Rob Arring is a certified holistic health coach and co-founder of Integrative Pediatrics. He is also the director and producer of the award-winning film The Need to Grow, and has a big interest in one of our central concerns: reversing the chronic disease epidemic in our children. In this episode, Rob talks about his philosophy and approach to advocacy, and how we can all work together to make our food and environment more nutritious and more clean. Happy Earth Day! - Happy Cleaning Day! - Happy Holidays! - Earth Day is a global day to honor and celebrate all things Earth. This episode is a reminder that we are all connected to the earth and all things that are connected to us through our food, our environment, our bodies, and our bodies' interactions with the elements. We can't live without food, and we can t live without water, but we can't really live that long without air. And we don't have an air filter. If you don't become a filter in the first place, you don t become a good person. - Unfortunately, the first person in the world has an air filtration system that doesn't filter the air, but it's a good idea, but if you can get a filter, it's not just a filter but a filter that filters the air you can become a person. - Happy Earth Week! - Rob Arring is a writer, filmmaker, musician, and environmental activist. He writes songs for health and eco-activism, and writes songs about the importance of living in harmony with the earth. . He is a songwriter, and he is an advocate for the planet, and a passionate advocate for nature, and so much more. He also writes songs that help us all become a better version of ourselves. Thank you for listening to this episode of Earth Day. Thank you, Rob! Thank you so much for listening, Rob, I really really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this episode and I really do appreciate you. Love you, bye. XOXO, bye, bye! - Caitlyn. xoxo, Caitie, Sarah, Emily, Amy, Rachel, Natalie, and Sarah, Sarah, Sarah and Annie, - Sarah, Caitlyn, and her husband, Rebecca, and your support is so much. Caitlyn and her work is so important to me, too.
00:00:22.000He co-founded the platform Earth-conscious life as an environmental filmmaker, citizen journalist and musical activist.
00:00:31.000Rob writes songs for health and eco-activism.
00:00:35.000He headlined the Rock for Nature concert in Berlin for 25,000 people.
00:00:40.000He is a certified holistic health coach and is the co-founder of Integrative Pediatrics and has a big, big interest in one of our central Wheelhouse preoccupations, which is how do you reverse the chronic disease epidemic in our children?
00:01:00.000And how Rob Hughes, my friend Mark Hyman, says that food is medicine.
00:01:06.000But the way that we grow that food and the way that we consume that food really helps.
00:01:15.000And that's one of the central formulations of your philosophy and your approach advocacy.
00:01:27.000We know that more and more as our population is eating things that look like food, that resemble what once was food, but unfortunately are not containing all the nutrients and are unfortunately contaminated in ways that they once were not.
00:01:44.000And so through that is that that's really one of our biggest interactions with nature.
00:01:49.000We can think of it that way where the actual soil is being turned into something that is consumed by us that turns into our physical bodies.
00:01:59.000So if we're eating things that were contaminated, we're polluting our own bodies.
00:02:04.000So this is a big part of my work moving forward is really not just how our connection to earth and minerals through our food, but how really all the elements are medicine.
00:02:17.000And how air is medicine, how water is medicine, how even something like fire, the way that we interact with light and the way that light works within the body, the way that heat works within the body.
00:02:31.000And so as I've been doing deep dive research on how much of our food system has unfortunately Kind of become destructive, not just to our own physical bodies, but to our ecosystems at large.
00:02:44.000What I keep coming up against, or what I'm reminded of, are the synergies with The systems within our body and the systems on a larger scale.
00:02:56.000And so that we and our human health is such a reflection of the ecosystems that we see on a planetary level.
00:03:02.000And just as we're seeing biodiversity loss on large scales, just as we're seeing pollution on large scales, we're also seeing biodiversity loss within the human body.
00:03:14.000And we're seeing this even in kids, even in newborns, being born without certain microbes in their gut microbiome that we would expect with a healthy newborn.
00:03:25.000And we're also seeing these same kids being born contaminated to chemicals even before they exit the womb.
00:03:34.000And so what are we doing on a planetary level?
00:03:37.000On an ecosystem level that is unfortunately affecting our human health.
