Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcript has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes To Life show. I’m Robin Daly, regular host for the show and founder of Yes To Life, the UK charity that’s been advocating for integrative cancer care for almost two decades, pushing for the recognition of lifestyle and complementary interventions and supporting those with cancer in using them. My guest today is an expert in mycotherapy, which if you don’t know the term, means the use of medicinal mushrooms for help. While I will be talking about mushrooms, I’m also going to be focusing in on skin cancers, as my guest Sophie Barrett has personal experience of this and is keen to raise awareness of the issues around it. Sophie, real pleasure to have you as my guest on the Yes To Life show today.

Sophie Barrett
Thank you, such a joy to be here.

Robin Daly
we’ve met occasionally before but it’s only recently at our annual conference that I got the opportunity to see you in action as it were responding to live questions from all our delegates. I was really impressed with your insight and knowledge that you brought to your answers. I know it was really appreciated by our audience there so I’m really delighted also to get this talk to you some more today. So it’s beyond common to find that a key motivating factor that’s driving our best practitioners of integrative cancer care is personal experience. A health crisis of some kind often cancer has precipitated a lifting of that curtain surrounding the conventional medical responses to see if there’s anything out there beyond that could help in some way and it’s the discovery that there’s so much that is so helpful out there that elicits a thirst for knowing more and it drives a mission to share the great news more widely with others who are in similar difficulties. So I think although it’s something you not tend to speak about publicly I think it’s fair to say that you fit this mole to some extent and you very kindly agreed to tell us today about your experience of finding your way through cancer and the impact this has had on your life since. I wonder will you tell us your story beginning with telling us about the life you were leading before you were diagnosed.

Sophie Barrett
Yes. it’s quite a story. I’ll try and give it in a nutshell because I tend to ramble on. now I’m cancer free and I’m a trained medical herbalist and a naturopath. I’m 42 years old now. I was diagnosed early thirties with a non melanoma skin cancer. an NMSC. actually I was misdiagnosed twice. I think Robin, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk today about my experience was because there was a report that NMSC skin cancers are on the rise and they often go undetected, and the focus was always on melanoma, as the scary one, let’s say. But now they’re finding, thankfully, that melanoma is not so life threatening, which is great news. I’d kind of been very private about my experience because it was a very different experience, but in the time leading up to my diagnosis. I’d been working in the fashion industry for about 20 years. that was very much my career before I retrained and converted careers, which I’d started to do in my early thirties anyway. But I’d had this very stressful, quite high powered career working for different fashion brands. long evenings, working all days, really even the weekend and high stress. I loved it. But I knew it was taking its toll on my body. when you’re younger, you think you’re invincible and you see what everyone else is doing. you think, Oh, well, I’m not doing that as much. I’ll be fine. there were warning signs early on. I actually went to a dermatologist aged 28, on Harley street, because my boyfriend at the time, my long term partner had noticed a very, very small spec, like dark spec, it looked almost like a blackhead with a pearly waxy, almost bubble of skin over it. I’d grown up in the sun. as a baby, I was in the United Arab Emirates. I was in the sun in the desert from naught to three. If you look at me now, you’ll think I’m blonde, but I’m not actually naturally blonde. I am quite dark. I wasn’t someone who burnt. I didn’t fit the typical fair skin burning profile of, of skin cancer, but I had had a lot of sun exposure as a baby and I’d traveled extensively a lot and I loved being in the sun. So I took myself off. I had private health at the time. I took myself off to a dermatologist on Harley street and he checked this out and he said it was nothing. So at age 28, I went off to Asia to Thailand to take a, a very interesting role at a destination wellness spa called Kamalaya in Thailand. And I thought I was fine, but I think really what happened, like many of these things, it was a perfect storm. And when I wa in Asia and Thailand, I got dengue fever. Which can really impact the immune system.

