for something to [00:04:10] [00:04:10] Dr. Taz: Yep, [00:04:10] Dr. Zach Bush: me too. Waiting for something to happen. And so instead I ended up in the [00:04:15] completely opposite direction, was really more of the intellectual pursuit of understanding of [00:04:20] human systems. So I was in an internal medicine initially for three years, doing hospital-based [00:04:25] medicine in the ICUs, and then realized I was kind of chasing the wind in the ICU setting. [00:04:29] Dr. Zach Bush: Even though we [00:04:30] had, you know, what seemed like the power of God to restart hearts and, you know, pull people [00:04:35] back from the brink of death and all this stuff that's, in the adrenaline moment, seems powerful- [00:04:39] Dr. Taz: Yeah ... [00:04:39] Dr. Zach Bush: you [00:04:40] find out that you're kind of just doing, like, end-stage symptom management of a disease- Right [00:04:43] Dr. Zach Bush: that started 25 years ago [00:04:45] and you can't really change the disease now 'cause it's too far down the road. So that, after a few [00:04:50] years, I realized I need to g- I need to get further up that river and see if I can have an effect on my patients that's [00:04:55] maybe more meaningful than, you know, kind of the revolving door of ICU care until they die.[00:05:00] [00:05:00] Dr. Zach Bush: And, uh, in that journey, found endocrinology and metabolism. And endocrinology is the [00:05:05] study, of course, of the hormones and the way in which they- [00:05:07] Dr. Taz: Yep ... [00:05:07] Dr. Zach Bush: coordinate the body. And most endocrinologists [00:05:10] go down that side of the field. But the second half of the specialty is really overlooked, I think, which is [00:05:15] metabolism, which is the study of mitochondria, and that became my fascination. [00:05:19] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:05:20] And so I developed a bunch of biomedical research in mitochondrial dynamics in cancer [00:05:25] cells, and through that I had the opportunity to develop a new chemotherapy, um, [00:05:30] in vitamin A compounds that interact with, with the mitochondria. And Not [00:05:35] knowing it then, but that was my slippery slope into the world of the microbiome, which was really coming of age. [00:05:39] Dr. Zach Bush: This was 2005 to [00:05:40] 2010 timeframe. Mm-hmm. And so genomics was starting to really change our understanding [00:05:45] of what it meant to be human at the time, and it was changing our understanding of disease in general. Uh, [00:05:50] up until that time, and unfortunately still the dogma in the industry, is that a carcinogen [00:05:55] is something that- Right [00:05:55] Dr. Zach Bush: breaks DNA strands like radiation. Uh, what was [00:06:00] coming in through genetics, though, at the time was the sudden realization that actually [00:06:05] you can predict which cancer somebody's gonna get by a change in the microbiome of their gut, and that just didn't fit [00:06:10] anybody's model of what [00:06:11] Dr. Taz: cancer was and- But we're still not really talking about that, honestly. [00:06:13] Dr. Taz: I mean, I think you're still- No, it's poorly taught ... you [00:06:15] were ahead of your time back then, but you're still ahead of your time even 10, 15 years later, I would say. Mm-hmm. So [00:06:20] it ... You know, that idea. And I ... It's so funny too because I almost thought I was gonna be an ICU [00:06:25] doctor. I loved that, you know, the procedure, the adrenaline part of it, but it gets old and you realize you're [00:06:30] only having so much of an impact on, on your patients, you know? [00:06:33] Dr. Taz: And then endocrinology and [00:06:35] metabolism was fascinating as well because you are interconnecting, you are thinking about the body as a whole, [00:06:40] not thinking about it- Yeah ... in one isolated sphere. But how ... Okay, so I want ... 'Cause [00:06:45] not everybody watching or listening may understand the mitochondria. Mm-hmm. So talk about the mitochondria. [00:06:49] Dr. Taz: It's the [00:06:50] powerhouse of the cell. It's providing energy. You're finding the connection between the [00:06:55] mitochondria and the soil, not the soil microbiome, but our, our microbiome. Our [00:06:59] Dr. Zach Bush: soil, yeah. [00:07:00] [00:07:00] Dr. Taz: Our soil. So can you- Mm-hmm ... wind that together for us? [00:07:02] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah. Uh, [00:07:05] I, I think, again, unfortunately it hasn't changed in the education system, but we're taught that the mitochondria are the powerhouse of [00:07:10] the human cell, which makes it sound like a part of the human cell or something human- Right. [00:07:13] Dr. Zach Bush: Right ... when in fact it's [00:07:15] non-human and it's one of the highest technologies that the earth has produced is the [00:07:20] mitochondria. Uh, maybe for a second I need to back up actually and just define life 'cause [00:07:25] then mitochondria make a lot more sense. Right. But anyway. 'Cause everyone's like, "Wait, what [00:07:26] Dr. Taz: do you mean? [00:07:27] Dr. Taz: I've got non-human stuff in me. What's happening here?" [00:07:30] [00:07:30] Dr. Zach Bush: So. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're full of aliens. Yeah. Um, which is actually very much the truth. So [00:07:35] life is, in its simplest definition as far as I've come to [00:07:40] distill it now, is life is a concentration of light energy. [00:07:43] Dr. Taz: Yes. [00:07:43] Dr. Zach Bush: And it takes an enormous [00:07:45] amount of light per cubic centimeter to generate enough energy to coordinate s- [00:07:50] the materialization of a particle out of vacuum space. [00:07:54] Dr. Zach Bush: And so [00:07:55] Einstein showed us that light can either be a particle or a wave, and it can be it at the same time, [00:08:00] uh, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to anybody's brain, but what he's saying basically is energy in the [00:08:05] form of light, which is, is the energetics of the universe- That electromagnetic [00:08:10] field that we could call light is, uh, in this constant [00:08:15] vibrational frequency expression of itself all over the universe. [00:08:19] Dr. Zach Bush: And if it's [00:08:20] witnessed, if there's something that is still enough to witness the photon of energy, then it [00:08:25] will become a particle. And so this is called the observer effect in, in physics. But [00:08:30] everything is in wave until it is seen, and then suddenly it can become particle. [00:08:32] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:08:34] Dr. Zach Bush: And, [00:08:35] uh, to become particle, you know, when light becomes particle, [00:08:40] you're obs- you're basically demanding an enormous amount of energetic exchange [00:08:45] or, or transmu- formation. [00:08:47] Dr. Zach Bush: And for that, to get something as complicated [00:08:50] as a bacteria, you need an enormous amount of sunlight concentrated before you get there. So [00:08:55] physics, the brightest thing it does is a sun or a star. Uh, biology, [00:09:00] h- the single c- cell bacteria or fungi has to concentrate 1,000 times [00:09:05] brighter that sunlight before you can have enough energy to manifest a single cell. [00:09:09] Dr. Zach Bush: And so that [00:09:10] gives you a sense of just how extraordinary it is that there's a, a cell exists. It takes a lot of [00:09:15] technology in nature to create that much light energy in a cubic centimeter. And the way in which that was [00:09:20] done and, you know, as life emerges is through fermentation. So bacteria and [00:09:25] fungi, you've maybe made yogurt before, maybe you've made sauerkraut. [00:09:27] Dr. Taz: Yeah. [00:09:27] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah. That's a process of [00:09:30] using the microbes in the air to start generating energy through the fermentation of the [00:09:35] carbohydrates, for example, in a piece of cabbage to become sauerkraut. So the fermentation [00:09:40] is this process of liberating energy from other cellular, [00:09:45] uh, forms of, of life. And before you can get cellular life, you have to have molecular [00:09:50] energy. [00:09:50] Dr. Zach Bush: And the way in which molecular energy happens on, on this planet at least, is through carbon. And so [00:09:55] CO2 in the atmosphere is, is the energy potential of the, of the planet. And [00:10:00] so all this demonization of CO2 right now is a big problem for our- Hmm ... scientific understanding of the world. [00:10:05] But nonetheless, CO2, y- we all need to come to terms with the fact that this is actually the bloodstream [00:10:10] of life. [00:10:10] Dr. Zach Bush: And if you don't have CO2 in the atmosphere, you, you don't have life. The more [00:10:15] CO2 in the atmosphere, the more potential for life the planet has. Our atmosphere has very [00:10:20] little CO2 in it. 0.04% of the atmosphere is actually CO2. Most of [00:10:25] it's nitrogen, oxygen, and a few other gases. And so CO2 is this sliver of the pie of [00:10:30] the breathed air of this planet, but it's enough to help store sunlight. [00:10:33] Dr. Zach Bush: And so the way that's done is [00:10:35] through the green, green things behind us. A, a green leaf, uh, produces [00:10:40] chlorophyll, and that chlorophyll takes CO2 and stores a photon of sunlight between the two [00:10:45] carbons. And so two CO2 molecules start to chain together to store sunlight. [00:10:50] And a glucose or carbohydrate or a fatty acid are long chains of [00:10:55] CO2 built in these long carbon strings that we would call sugar or fat. [00:10:58] Dr. Taz: You're taking me back to med school [00:11:00] biochemistry class right [00:11:02] Dr. Zach Bush: now. [00:11:03] Dr. Taz: Exactly. Exactly. And [00:11:05] sadly, this is- So I'm remembering all these formulas. Yeah. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this was the [00:11:06] Dr. Zach Bush: bane of [00:11:06] Dr. Taz: my existence." And the PTSD there. Right. But yes. [00:11:08] Dr. Zach Bush: And sadly, [00:11:10] [00:11:10] Dr. Taz: that's- I'm completely following- ... but having a little bit of trauma as you speak too. [00:11:12] Dr. Taz: Sadly, [00:11:12] Dr. Zach Bush: that's why... What happens is- Yeah ... as doctors, [00:11:15] we forget that. [00:11:15] Dr. Taz: Yeah. [00:11:16] Dr. Zach Bush: And so you ask a typical doctor, you know, "What is life?" And, you know, [00:11:20] vague answers. [00:11:20] Dr. Taz: Right. ' [00:11:21] Dr. Zach Bush: Cause we forget that first few days of tr- of training, and then it's dwarfed [00:11:25] by, you know, eight years of, you know, pharmaceutical training after that. [00:11:29] Dr. Zach Bush: But- Facts ... the [00:11:30] actual biology is not n- understood well, and therefore doctors behave the way they do. [00:11:35] Um, therefore I behaved the way I did, as I thought I needed to poison the cells to [00:11:40] get them healthy and such an insane metrics of chemotherapy, for example. So [00:11:45] Um, th- there's this slippery slope that happens if you forget this. [00:11:49] Dr. Zach Bush: So as a [00:11:50] society, as a human species, we need to remember that light is the code of life, [00:11:55] and the biology of the planet, namely the green things on the earth, are what [00:12:00] store that sunlight in a way in which it can be liberated by the mitochondria. And so the human cell has no way to [00:12:05] take that carbohydrate or fat and turn it into energy. [00:12:08] Dr. Zach Bush: The human cell lacks that ability 'cause this [00:12:10] human cell can't do fermentation. Bacteria and fungi do that. [00:12:12] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [00:12:13] Dr. Zach Bush: But a multicellular organism has let [00:12:15] go of its ability to do fermentation, and it is now relying on the microbes [00:12:20] to do that. And so the, the gut of an earthworm, a wolf, or a [00:12:25] human is the soil systems that s- start that process of- Right [00:12:28] Dr. Zach Bush: metabolizing [00:12:30] potential energy, and then they p- they process all of the nutrients that would be in your food [00:12:35] into the glucose, fatty acids, and other compounds that will become the, [00:12:40] the carbon delivery to the mitochondria. So the bacteria live inside your gut, and actually now [00:12:45] we know there's microbes that live in every single organ system, in your prostate, in your breast, in your brain. [00:12:49] Dr. Zach Bush: You have [00:12:50] microbiome throughout your whole body. So you're an organic garden of microbes that are producing energy or poten- [00:12:55] potential energy for you. And then that gets put into the bloodstream, eventually getting inside of a human cell, where the [00:13:00] mitochondria live. Mitochondria are tiny little bacteria that live inside of human cells, and [00:13:05] that's again what wasn't taught to us well in medical school. [00:13:07] Dr. Zach Bush: No. I [00:13:07] Dr. Taz: always thought of it as a- [00:13:09] Dr. Zach Bush: Organ- [00:13:10] organelle ... pa- like an engine. It's an organelle within it. Like an organelle. Exactly. Yeah. So- That was the [00:13:12] Dr. Taz: word that was used. [00:13:12] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah. So this is a little organelle that lives inside [00:13:15] of you, and maybe they taught us that because we're too narcissistic as a species to believe that [00:13:20] we rely on anybody else. [00:13:21] Dr. Zach Bush: But w- there actually is no human mechanism of creating [00:13:25] energy for human life. It's entirely done by these microbes. And so the, a tiny little bacteria [00:13:30] called an archaea absorbed a methane-producing bacterium around three billion years [00:13:35] ago if, if the fossil record is correct. So around three billion years ago, you have this massive [00:13:40] innovation in biology moving from the ability for fermentation to produce that breakdown [00:13:45] of carbon to release the sunlight into mitochondria. [00:13:48] Dr. Zach Bush: And so this new innovation of the [00:13:50] bacterium that we would call mitochondrion allowed for respiratory, uh, digestion or [00:13:55] breakdown of that carbon chain, which was 10 times more efficient than [00:14:00] fermentation. So there was an explosion of light energy per cubic centimeter, and that suddenly [00:14:05] enabled multicellular life to occur It takes, you know, a thousand times more [00:14:10] energy than sunlight per cubic centimeter to produce a single cell. [00:14:12] Dr. Zach Bush: But if you start to think about a [00:14:15] human body that's got dozens of organ systems with roughly 70 trillion human [00:14:20] cells that are interacting with 14 quadrillion mitochondria and 1.5 [00:14:25] quadrillion bacteria of 40,000 different species, the system is so freaking [00:14:30] complex that is, it dwarfs the complexity of what we would think of like a city center. [00:14:33] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:14:34] Dr. Zach Bush: And yet [00:14:35] you've seen it yourself. If you go out to the country, somebody can have a solar panel and their little house and all [00:14:40] is well. You go into the city, now you need nuclear power plants- Right ... and everything else because you are [00:14:45] requiring so much energy because there's so much community. So the more complex the [00:14:50] interactions, the more energy you need to maintain that, that system. [00:14:54] Dr. Zach Bush: So the [00:14:55] multicellular life of a human requires a lot. So the mitochondria are how we become human ultimately, [00:15:00] and this is where we, you know, went sorely wrong in our, in our addiction to [00:15:05] chemical, you know, management of our systems because almost every chemical we use, whether it be in [00:15:10] the pharmaceutical industry, at the bedside as a doctor, or in the farm fields of producing our food, [00:15:15] we've become reliant on these small molecule chemicals that function as antibiotics. [00:15:19] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:15:20] And so the antibiotics that came out of the 1940s with penicillin quickly grew [00:15:25] into not just lots of p- antibiotics for humans, but by the 1950s, antibiotics for our [00:15:30] soils and crops. And so we started using herbicides and pesticides, uh, [00:15:35] widespread throughout the globe really by the 1960s, and this was called the Green Revolution. [00:15:39] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:15:40] Right. We found that if we dump chemicals into soil, like urea nitrogen and n- nitrogen, [00:15:45] phosphorus, potassium fertilizers that are drawn out of fossil oil, we were suddenly seeing [00:15:50] fields just grow things like never seen before. So we thought, "Well, this is-" A good thing ... "this is amazing." Right. [00:15:55] "We're gonna feed [00:15:55] Dr. Taz: everybody." [00:15:55] Dr. Zach Bush: Right. What we didn't realize was that when you reduce soil down to [00:16:00] basically a, an, an engine for nitrogen and phosphorus, you start to chew through the carbon [00:16:05] reservoir. And so we started destroying the carbon reservoir of our soils in the 1960s, [00:16:10] and in that we sterilized the whole planet. And so 97% of the world's farmable [00:16:15] soils are now depleted or severely depleted of carbon metabolism. [00:16:18] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:16:19] Dr. Zach Bush: And so this whole [00:16:20] process of storing light energy is being undermined, and so now every plant in the world is [00:16:25] deficient in energy compared to where we were in the 1960s. And so for this, we're seeing [00:16:30] human disease emerge because there's a lack of energy to maintain these complex systems of life. [00:16:35] [00:16:35] Dr. Taz: So lots of questions. [00:16:36] Dr. Taz: So first of all, when someone talks about a carbon footprint, [00:16:40] right? We're trying to reduce our carbon footprint. We're trying to be sustainable. We're trying to be all these [00:16:45] things, but then you're saying carbon dioxide is sort of the essential life force [00:16:50] or life energy. How do you reconcile those two ideas? [00:16:54] Dr. Zach Bush: Uh, well, you [00:16:55] actually have to throw out the first idea completely. There, there is no negativity to having a carbon footprint. [00:17:00] What is negative is if in creating that f- carbon footprint, you destroy biodiversity. [00:17:05] Mm. And so if, as an oil company, you're destroying ecosystems to go dig [00:17:10] your oil out of the ground, then you're a problem. [00:17:12] Dr. Zach Bush: But if you are, you know, [00:17:15] taking a look at, step back and start to measure biodiversity as a metric for [00:17:20] l- you know, life and human impact on it, you get a much more accurate vision of where we need to [00:17:25] go as industries. When you just demonize a single molecule like carbon, CO2 [00:17:30] in the atmosphere, now you let everybody else cheat or be hi- hidden behind [00:17:35] this one demon of CO2. [00:17:36] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:17:37] Dr. Zach Bush: And so CO2, you know, is easy to then [00:17:40] blame on the oil companies, and in global politics, we politicized [00:17:45] climate change in the 1990s and 2000s. Al Gore's famous [00:17:50] film- Yes ... uh, you know, in- Yeah ... Inconvenient Truth, demonized carbon, I believe, for a [00:17:55] political reason, not so much for a scientific rationale. Um, even then, we understood [00:18:00] that CO2 is actually a tiny contributor to, you know, the extinction processes that we see [00:18:05] going on, but it was a very convenient reductionist measurement of [00:18:10] a political outcome, basically. [00:18:11] Dr. Zach Bush: And what you see is most of the wealth [00:18:15] in the world under our current energy systems- Is held in [00:18:20] non-Western countries [00:18:20] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:18:21] Dr. Zach Bush: And so most of the oil in the world is in North Africa, [00:18:25] the Middle Eastern peninsula of the UAE and Saudi Arabia and the like, uh, all [00:18:30] of the nations there within that peninsula, and then, uh, into Siberia, [00:18:35] North China, uh, North India, Siberia, North China. [00:18:38] Dr. Zach Bush: That's one-third of the planet's surface [00:18:40] that's all under desert right now, and it's those desert countries that have these huge oil reserves under the [00:18:45] ground because that's actually a carbon cycle. Deserts go into grasslands every 20,000 [00:18:50] years, and then the grasslands, um, go into f- into savanna, savanna into [00:18:55] forest, forest back into desert. [00:18:56] Dr. Zach Bush: And when it desertifies, that silica has so much, [00:19:00] um, basically energy force 'cause the sun hitting silica is like Basically [00:19:05] what you would think of as a superconductor. And so it, it turns that old soil into oil very [00:19:10] quickly. And so we build these- So that's why they have all that oil ... deep oil reserves through this cycle of the [00:19:15] desert back into grasslands, back into desert again. [00:19:17] Dr. Zach Bush: And so when you then look at [00:19:20] geopolitics that are driven largely by energy systems, and the dominant energy on the planet [00:19:25] is oil, the Western countries were... It was an aviatious thing to [00:19:30] demonize oil- Mm ... because it disenfranchised- Fascinating ... economically the [00:19:35] oil-producing countries of the world. And so it was the West's way of penalizing the wealth [00:19:40] of these regions, I think, and trying to level the playing field in a field [00:19:45] where you're simply disadvantaged because your resources under your earth don't produce as much oil [00:19:50] as somebody else's. [00:19:51] Dr. Zach Bush: And so I think that's subconsciously, or probably very consciously, [00:19:55] part of the agenda that was behind politicizing this. And when you step back and really [00:20:00] look at the extinction event that we're in right now, you realize it's not oil and oil, you know, [00:20:05] companies that are killing the Earth. It's chemical agriculture companies coming out of the US and Germany [00:20:10] that are killing the planet. [00:20:11] Dr. Taz: Oh, [00:20:11] Dr. Zach Bush: wow. And so we've hidden Western technology behind this [00:20:15] carbon story while we poison the Earth with our chemical industries and our small [00:20:20] molecule chemicals. Nobody's penalizing anybody for that. Nobody's getting s- you know, their [00:20:25] wrist slapped or getting penalized or, or having biodiversity, you know, offset [00:20:30] requirements for a company that's spraying antibiotics at four billion pounds a year [00:20:35] into our soil system. [00:20:36] Dr. Taz: So is climate change real? Like, how would [00:20:40] you define climate change? [00:20:41] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah, I mean, [00:20:41] Dr. Taz: it's def- 'Cause that's a political issue right now as well, or has [00:20:45] been. [00:20:45] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Climate is definitely changing. Yeah. There's no question. There's lots of variables to that climate [00:20:50] change, including human y- human damage. [00:20:52] Dr. Zach Bush: And so if you take a look at [00:20:55] global warming as a concept, which is what Al Gore kind of- [00:20:57] Dr. Taz: Right, focused on ... uh, [00:20:59] Dr. Zach Bush: they, they called it [00:21:00] global warming at the time, and then they had to rename it climate change because actually a lot of areas of the [00:21:05] world are not warming, and they're doing weird things. And the temperature d- differentials across the planet are doing really bizarre [00:21:10] dynamic things that are pointing to something other than just CO2 in the atmosphere, um, which we probably [00:21:15] don't have time to get into entirely, but it has to do with actual geothermal dynamics of the Earth itself. [00:21:19] Dr. Zach Bush: So the [00:21:20] Earth... Well, let me just give a short answer. A baby version. Earth is- Yeah ... Earth is going through a major [00:21:25] metaphor, morphosis right now irregardless of human existence, let alone behavior. [00:21:30] And those changes are, have to do electromagnetic field of the Earth itself. So [00:21:35] when I was born, the North Pole magnetically favored North America, and so, [00:21:40] uh, above Canada there was this foci of, of magnetic field that we called the [00:21:45] North Pole, and you would pick up a compass and it would- Right [00:21:47] Dr. Zach Bush: point you there, and it was roughly to the North Pole, but it was- Right ... [00:21:50] actually northern Canada. That North Pole has moved dramatically over the last 30 [00:21:55] years, and so now it's over in Siberia. What? So it's across the North Pole and it's over there, and so you'd think you'd pick up a [00:22:00] compass and you're like, "Oh, certainly it's showing you the North Pole." [00:22:02] Dr. Zach Bush: Well, it's never showing you the North Pole. [00:22:04] Dr. Taz: No. Okay. [00:22:04] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:22:05] Um, it's never showing you the n- n- you know, that tip of the, the axis of the Earth's [00:22:10] spin. The magnet of the Earth keeps moving, and every couple hundred thousand [00:22:15] years it goes through a complete reversal where the South Pole becomes the North Pole and North Pole becomes the South Pole.