00:03:42.000And so as I've looked into this deeper, I've been, you know, just returning to these elements.
00:03:46.000And air is probably the first and foremost, right?
00:04:38.000Just turning the vent on when we're When we're actually frying something on a pan or reducing the number of candles that we're burning or the amount of incense that we're using.
00:04:49.000Simple things like that can have profound impact.
00:04:53.000We know that our mental health, our physical health changes when we go outside.
00:04:59.000So can we bring a little bit more of the outdoor world Into our indoor space, which is what's so important about things about holiday, quote unquote, like Earth Day or Earth Week or Earth Month is because it reminds us, hopefully, of the connection that we have to nature and the dependence that we have on nature.
00:06:47.000That's pharmacy with an F, by the way.
00:06:50.000It looks at the biophotonic potential of light within our bodies.
00:06:56.000So we are being exposed to artificial light, just like we're exposed to Artificial stale air and we're deficient in natural light.
00:07:06.000So many of us think of sunlight as just vitamin D, but it's so much more that's happening there at a hormonal level and genetic level if we can expose our bodies in a healthy way to sunlight.
00:07:20.000And so we have to look at the way the humans evolved if we want to return to health.
00:07:25.000And when we use these phrases like natural, you know, do I want something to be more natural?
00:07:30.000Well, really what that means is how did human beings evolve?
00:08:31.000But we know that most of the things that we're using to, quote unquote, protect ourselves from sunlight are just more chemicals, are just more pollutants that are in most of these sunscreens.
00:08:42.000So as I'm going through each of these elements, of course, we look at our water.
00:08:48.000We know that water, it's estimated to be the largest cause of death on the planet, larger than war and violence combined because of unclean water.
00:09:00.000So many of us are blessed to have access to clean water, some of us not so much, but even what is Known as quote-unquote clean that comes out of our faucets, as you know very well, much of this is contaminated with other things, whether it's chlorine, whether it's fluoride, again, chemicals that really the human body didn't evolve to be consuming at this level.
00:09:30.000If you have access to spring water and can filter that and, you know, at your own risk, This is some of the most healing water on the planet.
00:09:40.000So I'm always looking at how do we really return things to the way that humans evolved?
00:09:46.000Because so much of the debate of human health right now is, well, it couldn't have been this.
00:09:53.000It couldn't have been caused by that because it's hard to find smoking guns to one particular variable.
00:09:59.000And these are some of the limitations of science, which is that sometimes you can't isolate one thing.
00:10:05.000But we know that there are very clear trends of ways in which humans have been disconnected from nature and ways in which that we've been polluted and contaminated with new things.
00:10:17.000And so if we can reduce some of those newer things, it's not that we want to, you know, avoid all of modern life and go live in a cabin for the rest of time and never go back to society.
00:10:30.000But how do we get in balance and actually rebuild our connection?
00:10:35.000And another cool thing that I've been learning about is the way in which nature and time in nature really shows benefit to our whole physical body in as little as a few hours.
00:10:49.000There's a concept from Japan called Shinrin-yoku, otherwise known as forest bathing.
00:10:55.000And there are studies that show that in just a few hours in the forest, What's happening is that the body's natural killer cells, a key immune system cell in our blood, goes up by as much as 50% just from a few hours.
00:11:14.000So this is a key part of the immune system that can fight cancers, that can fight infectious disease.
00:11:19.000And so this time in nature is not just, you feel better, it's just some woo-woo idea.
00:11:26.000We know that on very measurable metrics, blood pressure goes down, anxiety goes down, the healing power of our immune system goes up, our mental health changes, our mood changes.
00:11:39.000And so even things as simple Plants in hospital rooms.
00:11:45.000At first was written off as, okay, that can't be that big of a deal.
00:11:49.000But there are studies that show that plants in a hospital room during recovery increases healing.
00:12:21.000And the way that I've been looking at as we're seeing all these mental health issues is that our brain evolved in a way to actually tell ourselves when things aren't right.
00:12:32.000And sometimes when we feel bad, we think that's a problem.
00:12:38.000I mean, obviously we don't want people to feel bad, but when you start to feel a bit sluggish, when your energy is low, When you're depressed, instead of looking for more ways to focus on problems and be even more depressed, what if we ask ourselves, hey, this is feedback.