Sophie Barrett
Yeah, exactly. So I think I would have got this, but I think I would have got it slightly later in life. But I think because the dengue really knocked me. knocked my liver function. I noticed this little patch on my face start to play up within six months after having dengue fever and I’ll describe the symptoms so that people know what to look out for because I was in Thailand, I was in the sun, I was sweating a lot, I was wearing sunglasses a lot. So basically the area on my face was being aggravated by my sunglasses all the time, there was natural friction and rubbing. So you know I’d always thought I’d taken good care of my skin, used sunscreens, all of that. Now I won’t use chemical sunscreens but that’s another conversation but I think what was happening was that area was being chafed and rubbed so any natural protection, any barrier was being taken away by my sunglasses and rubbing and UV was getting in and my immune system was down and I didn’t have a strong enough immune system for apoptosis to happen so these cells were being irritated constantly and I think it was that. I also think it was I’d been on the contraceptive pill for 10 years that can have a contributing factor to all types of skin cancers and also I was religiously a very hygienic person always taking baths, showers twice a day, always swimming, always loved the water and in Thailand the shower water is much more chlorinated because you’re living on a tropical island and because of the heat than it is in the UK and also I was swimming a lot in what I now know was an over chlorinated pool so I was just stripping my skin of its natural defense all the time.

Sophie Barrett
So I came back to the UK went to the GP and showed them this area which was now scabbing over so this is one of the key signs to look for so it was still pretty tiny spec but it was scabbing over and starting to act out a bit and the GP said oh it’s nothing it’s just some dermatitis or some eczema here have some cortisol cream and I actually had a little argument with the GP and I said I’m really sorry but I know myself and I know my skin I don’t fit the eczema dermatitis allergy category I’ve never had those kind of skin issues it’s something else I would like to see a specialist and I didn’t have private health at that stage so she said look it will be a six-month wait to see a dermatologist this was back in 2015 so I said that’s fine I’ll pay to go privately so I went to my original dermatologist who I’d seen on Harley Street and went in for the appointment and he took one look at me and he just went white like a ghost and he he knew what it was then and there but he did a biopsy then and there because he said look because he’d lived in in Asia it could be something unusual like a sand fly has laid eggs in your face or something so we need to biopsy it I’m pretty sure it’s a form of skin cancer but we just need to be sure so I had a biopsy in three places then and there and walked out and a week later I knew you it was but then I was in a holding system because I’d done that through private health but I couldn’t afford to have the surgery and the reconstructive surgery on the private health so I went back into the NHS and even in 2015 the waiting list was very very long so I legally should have had it excavated with Mohs surgery which is great for getting everything out taking as least flesh as possible so Mohs was only in practice as a type of surgery a couple of years before so I was really lucky they were using that in the NHS because where it was was so close to my eye he really didn’t have much to play with so I was in a long line of people and legally they should have got it out within six weeks because of it being so close to my eye but they didn’t I didn’t have the surgery until March 2016 so Easter and by then it had spread. So it ended up being major surgery. And I decided not to talk about it because it isn’t the typical picture. It isn’t the typical picture of events that happens. Normally, you just find a tiny little area that might be scabbing over and they can get it out quickly and very easily no major surgery or anything like that. And my story was so different and so complex. That’s why I decided to kind of keep it to myself because the last thing I wanted to do was instill any fear in people. So really, you just need to know the signs to look out for. So both my parents were then diagnosed with tiny BCCs, which is exactly what I had, but mine was a lot more extensive. So BCC stands for basal cell carcinoma and they had their areas excavated. They didn’t need most surgery.

Sophie Barrett
My dad just looked like a shaving cut. It was so tiny. So that’s really why I decided to come on and tell my story that earlier you notice something’s wrong. Go to the GP, go to the doctor, get a second opinion, because quite often they might say, oh, this is nothing. Get a second opinion. And then it will just be taken out and it won’t become a big deal.

