Hey humans. How's it going? Susan, Ruth here. Thanks.
Listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast.
This.
Is episode 385,
and I had a conversation with Udo Erasmus. He's a bestselling author,
most notably Fats that heal, fats That Kill,
and he's the founder of Udo's Choice.
He is the guy who invented flaxseed oil. We discuss pesticide poisoning,
pioneering machinery, microbiology,
and finding the balance of nutrients to heal ourselves.
This is part two of my interview with Udo.
Find part one on episode 375 where we talk all about the spiritual
center of self.
And this is focusing on the Body center.
Check out hey human podcast.com for links.
And to learn more about me and my guests and the show, check out Susan ruth.com.
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human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's super helpful and I really appreciate it. Alright, let's get into this.
Thank you for listening. Be well, be kind, be love.
Here we go.
Hi.
Where are you?
Uh, Santa Monica.
Oh, Santa Monica.
How about you?
Vancouver, welcome.
Back. First of all. Hi.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Hi.
It's nice to see you again. We're, we're gonna jump into part two.
Part one was the spiritual self,
I suppose is the best way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. And part two is,
now we're gonna speak about the, the body, how to keep it running. Well, yeah.
Give everyone a little background.
I encourage everyone to go listen to the other episode of course.
But give a little background to what led you into the
taking things internally to make yourself better.
How I got into nutrition. I,
I got poisoned by pesticides in 1980 and that came out of
my marriage broke up and I was really upset.
And, uh, I, I basically, I wanted to kill something,
so I took a job as a pesticide sprayer.
'cause pesticides are only made,
their only purpose is to kill things.
And so I sprayed them really carelessly for about three years.
I walked barefoot over the lawns,
I sprayed till the skin peeled off the bottom of my feet.
And then I started wearing rubber boots. But it was a summer job.
I always did it in a bathing suit.
I wear these rubber boots now and the wind would drift a spray on my back.
And somebody said to me, aren't you worried you're gonna get poisoned? I said,
nah, I'm immune. But I wasn't immune.
After three years of being really careless, I got poisoned my pesticide.
And so I went to the doctor and said, uh,
what do you have for pesticide poisoning? She said, nothing.
And that was the day it became, I mean, I always knew, you know, I I,
I remember saying at one point, I know I only get one body.
I know I need to take care of it, so I need to pay some attention. So I,
I kind of knew that my health is my responsibility, but when she said nothing,
the penny dropped. And I could hear the sound really loud. , oh,
your health is your responsibility. And so,
because I had background in biochemistry and genetics and science, and so,
and it was like, I found it interesting. Uh,
I decided I would try and figure it out for myself. They don't have it.
The experts don't have anything, so let me figure it out.
So I went and looked in the research in Medline.
They had like 16 million different research studies are published there,
16 million.
And I started to look at anything that had to do with health and nutrition.
Disease and nutrition. I didn't pay attention to water and air that much.
But the point of it was, well, if your body is made out of food, water, and air,
so if something goes wrong with the body,
then the way you fix it is you raise your standard of intake of food,
water, and air, and your body turns over all the time.
Like it's a major construction site.
98% of the molecules in your body today
will have been removed and replaced. If you and I get together next year,
at this time, 98%, you don't notice it,
but you're always under major construction. And so if you raise your standard,
then within one year you will have rebuilt 98% of your body
to a higher standard. That's healing. That's what's,
that's called healing.
What did the pesticide poisoning do to you?
I got, um, I got, uh, nausea, cramps, dizziness.
Uh, if I turned my head, it felt like my head turned, but my brain didn't.
Obviously that's, that's an experience because obviously when your head turns,
your brain turns. But that's what it felt like. And uh,
and then low energy. I was 38 years old and if I walked around a city block,
I had to sit down and rest. So I was like 80, you know, I'm 81 now.
I have more energy than I did after I got poisoned.
And I knew it came from the pesticides, you know.
And then I went around and I talked to the people who gave me my pesticides,
prayers, license, government, and said, what do you have for pest? You know,
what do you have? Like,
can I come and look at some of the research you have on pesticide poisoning?
And they said, no, we can't let you do that. And they said, anyway,
you probably just have a flu. It's going around. I knew it wasn't the flu,
so they were lying to me. And, uh, they never, in, in,
when I was trained to spray pesticides,
they never said anything about pesticide poisoning, nothing.
I lived in Nashville, uh, and Nashville's heavily sprayed Mm-Hmm.
community. Yeah.
And of course it's on all of our foods that are veggies and fruits and things.
And I started having lethargy and
weird joint stuff and weird skin stuff. And the doctor,
western medicine doctors kept saying that, we can't find anything.
We can't find anything. And I finally,
someone recommended another doctor to go to who is a
biochemist. Mm-Hmm. . That was their forte.
And I went to her and she ran some tests and she said,
you have pesticide poisoning. And I said, oh, okay.
And she said, your choices are getting all your blood out and put back in,
you know, clean it, put it back in or,
and that I went on a six month about treatment of the stuff I had to drink.
That was terrible that I kept in the freezer.
And as it was leaching outta my body, it was coming out of the joints.
I've never,
I don't think I've ever been in as much pain as the week it took to leach that
stuff out of me.
Wow. Wow. Amazing. It's.
Not fun.
