[00:00]
Welcome to Seeds, a show where we talk with people who are living lives of purpose and
[00:04]
doing amazing things that make a positive impact in our world. We take time to listen
[00:09]
to them as they reflect on their life journeys and what has shaped them into who they are
[00:13]
today and what motivates them to be involved in what they do.
[00:17]
Kia ora everyone. Welcome on to Seeds Podcast. This is Stephen Moe speaking, and I'm really
[00:21]
glad you could join me as we get the chance to speak with Diane Ducardemain. In this conversation,
[00:27]
we talk a lot about what we eat, our health, and have a real focus on migraines. If you've
[00:33]
ever suffered from them or you know someone who does, then I think you're really going
[00:36]
to enjoy this perspective that she brings. And also make sure to check out the show notes
[00:41]
because there's an assessment that you can do that we talk about during the episode.
[00:45]
And Diane is offered to look at every single person's assessment when they do it and provide
[00:50]
some input to them. If you enjoy this, then don't forget there's more than 333 other conversations
[00:56]
in the back catalog. So you might want to check some of those out as well. If you like
[01:00]
it, then why not subscribe and tell one other person about the show. Now let's get straight
[01:04]
into this conversation.
[01:05]
All right. So it's a real pleasure to welcome Diane Ducardemain, the founder of Nectar Health.
[01:11]
Thank you for joining me.
[01:13]
Thank you for having me.
[01:14]
I'm really looking forward to this conversation and finding out about what you're doing today.
[01:20]
But I also love to find about people's life journeys and what led them to do what they
[01:25]
do today. So in your case, could we jump in a time machine and go back to when you
[01:31]
were, say, four or five years old? What was life like for you and where were you living?
[01:37]
When I was 45 years old, I was living in Brussels, which is my hometown. My mother tongue's French,
[01:44]
so we were three sisters. And I was the sick one. You know, one of those who has the purple
[01:50]
lips in the swimming pool who can't go to school because she has an ear infection. Then
[01:54]
she has a bronchitis. Then she has a bronchopneumonia. The one where dad and mom say, oh, it's your
[02:00]
DNA. No, it's your DNA. And you're in the middle and saying, oh, thank you. It's my
[02:03]
buddy. So, yeah, that is how I remember being a child. Yeah. Otherwise, happy. But, you
[02:14]
And describe that city, because I actually haven't visited before. What's it like? Or
[02:18]
when you were young, what was it like?
[02:22]
You know, it's a city that my parents have had very little means. So I remember doing
[02:27]
everything walking. And so everything was arranged that we could walk to school, walk
[02:33]
to do grocery shopping, etc. My parents were sharing a car and my dad needed it for work.
[02:40]
And so I remember lots of walks, large path walks. And then I remember the garden we had
[02:48]
at the end of the garden, like this amazing cherry tree, which would be so lush in summer.
[02:54]
And we would, my little sister and I in particular, we would go in the tree. It would be like
[02:59]
a place of heaven where we would just collect these abundant cherries and spend a bit of
[03:04]
time hidden together, feeling we were taking risks, you know, just in the garden.
[03:11]
And what was it like having two other sisters, you said? Were you the oldest or the youngest
[03:16]
or where did you fit?
[03:18]
I was in the middle. I was the middle one. Yeah, it was good. It was good. Lots of chats,
[03:24]
lots of two plus one, you know, depending which is the combination, I guess.
[03:28]
Yeah, yeah. So coming through in your younger years in terms of school and things, what
[03:35]
sort of subjects interested you?
[03:39]
I was really interested in the body and medicine. I remember when I was a child collecting the
[03:45]
newspaper, they were offering these pamphlets on the body. And I remember collating them
[03:52]
and asking my parents to buy the newspaper, which was called Le Soir, like the evening.
[03:58]
And I remember putting them in one of those, you know, like a folder and collating them.
[04:06]
But that being said, I had lots of interest. I later in the years, I said to my parents,
[04:11]
I either wanted to be a hairdresser, which I have become, you know, I'm the hairdresser of my
[04:16]
son and my husband and my daughter, or the prime minister, which, you know, not yet.
[04:24]
But I'm not sure if that is something I desire anymore.
[04:28]
That's interesting. Yeah, it's so growing up then in that environment, I guess, because it is
[04:35]
quite an interesting city, isn't it? It's quite international.
[04:38]
Yes. In terms of European Union and different things. Was that something that was on your radar?
[04:44]
Like, were you aware that it was that sort of a place?
[04:47]
Yeah, interesting. No, I don't think I was aware, but I could hear a lot of languages being spoken.
[04:56]
And so today I speak seven. And I think the aptitude to learn languages came from the fact of
[05:02]
walking in the streets and hearing different ones. I think the taste for living abroad came
[05:08]
much later when I was 14 to 16. My family and I, we went to live in London. And then I was like,
[05:15]
whoa, the world's so much bigger. It's so cool. Forget about the doctor idea, which I was back on.
[05:22]
I'm going to become a businesswoman and travel around the world. There's so much to discover.
[05:26]
And I don't want to be confined to a single place. And so I realized how small actually
[05:31]
Brussels was. Yeah. And that the languages, did that start at a young age, learning multiple
[05:40]
languages? Did I hear right? You said you speak seven? Yes. So like Dutch, so my son was French,
[05:47]
then Dutch you have to sort of learn it at school. But this is where it stopped until
[05:51]
we moved to London. And suddenly we had the need to learn English, which happened fairly fast.
[05:57]
And I was, when I was there at actually at the Frenchly scene, South Kensington,
[06:03]
there was no Dutch. So I had then to add a new language, which then turned out to be German
[06:07]
because it was the closest to Dutch and probably a useful one. And that went fairly fast. And I
[06:15]
spent a few summers in Heidelberg to learn more German. And I thought it was quite easy. Then I
[06:21]
later on went to Costa Rica and I learned Spanish within three weeks. And then I thought, oh, this
[06:26]
is cool. You know, I'll go to Italy and learn Italian. By that time, I thought things were
[06:31]
confused in my head because, you know, you know, Dutch and German and Italian and Spanish are
[06:36]
slightly too similar. And by then I had also started to learn Mandarin, which felt fun.
[06:43]
Right. So quite a few. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the exposure comes back to the early years.
[06:51]
Yeah. That's what allows your brain to dissect the syllabes. Now that I'm reading more about
[06:55]
the brain and how it works, it seems that this is sort of what made the difference.
