Ask Ell #ASKELL
Elliott Reid
All episodes
Best episodes
Seasons
Top 10 Ask Ell #ASKELL Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Ask Ell #ASKELL episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Ask Ell #ASKELL for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Ask Ell #ASKELL episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
12/09/20 • 26 min
What do you think about the vaccine? | The end of the sofa scientist... or did it even exist?
Elliott Reid, Osteopath and founder of the Revitalize Clinic which has provided over 6500 clients with osteopathy, physiotherapy, sports therapy, personal training, counselling, herbal medicine and more
“What do you think about the virus, Elliott. What did you think about the vaccine?”
It takes me back to a conversation I had with my friend, Dan. He’s an aerospace engineer. He summarised to be so well that, “long gone are the times where people can create society changing intervention without a long process of developing expertise...”
I wonder if that has ever been the case in modern history. The early founders of psychology, osteopathy were medical doctors first. An apple didn’t fall in sight of an unqualified man, it fell in front of an already expert, Isaac Newton. Despite this story being a myth, we fall in love with it.
Just like we love to hear the story of the drop out entrepreneur who started a business from his garage. But we pay little attention to the fact that to own a house big enough with a garage in California, he was probably already living in a multi-million pound household.
It tells us that anyone with a hint of inspiration can do good. And we can. But when something has killed over 1.5million people worldwide, we need to rely on a better stock of individuals than anyone with a facebook account.
And we do this every day. We trust our cars not to explode, our tap water to be clean, our food to not harm us. So why do we distrust scientists with decades of experience, and studies with over 30,000 participants with results of a 90%+ success rate to eradicate a virus and enable us to return to normality.
To rely on laymen, is a return to tribalism. To stand on the shoulders of giants is staying true to civilisation.
Decolonise Your Mind | My Black Experience
Ask Ell #ASKELL
06/14/20 • 49 min
I wanted to explore my experiences as a black man, growing up in the UK. And I have done so through reading history and attending therapy to ease the pain or at least better understand certain experiences. If you’re called a monkey or a nigger enough times, it certainly leaves a mark somewhere.
But until now, when having this conversation which is rarely ever instigated by myself, I am met with eyes that so quickly glaze over. Why would your eyes glaze over when someone speaks about something which affects them so greatly? And such a great source of pain?
I had one admittance of truth whilst having this conversation with a patient the other day
“I feel guilty” they said
This small admittance of truth is in my opinion such a great hint as to what lies under the tip of the iceberg. This guilt. This sense of ownership of the sins of the past is experienced by many British and American people of European descent, knowingly or unknowingly.
What a farce. What a fallacy. Guilty for what? During the height of the British Empire, 25% of Britains didn’t even have enough food to maintain a consistent calorie intake. Diarrhea and pneumonia were common causes of death. You wouldn’t have lived long enough to die from your first heart attack. If you were middle class you might live to 45
My family were on the plantations with scars on their backs as whips tore into their flesh. If of English heritage, your family were likely in the workhouses in more favourable conditions yet still not great.
But your ancestors were surely closer to mine than they were to the aristocracy.
The greatest lie that the working class have ever been told is that "as long as you’re better than a nigger or an immigrant, you are somebody”. So you look down on the people who are trying to make something better for themselves rather than look to banish the hand so firmly placed in your chest, stopping you from progressing any further.
You look to the imaginary ball and chain around your ankle rather than the very real knife in your throat.
So let’s now leave this fallacy behind that black progress takes from white progress. Let’s stop seeing black and white as being on this spectrum of push and pull where if one side wins, one side loses. Let’s accept that we’re different yet equal and let’s explore my experiences of being black and British for the hope of helping both of us rid ourselves from a legacy of inequality that has been perpetrated from the top down.
Advantages and Disadvantages of being Vegan
Ask Ell #ASKELL
05/24/20 • 30 min
Are you tired of it?...
Are you tired of the barrage of information on as to whether or not veganism is good or bad? If it’s healthy or unhealthy? Good or bad for our planet or economy?
