The transcriptions provided on this website are generated using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and may contain significant errors, including instances where the AI system can incorrectly add or invent content that was never actually spoken in the original audio. These errors may include fabricated medical terminology, non-existent treatments, incorrect demographic information, or other invented content that was not present in the original recording. These transcriptions of radio shows discussing integrative cancer therapies are provided solely as part of Yes to Life’s educational resources to help cancer patients and their families learn about additional therapies and treatments that may be available to support them before, during, and after medical treatment. Neither these transcriptions nor the original audio recordings constitute medical advice or endorsement of any particular treatment, practitioner, or clinic. By accessing these transcriptions, you acknowledge that Yes to Life does not guarantee their accuracy, completeness, or reliability, and expressly disclaims liability for any errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. All medical decisions should be made solely in consultation with qualified healthcare professionals. These transcriptions are protected by copyright law and are the property of Yes to Life. If you identify errors or inaccuracies, please contact us immediately at office@yestolife.org.uk for correction.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life to show. I’m Robin Daly, host for the show and also founder of the UK charity Yes to Life, that helps people with cancer find out what they can do to help themselves by broadening their view of what constitutes cancer care. My guest today is someone whose work centres very much around this type of self-empowerment, someone with a deep respect for the body’s innate healing abilities, which I’ll be exploring with her today. Dr Olivia Lesslar’s work covers a wide range of medical fields, including functional medicine and integrative oncology, and she has a particular interest in psychoneuroimmunology, which provides the focus for today’s discussion. Hi Dr Olivia, thanks so much for joining me today on the Yes to Life show.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Thank you so much for having me, Robin.

Robin Daly
So we met a few weeks ago to function and had a fascinating chat so I’m looking forward immensely to another dive into the science of healthcare survey. So you’ve got what can only be described as a pretty unusual lifestyle for a practitioner and one I guess wouldn’t suit everybody. You operate from addresses right around the globe with bases in Australia, the UK, Europe and the US. I imagine you have it that way because it really does work for you. Now you started off in Australia, I imagine there’s plenty to keep you busy down there. So what made you branch out and start working internationally?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Uh, Robin, you know, it was just a matter of happy coincidences and doors being open and me being in a position to say yes. And so I did, and then walking through these doors. And then before you know it, uh, you are traveling around the world, which is great in some respects and lots of great others. And, um, as my practice evolved, it meant that I was needing to travel as much as I do, because I am a generalist and I’m a very proud generalist. But because I tend to deal with, um, the tail ends of the bell curve, shall we say, for disease processes, especially complex diseases, I need to go for conferences that would seemingly be out of my wheelhouse. So as I was saying to you, I just got back from the United European Gastroenterology Week in Copenhagen a few days ago. Um, I’ve been to neuro trauma conferences, cancer conferences, Guiney conferences. You know, I went to, um, the organization for human brain mapping conference in Scotland last year. So it’s trying to keep my finger on the pulse because the answer to some of these patients who can’t seem to find relief from the conventional system is going to be in like, you know, some weird case study somewhere around the world. And someone has to be keeping their eye out for it to try and help these patients.