No.
. And I would argue, and you might agree with me,
that I think a lot of people probably have a low grade pesticide poisoning at
all times.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The, you know, the medical profession.
I took a year of medicine because I wanted to know what health is. Uh,
I think you've probably heard that story. And uh,
you know what I've realized over the years,
everything they do in medicine is not natural.
Cutting holes in you, cutting things pieces out of you is not natural.
What the drugs they give you, they're not natural. 'cause if they were natural,
you couldn't patent them.
So you always getting things that didn't exist in nature that don't belong in
your body. That's why they have side effects.
And it's kind of like you're trying to poison your way to health.
And that's not how it works. It goes on and on.
Everything that's going on there, you know, radiation,
you know what you expect to cure cancer with rays that are known to cause
cancer, you cut out a tumor, you, you know,
it wasn't a tumor that gave you the cancer.
Something happened in your body that grew the tumor.
So you're dealing with the consequences and you're not dealing with the cause.
And it goes, I mean, it goes on and on the whole practice of medicine. You know,
I, I'll give you another example. Cold and flu season,
cold and flu viruses have protein coats.
They come in through your mouth or your nose or your eyes and then they hang out
in the back of your nose. So it's kind of, you can't sort of like pull 'em out,
poke 'em out, you can maybe wash 'em out. But one of the things you can do,
and if you were eating raw foods like every other creature on the planet that
eats the enzymes in the raw food
digest, the food and the protease enzymes in those raw foods
would digest the protein coats off the viruses and put the viruses out of
commission. Would you.
Have to put a carrot in your nose or how does that work? ?
Yeah, that would work. No. Well, what we do now is what we,
we make enzymes and capsules. So, and then what you do is you, I,
what I do is I open a capsule on my, on my tongue,
in my mouth, swish 'em around everywhere.
And then wherever they come in contact with a virus,
they put it out of commission before it even gets in your cells.
And that's how you should be dealing with respiratory viruses.
'cause you wanna pick 'em off. So you can do that with shooting, uh,
salt water up your nose. You can do it with, uh, navage, you know,
where you pour, you know, you hold your sideways,
you put water in one nostril and then drain it out the other nostril,
then you turn the throat the other way and do it again.
But not with tap water. Do not just use regular old tap water.
Well, it's the better,
it's better use saline or even distilled water or
even, and what I do is I shoot acid water up my nose that I get out of.
I have a, an electrolyzing machine. So I pH 2.5 water,
I shoot it up my nose, shoot it in the back of my throat,
shoot it on my closed eyes, and it,
it kills 99% of all the viruses in 30 seconds.
And again,
you're picking them off before they have a chance to get into cells and
multiply. And when they get in it, when a virus gets in a cell, you know,
it takes over the machinery and makes 200 or 300 copies of itself and then blows
up the cell.
And then there's 200 or 300 that are all looking for a cell to infect. Well,
the best way to deal with it is pick 'em off,
pick 'em off before they get in,
or at least pick 'em off when they come out before they get into another cell.
No, no, no. We take a antibiotic and they don't work against viruses.
Right. Or we, you know,
we do all kinds of other crazy stuff and we do it in ways that are not natural
to nature. Even when you take injections, you know,
when you take an injection, you know,
for something that actually comes to you from the outside in the environment,
why are you shooting it into the middle of your body when where the problem is
is on the surface of your, of your skin in your respiratory tract anyway.
So, you know, and then so we have pesticides. They kill things,
but we don't have anything to fix the problems they cause. And the problem is,
pesticides kill living organisms. They do it by kill,
destroying their nervous system or by destroying their energy production.
Those are the two main ways we do it. Well, all,
all creatures on the planet have a lot of biochemistry in common.
So if you take something that kills a rat,
there's a really good chance that it's gonna be poisonous to you as well.
And if even if you have a pesticide that is a, a, uh,
for killing weeds,
there's a good chance that that weed killer is gonna be bad for you
as well. Mm-Hmm.
, the indigenous peoples understood this,
which is why they planted particular crops in tandem with each other.
So that one plant would make sure the weeds didn't grow.
Another plant would feed the lower plant,
another plant that would get the sun for everybody.
Or maybe one plant would get everybody's water supply. Yeah.
And they worked much in tandem.
Yeah. Well, in fact, in fact in nature, everything,
everything lives together. You know, including 10, you know, bacteria,
you know, that bacteria make up 10% of all the biomass on the planet.
Doesn't surprise me.
And human beings all together only make up 0.1%.
So there's a hundred times more bacteria biomass than human biomass
on this planet. You think you can clorox all of those bacteria to death?
Nah, don't even try. So you wash your hands, you know, and you don't,
you know, stick it in the ground and then stick it in your nose or whatever.
Right? So you, you do some hygiene,
but you gotta understand you need to make your immune system so strong
and you do that because it's made out of food, water, air,
air and light to strike the rest of the body. So if you live,
live aligned with nature and eat aligned with nature,
then you have a pretty good chance of having an immune system that can
keep you healthy in the midst of nature. But that's not what we do.
I got poisoned by pesticides.
I was looking for self-help and I looked at everything.
It was everything to do with health and disease, uh, nutrition and health,
nutrition and disease.
