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The mountain protocol developed for life threatening illness can seem insurmountable · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:08
  Hard hitting medical truth.
• 0:10
  Cutting through conflict and confusion to the understanding you're searching for.
• 0:15
  Join Dr.
• 0:16
  Peter McCullough, world-renowned medical expert and practicing physician for this edition of the McCullough Report.
• 0:24
  Your life may depend on it.
• 0:27
  Let's get real.
• 0:28
  Let's get loud on America Aloud Talk News.
• 0:30
  This is McCullough Report and Focal Points Substack.
• 0:34
  It's a great pleasure to welcome to the program, Dr.
• 0:37
  Chris Rob Yard, who is a doctor.
• 0:42
  He's a doctor of chiropractory.
• 0:44
  He's also, you know, really a man of so many different, you know, interesting facets.
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  He's joining us today from Indonesia.
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  And uh the wonderful uh, you know, uh resort community of Bali.
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  And we're gonna talk today about a very important kind of framework of understanding.
• 1:06
  I would say that, and it's called the Mountain Protocol.
• 1:09
  Chris, welcome to the program.
• 1:11
  Thank you ever so much for inviting me today, Peter.
• 1:13
  Thank you.
• 1:15
  Well, listen, you look great.
• 1:17
  You're getting a lot of vitamin D.
• 1:19
  You certainly are more tan than when we had talked to the United Kingdom uh about a month ago.
• 1:25
  Uh, why don't you start out by introducing yourself?
• 1:28
  You know, who are you?
• 1:29
  Who is this man of great intrigue?
• 1:32
  Uh and tell us uh, you know, your general orientation before we get into the topic.
• 1:37
  Thank you so much, Peter.
• 1:39
  Um, yeah, I mean, I think look, uh, my name's Chris Repelit, obviously.
• 1:43
  Uh I'm uh I'm a chiropractor of some uh some 30 years.
• 1:48
  Um I guess um I'm I'm also a psychologist, and I also teach mindfulness-based interventions, uh, which I've been doing over the past 15 to 20 years as well.
• 1:59
  Um, and I guess uh for myself, I've had um yeah, some sort of curiosity uh or questions with regards to to my clinical practice that have started or appeared uh right from the off.
• 2:14
  And the first sort of clinical puzzle that I noticed um in practice was uh two real clear patient patterns that I saw arising.
• 2:25
  Um there was two groups.
• 2:27
  There was those that used to come to me and had had lots and lots of treatment, both with myself and with other clinicians and other people uh in general, and they showed little, if any, improvement in uh in their symptoms.
• 2:42
  But what I also found on the flip side of that was that there was those um those patients that had almost minimal treatment.
• 2:50
  I mean, in some of the interactions with myself, um, I almost didn't really physically treat them, and they showed strong improvement.
• 2:58
  So for myself, the the first question that really arose from that was the treatment alone cannot fully explain the the recovery that I was seeing.
• 3:10
  And I guess um the observation when I stopped and looked a little bit further, it was those that weren't improving seemed to have other challenges within their lives.
• 3:21
  There was uh obviously relationship issues, there's other psychological challenges, um, there's a lots of complex problems that seemed to be playing a part in the way that their pain appeared and the way uh the way that it was expressed.
• 3:38
  Um, and obviously there seemed to be something about just the interaction of talking to me that obviously had some benefit in those that improved.
• 3:46
  So the link for for myself, I guess it had to be something within the mind.
• 3:51
  There was there's a psychological or a mental component uh to their pain or to their improvement, as it were.
• 3:59
  And from I guess from that original um original starting point, um it coincided with a a very a very dear friend of mine introducing me to a local Buddhist group um uh where I was living in Brighton in the UK.
• 4:15
  And I I guess I went along um curious and interested um uh at Buddhism as a whole, but more so at the techniques, I guess, that uh that it employed and it utilized.
• 4:30
  And it was that idea of that intentional focusing of somebody's attention in a very specific way, and with a certain attitudes that seemed to be a very good way for people to train their brain, and most certainly it seemed to have benefits in their life.
• 4:48
  But there's one very specific part that I guess I was I was very, very interested in, and it was the um the little Buddhist saying that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
• 5:01
  And there's this discussion that you know, all of us will face illness, we'll all face infirmity, and most certainly we'll all experience death.
• 5:10
  Um that bit we cannot avoid.
• 5:13
  But the interesting bit is that there's a circle around it, which um which is our relationship to those things.
• 5:20
  It's the it's often the narrative of I don't like it, I wish it wasn't like this, I wish it could change, why me, etc.
• 5:29
  And the Buddhists basically uh describe this or say that this is the fundamental source of our suffering.
• 5:35
  So pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
• 5:39
  So it's something again, once again, about our relationship to our pain that that is the curious thing.
• 5:47
  So with these two, this observation and my clinical practice uh my patients, and then this sort of growing physical philosophical um interest, as it were.
• 5:59
  I thought I want to know a little bit more about this in a little bit more detail.
• 6:03
  So uh I marched off after already doing five years of studying.
• 6:08
  I decided, right, I I need to do a psychology degree.
• 6:12
  So um I went off um and trained uh and studied, and after again another five years, getting my psychology degree, um, and then went off for another further two years to train in uh mindfulness-based uh interventions at Bang University, and this blending of sort of the mind and the body uh most certainly started my career, I guess, as uh as an integrative health guide.
• 6:41
  Um at the same time as this, I guess I was also starting to see this rise within medicine, most certainly within the psychological uh side of things, but most certainly in the physical realm as well.
• 6:59
  Um, where there was this growing um number of different diagnoses.
• 7:04
  And obviously, if you look at uh the DSM, the most recent uh the recent version, I mean, the number of diagnosable mental conditions has suddenly exploded.