Robin Daly
Interesting. Well, yeah, it is. You’ve called us up a proud generalist. I mean, it is a great thing to specialise in a way, because so many people, of course, don’t have a kind of overview in the way that you probably do. But it’s a lot to keep abreast of. You’re not only keeping abreast of several strands of science, but you’re also moving around the planet at the same time. So it sounds a complicated life. I mean, practically, how does it operate this nomadic lifestyle? How does it work for you?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
I think when people think of a generalist, they think of a GP, someone who’s going to see them through at the beginning, right through to the end and hold their hand along the way. And I’m a generalist, but I’m not a general practitioner, which means that I don’t do that. Essentially, I’ve set myself up as almost like a consultant to patients who are not able to find the answer in the conventional system. So I don’t actually know very much about the local guidelines with regards to, you know, think of any disease process, right? So if someone comes to me and they’ve got high blood sugars, I’m not the person to help you diagnose your diabetes. I’m the person who’s going to help you after you’ve been struggling with your diabetes and the normal conventional methods haven’t helped you get that under control, or hopefully more and more people know this, you actually want to go into remission from your type 2 diabetes, which is absolutely possible. I think that there are many great practitioners who understand that now. And so you go to them and if they can’t help you, then you come to me. So I usually see patients once, twice, maybe three times. And I say to them, if I can’t figure out what’s wrong with you in that time, then I’m not the practitioner for you. I don’t want to waste people’s time or money, right? Go, you know, keep looking, keep talking to people and then come back to me in 12 months because my knowledge base would have certainly changed and updated in that time. So yeah, I only see patients once or maybe three times and outside of concierge patients, of course, and I do look after, you know, a small number, a handful of concierge patients where I do do their sort of more day-to-day-ish care, but it’s more that they have me on speed out, if anything.

Robin Daly
Right, I understand. Okay, very interesting. So yeah, demanding work, I’m sure, but very interesting, though. And say that, that sort of specialist view that you’ve got have sort of helicopter view looking at disease in a way that a few specialists would be able to do must be enormously helpful for those people, as you say, who are completely frustrated by their efforts to resolve a situation.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah. The number one thing that patients who come to me say is that all their blood work is normal. Everything is normal. And then before you know it, doctors, specialists are telling you that more than likely it’s your anxiety to go on antidepressants. That’s the biggest story that I hear, which is very, very wrong.

Robin Daly
always been the story, isn’t it, to any disease that doctors couldn’t explain, was it, oh, it’s a mental health problem you’ve got. That’s the way out for them. I mean, the terrible things that have been done to people who’ve got metabolic issues of saying it’s all in their mind, you know, for years, aren’t they? So yeah, shopping. So I’m glad to hear you say that.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
And also, you know, the philosophy that the conventional medicine has kind of, look, I don’t know if it’s orchestrated or if it accidentally came to be, but it is very much a case of you are a constantly breaking body and us doctors, us, you know, medical fraternity, we have the answers. We have the drugs for you. And there’s a lot of patients lose a lot of agency. And after a while we have this generation of people that don’t even know that they can take control of their health. That’s a really scary thing.

Robin Daly
It is scary. It’s interesting that picture is quite well described as this constantly breaking body but of course they’re anything but actually they’re enormously robust and constantly self-renewing. Absolutely. In fact if you give them the right resources they’ll self-renew out of the most horrendous situations in fact.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Yes.

Robin Daly
Okay, so you’ve got a solid traditional medical background, surgery and medicine, but you seem to have ventured far outside of the sphere of operation that would normally follow such a training. So what’s made you want to step so far outside the conventional box? And, out of interest, what further training have you undertaken since then?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah. Well, I grew up in a family. My father is a vet and he’s also an engineer. So he’s always constantly thinking about problems with a different hat on, rather than just his conventional training. And he’s a very curious person as well. So he was always looking at new solutions, novel solutions, adjunctive solutions for his animal patients. And I took on a lot of those traits. And when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 43, you know, my dad did everything. I mean, he came out of retirement, spent their retirement money on trying to get her better. And, you know, that showed me dedication and tenacity, passion, you know, a lot of things that were done right. And of course, a lot of things that were done wrong as well. And she passed away when she was 45. And I’m always thinking about how to be the doctor that my mother deserved.