00:12:55.000This is like the engine coming on, the little light coming on that says service engine soon in our car.
00:13:15.000And what many people have found is that by just getting outdoors more, you know, getting into national parks, getting into any green space, bringing green space into the home, little things as much as looking out to a view of the trees for just a couple minutes, we can see that there's mental health change.
00:13:35.000So I love exercising outdoor, you know, even if you aren't a runner or a hiker or a biker, just something like a walk.
00:13:45.000You know, these simple things have profound impact.
00:13:49.000So I'm always returning to air, water, earth, and fire.
00:13:53.000And how do I get them back into my life as much as nature optimized them over thousands and thousands of years for us to feel good?
00:14:02.000I'm more and more aware of the metaphors and the connection between individual human health and the kind of macro environmental health.
00:14:13.000And, you know, what we want to do in both situations is to is to fortify the immune system, fortify resiliency of the ecosystem, resiliency of the individual organism, rather than use a war metaphor and say we got to eliminate this particular agricultural. rather than use a war metaphor and say we got
00:14:32.000Past are and we're going to do a chemical warfare against them or we got to eliminate this particular virus with chemical and technological warfare, but instead build, bolster the human immune system, bolster the ecosystem so that they can absorb the kind of bolster the ecosystem so that they can absorb the kind of punishment that humanity is now giving
00:14:54.000One of the sort of interesting experiences I had at Riverkeeper Was in ways of figuring out ways to measure the impacts of pollution on a river, on a creek, on a feeder stream.
00:15:11.000We have in upstate New York and in Hudson Valley, literally thousands and thousands of small creeks, many of them.
00:15:20.000Headwaters, not only at the Hudson River, but of the reservoirs that feed the drinking waters of life for 10.5 million people in New York City, this incredible reservoir system.
00:15:31.000It's really three systems, the Croton system, the Delaware system, and the Catskill system.
00:15:37.000And we'd see somebody build a golf course on one of those creeks.
00:15:44.000And you couldn't really, we knew they were using pesticides, but usually the pesticides were running off in slugs during rainstorms when there was nobody, there was rarely anybody out there to measure, you know, what was happening in the creek at that time.
00:16:00.000We ran into a group called Stroud Water Research Center in Pennsylvania.
00:16:07.000And what they do is they put leaf packs and they weight them down with rocks, these little packs of leaves and cheesecloth.
00:16:15.000They put them for two weeks into that creek and then they take them out and they basically shake all the little bugs out of them.
00:16:23.000And in a healthy creek, you'll see hundreds and hundreds of different species of microbes and small animals and aquatic organisms and, you know, mayflies, caddisflies, salmonflies and larvae and all of these different animals that you'll see intermingling with each other in these incredible teaming communities.
00:16:48.000And then below the golf course, you'll see the same biomass in terms of poundage.
00:16:54.000In other words, it's creating the same weight of biomass, but it will be all one species to affect worms, which is a very high-tolerance pollution species, but everything else will be dead.
00:17:07.000And it became the way that we measured ecosystem health.
00:18:22.000We're an ecology of all these different organisms upon which we're completely dependent for our survival, for our health, for our happiness.
00:18:37.000And what we're finding is a lot of these chemicals, the neonicotinoid pesticides, the glyphosate, the chemicals that we inject on a day-to-day basis that are in our food, our air, etc., they are killing chemicals.
00:18:54.000Large swaths of that species diversity.
00:18:57.000And when that happens, human moods deteriorate.
00:19:02.000We become less healthy, less able to fend off foreign invaders, less able to protect.
00:19:08.000Protect ourselves against coronavirus.
00:19:11.000And a lot of, you know, we're finding, for example, you know, ulcers.
00:19:17.000People thought they'd come from worrying when I was a kid.
00:19:21.000We now know that it's because your microbiome is out of whack.
00:19:26.000And there's organisms that in your stomach have been allowed to flourish.
00:19:32.000The organisms that we're supposed to keep down, those populations are gone.
00:19:36.000And there's so much science now on this, and it's really fascinating, but really important for people to understand that your health is not going to come in a syringe.