• 7:16
  I think it's gone up.
• 7:17
  Don't quote me on numbers, but I think we were up past 700 or so.
• 7:22
  And I, you know, I fully understood the purpose and the intention of diagnosis and the use of them, but what it did seem to be is that uh these diagnoses were starting to become people's identity.
• 7:39
  They were both becoming um yeah, they were becoming labels, but then they seemed to become restricted and defined by these labels.
• 7:51
  And my question really was was these new conditions, or in lots of ways, what were we doing?
• 7:57
  Were we actually uh diagnosing elements of what what I would define as a sort of the human condition, as it were.
• 8:04
  Well, you know, certainly, Chris.
• 8:06
  Um certainly I see that in medicine in the non-psychological areas, um, where the number of diagnoses are also increasing, and the the subcategories of various uh, you know, I'm internal medicine and cardiology, the subcategories are increasing and uh with increasing complexity.
• 8:28
  So when I was a student, it was estimated that the medical database was doubling every seven years.
• 8:36
  Now it could be doubling every two years, and probably before that every one year.
• 8:41
  You know, virtually every drug I use now was not even available when I was a student or a resident.
• 8:47
  And so the knowledge base is massively exploding.
• 8:51
  And one of the things in the written materials you provided struck me is uh this idea of patients um kind of either labeling themselves or we label them uh as a disease.
• 9:06
  So it's a breast cancer patient or a cancer survivor or a stroke victim.
• 9:14
  And uh recently my mom was in the hospital uh with a stroke, and I noticed when I went to her room, you know, her name is not even on the door.
• 9:24
  They there's all this concern about confidentiality.
• 9:27
  And so it's so my name is uh an Irish name, so it was MCC at the beginning.
• 9:33
  And then when I went to the nursing station, uh, you know, the way they talk about patients is well, uh 224 needs this, 226 said this, a 230.
• 9:43
  So people are reduced to numbers in the hospital.
• 9:47
  Sure.
• 9:48
  For sure.
• 9:48
  And it it's that you know, that observation that people become this this, you know, this label, this name, and it you know, is most certainly first and foremost dehumanizing as a patient.
• 10:00
  Um to be sort of reduced down to that in itself.
• 10:06
  But like I said, you know, all of a sudden the words that we use in and around, you know, all of a sudden people become their depression.
• 10:15
  They become their cancer.
• 10:17
  They become exactly what it is.
• 10:20
  And like I said, what I'm not doing is dismissing the benefit in the role of diagnosis.
• 10:25
  We we need to diagnose itself.
• 10:28
  But what I would say is that there is this danger of or this lack of almost awareness and understanding how that can be problematic if I just put it in inverting commas.
• 10:41
  It might not be the best.
• 10:48
  This underlying question that was has pervaded, I guess, my my professional career is that is there a difference between healing and curing?
• 10:58
  You know, is it possible for somebody to be cured and then not to be healed?
• 11:05
  And vice versa, is it possible to heal them and then not to be well, Chris?
• 11:10
  What's the what's the difference?
• 11:12
  How can we understand this?
• 11:14
  Well, I I think um curing, I mean, curing is the the eradication or the removal of a pathology for or the eradication of something, as it were.
• 11:27
  But the healing is something slightly more complex.
• 11:30
  It's you know, it's around identity, it's around meaning, it's around dignity, it's around adaptation, is you know, it's based within the culture that we live within the family and the community that we live in.
• 11:43
  And so, especially you know, within uh chronic and complex illness where there may well not be a cure, you know, I I see modern medicine failing to a degree.
• 11:56
  We we sort of fall into this trap, you know, curing is about the what it is done, the what is uh the actual treatment itself, the what that is done, healing is more about the way that it is done.
• 12:10
  It's the you know, the introduction, you know, the we've all had introductions or uh interactions with medics that yeah, it just leaves you feeling dissatisfied and feeling uncomfortable and not cared for and reduced to a name.
• 12:27
  And if we ask patients yeah, yeah, I was gonna say you reminded me of a of a phrase that they taught us in medical school.
• 12:37
  Uh they should uh it was said that you know, we cure very rarely that we we only help people sometimes, but we should care about them always, and and it is true.
• 12:54
  I'm I use my mom as an example.
• 12:56
  She's just had a stroke, she's not going to be cured of that stroke.
• 13:00
  That that's the hard reality here.
• 13:04
  And uh, you know, I think that's very important for people to realize uh uh every so often we use the word cure.
• 13:12
  And um, I I did the other day, I had I had a patient actually yesterday who had breast cancer, and I was going through the history, and she did have surgery on the breast cancer.
• 13:24
  I think in you know, about 20 years ago, and uh, and then some additional oral uh uh chemotherapy.
• 13:32
  And essentially, you know, we use the word cure.
• 13:34
  She goes, Yeah, I had breast cancer, and I'm cured of it.
• 13:37
  Uh, you know, but that's pretty rare, you know.
• 13:39
  In my field, the the heart disease is essentially not cured.
• 13:43
  Uh, strokes are not cured.
• 13:45
  Um, many, as you know, musculoskeletal problems are not.
• 13:48
  I mean, you you can tell me do people get cured of various forms of uh you know, back and muscoskeletal problems.
• 13:58
  I mean, incredibly rarely.
• 14:00
  I mean, incredibly rarely, you know, it becomes more, you know, of course, you have the acute injuries, which people do recover from, and we have acute medicine where of course people have a broken limb or or an injury that they fully recover from, but you know, very, very rarely is that the case.
• 14:22
  It's it's about learning to manage, navigate and work with these things, um, and working with sort of professionals like ourselves to try and work out what it is that I can do and what it is that you know they can do as it were to help themselves.