Robin Daly
No, no.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Um, and I know from experience because my, my, my mom did on provincial medicine as well as non-conventional medicine for her healing journey. Um, I was exposed to a lot of stuff and that really got me interested, really got me curious because along, along the way, you meet a lot of people who, who did get better, you know, who unexplainably got better. And so this makes you, if you have a curious mind, you ask why. And unfortunately, fortunately for me, when you ask why, and you start peering behind doors, you’re going to see things that you can’t unsee and then you just have to keep going because to stick your head back in the sand, it’s just ludicrous. And, uh, and that’s where, uh, that’s why I practice the medicine that I practice now, because the, the answer I’ll tell you now, the art that generally speaking, the answers are not to be found in a, uh, a sanitized, uh, guideline handed down from the government. You know, that can be helpful with symptoms that can be helpful for many patients, of course, but there is much, much more out there and we need to, why I feel that we need to pay homage to thousands of years of civilization that have worked out some of these things too. Um, you know, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, that they, they have stumbled upon things that they may not have been able to explain with fancy words, with fancy assays, with fancy tests, but we’re coming along and we are actually being able to see why some of those things work now, you know? We need to pay attention.

Robin Daly
We definitely need to be intelligent, and of course the most important thing about those techniques they evolved was that they did help, they actually did work, and explaining it is secondary, in fact, when it comes to healthcare, because people want help. Yeah, okay, so do you mind telling us a bit about the kind of trainings you’ve done?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Oh, sorry. Yes. So, um, I did, you know, my bachelor of surgery, bachelor of medicine in Australia, um, did my usual internship and, uh, residency in hospital. And then I got very interested in aeromedical retrieval. Does that sound cool? I thought I wanted to do emergency, it was a very fast pace. So then I did, um, certification, uh, with, you know, helicopter under water escape training, for example, and, um, Aeromedical Retrieval. And then I realized that my circadian rhythm really didn’t appreciate the night shifts and the chopping and changing. So I pivoted to general practice. And when I was in general practice, I thought, wow, I maybe could sub specialize in skin, like become a real skin expert. So I did certification in, you know, dermatology, I have an advanced certificate in skin cancer medicine. Um, I had toyed with the idea of aesthetics for skin, but that just really, really isn’t me. Um, and then as you start doing the skin cancer medicine, more and more, you realize how oversimplified the messaging is to patients. And then you realize as well that us doctors are also completely sucked in by the oversimplification of the message. I E don’t get in the sun slathers or this chemical sunscreens on you to protect yourself from the sun that we evolved with over millions of years.

Robin Daly
Yeah, I know.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
There is no talk about nutrition and about the antioxidant capacity of the skin. The skin is a unique organ. The fact that every organ has its own metabolic processes, every organ has its own antioxidant capacity and needs special nutrients, none of this was talked about. It wasn’t long before I was completely disillusioned. And then I started talking to patients more about the things that I knew mattered, right? So before you know it, I’m talking to patients about their diet and their sleep and their stress and it really resonated with patients. Now, it doesn’t resonate with other doctors, but it really resonated with patients. And in the two GP practices towards the end of my GP stint, the two GP practices I was at had the fastest growing practice of any registrar that came through, because this is what patients want to talk about.

Robin Daly
That’s what patients want, yeah.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
And so that was when I went, right, okay, this is enough. And so I, at this stage, I was quite bored with general practice work. And so I, in between seeing patients, I would start doing white papers. So I would be listening to podcasts, picking up on ideas that were interesting to me. I would spend hours writing white papers for myself to, you know, for my own knowledge, but this was my end because one day I was at a research symposium and on stage was a neurologist, psychiatrist who, this is 2019, nobody was talking about heat shock response, heat shock proteins at that stage, certainly not in general practice. And he was on stage and he said, what else apart from like heat brings on heat shock proteins? And, you know, I just done a white paper on this by coincidence, I look around the room, 600 people, nobody’s put their hand up, I put my hand up. And I said, cryotherapy. And he said, no, it’s called heat shock proteins for a reason. And he moved on. Now I happened the next day to sit next to him at a dinner. So I said, do you remember me? He said, no, I said, you asked this, I said this. He said, I was wrong. I said, well, there’s a paper in 2015 in nature that agrees with me. So he read, he had a quick glance at the paper, asked me to send it to him. And then three hours later, offered me a job in New York. So I took it, that’s it, that’s how I, that’s how I went overseas.