And got stuck on oils because that was the most confusing
area. There were lots of studies I that I was reading,
but I read one study and says Omega six is an essential fatty acid.
And essential fatty acid is defined as like essential nutrient is defined as
in any nutrient that you have to have to live and be healthy,
but cannot make in your own body and therefore have to bring in from outside.
That's the first part. The second part is if you don't get enough of any,
any essential nutrient, you cannot stay healthy. Your health will deteriorate,
you will get deficiency symptoms. Those symptoms are degenerative in nature,
which just means your body's falling apart.
And if you don't get enough of any essential nutrient long enough,
you die.
These are the essential building blocks for c body construction,
maintenance, and repair. Okay?
And then the third part of the definition is if you're deteriorating,
'cause you're not getting enough of an essential nutrient, but before you die,
you bring enough back into the, into your body,
then all the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed.
And that's because life knows how to make a body using your genetic material,
provided you take responsibility at your mouth to make sure that
optimum amounts of the 42 essential nutrients land in your body.
Because life has to have them to build that body.
And those 42 18 minerals, 13 vitamins,
nine essential amino acids that come from protein and two essential fatty acids
that come from fats, from come from oils.
So the study says omega six is essential.
Omega six linoleic acid is an essential nutrient.
You have to have it to live and be healthy. And the very next study I read said,
alpha linoleic acid Omega six gives you cancer and kills you.
And what do you think happened? ? Uh, uh, uh, uh,
my head exploded like, how the hell can this happen?
I have to have it to be healthy and then it gives me cancer and kills me.
And I was like, first I sat there and was like, uh, what judge,
you know, , I mean, and then was like, okay,
there must be something else missing. There must be something missing.
So that forced me to look deeper into how oils are made.
And what I found out is, and what oils are made, the way industry makes oils,
they press the oil out or they dissolve it out with solvents depending.
And then they treat the oil with sodium hydroxide,
a very corrosive base then with phosphoric acid,
a very corrosive acid,
then with bleaching clays with to take out the color molecules.
'cause they attract light, which damages the oil. And then the oil goes rancid.
And now they have to deodorize it to get the stink off.
And they have to heat a tough frying temperature to get that done.
And in that processing, you end up with a colorless, odorless, tasteless oil,
but you also end up with about half to 1% of the
molecules of the oil being damaged by that processing. On top of it,
you'll have pesticides in it because they don't,
they they don't use organically grown seeds.
And you get plastic in the oil because they put it in plastic bottles and
plastic swells when you put oil in it.
And then plastic leeches into oil quicker than into water.
I didn't know any of that stuff. So 1% half to 1% damage.
And I thought, well that can't be good.
So I called the oil chemist society and I said, I want to talk to a researcher.
And they said, okay, we'll put, put a researcher on the line.
They put 'em on the line. And I said,
so when you know that the processing you do to oils damages them,
why do you do that? And he said, well,
one of the reasons we do that is because we can get rid of half of the
pesticides in the oil by deodorizing it at frying temperature.
He didn't say frying temperature by deodorizing it. Right?
I didn't know there were pesticides in oils. So in my head I'm saying, oh,
you mean the other 50% stay in the oil? I just said in my head,
I didn't tell say that to him.
And that wasn't good 'cause I'd been poisoned by pesticides. Right?
So this is , this was not a good answer for me. So I said to him, well,
why don't you start with organically grown seeds?
And I got this long silence at the other end of the phone. And I waited.
When he got back, he was, he was mad. He said,
I don't know what your problem is. The oil is only 1% damaged and it's 99% good.
And if you got 99% on an exam, you'd be damn happy, wouldn't you?
I got 99.5% on my pesticide sprays exam and
I used to get a hundred percent in genetics, sometimes .
So I wasn't impressed with the nine nine. But then I backed off. I said, well,
maybe I'm overreacting. It's only 1%. So there's a saying,
when in doubt, do the math. So I decided, okay,
if I have a tablespoon of an oil that is treated like they do
and is 1% damaged,
how many damaged molecules would I find in that oil?
And I'm asking you that question 'cause I want you to answer it because you'll
see why, why I'm doing that.
And of course it's hard to do that because you don't know how big molecules are
and all that. But give it a shot. How many molecules,
how many damaged molecules will there be in a tablespoon of oil that is 1%
damaged?
I'm gonna go with, let's say I feel like it's a lot. A million,
2 million.
Okay. Million. Okay, that's good. Uh, perfect. It's perfect.
Now here's the thing, A million has six zeroes on it, right?
So it's actually 60 quintillion.
That's a lot.
So quintillion 60 quintillion is a,
is a six followed by 19 zeroes.
So subtract six and you have a zero,
a six followed by 13 zeroes.
If it was 12 zeroes, if it was 12 zeroes, it would be
a trillion.
This is six followed by 13.
So you have got 60 trillion. So no.
So your estimate is 60 trillion times too low
so that when people use these oils, they,
and they have a guess like you did. They think
it is 60 trillion times safer than it actually is. Hmm.
Right?
They're doing 60 trillion times more damage to themselves by using these
oils. Mm-Hmm than they think they're doing. Mm-Hmm ,
that's why I do it because you say, wow, I had no idea.
So how much is 60 quintillion molecules in one tablespoon you get
enough damaged molecules to get more than a million damaged molecules
for every one of your body's 60 trillion cells,
a million damaged molecules tablespoon.
