Glen Robison: Episode 704

Transcript

[0:00:31] DA: Are you living toward a healthy retirement? Far too many people retire, needing to take five to 20 medications a day for health conditions that could have easily been prevented and it doesn’t have to be that way, in nature, when things are imbalanced, there is no disease. In his new book, Healthy Dad Sick Dad, Dr. Glen Robison shares his personal journey with two very similar fathers who ended up in drastically different retirements. Determined to understand why, Dr. Robison studied his healthy father’s lifestyle and emulated it for 15 years with dramatic improvements to his own health. Now, he’s ready to share the secrets of living toward a long, healthy life. Start living today for your greatest asset, you, and look forward to a retirement you’ll love. Hey Listeners, my name is Drew Applebaum and I’m excited to be here today with Glen Robison, author of Healthy Dad, Sick Dad: What Good is Your Health if You Don’t Have Your Health? Glen, thank you for joining, welcome to The Author Hour Podcast.

[0:01:29] Glen Robison: Nice to be here.

[0:01:31] DA: Let’s kick this off, Glen, can you give us a rundown of your professional background?

[0:01:35] Glen Robison: My profession, I’m a pediatrist so I do clinical work and surgical work, I’ve been in practice for a little over 21 years and there’s a variety within my specialties, from surgery to dermatology to pediatrics to geriatrics, to all sorts of flavors that you would find within the foot and ankle. I have leaned more towards the more natural approaches to treating the structure of the body over the last, probably I’d say, 15 years and this is probably what developed me into putting all this information that I’ve learned into a book.

[0:02:16] DA: Why was now the time to share these stories in the book? Was there an “aha moment” recently, something inspiring, did a hundred people come up to you and say, “Glen, you got to put this in a book.”

[0:02:29] Glen Robison: There wasn’t really an “aha moment” it was probably just a course of my journey, you go back some 18 years ago when I was in a position where I was facing a crisis. My lower back had gone out, I had a family, kids I had to support, no health insurance, starting out a practice because I was in private practice. Some of the luxuries of life, you have to compensate and one of those luxuries that most people would call luxuries is health insurance. I didn’t have that. I stumbled upon this venture and got my back all fixed with no injections, no surgeries and yeah, there was many multiple levels on this journey. The main one, this book in particular is the foundation, it’s nutrition and so I had to go through that in order to get to where I’m at. Over the course of years when I started to implement in this to my patient and started seeing patients get better and just having profound experiences, especially people coming in pain and leaving the office without any pain and having it maintained and retained and then seeing the course of my diabetics or patients that had fungal toenails and changing their diet and it’s changing them completely. I got to a point where I just said, “Hey” I asked my healthy dad, if I could put everything together and write a book and finally, I think it’s about 15 years of extensive study and in training that I was given the permission to put all this data in there because having gone through medical school, this was never taught to me. It was – this is a very – an eye-opening to me and I talk a little bit about what really changed me is when my daughter was injured and so I was – have this great opportunity now to put what I – a little bit I know into a book and hopefully it will continue to help other people.

[0:04:41] DA: You decided to put pen to paper and write this book and you probably had an idea of what you were going to write but a lot of times, authors during the writing process just by digging deeper into some of the subjects or by doing research, you come to some major breakthroughs and learnings. Did you have any of these major breakthroughs or learnings during your writing journey?

[0:05:02] Glen Robison: Absolutely. Being a student and having gone through modern medicine and doing that medical school and surgical residencies, I mean, you should see my stack of notebooks, I have notes I’ve taken over the course of the years. The same rings true with this study. I have countless notes, I have countless articles, I have countless books that I’ve read. My challenge was – is one, asking the right questions for the book. Two, is to go through all that material over the course of 15 years of stacks of stacks of papers and finding out the important thing. It’s not a huge, thick, book that’s going to scare somebody away and then there’s definitely some “aha moments” One with myself, one with my daughter, one I can countless numerous patients that had come in to my office from a little child that had a hip dysplasia and they call it one foot terms completely, almost at 90 degree angle from the other foot and a simple manipulation set her hip back in place and she walks straight and followed up a year later and she was still walking straight and changed that course of that little girl’s life, for life. Some of them are diabetics and actually take hold of the information within the way to eat and seeing the blood sugars come down and regaining their life and starting to live a very enjoyable movement, exercising life that they’ve always wanted. Yeah, there was definitely some “aha moments” I’m sure I could think of quite a few of them if I had the time.