Robin Daly
yeah how exciting and you’ve already given us the idea you’ve got all sorts of interests is very broad interest but from our talk we had a few weeks ago I certainly got the impression that you’re very interested in psycho neuroimmunology particularly interested there and well it’s the area I’d like to homeal it on today a bit and to look at how it plays out in the field of cancer well first of all it’s a horrendous mouthful of a name for a discipline and is so we often call it PNI for good reasons but for those who are wondering what the hell we’re talking about can you explain what PNI is all about

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah. Well, to see where PNI is now, it’s to understand where it’s come from. And that is, we managed to chop up the human, this living entity into a sum of its organ systems. And we talk about cardiology, we talk about, you know, respiratory medicine. But there are certain principles that underpin all the organ systems. And that’s going to be your nervous system immunology, your immune system and your hormone system endocrinology. And of course, up till very recently, doctors didn’t want to have anything to do with psychology or behavioral sciences, even though that is how important that is. And so now we have a discipline of PNI, which is looking at the intersection between psychology, behavioral sciences, neurology, nervous system, immunology and the hormones. And this is then instead of being a organ system derived discipline, it goes across all the organ systems instead. And the intersection is really important because no system works on its own. We know that psychology can make your immunology worse. Everybody knows about how stress can please make you more susceptible to getting sick, for example. We know that the nervous system can affect the immune system. We know that hormones can affect the nervous system. And you ask any perimenopausal, premenstrual or menopausal woman that. So we know these things affect each other. But for some reason, conventional medicine right now isn’t set up to be able to understand and implement clinically those intersections. That’s where PNI’s come from. It is a organically growing discipline. And we’re still feeling our way. So I would say even though it’s been around since the 70s or so, it’s only just starting to take on some traction, gets some traction going.

Robin Daly
Yeah, so yeah, it’s a relatively youngish science. Yeah, maybe it’s 50 years old. And yeah, I mean, I started hearing about it in the early 2000s, I suppose. So it’s maybe 15 years or so. It’s become a word that is banded around to it. You know, it’s…

Dr Olivia Lesslar
and you heard about it earlier than I did. Is that right? And I went to medical school.

Robin Daly
Oh maybe I’m making it up. Anyway, that’s when I seem to become aware of it sometime, you know, it’s certainly within the life of Yes To Life, which is 20 years old, and it felt it came in the middle somewhere. So yeah, but it’s, to me, it’s a hugely important science because it’s actually, you know, Yes To Life is all about integrative medicine and psychoneuroimmunology to me is the science behind caring. Yes, science that shows that how we feel, how we see the world, how we think, how we’re cared for, it’s all inextricably bound up with our physical condition and there’s no real mileage in trying to make people physically well without taking the stuff into account. So, absolutely. Can you give a general overview of the ways in which PNI is informed and continues to inform the direction of research in cancer?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Oh, okay. So I see cancer research, you know, conventional cancer research as unfortunately going further and further away from intersections like PNI. In other words, they’re looking at smaller and smaller molecules in isolation. I obviously wish them the best of luck, but cancer is such a complex condition. It will never be solved by a molecule. I don’t think. It’s like neurodegeneration, Alzheimer’s, dementia, such a complex condition and people are still putting their money behind a drug. And that’s why it’s been what, 40 plus years. And we’re still doing dismally, dismally, because such complex conditions require complex solutions. Not difficult, not complicated, just complex. There’s a lot of compassion that needs to be brought to the patient suffering a complex condition, right? So how PNI, I’ve seen in my practice and I do also go to different practices around the world doing integrative, alternative, inverse, and commas, cancer care. They understand this too. And so there’s always going to be a emotional, psychological healing as any program. So we kind of have hints of this actually in conventional medicine. We know that some breast cancers and prostate cancers, for example, tend to be highly innovated by this sympathetic nervous system, which means that stress makes it worse, which is why off label use of beta blockers, for example, which decrease that sympathetic tone for breast and prostate cancer assigned to get a little bit of notice in the conventional literature. Are they? Interesting. But interestingly enough, these same people saying, oh yes, stress is making it worse. Sympathetic nervous system got to calm that down and we’re going to use beta blockers for that. These are the same people not talking about the emotional drivers to these conditions. Now, again, there is not one thing that’s going to be the panacea for any complex condition, including cancer. And this is absolutely not to say that if you don’t get counseling or whatever, that you’re not going to survive or something like that. These absolutist statements are very wrong and it, again, doesn’t pay enough respect to how complex these conditions are and the struggles that patients are going through. Do I think that emotional shilling is important? Yes, I really do. I really, really do. I respect the work of Kelly Turner and I followed her for a bit. I’m sure you’re probably more familiar with her than I am and certainly your audience would be too. She wrote the book, Radical Remission, and she was talking about the fact that the majority of interventions that patients employ on their healing journey, which seem to make a difference, the majority of it is emotional, spiritual healing.

