Our New Cancer Coach, Tony Winyard, Interviews Luke Watts From The Cancer Coach For The Art Of Living Proactively Podcast
Introduction to Podcast
Welcome to episode 228 of The Art of Living Proactively, and my guest in today’s episode is Luke Watts, and we discuss revolutionising cancer care.
Luke brings a unique perspective to the conversation, having experienced the impact of cancer first-hand in truth, and losing people that he knows, and he firmly believes that some cancers are preventable and that individuals have the power to take more responsibility for their health.
He shares his observations on the effect of health coaching and noting a significant difference in outcomes between those who have a health coach and those who do not. He emphasises the value of health coaching, but acknowledges that many people maybe do not understand its worth and encourages others to try it, highlighting the low cost and commitment involved. The conversation also touches on his experience at Kamalaya, where he witnessed the connection between chronic illnesses and lifestyle, and the holistic approach really focused on improving lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep, quality, emotional well being. So we’re going to find out a lot more about that. We go into quite a few different areas around cancer and his other project, the Tree of Life. So that’s all in today’s episode 228 with Luke Watts. Don’t forget to subscribe, and it’ll be great if you do like this podcast, The Art of Living Proactively, please do leave a review for us. It really helps for more people to find out about it. If you’re listening, watching this on YouTube, maybe you’d like to subscribe to the channel on YouTube. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode with Luke Watts. Welcome to another edition of the Art of Living. Proactively.
The Art of Living Proactively with Luke Watts
Tony Winyard: Welcome to another edition of the Art of Living Proactively. My guest today is Luke. How are you, Luke?
Luke Watts: I’m very well. How are you?
Tony: Winyard: I’m doing well. We were just saying, when we were having a conversation before the recording started, this is one of the few times of the year where the weather where I am is the same as where you are in the fabulous place you live.
Luke Watts: Absolutely, I was saying that. I don’t feel so guilty. Normally I have to have this screen background on because people get a little upset at the palm trees but right now, as you said, we’re actually sharing positive weather war stories.
Tony Winyard: So can you inform the listeners of where it is that you are?
Luke Watts: Okay. I’m on a little island called Costa Mui, which is the Gulf of Thailand, and I’ve been coming to this island nearly 20 years now. And yes, it’s a very magical, very personal place for me. It’s where I embarked on my understanding of an Asian point of view of way of life and how their approach to particularly preventative medicine, I believe we could still now learn a lot from when it comes to our Western cultures. And I’m always amazed. I love to share when I do come back to London, the things that people have taught me around here and how easy it is to actually do it.
Tony Winyard: So when you first went out there, what were you doing work wise, when you first went?
Luke Watts: Oh, when I first went out there, I was the backpacker. I was the guy who read about the beach, like a lot of people had, and went in search of it. I got to Koh Phangan, if there’s anybody who knows about those islands over here, and, yeah I just fell in love with it. I hoped at one point that if an opportunity presented itself, I would be able to live out here, and it did 15 years ago. I came over here with the intention to support a health and well-being organisation that had been set up in a place down on the south coast that was run by two wonderful human beings. And I was asked to, I guess, professionalise it, for lack of a better phrase, and make sure that the bills get paid. A lot of these Spas and medical retreats, when they’re run by wonderful humans like John and Corina are, their focus, they’re not necessarily the most savvy. I think a lot of these wonderful places fold because they probably didn’t have that business acumen to just make sure the bills get paid. And I’m grateful I played a small part in that, and the company, it’s called Kamalaya, which is in Koh Samui, and has been going ever since and I think it’s regularly rated one of the best Spas in Asia.
Tony Winyard: And so I’m wondering how did, living in a place like that, how did The Cancer Coach come about?