Robin Daly
Interesting. But it can become a big deal, correct? An untended BCC can become another story altogether. Do you want to just say a bit about that?

Sophie Barrett
So, it’s tricky because I feel that the body is so innately intelligent and I feel that my BCC was very well contained so that my body had formed this natural barrier around the tumour of cells to hold it in place. But I feel like when the biopsy was done, I feel like the natural barrier and boundary was broken in three places. So I felt that that time between having the biopsy and that weight before surgery it spread and I felt like it grew by two thirds in that time. So this is the issue is if you don’t stay on top of it, it can turn into a bigger deal and a bigger operation and you really need to find someone if it is more sizeable that can get the whole thing out. So with me, I work with a great dermatologist at the Chelsea and Westminster who was able to perform MOSE, which is this surgery where they are taking the flesh and then they’re able to test it under a microscope to see if there’s any cuts or cells remaining. So in my case, they did one excavation, tested it on a microscope. They could still see there was more cells there. So they did a second excavation and tested it on a microscope. So they were 99% sure the whole thing got out because sometimes they can have these little roots that stay in. So I was very lucky to get MOSE surgery on the NHS and thankfully get the whole thing out. So I still have checkups once a year and they actually kept me in their system beyond the traditional five year checkup because my case was quite unusual and quite extraordinary. And when the surgery was done, I then needed reconstructive surgery and I had a fantastic reconstructive surgery. I won’t say anyone’s names on the radio show, but he was just brilliant because I was very worried about losing the function of my face and losing the nerve feelings and everything like that. And I had a bit of an argument with him on the surgery table because he knew that I really did want more surgery and I’m not really a fan of hospitals. And he said, Sophie, no one has a symmetrical face. Don’t worry. And I said, no, I have a really symmetrical face. Can you please do your best job to keep that symmetry? He was fantastic. But when I came round from the five hour reconstructive surgery, that’s where things started to go wrong. And for some reason, the surgery they’d done, the skin that they’d pulled over, the skin flap that they pulled over. So they took some cartilage from my ear to fill in the hole. They ended up having to take out about an eyeball’s worth of flesh.

Robin Daly
Well, hello.

Sophie Barrett
yeah doing a horizontal cut from above my eyelid along here and down my smile line. So now I do have an extensive scar but only because I had a problem recovering from the surgery and the doctors to this day don’t know why. I have again a few a few theories but at some stage I would really love to go in and help redesign hospitals to be optimum healing environments.

Robin Daly
wouldn’t we all? Absolutely right. I mean, the basics of healing are just completely absent from hospitals. I mean, it’s the one place you step out and even bad lifestyle is better than hospital in many aspects. It’s just like unbelievable that the basics are not supplied when you’re trying to recover from illness or an operation or whatever. But yeah, it’s shocking.

Sophie Barrett
I ended up having six days of leeching, so leeches.

Robin Daly
All right, okay.

Sophie Barrett
on my face to help the skin actually take. And so if you imagine playing on a grass tennis court and you know, when the grass gets so trampled, they come and try and put a patch of new grass on and sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn’t take. Okay. So in my case, the skin that they’d pulled across, which was the same skin, just wasn’t taking, the capillaries weren’t rejoining. And so I started to get necrosis here where the scar is at its deepest and they knew that there was a finite amount of time before they’d have to try again another operation, which I really didn’t want. And so they knew that I was studying to be a medical herbalist and that I was, you know, very into the natural way of things. So they said, look, how do you feel about leech therapy? And I thought.

Robin Daly
from the hospital we got this from the hospital also okay

Sophie Barrett
else at all. And I said, let’s go for it. Let’s do it. I don’t want to have another operation. So the leeches went on. I had, I think I had about four a day for an hour at a time to help try and so they would suck the blood, but they’d also release an anticoagulant. So it was this kind of pump action as well to try and get things to circulate. And then we didn’t know for 10 weeks if it had worked or not, but thankfully it worked.