Me too. Which is why, when I became plant based (diet consisting of majority plants) 4 years ago, the first thing I did was churn through books and studies to better inform me on my decision. But what led to this decision?
Health has always been my north star. When I was 8, we went to Bath Spa. My mum told me the spa water was minerally rich and good for you. I literally chugged that spa water down until it made me sick! The point I’m trying to make here is that I value my health over short term satisfaction. And that puts me in a fairly unbiased place because it means I cannot be overcome by subconscious drivers of pleasure as easy as someone else.
And that’s what I want you to do whilst exploring this topic with me. We has humans have an amazing ability of paying attention and learning about something until the information presented conflicts with a belief that we hold great emotional attachment too. But we don’t necessarily throw a paddy. We instead work back from our emotions rather than from logic.
For example, if you really liked chocolate milk, and I told you that chocolate milk was a killer of small children, you might say things like “well it never killed me or my family and we love it... you have to look out for the dairy farmers... people who don’t like chocolate milk are boring” etc.
You’re practicing cognitive dissonance because you’re being presented with information that should make you change your behaviour. Instead you create a false argument to continue to do this behaviour.
And it’s the same for vegans. There are many vegans who will deny certain mineral deficiencies because they’re so emotionally attached to the idea of only relying on mother nature for their sustenance. We will explore this later
So let us begin with the advantages and disadvantages of being vegan
Health implications
When we look at a sensible diet, vegan or omnivorous, the closer we stick to a plant based diet, the better. To argue against this, you would have to say that there is a negative consequence of consuming as many of your recommended daily calories from fruit and veg, as possible. This is a pretty crazy argument since all of our essential nutrients come from plants. We have for hundreds of years, evidenced that a reduced consumption of plant based vitamins and minerals results in:
- scurvy (vitamin C)
- anemia (iron deficiency)
- infertility and nerve damage (vitamin B12)
So we can safely assume plants are good. So the other question is what happens when we increase the consumption of animal products?
- type 2 diabetes http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677007
- heart disease and all cause mortality https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803089/
- cancer (china study, linking dairy casein to cancer rates)
- alzheimers and vascular dementia https://p.widencdn.net/zbsj0b/Diet-and-Alzheimers-Disease-Fact-Sheet
- erectile dysfunction https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20487239/
Full Post available at www.revitalizeclinic.co.uk/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-being-vegan
"Should I keep doing it if it hurts?" | Chronic Pain Podcast
Ask Ell #ASKELL
05/17/20 • 12 min
But what is actually wrong with me?
And I understand the question; ‘what is actually wrong with me?’. You want to “know your enemy”. But why do you think your enemy can be seen? If you were to take an MRI of your eye whilst you were looking at a sunflower, do you think you could see a flower on the MRI?
No of course not. So why do you think that by getting an MRI on your lower back, you will see what is causing the pain?
The psychobiological model for psychiatry has been argued as being obsolete by Suman Fernando
We are greater than our anatomy, individual chemicals and compounds
So why do we insist on diagnosis and “powerful” interventions
Why do we insist on scans, surgery and blood tests; diagnosis and prognosis despite no evidence showing this is worthwhile and that it may in fact be harmful? Filling our creative minds with a threatening image or description is never good, as anyone who has googled their symptoms will know.
Because we are:
- curious by nature
- often passive by nature
- have been fed a false, pacifying ideology of pain and suffering
Humans are curious, we want answers. But we are often very passive. Every invention we pride has made things easier. A dog would invent a computer with a treadmill attached. We instead invent the remote control. The less effort the better
It’s the same with relief from pain; mental or physical. If you can pop a pill, have a drink, have an operation, injection etc. you’re all good! You don’t even question the logic behind cutting into a painful area to reduce the pain? Just God forbid you have to actually put the effort in to reduce the pain
The Truth
The truth is that pain is complicated but the mind and body in all their complexity have one key advantage. They adapt. Endurance and strength athletes have a far greater tolerance to pain than inactive individuals.
