Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Heal me with your rake. Sorry, I mean reiki.
Ever felt like a "semi-porcupine" in pursuit of health? Join me, Annie McCubbin, as I share my candid journey from the bewildering maze of alternative medicine to the clarity of science-based thinking. After the birth of my daughter, I found myself in the throes of chronic illness, trying everything from acupuncture and Chinese herbs to Reiki and even a stool transplant, only to realize that critical thinking was my best remedy. Together, we unpack the biases towards ancient therapies and the allure of unproven treatments that can trap those seeking relief.
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He put them in my scalp and I then had to go home with them in there like a sort of a semi-porcupine. That was a low moment for me. You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him. Husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be, aboriginal land. Well, hello smart women, and welcome to the second last episode of why Smart Women for the year. My voice sounds a bit like I'm a man because I have been doing a fair amount of going out and enjoying myself, as it is nearly Christmas and it is essential that we go out, drink too much, eat too much and generally have a good time, and that's what I've been doing. So while I was out and about enjoying myself, I was mentioning to someone that I was speaking at the Skeptics Conference, and the Skeptics Conference for because most people don't know what it is is a conference that it runs every year by the Australian skeptics and it is to do with science and critical thinking, and I was one of the speakers and this person said to me at this particular party that I was at how come you got into skepticism, critical thinking and science-based thinking? They didn't quite say that, but that was the inference and I thought to myself it's such a good question, and so I thought I'd explain today, in case anyone's wondering why I am so anti-pseudo-science, I thought I'd explain how I got here. So here goes, I'll try and keep it short and sweet. So about, I don't know, maybe. Well, my daughter's, now 27. So it was after she was born.
Speaker 1:I had my daughter, second child, and then I never quite recovered from a terrible pregnancy, from the pregnancy, and I just sort of got sicker and sicker and began to experience sort of terrible nausea and other awful symptoms anyway. So off I went to the doctor and they couldn't find anything wrong with me and in those days I was more likely to be involved in the alternate med, pseudo-scientific sort of environment and I had a lot of friends in that environment, and so people started coming to me and going look, you're not well. I know what you should do. You should go and see A, b, c, d or E. So these are the things that I did.
Speaker 1:I did acupuncture, I did Chinese herbs, I went to an osteopath, I did Reiki, I went to a spiritual healer, I went to a number of naturopaths, I went to an Ayurvedic practitioner. Did I say homeopath? I took homeopathic drops, I fasted. I went on a health retreat. I went on two health retreats and I went to the Centre for Digestive Diseases where I was seen by Thomas Barodi Brody and I had a stool transplant, because where they say that what's happened is that your gut or your stool is not well and so you get a transplant from somebody who does have healthy microbiome in their stool and that's meant to fix everything. In fact, I think in terms of a couple of conditions it does work, but it was really disgusting and it did not work for me.
Speaker 1:And the thing about all these practitioners that I saw is they were completely definitive, that whatever was wrong with me, they understood it. Nobody else understood it and they could fix me. So the acupuncturist, for example, said that my energies were out. I had way too much energy in my head and not enough in my gut, and this energy that has never actually been proven, this chi, he could actually move it around and fix it, and so there was endless sticking of needles into my scalp. In fact, at one point he put them in my scalp and I then had to go home with them in there, like, like a sort of a semi-porcupine. That was a low moment for me. Anyway, that didn't work as this was going on.
Speaker 1:I had a toddler and a baby, so I was really busy, like you know what it's like. I had a four-year-old, I had a baby, I was working, I was in a play, I had it all going on and during this whole thing I'm a person with a lot of natural energy. I'm normally really sort of right up there. I was very tired and I had this constant sort of grinding nausea. So at one point they all seem to be completely fixated with poo.
Speaker 1:So at one point I had a stool sample sent to America because, um, the doctor told me it was for sure it was going to be a parasite, um, and that it wasn't, wasn't a parasite, nothing was in it. And I remember crying um at the this sort of alt med practitioner's office because it wasn't right. And he said, well, I'm disappointed too. And I thought, well, that's the main thing, because your disappointment, you know, really trumps mine. Um, so that was him, um, an osteopath, um, again, seven different kinds of useless um. There was endless manipulation of my neck, my back, because something was definitely out of alignment there, and and that didn't work.
Speaker 1:But he did give me some really useless supplements, and I think we've spoken a couple of times about supplements and the issue with them and supplements and vitamins and herbs. You know there's the Mr Vitamin shop, there's massive. Every single chemist I go into. I want to say to them why are you selling these supplements, vitamins and herbs? Because I don't say that because you know I'd like to be able to go shopping without people hating me. But they are not tested, they are not regulated and the efficacy of them is really up for grades and apart from that, they can actually cause damage.
