Men are often "tough" customers when it comes to new options in the world of health and wellness. That's a trend that was not lost on Robin Daly when he began digging into the world of integrative and complementary medicine for his daughter. It's a trend he wants to change.
Men NEED options for their health as much as women, but they are often left out or overlooked, making it difficult for them to do what's best for themselves. There is a vulnerability that needs to be exposed for men to help them know their health matters too.
Join me today as Robin and I talk about
Connect with Robin at Yes To Life:
https://yestolife.org.uk
Suggested Resource Links:
Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟
Men are often "tough" customers when it comes to new options in the world of health and wellness. That's a trend that was not lost on Robin Daly when he began digging into the world of integrative and complementary medicine for his daughter. It's a trend he wants to change.
Men NEED options for their health as much as women, but they are often left out or overlooked, making it difficult for them to do what's best for themselves. There is a vulnerability that needs to be exposed for men to help them know their health matters too.
Join me today as Robin and I talk about
Connect with Robin at Yes To Life:
https://yestolife.org.uk
Suggested Resource Links:
Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟
Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders, and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page and it's an honor to spend this time with you. Today, we are tackling an important issue that typically affects men. It's how to get them involved with integrative and complimentary medicine. My guest today, Robin Daly, has found that in the 16 plus years of developing Yes To Life, that men may do outside of the box treatments like hypothermia or IV vitamin C, and even turn up at a conference. But if you put an event on the mind body relationship, you'll be lucky if one man shows up. He's here today to help us change this. Robin Daly is the founder and chairman of Yes To Life in response to the immense difficulties he faced in finding authentic, appropriate and available complimentary and lifestyle treatments for his daughter when she was facing cancer for the third time at 22 years old? Yes To Life was established in 2005 as the first charity offering direct support to anyone with cancer in the UK, looking for ways to help their own recovery. They have a helpline service, offer financial assistance and discounts to those with cancer in the UK. They hold regular seminars and conferences. They have a radio show and podcast and publish a book called The Cancer Revolution in collaboration with Patricia Pete, and so much more. So I am so excited. Welcome Robin to the show.
Robin Daly:Hello, Ivelisse. A real pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me on.
Ivelisse Page:It's so great to see you and to have you on. our listeners are always interested in discovering what our guest favorite health tip is, and I know you have many, but can you just share one with us?
Robin Daly:All right. Okay. I think my favorite health tip is get educated. And I say this because it's what's happened to me through the course of running Yes To Life. I've always been health conscious, always gone for a good diet, sort of whole food, good diet all my life. But, actually it wasn't until I got to running Yes To Life, I started to really learn a lot more about what good food's all about and the challenge of buying good food has got great and greater as green washing overtaken us. And you really do need to know what you're looking for in a shop if you wanna buy something which is actually good food. But further than that when I started out, I wasn't really the slightest bit concerned what was underneath the basin in the bathroom, in that cupboard, where you keep all your cleaning stuff or underneath the sink in the kitchen. I just thought it was neither here nor there. But now the stuff I used to use then I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. I've completely changed my relationship to all the products that are around my home that I live with. And, I just got educated basically. I talked to so many people who are actually know about these subjects. In the end you can't ignore it You have to change. We never like to change, but in the end, enough education, bites home
Ivelisse Page:Yes. Knowledge is power and you all do such a great job at educating people and letting them know. But you mentioned a word or a term that some of our listeners may not be familiar with, and I would love for you just to briefly explain what is green washing?
Robin Daly:As the popularity of healthy products has gone up and the market for them has got bigger, of course, the key players who've been busy selling absolute junk think they're missing out on something. And so there's inevitably a drive to make a poor food look good by putting the right picture on the right words, that kind of thing. And really they need to have little relationship really to what's going on in the factory farm. You could put a few lovely pictures of fields and cows and things, butterflies and try and even some rather healthy looking logos that are not genuine logos of anything like the organic society. That's what I call greenwashing. It's just basically trying to make un-wholesome things look appetizing to people who care about getting good food.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. Just like the cigarette industry used to have like cartoons and all of these pictures to entice
Robin Daly:Exactly.