But we two usually use two or two to four a day. So you gotta multiply that in.
You got the pesticides, you got the plastic. Um,
we use 'em for frying. When you fry oils,
you probably damage them three to six times more than they're already damaged.
So you gotta multiply that in. And if you do that for 30 years,
you have to multiply the number that you just came up with by
10,000 times. 'cause there's about 10,000 days in 30 years.
That's astronomical numbers of unnatural toxic molecules
that we are feeding ourselves on a daily basis.
And more health problems come from damaged oils than any other part in
nutrition.
And more health benefits will come from oils. If we do,
if we give the body the oil change it needs from the dirty oils out to clean
oils in and out of that calculation, I said, you know what?
I can't get healthy on dirty oils like this.
We should make them with health in mind. And how do you do that?
Oils are very sensitive to damage by light, by oxygen and by heat.
So you have to create a pressing,
pressing system that is super tight. So no light, no oxygen,
and only low temperature. Get to the oil while it's being pressed,
while it's being filtered, while it's being settled and while it's being filled.
And then when you take, and then you keep it refrigerated in the factory,
they ship it to the stores, they keep it refrigerated. You take it home,
you keep it refrigerated.
And then you use that oil that you're keeping in the refrigerator on foods
after they come off the heat source. And you never ever, ever, ever,
ever use the oil for frying.
And then the oil is in, remains in its natural state.
You get omega three and omega six,
both of which are essential by the definition already gave.
And then you have to get them in the right ratio because they compete in the
body. And if you get too much of one, it crowds out the other.
If you get too much of the other, it crowds out the one.
So you have to get the right. And then you,
you take that oil and you add it to food, you always add it to food.
Could be shakes, could be, uh, smoothies, could be uh,
mashed potatoes, could be pasta sauce, could be steamed veggies.
And they're compatible with all foods.
And you wanna get a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day.
That's why two to four tablespoons for most people.
And you get enough ballpark,
that's the enough to make your skin soft and velvety because omega three and six
form a barrier in the skin against the loss of moisture.
And if you have dry skin, you need more good oils.
And which kind of oil specifically?
Well, we started with flax oil because that's the richest source of omega three
commonly available.
You are the inventor of that. Am I correct?
I I developed a machinery and that for making oils with health in mind.
And flax oil was the first oil we developed in 1986 and
19 and o so has a lot of omega threes.
And 99% of the population is not getting enough omega
threes for optimum health. And every cell requires it.
Is it, is that, is it essential to do it as an oil or if people,
I know a lot of people eat flax seeds that are still seed form.
Yeah, well if you, if you just swallow the seeds without chewing them up,
they will literally go through your body and you can plant them and they'll
still grow because they have a very hard covering on them because the seed is
not there to feed you.
The seed is there to make another flex plant. So then you have to,
you have to chew 'em up or blend them up or do something if you wanna get the
nutrition. But there's another issue. People say to me, well, you know,
why don't you just use whole foods because nature's, you know,
that's how nature did it. And of course it's how that is how nature did it.
And so I asked the question is na is Optimum Health Nature mandate?
Because if Optimum Health is nature's mandate than just eating
whole foods would gut your optimum health.
But I'm not sure that that's true. Because here's, here's what nature does.
Nature wants you healthy enough to grow up
once you healthy enough to be able to reproduce once you healthy enough so you
can take care of your kids until your kids don't need you anymore.
And then neither does nature. And so then when your kids are grown,
like if you're, if you didn't live in a civilized place,
you were just hanging out, you'd probably have your kid,
your your first kid when your 14, 15 maybe maybe 20.
If you're, if you're slow, right,
by the time the kids are grown and don't need you anymore,
you're 40 and then nature will recycle you. Well, how would you,
how would nature do that?
You should never be optimally healthy because if you're optimally healthy,
you'll, you'll live longer. But if nature wants to recycle you at 40,
then it's best to keep you
suboptimally healthy or minimally healthy.
Because then when it's time to re you know, your,
your machinery slows down in your body as you get older.
So by the time you hit 40, 45, it's recycling time. So,
but I wanted to test it because that's just a theory.
So what I did is I took seeds and nuts and I,
by this time I was working with the blend because some flexe oil made me omega
six deficient because it's poorly balanced,
has four times more omega three than omega six.
And that crowds up the omega sixes. So I got dry eyes, skipped heartbeats,
arthritis,
like pain in my finger joints and tin papery skin fixed it by eating sunflower
seed, which have only omega sixes and no omega threes.
So I brought the balance back, symptoms went away. Can you.
Eat them at the same time?
Yeah. Well then, then we made a blend because I'm trying to get people healthy.
You know, my big, my big inspiration was, oh my God,
if we could bring omega threes back into people's diets and they weren't damaged
by light, oxygen or heat, oh my god, we could help almost everybody.
And you know, it feels really good in the heart when you help.
Helping is like very satisfying, right?
It doesn't satisfy you if you haven't done your homework to know how to get,
get there. But once you've done that, helping is the thing that makes,
makes you shine. Helping is, makes, makes is what makes you happy, right?
We talked about on the last one, right? So I was totally inspired to do that.
And then it became Omega 60 fish.