[07:01]
I think you're right. I think it does have something to do with even knowing that it's
[07:06]
possible to learn the other language, which I know sounds a little bit strange. But when I was
[07:11]
young, we lived in Chile, in South America. So I learned to speak Spanish as an 11 year old,
[07:17]
12 year old. And so because I could speak English and Spanish, then when a little bit later,
[07:23]
when I moved to Japan, it kind of wasn't that big a step to say, well, yeah, I might as well
[07:29]
learn Japanese. I'm living in Japan. Yeah. You know, so it sounds really odd, doesn't it? That
[07:33]
I would be able to speak English, Spanish and Japanese. But then once you've learned one,
[07:39]
it's like, well, yeah, I can. Yeah. And I remember vividly one of my uncles,
[07:45]
he was able to speak seven, one of which was Hebrew, like really cool. And I thought as a
[07:50]
child, this was phenomenal. And so sometimes one of my sisters and I, we would fake talk a
[07:56]
different language. So we would talk stuff, but we were faking it was Spanish. So we were just,
[08:01]
you know, making intonations. Yeah. And living in that world of possibility.
[08:07]
Yeah. And just let's talk about this just for a second, because language fascinates me.
[08:12]
And what fascinates me is the way that we think. Yeah. And to what extent does language
[08:19]
alter maybe the way we look at the world? Have you got any thoughts on that? Like speaking so
[08:24]
many languages, you've seen different approaches. Massive. Massive. Because what really struck me
[08:31]
is I started to learn Mandarin, which was the last one. Although I maybe I'm going to start
[08:36]
Maori, let's see. But I learned Mandarin. I started around age, I don't know, 21. And it
[08:47]
really struck me how different the logic was. So there was a certain logic, you know, to French,
[08:52]
Spanish and Italian, you could feel had the same roots and Dutch, German, and to some extent,
[08:58]
English had similar roots. But both of all of these six languages, when you designate something,
[09:04]
it means that something. And then they each would have, you know, their expressions like
[09:12]
in Costa Rica or things that you wouldn't be able to translate. But they would still,
[09:19]
you know, when you say A, it means A, and when you say B, it means B. When I started to learn
[09:24]
Mandarin, A didn't mean A. And that was like a whole new way of thinking that was opening to me,
[09:33]
which actually really relates to what I do. You might be poking by coincidence, but really relates
[09:41]
to what I do. In Chinese, a liver doesn't mean liver, it means the system, which links to many
[09:48]
other organs than the liver, the liver doesn't work on its own. And so it really interests me
[09:54]
how the language in this case, in the case of medicine allows for a whole other universe to
[10:01]
express itself. Yeah, I think that we could easily talk for this for hours, because I love it.
[10:08]
The whole idea that the language is like the architecture, and that you can build different
[10:15]
things with different language and different vocabulary. And I think two points. The first
[10:20]
one is that knowing that an object or something is called, you know, let's say bread, you know,
[10:27]
this thing is called bread in my native language, but it's also called pan in Spanish. It's the same
[10:35]
thing, but it has a different name. I think it does open your mind to the idea of more possibilities,
[10:42]
you know, like, there's different conceptions of the world beyond one linear way of thinking.
[10:48]
Yeah. And I know for me, when I went to Japan, kind of similar to Chinese, I think there's just
[10:54]
it's just so different to the English way of expressing things. But within Japan, they have a
[11:01]
very formal approach and how you talk. It's called keigo. So you talk to your boss in a certain way
[11:08]
using a certain way or certain verbs. Whereas if you're feeding the dog, you talk to the dog
[11:15]
differently, you know, like, so the point is, it's a very hierarchical society. And that's mirrored
[11:21]
in the language itself. Yeah. So it's like, the culture, the language, it's so intertwined. It's
[11:28]
really fascinating to me. Yes. Similar. It's funny, similar to French, similar to Spanish
[11:34]
in Costa Rica, but not to Spanish in Spain. So it's quite, it's quite fascinating how these
[11:39]
things play out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So you mentioned before that the
[11:46]
body and health even interested you at a young age. I'm always curious about that because what
[11:51]
you're doing today is now kind of an intersection point. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that
[11:57]
young experiences of health and the body. What was it that was interesting to you?
[12:03]
Well, it was really frustrating. I think, you know, frustrating because my brain would say yes,
[12:10]
or I would want to do something and my body would say, no, you cannot, you're not allowed,
[12:18]
you're too weak, you cannot. And so that was like, for me, it was a massive level of frustration
[12:25]
of, you know, going a lot to the doctors. And I come from a family of doctors, Western doctors,
[12:29]
and sort of, you know, taking medications and that being it. Right. And so like that frustration,
[12:38]
and then at the same time, coupled with a curiosity of why things work a certain way inside
[12:43]
the body. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting what it is that spurs us to get interested in that.
[12:50]
So coming through into high school, did that continue? Or what were you,
[12:54]
what sort of subjects did you enjoy in your high school years?
[13:00]
Well, I did quite a lot of science. I did a lot of maths. I was doing the stuff that was hard. I
[13:06]
liked to be challenged. Yeah, I like a good challenge. So I was going towards the things
[13:11]
that were a bit harder, but almost by design, which doesn't make sense. I think, in retrospective,
[13:19]
you know, like, I think when I was a child, I, for me, equitability really mattered.
[13:27]
You know, I couldn't understand that we were living in a capitalistic world and not in a
[13:31]
communist world. And I think there were ideologies that I had as a kid that were very strong.
[13:37]
But the way I was raised, why you need to earn your bread, you need to earn your life, you know,
[13:41]
life is hard. You need to go at things, you need to be resilient, you need to study, you need to
[13:47]
do your best. And so there was a lot of competitive spirits. And sort of part of that
[13:52]
equitability and kindness was sort of brushed on the side and said, hey, you know what,
[13:57]
it's nice to be nice. But, you know, you first need to be strong in order to be nice.
[14:02]
And so that's, that together, combined with that experience in London, made me go for
[14:10]
studies in business. And so I went back to Belgium and I studied at Solvay, which
[14:18]
is a very reputable university.
[14:22]
Oh, that's great. And the topic then, was it on the subject of business and entrepreneurship
[14:31]
Well, it was actually a pretty interesting degree. It was, if you will, helping people
[14:37]
become translators. So Solvay is a chemistry company. And the people in charge of that
[14:43]
company thought that the business people ought to understand science. And so they put together
[14:49]
a degree where you would have, for the first two years, a lot of classes of chemistry,
[14:55]
of physics, of mathematics, of statistics, like really hardcore of technology. And then you would
[15:00]
overly three years of pure business. And so it had a very, I mean, an extremely solid reputation
[15:08]
in Belgium, being qualified as, you know, the top curriculum someone could do at the time.
[15:15]
But then they struggled with their own identity because they wouldn't fit anywhere. And so they
[15:20]
tried to retrofit their classes to attain some scores and some ranking, which, to some extent,
[15:28]
put them backwards, because then it became sort of a me too, a me too business school.
[15:33]
I mean, if I may say, with a lot of kindness towards the people who led it, I think the
[15:37]
intent initially was superb and extremely advanced for its age, like of having STEM
[15:43]
overlaid with business. It was quite phenomenal. And then it tried to play in similar fields as
[15:51]
the other ones. So it was, yeah, a combo university, I guess.