Luke Watts: Yeah, so we’ll skip ahead. My experiences at Kamalaya Spa were that a lot of our illnesses, particularly in chronic illnesses, are related to lifestyle. And a lot of what Kamalaya were teaching and what they were delivering in terms of their holistic practice, was getting us back to our raw roots; the foods that we’re eating, the exercise, the movement, the quality of our sleep, how we process stress and emotional well-being etc. And then, by having seen that work in a variety of ailments, and there’s also things like weight loss and diabetes and stress and burnout, I was approached by an American doctor who said that he would like me to come to Thailand to set up a retreat, focusing more on serious conditions and would I be interested in helping him do that? So we did that together, and he was working with people with cancer and the cancer coach. It wasn’t the name The Cancer Coach then, what it was where people were travelling from overseas to come and experience our treatment modalities. And parts of it, actually, 70% of the time they spent with us was actually workshops. They would make their own breakfast, lunch, and dinner under the supervision of the dietician. They would have access to personal training, meeting them where they are at in their physical capability. They would have access to mindfulness practices two, three times every day. So The Cancer Coach was really our aftercare programme. It was now that you’re going back to your country, now you’re going back to your environment, how can we help support you implement what you just learned, which under the bubble of our centre made our way up like easy to be compliant, but then when you’re trying to transfer that back home. So Cancer Coaching, or aftercare as we refer to it, was essentially health coaching for people as they returned back home to apply what they had learned with us. And we did that very successfully, and we felt that the outcomes of our treatments were greatly enhanced by that very comprehensive aftercare programme. So when Covid hit and people couldn’t travel to our treatment centres anymore, we repositioned that service to be one of if you can’t come to us, how can we get over this information to you once you’re in your country of origin, where maybe you are going down the chemo radiosurgery approach. So it became a service of treatment support and aftercare where we would be looking at lifestyle interventions that could reduce side effects, and long term side effects, from treatments, complication from treatments from aid in their recovery, and then into sort of survivorship and aftercare, and how to build a long sustainable way of life that has been shown to help and assist people in long term recovery. And we have learned that once you finish cancer treatment, you are very susceptible to other chronic illnesses including heart disease. I believe it’s six times more, the risk is now six times greater after cancer treatment and then you obviously have a recurrence of cancer. So The Cancer Coach was essentially a product that we had been doing for a very long time under a slightly different positioning. That then became our core product and service that we were delivering during Covid times to help people who could not travel and get access to our approach to cancer treatment. Yeah, that was it. And it’s going great.
Tony Winyard: It seems to have really grown recently, and it’s not just here, it’s in quite a few countries around the world, isn’t it?
Luke Watts: Yeah. I think we’re in 11 right now and always expanding. Yeah, it’s going very well, and there is no boundary. Cancer does not discriminate between where you are in the world and your ethnicity, and it doesn’t. So there’s no reason why the approach that we have at The Cancer Coach could not be deployed anywhere. Language and cultural sensitivities and understanding towards certain lifestyles would have to be integrated into the programme. But apart from that, the core message of eating well, exercising and moving regularly, coping with stress, anxiety and depression, getting good quality sleep, they’re universal.
Tony Winyard: You’ve touched the point already. But the biggest differences between your approach to helping people with cancer and the typical, from an England perspective, the NHS approach, how does it differ?
Luke Watts: I think the NHS is overburdened. I think we can say that quite comfortably without upsetting anybody. And I think their focus is very much on the intervention side of things, at the point of diagnosis. Where The Cancer Coach can offer tremendous support and value to anybody who’s going through cancer, or, let me take a step back, anybody who is experiencing chronic illness or a reduced quality of life, so prevention, could benefit on working with our approach to health coaching. Prevention is always better than cure. And even though it might not top of mind for people if they are currently dealing with an ailment that can be “treated” pharmaceutically, and I say that again, not with being disrespectful, but quite often, the pharmaceutical approach is treating the symptoms, it’s dealing with people that have symptoms of chronic disease, not necessarily the root causes. So health coaching, in my opinion, could bookend the amazing work that the NHS does, by giving people an opportunity to prevent the occurrence of cancer by treating the root cause, some of those lifestyle issues that are giving them challenges right now, which are reducing their quality of life. And on the other side, once treatment has been completed, in the NHS again, because of the resources at their disposal, there isn’t a long term continuum of care strategy. So once somebody has left, it’s not uncommon, and it sounds very supportive, but it’s not uncommon for someone in the oncology team to say something like “go back to your own way of life, or go back to your normal life as much as possible. We’ll see in 3 to 6 months.” Now anybody who has decided to understand or learn how lifestyle plays a part in that disease, it’s not the best advice. And there’s very disrespect to the oncologist. They haven’t had the training. But where our health coaches can add tremendous value, is to be picking up those people, at that cliff edge or once treatment has finished. I just want to touch on a little point, Tony, if you’d indulge me, is it’s quite common, I’ve heard and I’ve read, and people have explained to me that at a point when treatment finishes, it is a really emotional, almost, I use the word trauma, not in it’s medical sense, but it’s just a very overwhelming experience, because up until that point, quite often, from the moment of diagnosis, they’re straight into a treatment regime. And therefore, everything is prescribed, everything is done for them, and quite often, that person hasn’t had a chance to process what is happening to them. They’re very much focusing on what’s happening now. So at the point in which treatment finishes and all of those scheduled appointments start to dissipate and that support circle of family and friends who’ve been with you actually back to their lives, at that point, you as an individual, feel really vulnerable. But there really is, as far as I can see in the UK, very little support for that person. Even in a mental, spiritual perspective, let alone the physiological part. So our approach to help people with cancer adds tremendous benefit if it could be supported in a way that we finish treatment, and we’re talking 360,000 new cases a year in the UK right now, that’s a lot of people that could be picked up post treatment and offered, you know, our approach now.