Exercise based rehab has shown to be superior to purely manual therapy treatment for patients (BEAM trials 2004)
Exposure therapy has been a key pillar of CBT, exposing an individual to manageable levels of a threat so they adapt.
And once they adapt they can be moved onto the next stage of rehab or therapy.
The Guide
The issue is, to me, there seems to be a cry out for someone to take the pain away and I get it. It’s like when you’re a child and you hurt your knee, your mum or teacher might wet a towel and dab the sore spot and the pain goes. There are so many examples of insignificant interventions causing pain to drop.
The issue is when we rely on something other than ourselves. 20 visits with the chiropractor, another bottle of wine, another month on pain killers
You don’t need a hero. You’re the hero. You need a guide
Find someone who empowers you. Someone who can make you the hero of your story. Become someone who can rise in triumph against the ill fortune of physical and mental pain.
Stop looking for someone to take responsibility for your own deconditioning to trauma. Find someone who will help you to eventually look at what caused you to wince, or hide, or grimace... and be comfortable with it
If you need to find your guide then contact the myself at the Revitalize Clinic 6000 clients in and we’re helping people to create lives they love.
Powerful Philosophy from Ancient Egypt
Ask Ell #ASKELL
05/10/20 • 19 min
Socialist Ideals
There seemed to be a lack of classist tension in Ancient Egypt. Far from Feudal Europe with social upheaval being very rare (C.Diop, The African Origin of Civilisation) .
Their society was extremely wealthy, pledging us much as the equivalent of £8million worth of Gold to build their temples but every. However the Monarchy was responsible for the success of commerce. They also insured the people were well fed and inherited a house.
This would be the equivalent of a home and nutritious food being your birthright, living in the UK. Not 30 years of debt to own a flat. You would be given a home and nutritious food would be made plentifully available to you (C.Diop, The African Origin of Civilisation). And this was in pursuit of an ethical, not an economic ideal. Ethics held the greatest currency, not wealth
The Monarchy, in their death would have the Declaration of Innocence inscribed in their tombs. We read things such as, Bakhenkhonsu, High Priest (12th century BC) "I did not do islet (evil in his house); I judged the poor like the rich and the strong like the weak”. If they did not live to the Ethical Ideals of Maat, their Ka (soul) would be destroyed in the Duat (afterlife) after it was weighed against the weight of a feather.
The point to explore here, is what would society be like if ethics carried as much weight as currency?
Triumph over evil (Maat vs Isfet)
It was each Egyptian’s duty to banish Islet (evil) from the land by spreading Maat (good, order) and it is in Egypt that we see the first detailed hero story emerging. We can see this in the form of Horus. But the triumph of good over evil is equally seen as a form of Introspection. Within us we have a balance of good and evil and it is our duty to exercise good order over the chaotic evil that resides within us
This has translated into the Abrahamic religions but in Christianity, many will claim to be practicing but will assume forgiveness if we even superficially repent.
Many people who are practicing followers of religion also practice passivity to save themselves from eternal torment. However Maat encourages active participation in banishing Islet from the land.
Mythology (origin of good and evil
In ancient Egypt we see a creationist story which tells the story of the universe into being as well as our own consciousness from unconsciousness
Atum (the uruboros, the abyss, the chaotic disorder of good, evil, female and masculine) provides 4 key figures
- Osiris (the old King)
- Isis (the wife of the old king)
- Set (the evil brother of Osiris, precursor for Seitan)
- Horus (Osiris’s son who defeats Set to re-establish order)
Horus (eye of Horus) represents consciousness (J Peterson, Maps of Meaning; Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness) and he can only see Set’s evil because he can look into the abyss of chaos and evil and see it for what it is. He is not blinded by tradition and complacency like his father but also ourselves
We are all guilty of lying to ourselves in moments of complacency. Many times we look away from the reality of chaos and hide in our unconscious states rather than stare into the abyss and do what is needed of us. Know Thyself is an antidote to this. Do not lie to yourself
There are many theories that this is who the story of Jesus is based on. A deity who can look into the abyss of evil and chaos and confront it with good (Ma'at)
05/03/20 • 30 min
Welcome to the #ASKELL Podcast; where we explore the make up of amazing people and topics
I founded the Revitalize Clinic in 2013 to provide you with the team of experts you need to be pain free, mentally well and physically fit. Contact us for your free consultation with an expert to start your journey, online or face to face
I think this question is beyond important. Our inability to do what is best for us is the leading cause of death in the UK, with western diseases (diet and lifestyle related illness) and COVID-19 having a 1000% increase in mortality rate for the overweight and obese.