[15:55]
Yeah, that's interesting. And did you know what career that would take you to or what area you
[16:01]
wanted to get into? No, I didn't quite know. And to this day, I'm surprised by some of the classes
[16:08]
I've learned a lot from. For example, we had IT. And so I learned to do Java and JavaScript
[16:15]
as languages. And I never thought it may or may not, you know, help me. And it helps me so much
[16:21]
now. But going into it, I didn't know. Like I, you know, in Belgium, I was in a microcosm where
[16:31]
it was more about health and well-being and, you know, being kind to others. And then you evolve
[16:37]
and you're like, oh, the world's bigger. It has more possibilities. I first need to learn and
[16:42]
explore before I settle on anything. And so I did those studies. I quite enjoyed them. I mean,
[16:50]
they were really intense, but it was nice. And then I joined McKinsey because I love strategy
[16:57]
and I thought it would be a nice way to get into it and not wait too many years before that.
[17:03]
Yeah. And all through this time, because obviously we're here in New Zealand now,
[17:09]
was international like a life that would take you overseas? Was that on your horizon?
[17:15]
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I was really curious. I was curious about other languages,
[17:21]
back to the earlier conversation, other languages, other ways to talk, other ways to think.
[17:27]
I felt I was really having a very small perspective on the world and I wanted to
[17:33]
have a much larger one. And so it was a very big appeal for me to work abroad with McKinsey.
[17:41]
And so I worked across Europe and then South Africa, the US, a bit in Dubai and then China
[17:47]
for five years. And among all places, there was a need for 18 months in New Zealand. And that's
[17:54]
how we landed here seven years ago, sort of loved it and are still here. Wow. So just stepping back
[18:00]
from that, because I want to get to how you ended up in New Zealand. Can you describe a little bit
[18:05]
about McKinsey and what it is for those who aren't familiar? Yes. So it's a strategic
[18:12]
consulting company. So if you think of it, it's a doctor for companies. And so if two companies
[18:19]
want to merge together or they want to expand into a new market or they need to do a product launch,
[18:27]
McKinsey has a worldwide expertise to do these things. And we put together an assemblage of
[18:32]
experts and be able to help at speed and scale internationally. And what was that like? Just,
[18:40]
you know, not into details of any specific project, but what was it like to be asked to come
[18:44]
in and support a company that had a strategic need or something? And I presume you didn't know a huge
[18:50]
amount about them. You come in, you get the data, you present the report. I loved the learning
[18:56]
aspect of it. Like you'd learn so much so fast. It was super intense. I also loved my colleagues.
[19:03]
I think I was surrounded by people who were really brilliant in their own domain. Some doctors,
[19:09]
funny enough, who had, you know, studying medicine for a long time. So it was not their thing and
[19:13]
joined later. They thought either MBA or this. So like there was a really wide variety. There
[19:18]
were lawyers as well who practiced law for some time, didn't love it necessarily. It was a great
[19:24]
school of business for people to get into. And so, yeah, very varied. A lot of hard work. I would
[19:33]
work anywhere from 8 to 11 or midnight. Like that would be the norm, like especially when I was in
[19:39]
China. I remember having worked one day from nine to five, just the other five, which was intense.
[19:46]
So I remember, yeah, it being very intense, but very happy. I was learning and I was curious and
[19:53]
it was a crash course into companies, how they're structured, what makes them strong, what makes
[19:58]
them weak. And gosh, I thought, you know, I don't even know how I put a foot in an elevator or put
[20:04]
my money in the bank. People don't always know what their job is. It's quite scary.
[20:12]
And what was the approach of a company like McKinsey? Like was there an ethos or a theme that
[20:18]
would come through in how you're supporting clients? Because it's one of those names that
[20:22]
I hear from time to time, like, oh, there's this infograph from McKinsey on life cycles of a deal
[20:29]
or something, you know, like it seems to have had outsized influence beyond the clients that they
[20:35]
help. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a major influence. I think there was one thing that
[20:41]
really struck me and is still with me is client first. Like any, you know, anything comes after
[20:47]
your client. And when it comes to work, administrative tasks or anything around that
[20:53]
you can and be able to serve your client the best you can. There was another theme around obligation
[20:59]
to dissent. So even if you're very junior and you disagree with something, you have an obligation
[21:06]
to say what you think is. And I think those two things really stuck with me. There was no,
[21:14]
one thing I did not like is there was no overall obliged moral compass, meaning if you,
[21:22]
at the time, back in the days, if you wanted to serve the tobacco industry, you could. And if you
[21:27]
did not want to, you could abstain. But there was no, is this a good industry or bad industry?
[21:33]
Therefore, are we going to serve them or not? There was no judgment like that, which I think
[21:37]
in 2022, like starts to change a little bit or, you know, from external forces.
[21:43]
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Just as we're talking, we're doing this by Zoom. So I just
[21:48]
pulled it up and it's interesting to look at their website and just see some of the things
[21:52]
that they're involved in. The front page here is a new book, which they've come out with called
[21:58]
Deliberate Calm, how to learn and lead in a volatile world. So I can imagine those sorts
[22:04]
of themes would come out through the research and support they're doing of companies, right?
[22:11]
So, you know, you've got a global life here. You've worked in Europe, you're talking about
[22:19]
the Middle East, you're talking about China. How did New Zealand come on your radar as a place to
[22:29]
So we were seeking to travel. So by we is my husband. So I met my husband at
[22:37]
university. We went to the same exchange program in Mexico. And that's how we met. And we both
[22:43]
ended up working there. And so we were together in Europe, in South Africa, in the US, in China.
[22:49]
In China, we had the pleasure to have two children, which was great. It was wonderful.
[22:54]
And, and, and our son had a bit of respiratory issues. He was one of those, just like me,
[23:03]
I think, you know, your infection, bronchitis, bronchial anemia, maybe not that one, but,
[23:09]
you know, quite recurring sort of mucus and throat and lung infections. And so we thought,
[23:17]
hey, you know what, it's maybe time that we do something about where we live,
[23:21]
because of the pollution. We liked China a lot. It was a lot of fun. It was Shanghai,
[23:26]
2010 to 2015. Amazing years. But with small children, it's a lot more challenging,
[23:32]
especially as there was a lot of pollution. So we thought we need to, to go away. And there
[23:37]
was this opportunity to just come to New Zealand for 18 months and do sort of a lung cleans.
[23:42]
And we thought, oh, that sounds, that sounds great. We're, we're just gonna jump on that
[23:46]
occasion. And when we arrived, it has that, you know, that beautiful Anglo-Saxon vibe,
[23:52]
you know, mixed with a European vibe and an Asian one. And so it just, you know, and, and the
[23:58]
indigenous wisdom. And so we thought, wow, that's a, just a perfect combination. Just like, lacks
[24:04]
a bit of the Latin crazy, you know, warmth, but aside from that, it's just perfect. There's so
[24:09]
much nature. And so we loved it beyond any expectation. And, and so we stayed, now it's
[24:17]
been seven years. Wow. And growing up, like, had you known about New Zealand? Was it on your radar?