Ivelisse Page:Younger generation to smoke. So let's get into our topic today. And I'd love to get your insight and input as a man who really appreciates integrative medicine and all that it has to offer to patients. But why do you think men are less likely to seek out complimentary therapies compared to women?
Robin Daly:Right, well, I think it's a conditioning thing. I mean, quite obviously, men need care and have their vulnerabilities just as women do. There's no difference really from that point of view. But the conditioning is very different and the expectations on a man, almost from when they're a kid of come on, put yourself together. Don't cry. That kind of macho thing is brought in incredibly early, very often. Not always, but very often. And, I think right across the society, there's a kind of expectation that men don't do this stuff. And the idea that somebody who's facing a life-threatening illness like cancer, doesn't need as much support as a man need as much support as a woman is to me, it's ridiculous. They clearly do. But I think they don't feel able to ask and they don't, there's very often a rather feminine vibe around complementary alternative medicine, integrative medicine as well, because that's where the women go. It's not the women's fault, but it's simply that the women are attracted there and men, I think feel a bit excluded from that and they sort of leave it alone and let them get on with it. And men are taught to rely on using their intellect to look up, research some really good stuff to do and all that, which is great. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, but this other whole side of their psychological and emotional life gets ignored in that. And they tough it out through cancer, which is hard for heaven's sake, why? I went to a conference, which was on complimentary medicine, and I was sitting in this large hall, I mean, there must have been 150 people in there, I think something like that, maybe 200. And after a little while, I sort of suddenly struck me. Now wait a minute. There aren't any men here. And there was one other man other than me. He was the person on the stage speaking and everybody else was a woman. I was like, whoa, this is ridiculous. And I think it, frankly, it is tragic on two sides. One is the side of receiving that I've already described is that, yeah, men need caring for, just like women need caring for when they're up against it. No doubt about it in my mind. But on the other side, men make such great carers, actually engaging in complimentary medicine. They don't do that either very much, they stay away from both sides of it. And I think it's a tragedy because men of course are just as caring as women and they have an excellent way of delivering complimentary medicine, for example, in a very caring way. And of course, men and women are not the same, so there is a different energy to it as well. And I've been running Yes To Life for nearly two decades now and I love the women who work with us to bits. But it's been so difficult to get any men to join me, honestly. We have a man who's an executive director at the moment, and that's a first. But still by far the majority of the people working in the charity are women and as I said, I love them to bits they're fantastic. They're dedicated, they're doing great stuff. But I'd like some men as well, please. Yes. Is anybody listening?
Ivelisse Page:Yes. You share that genuine strength and independence are about the willingness to be vulnerable and selling themselves short to capitalizing on all that integrative medicine has to offer. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Robin Daly:Yeah, if somebody calls our helpline, the the first thing that to be concerned about is the state of mind of the person. If somebody calls up the helpline and they're feeling hopeless, that's a terrible thing. They're in no situation to think about deciding anything from that place because they make a poor decision about their own future, their own wellbeing. The state of mind is the is the starting point, it's the baseline. All the really key sort of areas that people think about in lifestyle medicine, you where I exercise and diet and all this stuff, they'll come next. Thereafter, if the will to live is in good shape and the person is not feeling hopeless, even if they're facing an incredibly difficult situation. We don't know what's gonna happen here. There are no certainties in life. I've been told I've got six months solid. But they could be wrong. If they're in that place, they're good to go, and then you can get on with all the practical stuff. But if they're not, then there's no point in starting any other stuff. It's almost doomed to failure, as far as I'm concerned. You've got to have the state of mind right, and that is a subtle thing because apart from anything else before someone is faced with their diagnosis like cancer, sometimes they may not realize it, but their will to live is not very strong. Some people are actually a bit ambivalent about even being here. So along comes cancer and whoa, you are not really in a position to survive cancer. If you're ambivalent about whether you even want to, you might be looking at it as an easy way out. these psychological and emotional issues really have to be addressed and quite apart from that, what I've described, which is like where you start out from, of course, unbelievably challenging journey many people have of going through cancer, and there are lots of times when the psychological emotional pressures, and spiritual pressures are huge. And to think that people can get through all that without any help is well, they might, but, I don't think they should have to, that's what I'm saying. They should feel it's just as available to them as to anybody else.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. And so in, in your experience, what ways have you found that was helpful in engaging men more? What are some ways that we all could engage more on this side of healing?