[00:22:20] [00:22:20] Dr. Zach Bush: The speed of change of that pole right now has got a lot of people concerned that we're about to [00:22:25] go through a reversal. If that happens, then we can't even imagine the changes in the dynamics on the [00:22:30] Earth, which has happened many times, so the Earth will be fine. But it's going to change coastlines in ways we [00:22:35] can't even imagine if that were to happen. [00:22:37] Dr. Zach Bush: Right now, we don't know if it will go through complete [00:22:40] reversal. Uh, it's certainly possible 'cause I think the last one was a couple hundred thousand years ago, so it seems on track [00:22:45] to. But we're certainly seeing the movement of the magnetic field of the Earth, and that... During a movement [00:22:50] of the North Pole magnetically, you get these extremely chaotic patterns where there's no longer just [00:22:55] the, the, the r- the well-ordered double torus of the planetary geology. [00:22:59] Dr. Zach Bush: Y- you [00:23:00] now get this weird super chaotic pattern that I think matches what we call [00:23:05] climate change very well. Hmm. Where some places are flooding that have never flooded. Right. Some places are drought. Some [00:23:10] places are hot. Some places are cold. We're getting freezing in Atlanta- Right, right ... at times we've never seen it freeze before. [00:23:14] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:23:15] Snow. Snow in Atlanta and other things. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So the strange weather patterns match that [00:23:20] rather than just, like, some linear growth of heat. [00:23:21] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [00:23:22] Dr. Zach Bush: Okay. Um, and so when we really sit back [00:23:25] and ask ourselves, "Is our learned experience global warming due to CO2 in the atmosphere?" [00:23:30] The answer is no, it's not. [00:23:31] Dr. Zach Bush: It's not matching that pattern at all. So CO2 in the atmosphere [00:23:35] is dwarfed by other problems in the atmosphere that are produced by our chemical industry, such as [00:23:40] methane and things like that. And, and that's largely coming from natural gas, not that. So the whole effort to get [00:23:45] off of fossil fuels and- Yeah [00:23:46] Dr. Zach Bush: and oil and go over to natural gas sounded like it was gonna be our [00:23:50] new green energy, but the amount of methane, uh, that is being produced through our natural gas [00:23:55] industry that's leaking into our atmosphere is actually far worse than any carbon offset we [00:24:00] would've gotten from, you know, the advantage of- My goodness [00:24:02] Dr. Zach Bush: of oil. [00:24:03] Dr. Taz: This is all so politicized. It's all politicized, yeah. It's [00:24:04] Dr. Zach Bush: hard [00:24:05] to, like, really... [00:24:06] Dr. Taz: All right. So we've got this question mark around climate [00:24:10] change. We have- [00:24:10] Dr. Zach Bush: Well, let, let me emphasize before people- Okay ... walk away thinking we don't have a problem. [00:24:15] Climate change is happening. It's got a lot of factors. [00:24:17] Dr. Zach Bush: Th- deeper than that, I [00:24:20] think we can start to say that the problem that humans are creating is a decline in metabolism of the [00:24:25] planet, and therefore human biology and all other biology on the planet. So we've accelerated through our [00:24:30] behavior. We've contributed to a 10,000-fold increase in the rate of extinction on the planet over the [00:24:35] last 50 years. [00:24:35] Dr. Zach Bush: Wow. And so that 10,000x on extinction events of [00:24:40] species is what we need to escape. Because right now we're, we're online to go [00:24:45] extinct over this next 100 years or so at our current biologic collapse rate. And so we've got a [00:24:50] very short amount of time to re-understand this issue of the planet, and we need to [00:24:55] stop thinking about the problem as a chemistry problem, which is what, you know, the whole- [00:24:59] Dr. Taz: Right. [00:24:59] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah ... [00:25:00] CO2 story is arguing. We have a chemistry problem. We have a biology problem, and that's much [00:25:05] more Integrated of a solution set that we need to go after rather than just [00:25:10] demonizing one molecule. We need to come to terms with the fact that it's death of complex [00:25:15] ecosystems through chemical agriculture as a primary driver that's really fundamentally at [00:25:20] the foundation of why climate crisis is happening, why extinction crisis is upon us. [00:25:24] Dr. Zach Bush: And so we [00:25:25] need to br- develop a much more holistic understanding of the nine [00:25:30] partitions that drive extinction. And of those nine, we've passed six of the [00:25:35] nine to guarantee that there is, we are in the midst of a massive extinction event that is not [00:25:40] reversible. So now we have this short amount of time to rethink our [00:25:45] relationship to the Earth and Earth's relationship to human in time to see nature recover [00:25:50] this, which she can. [00:25:50] Dr. Zach Bush: She's very fast [00:25:51] Dr. Taz: to [00:25:52] Dr. Zach Bush: heal. Which [00:25:52] Dr. Taz: was my next question. Are we gonna be able to recover if we're [00:25:55] 100 years out? Like, are we gonna be able to recover? [00:25:59] Dr. Zach Bush: Nobody knows- Mm ... [00:26:00] is the interesting thing. You know, we're, we're, a lot of people think we're past the [00:26:05] 50/50 threshold, so 50% likelihood of us getting through this. [00:26:08] Dr. Zach Bush: I personally think that it's [00:26:10] 100% likely that we get through, but it's gonna be achieved in ways we can't even [00:26:15] probably imagine, and it's the children on the Earth right now that already know what that future looks like. [00:26:19] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:26:19] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:26:20] And so we need to very quickly let go of our politici- politicalization of [00:26:25] these issues, and we need to start to empower our children to dream our future. [00:26:29] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:26:30] Um, Kahlil Gibran, 100 years ago, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century said, was asked, [00:26:35] "How should we parent?" And he said, "We need to make sure that we never make our children think like us, and we should [00:26:40] strive every day to think more like our children." And so we need to empower our children saying, "You [00:26:45] kn- you came in right now, and if you did, if you're a soul that showed up right now, you, you must [00:26:50] be part of a- The movement. [00:26:51] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah ... a, a movement, a transformation, a reimagining of a [00:26:55] future that we can't see yet. And so let's start empowering the dreaming of children. Let's start empowering [00:27:00] our own dreaming as children. I can find the child in me still, and when I do dream like a [00:27:05] child, I can shake off the limitations of, well, that's impossible. [00:27:08] Dr. Zach Bush: Well, that's never been [00:27:10] done. Yeah. Those, you know, your, your, it's a pipe dream. And I can start to dream bigger, and I can start to [00:27:15] fee- realize I c- if I can feel the future in my body, then it's already here. [00:27:19] Dr. Taz: I [00:27:20] love this, and I, I wanna wind it back to health. Like, if we put our finger at 1940 [00:27:25] What happened to human health from 1940 fast-forwarding to [00:27:30] today? [00:27:30] Dr. Taz: Can we mirror, like, what we've seen in the healthcare landscape and the healthcare [00:27:35] space with what we're seeing kind of with the planetary, you know, frequencies and rhythms and [00:27:40] stuff like that? Are you seeing those two things kind of go hand-in-hand? [00:27:44] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah, so [00:27:45] the, and the crisis of today started in the late 1800s probably, and what happened w- that's when [00:27:50] really the Industrial Revolution really got its- Right [00:27:52] Dr. Zach Bush: you know, foothold with trains. And so when trains really [00:27:55] became a normal mode of transportation, it shrank the world. Technology started to really accelerate [00:28:00] around the globe at that point, and during that process, by the 1940s, [00:28:05] you know, the Great War had really accelerated a lot of technologies on the planet. [00:28:08] Dr. Zach Bush: And so the, [00:28:10] the World War II and the innovations there, and World War I just before it, we had seen the innovation. We'd [00:28:15] gone from horse and buggy to jet aircraft in- Mm-hmm ... 50 years. Like, what the heck? [00:28:19] Dr. Taz: Crazy. [00:28:20] [00:28:20] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah. Like, that's- [00:28:21] Dr. Taz: Yeah, yeah ... [00:28:21] Dr. Zach Bush: it's an insane- Yeah ... amount of innovation that happened during that [00:28:25] time. [00:28:25] Dr. Zach Bush: Which begs the question of, like, how does human ingenuity happen? Like, how, how is [00:28:30] that even possible? We've been here 300,000 years and then we go from a horse to, you know, jet [00:28:35] aircraft. Mm-hmm. Like, what, what happened? And so we need to maybe touch on that at some future conversation, [00:28:40] but the fact is that did happen. [00:28:41] Dr. Zach Bush: There was something that touched human ingenuity at that point, or the [00:28:45] human imagination or human information that allowed us to suddenly, you know, pop our [00:28:50] head above some previous normal and become something radically different In [00:28:55] that journey, right in the 1940s, we were at an incredible balance point of [00:29:00] deciding our future as a species. [00:29:02] Dr. Zach Bush: There was groups of scientists that were discovering how [00:29:05] nature was working within biologic systems to cure cancer and all kinds of things [00:29:10] through natural phenomenon. There [00:29:12] Dr. Taz: were. [00:29:12] Dr. Zach Bush: Absolutely. Royal Rife was a phenomenon, you [00:29:15] know, in and of one man's name, but he really was representative of an entire scientific, you [00:29:20] know, group that even was present by the late 1800s. [00:29:22] Dr. Zach Bush: So as the Industrial Revolution emerged, [00:29:25] um, Dr. Koch was, I think, one of the, the [00:29:30] powerhouses. Uh, K-O-C-H. Uh, Koch was [00:29:35] arguing with Pasteur in the late 1800s, uh, over the issue of, of [00:29:40] microbes- Mm-hmm ... and the concept of infection and germs. And so, uh, [00:29:45] Louis Pasteur was arguing that humans are embattled against nature, and nature's trying to [00:29:50] attack us, and if nature [00:29:51] Dr. Zach Bush: If a bacteria gets inside of us, then we get sick and we die. And, and so the immune [00:29:55] system must be a, a battlefield for sterilizing the human body. And Koch was [00:30:00] a brilliant scientist and observer, and he was just like, "That's not fitting my experience." Hmm. He's like, "I'm studying [00:30:05] indigenous people and cultures that have no, you know, industrial water or clean things." [00:30:09] Dr. Zach Bush: Right, right. "And, and [00:30:10] they're living better and healthier than we are in these cities." By the late 1800s, cities were [00:30:15] toxic. [00:30:15] Dr. Taz: Yeah. [00:30:15] Dr. Zach Bush: And, and