[24:24]
Barely. Barely. I know, I knew it was the, it was called to them, the most extreme dreams of
[24:32]
the travelers. So that's how people pictured it. It was like the, if you like to travel,
[24:37]
this is your biggest dream is New Zealand, but that's all I sort of knew. Yeah. That's amazing.
[24:43]
So I'd love to learn about what you're involved in today. Like we've heard about your background
[24:48]
and things. Yeah. Yeah. How did your current initiative get started in terms of nectar
[24:54]
health? Yeah. There's one thing that happened that I did not mention when I was in my first
[25:00]
year at university, um, is, um, I was with my boyfriend, um, and we were skiing and, um, like
[25:10]
my daughter would say, I was probably trying to impress him really bad idea. And I did a jump in
[25:15]
the snow park and with skis and I broke my femur in two sharp. I fell on my back and I bounced on
[25:24]
my back three times. And I was really like looking at the blue sky and praying and say,
[25:30]
please not that, please not the, not the spine. Like I could feel my body bounce on it. And it
[25:38]
turns out one of my femur is not well placed on my hip. Um, and so by amazing luck, um, the femur
[25:45]
broke, which is the biggest of bones where there was a lot of something had to break and this is
[25:49]
what conceded. Um, and I lost conscious, I lost half of my blood. I had a skin, my forehead to my
[25:56]
face was all black and full of blood. Um, and, um, and so I got the helicopter came to get me,
[26:03]
um, the first helicopter, and then the doctors were not, not, not the best ones in that hospital.
[26:09]
So I was moved to a second hospital and they, uh, they did not transfuse me, um, because they
[26:16]
had contaminated blood issues. This was 2001, January, 2001. Um, and so, um, and so that led
[26:25]
to a whole, um, sort of physical catastrophes or physical, um, really hard to bounce back.
[26:32]
And so it was my first year at university. I was back in a wheelchair at university, but my,
[26:38]
my face was still very, um, black and purple from the injury. Um, and I was not transfused. So I was
[26:45]
really limping. I gained 12 kilos. I wasn't sure, you know, I couldn't understand and read my body
[26:51]
anymore. It was like, I was in first gear. I was trying to go in second gear. And in the past,
[26:56]
if it was hard to go from fourth to fifth, now it's just hard to go from first to second. Um,
[27:02]
and so that was really, really uncool. And it led to many years of, uh, limping of, um, my,
[27:13]
yeah, my brain saying yes, my body saying no. And so when I was at McKinsey, I was sleeping quite a
[27:17]
lot during weekends, which, you know, arguably some people would find normal given the hours
[27:22]
we were pulling, but still, I was sleeping a lot, you know, as much as I could to sort of
[27:27]
recuperate. And so that defined it. Yeah. Because when I went to then study Mandarin, um, because I,
[27:37]
I took a bit of a gap time when, um, uh, in between South Africa and the US.
[27:43]
Um, and we went to study Mandarin and there, uh, I went for a massage. Um, and, um, it was seven
[27:51]
years. It was fabulous for 19 minutes. I was like, yay, it's so cool. Um, and they did a session of
[27:57]
cupping at the end. Uh, they said, oh, there's another treatment you can have. Uh, what would
[28:01]
you like to have? Um, and I'm like, oh, I don't know what's your best seller. I can't read these
[28:07]
Chinese characters. This is beyond my level of Mandarin. Um, and they said, oh, take this one,
[28:13]
take this one. And I'm like, oh, it must be very successful. And I, it's not that it was successful.
[28:17]
It's just that my body was craving that, but I had no idea. So they did the cupping. I don't know.
[28:22]
Have you ever seen Steven like cupping or have done that? No, I haven't. It's like this, you know,
[28:29]
do you know Phelps, like the swimmer, like the bond he has on his back. So I was like a ladybird,
[28:35]
but like my back was full and the bones were black, black, black. And after that, I slept for
[28:41]
three days and three nights, literally. Like I just slept, I didn't go to class or anything.
[28:45]
Um, and, um, and then I lost two kilos, kilos, like just suddenly. And I thought, oh, I feel
[28:53]
different. I woke up and I felt different. I didn't know what I had. I didn't know what they
[28:58]
had done. I didn't know what I no longer had, but I could really feel something had shifted.
[29:04]
But this was in 2007 when we had just learned, we had done a few months to learn Mandarin
[29:11]
before MBA. And so after MBA, my husband said, well, would you like to go back to,
[29:17]
and because of the language and learning and being so curious about China, I, um,
[29:23]
I said, I'd like to go back to China. And so we applied for Shanghai. They were really reluctant,
[29:28]
but because we had sort of a open-minded backgrounds, they said, it's okay.
[29:33]
And, um, and there I started to take a traditional Chinese medicine classes on Saturdays,
[29:41]
which I thought were really average to be honest. I was like, this is just so esoteric,
[29:45]
like Yin Yang, Autumn and Metal. And it's like, how does that even relate to health?
[29:51]
Um, and I remember, um, going one day to see my traditional Chinese doctor,
[29:56]
just the teacher to see, Hey, you know what? I'm just going to give this thing a go,
[30:01]
like as a, as a patient, cause I have nothing. And she, again, she took me from A to B.
[30:08]
I couldn't understand what was A, couldn't understand what was B and in between were just
[30:13]
a list of foods and it transformed me. And this was in 2011. And my body was back to how it was
[30:23]
when I was 17. And I was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. What did she do? She pulled a trick on me and
[30:29]
I'm back to where I was before my ski accident. It sounds, yeah. Almost like magic, huh?
[30:39]
What happened here? Yeah. So I went back to work to my very rational colleagues and I said, Oh my
[30:46]
God, I tried this thing. You know, traditional Chinese medicine. It's amazing. I feel so
[30:52]
different. They're like, Oh yeah. And it's all placebo. And I'm like, well, then I stopped
[30:57]
looking. I'm like, well, of course it's not now I can go in third, fourth, fifth year.
[31:02]
Um, and this was when I was pregnant and there were many different signs afterwards of
[31:07]
things that had massively changed. So to give you an example, I had really long and irregular
[31:13]
cycles after that accident. And for the first time ever, they were back to normal. I thought,
[31:19]
wow, like it has changed in a way that is very tangible. Like I can put it's data, like,
[31:24]
but I don't know. I don't understand fully what she's done.
[31:30]
Wow. So you'd had real experiences of your health being impacted in a positive way
[31:36]
through these traditional Chinese methodologies and cupping and did it involve acupuncture or
[31:44]
different things like that as well? Or was it diet?
[31:46]
Yeah. Just diet. Like with her, just diet. So cupping the first time and just diet the second
[31:51]
time. And so now you have to really imagine like by now I'm, I don't know, I'm 20, I'm 30, 29.