Tony Winyard: I guess what’s going through my mind is in the US and many other countries, people are used to paying for health, but in the UK there’s this approach where everything should be free because of the NHS. So therefore, getting people to accept something like The Cancer Coach is it more difficult in the UK?
Tony Winyard: You touched upon the Tree of Life, so tell us more about that?
And then I guess from a cancer coaching perspective, I’ve seen how health coaching can be the difference between somebody who’s going to go through a treatment as a passenger and just see what happens and those who have a more introspective point of view on what’s happening and are encouraged to do something then without that health coach.
Quite often those good intentions don’t materialise. So I’m extremely passionate. I’ve seen it.
I don’t know if that kind of sums it up. As best I can. I’ve seen the effects of the work that people do and others in health coaching and yeah, I just sing loud and hard and I just hope people are listening. And it is, it’s a wonderful discipline.
And Tree of Life, just bringing that to that is an extension of that passion because I know people can afford health coaching, they just don’t understand the value. So we can encourage you to try Tree of Life because it’s very low entry point, cost wise and also commitment wise. And you get to meet some of the health coaches on your online journey. Then you will understand the value proposition better and you’re then going to engage in those services.
Tony Winyard: You mentioned that you’re working in eleven countries. Is there much of a difference in people’s perception and reaction to health coaches in all those different places?
Luke Watts: That’s a really good question. I said at one end of the spectrum, you’ve got the States, where professional coaching is a discipline that is well rooted and people actively seek it. And we’re talking health coaching, but this could be like personal training or business coaching, or voice coaching, or relationship advice and coaching, the actual idea of paying a professional to improve your way of life, or your outcomes is more ingrained. So in the States, they have a very active participation and they’re very engaged in the process. They understand the two-way relationship of this coach is not telling me what to do, they’re giving me opportunities to do and then still up to me to actually give it a go and report back on what I found was really bad and didn’t really excite, etc. So just the concept, the idea of having a professional coach, it’s more ingrained in the States.
In the UK, the UK perhaps is on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to the Western world. I’m sure people might disagree, but just in my experiences, to say the UK. With the NHS, which is a wonderful institution, has in some way, and I’m going to say it so people will probably hit me on the head with this, and I have spoken to quite influential people in the UK, In some regards, the NHS is an enabler of bad behaviour because it has this actual when things go wrong, it’s just my personal view. And I think because the NHS and I don’t believe from what I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot about the history of the NHS, I don’t believe when it was conceived, where it is now is the intent of inception. It was an accident and emergency, at the point of need. It wasn’t there, I don’t believe, to cover what it’s covering at the moment. But culturally speaking, as I said, because we don’t have a, I don’t know, cause and effect, individual responsibility of our own health, the NHS has inadvertently contributed to this culture of just keep going until things go wrong and then go and see your GP.