the life expectancy had gone way down because of the phenomenon of, of [00:30:20] these, you know, kind of nascent urban spaces where suddenly everybody's crammed together. Disease [00:30:25] was through the roof. [00:30:25] Dr. Zach Bush: The water systems didn't work, and so the people were drinking their own [00:30:30] feces, basically. Hmm. And so there's so much tuberculosis and cons- called consumption at the time, and [00:30:35] lots of these kind of infectious ... cholera and all this. And so we had created [00:30:40] disaster biologically by pushing people into these nature deficit [00:30:45] spaces, and then we started to innovate to try to Band-Aid that- Right [00:30:48] Dr. Zach Bush: with technologies like, [00:30:50] you know, by the 1940s, penicillin. And so here we were creating an unhealthy ecosystem for [00:30:55] humans to live in, and then we were creating Band-Aids and saying, "Well, the Band-Aid's gonna fix it-" [00:30:58] Dr. Taz: Right ... [00:30:59] Dr. Zach Bush: without ever [00:31:00] addressing the fact that, no, it's the ... It's actually the environment that was creating the sickness. [00:31:04] Dr. Zach Bush: Life [00:31:05] expectancy was, like, 48 years old in the m- in the US in, in, in end of the 20th [00:31:10] or 19th century, end of the 1800s. And so by the 1950s, '60s, we suddenly [00:31:15] have this life expectancy of 70 years, and we're like, "Oh my gosh, these technologies are gonna fix everything." [00:31:20] But really what had happened is we had started to, you know, demand [00:31:25] changes be made in child labor. [00:31:26] Dr. Zach Bush: And a, a lot of the death that was keeping our average age at 48 [00:31:30] wasn't 'cause people weren't living long, it was 'cause children were dying s- at such- Mm-hmm ... high volumes. Mm-hmm. And that was largely [00:31:35] because of our toxic city centers. So as we cleaned up municipal water, uh, when we went ahead [00:31:40] and, and started putting chlorine in, in swimming pools, we eliminated polio [00:31:45] overnight. [00:31:46] Dr. Zach Bush: Because the kids were all getting polio in the summertimes in swimming holes in post-World War II [00:31:50] era. We didn't have a polio epidemic until we did urban dwellings and, you know, urban [00:31:55] centers in that post-World War II era. Then we created an epidemic, and then we said that we f- fixed it by the [00:32:00] polio vaccine. [00:32:00] Dr. Zach Bush: But really what we did is we went and cleaned up the water system so the kids stopped getting polio [00:32:05] in the, in the water holes in the summertime. Um, but at any rate, we have a lot of this, like, subterfuge of, like, [00:32:10] environmental things happen, and then we get disease, and then we change environmental things, and people get healthy. [00:32:14] Dr. Zach Bush: And instead of [00:32:15] recognizing that environmental effect, we instead are looking for, well, what did we do to the [00:32:20] human? What did we do, right? What did we do- Right ... that caused any of that? And, and, and so we have this [00:32:25] long problem of seeing human disease as a human problem instead of an expression of the relationship of [00:32:30] that organism back to its ecosystem. [00:32:32] Dr. Zach Bush: And that's where we're now at with genetics, [00:32:35] is realizing, oh my God, to be human is to be the most complex ecosystem on the planet. [00:32:40] Our species actually holds more microbial diversity than any other species on the planet. [00:32:45] Therefore, we produce more energy per cubic centimeter. Therefore, we produce more intelligence 'cause we have more data [00:32:50] inputs into our brain than any other species- Hmm [00:32:52] Dr. Zach Bush: on the planet. And so the data inputs that are [00:32:55] necessary to, for intelligence to occur actually occur in the gut lining. So when we talk about [00:33:00] the microbiome, this isn't just, like, soil to feed you. This is the soil that's making you think. [00:33:05] Your ideas are literally coming as an amalgamation or a co-creation [00:33:10] from the diversity within you. [00:33:12] Dr. Zach Bush: And as you decrease the diversity inside of an intelligence, their [00:33:15] creative juices go down. [00:33:16] Dr. Taz: Hmm. Interesting. [00:33:17] Dr. Zach Bush: A single course of antibiotics for a human will [00:33:20] take you into a 17% increase in major depression. Two courses of antibiotics in 12 months, [00:33:25] 44% increase in major depression. [00:33:26] Dr. Taz: Wow. [00:33:27] Dr. Zach Bush: 80s, 57. We don't talk about this- [00:33:29] Dr. Taz: Yeah [00:33:29] Dr. Zach Bush: at all. No, we don't talk about it. No. [00:33:30] And so your neurologic intelligence, behavior, adaptation, capacity for [00:33:35] creative thought relies on the ecosystem within you. And as we start to [00:33:40] imbue our entire food system by the 1970s with these chemicals that are potent antibiotics, [00:33:45] we started to undermine soil health globally, which undermined plant health globally, and then the plants were carrying the [00:33:50] residues of the antibiotics. [00:33:51] Dr. Zach Bush: We would eat those, and our mitochondria started disappearing by the 1980s. [00:33:55] [00:33:55] Dr. Taz: So did we get dumber? [00:33:56] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah. [00:33:57] Dr. Taz: We did. [00:33:58] Dr. Zach Bush: For [00:33:59] Dr. Taz: sure. [00:33:59] Dr. Zach Bush: From [00:34:00] the 1970s on. From the [00:34:01] Dr. Taz: 1800s on. From the 1800s on. [00:34:01] Dr. Zach Bush: A, a good way to do this, I think you can probably find it still on if you Google [00:34:05] this, but if you look up eighth grade education or eighth grade final [00:34:10] exam 1880 There's no college kid coming out [00:34:15] of college today that could pass that test. [00:34:17] Dr. Taz: Really? [00:34:17] Dr. Zach Bush: The complexity of the [00:34:20] philosophy, language skills, mathematic skills that were an eighth grade education in [00:34:25] the 1880s does not, is not taught in our schools anymore. [00:34:27] Dr. Taz: We're, we're thinking we're so ahead and [00:34:30] savvy and all these other things. So going back to health for just a second, I, I wanna see if I have this right.[00:34:35] [00:34:35] Dr. Taz: Sounds like we've gone from an environment of infection and [00:34:40] disease to then one of a metabolic crisis, which is all the [00:34:45] cardiac stuff, weight gain, obesity- Mm-hmm ... all of that stuff. Now I [00:34:50] feel like we're transitioning to one of mental health and [00:34:55] cognitive- Yeah ... decline. Would you tie that entire spectrum- [00:34:59] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah[00:35:00] [00:35:00] Dr. Taz: infection, inflammation, cardiometabolic- Yep ... weight, [00:35:05] now to this cogniti- global co- cognitive decline, right? In our children- Mm ... we're seeing sensory [00:35:10] processing disorder, ADD, ADHD, autism. In, you know, the [00:35:15] population in between, we have anxiety and depression, we have dementia of all [00:35:20] kinds. We have ... You know, we have a problem cognitively that people are struggling to find [00:35:25] solutions to. [00:35:26] Dr. Taz: We blame technology, we blame family units, we blame so many different [00:35:30] things. Is it really just all back to the microbiome? [00:35:33] Dr. Zach Bush: It's one graph. I can show you the [00:35:35] entire last 50 years of human disease in a single graph. So if we have a, a vertical axis [00:35:40] on the graph of metabolism, which means light energy per cubic centimeter produced by mitochondria. [00:35:44] Dr. Taz: [00:35:45] Right. [00:35:45] Dr. Zach Bush: And then along the lower one, we have years from 1976 to 2025 here. [00:35:50] During that, what is that? You got 50-year [00:35:55] process there. [00:35:55] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:35:56] Dr. Zach Bush: Mm-hmm. In those 50 years, uh, we started in [00:36:00] 1976 with widespread use of glyphosate in the form of Roundup, and we were using Roundup in our [00:36:05] farms and within a couple years in our backyards and in our driveways as a weed killer.[00:36:10] [00:36:10] Dr. Zach Bush: And so the famous Roundup molecule that you now find in any hardware store in the [00:36:15] world, uh, you'll go ... And, and probably every garage in the world- [00:36:18] Dr. Taz: Yep. Yep ... [00:36:18] Dr. Zach Bush: uh, has got a bottle of [00:36:20] Roundup. And that Roundup has an active ingredient called glyphosate. So glyphosate starts [00:36:25] entering our water system and our food system in the 1970s. [00:36:28] Dr. Zach Bush: By 1981, the first [00:36:30] tip down, the first r- symptom of a declining metabolism globally is obesity. [00:36:34] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:36:34] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:36:35] Obesity is a phenomenon where you have the same number of calories, but you can no longer burn the calories 'cause there's fewer [00:36:40] mitochondria per cubic centimeter to t- turn that back into light energy. And so with that [00:36:45] inability to convert to light energy, this, the human cell is like, "Oh, there's too much fuel sitting [00:36:50] here. [00:36:50] Dr. Zach Bush: We're gonna have to send that back to the liver." And so instead of burning it in the cells, the [00:36:55] cells are sending the energy back to the liver, unable to use it 'cause the mitochondria are the bi- bottleneck of [00:37:00] energy production or conversion from CO2 or, uh, or from [00:37:05] long-chain carbon back into CO2. And so obesity s- happens. [00:37:08] Dr. Zach Bush: As we start to store fat in the [00:37:10] liver, the very first biologic consequence in the endocrine world is an increase [00:37:15] in insulin resistance- Yep ... which is a decrease of function of insulin to move those [00:37:20] carbohydrates into the cell. So now you got a double hit. Not only do you not have enough [00:37:25] mitochondria to get the glucose into light, you don't have enough insulin function to get the glucose to the [00:37:30] mitochondria. [00:37:30] Dr. Zach Bush: So the mitochondria are now starving And the human is overwhelmed with sugar [00:37:35] and, and calories because they can't get it to the mitochondria. So by the late 18, uh, [00:37:40] 1980s, we've got a diabetes epidemic coming on. Mm. [00:37:42] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:37:43] Dr. Zach Bush: As the light energy declines in [00:37:45] human biology, the first system to really start to dysfunction is the most energetically demanding, [00:37:50] which is the immune system. [00:37:51] Dr. Zach Bush: The immune system in any organism's always the most demanding [00:37:55] energetically because like I mentioned earlier about cities, the more organisms you have in close [00:38:00] relationship, the more energy you demand to maintain healthy relationships. And so you need [00:38:05] stoplights and you need things, and like there's so much- Right [00:38:07] Dr. Zach Bush: communication- Right ... intercommunication necessary. The [00:38:10] immune system is not a battleground. The immune system is an arbiter of, of complex relationships between [00:38:15] tens of thousands of species. So as the immune system starts to lose its metabolic energy, you start to [00:38:20] misbehave and you start to become reactive. [00:38:22] Dr. Zach Bush: When you don't have enough energy for maintaining healthy [00:38:25] relationship, you get inflammatory. [00:38:26] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:38:27] Dr. Zach Bush: This happens in human relationship, politics- [00:38:29] Dr. Taz: [00:38:30] Everything ... [00:38:30] Dr. Zach Bush: the crossing. Right. Less energy, more inflammatory. Your rhetoric gets more inflammatory. You have a [00:38:35] short fuse. You get angry easy. All your coping mechanisms are shutting down. [00:38:38] Dr. Zach Bush: So that's what's happening in an [00:38:40] immune system as the energy ... So by the early 1990s, allergies started hitting you. [00:38:44] Dr. Taz: [00:38:45] Mm-hmm. [00:38:45] Dr. Zach Bush: So suddenly the immune system is reacting to stuff it's never reacted to before. Gluten [00:38:50] sensitivity really came- Yep ... online in 1992. Mm-hmm. And so in 1991, we