Treating Measles: Lessons From The Texas Outbreak With Dr. Ben Edwards

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What really happened during the 2025 West Texas measles outbreak? Dr. Ben Edwards shares his firsthand experience caring for hundreds of Mennonite families at the center of the highly publicized epidemic. He explains why he turned to cod liver oil, vitamin C, and other supportive therapies, discusses the nutritional and lifestyle factors he believes influenced patient outcomes, and recounts the challenges of navigating intense media scrutiny after his work drew national attention. Dr. Ben also shares why he has great respect for Dr. Tom Cowan’s work and discusses the growing importance he places on terrain over germ theory, exploring how nutrition, movement, sunshine, emotional well-being, and other lifestyle factors help determine our resilience to illness. Whether discussing measles, chronic disease, or everyday health, he makes the case that supporting the body’s innate healing capacity is the foundation of lasting wellness.

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Kendall Nelson and the regular text is Dr. Ben Edwards.

Few physicians expect to find themselves at the center of a national news story simply by caring for their patients. When a measles outbreak spread through a Mennonite Community in West Texas in 2025, one family physicians’ willingness to treat children using nutrition and supportive care quickly drew national attention and sparked a much larger conversation about medicine, public health, and the body’s remarkable ability to heal.

This is episode 593 and our guest is Dr. Ben Edwards, affectionately known to many simply as Dr. Ben. Dr. Ben is a board-certified family physician who practiced conventional medicine before transitioning to a more holistic nutrition-based approach to healthcare. During the 2025 measles up break, he treated hundreds of Mennonite children using protocols to emphasize cod liver oil, vitamin C, and supportive care.

His work eventually caught the attention of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., placing Dr. Ben at the center of a national debate over how infectious illness should be treated. In this episode, Dr. Ben shares what he witnessed firsthand during the outbreak, why he believes one young girl’s death was the result of improperly treated pneumonia rather than measles itself and how the experience changed his life.

We also discussed the role of vitamin A and cod liver oil, the importance of metabolic health and nutrition, why fear itself can compromise the immune system and his evolving views on terrain theory after years of studying nutrition, chronic disease, and human physiology. Finally, we explore what Weston A. Price’s work has meant to his own medical journey and why he joined the Weston A. Price Foundation’s Board of Directors.

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Whether you’re a long-time advocate or just beginning your journey, you’ll leave with new knowledge, new friends and renewed inspiration. Come hungry for wisdom, for community and for real food. Visit the Wise Traditions to register and learn more. We hope to see you in Washington DC, October 16th-18th. Now, let’s welcome Dr. Ben.

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Dr. Ben, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

I’m so happy that you’re here.

I’m excited to be here.

Dr. Ben, I assume that your life changed pretty dramatically during the 2025 measles outbreak that happened in West Texas. It’s my understanding that what began as caring for patients in a close-knit Mennonite community soon drew a lot of national attention. Culminating in a visit from HHS Secretary Kennedy, who publicly recognized your work. Suddenly, across the country, people knew who you were and what you were doing taking care of these families. I’d like to begin there and ask you to go back in time. Think back to the first few days of the outbreak. Tell me what it was like.

I’ve replayed that many times, and my life did change. It’s settled back down now. At the time, I was doing what I normally do, which is go to the office every day and see patients. I’m more of an integrative holistic practitioner. Now, family practice trained conventionally MD. I did that for about ten years and then had been practicing more holistic nutrition-based medicine for the past ten years. I was doing that in Lubbock, which is about 90 miles North of Gaines County where the Mennonite measles outbreak was at.

Navigating Frontline Crisis Response

I’d heard about it like everybody else on the news. A few cases here and there down in Gaines County. We do have some of the Mennonites from Gaines County utilize our clinic in Lubbock, even though we’re 90 miles North. They just like our approach. I had some Mennonites already in my practice. I was familiar with Gaines County. I have patients from there, but it was just a few cases. One of my patients reached out.

There was a little Mennonite girl, who had measles and was recovering from the measles. She started to have some respiratory distress. She wasn’t my patient. I didn’t know the family or her at the time but her respiratory distress led her parents to be worried and took her to the hospital in Lubbock where she was admitted and deteriorated and unfortunately. She was not given the appropriate antibiotics for a community-acquired pneumonia, which is very common.

Pneumonia is super common. A community-acquired pneumonia, meaning you come in from the community with pneumonia already. That’s a certain protocol you follow in the hospital. A certain antibiotic you would choose to cover those bacteria that tend to come from the community, versus an institutional-acquired like a hospital-acquired or if you’re in a nursing home or incarcerated in prison. If you come from a group setting, from an institutional-type setting, that’s different bugs living those. You use different antibiotics.

