June 1, 2021 | 77 minutes, 48 seconds
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Podcast Show Notes
In this episode of the Ayurveda Meets Modern Science podcast, host John Douillard, DC, CAP, interviews master herbalist, nutritionist, and author Donnie Yance (also find him on Facebook and Twitter) about his opinion on vaccines, maintaining a balanced diet, and cancer treatment from an Ayurvedic approach. Yance is author of Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer and Adaptogens in Medical Herbalism: Elite Herbs and Natural Compounds for Mastering Stress, Aging, and Chronic Illness. Learn more about his books here.
Diet
If there could only be one superfood out there that trumped all the others, Yance believes the potato would win for its many benefits. Yance recommends consuming diaphoretic plants to support a healthy lymphatic system, as well as maintaining a diet filled with complex carbs, whole grains, and probiotic foods. The importance of wheat in your diet has been studied over the years, including in Dr. John’s book Eat Wheat. With age, we become dried out, but by eating wheat we can hold on to more water for increased healthy aging.
See also Why, How & When to Eat Wheat
Other great foods to add to your diet include spinach and quinoa, which help build muscles in the body. When it comes to diets that eliminate food groups, such as the Keto diet, Yance explains why he is not a fan (unless for medical reasons) and supports a balanced diet instead.
Yance also delves into how to treat the body as a whole, instead of just singular diseases, as well as the benefits of a ghee detox and how to increase supplement intake to help the body’s natural ability to produce it.
See also The Power of Ghee for Cleansing and Detox
COVID
There have been a lot of opposing views regarding getting the vaccine. At the end of the day, it is each person’s decision to choose what is right for them. If you chose to get vaccinated, Yance recommends the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, over the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, for the following reasons: it is a one and done shot, does not need as much refrigeration (so is more accessible), Johnson & Johnson is not making a profit off the vaccines, there is a tested African variant of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and there is a lower chance of side effects. In addition, Yance talks about the short, intermediate, and long-term effects the vaccine has on your body. He believes if you receive an overload of vaccines throughout your life, your body cannot regulate as well.
See also 3 Ways to Cleanse Your Brain Lymph
Cancer
Yance discusses how immunotherapy is beneficial for cancer treatment.
See also What I’ve Learned from Cancer Survivors
What came to me in listening to this are a few things-first of all, at the start of the podcast, I thought to myself, who is this joker (Donnie Yance?) He was downplaying the vaccine and science and couldn’t even pronounce the medicines and words he was claiming to dispute (such as remdesivir and Moderna), or provide alternative “science” and evidence/studies that actually provided something that was more effective than these things. I will put out there that I work in a hospital (an acute hospital as well as a cancer center), but also very much subscribe to the ideas of TCM and Ayurveda, and have taken herbs and done acupuncture, Ayurveda, etc. for years.
While I agree that having a healthy immune system is a big part of maintaining health, it makes me a little skeptical when people start to carry on about how eating weeds can make all of the difference for our society. It is also very blind in thinking that some of the people who might need better immune systems don’t have access to the said weeds and herbs due to health disparities and lack of access to care, good nutrition, etc.
While I think major overhauls are needed in our healthcare system, I am not sure that telling people to just rely on vitamins in the middle of a pandemic, when science is still trying to figure it out as well (and ever-evolving in their recommendations), is going to be helpful in the midst of a crisis. It seems to me to be very naive in promoting herbs and not recommending things like vaccines and medications that can help us get through this emergency state. If you had seen the things that I have in working in a hospital the past year, you might think otherwise, and realize that this is all very real. Maybe many people do recover from it, but many people who would not have otherwise died at this time, or are suffering from long-lasting effects of COVD, might disagree.
However, when he moved onto his discussion of cancer (which he actually seems to know something about, and was finally able to cite studies, etc. about the same), then he seemed to be someone that I would be willing to follow and believe around this issue. I like the idea that his board is made up of oncologists as well as other practitioners, and that they work to integrate both types of medicine (Western and Eastern) with each other. Then Dr. Douillard states that his experience with oncologists has not been positive, and I can see how he would come across that way, in likely trying to tell them that Western medicine isn’t the way, but that his Ayurveda is the only way. If you work with folks (rather than against), like it sounds Donnie Yance has worked hard to do, you get a different result.
Overall, it seems like Donnie Yance has some good information to consider in relation to cancer treatment, and I plan to take a closer look at his website. As for his other opinions on the pandemic and other issues that he seems not to be so well informed about, maybe those could be saved for another podcast. If I hadn’t been driving and not wanted to mess with my phone to turn off the podcast while I was driving, I would have done so based on the start of the conversation. I’m glad that I didn’t, because once I got through the beginning and onto the oncology part of the conversation, then there was something that was actually useful and seemed to come from someone educated and informed, unlike the start of the podcast.
absolutely wonderful! Thanks to both of you great healers!
Thanks for sharing a beautiful blog.