62. El Salvador & the Rise of Decentralized Healthcare: Age of Light Event Recap

This is a short recap of my recent trip to El Salvador for the Age of Light summit hosted by Palestra Society and Dr Jack Kruse. It featured great presentations by leaders in the decentralized health movement including Erwan Le Corre, Michael Shapiro, Keira Lea and Jack Kruse as well as President Nayib Bukele. 

El Salvador is leading the way in protecting rights of patients through the adoption of a constitutional amendment that provides unprecedented assurances of the integrity of the doctor:patient relationship, which in my mind is the most important of healthcare innovations.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

okay, welcome back to a special episode of the regenerative health podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be giving a recount of my time in el salvador and specifically, the reason why I traveled to that central american country was to attend an event called the Age of Light, and the Age of Light was hosted and participated by Dr Jack Cruz, amongst a range of other interesting guests, and the topic of this was decentralization and the decentralized health movement that is currently being built in El Salvador and using that country and that legal system as a real epicenter or nucleus of medical innovation with regard to patient rights and with regard to extremely strong informed consent. The overview of this episode I'm going to talk a little bit about El Salvador, a little bit about my trip, and then we'll go deep into this event for you all and give you an idea about what it meant and what was said there and the implications of that. I'll get started with a background about El Salvador, because many of you are listening from Australia and some are listening from the United States, and it might be a question on your mind as to why is a doctor from Australia talking about a tiny Central American republic? So, to understand the background of this whole movement. We have to understand what was going on in El Salvador, and, like many countries in Latin America, it had a turbulent past, and that past included political instability, regime change, civil war, violence and all the kind of downstream economic consequences of that instability, which is, you know, it's difficult for people and a country to prosper in the face of such uncertainty and instability.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Something changed dramatically in 2019, and that was the election of a man called Nayib Bukele, now Bukele. He was elected. He's a younger guy and he was elected with, I guess, maybe the same promises that lots of politicians exhort and advertise, but the difference between him and others is that he actually executed on his promises. So El Salvador was notorious for being one of the, if not the, homicide kind of hotspot in Central America, and within a surprisingly short amount of time, he was able to completely turn around the country from a safety point of view, and what this involved was essentially putting a whole bunch of criminals and gang members into jail. In a surprisingly short amount of time, el Salvador has gone from one of the most dangerous places in Latin America and the world to the safest, and I believe there was just data released recently the homicide rate in El Salvador currently is the lowest in Latin America, and that is even lower than traditionally very, very safe countries like Costa Rica, like Uruguay. So they have done incredibly well in a very short amount of time.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So the reason why some of you might have become aware of El Salvador is that it wasn't only a crime cleanup that made Bukele famous. What he did was implement a law that made Bitcoin a legal tender in that country legal tender in that country. Prior to this, el Salvador had been reliant on the US dollar for, essentially, its currency as a domestic currency. So, like other countries I believe Ecuador as well El Salvador didn't have its own monetary policy. It was simply dependent on the US dollar and was basically using the US dollar. So what Bukele did is allowed people in his country to use Bitcoin, the digital currency, bitcoin, the digital currency, in addition to or alongside the US dollar in terms of everyday transactions, in terms of possession. The reason or the implication of this is that it became less like an asset and more like a transactional currency, meaning it was much easier for people to conduct business without having to go through onerous accounting hurdles in terms of daily use. So this was interesting and kind of pivotal, because they were the first country to essentially adopt this digital currency, bitcoin, as a legal tender, and not only did they enable it for the citizens to use, but they also began to store or stockpile or purchase Bitcoin, and they've since become known as the most favorable jurisdiction in the world for Bitcoin. If you want to learn more about Bitcoin specifically, I won't go into too much depth only to say that it is a neutral currency and the features of its monetary policy mean that it is not able to be printed or diluted by government. So essentially, what Bukele did was separate the money creation or money printing ability from his own government, which is quite an altruistic thing to do, and it's been very, very empowering for his citizens. So that is the background for what has kind of came next in terms of the Age of Light event and the declaration or the amendment that Dr Jack Cruz has written as it relates to medicine. But the theme that the Bukele government and the country as a whole is moving towards is decentralization and empowerment of its citizens in many ways, and I guess the foundation of that was these monetary rights that the president, the regime, the government gave to the citizens.

Speaker 1: 7:23

So I flew into El Salvador a couple days prior to to the event and what I? What we did? First, we we went to the epicenter of um, where everything is happening in el salvador, and that is an area called uh el zonte beach, and what I did was I I got in touch with the owen quilliam, who some of you might have listened to my episode with owen on beef back better now. Now, owen is an Australian who started a fully grass-fed beef company in El Salvador, being the intermediary between fully grass-fed beef suppliers and the locals and doing really well in providing this great service. So Owen's since moved on from the company but he has passed on to another Australian, james, and I got in touch with James just before I touched down and when I arrived we had a massive pack of fully grass-fed beef from Beef Back Better. So it was a fantastic start to the holiday of just being able to grill and have really high-quality beef, and that is something that didn't exist and I really encourage you to go back to listen to my podcast if you guys are interested.