Unfortunately, this little girl got the wrong antibiotic. She got the one for hospital-acquired pneumonia instead of community-acquired and egregious breach of standard of care. This is a very basic elementary standard of care. She got worse and passed away from that pneumonia, what I would consider malpractice using the wrong antibiotic. At that point, everybody heard about this. A little girl dies from measles. Now, we know it was an improperly treated pneumonia.

I heard about it just like everybody else did. However, it was a Saturday afternoon. One of my patients who was a former Mennonite has left that religion, but still lives in the community and loves the community. She’s my patient. She reached out to me on behalf of that family, of the mom and dad, and asked me if I would come see the siblings who were also sick with the measles. The mom and dad were worried they would deteriorate and potentially die, too. They’d just lost their seven-year-old daughter.

Strengthening Natural Cellular Defenses

I said, “I’ll be happy to come see the siblings and talk to the mom and dad.” That was a Saturday afternoon. I ran by my office and grabbed some cod liver oil and vitamin C after a quick Google search on measles. We don’t see a lot of measles. I don’t know that I’d seen any measles up until that point. It’s possible I had. It’s just basically a rash and a fever. We see a bunch of rashes and fevers. We don’t always test for measles. To my knowledge, I’ve never seen measles.

I did a real quick look in the literature, and it’s all over the literature that Vitamin A decreases mortality in measles significantly. Even using certain forms of vitamin A, like a synthetic form of isolated vitamin A. Most of these studies are out of Africa in malnourished populations because I was thinking measles is no big deal, like everybody else here in a first world country with healthy population, good sanitation, nourishment and access to care.

It’s a rash and a fever. Not a big deal. With my 70 to 80-year-old patients, we take a very thorough history at our clinic now. We spent two hours with the new patient. One of the things we ask is childhood illnesses. All my adult and elderly patients all had measles. That was just normal. People understand that historically. The news ramping this up and fear factor and that she died from measles. I looked at the vitamin A. I knew cod liver has vitamin A.

 

I was already familiar with Weston A. Price’s work. I hopped on the Weston A. Price website, and looked at the amazing articles that are on there regarding cod liver oil, vitamin A, and measles in particular. I did that very quickly. I ran by the office, got some cod liver oil and vitamin C that we carry here in our clinic, and went to Gaines County. The family was at the church doing the viewing. The funeral was the next day.

I went into this church. It was a very conservative sect of Mennonite I learned. There are different sects or denominations of Mennonite. This is the most conservative. The lady that called me and asked me to come told me I may not be allowed to go in the church because they don’t allow outside people to come in, that’s just their tradition or rules but they did. They let me come in, so I went into this one room. The mom and dad were there. The open casket for the seven-year-old girl that had passed away was there for viewing. The siblings were there covered in a rash.

I examined them. I had my stethoscope and brought my equipment. I looked them over and listened to the heart and lungs and did a quick exam. They were sick but stable, and I advised them on the protocol for cod liver oil and vitamin C. I encouraged the mom and dad and prayed with them and loved them a little bit. I was ready to go, but I was noticing as I was doing this little exam, streaming in all these Mennonite families to pay their respects. I’m glancing over every time because a lot of them have big families. There’d be 5, 6, 7, 8 kids coming in with each parent.

Most of them were all sick. You could just see they were sick. Lots of coughing. I made note of that, but I was ready to go home. I was walking out the door and the dad of the little girl that passed away came, and he barely spoke any English. This broken low German. I had a translator there to help. He asked if I would mind running by his sister’s house who had two little babies, eight-month-olds. I believe they were twin boys, had measles, and were super sick. They had respiratory distress.

We’re in the parking lot of the small little emergency room in the little rural county hospital, waiting to be seen. Apparently for 45 minutes is what they told and were worried the babies were deteriorating. They couldn’t be seen, or it was a long wait. Long story short, I went and saw those kids. One in particular looked really sick. When there’s a baby that’s dehydrated, which he was, the fever dehydrates. He’s not eating. Respiratory-wise, he was in bad shape. We treated him and gave some budesonide and inhaled steroids because of the success we had during COVID using that.

This baby’s lungs sounded like a COVID lung, which was unusual. Measles doesn’t typically do that, that I read about anyways in the literature. I treated those two babies, then they said there’s eight more babies that are sick just in this family. The extended family. The brothers and sisters of just this lady and the dad of the deceased. They asked if I could go see them. I turned to my translator. Now we’re getting into the evening. I said, “How many do you think there are in the community? How many sick babies?”