Robin Daly
Absolutely, not protocol. Yeah.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
So the P&I aspect of this is about paying attention to the intersection between all these things, about why sleep is important for any patient, why sleep is important, how sleep is going to affect your moods, so your nervous system, how it’s going to affect your immune system, how it’s going to affect your hormones, and how stress can play such a big role. Because from an evolutionary perspective, we would only be feeling stress, for example, when we’ll be chased by a saber-toothed tiger, let’s just say. And the hormones being produced are cortisol and adrenaline. And we know that these affect the immune system because you don’t have time to repair wounds until you are safe in the cave away from the tiger. Now, these days, we’re stressed because we’ve lost our car keys, because the kids are late, dropping them off to school, and so on. It’s just a constant barrage of stressful events, stressful events, stressful events. And this means that you are constantly popping out cortisol and adrenaline, and you’re not getting a break from it. Now, your brain, your subconscious, your nervous system, can’t tell the difference between cortisol being produced because of car keys or cortisol being produced because of saber-toothed tiger. It is going to down-regulate the immune responses, because it’s waiting for you to be able to get into that cave, whatever that cave is. Now, thankfully, for many people these days, that’s going to be the sanctuary of breath work or yoga class or meditation or better resiliency skills that we are starting to understand is really important. But for some people, there is no respite.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
your immune system takes a beating and whatever susceptibilities you have, uh, encoded in your epigenetics or genetics, you know, can then unfortunately be more vulnerable. So this is all we see in all this simplification. However, PNI, yes, it’s important, really important.

Robin Daly
Yeah, it’s interesting you stumble across things every now and then which, you know, in the in the newspapers, you know, they put out as a piece of news, which completely, they back out what you’re saying enormously about how much this stuff matters. And yeah, everybody just sort of passes them by, you know, the statistics for longevity and your social setup, your social circle, how good that is. The amount it can extend your life just by having a good social circle is stunning. And yet, you know, that’s like, they’re not looking at that in medicine anywhere and asking people how’s your social set up.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
That’s why Robin, I think I may have told you when I saw you, but I spent the last couple of years when I was back in Australia because of the pandemic, really trying to make sure that I was nutting out opportunities that would help me research right about the message that we’re talking about here, the importance of these so-called soft sciences. I jokingly talk about wanting to put the hard science into the soft science because there is very hard science behind these things. Now, it feels as if unless we’re talking about receptors, neurotransmitters, and other long words, that doctors aren’t interested in this because this is the work of psychologists and counselors. Exactly. These people aren’t doctors FYI. Right. It’s terrible state of affairs that we’re in. And anyway, I’m an adjunct senior lecturer for the National Center for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases in Australia at Griffith University, and we do research into ME CFS. Now, what’s that got to do with this? Well, actually, we have been looking at an ion channel, which is dysfunctional in the natural killer cells, the cell that helps you, the white blood cell that helps you clear out viruses, for example. And this ion channel is called the TRP, transient receptor potential. And the TRP M3, which we did research on, is one of like 28 plus ion channels of TRPs, transient receptor potentials. And these TRPs is now a big focus on my research, of my research, because these trips are evolutionary conserved. And these are the ones which are also known as threat detectives in inverted commons.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
they’re everywhere, especially in the central nervous system, especially in guardian sites, like your nasopharynx, your mouth, and so on. And they take in information from the external internal world and they give it to your brain and your brain makes a decision about whether or not that input is benign or malignant or a threat, right? Now, this has got nothing to do with your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex. This is split second stuff by ancient brain. And we find that in patients who, you know, have had adverse childhood events, who are in very stressful jobs, stressful positions, have low resilience, that their trips are very twitchy.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
So these are the patients who wind up having all these food intolerances. And they get hay fever from more and more things. And their body starts to act as if it’s constantly in fight or flight, constantly sympathetically driven, because their nervous system is so, well, nervous.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
It hasn’t understood that these inputs are actually benign because there are definitely obviously inputs, which are objectively bad in inverted commas, but there are some inputs, it’s about how your body perceives it and therefore how it reacts to it, right? Some people are fine with pollens, other people are not fine with pollens and so on and so forth.