But, to start I think we need to answer “why should we do what’s good for us?”. The answer to this is that “it will pay off... eventually”
The key word here is “eventually” because it takes us from instant gratification to delayed gratification. Eating obesogenic foods is without a doubt, instant gratification. It pays off right there and then, and the more instant the better. Which is why we, as a nation or in the developed world have moved the origin of our meals from the kitchen, to the restaurant, to the delivery man. Apps like JustEat, really, shouldn’t even have taken off. You’re talking about saving 5mins ordering a meal from the same place you always get your Indian or Chinese from anyway. But it’s more instant
So now let’s explore delayed gratification and the benefits/ predispositions to the inability to delay gratification.
The marshmallow experiment (Mishcel et al 1970) involved a teacher who asked a group of children to sit in front of a marshmallow. The teacher said “if the marshmallow is there when I get back, I’ll give you another”
Those children who could resist the instant gratification they would receive when taking the marshmallow so that they could receive another marshmallow showed the following promise in later life:
- less addictive behaviours (they could say no to drug use)
- academically more successful
- more likely to have a healthy BMI
Now, if this wasn’t put into context, we would have a random distribution of obesity, for example. Random children are born with randomised abilities to control their impulses. But unfortunately, we don’t.
The limitations of the study were later concluded to be that socioeconomic background significantly predisposed the outcome (Tyler et al)
i.e. kids with rich parents could delay their gratification
But this isn’t necessarily maladaptive for poor children to go for the instant gratification. When the future is uncertain (i.e. the marshmallow might disappear) it makes sense to grab it whilst you have the chance. “The early bird gets the worm” or “strike whilst the irons hot” are both sayings that promote the “getting whilst the getting is good”
I think this relays a far clearer picture of why we don’t do what’s good for us. Because for many people the future is so bleak or uncertain, why would we.
Predictors of obesity are: income
I.e. your home culture and your nation’s culture, significantly predispose obesity
The Solution
Anyone who has attempted to lose a significant amount of weight knows that it is simply too hard to ask the nation token their weight down out of free will alone. IMO, it needs a nationalised attempt
See full post at www.revitalizeclinic.co.uk/blog
PodCast with Niki Mahon | Know Thyself
Ask Ell #ASKELL
05/02/20 • 55 min
Today we have Niki Mahon is a friend and of whom, I am a fan.
From a young age Niki has thrived in environments such as dance and art, showing from an early age, creative flare. After completing a degree in graphics design from Bournemouth University, Niki quickly set up a side hustle, selling finely sourced jewellery online.
Over the years, she has been a finalist in 3 KEIBA (kent excellence in business awards) for her excellence in business and has also featured in beauty publications and Bhangara music videos.
A business is like an iceberg. There are greater depths to what you see. And when the line between the business and the person is blurred, the depth grows deeper.
I had a great time discussing today with Niki,
01:43 General Introduction
03:00 Niki expresses the conflict she felt age 23
She was a qualified graphics designer but didn't feel it was her calling. She had to make a move. Niki decided business was her move. But how she came to this decision took introspection and a drive to leave the comfortable working environment she had found
06:50 Cutting the Emotional Attachment to Instagram
Niki now has over 90,000 instagram followers but when she initially hit 10,000 she deleted her account. She felt embarrassed at the time and didn't feel people would take her seriously at work. How did this shape her perception of social media? How does that manifest itself today?