And that's why we did developed a blend because we got,
it had to get the ratio right. So we mixed flax, sunflower,
sesame, evening promos, oil, rice germ,
oat germ, coconut,
a little bit of coconut lesser than vitamin E and made a blend that has
everything in it that you need. Nothing you should avoid in the right ratio.
All organic made with health in mind. And so we started working with the blend.
I decided to see if I could get optimum health from just
eating seeds and nuts.
And I was in California and it was summer.
You need less in oil in summer than in winter.
I use four tablespoons in winter and only two or three in summer.
'cause in winter you burn more of it to create heat to, to keep you warm.
So I was in summer in California,
I used five tablespoons of flax and three tablespoons of
sunflower and sesame to get the same ratio as the ratio we have in the blend.
And I couldn't eat more than that because flax
absorbed six times its weight in water. So it super swells up.
So my five tablespoons became 30 tablespoons.
So I was doing 33 tablespoons of seeds to get my omega
threes and sixes. And the ratio was the same.
And even in summer when I need less oil, I could not get my skin,
I could not keep my skin from drying up.
And so my answer to that question was,
because it's a great question and everybody asked it,
my answer to that question was, I can't do it on seeds alone.
Some people may be able to,
and some people can't even do it with the oil because they're high metabolizers
and they burn the oil before it makes it to the skin.
And those people may actually need to put some coconut oil on their skin from
the outside. That's maybe, probably,
I guess two to 5% of the population are high metabolizers like that.
How do you know if you're one of those?
Well, you take tablespoon per 50 and if your skin keeps being dry,
then you, then you use coconut. Now I, when we started, we were in the,
in the height of low fat diets. Everybody's on low fat diets.
So I went to the Vegetarian International Society and gave a talk there
in Vegas. And so I got on stage and I said, so how many of your,
uh, are how many of your plant completely plant-based? All the hands went up.
And I said, how many of you have dry skin? All the hands went up. And I said,
okay.
So there's something to be said for eating plants or eating more plant-based.
But the mistake you are making in your plant-based diet is you are not getting
enough oil. That's why your skin is dry.
Shows up in the desert more than in humid climates shows up in winter more than
in summer when your skin is dry, you need more of the right kind of oil.
And the omega three and six together form a barrier in the skin against the loss
of moisture and skin gets some last and loses 'em first because
the inner organs get priority on it. Because you can live with di dry skin,
but you can't live with a dried out heart or dried out liver. So liver,
they get priority on 'em when it makes it to the skin and your skin is soft and
velvety, you know that the rest of your body has what it needs.
It's a nice easy way to keep track of it. And it doesn't make your skin greasy,
but it makes a velvety because the oils, the, the,
the essential fatty acids kind of set keeps pushing away from each other.
Did people think you were nuts? No pun intended.
? Oh, people still think I'm nuts. . Wait, when I did that? No,
I says, but you know what, this is an experiment. The body is an experiment.
The body is the laboratory.
I can do things to it and it'll change and I'll get symptoms.
Just like if you eat junk food, you're gonna end up with a junk body.
If you do everything right,
you're gonna have energy and your skin is gonna be good and your brain is gonna
work and you know you're gonna be able, you're gonna be capable.
Here's the laboratory.
I'm gonna do any e any experiment I wanna do.
It doesn't cost me a dime other than for what I put in it.
So I can do an experiment at least for one person.
What does my body tell me? And individ,
in some ways we are different in, in, in, in, not in huge ways,
but in some ways. And so what do you do?
You need to find out what works for your body.
If you can get soft, smooth, velvety skin on whole,
on whole seeds and nuts alone, go for it. I, I eat them too,
but I can't get my skin right. So I use oils on top. Oils on top of that.
My conclusion was, yeah, my idea that, uh, you know, after your kids are grown,
uh, nature would happily recycle you. Uh,
for turns out for me to be true. I'm 81 now, so I'm cheating nature a little.
And in order to do that, I I may,
I have to hydrate some of the essential nutrients that nature makes.
They're still essential nutrients.
And the oil that you make through your company is, yeah,
I believe I may be incorrect here, but it's the number one in the world,
is it not?
Nobody's doing what we're doing. Yeah.
That's what I thought.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, because why? It's because my brainchild, you know,
it was my obsession that created all that.
There are people who didn't make flax oil.
They never got further than I did because it wasn't their obsession.
They were just selling stuff. Right. And they put it in plastic bottles.
Really dumb idea. I, we started in plastic when I,
I found out that oil swell plastic and then plastic leeches into oil.
It's in the encyclopedia of plastics. That's where I found it.
I told all the people who were making flax oil and they all learned from me.
I told 'em, change the glass because plastic leeches into oils.
None of them would do it because plastic is cheaper and easier to work with.
My, yeah,
all my bal balsamics and all my avocado oil and my olive oil,
I I only buy glass.
Yeah, yeah. Oil belongs and glass.
And dark glass as well.
Yeah. Dark glass. And then we put a box around it to keep the light out.
So nobody wanted to do that either. 'cause that's, again, it's more, it's more,
it's more work and it's more expensive.
But you actually get something that isn't damaged. See,
and you can tell by whether they package in glass or plastic,
whether they actually care about health or environment. We're,
we're the only guys in glass and we're the only ones who have a, the ratio,
you know, people co tried to copy it,
but they didn't know the ratio and then they didn't know.