• 14:41
  Um, but you know, going back to that again, thinking about your your mother is I I always remember um I did a conference many years ago with a pediatric uh neur neurologist from Alda Hay Hospital, um, a really interesting guy called Andrew Curran, and the title of his talk was all you need is love.
• 15:02
  And he we were addressing a group of teachers, and he said, What I want you to do is he said, I want you to think back to your time at school.
• 15:10
  And he said, What I want you to do is I want you to bring to mind that favorite teacher that you had.
• 15:15
  He said, We all had one.
• 15:17
  And he said, now with that teacher in mind, he said, what I want you to do is reflect upon what it is that you remember most about them.
• 15:25
  He said, is it the things that they uh taught you, or is it the way that they made you feel?
• 15:32
  And you know, there's a ripple around the room, and he said exactly.
• 15:35
  He said, we all remember how that that person made us feel.
• 15:41
  And it highlights for me, you know, one of the features or one of the factors within healing and curing is that you know, a good doctor, a good practitioner, you you just feel heard, you feel held, you feel supported, you feel cared for.
• 15:58
  And whether you be, you know, whether there be a cure or not, you definitely it helps you move along that journey towards healing.
• 16:06
  Does it does that make sense?
• 16:08
  Yes, well, certainly it does, and to just understand this excision of a pathology, you know, a surgical cure or uh a medical cure.
• 16:18
  It it is rare.
• 16:19
  I mean, people need to understand this.
• 16:22
  I mean, I I personally have high blood pressure, I have hypertension, you know.
• 16:26
  I I've had it since age 25.
• 16:28
  I've had it nearly 40 years.
• 16:31
  So I'm I'm not cured of it, but uh I'm I'm living with it.
• 16:35
  And I think uh what a lot of people you know struggle with, and doctors struggle with it, or a lot of times doctors don't even address it, is this aspect of kind of living with something, this idea of being healed of it.
• 16:51
  I don't walk around with my identity as you know, a high blood pressure patient.
• 16:55
  I I I basically just took my medicines about an hour ago before I got on this interview.
• 17:01
  But it you know, it it brings us to this idea that uh and you know, in your um in your work, you you spend a lot of time on the word agency, agency.
• 17:16
  And so can you help us understand that?
• 17:18
  What is agency mean in this context?
• 17:21
  Well, I think um maybe it's easier to to sort of see where I there was a lack of agency.
• 17:29
  So the this sort of um professional and then this sort of philosophical pondering, as it were, that was earlier on in my career, I guess came to to a real poignant and pertinent uh uh moment where I myself, I was diagnosed with stage four uh throat cancer 10 years ago.
• 17:49
  Oh no.
• 17:50
  And so, you know, I was age 40, uh 43, um, three young children, um, and you know, my wife, my my sort of life and my wife's life got uh flipped upside down, literally.
• 18:05
  And what I'd been obviously observing and thinking and reading about, as it were, came to that real personal point.
• 18:16
  And the interesting bit is stepping from that sort of that moment of being observing and then being part of that that that sort of system, as it were, and the reason I mention it is that that lack of agency was the most prevalent part for me.
• 18:36
  It was I, as you mentioned earlier, I became, you know, C is for cancer, not C is for Chris, you know.
• 18:45
  I literally I became my diagnosis, you know, in the multidisciplinary teams or meetings that I was I was part of, you know, it it literally felt like I was in this storm with you know, 10, 12 people all talking about me rather than with me or to me.
• 19:08
  It was no collaboration.
• 19:09
  There was no when you say about agency for me, is about where is it that I have choice and I have an element of control.
• 19:18
  There was very, very little within that.
• 19:21
  Wow.
• 19:22
  Um Chris, let me ask you something else, since you know, you're uh you you had this problem.
• 19:29
  After the diagnosis of throat cancer was made.
• 19:34
  Was there ever a day in your life where you did not think about it?
• 19:46
  Um for a lot if I'm honest, um, yeah, the reason why I asked that is my my brother in law has had metastatic lung cancer now.
• 20:00
  For over a decade.
• 20:02
  And uh yeah, he's very highly functional, uh, you know, professor at a university, very accomplished.
• 20:08
  And he told me that.
• 20:09
  He goes, When you develop cancer, he said he said, I'm just telling you, he said, every day, there's not a day that goes by where it doesn't come into my mind that I have lung cancer.
• 20:24
  He said it for a decade.
• 20:27
  Sure.
• 20:27
  I mean, it it's it, I would say it's the elephant in the room, but it's just that all pervasive uh yeah, background sort of narrative, as it were, you know, it's like a it's like uh almost but Chris, don't you think that's special for cancer?
• 20:47
  I mean, I mentioned high blood pressure.
• 20:49
  I can tell you there are many days that go by.
• 20:52
  I never think about my blood pressure.
• 20:54
  I never do.
• 20:55
  Um, I think there's something about cancer.
• 20:58
  I mean, people call it the C word, right?
• 21:01
  I mean, there's something about cancer.
• 21:04
  People uh uh you know, people feel as if they are a victim of cancer, and then when there is a cure that they are a cancer survivor, you know, we we don't call somebody a victim of diabetes or a survivor of diabetes, or we don't call somebody a victim of back pain or a survivor of back pain.
• 21:28
  I think there's something about special about cancer, but you know, you you've had it, I haven't, so you you can tell us.
• 21:35
  Uh well, yeah, yeah.
• 21:36
  I mean, it's interesting because uh, you know, I've got um uh yeah, I I get really sensitive, funny enough, uh, if I'm honest about those those wordings, exactly that, because I go victim, you know.
• 21:50
  Uh for me, it's yeah, I don't know quite why.