Do people feel entitled when contacting her; do they demand attention and a response? Niki discusses how this affects her
14:15 How much don't people see?
I used the metaphor of an iceberg. Niki explains how much people don't see of the background workings of her business. But she also gives insight in as to how social media is becoming more transparent for the better. It gets tiring keeping on a mask that doesn't always represent how you feel
16:20 What would have happened if you didn't change?
When Niki was 23, the family of her spouse at the time put undue stress on her to fit a mould she didn't affiliate with. She needed something for herself to be proud of... but what would have happened if the pressure to change wasn't as great? And is this pressure to fit a mould felt by many second or third generation immigrants?
23:52 The pressure of the Entrepreneurial Pop Culture
Is everyone meant to be an entrepreneur? And do they come in different shapes and sizes? Niki expresses that you don't necessarily need to go ALL IN straight away. I agree
28:05 What are your motivations going forward?
Niki expresses her motivation; what she's running towards and what she's running from
34:15 Niki flips the script onto me. Know Thyself
I express how early experiences of racism ignited my fire to prove myself to the world and leave no stone unturned
40:38 Could the drive have been extinguished
There are many people who live in chronically oppressive situations. Can these situations extinguish the greatest parts of our personalities if she sit there long enough?
42:45 "John lost his wife and sold his house. Next week he was a billionaire"
We discuss how the glorification of these often fictional events are harmful for entrepreneurialism
44:25 Word Associated Game
Popularised by Sigmund Freud, it's a simplified version that shows what people's minds associate with different words. Niki had some great ones
End
Thank you for listening! And if you have any suggestions for future podcasts, please let me know!
09/07/20 • 20 min
What does death mean to you? Is it the end of a journey, the beginning of another? I would be interested to hear your perspective so please let me know.
Go to www.revitalizeclinic.co.uk/blog for more posts
I had a fairly early and close encounter with death when I was 16 years old. A great friend of mine passed. It drastically changed the way I viewed life thereafter. And I suppose this can be a good thing. It greatly increased the value which I attribute to time and makes me question to this day, if I could be spending that time doing something better?
I had the opportunity to speak with James from the Art of Dying. Their award winning podcast helps people to approach their death with control and dignity. Give it a listen. I would be interested in your thoughts
It’s time to talk. You’re going through potentially, one of the most challenging experiences that you have ever encountered. And it makes it worse that no-one can tell, or even begin to understand.
When experiencing bouts of depression, anxiety, bereavement; or maybe your personality disorder or bipolar has taken a turn for the worse; it can seem that there is no way out. You’ve tried everything, right?
Well, sometimes you need a hand to guide you out of the darkness. Our gravesend based counsellors and psychologists would love to hear about your struggles. It will at least give you a chance to express how you feel to open ears, with no judgement
Message us or give us a call and we’ll book you in for a free over the phone consultation to begin with. It will help us to get to know each other before you embark on your journey to recovery
#mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #anxiety #selfcare #depression #selflove #love #health #wellness #mentalhealthmatters #motivation #therapy #mentalillness #mindfulness #healing #fitness #psychology #recovery #wellbeing #ptsd #life #loveyourself #meditation #inspiration #positivevibes #positivity #happiness #quotes #bhfyp
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does Ask Ell #ASKELL have?
Ask Ell #ASKELL currently has 27 episodes available.
What topics does Ask Ell #ASKELL cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts and Society & Culture.
What is the most popular episode on Ask Ell #ASKELL?
The episode title 'Advantages and Disadvantages of being Vegan' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Ask Ell #ASKELL?
The average episode length on Ask Ell #ASKELL is 28 minutes.
How often are episodes of Ask Ell #ASKELL released?
Episodes of Ask Ell #ASKELL are typically released every 15 days, 4 hours.
When was the first episode of Ask Ell #ASKELL?
The first episode of Ask Ell #ASKELL was released on Oct 15, 2018.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