Because different people think different ratios are, are better. But I,
I've been working with people and getting the feedback for 40 years.
I know more about it than anybody on the planet.
And we use a ratio that's higher in omega three.
That's not what the researchers say. But the researchers aren't,
aren't talking to real people. They're doing experiments in laboratories.
So some of them say four times more Omega six in omega three,
you do not get the results we get with our, our richer in omega three.
And then we did some studies with athletes.
They never got published because we weren't affiliated with the university.
When people took a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day of
Udo's oil mixed in food and intake spread out over the course of the day,
how we recommend to take it within a month, within 30 days,
if they did their sport to exhaustion,
they had 40 to 60% more bigger, longer performance,
more stamina, more better performance.
40 to 60% just by changing the oil.
When you took it to market. Was it hard to convince the grocery,
uh, year in Whole Foods? I know,
but was it hard to convince those people to carry it?
Because I imagine it would cost a little more.
When we started, we were, we were, uh, doing flax soil and how that No,
what happened was we, when I, when I realized, oh my god,
I could help so many people, I just got so lit up.
There was so much enthusiasm and juice and energy. I mean, we,
we did a tour in a van without air conditioning in the hottest months of the
year in the United States. I slept on the floor of the van.
We had our,
our clothes on a broomstick inside the double doors.
And we basically worked all day and then drove all night.
We were just so on fire. And you know what,
it was the enthusiasm that that carried that through. In two years,
flax oil became the second highest selling oil in the health food trade where we
were working. And no, everybody wanted, you know, nobody said, oh,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everybody wanted to carry the oil,
everybody. 'cause there was so much juice and it just became a huge buzz.
Then everybody wanted to, then we would say, well,
do you have refrigeration in your, in your storage?
If they said yes,
I would hand 'em to the guy who did the deals to see if they could make a deal.
If they said no, I'd say, are you willing to bring it in? If they said yes,
I'd say, well, call us when you have it. And if they said no, I would say,
this is a good time to end the interview.
We were not gonna do business with anybody who wasn't willing to take care of
our precious oils. It was wild. I mean, they, they were,
we had lineups for people wanting to carry the oil, oil.
Everybody wanted to carry the oil because everybody was talking about it.
Oh my God. Udo making oils with health in mind. You know, it was like, you know,
and then when the, when the blend came along, you know, it was not a big deal.
It was Udo's oil, , we called it Udo's Oil, right?
Udo's Oil Udo. Oh, Udo. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. We want that, we want that.
The buzz started it.
But people consistently saw improvements so regularly
that a lot of the, the marketing was,
was done by people talking to their friends.
And that's the value of taking the time and making the
effort at the front end to create something that is so aligned with nature
that you actually see the results. And, I don't know,
a single nutritional product.
Not any of the 18 minerals or the 13 vitamins,
or the nine essential amino acids except for the
Omega three. Because it's the, the biggest nutrient deficiency of our time.
Most widespread nutrition deficiency of our time.
I've not seen remarkable results like that consistently
with any other nutrient.
Do you have your own orchards or do you source for your nuts?
No, no, no, no. It's so it's sourced. We source it from, uh,
flax from Canada and you can't, you know, uh, we have sesame seed. Well,
that grows in a different climate than flax does. So we go,
go organically grown farms. We have agreements with, uh, with the farmers.
And then we have, we have places like in Canada is flax. Flax is a,
is a northern seed. Omega threes are kind of northern oils.
So we get it from, from Canada. But if Canada has a drought,
we might get it from, uh, Argentina.
Or if it doesn't in Argentina,
there's places in Europe where you can get it as well.
And then the sesame comes from other places, you know, again, and they,
but it's gotta be organic, gotta be certified, you know, they got,
so you have to know the farmers because there are some people who say it's
organic when it's not . You know, so,
so there's always that kind of stuff. And so, and so we get it from everywhere.
And we built the machinery.
We had engineers build the parts to the machinery because no oil,
the oil industry doesn't make those kind of tight systems
because they're more interested in shelf life than they are in health.
And that gives them a big market. And it's a huge industry.
It's a hundred billion dollar industry a year. You know, work relatively small.
I think flax is about a billion dollar a year.
I often wonder about shelf life. Yeah. I think, oh,
well what happens if your product, for example,
sits on the shelf for what you personally would deem too long?
Is there some sort of an agreement that they have to only have it for X amount
of years or days or more?
No. Uh, yeah, there's a one year shelf life. If it's refrigerated and closed,
once you open it, we recommend you use it within eight weeks.
If you want a longer shelf life than a year, freeze it, freeze it,
put it in the freezer. Oil shrinks when you freeze it.
So the bo the bottles won't break, you know, water expands and breaks bottles.
You freeze the oil in the freezer. That's what I do. I get a case at a time,
stick it in the freezer, pull out the bottle I'm using, put it in the fridge,
open it, use it within eight weeks. But if you're using a tea,
a tablespoon or two tablespoons or four tablespoons a day, you,
you go through it through the bottle way quicker than that. Mm-Hmm.
.
Shelf life on all of that. If, if it's in transit longer than two weeks,
it gets shipped. Refrigerated. Like when we ship it to Europe and Asia,
it's shipped refrigerated. It's important. Two weeks maximum.