• 21:56
  Victim and survivor, that they're they're words that really are sort of like quite powerful for me.
• 22:02
  Um and I I in a bizarre sort of way, I guess maybe this is the almost the root origins of uh of the sort of the mountain protocol is that is that actually that diagnosis.
• 22:18
  I've become the mountain, as it were.
• 22:22
  I my diagnosis is the mountain, and actually what I want to do is I want to be just traversing the mountain.
• 22:31
  So if I can separate myself from my diagnosis, then all of a sudden, you know, the fear, the anxiety, the worry, the you know, all of those things that are so part of your brother's life and my life, as it were, all of a sudden it becomes slightly a little bit, it's a bit more manageable.
• 22:48
  All of a sudden, this is just simply terrain that I'm navigating, you know.
• 22:53
  So this sort of professional and philosophical interest, and then this personal uh yeah, this personal experience of cancer, and that that sort of real linking of my identity to it that we so do, and you you're quite right, it feels different in some way.
• 23:11
  I guess that was the starting point of this protocol or this idea for me, uh, and how to work with it differently.
• 23:19
  Wow.
• 23:20
  So the mountain protocol.
• 23:22
  So help us understand that.
• 23:24
  So now what is the mountain again?
• 23:26
  Is it the disease?
• 23:27
  Is it the patient?
• 23:28
  Is it is it you know, all together?
• 23:30
  What it for many people, a major problem like cancer does seem insurmountable, like a mountain, right?
• 23:40
  For sure.
• 23:40
  For sure, for sure.
• 23:42
  I mean, I think you know this is where the diagnosis, you know, the diagnosis is the mountain, uh, as it were.
• 23:50
  Um it it simply describes the terrain that that we uh we find ourselves upon.
• 23:59
  Okay, so um, but the interesting bit is I guess I see I see the diagnosis more as uh as a reference point to where we are on the mountain, if if you were to word it that way.
• 24:12
  So um I often uh in some of the courses that I run, I ask people um a question of what is the most important thing to know if you are lost within a city.
• 24:26
  And you know, they they might they might give options or or sort of um ideas with regards to it.
• 24:32
  But the most important thing to understand when we are lost in a city is we need to know exactly where we are.
• 24:40
  We need to know where our starting point is before we start to move or shift in any sense or form.
• 24:47
  So for me, you know, all of a sudden what we're doing is decoupling the individual from the diagnosis.
• 24:54
  You are not your the diagnosis, the diagnosis is just simply a reference point to where you find yourself right this moment.
• 25:02
  Okay, find yourself within cardiology team, you might find yourself within an oncology team with a specific diagnosis.
• 25:11
  But then, as it were, from that starting point when we know where we're at, then we start to see our illness a little bit like the terrain.
• 25:21
  And my the mountain in the mountain protocol has three very distinct sides to that mountain.
• 25:29
  There is a physical side, there is a chemical side, and there is an emotional or a psychological side to that uh to that uh mountain.
• 25:39
  And the interesting bit is that obviously if we have an imbalance or an excess stress on either the physical, the chemical or the psychological, what we find is we get a dis-ease, you know, the system is knocked out of equilibrium, and we start to have symptoms arising, as it were.
• 26:02
  So a lot of this about the mountain protocol is just creating an awareness or an understanding as to where we're at, what the diagnosis means, but also those three interconnected parts between the physical, chemical and emotional.
• 26:21
  And for yourself as a cardiologist, I suspect, you know, you see that on a day-to-day basis, you know, if we ask people about their high blood pressure or uh, you know, their arrhythmia is or whatever, it is not just a physical cause, there are other contributing factors.
• 26:40
  Oh, for sure.
• 26:42
  And you know, the nice thing about our technology, certainly in cardiology, we can get to a point where we can understand you know the relative contributions of this, and and you know, when I can give a patient a reassurance that they don't have critical coronary disease, I I can tell you a lot of times the chest pain goes away.
• 27:03
  I mean, it we've always said there's a lot of value in a in negative heart catheterization, completely normal heart catheterization, or nowadays we do CT angiography, because you know, all of us have had some chest pain, all of us, and then in the back of our mind, we think, is this the big one?
• 27:21
  You know, am I sitting?
• 27:22
  Am I you know, do I have a people think that I mean you can't help but not think that all of us will have you know, some of these uh thoughts come into uh our head, and um you're right.
• 27:39
  You're opener, you talked about uh patients uh you know, getting better or getting worse.
• 27:45
  When a patient sees a doctor, I see patients every day.
• 27:48
  When they walk into the exam room, you know, uh I do solicit and get a general self-assessment.
• 27:57
  Are you better?
• 27:58
  You know, are you the same?
• 27:59
  Are you worse?
• 28:00
  And so the patient is integrating all of that, right?
• 28:04
  And uh, and then we're getting that we're getting that read, but it is about the patient, you know.
• 28:12
  As a doctor, I can't go in the room and say, How's your left ventricle?
• 28:16
  You know, so true.
• 28:19
  I mean, it reminds me of uh just chuckling there because um I think one of uh one of my favorite little sayings or strap lines, and I I must I must get them printed up as t-shirts because I think I'd make a fortune, but it it simply said that there is no problem that we have in this world that our minds cannot make worse.
• 28:41
  And it that's so true, and it is you know, I think it captures it so beautifully is that you know, the the mind is a great modulator, and you know, uh a patient once um once wisely said to me, he said, you know, um knowledge dispels fear, you know.
• 29:01
  If we can just start to understand in a in a very simplistic fashion, this sort of interconnected nature of our health, then like I said, we start to develop this choice with this agency, this understanding this control, you know, these elements where we do able where we are able to shift as it were.