started using [00:38:55] Roundup to dry crops. [00:38:57] Dr. Zach Bush: Not just weed killer, we started spraying wheat directly in [00:39:00] 1991 By 1993, we have widespread global- Wow ... gluten sensitivity- Yeah ... [00:39:05] which is actually glyphosate poisoning. [00:39:06] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:39:07] Dr. Zach Bush: Because suddenly we were spraying the wheat days before [00:39:10] harvest with a chemical that would be at very high, you know, logarithms higher residues than [00:39:15] if you had just sprayed the weeds near the crop. [00:39:16] Dr. Taz: Right. [00:39:17] Dr. Zach Bush: And so now we have direct crop treatment by the [00:39:20] early 1990s with, with Roundup-like c- compounds. And so with that [00:39:25] advent, we started to see huge, deep i- injuries in the, uh, immune system, which would by the [00:39:30] mid-1990s rear its head as autoimmune disease. Right. Now you're not reacting to the weed outside your body, [00:39:35] you're reacting to your own body. [00:39:37] Dr. Zach Bush: By 2000, one in four girls in the [00:39:40] United States has a- autoantibodies to her own thyroid gland. Yeah. And so [00:39:45] we are, you know, systematically destroying our own organ system by 2000 with our own [00:39:50] immune system due to the confusion of this lack of coherent communication. In the [00:39:55] meantime, the second most, uh, neurologically, or the second most energetically intense system [00:40:00] behind the immune system is the neurology. [00:40:02] Dr. Zach Bush: And so here's the rearing of, [00:40:05] uh, right in the late 1990s, uh, autism goes through the roof. Mm-hmm. [00:40:10] Alzheimer's in women, Parkinson's in men, uh, attention deficit disorder, [00:40:15] mood disorders, uh, major depression, anxiety disorders at rates never seen before. [00:40:20] As the neurologic toxicity continued to climb by the early 2000s, we see the emergence of chronic pain [00:40:25] syndromes, chronic fatigue syndromes, and the rest. [00:40:28] Dr. Zach Bush: And so this is a continued decrement [00:40:30] in the amount of energy available per cubic centimeter for a human to do its work, and it's very [00:40:35] predictable. We should have seen this coming a long time ago. By 2006, we've got [00:40:40] 95% of corn globally being grown as genetically modified Roundup ready crop, and so now we're in the billions [00:40:45] of pounds per year being used globally. [00:40:47] Dr. Zach Bush: And at that point, we see such a decrement in, in [00:40:50] mitochondrial function that we start to see the cancer epidemic rear its head. And so we see [00:40:55] leukemias, lymphomas, liver cancer, bladder cancer, thyroid cancer, uh, breast cancer, prostate cancer all [00:41:00] going through the roof in the 2000s. [00:41:02] Dr. Taz: It's all connected. [00:41:03] Dr. Zach Bush: It's all the same equation.[00:41:05] [00:41:05] Dr. Zach Bush: And so as, as we see the cancer thing come and go, by 2010, we have [00:41:10] such high residues now that the mitochondria inside the egg of a woman can no longer [00:41:15] achieve conception the mitochondria inside the sperm of the male [00:41:20] can no longer have enough energy to swim upstream to find the egg. And so we have a massive explosion [00:41:25] of infertility by 2010 globally. [00:41:26] Dr. Zach Bush: Which [00:41:27] Dr. Taz: we're seeing actively [00:41:28] Dr. Zach Bush: day and day out. It's getting worse by the day. [00:41:29] Dr. Taz: Yeah. [00:41:30] Mm-hmm. [00:41:30] Dr. Zach Bush: By the late 2000s, I was an endocrinologist at the time working in fertility clinics. We [00:41:35] were suddenly seeing this explosion of infertility and we w- and IVF became a sudden normal. [00:41:40] Standard of care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so by 2010, 2012, standard of care in the United States.[00:41:45] [00:41:45] Dr. Zach Bush: Every year since then, we've seen this declining success of IVF, [00:41:50] and so now women are going for four or five in vitro fertilization- Mm-hmm ... attempts before they [00:41:55] can get pregnant. And so the reason is, is because even if you've now taken in a test tube and [00:42:00] made those sperm and egg find each other, you still can't solve for the problem of [00:42:05] conception. [00:42:06] Dr. Zach Bush: Conception of a human is the most beautiful, brightest thing that [00:42:10] happens in the universe, and I can't overemphasize the, the magnitude of the scientific reality [00:42:15] I, so far I've been describing to you the decline in [00:42:20] mitochondrial- Right ... function or metabolism in humans. Right. And that's based on each human cell having about 200 mitochondria in it.[00:42:25] [00:42:26] Dr. Zach Bush: Think back to your biology textbooks. How many mitochondria did they tell us was in a cell? [00:42:30] Two usually. Right. There's, like, two little mitochondria floating in there. Like, and they could do a cross-section of one of them so you [00:42:35] could see it was a double-walled- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... bacteria. There's 200 mitochondria inside of every human [00:42:40] cell, unless it's a neuron, then there's 2,000 mitochondria in the head of every neuron. [00:42:44] Dr. Zach Bush: And so [00:42:45] it takes so much energy for a cell to do its work, and it's crammed full of these bacteria that [00:42:50] are reproducing independent of the human cell. And so the b- bacteria in a [00:42:55] thriving organic system of a human body, you've got 200 mitochondria per human cell, 2,000 in a neuron, [00:43:00] and then the egg comes along. [00:43:02] Dr. Zach Bush: Right. And the egg of a woman [00:43:05] has half a million mitochondria in it. [00:43:07] Dr. Taz: Wow. [00:43:08] Dr. Zach Bush: The egg of a woman- You are [00:43:10] powerful ... has half a million generators of sunlight, and at the [00:43:15] moment of conception, they discharge light. So this is called the zinc flash, and it [00:43:20] blinds the microscope, but you can find it on Google. [00:43:22] Dr. Zach Bush: Google this, "zinc flash conception," and you'll [00:43:25] watch a video of this lightning bolt that comes out of the egg at the moment of conception. [00:43:30] It's that lightning bolt that I believe entangles a soul to a cell. [00:43:34] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:43:34] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:43:35] And you have to have this huge light event to get the physics to bind an [00:43:40] identity to the cell. [00:43:41] Dr. Zach Bush: And this is something that modern science ignores [00:43:45] completely- Right ... is that each body has its own identity, which is very annoying 'cause the biology is the same. [00:43:50] [00:43:50] Dr. Taz: Right. [00:43:50] Dr. Zach Bush: My DNA is the same as your DNA. How the hell do I know at every single [00:43:55] cell level that I am different than you? And if I put any of my cells inside your body, you'll kill it immediately 'cause you [00:44:00] see it as foreign. [00:44:01] Dr. Zach Bush: What's creating the identity of the freaking cell is this [00:44:05] deep secret, and I believe it's not in the biology, it's in the physics. At the moment of [00:44:10] conception, this massive discharge of light allows a soul to entangle. And so [00:44:15] when we start to see these deep, deep disorders of fertility, which are now driving us to a point of [00:44:20] extinction, uh, and not just in the United States. [00:44:22] Dr. Zach Bush: You know, I've been in- Globally ... Saudi a lot recently. Right. Yeah. And Saudi [00:44:25] Arabia is now publishing its own data at 68% infertility rates. [00:44:28] Dr. Taz: Wow. [00:44:29] Dr. Zach Bush: And so- [00:44:30] 68%? 68%. [00:44:32] Dr. Taz: Ugh. [00:44:32] Dr. Zach Bush: And so we are reaching this threshold of [00:44:35] inability to produce babies globally, China to Saudi to US. US's [00:44:40] population, um ... So if you go below a birth rate of 2.1, then [00:44:45] you're destined to disappear as a population. [00:44:46] Dr. Zach Bush: Hmm. United States is at 1.6 right now. A- and every [00:44:50] tenth of a point, you, you're taking off decades of survival, uh, for the species. And so at [00:44:55] 1.6, US population is gone in 100 years, you know? So we've got this very [00:45:00] rapid declination in human reproductive because the light energy per cubic centimeter in the [00:45:05] egg of a woman is starting to be challenged by the amount of chemical that egg is exposed to on a daily [00:45:10] basis. [00:45:10] Dr. Zach Bush: And meanwhile, nobody's talking about it and everybody's complaining about 0.04% of our [00:45:15] atmosphere being CO2. This is the problem with politicizing science, is we will spend [00:45:20] half a century going down the wrong avenue- Hmm ... for solutions that are irrelevant to the biologic [00:45:25] outcome of humans or the planet while we go extinct. [00:45:27] Dr. Taz: So we have this massive [00:45:30] global infertility crisis. Is that the bottom- [00:45:33] Dr. Zach Bush: Mm-hmm ... [00:45:33] Dr. Taz: of this decline that we're talking [00:45:35] about with human health? [00:45:36] Dr. Zach Bush: Unfortunately, it's not, and we've seen, you know, a phenomena that we [00:45:40] could not have imagined, but was actually prophesied by a lot of indigenous cultures over time, [00:45:45] was that we would actually see the dissolution of gender, and that's the next metabolic step- [00:45:50] Really? [00:45:50] Dr. Zach Bush: below infertility. And so- It was [00:45:51] Dr. Taz: predicted? [00:45:52] Dr. Zach Bush: Yes, very much so. And so there's an [00:45:55] understanding that the masculine and feminine would lose its polarity, and therefore we would [00:46:00] start a new human species at that point, you know? And so we would rebirth out of the [00:46:05] dissolution of this polarity by finding our way to this crisis point. [00:46:09] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:46:10] And so we have found our way to that crisis point. And so by 2010, uh, the [00:46:15] fetus, uh, and, you know, even adults at the time, but playing out in the fetus in [00:46:20] s- ways we haven't even seen fully come to fruition yet. Uh, the process [00:46:25] of moving from neutral, which is where every fetus begins- Right ... to a masculine or [00:46:30] feminine expression of male/female, uh, requires enormous amount of energy, because you're [00:46:35] taking a- an organism that's at this nice neutral, every cell's the same, everything's predictable, to [00:46:40] suddenly trying to de-polar- to polarize it in one direction or another into a masculine or feminine expression.[00:46:45] [00:46:46] Dr. Zach Bush: And if there's not enough energy per cell at that time, you can see this [00:46:50] failure to completely gender, and that plays out in the nuclei of the brain more than [00:46:55] anyone else- Hmm ... because there's so much energy required at the neurologic system, 10 times more than a peripheral [00:47:00] cell that might be, you know, the cell of a breast or the cell of, you know, a prostate or [00:47:05] whatever s- future tissue is gonna be male, female. [00:47:07] Dr. Zach Bush: The, the neurons are requiring [00:47:10] enormous amount of energy to, to distribute energy to grow certain neurons [00:47:15] large if it's gonna be a male, certain neurons large if it's gonna be female. And it's, I think, that neural [00:47:20] differentiation where we start to see this emergence of gender neutrality. And so this- [00:47:25] Situation that we're in where our, we've got two generations of people now that [00:47:30] are not- Clear [00:47:30] Dr. Zach Bush: are largely not identifying- Right ... as either or. We keep thinking that's a [00:47:35] social crisis, and there's certainly social overlays and social program that can be a [00:47:40] way in which to interpret this, but we actually have a biologic problem- It's been always biological ... not a social problem. [00:47:45] And so the biology deteriorated by 2005, 2010 such that it was a high level [00:47:50] of the, the fetuses developing weren't able to gender fully. [00:47:54] Dr. Zach Bush: And so then we end up with [00:47:55] this kind of neutral state of behavioral traits where the person in the brain is being [00:48:00] told, "This is how a male functions and feels the world." And they're like, "Well, I look biologically male, but I'm not [00:48:05] feeling- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... I'm not neurologically interpreting the world as male.