Robin Daly:This is such a hard one. Honestly, we're thinking about this a lot of the time. And it is so difficult. I do feel there is a virtue in having events which are for men though, because of the thing I spoke about earlier. There's a feeling about the whole arena of integrated medicine being for women. And therefore if you put on something special for the men, at least they're gonna feel like, okay, it's just some other guy's gonna be there. And, if that's a way of getting them in the door and then later on they're much freer and easy about it, then let's do it. But, that's really the prime thing I've come up with in all these years is that, you must cater particularly for men and know that they feel excluded in a certain kind of way, and they're not likely to come forward unless you make a nice, comfortable space that looks like they might fit in. The other side of it, I suppose, is if they're coming to an event which involves somebody who's speaking, leading it in some way, then you look for a figure who men will find a good figurehead and somebody who's inspirational in some way. And, somebody obviously who themselves is not afraid of moving outta the box of kind of sharing information and all the rest of it, but is wants to engage with what people really get to know them, get to hear about, what they're struggling with all the rest of it. And talk about ways in which integrative medicine can really help them and just understand the men's point of view, if you like. Yeah, it's tricky, it's no magic fixes. I haven't come up with anything, which is oh, I'll just do this, and then it'll turn up.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. How can we change the way we talk about it so that you think it would resonate more with men?
Robin Daly:I think you know what we're doing, which is directly addressing the subject is good. It hasn't been talked about much in the past. I mean, I've written some articles about it, but it's not something you come across anywhere mentioned. But it's so obvious it isn't true, that there aren't any men. It's just absolutely obvious. Things are going in the right direction. There's no doubt about it. I say I've been doing this for 20 years. In that time things have changed quite a lot. Twenty years ago men didn't know they had a prostate and they certainly wouldn't have talked about it if they did. Now it's you can talk about that stuff, of course, yeah, I've got a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Nobody minds that anymore, and I have to say more men do turn up at things. We do keep a track of these things and if you've got 10% of men, you're doing really well. In some years going by we have had getting towards a third occasionally. Definitely things are moving in that direction, which is very good. So we must be doing something right. I hope so. But, I think, in the main, I think the change is a societal one is that men are feeling more able to talk about things now. They've been encouraged to in a multitude of different ways. Having a prince standing up and talking about mental health and things like that actually does help. It makes people feel like it's actually okay to share about this stuff. This sort of idea that you have to be a castle standing on your own and all that stuff. It's good in principle in some ways that you can stand alone and when you need to and all the rest of it. But as a way to be, which is isolated, it's terrible. So I think yeah, society is making much more room for men to have that kind of vulnerability, which I'm very happy about. I mean, it's certainly, nothing like as abusive as it was when I was young. I mean, men's society when I was young was just a hundred percent abusive as far as I was concerned. It was a nightmare. All the stuff that was men only was like, oh no, please. I just did not wanna be anything to do with it. But, there is the cultural roots list are really deep. It is just it's a brutal conditioning that the world has for men and, I think it's very unfortunate. And, what do you do about that. It happens in business, the same staff. It happens in sport. It's just coming out in this country, just how abusive the fire service, the police, the football associations, rugby, all sorts of things are being suddenly revealed to be abusive. What a surprise. Yeah. They all are. All the culture is built on this abuse and the thing that's bringing it out, I think is the fact the women are getting involved in this and they're having a horrible time. And so it's finally making it onto the news. And, and so the things getting uncovered, the, I think this is going to be fabulous news for men. It seems like the news is wanting to stop women being abused in that way, but it'll also let the majority of men who would much rather not be engaged in any of that kind of stuff, off the hook. No longer is it reasonable that this stuff goes on in their place of work or wherever it is. And so they don't allow it anymore. They actually say, oh no, we're not gonna have that here. This guy who's running this abusive thing, he needs to go. And, when that happens, I think the culture of men will change big time. It'll really ease off and the ability for men to be vulnerable, I mean, you can't be vulnerable in the face of abuse. That's all there is to it. It's just common sense. You look after number one. So I think that's where it comes from, this lack of vulnerability in men. It's that kind of deep, thousands of years cultural conditioning. And yeah, and the sooner we get rid of it, the better.
