Water: The Basis Of Life, Therapeutic Bathing, Cold Water Immersion & Extreme Wellness | Professor Marc Cohen #014

Water: One of the Foundational Elements of the Universe and The Basis of All Life

What ways can we utilise it to optimise our individual health and the collective wellness of humans on earth and deal with the world water crisis.

ABOUT PROFESSOR MARC COHEN

Professor Marc Cohen is one of Australia’s pioneers of integrative and holistic medicine and has made significant impacts on education, research, clinical practice and policy. He is a registered medical practitioner with degrees in western medicine, physiology and psychological medicine along with PhDs in Chinese medicine and biomedical engineering.

In 2002 he became Australia’s first Professor of Complementary Medicine and Head of the Department of Complementary Medicine at RMIT University, which was by far the largest such department in the country with around 100 staff and 1000 students. He currently leads wellness research within the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University and serves as Program Leader for postgraduate wellness programs along with teaching undergraduate courses on Medical Diagnosis and Medical Examination.

He is a Board Member of the Global Wellness Summit, Past-President (from 2000-2007) of the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association (AIMA), a member of the RACGP-AIMA Joint Working party and sits on the Editorial Board of five international journals. Prof Cohen has previously held positions as Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Medical and Health Sciences Education at Monash University, Expert Advisor to the TGA Complementary Medicine Evaluation Committee, Member of the NHMRC Grant Review panel on Primary Healthcare, Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the National Institute of Complementary Medicine and multiple ministerial appointments on various Registration and Accreditation Panels. He previously held the position as Director of the Centre for Complementary Medicine at the Monash Institute for Health Services Research.

As a medical practitioner and researcher Prof Cohen has pioneered the introduction of complementary, holistic and integrative medicine into mainstream settings. He has been involved in two landmark surveys of Australian General Practitioners and their attitudes towards, and use of, complementary medicines, which were instrumental in the development of the AMA policy on complementary medicine and the establishment of the RACGP-AIMA Joint Working Party on Integrative Medicine. He has also been involved in establishing acupuncture as a form of standard care in emergency department settings and developing hospital policy on practitioner accreditation as well as co-authoring many high level reports including a report for the World Health Organisation on quality assurance in CM education, a report for the National Asthma Council on CM in Asthma, and a report for the Victorian Department of Human Services on the risks and regulatory requirements of naturopathy and western herbal medicine, which was used to inform policy development for the regulation of natural medicine practitioners.

Prof Cohen has published more than 90 peer–reviewed articles, authored more than 20 book chapters and edited 8 books on holistic health as well as co-authoring the landmark text; “Herbs and Natural Supplements an Evidenced Based Guide”, with the first two editions being short-listed for an Australian Publishing Award in the scholarly reference section. He is also co-editor with Oxford University’s Prof Gerry Bodeker of the landmark text ‘Understanding the Global Spa Industry’ which is the first academic book documenting the global spa and wellness industry. He writes a regular monthly column for Prevention Magazine and is regularly requested to examine PhD thesis from many local and international universities and peer-review articles for numerous international scientific journals.

Prof Cohen has extensive experience in running clinical trials and other multidisciplinary projects. He has been involved in running more than 10 industry-funded randomized controlled trials as well as being CIA on two NHMRC funded trials on the use of yoga for geriatric insomnia and the use of acupuncture for analgesia in Emergency Departments. Prof Cohen is currently involved in research into various aspects of holistic health including the use of organic foods in reducing pesticide exposure, the use of yoga and meditation for insomnia and stress, and the use of various therapies and lifestyle interventions for detoxification from environmental chemicals.

Prof Cohen is one of the most active people in Australia when it comes to organising conferences on holistic and integrative medicine. He has organised more than 10 International Holistic Health Conferences and in 2003 he chaired the Organising Committee for the First World Congress on Chinese Medicine. He also organised the Complementary Medicine Symposium at the XIIIth World Congress on Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics as well as organising the RMIT School of Health Sciences Research Conferences from 2005-2007. He sat on the Scientific Committees for the Third International Conference on Complementary Medicine Research and National Prescribing Service Scientific Conference and currently sits on the Board of the Global Wellness Summit. In this last role he has been involved in commissioning and conducting landmark econometric research into the global wellness economy and been instrumental in the development and implementation of the free online evidence based portal wellnessevidence.com

As well as organising conferences, Prof Cohen is a sought after presenter and has been an invited speaker at more than 100 conferences including more than 40 international and 40 national conferences in Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Switzerland, China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines, New Zealand, The United States and Hong Kong. Prof Cohen’s impact on the field is recognised by the media and he has received four consecutive RMIT Media Star Awards as well as the inaugural award for leadership and collaboration from the National Institute of Complementary Medicine.


IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

An overview of water on earth:

  • Just a ping pong ball (water) in a basketball (earth).

but 97.5% of the water is ocean (saline) water.