• 29:24
  Yeah, Chris, I I went to one of the best grand rounds I ever went to was given by an anesthesiologist, and it was about pain in the United States.
• 29:34
  A lot of anesthesiologists become experts in managing pain, you know, some go into that branch actually of anesthesiology.
• 29:43
  Um he said, you know, if you look at chronic pain, he goes, it can be divided into into threes, three three parts.
• 29:53
  The first part is there is pain that is pure physical pain.
• 29:59
  He said.
• 30:00
  Like a knife sticking into your arm.
• 30:02
  He said, for sure, that's pure physical pain.
• 30:06
  That can be a third of things.
• 30:08
  You know, there really are painful conditions.
• 30:11
  He said, um, he said, a third of it is just there is some stimulus in the body, but it's a an issue of uh, you know, amplification of that signal in the brain is does the brain perceive that they're they're taking the so the same physical uh signal in one person, they're fine, but another symptom that it's it's uh massively amplified.
• 30:38
  So they the the volume is turned up, and then he said a third of pain is just completely functional.
• 30:46
  There, there's there's neither one of the first two, and that it really is upstairs, that it's uh you know, it's function is true truly functional in some way, and it helped me understand that.
• 30:58
  Um, and I'm sure someone, you know, as a chiropractor, you're kind of in the pain business.
• 31:04
  For sure.
• 31:05
  And it is you know, the the question is as practitioners is how is it that we begin to have those conversations with those patients about that?
• 31:15
  Because you know, the interesting bit is it's that very um nerve-wracking moment where you start to you know, you start to explain that the logical third, you know, and there's that that awful moment where patient turns around to you and just simply says, What are you doing?
• 31:35
  Are you telling me it's all in my head?
• 31:37
  And you're like, Oh no, right, you know, you start to backpedal, and in I guess the way of describing it in this sort of interconnected model, you know, is nothing new.
• 31:56
  That sort of triad of health, yeah, physical, chemical, and emotional psychological stress in our life will manifest in both chemical changes, you know, there's obviously increased levels of cortisol and increased levels of inflammation subsequently in the body.
• 32:13
  We also obviously will see it physically manifest.
• 32:17
  We will all feel tense in the jaw, tight in the shoulders, we'll all have the you know, so by unpicking it and normalizing it and saying we all feel this, you know, the hope is that it becomes uh slightly more open and more receptive person or receptive uh better way of explaining to an individual to a patient without shutting down and closing down to us.
• 32:47
  Well, well, let me ask you.
• 32:48
  So, can stress alone, let's say uh emotional stress, uh, you know, financial stress, uh you know, family relational stress.
• 32:59
  Can that manifest as pain?
• 33:04
  Uh 100%, you know, uh with without a doubt.
• 33:08
  Yeah, um, I think I would also go one step further and say it would also manifest as as illness.
• 33:15
  And I look I've got plenty of uh sort of professional evidence, but I'd say that the most powerful for me would be uh a personal uh evidence of that.
• 33:26
  So my cancer diagnosis, what's what preceded that was um was a uh a protracted period of chronic stress, very powerful emotional um problems uh within my family, uh within my wider family, which manifested uh in me fracturing both of my heels quite catastrophically.
• 33:54
  Um the the interesting bit is that that um that chronic personal psychological and emotional challenges manifested in me fracturing my heels, but it my cancer diagnosis was almost one year to the day after my fracturing of my heels, and I am 99.9% certain that both the psychological, the physical manifested uh and pushed the system towards this dis ease uh that manifested as my cancer, without a doubt.
• 34:37
  Well, it's so interesting that more and more, and actually, I mean cancer, more and more therapies are oriented towards this interface that we probably are forming cancer cells in our body all the time, and then we have an immune surveillance system that identifies the cancers and knocks them out or contains them in some way, and that there's a balance, and when the immune system is down, the cancer immune system or cancer surveillance system is down, then the cancers advance or can be expressed.
• 35:13
  And it's been said, let's say for uh neck cancer, from the time the very first cancer cell was there, Chris, to the time it was recognized was probably five years.
• 35:26
  There we go.
• 35:27
  How interesting.
• 35:28
  How interesting.
• 35:30
  And you know, so the this sort of the space, this opening, this this slight weakness in the system, as it were, where where these things uh show their face as it were.
• 35:43
  This is I guess it again to help patients, maybe like myself that sit on this sort of mountain, this diagnosis of cancer, all of a sudden to understand the sort of the interconnected nature of health, and literally it's just that constant questioning of you know, where are you right now?
• 36:06
  What is the biggest stress in your life?
• 36:08
  Is it a physical stress?
• 36:10
  You know, are you excessively drinking?
• 36:12
  Are you not taking care of yourself?
• 36:14
  Are you you know, or is it, you know, are there psychological stresses?
• 36:18
  You know, you have you lost your job, you know, or is it you know, is it something else?
• 36:23
  So by simply just understanding or exploring the terrain that we sit on in this way, what we then develop is this space for the uh this space that comes from understanding, but then it moves on into choice, uh agency.
• 36:41
  Um, but also then it becomes Chris.
• 36:43
  Before you leave uh stress, I wanted to point out have you heard the term sandwich generation?
• 36:49
  Oh no, come on.
• 36:51
  I haven't heard that.
• 36:52
  Well, I think you and I are in the sandwich generation.
• 36:54
  So the sandwich generation means that um, you know, we had a source of stress as we raised our children, and and some of us still have stress if children have gone astray or they themselves are facing difficulty as a parent, you know, you are responsible for your children.
• 37:11
  You're forever responsible for your children, but also we become responsible for our parents and our senior citizens, our elderly.
• 37:20
  So we're in the sandwich.