Non-refrigerated.
I'm very excited to try this for myself as I have not had it before. Yeah.
I eat nuts every day. Yeah.
Play with it. See? Yeah. You,
you might be one of those people who doesn't need oil,
can just do it with nuts alone. I can't, I just, I'm.
Oh no. In the winter, in the winter,
I personally start drying out my fingers crack my lips. Crack.
Yeah. Well, that'll stop. , that'll stop If you take,
if you use enough oil, my fingers used to crack my fingers never crack.
You know, I have nothing. I have no art, arthritis. Oh, here's my fingers. See?
Yeah. Not nothing there. No, no cracks.
And I come from a family of arthritis people, so I'm, I'm only, I mean,
I'm willing to try anything. Yeah. Uh, to preserve health.
Yeah, good idea. Might as well, you know, might as well.
I ain't getting any younger either. I.
I know, I, I know I'm gonna die one day. That's what people say. Oh,
I worry about, oh, you're gonna die anyway. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
But I wanna die healthy.
. Right. My dad always says that as well, why die miserable, die healthy.
Which is, it's, it's a conundrum of course. But I know what he's trying to say.
Yeah. And.
When and when you have pain, you know, the pain is, is a,
the pain is your friend. It's trying to tell you something.
Something needs to be different here. It doesn't tell you what it is.
So then you have to mess around and try and figure it out. Right? Mm-Hmm,
. But pain is not, pain is not an enemy. Pain is a pain is a,
you know, if it wasn't for pain, we would,
we would get really stupid and never find our way back.
There is disorder that there are certain, there's a tiny,
tiny percentage of humans that don't feel pain.
They're born with the inability and it's a very dangerous way to live a life.
Oh yeah. Well,
there are diabetics who don't have any pain receptors in their legs
and they bang into stuff and they actually injure themselves.
And sometimes they injure themselves and they're bleeding and they don't even
notice because they're, because in diabetes, your,
your nerves kind of get deadened, right? Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.
. Yeah.
And how are you gonna make it through the world if you can't feel that you
banging into something, how would you know?
Then I got into digestion because that's the second most neglected area.
And indigestion, most things that go wrong with digestion,
you can fix with digestive enzymes or probiotics
or fiber or bitters, bitter herbs,
you know, or combination of those. So I got into that next, which should,
so work with digestive enzymes and probiotics and, uh,
I brush my teeth with probiotics and I don't wake up with bad breath in the
morning. How about that? And I have no,
you know, no digestion problem issues at all. I eat lots of raw, lots of,
lots of plant-based. I'm 81 and I have a ton of energy,
you know, and also with digestive enzymes, uh,
they'll digest the protein coat off viruses. So they're very helpful.
Raw foods and digestive enzymes, very helpful with respiratory issues.
Probiotics, very important to keep unfriendly bacteria to get,
get from getting outta hand in your digestive system. Uh,
fiber obviously good for bowel regularity and blood sugar slowing,
blood sugar absorption and all of that bitters for liver,
both liver and digestive function. So then I did that. Then I got into,
uh, greens because it's like, okay, well, well what else do we need to do here?
Oh, greens. Yeah.
Everybody knows they should be eating their greens and most people don't.
So we made digestive, we made, uh, uh, uh,
portable greens that people can take on the road if they want to pay attention
to their intake. And sometimes when you travel, you know,
you're around a lot of bad food.
So you can take them along and make your own green drink in the morning or,
or put 'em in your oatmeal for whatever. Put 'em on your bacon and eggs. I know.
I'm just kidding. . And uh, and then I got,
and then after that I got into what else affects health? And I realized,
oh my God, everything affects health. And so that's when I said, okay,
we need to create a field of total health based in nature and human nature
and the, and the inner part of it that is most neglected. The,
the contentment part and the unconditional empowering love part and the
inspiration part that are all internal to each human being is the most
neglected of all topics on this planet. And so that's,
that's what I got into. That's what I'm into now.
Then we talked about that the last time it came on. Yeah.
That was a great conversation. Human, human nature. Yeah.
It seems to me that, especially in the United States,
that we are a, a human race now that is
weirdly obese and yet starving.
Mm-Hmm, . Yeah. Why? Why is that? Because we eat refined foods.
White sugar has no nutrients in it. Only fuel.
White flour has had a lot of nutrients taken out and the white
oils have had all the nutrients taken out except the essential fatty acids.
And a part of that is damaged.
And so when you are eating foods like that, you don't get,
you stay hungry because your body's still saying, I need more.
'cause you're supposed to be eating undamaged.
You're supposed to be eating whole foods and you're getting your minerals and
your vitamins and you don't have a hunger for magnesium and a hunger for omega
threes and a hunger for zinc. You just have a hunger.
And all of zinc, zinc and all of the minerals and,
and vitamins came with the whole foods.
So life never elaborate at different nutrient needs
for specific nutrients. Right. So then when you eat badly,
you eat foods. Not the way nature made 'em, but the way industry made them,
then you set yourself up for never being satisfied, eating more than you need.
On top of it. You got stress that makes you eat. Also, on top of that, we've,
we've focused on carbs.