And then in the middle you’ve got countries like Australia, which have a bit of a hybrid system, a little bit public, a little bit private, and also the employers take a lot more responsibility in Australia for their employees. Singapore is a little bit more towards the States in terms of personal agency. But I think the culture of people in Singapore is unique in that they’re very fired up to be the optimal human beings they can be. It’s no surprise that some of the best education institutions in the world are in Singapore. For a country that is so tiny, it has invested in its population, it’s invested in its people and it’s come out to be a leader in the world for that. Canada is a little bit UK, a little bit States-y. So, yeah, it’s a really good question, but I do feel the tide and turning, as I said, I do with feel with COVID and the unbearable strain and I was reading recently in the UK, people are saying that it might take another five years in order for them to clear the backlog, including cancer.
At the end of the day, I think we have to take more responsibility for ourselves and if you are interested in doing that, something like the Tree of Life is a really good way to start. The way we’ve broken each module down, the way we’ve explained it, step by step, the way that we give access to professionals if you want them. And the other feature we haven’t mentioned is the community. As a member of Tree of Life, you can access other members in the programme so you can share your own story and support from one another and this isn’t a unique concept, Tony, this is Weight Watchers. People in the UK listen to this, they’ll go, oh, it’s like Weight Watchers but digital. It is. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s like Narcotics Anonymous. These programs in bulk themselves are not perfect. There are problems with things like AA and NA, very well documented. But what they are very successful at doing, and that’s what we want to do in Tree of Life, is they bring together a consistent community of people that want the same thing. So for alcoholics anonymous it’s sobriety and Weight Watchers, it’s losing weight. The Tree of Life is about adopting the way of life that’s healthier in terms of preventing disease, overcoming disease and then becoming resilient to disease. So, yeah, it’s not a unique concept and I guess the way we packaged it makes it very unique and it’s very powerful.
Tony Winyard: There’s a lot of studies in the last few years about the power of community, isn’t?
Luke Watts: Yes, absolutely. And there’s some really good books out at the moment. I forgot the name, one of the guy, I actually met him face-to-face in the States, but he talked about it.
Tony Winyard: James Maskell.
Luke Watts: Might be. I know he is a fan of cricket as that’s what we were talking about, which, if anyone’s listening to this Friday, the 16 June and the Ashes is about to start in seven minutes. That’s how committed I am to Tony and his podcast that I’m missing the first ball of the ashes to do this interview, which is all good. Him and others who have forged a conversation and again, I don’t want to dismiss what they are sharing, but this isn’t new. The long phrase is like it takes a village to raise a child. If anything, we’re always trying to wind back some of the areas of community health that we knew worked. And I need to stress for those who don’t already know that I’m not medically trained. That’s not my background. And so whenever I say, it’s not something anyone to listen to here and to run with it.
But what I can do is share my experiences as someone who’s done this for a very long time. And I remember as a child, I don’t even know if it was policy, anything, but we used to have chickenpox parties. I don’t know if you had one of those times, but if a kid on the street had chickenpox, we’d all go around to this guy’s house and we were normally expected to catch chickenpox so that we could get over it and move on. Right. And I don’t know, there’s just something in that lost form of community health supporting one another. Yeah.And I guess Tree of Life is trying to embrace that, but in a more realistic way and embracing the digital aspect, the way we live in our world. And that, I guess, what we created as well, is a COVID proof programme. If something like this ever happens again, Tree of Life will be sustainable because it is 100% remotely driven. So I guess that’s also something to consider is the way our world is. Most people are in agreement that something like COVID or maybe even another strain of it could happen again.
And so we make sure that yeah, I don’t want to go into those theories, but I think a lot of people are saying these kind of epidemics, pandemics are going to happen a little bit more regularly, and therefore, then it’s essential that there are those services, including ours, that do not alter when those kind of things happen. This is a 100% online programme that has access to professionals and peers so that people jump in. We’ll save the COVID for another podcast.
Tony Winyard: I’ve seen you speaking in a couple of webinars over the last few months, and I was really impressed by how passionate you are about what you speak about. And I wonder, why do you think it is that you become so passionate about it?
Luke Watts: Yes, absolutely. And there’s some really good books out at the moment. I forgot the name, one of the guy, I actually met him face-to-face in the States, but he talked about it.
Tony Winyard: James Maskell.