[00:48:10] [00:48:10] Dr. Zach Bush: I'm looking at women and I understand- Right ... the female there and I vibrate in that frequency. I must be [00:48:15] a female The reality is a lot of people will do sex changes and everything else, [00:48:20] which is... I oversaw a lot of that as, as an endocrinologist. All the, every sex change, you know, in [00:48:25] trans community is dependent on the endocrinologist to provide the hormones and do all that stuff to, [00:48:30] to make the transition. [00:48:31] Dr. Zach Bush: But what I saw over and over again there, and what we see playing out, I think, socially, [00:48:35] globally, is you can make the sex change, but it doesn't actually change your neurology. And [00:48:40] so, uh- Which is why we still see the issues ... in the end, you find that you're still in some sort of neutral state. Yeah. Yeah. [00:48:44] Dr. Zach Bush: You may have [00:48:45] changed your outward appearance, but your biology is, is still in this lovely neutral [00:48:50] space in some ways. And so I don't think we need to w- change anything [00:48:55] necessarily biologically. We need to acknowledge what's happened biologically, and [00:49:00] then acknowledge that we could move past this by increasing the metabolic potential of each organism on the [00:49:05] planet again, starting with the plants that we grow, which becomes the food we eat, which becomes the [00:49:10] neurons we, we create with. [00:49:11] Dr. Zach Bush: And so this, this meeting at the center [00:49:15] point of the masculine and feminine is a necessary part of our journey, which I find quite [00:49:20] fascinating. If we were going to survive, we were gonna have to end this male [00:49:25] dominant, you know- Right ... control the nature thing. You know, control one another, own everything, [00:49:30] because everything's scarcity. [00:49:31] Dr. Zach Bush: We got kicked out of nature, therefore we need to control nature. That whole wounded [00:49:35] masculine psyche that comes out of every human, male or female. The wounded masculine within us [00:49:40] believes we got kicked out of nature, so we run around with this literal abandonment disorder. [00:49:45] And we now know biologically and chemically that if you create an abandonment disorder [00:49:50] in any organism, a mouse in the cage or a human, that abandonment sets that [00:49:55] organism up for severe addiction. [00:49:58] Dr. Zach Bush: And so humans are addicted to everything [00:50:00] right now, not because we're dumb, but because we have an abandonment disorder. Mm. And our [00:50:05] abandonment disorder is from nature itself. And so we even created our religious paradigms. You know, the Garden of Eden, [00:50:10] then we got kicked out 'cause we weren't good enough or we sinned or somehow we weren't gonna fit the- [00:50:15] Right [00:50:15] Dr. Zach Bush: make the, make the mark. So at the moment you get kicked out of nature, now you're against it, and now [00:50:20] you come at it with this, you know, kind of adversarial effect, and you're prone to major [00:50:25] addiction to something. And so we're all addicted to our work or to substances or whatever it is. Uh, [00:50:30] and for this, we're missing the bigger point of we only have one human problem, [00:50:35] is nature deficit disorder. [00:50:36] Dr. Taz: Mm. [00:50:37] Dr. Zach Bush: And that nature deficit disorder has led to this decline in [00:50:40] metabolic function because we kept separating ourselves with our technologies from nature itself, and [00:50:45] ultimately from the concentration of light energy So the path forward is exciting. We created the path [00:50:50] down, and now we know [00:50:52] Dr. Taz: the path out. [00:50:52] Dr. Taz: Well, let's talk about the path out, because I think for anyone [00:50:55] w- you know, watching or listening, it's a little heavy. It's a very different way of [00:51:00] thinking about health and human disease. It's a very different way of thinking about our existence. I [00:51:05] have long thought that the gender issue is biochemical in nature, and that's [00:51:10] really where it's beginning. [00:51:12] Dr. Taz: How do we, if it's the mitochondria [00:51:15] not getting the energy it needs, how do we help our own mitochondria, the [00:51:20] mitochondria of the planet? H- what do we do? What are our starting steps? Mm. Where do we begin as the individual, [00:51:25] and then as a family, and then as a community? What, what do we need to do? [00:51:30] [00:51:31] Dr. Zach Bush: The solution came to me actually at the same [00:51:35] time the problem surfaced. [00:51:36] Dr. Zach Bush: So I left the university in 2010 and started my own [00:51:40] clinic, which led to my own laboratory. And by 2012, we were starting to study [00:51:45] soil because we were recognizing the nutrition that we were feeding in our, our nutrition center wasn't [00:51:50] working like the data said it should. And so I was basing my clinical practices of a plant-based [00:51:55] diet, uh, on the data that had come out for 30 years from Cornell and Cleveland Clinic, and [00:52:00] these huge, you know, academic centers that created an incredible amount of data around the use of plant-based [00:52:05] diet to reverse diabetes, reverse cardiovascular disease, reverse cancer. [00:52:08] Dr. Zach Bush: And so I was applying all of that [00:52:10] science, and it just wasn't getting traction in, in a significant portion of my patients as, [00:52:15] as it should. So that got me starting to study plant nutrient density, [00:52:20] which quickly got us into soil sciences. And, uh, there we uncovered a beautiful [00:52:25] fact, which is something that I hold as really a tenet of nature now, which is [00:52:30] she has never allowed an injury to occur that she didn't already have a solution for. [00:52:33] Dr. Zach Bush: Hmm. [00:52:35] It's impossible. Because had there not been a solution for adversity, life would have never [00:52:40] happened. This is an adverse friction-filled universe. So [00:52:43] Dr. Taz: there's hope. [00:52:44] Dr. Zach Bush: And so there's [00:52:45] not only hope, there is a 100% reality that nature is going to [00:52:50] engineer herself out of this crisis. Now the only question is, do we want [00:52:55] to stay in play as humans? [00:52:56] Dr. Zach Bush: And if so, we just need to quickly align ourselves with [00:53:00] her predictable metabolic recovery process. And a metabolic recovery [00:53:05] process l- is achieved by the increasing the number of interconnected relationships [00:53:10] in nature. And so we've got to take ourselves out of these sterile boxes of houses, and [00:53:15] we need to get our children out in rivers and lakes that are not chemically poisoned, and we need to [00:53:20] start building our food system on soils that are regenerative, that are imbued with these [00:53:25] relationships across the microbiome from bacteria to fungi and the rest. [00:53:29] Dr. Zach Bush: And [00:53:30] so we found that solution. We were able to show by 2013 in my lab, we were able to show that we could [00:53:35] completely reverse glyphosate damage at the cellular and metabolic level by reintroducing soil [00:53:40] extracts from fossil soils. [00:53:41] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:53:42] Dr. Zach Bush: And so that would become the, the dietary supplement line [00:53:45] called ION or Intelligence of Nature. [00:53:47] Dr. Zach Bush: Which I love. [00:53:47] Dr. Taz: Yes. [00:53:47] Dr. Zach Bush: And so what we can show is that [00:53:50] a, a tiny amount of glyphosate, so the residues that would be in this cup of tea that I'm drinking right [00:53:55] now, they're somewhere between... We're in Atlanta, so you're probably [00:54:00] Somewhere around 10 to 15 parts per billion, uh, are, is glyphosate in [00:54:05] this cup. And so with that, my cellular biology is diminished in its [00:54:10] mitochondrial potential. [00:54:11] Dr. Zach Bush: But just half an hour before getting here, as I was leaving the hotel, I [00:54:15] sprayed a bunch of ION in my mouth, and the m- and that soil extract is [00:54:20] accelerating the light energy produced by my mitochondria at such a rate that that little bit of my- [00:54:25] glyphosate no longer does any damage. In fact, it actually makes me stronger. [00:54:28] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [00:54:29] Dr. Zach Bush: And this is where you [00:54:30] know you're getting back into a biologic threshold of regeneration when injury actually stimulates [00:54:35] repair to a point of strength rather than weakness. And so this is what we should see. This is why you go to [00:54:40] the gym. You go to the gym, you destroy millions of muscle cells by stressing it under the weight of [00:54:45] something. [00:54:45] Dr. Zach Bush: You go run down those flight of stairs, you cause thousands or if not millions of tiny [00:54:50] little fractures in the bone from that weight-bearing pounding exercise Both [00:54:55] the gym and the bones after the run down the stairs start to regenerate and start to rebuild such [00:55:00] that your bone has higher density at the end of the day than before you ran down the stairs, and you have more muscle at the end of the week [00:55:05] than you did at the beginning of the week because you stressed the cells. [00:55:08] Dr. Zach Bush: So stress, when it's used in the [00:55:10] threshold of biologic response, is always a good thing. So we can get the glyphosate in our [00:55:15] environment actually to act as exercise for our future biology if we have enough [00:55:20] information and enough resources, carbon resources from the soil. And so that's what we're showing with ION is [00:55:25] within seconds of that ion touching the cell membrane, the cell immediately [00:55:30] remakes the tight junctions that are damaged by glyphosate. [00:55:33] Dr. Zach Bush: Tight junctions are the Velcro [00:55:35] between- Mm-hmm ... our cells. When you damage those, you get leaky gut, leaky brain. And so when you put the [00:55:40] communication network and resources back to the human cell, it [00:55:45] automatically does what it needs to do, which is to recreate healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries are then [00:55:50] followed by increased metabolism at the cellular level. [00:55:52] Dr. Zach Bush: And so within minutes of taking in these [00:55:55] soil extracts, you see your body's ATP production going through the roof, not only back to normal, [00:56:00] but actually higher than it was before the injury. And so in a beautiful way, nature has provided [00:56:05] not only the solution for the repair, it's r- it's giving us a, an [00:56:10] opportunity to move past any biologic potential we've lived before. [00:56:13] Dr. Zach Bush: We will come out of the glyphosate [00:56:15] era stronger than we've ever been if we put enough nature back between us and the glyphosate. [00:56:20] [00:56:20] Dr. Taz: So what can ... So I love ION biome, and we use it all the time in practice. We use it here [00:56:25] in the house. It's probably sitting on the table somewhere out there. And we have noticed that incr- I [00:56:30] mean, you can notice the- You feel the better energy [00:56:31] Dr. Taz: instant increase in energy. But are there other [00:56:35] ways to do that as well? Yeah. Like, just from a, you know, individual standpoint. I mean, I [00:56:40] know food quality, all these other things make a difference, but like, what are [00:56:45] i- if ION biome or soil extracts are one, what are maybe two other super efficient [00:56:50] ways to regenerate energy, to improve sort of the ATP, the light [00:56:55] energy, chi, all these things- Yeah [00:56:56] Dr. Taz: all these different things and ways we have of describing it? [00:56:59] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:57:00] So the first step, what we saw, and by 2013 when we started getting these products on the market, is that this was gonna have to be a [00:57:05] Band-Aid, 'cause there's not enough of this fossil