Speaker 1:So this idea, because they come under the banner of natural, natural healing it's the appeal to nature bias we have this idea that pharmaceuticals bad, big pharma, vitamins, supplements, minerals, herbs, good, but actually they are just big vitamin and they come out of the factory like everything else, but they are not tested and they're unregulated and the TGA does not have enough time to test these things. And I've known of two people recently who have actually died from taking supplements for bodybuilding. I know that's in a different level of taking supplements, but supplements, unless you have an absolute, something that is clearly showing to be actively missing, like d, supplements are useless. But boy did I try some supplements. I was just supplement city back then and then I went to a guy. This girl said to me he is amazing, they're always amazing. No one's ever average. Everyone's amazing. He is amazing and what he does is he checks for any spiritual sort of issues, imbalances or entities that may be causing the dis-ease. They're very fond of this idea of dis-ease. They've taken the word and gee, they're clever with it dis-ease.
Speaker 1:So along I went because I was desperate and I put myself now that I'm sort of I don't know, 25 years past it. I get why people end up washing up at these sort of nefarious places Because we get desperate. I felt really, really unwell, so anyway. So I washed up at this guy's place and he was living in a small unit in Chatswood. I remember going up in the lift and walking along this corridor and then knocking at the door, and as soon as he opened the door I became immediately disquieted. I thought this does not feel good. But again I thought well, I'm here, you know, maybe he can do something, maybe he can heal me. So in I went and it was very, very hot that day, I remember, and he was sweating profusely. It's not attractive and I lay down on some special bed in his lounge room and also he'd been smoking cigarettes, and I don't know about you, but I think someone who's meant to be spiritually enlightened and sort of plugged in to some sort of other plane maybe shouldn't be sucking cigarettes into themselves, but anyway. So he lay me down and then he began sort of waving his hands over the top of me and then began pulling at something, some imaginary thing that was apparently stuck in my throat, and then he was pulling at something that was apparently stuck in my stomach. I thought, if your hands get any lower, I'm getting up and walking out.
Speaker 1:At this point I got really, really nervous. I was really frightened. I thought I did not feel safe. I was in some weird scabby unit in Chatswood with some very, very overweight guy who smelled of cigarettes and was dripping sweat on me saying things like it's going, it's going get out of ye spirit and some sort of weird medieval incantation. Anyway, I did walk out of there intact, having paid him, I don't know, 150 of my hard-earned thinking to myself. I don't know about that. I don't know about that recommendation.
Speaker 1:But again, I went home that night and at this point I was getting really thin. Now for all of you out there that are going oh how awesome being thin. I was too thin. I did not look good and the reason for that was that the naturopath had decided that my issues were gluten, dairy and sugar. So I was off everything. Now that gluten and dairy are their absolute go-to faves, to start bagging out, if there's something wrong with you, it has to be gluten or dairy. So I was off dairy, off gluten, no sugar. Oh, no coffee. I also wasn't. I was told not to have coffee. Now, coffee as we is actually really good for you. It's actually a really really good thing to have for a number of conditions. But I wasn't having any of that. I was getting thinner and thinner and thinner, feeling less and less well, and nothing was going in the right direction.
Speaker 1:And then somebody said why don't you go to a Ayurvedic practitioner that they knew? Now the Ayurvedic and this comes into the bias around something if it's ancient it must be good. So the Ayurvedic Indian practice has been around for a couple I don't know how long, quite a long time. And they look at you and they go are you Kapha, vata or Pitta? And then they look at this type that you are and they recommend what sort of life you should be leading. And then they also gave me some supplements. So that was great. So then I had more supplements, but that didn't work. So then I went to a Chinese herbalist. And it's really interesting about this idea. Again, appeal to you know, appeal to the ancient sort of bias if something's been around for a long time must be valid.
Speaker 1:So then I was taking the Ayurvedic things. They didn't work. So I went to a Chinese herbalist and he gave me some concoction of the most disgusting smelling tasting stuff I've ever had in my life. It was like drinking cigarette butts. It was like after a really big night you go out into the lounge room and somebody's been smoking and there's that revolting sort of acrid smell. It was like that, but in water and I had to boil it up and I had that every night and um, and I remember Lily coming you know it was Lachlan actually coming going what's that smell, mummy? It's horrible. And I thought he's right and I'm not going to do that anymore because that didn't. Um, that also didn't fix me.