Luke Watts: Might be. I know he is a fan of cricket as that’s what we were talking about, which, if anyone’s listening to this Friday, the 16 June and the Ashes is about to start in seven minutes. That’s how committed I am to Tony and his podcast that I’m missing the first ball of the ashes to do this interview, which is all good. Him and others who have forged a conversation and again, I don’t want to dismiss what they are sharing, but this isn’t new. The long phrase is like it takes a village to raise a child. If anything, we’re always trying to wind back some of the areas of community health that we knew worked. And I need to stress for those who don’t already know that I’m not medically trained. That’s not my background. And so whenever I say, it’s not something anyone to listen to here and to run with it.
But what I can do is share my experiences as someone who’s done this for a very long time. And I remember as a child, I don’t even know if it was policy, anything, but we used to have chickenpox parties. I don’t know if you had one of those times, but if a kid on the street had chickenpox, we’d all go around to this guy’s house and we were normally expected to catch chickenpox so that we could get over it and move on. Right. And I don’t know, there’s just something in that lost form of community health supporting one another. Yeah.And I guess Tree of Life is trying to embrace that, but in a more realistic way and embracing the digital aspect, the way we live in our world. And that, I guess, what we created as well, is a COVID proof programme. If something like this ever happens again, Tree of Life will be sustainable because it is 100% remotely driven. So I guess that’s also something to consider is the way our world is. Most people are in agreement that something like COVID or maybe even another strain of it could happen again. And so we make sure that yeah, I don’t want to go into those theories, but I think a lot of people are saying these kind of epidemics, pandemics are going to happen a little bit more regularly, and therefore, then it’s essential that there are those services, including ours, that do not alter when those kind of things happen. This is a 100% online programme that has access to professionals and peers so that people jump in. We’ll save the COVID for another podcast.
Tony Winyard: And something else you’re passionate about is your, and you’ve already touched upon it in a few of the things you said, but your views, your views on being proactive and about how important it is to be proactive?
eat the food they want us to eat and be lethargic.
I’ll share one story if I may. So I was in London earlier this year and I talked to a friend of mine who works in the city and was super stressed and just didn’t get much sleep and complaining about his health conditions. And he knows what I do. And then we went to a restaurant and he asked the waiter, we’re just tasting our orders and he always says: is this item gluten free. And I looked at him, I said, well, why? He says, oh, I’ve got this kind of intolerance to gluten. I said, but I ended up okay, which is fine, I understand that. But you’ve allowed yourself to become tolerant to lack of sleep, lack of exercise, constant stress eating crap and dealing with the gut health issues and the toilet issues. I don’t want to get disgusting on your podcast, but if you’ve allowed yourself to be tolerant to all of these things that are making you less than optimal, then you’ve decided it upon yourself to ask this waiter if the meal is gluten free.
That just seems a real big disconnect from him that we have grown tolerant to so many more pressing issues in life and intolerant to something as benign as gluten, that we had in our diets for millennia now. We’ve eaten bread for quite a long time. So I don’t want to say I’m not a doctor, I’m not a dietitian. I don’t want people to get upset with what I just said. Take from what I just said as a message then, regardless of the gluten thing, just that this person took it upon himself to focus on that part rather than all the other areas of life that he has decided to become tolerant to.
So, yes, there’s a lot in personal agency, there’s a lot people need to be woken up to.
That is the way that they’re sleepwalking into pharmacological disease care, it’s not healthcare, it’s a disease care way of life.
And I was reading somewhere recently, Tony, that there was a wonderful chart. I actually put it on my LinkedIn, I’m sure a few months ago that had on the x axis on the vertical sorry. Now, the x axis on the horizontal was the age of the person. And the y axis on the vertical was essentially like their vitality, their energy level. And on this chart, it was from the United States, and what we saw was that the health, the relative health of that person, almost dropped off the cliff at the age of 37, and it was suggesting that a lot of health conditions are hitting these people at the age of 37. Now, you and I are a few years older than 37 and it breaks my heart that these young people are having such a drop in quality of life at such a young age. And I would like to think of the Tree of Life and other people and other things that we do, we should be trying to keep that line as horizontal as possible for as long as we can.