  • Fresh Water: size of a marble in the basketball.

But most the fresh water is in the ground or in icecaps.

  • Liquid fresh water: the size of a small mustard seed in a basketball. – in lakes, streams, rivers and the water in every microorganism in earth. 

We are 99% water including the molecules in our body.

Water as the Matrix of Life and the Most Important Thing for Life on Earth

The Distribution of Water in the World

  • 1 in 7 people on earth does not have clean drinking water – a survival issue.
  • 4.2 million people (mainly children) die every year from water born illness.
  • 1 in 3 people on earth (2.4 billion people) do not have access the clean water to bathe.

The Dignity, Comfort and Spirituality of Water

Feeling good, not stinking, feeling wealthy and abundant when having access to clean water and bathing.

WELLthy – water is part of what we desire.

Bathe The World

Marc and his business partner and friend Charle Davidson’s initiative: everyone on earth deserves one 10L bucket of water a day to drink and clean with.

We have the technology and resources to provide clean bathing water to everyone on earth but we are more focused on doing thing like going to Mars.

World Bathing Day – June 22.

Global Bathe the World Event

  • June 22, 2022.
  • Marc and Charles’s initiative to get one person from every nation of the world to bathe in the biggest natural hot spring on earth.
  • This happens to be in the center of Australia.

Alternating Between Hot and Cold Bathing as Therapy.

Using the thermal properties of water to change your own physiology and mental state.

Marc as personal the scientist of Wim Hoff (known as The Ice Man).

The Cold Water Hokey Pokey: At Home Therapeutic Bathing Technique 

Benefits of Cold Showers/Bathing:

  • Vascular workout – Vassal dilating your blood vessels (we have about 100,000km of blood vessels in our body which are not normally under our voluntary control). Open blood vessels with hot water and close with cold water.
  • Taking control over your breath = mastery over your body. Psychology. Remaining comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. But for those who cannot be comfortable, it is not good.
  • Immune system boost – High adrenaline response suppresses the immune system. Psycho-neuro-immunology: the link between our mind, nervous system, immune system and our brain.
  • Invigorating 
  • Communicates with and up-regulates mitochondria.
  • Induces brown fat production (around big blood vessels, heart and lungs) fat is brown because it is so dense with mitochondria. These mitochondria produce thermal heat (thermogenesis) rather than ATP. They encourage white-fat metabolism.
  • Turns up metabolism and activates the thyroid gland.
  • Cold suppresses the mTOR pathway, a molecular signaling pathway that is responsible for either growth or repair, depending on whether it is stimulated or inhibited. To up-regulate maintenance and repair, boost longevity, and reduce your risk for cancer, you need to suppress the mTOR pathway, and the most efficient way to do this is to limit your protein intake.
  • Helps sleep.
  • Cells become more efficient – Hypoxia forces your body to clean up the house and become more efficient in how they handle oxygenWhen the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues is deficient, the cells freak out, their life is on the line. So any free oxygen radicals get mopped up, any proteins that have malformed get auto-phaged, any cells that are pre-cancerous, aging, not working well, abhorrent get apoptosed (cell death). 
  • Promotes cell stem circulation to regenerate tissues – since stem cells live in hypoxic environments.

The Risks of Cold Shock

Panic in cold water = sympathetic overload = arterial fibrillation = heart attack. This is rare and hardly seen in voluntary cold exposure (more seen when a “man goes over deck”).

The Importance of Easing Gradually and Gently into Cold Water Immersion and How to Do It

  • You want to be comfortable and not shocking.
  • Do so your body is at the point just before shivering. You should not shiver.
  • You should feel pleasant. Do not push yourself.
  • Ideal temperature.

Anything below 12-14 degrees celsius is considered really cold water immersion.

How Cold Showers Trained James Bond to Remain Cool and Calm in Hectic Situations

How Water Came to Earth

How the hottest water in the solar system met the coldest water in the solar system – the topic of Marcs third children’s book.

72 Scientific Anomalies of Water

The Fourth Phase of Water: The gel phase substance beyond solid, liquid and vapour.

  • H3O2.
  • Exclusion Zone (EZ) water – it is pure water that excludes solutes like salt to create an electrical potential difference and forms this gel phase / structured water.
  • This is millions of atoms thick (a lot more than we predicted).
  • Light increases the size of the exclusion zone – infrared radiation adds energy to water, purifies it and structures it.
  • Happens at 4 degrees. This is why the arctic ice is less salty than the ocean.

Extreme Wellness Practices

Explore both edges of your comfort zone, but don’t exceed it, through basic physiological processes to find your homeostatic point of balance and thus experience extreme comfort.

e.g. Hot and cold showers, Feasting and fasting, hyperventilation and hypoventilation.