Robin Daly
How interesting. I heard a thing the other day about the reason that birdsong has been scientifically shown to be good for you is because the message that it gives off is, well, birds only sing when they’re safe and when they’ve got plenty of food. And so that’s the message you’re getting. It calms you down and you feel good. And really interesting stuff. I mean, it’s like we’ve got so much to learn here. I mean, we’re just scratching the surface.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why when we’re talking to our patients about trying to remove threat signals, right? So removing threat signals will include removing processed foods, preservatives, and all the rest from the diet. It will mean quality fats, quality proteins, eaten at regular times. And again, this is not a recipe for every patient. There’s always nuances. But generally speaking, when you’re trying to talk about the safety signaling to the nervous system, there is a beautiful paper that came out in 2020, very recently. And it was talking about the oscillatory clocks of different organs. And it’s basically alien biology stuff, right? And the authors were talking about how the evolutionary inputs to the system, which then drive the outputs of fertility and activity and metabolism and all that, the inputs are actually very simple. And three inputs were light, temperature, nutrients.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
So you get some basics right that you’re in the sun and outdoors and not in your cave, right? Because people who are stuck in their cave are either people who have the plague or who are hiding out from the saber-tooth tiger. So it’s about being up and out when the sun is up and being, you know, indoors and not exposing yourself to artificial light. When the sun goes down, it’s about making sure that you are not in extreme situations, temperature-wise, right? And we can get on to Wim Hof and all that later, but the absolute basics are this first, and then you know making sure that you have regular quality, nutrient-dense food.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
When you have this absolute basics down pat, then you start doing resilience training for your nervous system. That’s going to be your saunas and your ice baths. That’s going to be your intermittent fasting where appropriate. These sorts of things actually can be very helpful in retraining or training your nervous system. So I think that with my patients, we go, right, let’s remove threats and the threats could be, you know, mold, preservatives, that kind of stuff, stressful events. And then we also have to flood your body with safety signals. And this, again, driven from a very sort of more evolutionary lens. And that’s going to be community, it’s going to be eating in parasympathetic states, it’s going to be touch, it’s going to be sex, it’s going to be, you know, being in the sun, it’s going to be wide open spaces, chest up, chin up, arms out, being able to look around the horizon, use your head, use your eyes, showing that your nervous system that you can survey for threats if you need it to.

Robin Daly
Was it?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Um, and that if you’re in a wide open space, you’re not afraid of being seen by a predator from the hill that nearby because you are apex. You are not afraid.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
And it’s just the ability of our body to be able to move in a way that can help us, um, survey for threats is very important because all of us now are looking down and fixated on a screen for long periods of time where we’re not moving our eyeballs in a way that is evolutionary, we’re not moving our head either, our nervous systems are screaming.