So not let the line drop 37 and head down towards the bottom of the graph, but try and keep that line as long as we can and then when we’re in our 80’s or 90’s, then let it drop and let us die. Let us die in our sleep, whatever it is. And I think the evidence says that it’s all possible if you want to do it and when you don’t have to be here. Tony and there’s people that I’m sure we both have in our lives who have a very fundamental approach to life. You must do it like this to have my way of life. It really ain’t silly little things, like, I feel like I’m overthinking your podcast, but my Nan would say to me, never eat anything that needs advertising. Now, if I told you, if you stand at the supermarket next time you go and before you walk through that door, just challenge yourself not to buy anything in a supermarket that needs advertising. Your whole experience in that supermarket will fundamentally change. Now, that’s not extreme, isn’t it? I’m not telling you to eat celery juice. Just don’t eat anything that needs influence. I don’t remember a piece of broccoli ever being advertised during football. Just have a different view on life. And I think it’s not an extreme, it’s always kind of going back to basics. Yeah, there you go. I’m getting passionate about being passionate. That seems a bit messed up, doesn’t it?
Tony Winyard: So if things all went exactly to plan in an ideal world, how would you like to see the tree of life in, say, five years time?
Tony Winyard: And also maybe for other countries as well, because this podcast goes out in many other countries as well.
Luke Watts: Okay, let me do a UK one. And then because I think this is probably where it’s going to be probably most challenging. As we’ve mentioned before, I’ll paint a little picture. So I believe that the NHS is like a monorail. It’s a single line with this huge bullet train on the top of it.
And this bullet train is getting heavier and faster. It’s having to go faster, faster, and that rail is getting weaker and it’s having to travel further and further and it’s having to cover more and more carriages. It’s a single rail. That’s where we seem to be going. And what I would like the Tree of Life to be able to do, and the health coaches with The Cancer Coach, is to strongly suggest that monorail should actually be a dual rail, like a train track, where each rail is of equal importance, of equal strength, where one rail is dedicated to intervention medicine and one rail is dedicated to prevention and recovery. And the sleepers are the integrative interconnections of our health and well-being. So the rail of prevention and recovery is more about personal agency and taking responsibility for your own actions. And that will reduce the burden on the other rail that needs to be there still for intervention.
And I just want to clear something up. If I’m ever involved in an accident, God forbid if I have a car accident, I don’t want somebody giving me essential oils, right? I just make that point. I want the serious stuff with the serious people. But if I find in the I’m having a few gut issues or things that just don’t feel well, or I don’t feel like I’m having good sleep. I don’t want to be prescribed a sleeping pill. I want to look at the root causes of why am I not sleeping? Is it because my diet is not great? I’m eating inflammatory food, caffeine rich food before I’m going to bed, or my mind is not restful, or I have too many electronics in my bedroom? I want that other line, other rail to be on me.
And that’s where the health coaches and the support prevention and recovery medicine really should be. That’s what I’d like to see. And I guess my intention worldwide, I would like
from Tree of Life and The Cancer Coach, for people to understand and recognise the importance of health coaching and that we do not have to sleepwalk into these ever increasing risks of cancer incidents. We can’t rely on spending more and more money on research for treatment. Let’s commit some funds into prevention. Let’s consider areas that we know that are detrimental to people’s well-being and let’s see if we can correct them. And it will need intervention from all phases. It’s going to need the government to buy into this.
We need ourselves to buy into this culture. As I said, wake up and realise that you have to do something yourself and it is going to upset people. The food industries, farmer industries, they’re going to be very upset if we start talking about processed foods and food high in sugars and dangerous fats and dangerous salts. What’s the alternative, Tony?
I mean, that quotation is 360,000 new cases of cancer every year, right now, that same organisation that boasts those numbers are also saying we will go up to 500,000 every year in the UK by 2040. So you can’t tell me that the status quo is the way to go. There’s a bit of a bunch, but it can’t, right? Because they’re already preconditioning us to say, oh, and we’re going to get to million and therefore please donate money so we can do more research into treatment. No. How about looking at that 140,000 growth, let alone the 360 that are already there.
Let’s see if we can reverse some of that 140, right? That’s my point of view. That’s where I’d like to see Tree of Life and health coaching changing the conversation that prevention and recovery is the way to reverse these figures. Not more research and money in treatment
options, but it takes us as well. We need to take responsibility for it.
Tony Winyard: You talked about the education element with a tree of life and so I wonder, are you aware of any countries who, as far as education is concerned, actually instil this in children’s education, about being proactive around health?
Tony Winyard: Right.