00:19:47.000It's not going to come even from going to your doctor.
00:19:50.000It's going to come from taking care of yourself, and particularly your microbiome.
00:19:55.000Yeah, we've been working on a project about the connection of what's known as the gut-brain axis.
00:20:00.000And our mental health, like you said, is one of the most responsive when we start to rebuild the gut microbiome.
00:20:11.000And, of course, many people are now becoming more aware that things like our feel-good hormones, like dopamine and serotonin, the majority of them, are produced in the gut.
00:20:24.000We, only in the last few decades, were able to have the genetic technology to be able to identify the differences of what's happening there.
00:20:33.000It seems almost every week there's new discoveries happening right now when it comes to the microbiome.
00:20:38.000So it's becoming a bit more trendy or a buzzword to talk about the microbiome and gut health, but for good reason.
00:20:46.000And so this idea of whether or not you're taking probiotics through a supplement or actually getting them from food, which was the way that we would have.
00:20:54.000Of course, humans didn't evolve with supplements.
00:20:57.000They were getting exposed to these microbes through their time in nature.
00:21:03.000And there's a really interesting thing that happens when we have our hands in something like soil.
00:21:09.000And there's one bacterium that they've identified called Mycobacterium vacae, or vacae, I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, is a particular microbe found in soils that we now know is critical to our serotonin production.
00:21:26.000And so it may be that our hands are in the soil, and we're breathing a little bit of this in when we're out there working in the dirt.
00:21:32.000Maybe it gets under our fingernails, or some of it is on the carrot when it comes out of the ground.
00:21:43.000We have great science now on this technology known as grounding that, of course, a lot of people thought was a woo-woo hippie idea of hugging a tree When in reality, we are connecting on an electrical level to the Earth's electrical field.
00:22:00.000And this has benefits to our blood cells.
00:22:04.000In as little as 45 minutes, we can actually, I've seen this in person, where we tested blood, looked at it under a microscope.
00:22:12.000We grounded the same patients who were experiencing some sort of pain.
00:22:16.000We saw the clumpiness, the sludginess of the red blood cells, the way that they clump together.
00:22:21.000This, of course, is not an optimal blood flow.
00:22:25.000We want oxygen to be moving throughout the body, nutrients to be carried throughout the body through our red blood cells really flowing.
00:22:35.000And once we ground, we can actually see a transformation.
00:22:39.000It's not that it's going to heal everything overnight, but these are very real changes that happen when we ground.
00:22:45.000There's a great film, I believe it's called The Earthing, that focuses on some of the science behind that.
00:22:51.000But we know that there's reduced pain, reduced stress, our heart rate variability changes, our immune system We see change in a city.
00:23:03.000So things like urban agriculture and our access to food are not just about the high freshness, the higher antioxidant content, the high nutrients of the food, but if you can spend time in a community garden, if you can spend time in your own garden, or just stepping into an urban garden or a park, we can really measure the changes that happen in our stress level.
00:23:26.000And so many of us, of course, are overstressed.
00:23:29.000And so if we can connect to the soil on a physical level, then there's also this fascinating concept of what are called phytoncides, which are effectively the essential oils that come off of plants.
00:23:42.000So we've all heard this saying of, you know, stop and smell the roses.
00:23:45.000But in reality, that time that we might take is not just about the pause or a Zen moment or reflecting on the beauty.
00:23:55.000Which also has benefits, but literally breathing in these compounds called phytoncides that come off trees and they come off of plants, they have antimicrobial properties, they have antifungal properties, antiviral properties.
00:24:10.000And they can also enhance your immune system.
00:24:12.000So this disconnection from soil, from plants, is something that has become ingrained, unfortunately, into our modern culture to the point where most kids don't know where food comes from.
00:24:24.000Most kids have never planted a seed and watched it grow.
00:24:28.000But there's something that can happen for a kid if you can give them that opportunity.
00:24:33.000They're gonna take a lot more ownership over their own connection to that food.
00:24:37.000They're gonna be more likely to eat healthy food More likely to try, you know, new vegetables that at first they thought were icky or whatever.
00:24:45.000But even on the adult level, I've seen this happen.