Speaker 1: 8:39

But the status quo for El Salvador prior to this, prior to Beef Back Better, was imported often imported meat of unclear provenance with unclear chemical and hormonal treatments. So it was great to get that beef and taste it. It was fantastic. So what we did then is explored the town, and it's a very easy walkable beach town. The people there are extremely friendly and welcoming. Um, there's, the people there are extremely friendly and welcoming and everyone is very much happy and facilitating of of tourism, the. The language of el salvador is spanish, so everything, um, while a lot of people are bilingual and english is spoken uh, it will also help if you can speak Spanish. I would highly recommend, if anyone visits this, to see James and get yourself some grass-fed beef.

Speaker 1: 9:40

So I also met up with friends, kira and Tristan so many of you who've listened to the podcast and heard my episodes with Tristan Scott will be familiar with Tristan and Kira, who is also Australian, and they were both visiting and had been there for the conference. So it was great to to meet them in person and a range of other interesting people who it's who I've been connecting with online or talking to online and then seeing in person. So the type of people there's an expat community that is slowly growing, and these are not only people who are there or Bitcoiners, but there's also people who are there because they follow Dr Jack Cruz's work, and Dr Jack Cruz moved there, I believe, a couple years ago and he's really been an advocate for El Salvador for a bunch of reasons. One of them is the monetary situation, but another one is the fact that it is at the 13th latitude, so this is an area of quite high UV yield, especially considering or keeping in mind where maybe a lot of people come from in North America. So there is abundant ultraviolet light around UVB all year round and that is conducive to healing, especially when people are quite sick.

Speaker 1: 11:16

So it was great to meet everyone and spend some time, although short, in Playa Elizonte, and then what we did is we traveled up inland to a place called Santa Ana. I believe there are don't quote me, I won't say the exact number, I don't want to be wrong, but there are, I believe, just under 10 volcanoes in El Salvador, and this one is a very interesting and nice volcano. But the place where we went for the Age of Light conference was in the looking out over this volcano. So the event was organized by a group called Palestra Society and they are essentially advancing the decentralized health and decentralized principles really using El Salvador or basing themselves in this country for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1: 12:17

So there was a whole roster of interesting speakers who were each offering an interesting perspective based on this idea of decentralization, and yeah who, I guess each offered something differently, so I won't talk about each and every one of them, but I'll make mention of some very, very interesting ones that I think stood out to me, and the first speaker was Erwin Lecour. Now, erwin is a French gentleman who has had a long and is very well known in the natural movement area, so he's a strong advocate for moving in an ancestral way and in a way that is free from contrived machines or other kinds of devices that would perhaps optimize our body physically in areas or directions that aren't consistent with our ancestral past. So that was a very interesting talk and it made a lot of sense, and he put up an image of a cheetah and compared that to this workout machine that we as humans would use and asking a rhetorical question about do you think that the cheetah would need to use a machine like this? And obviously not. The cheetah has instinctual knowledge and instinctual understanding of natural movement, and that is something that we as humans can learn from in terms of optimizing our physical activity Something that I like to advocate myself which is exercising outdoors and exercising in natural light and preferably bare feet while grounded, and I think we've come a long way from where we used to be in terms of exerting ourselves outdoors, and now people are wearing shoes, they're under blue light and that whole process is profoundly inappropriate when we think of our ancestral past. So that was a great talk, and we also and I didn't mention this prior, but just before we came to the Age of Light event I had the pleasure of meeting up and meeting Anjan Kata Now you guys are going to hear from him next week when I drop my podcast with him but he is the founder and CEO of Daylight Computer Company.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Daylight Computer Company is essentially being built to answer the problem of blue light emission and profoundly human, unfriendly technology devices. What they have managed to do is to build a display. What they have managed to do is to build a display, an iPad, and their first product is an iPad that does not emit blue wavelength isolated blue wavelength light, and they've got very ingenious designs that allow it to be used in daylight and used after dark, but not in a way that is going to be disruptive to your circadian rhythm and therefore become a health hazard. So I had the pleasure of recording with both Tristan, who is now working for Daylight Computer, and Anjan the day before, and I really got to understand what their mission is and this idea of how would we build a computer from first principles if we started from just the idea of human health or human-friendly technology, and that is definitely something that isn't underlying the design philosophy of the big tech companies, who are having technology products that are instead quite intentionally designed to invite us to use them such that we might become addicted. So it was great to meet Anjan.