Robin Daly
it’s amazing. You know how we’re having to kind of learn things that were completely natural, but now we have to learn them It’s you know, but in order to learn them we need what I tend to call the the science of the bog obvious You know that there are things that are obviously good for you But if you don’t have the science where you’re not going to persuade anybody these days so we have developed a lot of science and we do begin to understand a lot of these things that you’re talking about and of course, they are extraordinary aren’t they that but it shows our Absolute connectedness with what’s around us with our surroundings with the environment and how plugged in we are to it And how much we respond to it whatever we like to think and and therefore if we want to be well We have to acknowledge that and stop pretending that we’re somehow separate and can exist independent of our environment

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Absolutely. You know, a lot of our homes, I think there have been plenty of studies to show that most of our homes are actually more polluted on the inside than we are outdoors, right? On a city street. And it’s off gassing and it’s all the plastics that we have, you know, rugs and in our curtains and the dust that it all holds. You know, it’s it certainly is a goal for us to be a little bit more sympathetic to our nervous systems and our environment and choose things more wisely, I think. Cleaning products and the like.

Robin Daly
OK, well, one thing that I’ve noticed over the years, all this stuff started to be described as being linked together, you know, the psychological, the emotional and the physical. But that’s now really evolved, I think, because I think the word that more applies is inseparable. There isn’t a dividing line at all between these two worlds. It’s not like one thing affecting another. They’re all the same thing. And I feel this is an important development, particularly in respect of the siloing of medicine that we’ve discussed earlier, you know, which is still even though it acknowledges the psychology is still over in a box over there, you know. Yeah, do you want to say something about this is oneness?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah, look, you know, I think that, so the left of few people shall we say, you know, we’re always talking about mind-body medicine. The, you know, the indigenous cultures and traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic, we’re always talking about mind-body. But because it didn’t start off with a very strong scientific foundation, it has been, as you said, sort of put in a box over there. And fortunately, medicine really is still a very long way from opening that box and reincorporating medicine, psychology into medicine. You know, it’s still the domain of someone else who doesn’t have a medical degree. That’s really hard because I would have, I guess maybe because, you know, unfortunately, my circles are people like you, right? And the other attendees at the top we were at. And I forget once in a while that actually out there and in the conventional medical fraternity, it is still very far behind. When I was in Copenhagen last week for that gastro conference, there was 11,000 doctors there and I was terrified with what I was seeing because it seems to have gotten worse. There was one question, so there was a case case presentations that I was at for dyspepsia and reflux. And the immediate treatments for patients who present with these symptoms was actually quite hardcore drugs. When I was going through medical school, these drugs were sort of, you know, something that you gave the patients after the initial first few safer drugs were tried and failed. But now that they’re going straight to proton pump inhibitors, I mean, I was shocked and someone did say, oh, you know, maybe these patients have got snoring and they need to lose weight and that’s going to help with the reflux. And I’m not joking you. There was one of the guys on stage who was presenting all this and he said, you can’t help patients through overweight. It’s too hard. You should just do this. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, the mind body thing that it’s so important and you’re right. And I just don’t, I’m just, I’m really struggling to understand why even though doctors can see it with their patients, that stress makes things worse. Yeah. And that when people go on holiday and I happy, it makes things better. I just don’t understand why they’re not being embraced. Interesting. Yeah. So I don’t know. Right. Yeah.

Robin Daly
you know, there is a thing called psycho-oncology now, but you know, you won’t find much of it in this country. And that’s despite the fact, I heard the other day, maybe you know this is correct, that PTSD isn’t more severe in cancer patients than war veterans.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Oh, no, I didn’t know that.

