RADIO INTERVIEW
A radio interview with Dr. Doug English of Turmeric Life and the Turmeric Users Group Facebook page about the Health Benefits of Turmeric as a ‘whole food’ in the form of turmeric paste (Golden Paste) for BOTH animals and people, as well as a discussion of his current and future scientific studies on this medicinal root.
(Radio interview link not available at the moment).
Interviewer is Diana Farrar from a Pet Nutrition centre in San Antonia, Texas, USA. You can listen to more of her Radio Shows HERE >> PetTalkSA
Full Transcript
(provided by Helen Coultis)
Pet Talk Interview: Diana Farrar and Dr Doug English – 09/08/2015
Audio track – Hound Dog by Elvis Presley
“This is Pet Talk with Diana Farrar on News Talk 550KGSA and FM1071… now here’s Diana…..”
Diana: Good afternoon San Antonio and welcome to a very special addition of Pet Talk. We are delighted this afternoon to be bringing on an international guest star, a veterinarian from Queensland, Australia to talk about turmeric, of all things, and turmeric is of course, yes that little yellow spice that um, you see occasionally in Indian food, of course to curries and what not, um, but again, um, let me introduce myself, I am Diana Farrar, I own Fifi and Fido’s Pet Boutique @ Holistic Nutrition Centre, and one of the things we say all the time there is that medicine isn’t health care – medicine is sick care: food is health care, and we find that to be so very true. And many many of the medications and medicines we take today have come from very simple sources. Most of the medicines, for example, aspirin is a good example of that comes from, the very simple bark of a tree. So, it’s a wonderful thing when we start, or able to start finding these different things that can be very, very effective on, you know, helping people and animals, and turmeric is one of those things. Dr English has been practicing in Queensland Australia for about 40 years, and we’ll ask him here in just a second on as to you know, how he got into this and how he got this interest, but I will tell you my own personal story of this: I have a lot of customers that come in and give me information in my store, and somebody had mentioned this crazy, crazy website face book page called the Turmeric Users Group. And so, I’m very sceptical, got on it, joined it, sat there for mmm maybe two months and just kind of watched post after post after post of frankly amazing things. I mean it was just astonishing what I was seeing, I was seeing, you know, people with ARTHRITIS and animals with, you know, hip issues getting significantly better and finding a lot of relief, so I finally bit the bullet and took the time to make myself the first batch of Golden Paste and we will explain that of course in depth here in a moment, and, it was remarkable – I have heel pain, I am in retail, I’m on my feet, you know, 8 hours a day, um, and my dogs, I have one dog, an older dog who is about 8 years, 8 1/2 years old um, who was slowing down tremendously, and ever since then, it has been, I’m having to speed walk to keep up with her, which is a good thing because my heel no longer hurts. So, let me bring in, let me bring in Dr Doug English, and let him say hello to the world today and we do have some international people listening this afternoon.
Diana: Dr English, how are you today?
Dr Doug: I’m really good, and you?
Diana: I’m doing wonderful, it is 107 degrees Fahrenheit here, I’m sure it’s a little bit cooler where you are in Queensland?
Dr Doug: Well, I’ve just moved down to the Gold Coast from Cairns, and it’s as cold as anything
Diana: Oh, I imagine
Dr Doug: I’ve just been for an 8 K run this morning and I feel pretty hot and sweaty, so I’m fairly good at the moment
Diana: well, very good… well, as I have mentioned, you know, 40+ years as a veterinarian. At what point did you start becoming interested in this crazy yellow spice we call turmeric?