• 37:22
  My wife and I just talked about this today.
• 37:24
  I said, you know, we have been, you know, daily actively consumed by senior management of uh of our parents and in helping them in every way we can, you know, at least for six years, and for for some, uh, you know, this can be a decade or even more.
• 37:42
  So we're called the sandwich generation.
• 37:44
  And so when we review our parents, so for instance, my mother and father had no responsibility for their parents.
• 37:54
  Sadly, they died early.
• 37:56
  So they didn't have a prolonged period of time where they're worrying about care.
• 37:59
  And uh, you know, my wife is going to be racing to the store today to try to get something for my mother who's out of the hospital, but my brother stayed with her last night.
• 38:08
  You know, there's all these things, and I'm juggling my my schedule.
• 38:12
  Um, my parents never went through that because sadly people died earlier.
• 38:18
  But now in this new sandwich generation, people you know are living longer to the point where they have uh, you know, there is a uh certainly a rising fraction of seniors with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia living longer, stroke, physical disabilities, and uh and so the the responsibility is in the the middle, and I do sense this a lot.
• 38:44
  I had uh patients yesterday who said, listen, you know, I had 20 years of chronic stress, and it was family stress because you know, I I was responsible for this situation, and and uh you know it's great when all the family members are a great team, but many will admit that that families aren't a natural team, and a lot of times if things will fall on one person or another, and there's contentious discussions.
• 39:12
  But Chris, we're gonna take a break here and we're gonna pick up on the the back side of this.
• 39:18
  And we're talking to Dr.
• 39:19
  Chris Robiard, who's from the UK, he looks terrific because he's in the wonderful resort community of Bali.
• 39:28
  Uh, you can't see it, but he's got his swimming trunks on underneath.
• 39:32
  He's gonna go surfing after we get off.
• 39:34
  And uh, we've been talking about the mountain protocol, this whole issue of when a disease becomes so big as a mountain, and where is the patient?
• 39:43
  Is the patient the disease, or do they you know where is their identity, their agency?
• 39:48
  And so you're listening to the McCullough report.
• 39:50
  Let's get real, let's get loud.
• 39:52
  And America Out Loud Talk News.
• 39:53
  This is McCullough Report and Focal Point Substack.
• 39:57
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• 41:18
  Let's get real.
• 41:18
  Let's get loud and America Out Loud Top News.
• 41:21
  This is McCullough Report and Focal Point Substack.
• 41:24
  I'm Dr.
• 41:24
  Peter McCullough, your host.
• 41:26
  Our guest today is Dr.
• 41:27
  Chris Roboyard, who is a man of so many, you know, talents and so many different facets.
• 41:35
  He's uh a chiropractor, he's uh a psychologist, and he's someone who's very thoughtful and I think very careful in his deliberations.
• 41:45
  And uh he's been a patient himself, and we've been talking about the mountain protocol.
• 41:50
  So, Chris, why don't you pick up on where you were about the patient and this whole you know how we navigate so there's a mountain, but on the mountain there's terrain, right?
• 42:01
  And the terrain, uh the terrain is just simply like I said, that that physical, that chemical, that emotional size to it.
• 42:09
  So um by understanding and orientating ourselves with our diagnosis and then understanding the the shape of the mountain, the steepness, what is causing me challenges, all of a sudden, like I said, that that sort of decentering, um, that separating ourselves from our diagnosis, um, that can and in itself be quite liberating, you know, it's that idea of metacognition, it's observing our illness rather than being part of the illness itself.
• 42:39
  Um, but the interesting bit is that we, you know, modern medicine, we also tend to um we also tend to sort of pathologize the distress that comes along with the illnesses as well, you know.
• 42:53
  So the depression, you know, we medicate you know, I had it with my cancer, is you know, oh my goodness, me, you know, you're having problems sleeping as a result of your diagnosis.
• 43:04
  Well, yes, you've just diagnosed me with with cancer.
• 43:08
  Here's uh here's a sleeping tablet to help you sleep, you know.
• 43:11
  Well, you know, I'm really quite depressed with it because of the you know the fear and the worry.
• 43:16
  Here you go.
• 43:17
  This is something to be eradicated, you know, my anxiety again here's something to eradicate it.
• 43:23
  And within the mountain protocol, the the the way I introduce it is that this sort of distress is they're simply like storms on the mountain, you know, they they come and they go, but uh they're not they're not dysfunction in the system, you know.
• 43:43
  Distress is basically information, it is it lets us know how the system is reacting to whatever it is that we are experiencing, and so as we explore, and what we simply do is we ask the the clients that we're working with is you know, well, what are the storms for you right now?
• 44:02
  You know, what's what's going on?
• 44:05
  And you know, for yourself at the minute, if I asked you, you know, there's quite a lot of storms going on, you know, there's worry and fear, and you know, with regards to your mum, you know, it's they're the storms.
• 44:19
  But the interesting bit is if we don't pathologize it and we talk about it as being normal, you know, this is normal reaction or response to a challenging situation.
• 44:30
  The invitation then is to ask people, well, what is it that creates steadiness for you?
• 44:35
  You know, what's what creates an element of just being grounded?
• 44:39
  Are there areas where you can shelter, do you think?
• 44:42
  You know, what is it that creates shelter?
• 44:45
  So all of a sudden, what we start to do is we know that storms pass, you know, we know that there's a there's a calm point in the eye of the storm.
• 44:54
  We know if we can just find that, but we also know that if we can just find something to either cover our shelter, hunker down or somebody to help us, then we can allow that that storm to pass through, as it were.
• 45:09
  So distress is not dysfunction, distress is information, is it's just a storm on this mountain, as it were.
• 45:20
  Yeah, I think that's a it's a terrific um analogy or kind of imagery here.