[31:59]
And I've traveled a lot and I speak a lot of languages and I have a bigger sense of the world.
[32:05]
And I've always gone West when it came to medicine and always not understanding and
[32:10]
limping quite a bit. And now I discovered this world that people say there's nothing inside,
[32:17]
but yet it does these sort of miraculous. And I'm like, hold on, hold on. What do you mean
[32:23]
there's nothing inside? There's nothing inside because people want, there's nothing inside.
[32:27]
People, people want to claim there's nothing inside. Or what do you mean? Because I can't,
[32:32]
like my experience is very profound and I can't relate to any form of placebo effect.
[32:39]
Um, and so now we go back to the child with a lot of empathy for others when they have,
[32:45]
you know, body issues, you know, always people come to me with their physical issues. I don't
[32:50]
know. Like I'm just a magnet for that. And I would take them, I would take and say, Oh,
[32:55]
I think I know someone who can help. And so I would sit in those consultations on weekends or,
[33:01]
and, um, she'd fix people one after the other, but with such a different logic,
[33:07]
like really profoundly different logic.
[33:12]
And what was that logic? How did it, how is it different to?
[33:16]
It was so upside down as it goes back to the language. It's so upside down. So I give you a
[33:22]
few, a few examples. Um, if we talk about someone who has an irritable bowel syndrome,
[33:30]
because of the language in, um, in Western culture, we're going to look at the bowel and
[33:36]
we're going to analyze and overanalyze and look at microbiome inside the bowel and analyze all of
[33:40]
that. But in traditional Chinese medicine, it's, it's not, it's not, the bowel is only on the
[33:46]
receiving end of the upper stream food process and digestion. And so the, the bowel is irritated
[33:56]
because food hasn't been processed by the liver system. It is not the bowel's fault. Then for
[34:03]
example, a second example would be, so for me, for me, what she did is, um, I had, I told her,
[34:10]
well, I don't have much, I'm, I'm, I'm doing really good. I only have a very dry skin.
[34:15]
When I'm super stressed, I'm going to have sugar cravings, sugar cravings when I'm tired. Um, when,
[34:20]
you know, just before my menstruation massive, um, or I'm going to have a crash at four or five,
[34:25]
or if I'm stressed, you know, I'm going to have a lot of sugar and it's not that I don't have
[34:28]
the will. I just, you know, it's like that. I can't help it. Um, if I'm very stressed, I'm
[34:33]
going to lose my hair. In fact, from time to time right now, I lose it, which is really annoying
[34:37]
because I'm young. Um, and, um, what else my, uh, skin is very dry and my, my menstruation
[34:44]
is profoundly irregular and my cycles are super long. And she said, every single one of these
[34:49]
problems is the same. You lack physical blood volume. So you're supposed to have four to five
[34:54]
liters in your body. And currently you have slightly less because you have slightly less,
[34:59]
not all functions can be, um, performed at the same time. And so if you eat these foods,
[35:06]
your, um, blood volume will re-increase and everything is going to come back in order.
[35:12]
And I thought, wow, that sounds great. And I did that and it worked. And I'm like, oh,
[35:17]
that's a funny, you know, if I think of my hair losing my hair, I'm going to put stuff on my
[35:22]
hair. That's what we do in the West. If I have dry legs, I'm going to put oil on my legs. That's
[35:26]
what we do in the West, right? Um, if I have long cycles, I might be told, well, just get on a pill
[35:32]
and then your cycles will regulate. Well, no, they're going to be fakely regulated. Um, and so
[35:37]
here she was taking all of these symptoms and linking them to a single root cause that she
[35:43]
would fix with a few foods and solve it. And I thought, wow, that's very powerful. I remember
[35:50]
also going to her when, um, our son, um, was born and she said, oh, you look very tired.
[35:56]
And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm so exhausted. My son has acid reflux. So I, you know, can we just talk
[36:01]
about me? Cause I talk about my son all day long and she's like, but wait, just stay on your son
[36:05]
for a minute. Um, so he has acid reflux. I'm like, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like, uh, yeah. She's
[36:10]
like, I know what it is, but he used to not have it right before you went back to Europe. And I'm
[36:16]
like, no, he used to not have any acid reflux. She's like, well, your food changed. So therefore
[36:21]
your milk became acid, your breast milk. So change back your food and it's no longer be acid. And
[36:28]
then your son's not going to have acid reflux. You don't need to give him an alkaline based
[36:33]
medication on top of your breast milk. Your breast milk is perfect. He just needs to eat less of
[36:38]
these raw foods and raw salad and raw tomatoes and raw yogurt. Like you've been doing in Europe.
[36:43]
You just have to go back to a Chinese diet or a warm diet and then you'll be fine. And I thought,
[36:48]
oh, oh, so he has acidity because my milk is acid. And that kind of makes sense. Oh, okay. Like,
[36:57]
you know, and it's always very logical, but it follows a different logic.
[37:02]
It's really interesting though. And I think it's actually really valuable to talk about this
[37:05]
because I don't think we talk about it enough. And I think in the West, you're right. We treat
[37:10]
the symptoms without thinking about the underlying causes and what what's led to this manifestation
[37:18]
or this thing which is happening, but actually let's go back and work out, oh, this has to do
[37:24]
with this change in diet or, you know, change in sleep or whatever it is. There's usually something
[37:31]
that is a causal link, isn't there? Yeah. Yeah. And it fascinated me how,
[37:37]
you know, I would talk to my colleagues. They'd say it's placebo. Pharmaceutical
[37:39]
companies looked into it and there is nothing valid inside. I was told. And yet I would silently
[37:46]
take people with care to see that wonderful human being who had written five books and had
[37:52]
1,000 students. And she would nail one case after the other, but with a logic that defeated anything
[38:00]
I had seen before. And so that made me more curious and that made me double down on learning
[38:06]
with her on these classes, but also starting to read on my own and sort of self-learn until we
[38:12]
moved to New Zealand. And then when I had a question or one of my friends had a problem,
[38:18]
I could no longer rely on her. And so I was really longing her help because I thought, hey,
[38:25]
you know, I'd like just a quick fix. I have a quick question. So sometimes we do sessions on
[38:30]
WeChat, but then my friends would ask for help and I would tell my friends, oh, do you have WeChat?
[38:39]
They're like, oh, no. Like, oh, do you have WePay? No. OK, then it's going to be a bit complicated.
[38:46]
And so I'm like, oh, I'll try to do my best to help you. And so outside of work, out of that
[38:52]
genuine care and genuine passion and genuine, you know, equity of, you know, people deserve to be
[38:58]
at full potential, I started to help people. So that was the origin of Nectar Health.