Dr Doug: Well, I’ve always been a foodie, and looking at nutrition, and trying to not take any drugs at all – which I don’t, I don’t even take antibiotics when I have a dog bite these days, and I heal up really quickly and I’ve been taking turmeric for years and I just realised that it’s better than I thought and I put several people on to it for itchy dogs, arthritic dogs, itchy horses and the biggest case was Tegan’s horse, who has sweet itch, Queensland itch really bad, and I told her for a couple of years that she should put it onto turmeric and very sceptical of course, it’s a bad drug etc, etc, but then she did, and all of a sudden bang, the horse has got a brilliant SKIN, no itch anymore, and so, she started to tell people, we started to tell a lot of people, and then all of a sudden, it got too busy in the practice – Tegan works in my practice, and um, she said “Why don’t you put it up on face book to get people to um talk about it and you get a broader audience” so I thought well ok, that’ll be good because I’ll get the evidence. And if we get 2 or 300 people, that’ll be wonderful, I’ll have all this evidence that I can sort of use to support my prescribing it. All of a sudden it’s gone haywire all over the world.
Diana: laughing… last count, 104 000 + people… continues laughing Dr Doug: yeah yeah
Dr Doug: Yeah. And the anecdotal evidence for all sorts of conditions (?) in all sorts of animals is just overwhelming. We’ve even got a group in England who have skunks that are old and arthritic on it.
Diana: No…well why not! I’ve seen Llamas, chicken, ah, dogs, cats, horses…it’s crazy
Dr Doug: yeah…Well I did a lot of work at the local CROCODILE farm, they farm for meat and skins, and I told them it was really good for skins – why don’t you try the crocodiles on it! And they came back very excitedly about three months later and said holy moly – the19 crocs we had on turmeric had a 50% increase in growth rate, and they know that because they measure them every week. So, they reached a marketable size in 4 months instead of 6 months.
Diana: Wow.
Dr Doug: And their hides were graded, um, as A grade B grade, and ###### take all the A grade hides, and 90% of the turmeric crocs were A grade hides verses the average 70% for the rest of the mob.
Diana: That’s amazing, that’s amazing
Dr Doug: So yeah, it’s really really good for SKIN, and ah, you know, fingernails, hair growth… I’ve even had several clients whose grey hairs has turned back to their original colour
Diana: absolutely amazing
Dr Doug: Wonderful stuff
Diana: Yeah…so, the basic recipe for the, the, I guess, Golden Paste for people… I want to make sure that we really talk about this first though doc, is, we are talking about the turmeric powder – we are NOT talking about the turmeric capsules that you find in your typical health food store because those have way too high % of the curcumin in it which can be harmful. Could you talk about that for a moment?
Dr Doug: Well, well yeah, there’s turmeric and there’s CURCUMIN. Curcumin, there are 3 or 4 Curcuminoids which are the active ingredients – the unique active ingredients in turmeric – there are several other ones – Turmerol and that, which is a water soluble one, the Curcuminoids are oil soluble, alcohol soluble, short chain fatty acid soluble – they’re not soluble in water. The limiting factor with them is the absorption and metabolism – you can have heaps of them in…you can take heaps – but you are not going to absorb them. So what has happened is, most of the experimental fellows want to have a pure ingredient when they do trials. So most of the trial work has been done on extracted curcumin.
Diana: Right
Dr Doug: Which then is been put into capsules, and there are turmeric capsules which is total turmeric, and there are extracted curcumin capsules…they are different. Um, there is about 5, 6%, 4% Curcuminoids in turmeric powder, and you’ve got all the other associated commodities in it that actually enhance the absorption of it, and I believe that the turmeric golden paste is best and safest, well it’s not dangerous at all, but it is the best way to take it because you have all the other associated compounds along with it. You take it with a food, not on an empty stomach – it’s got to be absorbed like everything, all your vitamins and that should always be taken with another food so your metabolism and absorption is maximised.
Diana: Right, right. The recipe is very simple. You know, it’s basically the turmeric powder and we recommend of course organic, um, water, and oil of some sort, I personally use the cold pressed um, coconut oil, because it does not taste good to me with you know any other oil, and the freshly ground pepper, and of course that Pipperine from PEPPER from that also because it again helps with metabolism of it.