Ivelisse Page:I think we, we need strong men leaders that have the ability to, like you were saying, to encourage others, whether they're speaking at conferences or within their own families. I know even in our home, my husband does an incredible job of letting our kids know that, it's not just about their physical bodies that need tending to, it's their spiritual, their mental and emotional and they rally together and talk about things openly and honestly. And, we need more of that. When they were little, he was the one that actually would put together their homeopathic remedy. So it wasn't always me. They're like, dad, my throat's hurting. And he's like, okay, let me go create you your little health bomb. And they loved it. And so he took an active role even when they were young about taking care of themselves and looking out for things and not ignoring them. And which leads me to the next question, why do you think men wait so long to get the help that they need?
Robin Daly:I think it is that thing, you're absolutely right. If you just look at the basic relationship between men and their primary care provider, you the GP in this country. They'll leave it till it's too late usually before they go to the GP. They get diagnosed with cancer too late, for example. But everything basically will leave it too late. And, I do think it's all part and parcel of the same thing about feeling you have to stand alone and look after yourself and, and that sort of stuff is somehow weak. I think it's seen as weak. What you just said, then you talk about strong leaders where you see, I think there's an entirely upside down view in the world of what a strong leader looks like. They seem to get voted in all the time, these strong leaders, but they're the weakest of all, unfortunately. And the fact they're so weak means they have to bully everybody. That's what they do. Cause they're completely weak. And, the strength that we're looking for is a strength to be vulnerable and real and, and to really interact with people in a real way. And that's quite a different thing all together. And unfortunately we have far too few examples of people like that in leadership positions, cuz the other guys desperately want to get there. They take them all the leadership positions and then sort of,"macho" it out with each other. And, at our expense, we pay the price for them doing this stuff, either fighting their wars or, making them rich or whatever it is. And, so I absolutely agree with you. We need some good, strong leaders, but by that, yeah, they're good examples of warmth and humanity and empathy.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. And I believe it, it starts in our home, and that's an easy way to, to start. We may not have control of what is shared outside of it, but, we can play an active role to pass it on to our kids of what that means and to our communities and our neighborhoods with our neighbors. And so I feel like that's could be an easy role for all of us to step into. What advice do you have for men who may be skeptical about integrative medicine and unsure of where to start?
Robin Daly:Okay. Well it, it is fair enough the skepticism about integrative medicine for anybody who's coming at it from nice sort of dry scientific view, it seems oh yeah, all the sciences with the mainstream medicine, and this is all sitting outside it. That certainly used to be the case, but it, I wanna say flatly, it isn't true anymore, right? There's good evidence behind an awful lot of integrated medicine. And there's good evidence not only for it in a kind of standalone capacity to help in the myriad of different ways, but also in its capacity to help with mainstream medicine, extraordinarily important. You are missing a trick if you think that's all sort of woowoo and you're going to stick with the mainstream. The two things are actually moving together at last and I mean one of the best examples that's come up recently is that of course immunotherapy is one of the big success stories in mainstream medicine for melanoma, which has had nothing good in the way of treatment forever. It's actually quite successful, but its success is very largely dependent on the state of your microbiome. If you have a poor microbiome, it's quite likely to fail completely. So the two things have to go hand in hand. If you do one without the other, it's it, it is like roulette. You basically would be mad not to do everything you can to ensure your microbiome in as good as state as possible before, during, and after immunotherapy, if you wanna live. So that to me is marvelous cuz of course the microbiome, this is definitely the world of integrative medicine. That's not what you think of that's coming from your hospital. But, that piece of science is just like fabulous for demonstrating just how important it can be, not to just stick with drugs, for example. There's much more to health than drugs.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. I completely agree. What are some success stories that you can share of men who have incorporated that you've worked with
Robin Daly:Yes,. I'm glad to say we have worked with men and, some exceptional men too. These are remarkable characters quite often who do actually turn up at our door. And, they use a great deal of initiative. I mean, it seems to be naturally meant to do this sort of massive research project. I've done it myself, did it with my daughter. And, that can be very productive. You can get people educated very quickly, get an enormous amount of information at their fingertips. But if they're prepared to add to that a bit more exploration into the world, other ways that they can help themselves and not just, the more practical ones if you like that's when the magic starts to happen. And quite often, I mean, you'll have had this experience that I've talked to many people who tell me that actually cancer's the best thing that ever happened to them. Ridiculous sounding statement, but they actually mean it. And the reason they mean it's cause their life transformed because they got cancer. And I can say that, not cuz I got cancer, but cause my daughter got cancer, my life transformed. So that was actually the best thing that ever happened to me. For a man that happens to, they do come out the other side, a remarkable person who has a huge amount to offer. This is the thing, is not only do they transform their own lives, have a much better life after than they had before, but also they're like a beacon for other men, basically. They actually show the way. And, we need that. I love those people. They're not enough of them around, but yeah, they're great.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. So when someone comes to Yes To Life, what would you say are the top things, looking back with what you went through with your daughter, all the patients that you work with, what would be your top three things that you would hope that every man and woman would do for their health once they're diagnosed?