[39:08]
Yeah. Yeah. So what is your main focus today? Because when the other thing I didn't say in
[39:14]
the intro, but we spent a whole weekend together about a week ago as part of the Edmund Hillary
[39:20]
Fellowship welcome experience in Wellington. And I know we were chatting then about headaches,
[39:27]
right? And migraines. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to just talk us through what it is you're focusing
[39:32]
on? Yeah. So I am focused on migraines. And the reason for that is twofold. The first is I was
[39:41]
really keen to do a food as medicine AI after I came across that experience. So I had seen
[39:48]
in the world of business, in the world of health, in the world of IT that we had a health issue,
[39:54]
which was a language issue, but also a business issue of in traditional Chinese medicine,
[40:01]
you only pay your doctor as long as you're healthy. For us, the more you seek, the more you pay.
[40:05]
So I could link now the business issue. There's a business fundamental flawed issue. The moment
[40:11]
we introduced the GDP, the gross domestic product as a measure of society coupled with health. So
[40:17]
with pharmaceutical companies having a fiduciary duty to make more money for their shareholders,
[40:23]
the only way for them to do that is to serve people more with more medications.
[40:29]
Then I could understand that problem of business. I could understand the difference of language of
[40:35]
health, and then I could see the potential in the IT. And then with the sustainability angle,
[40:41]
I could see how foods, because I was only asking for foods to my traditional Chinese doctor,
[40:47]
things could be repaired. And so I started to conceptualize vaguely how I would love,
[40:52]
and I started drawing airplanes, like how I would love to envision the world in which
[40:57]
you would have a food as medicine AI in your pocket and sort of just eat the right stuff,
[41:03]
you know, to remove acne, remove anxiety, remove depression, remove stress,
[41:09]
not being able to sleep well, et cetera. And so that's one thing that happens is like start
[41:14]
to that imagination. But I thought, how do I measure that? How do I find something that is not
[41:19]
very dangerous, yet doesn't require an external intervention to be measured?
[41:26]
And so I thought it was not possible. And so I left that idea down for seven years.
[41:30]
So it's a long time. But then I remember we lost our uncle from a brain tumor,
[41:37]
brain cancer, a glaucoma. And now what is it called? I can't remember the name.
[41:48]
And anyway, it's a very strong, one of the strongest form of brain cancer. And one of my
[41:55]
sisters said I had suffered from migraines, and I think I have a brain tumor as well.
[42:00]
But I went to do three MRIs. And each time the doctor said I didn't have a brain cancer. And I
[42:04]
told her, no, I don't think you do. But it doesn't mean that you have nothing. It's just a manifestation
[42:09]
of it's a symptom. So let me discuss with Dr. Zhang, ask you a bunch of questions, and I'll
[42:14]
help you out. And so I told her what to eat. And within four months, she didn't have those migraines
[42:19]
anymore. And so she could feel less anxiety from thinking, I also have that brain cancer.
[42:28]
But the day everything changed is when my neighbor in New Zealand told me, oh,
[42:34]
I've had a very confrontational conversations with my dad. After seven years of migraines,
[42:40]
I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were having migraines. And she says, yeah,
[42:43]
I've had them for seven years. My dad told me I need to get medicated for life, including having
[42:48]
injections. And I told her, oh, that sounds very unreasonable. Like, you know, like you shouldn't
[42:53]
do that. Like, what does it mean? You're 36, what, 50 years of medication? You have to be
[42:57]
kidding me. No one does that. But it turns out everyone does. No one does that. No, like,
[43:03]
why would your dad tell you that anyway? And she tells me, well, he's a neurologist. I'm like, oh,
[43:08]
oh, I'm sorry. So, well, then he must be right. And I'm like, no, hold on. This still doesn't
[43:13]
feel right. I've helped my sister. Maybe I can help you too. And so I asked her a couple of
[43:18]
questions. I do a little research and I'm like, well, just try to add these ingredients. And if
[43:22]
it doesn't work, you still have, you know, 49.5 years to medicate. Just give me six months.
[43:27]
And within four months, she no longer had migraines. And I thought, oh, that's really
[43:32]
bizarre. Why would her dad not tell her? Or unless the foods I gave her were very close to medical
[43:39]
compounds and this is just what they use in migraine medication compounds, just like I gave
[43:44]
my sister or I advised my sister to take. And I started to do some research and my eyes were just
[43:53]
like open, like two giant balloons. I made a few discoveries. Number one, you need a genetic
[44:02]
predisposition to have migraines. So there's 40 genes, lucky they've been identified. And it means
[44:07]
that you can have migraines. Number two, while boys and girls have a 5% chance to have migraines,
[44:14]
women have three at puberty, it triples to quadruples. So women have 18% chance to have
[44:21]
them. And I loved that fact because it meant that women were different to men. And I was
[44:26]
persuaded by that because in TCM, when you talk, it's a very different systems. Number three,
[44:33]
the only way you know a woman has migraines is you ask her. So it's a diagnosis by exclusion.
[44:39]
So because she doesn't have a brain tumor, because she doesn't have X, Y, Z, therefore,
[44:43]
she has migraines. And you only know a medication works or not by asking her, do you still have a
[44:49]
migraine? Yes or no? And I liked that too. And then all of the medications were painkillers.
[45:00]
trying to understand why is this woman in pain.
[45:03]
They would tackle the pain itself
[45:06]
because it's called a migraine.
[45:08]
So the migraine designates this debilitating pain
[45:11]
in the brain that an attack can last
[45:13]
for a couple of hours up to five, six, seven days.
[45:19]
Women can be in pain once a month
[45:21]
to every single day of the month.
[45:23]
They can have this pain for a couple of years
[45:26]
before they find a solution if it happens.
[45:28]
But for most of them, they might carry it
[45:32]
for 40 years, 50 years.
[45:34]
Some of them, it may stop with menopause.
[45:36]
Some of them, it may accelerate with menopause.
[45:39]
And so that came Eureka moment of,
[45:43]
now I see how I can link my Western language
[45:48]
with traditional Chinese medicine systems.
[45:55]
It's such a cool thing to make those connection points.
[45:59]
And the really shocking thing is that somebody
[46:02]
would have decades of medication to be looking forward to
[46:07]
when actually a few changes to diet
[46:10]
or other changes would clear this up.
[46:13]
So yeah, I can see where this would be
[46:15]
quite a satisfying job to be supporting people
[46:18]
with that understanding.
[46:20]
Yeah, no, it didn't come without hurdle.
[46:27]
The first hurdle came from my family.
[46:29]
I think my parents, and I think being in New Zealand
[46:33]
helped a lot because I was far away from judgment.
[46:36]
But my parents were like,
[46:38]
so you're going back to medical school, right?
[46:40]
That's what you're saying.
[46:41]
I'm like, no, no, I'm gonna start an AI
[46:43]
to remove women from migraines.
[46:45]
And they were like, no, no.
[46:46]
So it means you're gonna go back to medical school.
[46:50]
And you're gonna go and study.
[46:51]
And then with the studies,
[46:52]
you're gonna practice as a legitimate doctor.