Dr Doug: Yeah, it slows the excretion up, it makes it more active in your body longer – that’s basically how it works. And cooking, as in the Golden Paste makes the Curcuminoids more absorbable. It’s already heat treated to make the powder, and the powder is sort of ok, if you take it, but you’re not going to absorb it anywhere near as well as the golden paste and basically all you need with the golden paste is to cook the turmeric and water together, and it doesn’t matter what else you do after that, mix it up, don’t burn it, um, simmer it for 8-10 minutes, and then you can add a couple of teaspoons of cracked pepper in straight away, mix it up, and then you can use that by itself, put it in the fridge – take a teaspoon, 1/2 a teaspoon – put it in anything, put it in your coffee, put it in rice, cauliflower – any sort of foods, smoothies, the whole bit…as long as you add an oil to it later.
Um, the recipe we put up on the website um combines the oil and pepper later and then mixes it up, but, the problem is separation – it should be refrigerated – it will last for about 3 weeks refrigerated,
Diana: Hmm hmm
Dr Doug: If you are going to keep it longer than that, you should freeze it. But you don’t have to have the oil in it, um, my personal golden paste is just pepper and water, and I have it in the fridge, and I put it in everything…I’ve got a smoothie in front of me now that I put a teaspoon in, with lots of other things
Diana: Right. Now…with dogs we have found something rather unique, and it’s not all dogs, it’s just some dogs develop, if they are just given the golden paste in their food, somewhat of an unpleasant odour we liken to cat pee odour. And so, how did we figure out Ceylon cinnamon and what, we’ll talk about the differences in cinnamon in a minute, how did we figure that one out? That to me was amazing
Dr Doug: Yeah, well cinnamon is an antioxidant, it’s good for odours. I don’t really know how we figured that out, it just came about. To me, the cat pee smell… I’ve never… personally… I probably, I take it all the time, I might smell like a tom cat, I don’t know, no one has complained but, um, the cat pee smell is just a strange smell, and the cinnamon seems to take it away and anecdotally that’s came about from the website. There’s been lots and lots of input there on the website, it’s not something that I’ve devised, and people have tried it, it’s experimental and now there’s thousands of cases of the CINNAMON stopping the cat pee smell. I’ve had a couple of clients come in to me they’re sure their older dog has renal failure, because they smell like pee.
Diana: Oh no
Dr Doug: It does happen, I know. And I say don’t even worry about it, it’s just the turmeric, just put up with it, because it’s good.
Diana: laughing…Well, that’s true. But it’s absolutely, I mean, it really is remarkable, um, you know, how well it works, and like I said for me, it was almost instantaneous I’m thinking placebo effect, of course, you know, my brain is telling me I’m feeling better, um, but you know when you see it with animals it’s just remarkable and I have been talking with a lot of customers, you know, about that and giving them the recipe and putting then on, of course, um, the Turmeric Users Group, um, and again, if you’ve just joined us, let me let you know that you are listening to Pet Talk Radio, um, our guest today is Dr Doug English from Queensland Australia, and he is the one responsible and the power behind the Turmeric Life website and the Turmeric Users Group, that my customers for sure have heard me talk about quite frequently. And I will give you both of those, you know, URLs so you can get on there. The Turmeric Users Group is a closed group, so if you find that you are going to need to join, um, he is blessed to have the site administrators do an incredible job, it is now over 104,000.
Dr Doug: It is wonderful
Diana: It is remarkable, these are all volunteers, they are people from all over the world who kind of keep everybody on track, you know, they are not veterinarians, they are not there to anything but to keep everybody on turmeric, um, they can’t diagnose anything, but they, it’s amazing what they do um, and they just added 2500 people, just like a day ago, you know, so they are really overworked so if you don’t get accepted you know at the very beginning, be patient, they will get to you, and they will, you know, and they will accept you. Um, on the Turmeric Users Group site, I will also say that there is a section called files, at the very top of the page there is a beginner’s files and I highly recommend that anybody that goes on that page read through the files because it is going to answer an awful lot of your questions. Um, and then, um, Dr English has also started the Turmeric Life dot com website, and that again, I’m going to spell it. It is T-u-r-m-e-r-i-c life dot com dot au and that is where he is going to be posting you know, results of any you know studies that he’s starting to do, he’s wanting to take all this anecdotal evidence and start some pretty serious studies on that. Um, and that’s coming along pretty well I think, isn’t it Dr?