Speaker 1: 16:28

He actually spoke at the Age of Light on the following event and he gave an overview of his personal journey and his struggles with blue light toxicity and anxiety and depression as a result of technology abuse, and so that was a good talk and again, stay tuned next week if you want to hear my podcast on that. One of the great interesting other speakers was Michael Shapiro, and Michael is an aerospace engineer who is also the founder of GetChroma. So Michael has designed, amongst a range of interesting things, some very good photobiomodulation devices, and he's actually built a couple of devices with specific acknowledgement or design to include specific wavelengths of light that we have to target our non-visual photoreceptors like encephalopsin, that I don't believe any other company at the moment is doing. I haven't personally used those devices, but the innovation is something that I respect immensely and this idea of again building technology and potentially therapeutic devices that are directly targeted to our biological needs and our biological features.

Speaker 1: 17:51

So Michael talked about a range of topics, but he talked about the need to build and focus on engineering, focus on first principles and not on reasoning by analogy and that is something that I try and include or leverage when I think about health and I think about other problems is how can we as much as possible understand a system and think from first principles rather than by analogy or by? Something that people have always done and that reflects in engineering particularly this idea of trial and error, and maybe you might not understand academically or from a theoretical point of view exactly how something might be working From an engineering point of view. Just using that trial and error can be extremely valuable and in some regards we do. We listen in health to people's unique experience. We listen to their N equals one experiment and that in itself is an incredibly valuable and informative piece of information and I think that definitely gets lost in a centralized medical model that is kind of obsessed with randomized control trial as this gold standard of research and not to. Obviously it has a place. But if we're ignoring very important anecdotal responses on an individual level to different lifestyle interventions, different medications, whatever they may be, then we are kind of missing a very, very critical part in my mind of health-optimized individual.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Michael's talk was very interesting and next Kira spoke. And Kira, for those who don't know, was training as a nurse on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and she was not able to continue her training due to mandates and those mandates weren't lifted until recently. But they essentially forced her out of clinical practice and into health optimizing, health coaching and put her down a very interesting path and I think she's subsequently done very well and she's creating very, very interesting path and I think she's subsequently done very well and she's creating very, very great content and helping lots of people. But it was very interesting to hear her first-hand account of that journey and what it took and the costs that it put upon her to stay true to her values despite what you know the structures around her employers university were insisting. Check out Kira on her Instagram profile and her work, if you haven't already. She's posting very, very good and interesting content on quantum health.

Speaker 1: 20:57

So the next speaker that was interesting was Max Keiser. Now Max Keiser, I believe, is a very old Bitcoin advocate and he made the points or covered a range of topics that illustrated how the separation of the money from the government of El Salvador was and is a prerequisite to increasing freedom and increasing prosperity of its citizens. So his perspective was very interesting and definitely worth hearing. So the final or the main talk was Dr Jack Cruz, and Dr Jack Cruz was presenting, and he presented what he has formulated in terms of what are constitutional amendments to the El Salvador constitution. What he proposed and what he has written are a set of law or text that specifically protects the rights of patients in that country. So I guess the background to why this was necessary I mean, I think that a lot is quite self-evident in many ways with regard to the kind of indication or the reason why this might be necessary and the application of what Cruz wrote is specifically to protect the sanctity of what should be a very intimate relationship, that is, between the patient and the doctor, and what we've seen over the past four years was a situation where in many cases, that relationship, the integrity of that relationship, was not respected and the outcome is inevitably, in any situation where the doctor has to consider other interests other than their patient, the only outcome can be a suboptimal for the patient a sub-optimal for the patient. So that is kind of the background to why these laws were, or why this was required or why it was written.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Not only is he seeking to patch that hole in terms of what I kind of frame as a security vulnerability in the software of society, but also to fix the peer review process, and the peer review process in science is something that has been susceptible to influence and a range of academic and university and even corporate interests that make the publication of unbiased science and innovative science quite difficult. So he also talked about how we might solve this problem, again building on the structure that the Bitcoin protocol is offering the US constitution and the fact that in the US constitution they didn't decide to include any protection for medical freedom or medical sovereignty. So what I think the interesting or fascinating implication of this past four and five years is that what has happened has really revealed, maybe, a vulnerability that no one really understood or no one was able to see until now, in terms of how medicine and medical needs and medical indications could be basically manipulated to further other interests. So that was the thrust of Dr Jack Cruz's presentation was explaining exactly how these laws might be implemented and how they might help to protect people. They encompass, in a very interesting way, a whole bunch of areas or aspects of health that have not necessarily only to do with mandated medicine, but also with other technologies or other impositions into public health, whether that might be additives, medication, whether that might be air contamination and air pollution. All of these various aspects of health have been considered and are going to be implemented in this law.