[0:06:50] DA: When you sat down to write the book, again, who were you writing it for in your mind? Is this – It’s Healthy Dad, Sick Dad is the title, is this for older gentlemen, younger gentlemen, can women have takeaways from the book as well?

[0:07:04] Glen Robison: Who I wrote it for, when I first started writing, I thought I was writing to my brother who was in his 50s and looking at retirement and as I was sitting in a scribe class for the three-day course, I thought that was my person I was writing to, but actually was myself. I was writing to me, the college student in the, 20s that, I was fit, I was a former firefighter, wild line firefighter. I was very energetic, athletic, just liking sports and so I had my little illnesses such as asthma and things like that but when I hit medical school and I started to eat things that did not necessarily do me good over a course of time, it changed me. I’m writing a book for me at 20 years old and hopefully it resonates to all these college-aged students out there that were in the same boat I am that their health is great, they don’t think anything’s wrong with them, hit their 30s and 40s and things start creeping up. The book is for everyone, really. It’s male, female, people that are approaching retirement and saying “Hey, look, I want to enjoy retirement, I want to travel, I want to continue to exercise and I don’t want to be on all these medications, I don’t want to be stuck on that wheelchair, I don’t want a cane” There’s a saying, movement is life and so yeah.

[0:08:42] DA: Let’s also get this out of the way before we dive into the book. Do you want to talk about maybe what’s not in the book?

[0:08:50] Glen Robison: There’s a lot of things not in the book. I don’t discuss cancer. I leave it for those that are the authorities in that, naturally are medical. The book is though, designed that if you follow the principles, you probably won’t get cancer. But I don’t talk about that stuff. I do – I’ll bring this up, there’s a big issue right now, vaccination, not vaccination, especially with this COVID thing but childhood vaccinations. There’s so many profound authority people out there that could explain more so I put my two little senses and bits in the book but I leave it up to the reader and so that’s – if you're looking for things like that, it’s not going to be in there. Those two main ones, which are just hot issues that I hear every day.

[0:09:43] DA: Let’s dive into the book itself and there’s this question that I’m constantly asking. I think anyone who eventually finds proper nutrition if you want to call that later on in life, they always ask themselves, “Why is nutritional education lacking in our education system and specifically, in higher education?”

[0:10:01] Glen Robison: That’s a very good question and I wish I had an answer for that because I look back on my education and there is not a single course on nutrition. I mean, there is biochemistry, there is physiology and I’m sure that there’s one maybe chapter, I mean, I had my thesis, I wrote on in biochemistry it was on chocolate, is it good for you, is it bad for you. That’s about the only experience I got in medical school on nutrition. It’s sad because it is the foundation, it is the key to freedom of life and that’s why I do not believe in diets because why die it when you can live it. I believe in living to you know, you eat to live. Not eat to die.

[0:10:50] DA: What questions should listeners be asking themselves to really find out if they’re living a “healthy life?”

[0:10:59] Glen Robison: Well, looking back on me, there was really no question in presenting to me until the little subtle things started happening. The first time I got a kidney stone because one, I’m dehydrated and two I was drinking root beer floats with the Costco muffins. It is cheap, it is easy. I could scoff that down in five minutes and I’m back to studying. Then, when that subtle – not subtle, it’s a huge experience that mainly changed me. That’s usually the course that happens when that crisis hits, you start asking the questions but I would tell the reader, if you’re like, “Oh, well I’m not reading this.” Well, there’s a reason why you picked up this book, one is that you can jump to the very, very last chapter. I call it a whole life diet, it’s a chapter that is a diet for healthy people. I mean, these are the things you want to eat, these are the things you can avoid, these are the things that are going to keep you out of trouble but the key point I would say to the readers, observe. Look at those around you, especially within your family, what’s your mom and dad doing and I say that not in the sense of genetics but yeah, my grandpa died of diabetes but does not mean that I have to be diabetic. Do I have the diabetic gene? I have no idea, all I know is that type-two diabetes can be easily, one, prevented and corrected. I just choose to eat properly and I don’t have to worry about that. I would just say to those, just observe and see those, the ailments that they have and maybe you want to take a mental note and then say, “Okay, I don’t want that and what can I do to prevent that?”

[0:12:46] DA: What’s wrong with many of the diets today? Are any of these fad diets that come through every few years, are any of them actually healthy?