Professor Marcs 5 Factors for Life:

  1. Temperature
  2. Glucose
  3. Water
  4. Carbon Dioxide
  5. Oxygen

Breathing Exercises (Pranayama)

The Importance of Coupling Hypoventilation with Hyperventilation when doing breathing exercises or the Wim Hoff method.

Alkalising the body and reducing lactic acid in the body (what causes muscles to burn) with breath.

Marcs 5 Phases of Breathing for Health

Pranayama to increase the number and sensitivity of endorphin receptors – more blissful comfort and more euphoria.

Our Sensitivity to Light Spectrums

Our Cells Emit Light – Bio-photons get emitted with cellular metabolism.

Hot Water as a Therapeutic Technique

  • Lithian, sulphur, iron, magnesium springs.
  • Immersion in water is more relaxing than immersing in air.
  • Compresses your limbs and pulls blood to your core.
  • Bathing increases the efficiency of heart pumping, while your heart is more relaxed and not creating extra waste products (e.g. producing of carbon dioxide and muscle breakdown products).
  • Detox and relaxation at the same time – Flushing lymphatics and blood.
  • Improves sleep – due to cardiovascular workout, metabolic effects and mineral effects that improve sleep.
  • Helps with pain and inflammation.

The Importance of Magnesium and Why Most People are Deficient In It

Transdermally absorbing magnesium as an effective way to get magnesium – Epson salt bath or float tanks.

Thermohaline Circulation: Interactions occurring at the Deep Depths of the Ocean which Provides us with Oxygen

  • When solutes get excluded from Exclusion Zone Water because they are so heavy and mineral dense it drops down to the bottom of oceans. You get dense salty waterfalls occurring under arctic ocean surfaces that are 500,000 times Niagra falls.
  • It can take one to two thousand years to circulate around the bottom of the earths oceans.
  • This helps to stabilise the whole global temperature.
  • That cold oxygenated salty water hits the hot springs at the bottom of the ocean.
  • You get chemistry which started life on earth and semi-organic molecules form.
  • They travel up till they hit the continental shelf and rise up to form fertiliser for phytoplankton.
  • That phytoplankton photosynthesises and supplies us with oxygen today.
  • The oxygen we breath is because of the interaction that occurred at the depths of the ocean.

What Was the Turning Point for Marc to Go Deeper into Cold Immersion

When Marc got 320 Litres of 8-degree ice water poured on his head in 5 seconds.

This huge adrenaline response made his cells vibrate and enhanced his sensory experiences for the next 2-3 hours.

Our Drinking Water

  • Chlorine as a powerful poison.
  • Moving water, not stagnant, restructures water,
  • Mount Donna Buang, Victoria – 1.5 hours from Melbourne as a source of spring water.
  • Boiling water to reduce chlorine and other toxins.

Conscious Relationship with Water

  • Consciously drinking water to change the structure of water you drink and the water in you.
  • Drinking water in gratitude.
  • Even holding water changes the structure of water, which can be seen through looking at water drops with your eye, no need for a microscope.

Tulsi (Holy Basil / Ocimum Sanctum)

  • Purifies water – Wells in India are contaminated with fluoride. Tulsi absorbs heavy metals and toxic elements from the water.
  • Purifies air – when the Taj Mahal planted thousands of Tulsi plants around the Taj Mahal when it was getting bombarded with polluted air.
  • Cognitive awareness.
  • Blood sugar, diabetes, metabolic syndrome.
  • Relaxation without depression of alcohol.
  • Mouth wash, anti-bacterial, disinfectant.
  • Travel companion – boosts the immune system.
  • Every hotel, room, aeroplane you can get sugar and caffeine drinks.
  • Replace sugar, alcohol, caffeine drinks with tulsi and you start to transform consciousness globally.
  • You can consume it all year around.
  • Every part of the plant is medicinal.
  • Even the soil is healthy – the bacteria around the roots and fungi that grow are medicinal.

Read more about Tulsi: The Queen Of Herbs, here

Building Biology: The Health of Our Homes

Water damaged buildings and moulds and the relationship with toxic illnesses.

Balancing Scientific Validation with Intuitive Feeling and Traditional Wisdom

Marcs Ventures in Life.


RESOURCES

The Fourth Phase of Water: Dr. Gerald Pollack at TEDxGuelphU

Earth From Space – Thermohaline Circulation

Peninsula Hot Springs near Melbourne: Best Hot Springs in the World for three years in a row. They are implementing extreme wellness.

Maruia Hot Springs – Marc’s hot spring business in New Zealand which holds Extreme Wellness retreats.

The World In a Drop by a Prof. Dr. Ing. Bernd-Helmut Kroeplin from Stuttgart University.

Herbs and Natural Supplements an Evidenced Based Guide: Now in the fourth edition. 1600 pages. The chapter on Tulsi is 10,000 words and contains around 300 references. 

 


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Special thanks to Rudolf Steiner and Jiddu Krishnamurti for providing content.

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