Luke Watts: That was very, I don’t know, you’d have seen that as you’ve spent some time over here as well and then we moved from that to this culture where the fast food or convenience. You don’t really say fast food now, you go to any waitrose in the UK. You’ve got your meals bagged and things like that. And again, without going too much down the wrong road here, our consumerism has fueled the fact that Mum and Dad now actually hold down full time jobs in order to maintain what we think is a better way of life. As soon as you do that you have to just that does restrict what you can do at home. I read somewhere quite recently that in London we are spending on average less than 3 hours a week preparing our own meals but we spend 5 hours a week trolling social media commenting on other people’s meals.
Tony Winyard: Right.
Luke Watts: Weird one there, isn’t it? So the answer to your question is probably not as much as it should be. I know in the UK we met a couple of false storms with the Jamie Oliver stuff he did. That was over a decade ago now. That was over a decade ago. Yes. I think the intervention of kids getting them more evolved in what their food is at source, not necessarily as a cleaned up piece of chicken breast at the supermarket, actually giving them knowledge so they know what the food is and trying to get them engaged in preparing their own meals, that would be a great way to start moving on.
Tony Winyard: So before we finish, is there a question I always ask everyone and I love the answers I get to this. So, is there a book that moved you for any reason and why recently?
Luke Watts: In the last three months, I re-read 1984, and this will be, I think, the fourth time I’ve read it since I was introduced to it at school. And every time you read it you can see it through the lens of where we are right now, in modern culture, and it continues to amaze me that when I read that book, and we talk about sleepwalking, we talk about influence of Big Brother essentially and the fact that we have a more drone like existence. But every time I read that I do feel more and more that it’s relevant and we have to look out for those like the protagonist characters in the book and try and shake it up. I think it’s all upon us that we don’t want to go down this path of inevitability. For those who have not read 1984 you really do need to it’s a shocking instalment and it’s true. I think it was written in the 30s wasn’t it?
Tony Winyard: Yeah, I think, originally written in the 30’s.
Luke Watts: It’s got to be 80, 90 years old and it’s still relevant now. So yeah, 1984. Crazy book.
Tony Winyard: So if people want to find out more about the cancer coach tree of Life where would they go?
Luke Watts: Really simple, thecancercoach.org we did a new website, got released a few weeks ago where we put what we’re doing as The Cancer Coach products and services, the health coach here and we’ve also put the Tree of Life there now so it’s all consolidated on one website, thecancercoach.org, and you can get access to everything.
Tree of Life right now, you can register for free. And if you register for free right now, you get access to the first module, the complete programme of content of module one and all the other features that we’ve spoken about access to the community, access to the resources. So that’s completely free right now. And I think, double check, and I’m pretty sure if you wanted to continue the Tree of Life journey and open up all the other modules, I think we’re billing it at £20 a month, which we think is a very low barrier. I know times are tough at the moment but we genuinely believe that it’s a very good value at £20 a month and obviously you just keep the subscription going for as long as you need to. You could blast through the content in the month, I guess if you really want to, I wouldn’t recommend it, but I guess you could, so yeah as I said before it’s a very financially friendly way to engage in this conversation of responsibility.
Tony Winyard: And is that open to anyone anywhere in the world?
Luke Watts: It is. You can go to the website cancercoach.org and you’ll have a Tree of Life section. Just click on the button, you can access it as a web based platform, meaning from your laptop, or you can download our app and access it from your mobile via app.
Tony Winyard: Just before we finish. Is there anything around The Cancer Coach or Tree of Life that I haven’t asked you that maybe you think it would be useful for people to know?
And the programme is not going to cure cancer. It goes without saying, it’s there to create a baseline of resources that allows people to engage with as much as they want and put it to their day-to-day lives. But the programme itself is a wonderful series that has been built with the absolute best of intentions, and we are very confident it’s going to be successful. So anyone who’s curious about the role of lifestyle and environment and disease, not just cancer, a lot of metabolic based diseases will also be influenced by the Tree of Life programme. So heart disease, diabetes conditions, immune conditions, obesity, asthma, a lot of these conditions can also be improved upon by working with Tree of Life. And I think that’s an important distinction to make.
Tony Winyard: Finally, Luke, so I can let you go back and watch the ashes. Do you have a quotation that you particularly like?
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