Speaker 1: 26:34

It was to understand the kind of degree to which this was interesting and essentially groundbreaking was the following talk by President Bukele himself, who had pre-recorded his speech. But basically what President Bukele illustrated was that he deeply understands the issues or the problems that have been kind of bubbled over or culminated from centralized systems and how influence by centralized systems have led to these outcomes or these implications where the individual and the individual person and the individual citizen might not be getting the impartial, unbiased health advice or health care that they deserve. So it was. It's fascinating to see how quickly or how intimately the president is abreast of these problems and how willing he is to address them. So what are my thoughts? So that was the event and again, I've given you a brief overview. If you're wanting the kind of nitty grittyitty I'm happy to tell you more in my private group. But the events, or the implications, I think, of the event and this announcement, they're truly groundbreaking.

Speaker 1: 28:12

The reason Dr Cruz chose El Salvador is because the proximity to the legal structure, in the form of a president who's incredibly forward-thinking, incredibly interested in the welfare of his citizens and incredibly ready to make bold changes for the advancement of his country, means that this is like a force multiplying effect, this idea that if the El Salvadorian constitution might be updated with special protections for people, then this might more easily be able to be replicated in other countries and in bigger countries where there's greater distance between the legislative level and individuals. It's a unique situation where the size, or the small size, of El Salvador is really providing quite an ample or suitable place to introduce these types of approaches into the world. So the medical freedom laws and I Cruz is proposing is really fixing a security hole in the way that societies have had and the way that events happen to allow freedoms and incursions into the doctor-patient relationship that previously weren't tolerated in the medical field. And I think that getting back to this fundamental relationship and this fundamental axiom of our medical industry is important, and what that is is this sanctity, and I think that I'm excited for what could happen and what could come of this because of how important that is to everyone doctors and patients. So that was kind of a summary of what happened there and again, if you're interested in learning the nuts and bolts, read Dr Jack Kruse's blog post and listen to updates that are coming out. But I think that this is an extremely exciting development and, again, something that is going to be for the benefit of basically everyone, except for, perhaps, the overly corporatized, centralized entities that perhaps have a financial benefit. But really the implications are huge and I'm very excited to be following this into the future. So my thoughts on El Salvador in general is that it's a very exciting place and it's a very interesting place to have all this thing going on.

Speaker 1: 31:39

I visited the National Library in San Salvador after the Age of Light event, very briefly, and what we saw there is a lot of very happy people in a newly built building with an abundant access to books and literature, and everyone was learning. They were having fun on a Sunday, so it was exciting to see. And there's obviously civil works happening. There's a lot of development happening. I really got the impression that this is a place of optimism and development and burgeoning economic prosperity. So I think that is all has happened or has become downstream of these pretty pivotal changes that Nayib Bukele has implemented. So the future as it pertains to health in El Salvador remains to be seen exactly what it's going to look like. But it's exciting to think that the development of clinics, of hospitals that prioritize human health, as in this decentralized health mindset or perspective that understands the circadian and quantum needs of us and understands the critical role of light in this whole story. So to think, or to see a hospital that is built with windows that simply open, that perhaps feeds its people locally sourced produce and not trace of carbs and processed seed oils, the one that has a veranda or a terrace where you can push people out onto to get full spectrum sunlight. So these are all the exciting things that are potentially possible with these types of laws and implementation and willingness from the people that are in charge. So those are my general thoughts.

Speaker 1: 33:44

If you have any comments or further questions, then feel free to ask them.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Join up my school group to ask me directly.

Speaker 1: 33:54

But yeah, I had a very good time there.

Speaker 1: 33:57

I think it left me with a very positive feeling and maybe, depending on where you live, there might be feelings of pessimism about the direction of things, perhaps economically or otherwise, but the overwhelming vibe and energy of El Salvador was positive.

Speaker 1: 34:19

Of El Salvador was positive and this idea that people are collectively contributing to something that's greater than their individual selves, that people are building towards an ideal and a new ideal yes, that's all I have to say about that. And follow along and obviously I'll be following along closely to find out how these constitutional amendment with regard to medical freedom is being implemented. So that's all from me. If you are in Melbourne on the 21st of April so coming up on the several weeks to go then we would love to see you at the Regenerate Health Summit and I will be speaking alongside Dr Anthony Chafee, dr Jalal Khan, dr Pran Yoganathan, natalie West and Charlie Onn. So if you haven't got your ticket yet, grab that and we will see you there. So thanks for listening and stay tuned next week for the episode with Andrew Nkara and Tristan Scott where we go deep into the daylight computer and how this technology poses an incredibly exciting development for the future and for technology use going forward. Thanks,