Dr Doug: Well, I’ve just moved down to the Gold Coast and I’ve started a independent practice so it gives me time to do that, um, and I’ve got to renovate a laboratory at the moment, and ah, that’s been a bit slow but um I’m at it, I have to do it.
Diana: What do you think is…tell us about some of the cases that you’ve seen that have surprised you? Or some of the applications of this that nobody thought you know when they…
Dr Doug: Well the crocodile one I mentioned before…that was a bit mind boggling…50% increase in growth rate, wow, and that’s consistent as well. And ah, we’re doing a big trial at the moment um in New Guinea in a large crocodile farm there to repeat that, and I’ll get the results of that out in the next couple of months. But um, basically I’ve seen horses that couldn’t walk, all of a sudden kicking their heels up…I couldn’t believe that, you know, a bit of a trots flying but when they’re actually bucking and kicking their heels up, whereas a month before they were flat out walking…that’s amazing, I’ve seen several of my patients do that. And anecdotally on the website, there are hundreds, probably even more than a thousand now, that have had similar results. Old cows, chickens, I’ve got a hobby POULTRY farmer who’s got about a thousand birds he swears that he has about a 30% increase in his egg production.
Diana: Oh, I saw one of the Admins actually I think those chickens and she was showing the size difference in one of the eggs was tremendous
Dr Doug: Yeah, yeah, it’s just universal. I’ve got people with reptiles, it’s really good for REPTILES, so it’s not only active in mammals well a crocodile is not a mammal of course, it’s active in all animals.
Diana: Right, right. Another thing I found remarkable too is you have an awful lot of you know people asking can I take turmeric with this medication or that medication. Um, that’s pretty remarkable. You’ve got quite a bit of information on there for both animals and humans. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Dr Doug: Well it doesn’t seem to inter-react with um many medications, um, the only inter-reaction we have, for instance um, you have CANCER medications that try to kill cancer cells, they also kill other cells, well, turmeric is supportive of cells and can actually stop the effect of cancer cells. It certainly stops the effects of radiation, and that you can see that with SUNBURN. If you get badly sunburned, and you go and have 2 teaspoons of Golden Paste with a bit of oil very quickly, within half an hour the sunburn disappears and it becomes a tan. Now I’ve proved that to myself several times on myself when I’ve got caught out in the sun. It does mop up the free radicals which are caused by radiation, whether it be sun, or x-rays for, um, therapy for cancer. It mops up the free radicals which cause the damage and without the free radicals there’s no damage, no sun burn, but also, if you’re treating a cancer, you don’t get the damage from the radiation which you’re after to kill the cancer cells. So it’s contraindicated when you’ve been treated for cancer with radiation. Ok
Diana: Hmm, that’s really interesting. Um, what do you see, where do you see this whole group and everything going over the next five years? What do you think is going to come out of this?
Dr Doug: I don’t know. What I wanted to do was to get 3 or 400 people at the most to ratify my use for prescribing it on my patients. It’s gone way beyond that. And I’d be interested at having a look at the absorption in HORSES…I’ve got an inquiring mind, and you know, there’s no experiment for the absorption in horses, and I tend to think that horses absorb it better than monogastrics like humans and dogs, because they have a hind gut for fermentation and I’m sure that the bugs in the hind gut of a horse, um, utilise it far more efficiently because originally I was thinking well we need a cupful for a horse, and Tegan’s horse got up to a cupful and it worked pretty well. But now we’re seeing the same results with a teaspoon or a dessertspoon.