Robin Daly
Amazing. All right. And that’s the first time this show. Great. Leech therapy. Very interesting. All right. It’s a bit of a side issue from cancer, but anyway, fascinating stuff. So look, yours was, yeah, one of several types of skin cancer. Do you want to just say what the types are broadly and how they’re various, how dangerous they are, each of them?

Sophie Barrett
Yes. So I had what is classed as an NMSC, so a non melanoma skin cancer. So I had a squamous cell carcinoma and a basal cell carcinoma. So these account for more than three quarters. You had both together. Skin cancers. I found another one. So a month after the operation, I found a very tiny one on my collarbone. And again, that’s exactly where my seatbelt went in Thailand. And also where I wore a halter neck bikini. So again, it was a place that was exposed to the sun, but also exposed to friction and chafing. And because I’d had dengue in Thailand, I was spraying extensively natural mosquito repellent, but still on this area. And it’s for women, it’s the area where you spray perfume. And so now with all the knowledge I now have, I won’t spray perfume directly on my skin. And I’ll choose like perfume oils very, very carefully. But I think that’s the point I want to make is in both my cases, I felt like this friction and this chafing really contributed to exactly where I got them. And you can actually get them in places that don’t see the sun where there is chafing. So like a bra strap or even other places that don’t see the sun that might get chafed. So that’s definitely worth thinking about.

Robin Daly
So it was a bit like a kind of accident waiting to happen in your case that you were sort of ready for this to go wrong, but it needed some particular abrasion for it to, you know, take hold. Yeah. I think so, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so those are the two types that you’ve had, and what’s the difference between the two? I mean, just appearing? And so…

Sophie Barrett
squamous cell is when the cells start to really act differently. So my first one, the basal cell was kind of behaving itself and then the doctors started to describe it as a squamous cell because it was growing and doing quite abnormal things. So it started off as a tiny speck that was crusting over with a tiny, tiny scab, like I’m talking like a pinprick, very, very small. And then, you know, over the period of six months to a year, it was starting to do this kind of shedding and discolouration more like a yellowy weeping scab. So when it starts to act out and do things differently and get over a certain size, they tend to identify as a squamous cell carcinoma.

Robin Daly
So it might be the same thing at different stages then, basically.

Sophie Barrett
Exactly. And then melanoma, which is the one that people know that can be systemic in the body. So that’s when, you know, people typically look at the surgery and then maybe having chemo or other treatments for melanoma because it spreads systemically in the body. Whereas basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are very self-contained, usually.

Robin Daly
So that’s what makes the melanoma so dangerous. People have bits chopped out all over the place and they keep popping up relentlessly, yeah. But fortunately, a big advance in the treatment, in mainstream treatment of melanoma recently, in the form of immunotherapy. This is kind of one of those big wins that occasionally come from orthodox medicine. So very good news, obviously, for a dangerous cancer. Yeah.

Sophie Barrett
Very good news.

Robin Daly
So, maybe we can talk a little bit now about the increasing incidence of these things and also, I think the lowering age of diagnosis, both factors that are very much involved in skin cancers along with every other kind actually. What do you think are the key factors driving this?

Sophie Barrett
So I think we’re exposed to so many chemicals. I think it’s huge chemical exposure, but interestingly, there’s a high incidence of BCCs in Wales and they haven’t worked out why. And it’s also in the more affluent demographic, which normally with other cancers, it’s not. So I do think it is, it’s definitely some exposure and travel. I also think sunbeds, you know, I’d been to Newcastle University and done a couple of sunbeds, not a lot, but I’d done a couple as a teenager, kind of 18, 19. And now I won’t even do the gel nails, you know, where you.

Robin Daly
I don’t know, but you tell me.