• 45:25
  And you know, one of the things I try to do is uh in in this type of circumstance is to ask people about success.
• 45:34
  So ask them, you know, what works well for you?
• 45:37
  What is working well for you?
• 45:39
  But most of the time, you know, the questions are in the negative.
• 45:42
  Well, what can't you do?
• 45:44
  What are the problems?
• 45:45
  What have you?
• 45:45
  But to ask people, you know, what works well for them.
• 45:50
  And it's so powerful.
• 45:51
  I mean, you know, what works well for you, all of a sudden you can probably just feel you know, you can feel your feet just steady, and everything just and the interesting bit is it's just that sense of what you're doing by saying that Peter is you're you're trusting them and you're validating whatever it is that they find that you know that steadies them.
• 46:16
  Um, and that is such a powerful, powerful tool.
• 46:20
  Well, you know, positive is so much stronger than negative.
• 46:24
  And you know, in healthcare, that interaction is is critical.
• 46:30
  You know, in the medical specialties, cardiology is is really kind of the top of the totem pole.
• 46:35
  People say, listen, you know, without my heart, I'm a I'm a goner.
• 46:39
  So the cardiologist is kind of at the top.
• 46:41
  And so I, you know, I I've noticed, and I did work as an internal medicine physician for years before I trained in cardiology.
• 46:48
  So I I recognize that stair step up that when you're in the office with the cardiologist, you know, there is a lot of acuity.
• 46:58
  There's people taking notes, there's oftentimes family members.
• 47:02
  Sometimes they ask, they say, Can I record everything?
• 47:04
  I want to make sure I understand every word.
• 47:06
  And I imagine it's similar with cancer and oncology.
• 47:09
  I think they're right up there.
• 47:11
  And so when you visit with your cancer team, uh, there's so much going on.
• 47:17
  I I can't imagine as a patient, you know, uh, how tense and anxious uh those appointments must have been.
• 47:27
  They are, and I mean, it sort of leads into the next part in the respect that those uh those appointments.
• 47:37
  What you end up finding is that there is a real asymmetry in the system, as it were.
• 47:44
  And what I mean by that is that you are you are something that this is done too.
• 47:51
  There's a there's a power asymmetry.
• 47:53
  There's the specialist, there's a doctor, and then there's there's yourself as the patient, as it were.
• 47:59
  And what it does is it almost creates this sort of passivity as a patient.
• 48:04
  You're just somebody that's receiving the their expertise, as it were.
• 48:08
  You know, if you venture up at points, which I did, you know, venture up a possibility of I want to do something different.
• 48:17
  I would like to explore this.
• 48:20
  You know, I'm deemed as a heretic in some way, going, you know, uh one question that highlights it for me was um I didn't know, I didn't want to know what staging my cancer was.
• 48:30
  For for me, it wasn't important.
• 48:32
  You know, I was either going to live or I was gonna die.
• 48:34
  Uh but if there's mentally there's something different to them telling me it's stage one, two, three, or four.
• 48:41
  So I'm in a multidisciplinary meeting.
• 48:44
  And I was simply asking, they said, Well, we're going to, after your surgery, we're also going to give you chemo and uh radiotherapy.
• 48:53
  Uh, and then you're also going to have six sessions of chemotherapy.
• 48:56
  And I said, Well, sorry, nobody told me I was going to have chemotherapy.
• 49:00
  I said, Can you tell me?
• 49:02
  You know, what where's this all of a sudden come from?
• 49:05
  And somebody at the back of the room who I never saw just shouted out, well, if I had stage four throat cancer like this, I would have everything.
• 49:15
  And for me, it just highlighted this sort of this asymmetry and the power, as it were, or the within the interaction itself, which was quite troubling and destabilizing at points.
• 49:30
  And the the protocol again with this understanding of terrain, with this understanding of the storms, with this understanding of the fundamental basis of where I find myself, then with that awareness starts to become a choice.
• 49:47
  Then I start to be able to see the elements where I might be able to, and a sense of agency.
• 49:52
  I can I can follow this.
• 49:55
  Um, but this has also got to be respected by the practitioners, by the medics.
• 50:00
  As well.
• 50:00
  And yeah, that's I'm hoping the intention with this is it becomes a blueprint upon which both medics and clin um and patients alike can understand where the roles begin and where it ends and where the patients' desires and wishes begin and end as well.
• 50:25
  Well does that make sense?
• 50:27
  A lot of that has to do with um this idea of having agency and actually having some choice and things.
• 50:33
  A lot of that has to do with kind of the layout or the group blueprint of the information.
• 50:38
  So let's take cancer, for instance.
• 50:39
  And I've just had a patient go through this, where she has had a surgery.
• 50:45
  The surgery has removed the cancer.
• 50:48
  Now the issue is could there be any other cancer cells that we don't know about that are not in the lymph nodes?
• 50:57
  We check those.
• 50:59
  And should we give chemotherapy just for that extra measure?
• 51:04
  And that's the difficult thing.
• 51:08
  Because then the question is, well, doctor, what's the chances there's a cancer cell somewhere else?
• 51:15
  And that if I decline chemotherapy, that you know, I could be making uh uh a tremendous uh mistake.
• 51:23
  And there were you in that situation where the cancer was gone and this the surgery and radiation had done the job, and now you're in this this probabilistic uh web where you're trying to figure out should I take chemo to kind of cover that possibility?
• 51:40
  Was that the situation?
• 51:43
  100%.
• 51:44
  Yeah.
• 51:44
  So the the reason I sort of chuckle is that there was this moment where I've had um so they told me that I was gonna have uh four rounds of chemotherapy, so good old chemo radiation, and and you know the the ravages that that creates.