[0:12:58] Glen Robison: They are to a degree and they have their points but they’re short lived and I say this because let’s take the – and when I mention that, I’m by no means saying this is wrong or right but there are a lot out there for the sake of you know, I’m not going to mention even but think of a diet and one that you’ve been on and one you haven’t. You know, the life value of that is about six months depending if you’re yin or yang, meaning that let’s say you’re weak and tired, you’re in or you’re very strong and have a lot of energy, you kick your bed sheets off at night, you’re yang. When a yang person eats more yang, meaning that they eat a lot more meat and proteins, they’re going to get more agitated. They’re going to get more angry, they’re going to continue to get more inflamed. Whereas on the other side, on the yin side and I go heavily into the book on this that let’s say a vegan who is weak and tired but yet they get a cold and so they want to eat a salad and that salad has always been good for them but they continue eating these weak foods and it makes them weaker and sicker and sicker and so there has to come a balance and I think most diets out there don’t find the balance of life. They have their extreme yin or their extreme yang. I think the one that I have found out there that’s really good I would say aside from what my healthy dad has introduced me to is the Mediterranean diet but you know, then you have heart congestions, you have diabetes, you have all these rheumatory arthritic conditions and so then you have to curtail that and so going on these diets are just to me short lived and they’re going to see results up to about six months or so. Usually, they hit the plateau and then they crash and then they get off it and they go find a new diet and so the ones I’m proposing in the book is that let’s just take for instance the immune diet. It’s somebody that is weak and tired, it’s a yin diet, so if I can get them up to a balanced stage then they go onto the whole life diet, a diet that I’m on that I live the rest of my life. Now, there are times where I fall off the whole life diet and I have to revert back to the immune diet, which is basically just cooking your food for good better digestion. Getting off the sugar, staying away from the few of the things and usually the immune diet is within days to not more than a couple of weeks. I would say if somebody has like a fungal infection then they’re going to be on a little bit longer but yeah, I think that’s why most diets don’t work. They’re just short lived.

[0:15:56] DA: I thought this was really interesting that you brought this up in the book and can you go into a little bit more detail on how the actual organs in your body work together?

[0:16:05] Glen Robison: Okay, let me – I’ll bring up a classic example and I won’t go into all of them in detail but let me just talk about the large intestine-lung relationship. In the five elements, which is a chapter that talks about paired organs, meaning you have essential organs then you have functional organs. The essential organs you need, you can’t live without them and this is where I think that in the eastern medicine, they will have – they talk about the pancreas. Well, spleen pancreas. You can live without the spleen but you can’t live without the pancreas and so there’s a little change up in the book that I put in there but getting back to the large intestine and lung, they work together. It’s a classic example. When I was in medical school working on cadavers and you know, you’d have their certificate of what they died of and this is way before I was ahead any of these training and knowledge, I’d always notice that they had a blockage in their large intestine when they had a diagnosis of respiratory arrest and that was in the back of my mind. When I was implementing this into my practice and everything, I had a patient that went into the emergency room and they’re going to put him into ICU and I asked the doctor. I go, “When is the last time the patient had a bowel movement?” and the doctor asked me and I go, “Why?” I go, “Because if he’s constipated and he has a blockage in that large intestine, he’s going to have backup in the lung” and it’s being expressed in the lung of respiratory distress. He says, “Once he has a bowel movement and things are flowing, then you’ll notice that his lungs start to clear up” and he didn’t ask me right off the bat but he gave me a call and said, “Hey, you’re right on. The guy, he had a bowel movement a couple of days” and so we got his intestines cleaned out and he wasn’t in the ICU unit for very long and he came out and there’s many other classic examples of this and so I always approach a respiratory problem that has to do with the lung, with the large intestine. The large intestine is out of balance and so, if you have a cough-cold-phlegm, well, everybody looks at the lungs to treat the lungs. You know, you got to go down to the large intestine and saying, “Okay, are they constipated? Did they have a bowel movement? What types of food are going into that body? Is it heavily sugared and it’s inflaming the large intestine? Once you can have good established good bacteria in your intestinal lining and you have what I call the yogurt factory in your body functioning to a proper setting now with the right PH, with the right alkalinity, with the right temperature then it’s amazing how people get over their respiratory problems just by treating the large intestine.

[0:19:15] DA: Now, obviously having a strong immune system is key, I mean especially look at the way the world is right now. You never know what’s going to happen. What are some dos and don’ts that somebody can do to protect and help their immune system?