soil extract to actually k- let us keep doing what we're doing to- Mm [00:57:09] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:57:10] right now we've killed 97% of the Earth's soils through chemical agriculture. If we keep [00:57:15] doing that, we will run out of the, the antidote. Right. Um, and so we, we need this soil of today to become the [00:57:20] soil of yesterday. We need to start generating such potent soils that every bite of food and every drink of [00:57:25] water is carrying these molecules in it again. [00:57:27] Dr. Zach Bush: These molecules are made by diverse ecosystems, so [00:57:30] diverse species, d- diversity within the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and the like are [00:57:35] creating these millions and millions of different variants of these little carbon molecules that function as the liquid [00:57:40] circuit board for communication. Redox chemistry is the s- technical name for that. [00:57:44] Dr. Zach Bush: And so [00:57:45] that liquid circuit board is being created by diverse ecosystems. And so with, w- we hope we [00:57:50] put our entire supplement line and the entire supplement industry out of business over the next 30 years [00:57:55] because the concept of dietary supplementation is ludicrous. Like, nature's been feeding itself for [00:58:00] billions of years- Mm-hmm [00:58:00] Dr. Zach Bush: on this planet. It wasn't waiting for humans to come along- Right ... to supplement nutrition. We [00:58:05] needed the supplement industry to come along when we completely denuded our food system of [00:58:10] nutrients. And so right now, the entire, you know, f- f- $500 billion [00:58:15] supplement industry is a Band-Aid on top of a dying food system. [00:58:18] Dr. Zach Bush: So by 2018, [00:58:20] we realized we gotta do something about this 'cause farm fields all over the place, organic or otherwise, weren't performing at the [00:58:25] levels that were gonna recover this metabolic crisis that we've just described. So we launched a [00:58:30] nonprofit called Project Biome, and the concept of Project Biome is rewilding nature [00:58:35] systems to increase the number of communication networks and number of relationships in nature. [00:58:39] Dr. Zach Bush: And [00:58:40] then regenerative agriculture as a system for allowing soil systems to return to this level of [00:58:45] intelligence and, and opportunity for repair. And then reconnected economies, when we start to [00:58:50] allow bioregional e- economies to, to surge again. Bioregional [00:58:55] economy is a description of your wellness financially should depend on how healthy is your [00:59:00] ecosystem- Mm-hmm [00:59:00] Dr. Zach Bush: lo- locally. [00:59:01] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [00:59:01] Dr. Zach Bush: Therefore, you should be eating from your system locally. You should be actually [00:59:05] stimulating industry locally, and we know this. We see signs up at every retail stop. Right. "Hey, [00:59:10] shop local." [00:59:10] Dr. Taz: Local. Yep. [00:59:11] Dr. Zach Bush: Don't give it all to the, you know, the five people that own all the stock of- Yeah [00:59:14] Dr. Zach Bush: [00:59:15] Starbucks or whatever it is. Right. You know, so that eat local mindset is a symptom of this deep [00:59:20] knowingness that if we would return to the village, if we would re- return to village dynamics of [00:59:25] macroeconomics, we would have a very stable economy again. And so we don't necessarily [00:59:30] have to go backwards in time. [00:59:31] Dr. Zach Bush: We need to go forwards in time to a new village model where we [00:59:35] understand that human biology and our meta- metabolism is equal to the soil metabolism. It's equal to [00:59:40] water metabolism, and now we need to start benchmarking our local economies against the success [00:59:45] of our local environments. And then we can play those off of each, each other. [00:59:49] Dr. Zach Bush: You know, [00:59:50] one biosphere within the middle of the United States should actually have overlap and interaction with the biosphere [00:59:55] economics of those around it, and pretty soon, North America, uh, with Mexico, US, and Canada is [01:00:00] not three countries, but it's 15 biospheres that are communicating economically and energetically [01:00:05] to raise the vibration so that children can be a possibility again. [01:00:07] Dr. Taz: Mm. [01:00:08] Dr. Zach Bush: So that gender can be a possibility [01:00:10] again. And so this is where I think I get excited is it's pretty simple. It's, it's [01:00:15] rewilding, increasing the number of indigenous species in an e- environment. It's regenerative agriculture where we [01:00:20] stop chemically destroying the ecosystem, allow, uh, complex biodiversity to return, and [01:00:25] then a reconnected economy that honors that recovery system. [01:00:28] Dr. Zach Bush: And so that's what we started in 2018, and we realized that it was[01:00:30] [01:00:32] Dr. Zach Bush: too complex to re- like reach each [01:00:35] household with that message. Right. So we started Farmer's Footprint. [01:00:37] Dr. Taz: Okay. [01:00:37] Dr. Zach Bush: And Farmer's Footprint is our outward [01:00:40] effort with Project Biome, 'cause Project Biome was mostly working with governments and industry to like really align those [01:00:45] issues. But every household can do Farmer's Footprint, and so Farmer's Footprint is this w- wonderful, [01:00:50] uh, Japanese proverb that we pulled this from. [01:00:52] Dr. Zach Bush: But the proverb is, "The best s- [01:00:55] fertilizer for a garden is the farmer's footprint." [01:00:56] Dr. Taz: Mm. [01:00:57] Dr. Zach Bush: And it was the realization that if every household [01:01:00] will get their shoes off and start walking in nature again, specifically in their [01:01:05] backyards or on their porch or in their community gardens, and start to be directly interacting with [01:01:10] soil, their health will immediately recover. [01:01:12] Dr. Zach Bush: And so my clinic- [01:01:13] Dr. Taz: Just interacting with them. [01:01:14] Dr. Zach Bush: Just [01:01:15] interacting with nature. Not [01:01:15] Dr. Taz: like planting things or doing [01:01:17] Dr. Zach Bush: things or- That's exactly what you would love to do is- You know, but ... start and go [01:01:20] moving from walking in the garden to planting the garden. And s- in 1945, we [01:01:25] had a very high level of health. We'd gone to an average age expectancy of, you know, [01:01:30] 70, 72 or something like that. [01:01:30] Dr. Zach Bush: And so we had this great recovery of life expectancy and everything else by the 1940s. [01:01:35] And at the end of World War II, in 1945, not just the US but the UK and all the [01:01:40] Allied forces, those countries were all growing 45% of their food system in their backyards. [01:01:45] Mm. We called them victory gardens. We understood that victory was only gonna occur if we had [01:01:50] food sovereignty. [01:01:52] Dr. Zach Bush: This is the United States' problem right now is homeland security [01:01:55] has been boiled down to how big can we build defenses and how high can we make the tariffs. [01:01:58] Dr. Taz: Right. [01:01:59] Dr. Zach Bush: That's not [01:02:00] a healthy system. The healthy system would be where is food sustainability in the United [01:02:05] States? And the answer is zero. We have nu- no food sovereignty in this country anymore because we grow an enormous [01:02:10] amount of stuff, corn and soybean everywhere, but that never ends up on a human plate. [01:02:14] Dr. Zach Bush: You [01:02:15] can't actually eat GMO corn or soybean. It's too toxic and it's... Doesn't even taste good. It [01:02:20] doesn't produce food, so we have to turn that into chemicals. So we do high fructose corn syrup, we do ethanol [01:02:25] for gasoline, we do plastics for our, our clothing industry so that everybody can wear plastic [01:02:30] yoga pants. [01:02:30] Dr. Zach Bush: Like, it's just this intr- generative engine of energy, but it doesn't end up as [01:02:35] food. And so for that, the United States is extremely vulnerable, and really every, [01:02:40] every city system in the world is extremely vulnerable to humanitarian [01:02:45] crisis and biologic collapse because our food system supply chains are now measured in thousands of kilometers, [01:02:50] and we're extracting those food systems on slave labor pricing from developing [01:02:55] economies. [01:02:55] Dr. Zach Bush: Mm. Mm-hmm. And so the United States is fed by South America. Uh, Europe is fed by Africa. [01:03:00] Middle East is fed by Africa and, and parts of Asia. And so it's slave [01:03:05] labor for thousands of years to produce food when food is not seen as the foundation [01:03:10] of life. And so we need change, major change in socioeconomic systems that [01:03:15] start in your household. [01:03:16] Dr. Zach Bush: So you can immediately become part of the solution by joining this Farmer's Footprint [01:03:20] movement. If you go to the Farmer's Footprint website, farmersfootprint.us, [01:03:25] uh, and also in, in Australia, um, uh, we've got a big org there as well. [01:03:30] So you plug in and, and we have free content and, and cheap paid content too [01:03:35] that will take you through the 101 of how you turn your backyard, you know, Kentucky bluegrass lawn [01:03:40] into a food forest- Mm [01:03:41] Dr. Zach Bush: to start creating health sovereignty and food sovereignty for your own household. [01:03:45] At the community level, starting to get engaged in community gardening. Um, I'm on the, [01:03:50] on the advisory board for Denver Urban Gardens, which is now really a template for the whole country, and they're [01:03:55] now teaching their systems of, of community garden management to 26 other states now.[01:04:00] [01:04:00] Dr. Zach Bush: Um, but it's a phenomenal example of how urban settings can start to create food sovereignty [01:04:05] within these small pockets. And even a small amount of food grown in your backyard or community garden [01:04:10] has a huge ripple effect into your own biologic health and vitality. [01:04:13] Dr. Taz: Wow. Hmm. [01:04:13] Dr. Zach Bush: And so this is [01:04:15] the grace of nature that it takes such a little bit of her to start to restore your relationship [01:04:20] to her. [01:04:20] Dr. Zach Bush: And so welcoming back a mint plant onto the countertop in your [01:04:25] kitchen or into the windowsill. A single mint is hard to kill. Mints like your magic. If you don't think [01:04:30] you can grow food, go buy a mint plant and find out that you can keep it alive. If you [01:04:35] just take a leaf off of that, even better bite the leaf off without picking it [01:04:40] 'cause there's actually more energy in that way that all of plant- all of animal life around the world grazes [01:04:45] on living food. [01:04:45] Dr. Zach Bush: We're the only animal that goes and picks it and lets it die- Mm-hmm ... and then we eat it. Um, [01:04:50] so a little bite of mint off that plant daily actually retrains your body to [01:04:55] remember what generative food and generative water feels like and tastes like. And so you can start to [01:05:00] retrain your brain, retrain your biology into this direct relationship to nature through just a [01:05:05] single plant growing. [01:05:06] Dr. Zach Bush: Let that be your inspiration. Then if you've got a backyard, tear that thing up next [01:05:10] spring. Get rid of the grass and start planting a whole food forest in your backyard. Hmm. Get the kids out [01:05:15] there. And any kid that doesn't like a vegetable is simply a kid that's never grown a vegetable. You get the kid [01:05:20] planting the seed and suddenly a tomato plant comes out, they're gonna eat the baby tomatoes- Yeah [01:05:22] Dr. Zach Bush: and they're gonna love them. Yeah. And so [01:05:25] the child needs to understand where its food comes from again. Most kids don't know where a carrot comes from today, and a [01:05:30] lot of kids don't actually know what a carrot pulled outta the ground looks like 'cause they've only seen these little things that look like a [01:05:35] baby finger that got melded in the processing as a carrot. [01:05:38] Dr. Zach Bush: So we're so [01:05:40] divorced from nature now that our