And carbs will make turn on fat production and turn off fat
burning in the body. And so then what happens? You overeat 'em,
your blood sugar goes up, the excess goes in, the cells is turned into fat,
then your blood sugar goes down, then you get cravings.
Then you get carb addiction and carb addiction's being measured to be between
four and eight times more addictive than cocaine.
Right. And then you get all of the junk. I mean, I don't know what I,
I think it's something like 60 to 80% of the foods that people eat in North
America. It's not just us. By the way, Canada, Europe too 90, uh,
60 to 80% is like junk food,
fast food, white flour.
It's so much cheaper, unfortunately. And beware of the word enriched.
Never a good thing. Yeah.
Enriched. Yeah. How, you know how enriched goes?
They take 26 minerals and vitamins out of the grain,
then they add six back and then they call it enriched.
It should have been called impoverished . Mm-Hmm.
.
Yeah. And that isn't gonna change. Just like all our,
of our crazy warness and all of that crazy fighting and conflict we have is not
gonna get fixed until we feel whole inside and enjoy our life.
While our physical health problems are not gonna get fixed until we begin to
live in line with nature again,
eat our foods the way nature makes it. So that would be fresh,
whole raw, organic for human. Mostly plant-based.
Yeah. The organisms that live in our body have their own agenda.
For example, you mentioned probiotic.
When the little bugs in our bellies and in our colon, they,
if there's an over let's ex, let's just say yeast for example.
Yeast wants more sugar. Yeah.
So it's gonna create in your mind the idea that you want,
you think you want candy or ice cream or sugary things,
when in reality it's not you that wants it.
It's a little organisms that are pulling levers in your brain.
Yeah. But you have to be a little careful. It's true.
Yeast love sugar and cancer cells love sugar.
And it's true that they have their own ways to try and get what they want.
But you gotta be careful.
You're still in charge and you still can make decisions. And fundamentally,
what you need to do to get rid of the yeast and the,
and the cancer cells is you need to cut sugar out of your diet completely.
Doesn't mean you can't eat fruit. No white sugar.
I got no white sugar in my house. I never use it. No white flour. I,
I don't have bread or pasta or pancakes or any of that garbage in my house.
I eat seeds, nuts, greens,
fruit and whole foods the way nature made 'em.
If it ain't the way nature made it, don't eat it. Except for the oil.
Are you a vegan? Except for the oil? No, I don't like vegan. I like plant-based.
And I don't like some of the harshness that goes
with some vegan philosophies.
I posted an article on one of my web,
on one of my social media and the title was,
love is more important than vegetables.
Because if you're gonna be eat vegetables and you treat people like crap,
you're not helping the planet that much.
I would rather talk to a meat eater who,
who is kind to people than to a vegan who, who is abrasive.
You know, the abrasiveness is, is completely misguided in my,
in my opinion.
We need more peace and more love and more inspiration on the planet. And uh,
I think a good case can be made for eating whole food plant-based much
more than we do.
And out of insight comes to change in habits,
not out of being hammered over the head. So it's just bad strategy.
So I don't, I don't want to be associated with that kind of strategy.
Rarely do I have any dairy. Very rare. I haven't eaten meat.
I don't know how for, for how long or eggs. And I feel really, you know,
and I'm a type O they're supposed to be the meat eaters according to one of the,
the blood type diet. I've always done better on vegetables. The older I get,
the more I eat raw and raw works for me really well. Raw,
organic plant-based, fresh whole.
Well I think you made a good point too,
that you said you have to experiment and see what works well for your body.
Yeah. Yeah. And how your body responds. Yeah. And.
It'll change.
You have to keep experimenting 'cause it changes with age because what I,
what worked when I was younger doesn't work for me now. And I do, don't,
I know it. I do exceptionally well on, on plant-based. Okay.
You know, plant-based raw, you know, I never sort of set out say, oh yeah,
I think plant-based raw. Oh yeah, yeah. That's a really good idea.
It wasn't like that. I'm just following what works for my body. And uh,
you know, like I say, I'm 81 and people, people can't believe how young I am.
That's, that's what they say.
You say you look like you're in your sixties and you talk like you're still a
kid. . Yeah. So.
Tell everyone how they might find you again.
Uh, Udo's Choice, UDOS choice.com. That's where the products are.
And then the Udo, T-H-E-U-D-O, that's the website we're building.
That's more on the, on the big picture stuff. The total health and the, the, uh,
psychology stuff. And you know, the, the human nature.
I have a YouTube channel under Udo or Rasmus and I'm on Instagram.
And if you punch in Udo on Google Udo not even a four letter word,
you I'm on the first page. 'cause there are not so many Udo's on the planet.
Nice. It was, it was always an embarrassment to have a strange name like that,
but now it's a bonus .
Absolutely. And I know that Whole Foods carries your products and.
All the, all the health food stores in the fridge. The oil is in the fridge.
And the supplement section in the health food stores,
the probiotics are on under the Flora brand. Uh,
they're also in the fridge and the enzymes are on the shelf
because they don't need refrigeration as long as they're dry. And the greens,
I think they're, yeah. The greens are also on the shelf.
Yeah. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. I appreciate.
It. All right. Thank you.
Thank you for listening everybody. Yeah. It's been really great. Yeah.
Cool. Thanks Susan.
Yeah. Take care. Alright,
great review and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on iTunes or wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.