Sophie Barrett
Gel nails are very, very popular, so it’s hard to get a normal manicure with nail polish now. Most people go for these gel nails because they don’t chip and they’re quick to do. So you go to a salon and you put your hands in like a UV lamp and some testing has been done on this now that, you know, it’s not safe, so I won’t go and have gel nails now at all. And I’ll only, I absolutely love the sun and, you know, it is very good for you, but I will only go in the sun before 11am and then after 4pm, even in the UK, the sun is so, so strong, much stronger than it was in the past and I’ll wear a hat. I don’t like to slather chemical sunscreens on myself at all. I have to really look at everything I was putting on my skin, every household product I was using, you know, I’ve been gently detoxifying my body ever since, really, I thought I was healthy before this diagnosis, but I’ve done a lot since.

Robin Daly
Very interesting. Yeah, it makes you seriously evaluate that you have to really well, there’s so many unknowns in things like skin cancer, still, you know, we know so little in a way, but we can all tell there are loads of ways in which lifestyle has changed radically in the last 100 years. And so each of those needs looking at and not least of all, as you point out the the actual the sun is getting through the atmosphere in a way that it didn’t in the past because of what we’ve done to it. So, yeah, there are a lot of things to look at. Okay. And so, do you want to sum up, you know, for yourself, okay, not just generally, but if in your own situation, you’ve already said quite a few things, but if you were to sum up what the factors involved in the way you developed skin cancer, what would that look like?

Sophie Barrett
For me, it was extensive sun exposure at a very young age, so growing up in the Middle East, and then some sunbed use, not a lot, but some sunbed use, lots of travel, living and working in Asia and Thailand for two years where my immune system was really impacted. So, the dengue fever definitely contributed to my situation. I think it was also stripping my skin, using two harsh products. It’s worth saying that as a teenager, my brother had quite severe acne, so I always had this fear that I was going to get that. So, I was definitely marketed way too strong a products as a teenager that I did use that I really felt stripped my skin of its natural barrier, and then also I’m swimming in over chlorinated pools and showering in over chlorinated pools as well. So, a huge combination of things and maybe the contraceptive pill as well.

Robin Daly
all very interesting. Yeah, well, this sort of over cleansing or over-chemicalizing of ourselves is something that’s come up in a lot of the talks I’ve had recently with people and it’s it’s definitely a big theme, but it’s also very good to note that you’re saying that, you know, if somebody has a very serious illness like you live with dengue fever, it’s a time to really consider what you’re laid open to once you’ve had it because of the effect on your immune system and how important it might be to concentrate on that immediately afterwards in order to rebuild the immune system, you know, in terms of your microbiome and everything. So, yeah, it’s kind of a lesson in that.

Sophie Barrett
Absolutely. And I was very lucky when I was in Thailand with Dengue, even though I got it badly, I was surrounded by naturopaths and nutritionists because of the place I worked and also acupuncturists. So that was really when my interest in herbal medicine started because I was given things like milk thistle and dandelion and burdock for my liver to help my liver. And I was hospitalized with dengue for five days and then I was very anemic afterwards because they’d taken a lot of blood. They’d done numerous blood tests there. And actually my period stopped, so I didn’t have a period for three months after dengue. I didn’t have any of those horrid symptoms that some people can get where their hair falls out or anything, but I was very, very depleted and it took about six months to feel like myself again after that.

Robin Daly
Yeah. Yeah. A bit like getting COVID seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now I want to go and talk about mushrooms. You’re all about mushrooms. You’re a consultant for IFA Sotera, the Spanish company specializes in oncology products made from mushrooms. I think it’s true to say that they played some part in your journey as well there. And maybe this has led you to have your kind of prolonged interest in their use in supporting people. Do you want to say a little bit about that?