She said she didn’t know, but probably hundreds. I said, “How many do you think are like ten and under that are sick?” The girl that died was seven. She said, “Maybe in the thousands.” She didn’t know. There’s not a great population count on these families because they come a lot in and out immigrate from Mexico and Canada. Anyways, I just said there’s no way. It is inefficient to go house to house. Can we find a central location? This was a Saturday night.

I said, “Tell those twelve Mennonite churches in this community, can you get a hold of the preachers of each church, the leadership?” From the pulpit, Sunday morning just announced that if you’re sick, two and under is the first wave. Come to this location on Sunday morning and the doctor will be there and he can see you. Ten and under, if you’re sick, will be the second wave on Sunday afternoon.” That’s what we did the next day.

Dr. Ben, you ultimately ended up seeing hundreds of patients. What was the difference between what you saw and what the media was portraying? I know a lot of times the media will hype up an epidemic, but it sounds as though this was pretty serious.

Evaluating Underlying Environmental Load

It was unusual that there was some respiratory distress in some and just a handful. I started to make a note of breastfed versus bottle fed. Those breastfed infants, even though they had the rash and fever, were doing much better. They didn’t have respiratory distress and seemed to be handling it better and overcoming it quicker and easier. In this community, I ended up making a lot of house calls. I got to know the community well. There’s a lot of standard American habits in some of these homes.

Some of the families are lower socioeconomic, and they qualify for government assistance like food stamps and whatnot. Go to the local little grocery store where there’s goldfish, sweet drinks and standard American diet. I started to make note of what the diet was and if they were breastfed or not, and vaccinated or not. Some were but it was a mixture. The kids were more standard American, bottle fed, and the younger they were are the ones I would be more aggressive with, potentially given the budesonide inhaler or nebulizer and zithromycin for potentially a secondary bacterial infection.

It didn’t seem like a typical measles type of presentation from what I’ve talked to older doctors since then and the literature and the books I’ve read. There was something unique about this. I don’t know what was different. Was it a different strain? Was there some other confounding factor? This is right in the middle of what I call roundup ready cotton where glyphosate is sprayed in this entire region. There’s quite a bit in this community. They use glyphosate quite a bit. Who knows? I don’t know.

There was some speculation. Some of the dads had video even of some aerial activity as far as spraying aerosolized particles from the planes to try to either induce rain or block the heat of the sun, the chemtrail, basically. People were thinking outside the box on what’s going on here because it’s not a typical presentation but it responded very well. That first night at the viewing, I gave the cod liver and the vitamin C to that daddy to give to the siblings.

Real frontline healing starts when we support the body’s built-in wisdom rather than relying on panic.

The next day, he came to that clinic and said, “Dr. Ben, I woke up in the middle of the night scared because my whole house was quiet as a mouse. It had been nothing but cough the previous nights all night long. I didn’t give those kids Budesonide. They just got cod liver and vitamin C and slept all night. They responded beautifully to appropriate cod liver oil and vitamin C from a whole food source, mind you.

It wasn’t a big deal once the education, the support, and the knowledge came. The Mennonite community latched on to the protocol basically, started self-medicating or supplementing and just filling themselves with the right nutrition. Spreading that word amongst the community, even outlying communities. There’s pockets of Mennonite communities all over the state and the nation. They’re all connected is what I’m learning through WhatsApp on the phone.

A measles WhatsApp Mennonite group started, and it spread like wildfire like, “Here’s what you do. Get your cod liver now. Here’s how you do it.” I honestly believe that’s what tamped a lot of this down when it was trying to outbreak in some other areas. There were some cases that were more intense, but I wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t manageable. Which was the unfortunate part, they weren’t being managed at the hospitals, the ERs, and the urgent care facilities in the region.

Overcoming Institutional Resistance To Care

I made a call to the Texas Department of Health head of the region that I’m in, the physician in charge, and advised him he needed to put a memo out to all these local area hospitals and clinics. Advise them that if there’s a respiratory distress, budesonide works beautifully and the literature on vitamin A. Unfortunately, I was told they couldn’t do that. When I asked why, they said, “All we can recommend officially is a vaccine.”

I pushed back on that, and I said, “Vaccine is not a treatment. Vaccine’s contraindicated in a sick baby.” Maybe the patient chooses not to do the vaccine. There’s lots of reasons where the vaccine can’t be the answer or isn’t the answer for whatever reason, but definitely not in a sick kid. We’re talking about treatment. We can advise on treatment, even if it’s “supportive care.” They said, “We can’t do that.” I try to stay calm, cool, and collected.