Robin Daly:Okay. We've been through sort of the three stages during the course of Yes To Life. When we started out, nearly everybody who came to us arrived at our door after they'd been radiated to death at as much chemo as they were allowed to have been kicked out and told well you're gonna die. And they were hoping that integrative medicine was gonna help them. Some of them it did help. It helped them all to some degree, but some of them it really helped. But it was a long shot to say the least. And we've been in a more in between stage for quite a long time. And during that time all too often somebody who come across, would say, yeah, I'll just get the, all the orthodox treatment done, and then I'll start looking into that stuff and I'd be like, holding my head, no! It's never the wrong time to start looking outside the box and into integrative medicine. Before you start treatment is ideal. Get on with it straight away. It's so important to the results of treatment, how you get through treatment, how long you live after treatment, and just in every way it's important to do it sooner rather than later. That's the piece of advice I'd give to anybody who comes our way or starts to look at integrative medicine. Don't wait. The right time is right now.
Ivelisse Page:Yes, I agree. And could you imagine what a difference it would make for so many patients if they found this solution to adding it, complimenting already the treatments that they're doing. So it's not like they have to change anything, or even those who wanted to do it on their own. I mean, I've seen a night and day difference. Their quality of life and their quantity of life over the years at Believe Big. So I love that you said that it's, really important that people get on board immediately so that they can protect their body and support their body when it's going through such a difficult journey with cancer. So thank you for sharing that. And in our last moments, before we end today, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you feel would be important to share to those who are listening today about men's health?
Robin Daly:I think it would just be a summing up in a way, what we've already said is that I really feel there's so much on offer for men. I really invite them to contact us to get in touch with us, contact your organization to find out a bit more. And, it is great that I say that they may be doing research and all the rest of it on their own. But actually a big part of the magic of integrative medicine is the interactions you have. And we encourage people basically to be in touch with somebody else, at least one other person to join a group. We have our own groups, which are all like-minded people. They're all thinking outside the box. So it's a safe, great place for people to be. They're not gonna get criticized, they're not gonna get advised what they should and shouldn't be doing anything like that. They can just talk openly about their journey of discovery with other people who understand where they're at. For people who are not ready for that kind of thing, we have a one-to-one service as well, where people get peer-to-peer support. This kind of building relationships with people who actually know the territory makes such a difference because if somebody first diagnosed it's, it is like being landed on the moon. It's just like another planet. You're dealing with an area where you don't understand the language. All of your expectations of what your life is gonna be like have just been chopped into bits. You're in a really bleak place when you start out in the cancer journey. So you really need some friends and they are out there. You just have to find the channel and we're one of them. You are one of them. Contact one of these places and see what's on offer, what there's gonna be something there that suits everybody.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. thank you so much, Robin. That's excellent advice. And hopefully one day I'll be able to cross the pond soon and see you.
Robin Daly:I love that. I love that. Yeah, you make sure. Tell us when you do.
Ivelisse Page:All right, thank you so much and look forward to seeing you soon.
Robin Daly:Thank you.
Ivelisse Page:If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support our podcast, please subscribe and share it with others. Be sure to visit believebig.org to access the show notes and discover our bonus content. Thanks again and keep Believing Big!