[46:54]
And I'm like, no, it's not what I mean
[46:55]
is I don't think it's in the books.
[46:57]
I think that's the whole point.
[46:58]
It's not in the books, it doesn't exist.
[47:00]
What I wanna do, I want to create something new.
[47:02]
And there was a lot of reluctance.
[47:04]
Yeah, but that's called the charlatan.
[47:05]
And I'm like, well, that's very offensive.
[47:07]
But I was like, you know what?
[47:09]
You haven't seen everything that I have seen.
[47:12]
You haven't experienced everything that I have experienced.
[47:15]
By now I speak fluent Mandarin.
[47:17]
I can read and I can write it.
[47:18]
And I understand what these beautiful thousands
[47:22]
and thousands of years, just writing things manually
[47:26]
leads to that incredible wisdom
[47:29]
that is very discredibilized
[47:32]
because we are unable to really understand it.
[47:36]
And so I appreciated being FAR
[47:39]
and being FAR helped me to just be focused.
[47:43]
Be focused on what I would qualify as a vocation,
[47:51]
Yeah, that's great.
[47:52]
So how does it work today?
[47:53]
If somebody is listening to this podcast
[47:55]
and they say, well, actually I'm suffering from migraines,
[47:58]
like what is it, the solution that you're offering
[48:01]
or how would it work?
[48:02]
So I'm trying to first understand why.
[48:05]
And so I have developed a questionnaire
[48:08]
that asks 95 questions,
[48:10]
about 130 points of other things going on in the body.
[48:14]
I'm trying to reconfigure,
[48:16]
re-understand what is the root causes
[48:20]
of the woman's migraine
[48:22]
and what are all of the problems going on in her body.
[48:26]
And then based on that, the computer is gonna compute,
[48:30]
therefore here all of the foods
[48:32]
that she needs to be eating in this order.
[48:35]
And then every day she's gonna work with me in track.
[48:39]
She's gonna access an app
[48:40]
that is specifically designed for her and only for her
[48:43]
because there are not two same guts,
[48:46]
not two same people to fix.
[48:50]
And so as she's gonna track,
[48:54]
her migraines are gonna decrease in intensity and frequency
[48:57]
until for many of them, they disappear fully.
[49:03]
So it's really combining
[49:04]
sort of the traditional Chinese approach
[49:07]
with I guess the Western approaches as well, right?
[49:13]
And then looking to how you can minimize
[49:17]
these impacts of migraines.
[49:20]
And the Western approach is also important
[49:22]
because for example,
[49:24]
we have now a database of 1,500 medications
[49:27]
and all of their interactions with food.
[49:29]
There's a lot of things that,
[49:31]
for example, if you have less side migraines
[49:33]
and if you've had a couple of surgeries,
[49:35]
if you have dark circles below the eyes
[49:38]
and you tend to bruise easily,
[49:41]
probably you have something called blood stasis.
[49:43]
It's really easy to remove.
[49:44]
However, to remove it,
[49:46]
safron or turmeric would be top choices.
[49:48]
If you take anticoagulants or blood thinners,
[49:50]
you can't have that.
[49:51]
And so the sort of Western part of the algorithms
[49:56]
will refrain from that.
[49:57]
If you're pregnant, freshly pregnant,
[50:00]
or you are trying to get pregnant,
[50:04]
the system will also say,
[50:05]
hey, no turmeric for that woman
[50:07]
because if she's freshly pregnant and doesn't know it,
[50:10]
the turmeric is powerful enough
[50:11]
to actually cause her a miscarriage.
[50:14]
And so all of that intelligence
[50:18]
has been really built around that.
[50:20]
And look, it's just so, so, so satisfying
[50:23]
because women now, as you can guess and understand,
[50:26]
once they have less and less migraines up until no more,
[50:32]
they say, oh, people told me I had less weight.
[50:36]
Wow, I'm so less bloated.
[50:37]
I have indeed one less size of jeans.
[50:41]
Or they will say, my skin's so much better.
[50:43]
Oh, I have so much more hair.
[50:45]
I have more energy.
[50:46]
My partner commented on my energy.
[50:48]
My dad said, finally, my girl, you're back.
[50:51]
Your personality, you're bubbly again.
[50:57]
And so their depression is gonna go away too.
[51:00]
I feel sometimes meeting them for the first time
[51:03]
after a couple of weeks or months after we've worked together
[51:06]
and I tell them, I feel I'm getting to know your personality
[51:09]
for the first time, yeah.
[51:12]
And so back to the childhood,
[51:13]
I think there's an amazing desire for equitability
[51:17]
and so for providing this to as many women as possible,
[51:24]
because it's really, really, really unfair.
[51:26]
We talk about women being away from the workforce
[51:29]
and trying to attract them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[51:32]
But if you have migraines,
[51:34]
it's just really hard to stick with your employer
[51:36]
and your colleagues will not understand it.
[51:38]
It's not that they don't have empathy,
[51:42]
it's that they think headache,
[51:45]
but a headache and a migraine
[51:46]
have nothing to do with one another.
[51:48]
One is just a quick pain.
[51:51]
The other one is something very debilitating
[51:55]
that prevents you from doing anything else,
[51:58]
even taking care of a child from time to time.
[52:01]
Mm, yeah, no, it's definitely something
[52:04]
that if we can help people, then it makes perfect sense.
[52:08]
And the thing that strikes me is that very often,
[52:11]
I think, particularly in the West,
[52:13]
we want the quick and easy solution,
[52:15]
like just give me the pill that's gonna fix me.
[52:19]
But what you're talking about
[52:20]
is actually getting to know your body,
[52:22]
getting to know the importance of what,
[52:24]
it sounds basic, doesn't it?
[52:26]
But what goes in is gonna affect your body
[52:30]
and too often, I mean, it's a simple example,
[52:33]
but you look at the use of alcohol
[52:36]
and think about how in Western culture,
[52:39]
it's like, yeah, we just have a drink,
[52:40]
have two drinks, have four drinks.
[52:43]
But actually, what is it you're drinking?
[52:45]
Like if we fundamentally boiled it down and said,
[52:48]
is this a good thing for our bodies to ingest?
[52:52]
You would have to, if you, logically speaking,
[52:54]
you have to say, well, actually, it's a form of poison
[52:58]
and it's doing things to our body
[53:00]
which are not good for them.
[53:03]
And yet we ingest it, you know?
[53:05]
And it's, I guess it's reframing
[53:07]
and coming back to something which is really basic,
[53:11]
which is we are what we eat, you know?
[53:14]
Like what comes in is super impactful.
[53:17]
Absolutely, and so I'd love to echo what you say,
[53:20]
like in the most profound way, right?
[53:23]
Let's imagine we have a woman
[53:25]
who has migraines before her menstruation
[53:29]
or migraines on the top of the head,
[53:31]
on her temple, right or left, it doesn't matter,
[53:33]
or across her eyebrows.