Diana: Ah
Dr Doug: So the absorption, and I do know for a fact in CATTLE you don’t need to worry about absorption because the rumen bugs take it in, it’s, um, absorbed into the short chain fatty acids that are produced in the rumen and it’s efficiently metabolised in cattle, and sheep and goats. And I’ve got one friend down on, Bev Manning, she has every animal on her farm on it. She has chickens, dogs, um, goats, pigs, horses, cows, they’re all on turmeric. All the family, they’re all on turmeric, and they all do really well. Queensland itch, RAIN SCALD. With horses, it really does stick in the skin and makes it impervious to all the bugs that cause skin irritations and infections.
Diana: I think we have a lot of farmers and ranchers in this area that’s, we’re Texas, we’re going out to 99 counties and I’m hoping some of them are listening to this because I think it’d be very valuable information. And the thing that is so beautiful about the turmeric is, it’s inexpensive compared to some other medications and things that may or may not work or may or have horrific side effects too.
Dr Doug: Yeah, yeah. I really think I’d like to do a trial with a feedlot with cattle. Um, probably have a base rate per cow – 1⁄2 a teaspoon, and see the results with um disease processes, growth rates and things like that. That would be a perfect trial, because they are measuring them all the time too.
Diana: Yeah, that would be amazing. So for those of us who are on the golden paste ourselves or our animals are on the golden paste, or we want to put our animals…tell us how we can…how can we talk to our veterinarians about this, and how can they get in touch with you, to talk to you about it if the veterinarians are interested in this?
Dr Doug: I prefer that communication by email because then I can have a look at it at 9 0’clock at night, 6 o’clock in the morning and any time, rather than a phone call and ah, basically I’m easily contactable by email. Google search will get me, and um, I think vets have to have an open mind… my mind is open, I don’t have any, I’m always prepared to change my opinions. Um, if we get set in our own ways, and have a schedule that we won’t change from, that is a problem. There is a lot of scientific evidence to support the use of it in animals, there’s really hardly any negatives. Um, the biggest negative is probably a bit of taste, but that don’t mean it… a very small minority of animals don’t like it…most of them, but also on the website, most of the complaints are about animals won’t eat it, but that’s a very small tip of the iceberg, because 95, 99% of animals take it readily.
Diana: Oh yeah
Dr Doug: Um… keep going
Diana: No, go ahead
Dr Doug: I’ve exhausted what I was saying, ask another question
Diana: Oh, ok. I was going to say my guys absolutely love it, and you know, some dogs I can understand not
Dr Doug: most dogs, most dogs do
Diana: ah, but a lot of the people… but the thing I love about the face book page is people will post recipes, and they will post things, you know like, well if you mix it with maybe some salt free chicken stock, or, if you roll it up in a piece of chicken… and so the thing I love about that face book group is it’s pretty much like a big family
Dr Doug: Yeah, well, I’m very antagonistic to people who post any sugars or honey to put in it, because I’m very much against SUGAR or honey…it’s bad for your health, it’s a taste addiction, and ah, everybody that monitors the site wipes out all the recipes with honey or sugar
Diana: Right
Dr Doug: You don’t need sugar or honey and they’re actually bad for dogs and bad for humans. Even though I come from Queensland where we grow a lot of sugar cane, I’m very much anti-sugar… in any form
Diana: Yes…yes yes. But there are definitely ways for getting your animals to take it, you know, if you have a kitty cat that doesn’t want it, you can mix it in with something, if you need to syringe it in, if you feel that this is going to help that animal…you know
Dr Doug: Yep, it’s funny, I’ve got a stable that I used to go to, and ah they spill their… and it’s really good for RACE HORSES and it doesn’t swab as well – it make them win races and do well, but they spill some turmeric on the concrete floor of the feed room, 3 of the stable cats went straight over and licked it up… just raw turmeric powder. I was surprised at that.