Robin Daly
And well, that’s what I heard, but you know, but still it’s like, well, psychology is like not that important, you know, incredible, really. But anyway, many people with cancer, they’re still unaware or they’re disinterested in taking a broader approach to the treatment and they’re content to stick with a focus on eradicating the physical signs of a cancer. So, with your experience at PNI, how important would you say it is to look beyond physical care in order to achieve the best results even physically?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Oh my gosh. So thank you drawn and quoted for this. But, um, and, and remember that I went, did the cancer journey with my mother. Um, and I, I have been involved in integrative oncology now for five years. Um, and actually next, next year, so 2024 is a big year for me because I turned 45. Right. And it’s the year that my mom passed away. And so it’s a, it’s a big year. And I intend to, um, I intend to make a bit of a statement of it about it. Um, and so this is huge for me and I really do truly mean this. I believe that the psychological and emotional healing, it trumps the, uh, the eradicating things from the body part because I, I’ve just, from my experience, you know, which is of course limited, but from what I’ve seen, I know that not, not that we have to choose one or the other, thank goodness, right? Right. But if people aren’t at least looking, thinking about this, they really should. Really, they should cancer complex chronic conditions or otherwise that we all should. Um, I have seen some remarkable things in my time. Um, and there is something to be said about what you said in the very beginning of this, and that is the body has a remarkable path capacity to heal given the right environment and you know, the placebo effect is proof enough that he thought in your mind, so it might as well give yourself the best chance of healing by employing everything at your disposal, right? Because a lot of the drugs we give patients as external help, a lot of the interventions that that’s all external. What about all the things that we have internal to us that are free at our disposal 24 seven.

Robin Daly
Absolutely right. Yeah. So, and yeah, they’re free. That’s a very important point. Because the empowerment of people, you know, who are feeling like, well, what part do they play in their recovery? This you’re actually saying, well, you play an enormous part in your own recovery. Absolutely. And, and it’s so significant, actually, that you ignore it at your peril. And so don’t be complacent in the least, and realize that available to you free of charge, generally, are the most amazing resources for enhancing your recovery. Yes. So, yeah, there’s a great message. So, PNI is like the science that makes the case for holistic care.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yes, it is the hard science behind the soft science.

Robin Daly
Which, in my book, it looks like integrated medicine. So I see it as the science of integration, the science that makes the case for looking at healthcare from every angle, from 360 degrees. So there you are, you’re standing in front of a room full of established mainstream oncologists, and your job is to make the case for integration. What would be the main thrust of your argument?

Dr Olivia Lesslar
But Robin, you’re not asking much, are you? Okay, so it’s to appeal to humanity. We all became doctors because we wanted to help our patients. Only special people become oncologists because cancer is one of the toughest journeys, adversities that a patient is going to face. And for some, it is the last thing that they face as well. So knowing that, knowing that you are here to alleviate your patient’s suffering, then it is only right, it is only moral, and it’s only true that you start to see your patient again as a whole, not as a number and not as a diagnosis. And if you are seeing your patient as a whole and you’re a compassionate person, which you are, then you have to also understand that this person in front of you has a family, has fears, has thoughts, has wants, has needs, has loves, has laughs, has cries. So you have to realize that their psychology and their humanity is intertwined with your humanity. So, you know, step up.

Robin Daly
What a great message. Let’s get you rolled out in front of the smoke hoses, please.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
I really, I really will be drawn and thwarted.

Robin Daly
Maybe. Anyway, a great answer. Thanks very much. So look, we’re out of time. What a great chat. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much indeed. I love talking about this stuff.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Yeah, me too. Thank you so much, Robin.

Robin Daly
Thank you.

Dr Olivia Lesslar
Thanks, Robin. Bye-bye.

Robin Daly
What a stunning response to my last question. Dr. Olivia made one of the most convincing cases for integration I’ve come across. All in all, a fascinating talk with someone who straddles the worlds of science and human connection so admirably, worlds that can in medicine, all too often seem hopelessly disconnected. I’d like to mention the Yes To Life Christmas prize draw, fabulous prizes, and all in support of our work at Yes To Life. You can find out details of the raffle, either on the Yes To Life Facebook page or on the homepage of our website, that’s yestolife.org.uk. Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did, and we’ll be back for more next week in the next Yes To Life show.