00:24:48.000We often talk about, you know, for kids, we want to teach them this, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen adults that we've taken out onto a farm or an urban farm for the first time that either they've ever been in their life or maybe in decades.
00:25:02.000And once they just spend a little bit of time planting, hands in the soil, or tasting fresh food or watching that process, you know, some people, it changes their whole perspective on the food system.
00:25:15.000And so these experiences of being in nature, I think, are so critical.
00:25:20.000And we have to protect these ecosystems as much as possible.
00:25:23.000So we can look at the soil on the planet as our gut microbiome.
00:25:28.000But of course, many of us think of But we can't dismiss the ocean, which it's estimated over 50% of our oxygen that we breathe comes from these things like marine phytoplankton.
00:25:40.000So the ocean in and of itself is breathing.
00:25:43.000And at the same time, I think it's 80% of wastewater is just dumped right into public water without being treated.
00:25:52.000There are some estimates that up to 40% of lakes, at least in the United States, are too toxic to fish out of.
00:26:01.000So as we pollute more and more of our ecosystems, it's no wonder that we're seeing skyrocketing chronic disease, because we're actually causing disease on the ecological level at the same time.
00:26:16.000So if you like being alive, you know, you care about ecology, you care about ecosystems.
00:26:22.000I think we want to see ourselves in nature because it is Mother Earth.
00:26:31.000The more that we dismiss it or take it for granted, we're pushing ourselves further and further Towards chaos on a human health level, on an environmental level, but nature is resilient.
00:26:46.000As I just talked about the resiliency, what's amazing about natural systems is that they always build contingency plans.
00:28:47.000All of the vitamins I eat and everything else, I have no idea whether they're actually working, but I keep eating them.
00:28:54.000So when it comes to probiotic strains, there's so many.
00:28:58.000And as usual, humans focus on the ones that they think they understand.
00:29:03.000And so there's only a few strains that we have really great data on the benefits.
00:29:09.000Personally, I think as we've discussed, it's biodiversity that is really the solution.
00:29:15.000So I generally, for myself, and yeah, like you said, it's not medical advice, I don't like to focus on one particular probiotic strain or brand, because you can effectively rebuild not only a monoculture, say of one strain, but a limited number of strains that are in that product.
00:29:36.000Because there's only so many that they're allowed to put into preventing themselves.
00:29:44.000You're supposed to eat sauerkraut and you're supposed to eat, I think, yogurt.
00:29:48.000Maybe not all kinds of yogurt, but some kinds.
00:29:55.000Looking at rebuilding that biodiversity, because these are the things that aren't limited by an ingredient list that a human came up with, right?
00:30:02.000So whether it's kimchi, naturally fermented, even truly fermented pickles, like real pickled vegetables, could be, like you say, certain types of yogurt.
00:30:12.000And if you can make your own kombucha is a really powerful one.
00:30:16.000You know, these things sell in the store for $4 a bottle now.
00:30:20.000You can make it at home for literally pennies.
00:30:23.000Just by letting your fruit juice go rot, right?
00:30:46.000It's not just about go outside and eat dirt or just go and expose yourself to anything.
00:30:51.000But we know that a lot of these foods can be safely consumed.
00:30:55.000And really, it's like compost for the body, in a sense, where the microbes that are able to break down some of these things in soil and rebuild the health of our soil But once we put those microbes back into our body through things like fermented foods, you know, we're initiating a part of that cycle that is going to help our digestion.
00:31:17.000So I'm more about the gut soothing foods like aloe or marshmallow root or some of these things that can actually bind to different toxins and bring out some of the junk, but really provide an anti-inflammatory situation for our gut.
00:31:36.000So things like fasting when done under the right circumstances can just give your body that chance to relax.
00:31:44.000We need to not just be constantly bombarding, especially with a lot of the additives, the seed oils, the fried foods, overconsumption of alcohol, overconsumption of pharmaceuticals.
00:31:57.000Things that destroy those friendly microbes.
00:32:00.000Because like you say, they are part of us.
00:32:03.000We are like walking spaceships of microbes.
00:32:06.000And we have very clear studies that can show when we rebuild some of those microbial bacteria in our body, depression scores go down.