children are suffering to the bu- metabolic crisis that they're [01:05:45] in. We got to reconnect and so get engaged locally. Community [01:05:50] farmer's markets, I'm really delighted are scr- starting to crop up in every community globally now. [01:05:55] Uh, from Africa to Europe to South Asia. [01:05:57] Dr. Zach Bush: You can find 'em everywhere. And [01:06:00] so that, that's gonna be what the future looks like when our farmers are known, we know their [01:06:05] name. We volunteer in their farms on the weekends so the kids can feel what a big working farm feels like and [01:06:10] what soil smells like when compost is getting into it. And that whole technology- [01:06:15] That's healing in itself [01:06:15] Dr. Zach Bush: is healing. Yeah. It's where the biologic recovery will begin, is this more interconnected [01:06:20] social system of reconnecting nature to humans. [01:06:23] Dr. Taz: And that will heal the [01:06:25] planet? [01:06:25] Dr. Zach Bush: Everything [01:06:26] Dr. Taz: What do you think will happen geopolitically [01:06:30] when it comes to health and when it comes to the planet? [01:06:32] Dr. Zach Bush: Yeah, so there's two different futures that are m- [01:06:35] merging. [01:06:35] Dr. Zach Bush: One is a technocratic future where we re- rely on computer chips [01:06:40] planted in our brains to symptom manage our declining neurology and, you know, [01:06:45] artificial joints, and we're infusing everybody with peptides to symptom management them. Mm-hmm. Peptides will never [01:06:50] heal a human being. Peptides will never create health Uh, a probiotic will [01:06:55] never create a healthy gut. [01:06:56] Dr. Zach Bush: These are, these are symptom management tools that are making billions of [01:07:00] dollars for the pharmaceutical industry. Don't sell yourself short on nature. [01:07:05] Nature intended you to produce your own peptides. [01:07:07] Dr. Taz: Mm-hmm. [01:07:07] Dr. Zach Bush: Don't get stem cells from some other [01:07:10] quantum being. If it's getting stem cells injected into your body from a fetus that's not you, that's [01:07:15] confusing the hell out of your own biology at that point. [01:07:17] Dr. Zach Bush: 'Cause maybe your biology will allow a [01:07:20] stem cell to produce a cell, but if it's quantum entangled with a different soul, I stand on the fact that [01:07:25] that is confusing to a human body- Yeah ... and it's gonna force an inflammatory reaction over time because it's [01:07:30] not self. And so we need to get away from this external pursuit of [01:07:35] health, and we need to become internal generators. [01:07:37] Dr. Zach Bush: And so my eight-week program is called The Journey of [01:07:40] Intrinsic Health because it's really the, my 30 years boiled down to a nutshell of it can [01:07:45] only happen inside of you. [01:07:46] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [01:07:46] Dr. Zach Bush: You're the only pathway to your own health. [01:07:48] Dr. Taz: Wow. [01:07:48] Dr. Zach Bush: There's nobody that can add a single [01:07:50] technology that's actually gonna make you biologically more complete. [01:07:53] Dr. Zach Bush: You are... We're so biologically, [01:07:55] energetically, metabolically complete at the moment of conception that you became you. That [01:08:00] level of intelligence will be thousands of years in the future if we even get scratched. We are [01:08:05] so far from our technology mimicking the intelligence of a single human cell, let [01:08:10] alone the symphony of 70 trillion cells. [01:08:12] Dr. Zach Bush: You can't even cal- There's no technology that's gonna help [01:08:15] you. You need to come in line with the original math that designed you, and to do that, you have to [01:08:20] integrate back into nature in a deep way. [01:08:23] Dr. Taz: Powerful. I don't think we [01:08:25] can end this at any better place. I think it's a message of hope. [01:08:28] Dr. Taz: Unfortunately, we [01:08:30] have walked a journey that has made us sick, made our planet sick as well, but I [01:08:35] think if we can all come together and turn it around, then we can have a different outcome for sure. [01:08:40] It has been an amazing conversation. You always blow my mind every time you come on. Yeah. And probably want [01:08:45] you back for part three just to dive deeper into some of these ideas. [01:08:49] Dr. Taz: But for anybody [01:08:50] watching or listening today, where can they find you? [01:08:53] Dr. Zach Bush: Uh, my main [01:08:55] educational we- website is Zach Bush MD, uh, zachbushmd.com. You can keep an eye out [01:09:00] for my book that's coming out that will encompass a lot of this stuff. So y- it, it takes [01:09:05] iteration and repeating this information in yourself 'cause it's opposite of almost everything you've heard over the last 40 [01:09:10] years. [01:09:10] Dr. Zach Bush: So, so the book is there to really start, give us a, a grounding rod to say, "Okay, let's [01:09:15] begin again- Mm-hmm ... on our understanding of science in areas." So that book is called Human, and it comes out [01:09:20] soon. So, um, you can tie in there and, and start to really think through how you're gonna [01:09:25] rebuild your family unit and- Amazing [01:09:26] Dr. Zach Bush: your community and everything else around this understanding of metabolic force [01:09:30] as our future, or only our future. Uh, intelligenceofnature.com will [01:09:35] find you to the soil supplements and, and help bring all of those resources. There's a gut supplement, an incredible [01:09:40] skin supplement that reverses the, the aging of the skin. [01:09:43] Dr. Zach Bush: Um, both ones functioning [01:09:45] as this kind of, uh, nature antidote to the, the current chemistry of our planet. Uh, [01:09:50] and then there's a whole line of botanicals that are now available for sleep, [01:09:55] for immunity, for, uh, brain focus, and those are nourishing [01:10:00] the mitochondrial and metabolic pathways necessary for those different organ systems to return to [01:10:05] these high metabolic states. [01:10:06] Dr. Zach Bush: So intelligenceofnature.com there. Uh, [01:10:10] journeyofintrinsichealth.com, you can find your way to our coaching program for practitioners. We, we [01:10:15] train doctors, nurses into all of this science, and the, it's be- far beyond the science. There's really [01:10:20] the lifestyle that allows the support of the science to happen, uh, within a single individual. [01:10:24] Dr. Zach Bush: And [01:10:25] so that, that practitioner coaching program is available. It's a four-month training program. Uh, [01:10:30] we're certified coaching, uh, uh, certified by the, the International Coaching Federation around [01:10:35] that. Um, for, uh, consumers, um, out there and [01:10:40] families that need help and support, we have the eight-week program, which is an immersion in [01:10:45] really reintroducing your own biology to yourself, and that's a process of reintroduction of, [01:10:50] of core self, that core identity that knit you together in your mother's womb, and then we reintroduce you to food, [01:10:55] water, breath, fasting, movement, play, community through these new lenses of [01:11:00] self and helping you tie back into your intrinsic knowingness of where your health path lays.[01:11:05] [01:11:05] Dr. Zach Bush: And it's a little different from each person, but it's a beautiful experience because it's group immersion, so you've got [01:11:10] seven other people that are witnessing your healing journey. [01:11:12] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [01:11:12] Dr. Zach Bush: And it's only through the witnessing that you actually heal. [01:11:15] If you try to go heal by yourself, you actually get sicker over time, not, not, not less [01:11:20] sick. [01:11:20] Dr. Zach Bush: And so it... You have to be in community to really fundamentally heal. [01:11:23] Dr. Taz: Wow. [01:11:23] Dr. Zach Bush: And it's so powerful [01:11:25] when we empower each other, not as doctors and nurses, but as a small community. What if we could heal [01:11:30] each other by being witness to one another? Hmm. And we're taking that to the extreme with our immersive experiences, [01:11:35] and so you can go, again, uh, Zach Bush, MD. [01:11:36] Dr. Zach Bush: Keep an eye out on my website and social media for [01:11:40] the immersive experiences that happen a few times a year around the world, and that is a [01:11:45] radical kind of reset of human biology through changing the sacred geometry inside the water crystal of human [01:11:50] cells through somatic work that we do for seven days straight together in magnificent parts of [01:11:55] nature to get that nature immersion and re-energizing the original design of human.[01:12:00] [01:12:00] Dr. Taz: Fascinating. So there's no reason to begin somewhere with all those different options. Mm-hmm. [01:12:05] And I wanna thank you again for being here. I ask every guest this question, but I think [01:12:10] I already know the answer. You know, this show is really about bringing science and spirit [01:12:15] together, and you talk about it your s- so well in everything you just discussed. [01:12:19] Dr. Taz: But [01:12:20] when it comes to you- Hmm ... Zach Bush, what makes you whole? [01:12:25] [01:12:25] Dr. Zach Bush: I'm working on that. This has, like, been my biggest challenge, and maybe this is part three [01:12:30] for you or something like that, 'cause it's such a, a... It's the most intensely [01:12:35] beautiful and challenging thing I've ever done. Started about four years ago. [01:12:38] Dr. Zach Bush: I was taking the Course in Miracles, and [01:12:40] it blew apart my whole concept of human relationships, and one [01:12:45] of the human relationship metrics or matrices that I held most sacred, which was that of [01:12:50] marriage. Suddenly seen through that lens, I realized we have done something unnatural to human relationships. [01:12:54] Dr. Zach Bush: We have [01:12:55] broken the, the fundamental natural law within human dynamics, and for that, we see all the stress within [01:13:00] human relationships. Mm-hmm. And, uh, never before has it been more high, you know, this [01:13:05] extreme level of stress within re- relationships right now, and I think it's because [01:13:10] nature is forcing us to reevaluate not just city systems. [01:13:13] Dr. Zach Bush: We gotta f- focus back on what [01:13:15] does it mean to be me? And so for the last four years, I've been following that Course in Miracles journey into what they call [01:13:20] holy relationship, which is this completion of the masculine and feminine within myself. [01:13:24] Dr. Taz: Hmm. [01:13:25] [01:13:25] Dr. Zach Bush: And there's no greater challenge that I've ever faced, because it triggers everything that you didn't [01:13:30] want to face as a human, which is the possibility of loneliness. [01:13:33] Dr. Zach Bush: What if love is scarce? What if... You [01:13:35] know, it takes you through all these layers of fears, guilts, and shames that you have been programmed with, [01:13:40] and this slow detox of all of those matrices has been the most magnificent thing I've [01:13:45] ever pursued, the most challenging thing I've ever pursued. Hmm. And it's, it's really [01:13:50] is the keystone, or maybe it's the key in the lock for how we're gonna survive as a species, is completing [01:13:55] ourselves. [01:13:55] Dr. Taz: Completing yourself. You're gonna have to come back and tell us what you learn- ... from that [01:14:00] journey next. All right. For everybody watching and listening to this episode of Whole Plus, thank you for [01:14:05] being here. I have been so inspired by this. I hope you guys have as well, and I'll see you next time. [01:14:10] [01:14:10] Dr. Taz: Thank you so much for listening and watching today's episode of Whole Plus. [01:14:14] Dr. Taz: Be sure to share [01:14:15] this episode with your friends and family, and if you haven't already, please take a moment to subscribe to this [01:14:20] podcast on YouTube or click the follow button on Apple, Spotify, or wherever it is that you [01:14:25] get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow me on all social channels at DrTazMD. [01:14:29] Dr. Taz: Until [01:14:30] next time, stay healthy and stay whole.