I don’t tend to be emotional or get riled up very easily. I got mad because these are sick kids, and you’re going to play politics over sick kids? I was polite but firm and never talked to him again. Luckily, CDC acting director and then HHS personnel got involved and were a little more receptive to trying to get the message out that there are ways to treat this. I was thankful for that.

After Secretary Kennedy got involved or discovered who you were and how you were treating these families, did anything change then? I know it sounded like it was frustrating in the hospitals, but is there any wiggle room? Are there any doctors now saying, “We do need to treat with vitamin A or with cod liver oil and whole food vitamin C? Is there hope for that?

There are some doctors, but the ones that reached out to me tended to already be open-minded or complementary and alternative or integrative-minded already. Locally in West Texas, there aren’t many of those. There’s a few nurse practitioners that were more open-minded and reached out, so yes. It became known, like, “Here’s where you can go to get treatment,” but it’s not widespread even with Secretary Kennedy endorsing some of the protocols. Not to blame Secretary Kennedy. I blame the politicians and the news media. Once I got associated with the secretary, it became very difficult at our clinic.

We got inundated with very vile phone calls, emails, Google reviews of 0 stars or 1 star or whatever. The sweetest front desk receptionist girl you could ever imagine that we have as our front desk was taking the most awful calls from these random people around the country and the world. We became a spotlight of attack for sure from the media. My naivety at the time, I thought, “I’ll just tell these people the truth.” These are kids. I gave a few interviews and quickly learned that they weren’t interested in the full story, both sides of the story. The truth, as I would call it.

I had to learn real quickly to decline interviews. That was a very stressful time. In fact, I turned CNN down numerous times and then went down to Gaines County on a second trip to see kids at that makeshift clinic. They were in a community room where I was trying to take a break and have a quick meeting, because I still have my clinic running. I was trying to have a meeting on Zoom in a private room and they happened to be in there, CNN with their cameras and microphone. I walked in and they were right there.

I asked them to turn off their camera and their microphone and I could speak with them off the record. They sat down and the producer, the reporter and the cameraman all listened to the truth. It brought a tear to their eye. Literally, they were crying. I said, “Now, if you can report the whole story that I just told you, I’ll go on the record.” You know what I know. You can’t do that. Your boss will not let you put that whole story that I told you out there. They said, “You’re right,” so I didn’t go on the record with them.

That showed me how much evil we were dealing with when you get to talk to the humanity in a person. The question was, why aren’t these Mennonites getting vaccinated? I asked the Mennonite parents, because most of the parents were vaccinated to get into this country from Mexico where most immigrated from. They had to be vaccinated. I said, “Why aren’t your kids vaccinated?” The consistent answer I got was the danger of the MMR vaccine. We’ve seen twelve autistic kids in this community in Gaines County of the Mennonites damaged by the vaccine to all Autism or some severe significant damage.

They’d seen that. They witnessed it with their own eyes and, therefore, concluded it’s more dangerous to have the MMR than to have measles. That was their conclusion. Their one request was, could we talk to the CDC in a private room, a private meeting to discuss that concern? That was all they wanted from the CDC to talk about the potential side effects of MMR.

First of all, it doesn’t make any sense that a vaccine is somehow going to magically cure this epidemic. Also, I would imagine the Mennonite community is not only hesitant towards the vaccines because of what they’ve seen with the rates of autism skyrocketing. Now, 1 in 31 children in this country has autism. Also, the MMR shot contains aborted fetal cell lines. Don’t they have the MCR5 cells and the WI38 human lung fibroids? They also contain fetal bovine serum and a host of ingredients that I would think the community and community at large might be a little bit hesitant about.

 

For sure. Both from their moral, ethical, faith-based reasons, but primarily it was the danger. They saw the adverse events from the MMR over the years, and for a lot of them, that’s the reason they made their decision. To me, that’s a very legitimate stance to have and belief to have. Especially when we go back and look historically at the measles mortality rate from the early 1900s to the 1950-ish when the vaccine came out. We see a 98% to 99% drop in mortality rate. Not just measles, but all the childhood infectious diseases.

Conclusion on that, when the CDC, John Hopkins, Boston University and Harvard, the dean of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ed Kass, and he was the Head of the Infectious Disease Society. The founding and president of that society and editor of the journal of Infectious Diseases. He’s a top infectious guy. He looked at that data from 1900 to 1950 and said, “This 99% drop in mortality was due to sanitation, refrigeration, clean water, and nutrition.” The terrain is what I would call all that.