Sophie Barrett
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been consulting for E-Fest de Terra for two years now and it’s been so enlightening and they’re a great, great company. I’ve learned so much. But my first experience with with medicinal mushrooms was back in 2016. So I was training to be a medical herbalist at the time and I was working with a medical herbalist in North London, a very good herbalist who trained under a French doctor, botanical doctor who runs a cancer hospital in Paris. And so he put me on lots of different things. He put me on a herbal tincture to help with my anxiety, but he also prescribed me Reishi in capsule form. So this was the first time I’d taken a medicinal mushroom. So Reishi’s Latin name is Ganoderm and Luciderm. And it’s probably the most well-known and most studied medicinal mushroom. So it’s a beautiful looking mushroom that’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 3,000 years. It’s known as the mushroom of immortality and eternal youth. But this mushroom played such an important part in preparing me for the surgery because I was very anxious about the surgery. And also it helped on so many levels with my healing. So I really wanted to say today how much mushrooms do on an emotional level, not just on an immune modulating level. So they’re adaptogens, but Reishi really calms the spirit. It calms the Shen, so that would be the traditional Chinese medicine way. And so it helped me with my sleep, which is so important. And I had all of these brilliant knock-on effects from doing this protocol with this herbalist to prepare me for the surgery and then post-surgery. And there’s things that I’d had that I thought were just me, and I would have these things for life. I always used to get varicas, and my mum used to get varicas as well. And I’d had this horrid varicar on my foot that I couldn’t get rid of. And everything I was doing to prepare for my operation and post-surgery, I went on a low GI diet at the time, did all of those really important things from a dietary perspective. But I got rid of my horrid varicar, and it never came back.

Robin Daly
Interesting. Well, look, I’m very pleased you mentioned them. I mean, yeah, the mushrooms always get brought up in terms of the immune system, their amazing ability to support our immune system. And that’s a key thing about them. And they are extraordinary in that way. But it’s so good to hear you talk about this, how they can affect you emotionally. Because actually, I don’t think anybody’s ever said that to me before. And, you know, because the emotional journey, of course, for cancer is one of the most difficult parts of the whole thing. And so anything that can provide support in that area is very important. So you can be getting a double whammy from your reishi mushrooms here, quite obviously, because you could take it just for immune reasons. But, you know, you’re saying that actually does a lot more.

Sophie Barrett
Absolutely. And, you know, a big part of my role is to educate practitioners who haven’t perhaps worked with medicinal mushrooms before. And I always say to them, I try and find easy ways for them to remember what each mushroom does, because sometimes it’s like learning a new language for people. And I say with Reishi, it’s the three S’s, it’s stress, it’s skin, and it’s sleep. It does way more than that, but it’s very anti-stress, very calming. It’s just a fantastic, really, really fantastic. And, you know, generally overrule medicinal mushrooms, rejuvenate and improve the gut microbiota, supporting gastrointestinal health and immunity. They improve mental, emotional health. So in Reishi’s case, also increasing my sleep duration and reducing my stress levels. They do improve their response to chemo and radiotherapy, as well as helping mitigate or reduce side effects. And, you know, a lot of people know about their modulation of the immune system by increasing the populations of certain immune cells. There’s so many things that they do.

Robin Daly
Absolutely. Yeah, well, you know, I’ve been a massive mushroom fan for years, because I got to read about this stuff early days of yesterday’s life. And I was like, amazing, you know, these, these things today, why aren’t they dosing these out on the wards? There’s just no excuse for not giving mushrooms to people going through cancer, because they don’t interfere with anything. And they only provide goodies. And you’ve just described so many ways in which they deliver support is, it’s incredible. And, you know, we does seem that we have this kind of special relationship with fungi, don’t we? And I thought about, well, why is that, you know, it is like a special relationship, they can be extraordinarily good for us, but also extraordinarily bad, you get the wrong ones, yeah, they can kill you. Yeah. So, and I assume it’s something to do with the kind of cell structure, the fact that they’re eukaryotic cells, which is rather like us. And, you know, so that they’re on a similar level, you know, they’re kind of complex cells that are more evolved in order to have bought more complex forms of life like ours. So I assume that’s what isn’t it? Do you want to say anything about why you think they’re so amazing?