[53:35]
These are gonna be, for example,
[53:37]
liver system related migraines.
[53:39]
So you have the vagus nerve you need to imagine.
[53:41]
So now if we go back to the Western science,
[53:43]
you have the vagus nerve that goes from these main organs,
[53:46]
which is, you know, and it's an asymmetrical nerve,
[53:49]
goes from the heart, from the stomach, from the liver,
[53:52]
from the intestines, up in the neck to the brain.
[53:56]
And so when you have pain in those specific places,
[54:01]
this is when there is an overload
[54:03]
or a stagnation of the liver.
[54:06]
Now, women are gonna have it more
[54:07]
just before their menstruation.
[54:09]
They might have together with that like feeling of anger.
[54:13]
Sometimes it's repressed anger.
[54:14]
Sometimes it's expressed anger.
[54:16]
It doesn't matter.
[54:17]
They feel very angry inside.
[54:18]
They may have eye discharge.
[54:21]
They, and they will feel that if they drink
[54:26]
at a minimum wine,
[54:28]
they will have these migraines increased.
[54:32]
And so the irony is that for those migraines,
[54:35]
they're likely to take medication.
[54:38]
But the role of the liver as a system is to detox.
[54:41]
So if your liver is already loaded with alcohol
[54:46]
or toxins that accumulates during your PMS,
[54:50]
and you're gonna add medication,
[54:52]
you're gonna add to the toxicity of the liver.
[54:56]
you're gonna make that specific condition worse and worse.
[54:59]
And so in the Western medicine,
[55:01]
it is proven that what is called medication overuse
[55:06]
or rebound, medication overuse migraines
[55:09]
or rebound migraines are migraines that result
[55:14]
from the use of medication against migraines.
[55:17]
And so they have proven that,
[55:19]
hey, we noticed that the more the woman's gonna need
[55:22]
to medicate and take that pill,
[55:25]
the more she's likely to have migraines.
[55:27]
And that really is best explained
[55:29]
exactly the way you've explained it as,
[55:31]
you know, adding toxicity in the system,
[55:34]
which then is gonna increase the migraine.
[55:37]
Does that make sense?
[55:38]
Yeah, no, it does.
[55:40]
And I think the more I learn about our bodies
[55:45]
and how they work, you know,
[55:46]
just drinking the basic things like water, you know,
[55:49]
like why do we commercialize sweetened drinks
[55:54]
and, you know, the different energy drinks and things?
[55:59]
Like if you look at what it actually is composed of,
[56:01]
it's just not great for us.
[56:04]
And yet there's this whole industry.
[56:06]
And I do worry that we're creating a culture
[56:09]
and, you know, look at, I'll name it,
[56:12]
like a Coca-Cola or something.
[56:14]
And the amount that children drink
[56:16]
and the fact that their teeth are rotting age five,
[56:20]
like it's not a good thing.
[56:22]
And yet we continue to not talk about these things
[56:27]
or at least, you know, it's just,
[56:30]
we're actually selling a form of something
[56:33]
that is really bad for people.
[56:35]
And yet we're tightening it to, you know,
[56:39]
the Olympics are sponsored by these companies
[56:42]
that want to sell more stuff, which is not good for us.
[56:46]
Absolutely, absolutely.
[56:48]
Because when we in the West, we look at,
[56:50]
for example, a fizzy drink,
[56:51]
we look at the calories count.
[56:54]
So we're going to look at the sugar and say,
[56:55]
ah, you know, not ideal, but you know, so what?
[56:58]
The problem is that it can destroy a system.
[57:02]
So if you take a fizzy drink, a sweetened fizzy drink,
[57:05]
it's going to destroy over time gastric juices.
[57:08]
And the gastric juices are what enable
[57:11]
to split the food into what's good.
[57:15]
It needs to go within the bloodstream
[57:17]
and the muscles and the skin and what needs to come out.
[57:21]
And when that triage is not done,
[57:23]
then the bowel gets super irritated.
[57:25]
And here people might think
[57:28]
they have irritable bowel syndrome.
[57:30]
They actually have a leaky gut.
[57:32]
So it's just over time that misuse of this,
[57:36]
this gastric juices and how they become broken
[57:39]
by sort of modern lifestyle in the case of migraines
[57:44]
is going to translate as forehead migraines.
[57:46]
Because the woman who has migraines,
[57:48]
she has that sort of superior genes
[57:51]
that will launch a firearm and say,
[57:53]
hey, we disagree with that, you know, what you're doing.
[57:57]
And so if she can listen to her body well,
[57:59]
she can use migraines.
[58:01]
Look, you need to be really good to be doing this,
[58:03]
but I have a lot of women doing it now,
[58:05]
using migraines as a tool for longevity.
[58:08]
But if you don't, you can really, you know,
[58:12]
hit yourself in the wall before you notice you have,
[58:14]
you know, a very leaky gut
[58:16]
and sort of having runny stool for years
[58:18]
and no longer understanding
[58:20]
where it came from in the first place.
[58:24]
Well, it's been really helpful to talk with you.
[58:26]
And I think what we'll do in the show notes,
[58:27]
we'll put links to things.
[58:29]
So we can put a link to your Nectar Health website
[58:33]
and we can put links to anything else
[58:35]
that you think would be helpful for people.
[58:38]
The thing that sticks out to me is
[58:41]
I always love to know the connections
[58:43]
between people's lives and then what they do today.
[58:46]
And so even back in your childhood,
[58:48]
hearing about your own experiences with health
[58:52]
and then suffering that quite horrendous accident
[58:55]
and, you know, going through those painful experiences,
[58:58]
I can see how that then has led to this point
[59:02]
of learning about this particular type of medicine
[59:06]
and then using it to have impact and support others.
[59:10]
So I really appreciate your time
[59:12]
and the chance to talk with you
[59:14]
because I think people can learn
[59:16]
from each other's experiences.
[59:18]
And in your case, it's really fascinating to learn more.
[59:22]
So I'm gonna definitely check out your website
[59:25]
and see what else I can learn
[59:27]
about some of these traditional ways of thinking
[59:29]
from a Chinese medicine perspective.
[59:31]
Well, thank you so much, Stephen,
[59:33]
for taking the time, being so curious yourself
[59:38]
and helping me share this forward.
[59:40]
Well, I do hope you enjoyed that conversation.
[59:42]
For me, there was a lot of things that stood out
[59:44]
and in particular, that emphasis on we are what we eat,
[59:48]
how important it is to be aware
[59:50]
of what's going into our bodies
[59:52]
and the impact it can have on so many aspects of our health
[59:55]
and therefore on our life.
[59:57]
If you enjoyed this,
[59:58]
then check out some of the other interviews
[60:00]
in the back catalog.
[60:01]
And don't forget in the show notes,
[60:03]
there's a link to the website
[60:04]
and a way that you can do an assessment of your health.