Diana: Oh, that’s funny
Dr Doug: They must have been hungry maybe, but, anyway, a lot of CATS will eat it ok
Diana: Oh yeah, but there are all kinds of things on that face book page…human recipes that I think are wonderful, um, and people are very encouraging on the site and I think that’s the one thing cos there’s so many face book pages where people get into… amming all sorts of just ridiculous petty arguments and things like that. The admins are wonderful because they stop that. But it’s a very encouraging group and, you know, for people that are having problems themselves, you know, it is very comforting to have a group like that and even as big as it is, it seems like it is working just remarkably well
Dr Doug: Yeah, well, I’m a fairly blunt sort of person and ah, if people ask a silly question, I say well get over it and get on to it and ah, it’s …some people don’t take that the right way, but um, I’ve always been ah had a good reputation for being straight to the point over my time and practice and people like me because of that. I don’t waffle around too much and ah, there is a time when you can be blunt and ah, when people say they can’t have it without sugar, that’s my time when I say well get over it because SUGAR is an addiction – it’s not a necessity
Diana: Oh absolutely and it’s very highly inflammatory and if you’re taking gold…
Dr Doug: Yeah it is
Diana: If you’re taking this this golden paste as you know to help with inflammation and then you add sugar, it kind of like, that’s not going to work
Dr Doug: Well sugar is behind most of the degenerative disease processes in the world
Diana: Oh absolutely. I believe that, I talk with my people in my store all the time about animals you know with you know arthritis and things and we look at the amount of sugars that they are eating in their foods, you know because a lot of these you know inexpensive foods sadly you know have a lot of carbohydrates in then and a lot of added sugars and things and it’s just you know it’s so sad to see, so
Dr Doug: Yeah, food manufacturers know that if they fortify their food with say, high fructose corn syrup, it’s very addictive, people like it and they’ll eat 2 or 3 times more than they need and then they’ll still want more after because there is no sotiety associated with fructose, and of course, honey is more than half fructose and sugar is half glucose, half fructose and this the high levels of fructose that our bodies don’t handle really well
Diana: Yup, that is exactly and I actually, I’ve read the labels of some of the cereals that we feed our children here in the US and it’s, it should be a crime that they’re allowed to put that much sugar in, then we wonder you know why our children are obese, they have ADD
Dr Doug: yeah
Diana: or ADHD or something like that. Dr English, I so appreciate you coming on today, we’re going to have to, it’s already a half hour, it seems like it was just 5 minutes, um, but I wanted to again to thank you for coming on and to give out the Turmeric Life dot com dot au website for that, they also have a newsletter so if you sign up, you are going to get their newsletter periodically, and then to encourage people to join us you know join us on the Turmeric Users Group. Um, so we again appreciate you joining us and Dr English, we will say good bye now, I will make sure you get a copy of this for you to put up on the website and on the face book page
Dr Doug: Thank you very much Diana, I enjoyed it
Diana: Thank you Sir, bye bye
Dr Doug: If we can help anybody get better, that’ll be great, ok
Diana: thank you,
Dr Doug: bye now
Diana: OK, what a wonderful interview that was. I am so excited that he decided to come on. Um, if you need any of the other information again, it is Turmeric Life, t-u—r-m-e-r-i-c life dot com dot au, and again, the Turmeric Users Group, and again I’m Diana Farrar with Fifi and Fido’s Pet Boutique @ Holistic Nutrition Centre and we want to welcome you to our store at any time and if we can help. Our number is 2108222525, We’ll be uploading a copy of this and other shows onto both of our website and to our facebook page, and you’ll find it in about a week on both of the turmeric page sites, so if there is anything you know, anything we can do to get you more information about this remarkable remarkable product, ah, we’ll be happy to do so…and as always, go home and hug your pets. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks, bye-bye.
Audio tract: Hound Dog by Elvis
Transcribed by Helen Coultis (Ba Alumna– Transcriber Extraodinaire).
Are you or your Animals on Turmeric? What Turmeric Health Benefits have you experienced?