Speaker 1:Um, the homeopath that I saw also, um, I remember walking in and him going we, we can cure, we have cures for something like three and a half thousand diseases and I don't know if you know about homeopathy, but it is mental. So the more dilute something is, apparently, the more powerful it is. So this comes from a really, really nutty background. But again, um, I was given these drops, these tinctures, to take. Um, they're completely useless. And I now note that homeopathy is available in a whole lot of chemists so you can either get real medicine or you can get fake, bullshit medicine and they're sold by the same practitioner, which is very confusing for the consumer. They should not have homeopathic medicines in a chemist near real medicines, because people, fundamentally, are fooled. And I know that people were even having things like COVID homeopathic vaccinations, which is, I don know, putting a drop of water on your arm or something, and also for instead of getting a malaria vaccine, they were having homeopathic vaccines. So these people and it's always interesting to note, isn't it? Are they misguided or do they know that it's just total rubbish? And I guess at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. But we out here in the sceptical community spend a lot of time trying to educate people with the fact that these things are not tested, are not valid and they come under these cognitive biases and it's very, very easy for people to go in that direction because we don't know any differently.
Speaker 1:I went to a health retreat where they put me on a fast and I really needed that because I was super skinny anyway, and I can remember being on this health retreat and the other people. They assumed that I had cancer because I was so thin and they were still jealous of me because they wanted to be thin, because they're all on diets. Anyway, I went on that and then they recommended that when I'd done the five-day fast, that what I should do is then go home and just juice. So I did that. You can see that I went to a lot of trouble and went down many, many blind alleys trying to sort myself out, and I kept hitting up against these very confident, very definitive practitioners who all seem to have a supplement line waiting to give me after they'd done whatever pointless treatment they were doing. I also had Reiki.
Speaker 1:Did I mention Reiki when I had a frozen shoulder at the time? I don't know if you know about Reiki. It's super weird, but what they do is you put your arm up and they'll say something like gluten, and if they can push your arm down, it means that, um, no, if you put no, they can, they can push your arm down. It means you shouldn't eat it. If you can hold against, uh, against their pushing down on the arm, it means that it's fine, it's really scientific and, um, at the time I had a frozen shoulder. Things were going really well for me back then, so they couldn't use my arm, so I had to sit there and hold this girl's hand, and the guy used her arm and he said Harry, the producer is looking at me like what the? And the guy said to me yeah, we don't even, you know, we don't even know where to start. You've got so much wrong with you.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that was pretty much towards the end of the thing and my naturally sceptical brain it just sort of couldn't be repressed anymore. It just I began to think nothing's happening. I have spent thousands of dollars on pointless treatments and pointless supplements and I'm nowhere, um. So I went back to um, my doctor it had had now, I think, been something like two and a half years and he ran some more blood tests, but more specific ones, and he said to me are you taking calcium tablets? I said nope, and he said well, your calcium's high Right, so okay. So he sent me off to an endocrinologist who's actually done some training and knows a bit about the endocrine system, and he sent me off for a sestamib scam, which is nuclear medicine, and it came back that I had a tumor on my parathyroid gland.
Speaker 1:Now, normally finding a tumor is obviously not a good thing, but in that case it's a really good thing, because that tumor that was sitting on my parathyroid gland was pumping out too much calcium, which was making me really really sick, which was making me really really sick. And I'm lucky that I had symptoms, because if you don't have symptoms, eventually it just destroys your brain. So in a way, the fact that I was sick, even though it was just completely disgusting and horrible, it was lucky. So they whipped me into hospital and the last thing I said to the surgeon was because it was right next to my vocal cords, can you just not please preserve my vocal cords, because I'm an actor and he's like right, yeah, good. Anyway, they took out this tumor and it was massive and wrapped around my vocal cords, so it wasn't great and then I was better and that particular episode in my life was over and pretty much from that day onward I formed the view that alternate med pseudoscience does not know what it's doing.
Speaker 1:It's taking a wild stab in the dark. It's coming from the viewpoint of this modality that I am in. This is the one that knows what it's doing and is a cure. All Nothing cures everything. It's rubbish. And this notion that so many of these practitioners now talk about being able to cure cancer. It's just so dangerous because, as we know, cancer is a lot of different diseases and the notion that just one, just one thing, one procedure, one approach is going to do it is very, very dangerous. So that's my story, and now I am a massive advocate for people actually sticking to the.
Speaker 1:Admittedly, the medical system is flawed. Nothing is perfect, but the people in the medical system are trained. And pharmaceuticals for all the palaver about big pharma they are rigorously tested and sometimes they get it wrong. Sure, there are mistakes, but pharmaceuticals are tested, supplements and vitamins are not. They can pretty much put anything in those suckers. They can do anything they want.
Speaker 1:So my advice to you is, if you're not well and people are giving you admittedly friendly and well-intentioned advice about what you should do, about that, just smile and go. Thanks very much, that's super nice of you. And then just toddle along to your GP and start the process of talking to people who've actually done some training, because I'm telling you that the scientific developments with with illnesses, now the procedures and the surgeries and the medications are just getting better and better and better. So my message to you is stick with science. Well, that's it from me. That's short and sweet. We'll have our Christmas episode next week. Have a lovely day wherever you are in the world. Talk soon. Bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women with me, annie McCubbin, I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that.
Speaker 1:And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women? See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, annie McCubbin.