• 51:59
  So I came to the end of my my fourth session of chemotherapy, and um and and my bloods were quite good, and I was I was doing okay, and I met the oncologist and said, Well, look, I'm really pleased to say that your bloods are great.
• 52:14
  So um, so we're gonna uh book you in for another two rounds of chemotherapy.
• 52:19
  Bonus rounds.
• 52:21
  And I said, um, so I said, can I just pause you there?
• 52:25
  I said that first and foremost, I didn't know I was having chemotherapy to begin with.
• 52:29
  Um and now you've you said four, and then now you're springing another two.
• 52:33
  I said, can you give me a clear cut rationale as to why I should have two more sessions?
• 52:41
  Um, you know, is that can you give me you know uh outcome measures, etc.?
• 52:46
  And he and he and uh honestly, these are the and he was a lovely man, I hazen tied, but he just said, no, I can't.
• 52:53
  He said it's just protocol.
• 52:56
  And that was it.
• 52:58
  And so I said, Well, do you know what?
• 53:00
  I'll I'll you can leave those two.
• 53:02
  I've had enough, thank you.
• 53:04
  Um, and I I sort of didn't take those once too.
• 53:07
  Don't you think that's a tough part of cancer?
• 53:10
  I think cancer is different than a lot of other areas of medicine, where the word protocol is used, and people are saying, well, you get surgery, you get chemo, and you get radiation, and it's protocol.
• 53:22
  I mean, uh, and anybody uh you know, I really want the listeners' feedback on this.
• 53:27
  If if you've had cancer or someone in your family's had cancer, you know, has have you been faced with that?
• 53:33
  That it's protocol because I can tell you in cardiology, you we don't have that so much.
• 53:38
  There's a lot more stylistic ways.
• 53:41
  It's not like when I see a patient with heart failure, it's protocol that you do this.
• 53:45
  It's just no, it's it's an integration uh of things, and I think that's the problem with cancer and how cancer evolved was all these layers of randomized trials and one drug on top of another and one protocol, and and it it's this incremental advancement and patients in these cancer centers in Texas.
• 54:10
  We actually have the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center in Houston, and you know, I prefer patients there, but they tell me, listen, when you go in there, you in a sense, the entire institution is a giant protocol, and you just are right in there.
• 54:26
  So, Chris, we just have uh you know, two minutes left.
• 54:30
  Um tell us uh where we are with this and and your advancements.
• 54:34
  Uh, how do people learn more about the mountain protocol and particularly your work with clients?
• 54:40
  So um, so obviously I work uh one-to-one with people mainly online at the present time, and it's it's those that are obviously navigating uh complex illness and chronic health.
• 54:51
  So especially those that have been through uh cancer protocols and uh treatments and coming out the other side, and although they may well be uh as it were cured, they maybe all be like myself 10 years down the line.
• 55:05
  There's still a process of healing that's required, and it's um it's that group of people or uh Cleontel that I'm most uh most certainly interested in helping um explore and navigate their mountain and hopefully um create this collaboration, this choice and this movement towards towards their own goal, as it were.
• 55:28
  So, you know, that's that's my hope.
• 55:30
  Um, they can find me if you go to uh www.the mountain protocol dot com.
• 55:38
  Oh, that's great.
• 55:39
  That's my uh my website.
• 55:41
  Um maybe you can put a link.
• 55:43
  I'll uh I can put uh a link on to uh onto your site as well, and they can find me there.
• 55:48
  Chris, I get contacted daily from people all over the world in these types of predicaments, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna send them to you.
• 55:56
  So if they go to the website, can they enter their information and then you'll respond or your team will respond?
• 56:02
  Yeah, contact me, and uh I'm always up for a chat.
• 56:05
  Um, yeah, I love to talk.
• 56:07
  Um, you know, look, this is something that I'm most passionate about.
• 56:11
  I see it of great benefit most certainly to patients.
• 56:14
  I also see it as great benefit to to clinicians as well, because you know, what it what it's uh my hope is that it also takes a lot of the burden and responsibility off uh clinicians because what it will do quite clearly is define, like I said, roles and responsibilities and uh yeah, where help and begins and ends, as it were.
• 56:35
  So, you know, I really do see this a benefit to to most certainly to patients and clinicians alike.
• 56:40
  So, but uh yeah, thank you ever so much for having me today, Peter.
• 56:45
  Uh Ben, great discussion.
• 56:46
  I was so honored to meet you in the UK in Guernsey, and great to see you're in terrific shape.
• 56:52
  Now, Chris, is the is the final word here?
• 56:55
  You're more than 10 years after stage four throat cancer.
• 56:59
  I am indeed.
• 57:00
  Yeah.
• 57:01
  Gosh, that's so amazing.
• 57:02
  Your voice is just a little gravelly, just a little, but not much.
• 57:08
  Not much.
• 57:09
  So quite sexy.
• 57:11
  Well, well, but there you go.
• 57:12
  Yeah, the right.
• 57:14
  Well, listen, uh, this has been a terrific interview.
• 57:16
  Um, uh, we've been talking to Dr.
• 57:18
  Chris uh Robigard, who is uh chiropractor, uh a uh a psychologist, uh, someone who's a cancer survivor, and go to the mountain protocol, www.mountainprotocol.com.
• 57:32
  That's how you can uh reach him.
• 57:35
  And uh, and we've learned so much, Chris.
• 57:37
  I gotta have you on again.
• 57:38
  Terrific interview.
• 57:39
  Thank you.
• 57:40
  Thank you ever so much for your time, Peter.
• 57:42
  And uh, yeah, I hope uh hope your mom does well.
• 57:45
  So listen, send me much love.
• 57:47
  Thank you.