Sophie Barrett
Yes. I mean, from a scientific point of view, they contain polysaccharides and the key one being beta-D-glucans. So it’s the 1 in 3 and the 1 in 6 chain beta-D-glucan. A lot of brands will say, oh, our mushrooms contain a percentage of polysaccharides, but you’ve got to go one step further and look for a standardized amount of these beta-D-glucans because they’re like biological response modifiers. So they bring about the therapeutic effect in the body. And it’s so important to choose mushrooms that have been grown on wood as they would naturally in the wild or wood chips. So a lot of mushrooms are grown on grain. They’re what we call the emoji product because it’s quick, fast, cheap to do. But this will change the polysaccharide count, the ratio of polysaccharides. So you really need to look for a product with a good amount of beta-D-glucans. And then they contain loads of other things, minerals, vitamins, sterols, lovastatin. I mean, the list goes on polyphenols. They’re quite, quite extraordinary. Yeah, they just have such a holistic effect on the body.

Robin Daly
So, I mean, someone would ask me, well, what’s the one thing I should do when I’m going through cancer treatment? I would say mushrooms, you know, in some form or another. I don’t think you agree, but I think they’re just top of the list for all these reasons. It’s just so much bang for your butt, basically.

Sophie Barrett
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s it’s such a personal journey. I think, you know, that’s what I wanted to add. There’s no right or wrong way. You know, I think, you know, in my case, I dealt with my situation in a very private way. I didn’t want to kind of share what I was going through with people because I didn’t know what the outcome would be. And I wanted to kind of cocoon myself. And I know that a lot of other people go the other way, which suits them, you know, they want to share their journey and talk about it and they’ll get a lot of support from it. But I wanted to be very private. I didn’t kind of want to give any energy to it. I just wanted to kind of cocoon myself. So yeah, I would say there’s no wrong or right way. You know, people can say, oh, do this, do that, do the other, but try and tune into yourself. Yeah.

Robin Daly
Yeah, very important. Okay. Well, look, it’d be really interesting to hear about your stories over and there’s lots of good little side chats we’ve had there about all sorts of interesting things, including leeches. So I really appreciate you sharing your personal story. In fact, even though you’ve kept it private up to now, I mean, there’s just so much we can learn from the experience of others and particularly the successes of others, of course, and the storehouse of experience and knowledge that you’ve amassed over the years is a precious resource for others who are in need. So yeah, thanks very much for coming on to share it today.

Sophie Barrett
No problem at all, my pleasure.

Robin Daly
Thanks. Yeah, okay Well, that was definitely a first for leeches on the yes to life show Well, I’m not that surprised to find out that there was method in what may appear medieval madness I am absolutely gobsmacked that a hospital suggested it Yes to life has a fabulous Christmas draw at the moment It’s a way of raising much-needed funds, of course, but it’s also a chance to win one of a large number of great prizes The star prize is a seven-day holiday in a delightful cottage on the Pembrokeshire coast for up to four people I’ve been there myself and I can report that it’s a seriously nice place for a holiday So investing five pounds or more in raffle tickets puts you in line for the possibility of a fabulous free holiday Needn’t if you’re not lucky enough to win the holiday There’s quite a lineup of other great prizes your love superfood supplements personal care products books and more All of them chosen to be in line with the yes life ethos. I they’re all healthy and natural so please support our Christmas draw which will in turn support our work and Give yourself the chance of winning something fabulous Find out more and get some tickets go to the yes life website That’s yes to life dot org dot uk Scroll down the home page to the news item announcing the draw and click the link Thanks very much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this week’s show If you have suggestions for the show topics, you’d like covered guests. You’d like back again, maybe Suggestions for new guests that we’ve not featured before then. Please email us at radio at yes to life Org UK to let us know We’d love to hear from you. I Hope you can join me again next week for another yes to life show.