[0:19:31] Glen Robison: I’ve not seen a book out there talk about it. I’ve not seen articles but they key component right now I would say is what is your body temperature and that has a key component on your immune system. Your body temperature has to be at a 98.6 for the immune system to really fully work in your intestinal lining. Something I notice with myself every time I walk into my clinic or somebody take my temperature, now if my temperature is down to 96.8 and 97.1, it’s an indication to me that’s saying, “Okay, I need to raise that up. I need to get that temperature up.” Now, we’re so worried and scared about a fever temperature that’s greater than a 101 and that yeah, you do have to be careful of that but you also have to have a body temperature to have a good immune system. Now, there are other factors that goes beyond the foods we eat, the quality of the foods, the qualities of lard, the quality of air we need but sleep, rest. There’s a lot of stuff that I talk about in the book especially the five element chapter about emotions. You know emotions have a great, great effect on our immune system. Right now everybody is fearful of what is going to happen tomorrow. We don’t know and so that affects the kidney in a subtle way but yeah, it is interesting with the information in the book and so if a reader chooses to pick it up and read it, you know, be patient with it. It is not a book that is a quick read and then you’re done. It’s a book that you’ll pick up time and time you use as a references to saying, “Oh okay, you know that makes sense now.”

[0:21:15] DA: What can readers or listeners expect when they change their habits and start becoming the healthy dad as you call it?

[0:21:23] Glen Robison: What can they expect, it depends on what’s their element. I expected a diabetic if they truly did the diabetic diet that I have in the book to won, you know, come off their diabetic medication and be able to become diet controlled now. The diabetics have to be careful because especially if you’re on insulin, you just really have to have follow-up with your primary doctor and make sure that everything is in check because you don’t want your sugars to drop really low so it’s a course of time. The immune diet, I expect people to see within three to five days that they start to have more stronger constitution. They feel better. The whole life, I don’t expect anything of that, out of that except for you know, just we have movement. You don’t complain, you go to work, you’re happy to your coworkers, you’re happy when you come home to your family aside from the emotional stuff that goes on but expectation wise, it’s just individually. I think that it goes beyond saying and that you asked me a question earlier why diets don’t work. Well, everybody is different. Everybody is unique and I have in there a chapter and I purposefully put that in there because you know, you may have a different blood type of somebody. You may have a different body frame than somebody. You have a different, you know, I have five things, five other things that you look at and so your constitutions completely differ. It comes to an individual basis but as far as the book, I tried to keep it as simple as possible to gain – so the reader can just pick and choose information and just start applying it.

[0:23:06] DA: Well Glen, you know we just touched on the surface of the book here but I want to say that just writing a book that’s going to help so many folks clean up their nutrition and just asking them to get healthy is no small feat, so congratulations on having your book published.

[0:23:20] Glen Robison: Thank you so much.

[0:23:21] DA: I do have one question left. If readers could takeaway only one thing from the book, what would you want that one thing to be?

[0:23:29] Glen Robison: What question do you have? What question? I mean that my life started with a question. Every great thing in life started with a question and unless they’re willing to ask the question about their health, they’re not willing to participate, there is a saying don’t ask don’t tell, the patients in my clinic that ask questions, which I love and they participate, they get better. They see results. The patients that sit back and just nod their head and don’t really engage in the question, yeah, I can help them but nothing like those that ask questions. To the reader out there, develop your own question. Develop a question, keep an open mind and allow the questions to flow and when that question comes, write it down because that’s telling you something and that question needs to be answered somehow. That’s why I’ve written the book and that’s why I’m here to help, you know, help those that maybe if I can take the ease of pain of what I had to go through and lessen it for others, man that would be heaven to me.

[0:24:37] DA: Glen, this has been a pleasure and I’m excited for people to check out the book. Everyone, the book is called, Healthy Dad Sick Dad, and you could find it on Amazon. Glen, besides checking out the book, where can people connect with you?

[0:24:49] Glen Robison: Right now, there should be a website called liveitlifestyles.com. I will have the diets posted there. Also, that will be a platform where they can ask questions and I can answer them. This book, you know, you have to understand this book is just the beginning point. I am – you will hear my passion in this book but wait until the second book. That is where I really, really, really am excited to talk about and we didn’t touch upon it today but that’s where life changes but we have to start with the foundation of nutrition and so yeah, we’ll see where this goes and I think there is probably four books in the making down the road, so who knows? We’ll see.

[0:25:31] DA: Well Glen, until we speak again for your next book, I want to say thank you for coming on today and best of luck with your book.

[0:25:38] Glen Robison: Thank you so much.

[0:25:40] DA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can get Dr. Glen Robinson’s new book, Healthy Dad Sick Dad, on Amazon. Also, you can also find a transcript of this episode and all of our other episodes on our website at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.