If we look at what the measles mortality rate was right before the vaccine came, minimal. I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but somewhere in the 200 to 500 range. CDC verified vaccine adverse event reporting system, how many deaths attributed to the measles vaccine? Again, I don’t have an exact number, but from the year 2000 to 2025, it was somewhere, in the 1 to 200 range. VAERS is underreported by who knows what. Estimates maybe 1% get reported because doctors aren’t trained to recognize and connect the adverse event to the vaccine. Who knows the true number?

SIDS and other just death from MMR. We don’t have good data on it, but we can extrapolate on the death rate in measles in the 1950 pre-vaccine versus death from adverse events from the vaccine. If you treat measles appropriately, I believe the death should be zero. Now, there are obviously some extenuating circumstances of sick kids who may be already on hospice. They’ve gone through chemo for cancer or whatever. They happen to acquire measles. That’s a one-off.

Otherwise, even someone eating standard American goldfish and sweet drinks. They can still respond to appropriate vitamin A and vitamin C in supportive care like budesonide and appropriate antibiotics when needed. Nobody should be dying from measles or community-acquired pneumonia post-measles. If you’re not thinking clearly, and I’m not going to speak for that doctor in the hospital, but knowing the environment, the frenzy, the media and the fear. They got tunnel vision and just assumed, “This is measles only.” They weren’t vaccinated. You try not to be biased, but it’s hard not to be biased when your entire institution and the whole medical field is biased.

It’s important to stress the point that you made about how few measles deaths there are these days in developed nations. You talked about the Mennonite child who died, and that was a very unfortunate death. I’m not 100% sure I’m right, but I believe prior to that, the last death was in 2015. It was in a fully vaxxed woman who was in her twenties. Before that, in 2003, there were two deaths. One was in an immunocompromised child, and the other one was in an international traveler who was around age 75.

It’s so important to stress that measles is not a death sentence, especially when treated properly. It may not even be that difficult of a disease to go through. I want to ask you so many questions, but real quickly. I want to leave the subject of vitamin A and cod liver oil. Can you tell me what it’s about that you think has such magical healing properties?

I believe there are two parts to it. It helps to, how I describe it to my patients, form like this force field or a protective layer in the cell membrane because that’s where the action’s at. It’s when the virus or whatever it is toxicity-wise is impacting intracellularly. The vitamin A protects that cell membrane but probably most importantly is the epithelium. That’s fancy work for your skin. We have skin on the outside but we have skin on the inside. If you look inside your cheek, there’s skin just like on the outside of your cheek. That skin goes down your GI tract, but also goes down your airway. Your two ports of entry, so to speak, for foreign matter like toxins, bugs, germs or whatever, to enter.

If you have appropriate levels of vitamin A, it reinforces the integrity of these two ports of entry. The skin on the inside of your airway and those immune system cells that are stationed right along those ports of entry. think of it as like the border patrol. Vitamin A is essential for those immune system cells to do their job, to grab, sweep, and clear out the toxicity coming in the airway. The integrity of the border, the troops that line the border, and then inside all that, in your actual cells.

Vitamin A is essential for the integrity of that entire defense system. With measles in particular, vitamin A stores get depleted very quickly. That’s why you got to push the dose on measles with vitamin A. Any viral illness, you need to up your cod liver oil for sure, especially in your respiratory. Flu, COVID, or any respiratory illness needs a lot of cod liver oil.

How much cod liver oil to take or what brand to take? Are those things important to figure out the dosing and figure out whether you’re getting a high-quality product?

Quality product for sure. I didn’t mention some of the studies. Africa just used a synthetic form of A. That can work. It worked in those studies. The higher the quality of cod liver oil, the better. I know Weston Price endorses certain brands, Rosita, and the fermented cod liver oil. I don’t have all the brands memorized.

Maybe Green Pastures.

It’s quality for sure. Dosing-wise, it’s hard for people to remember. They’d be like, “Did he say a teaspoon or a tablespoon or two tablespoons when you’re sick and one tablespoon when you’re not sick?” When you’re sick, especially with measles, you don’t need to worry about overdosing. Overdosing on vitamin A is next to impossible. You can do it, but we’re talking like a bottle a day for weeks and weeks. Nobody’s going to do that.

Our resilience depends far more on daily lifestyle choices than on invisible external threats.

At the moment, on that day or 2 or 3 or 4, measles is breaking out and you’re starting to feel sick. The bottom line, get it in you and get it in often. Keep it under a bottle maybe. It was Weston Price, I believe, he reported some Arctic explorers were eating polar bear liver, which has an exceedingly high amount of retinol, vitamin A, and eventually got a little toxic from that much consumption. There’s no way to get that much. Literally, it would be bottles worth.

There are actual protocols with exact dosing on the Weston Price website. You can look that up. It is based on age, weight and how sick someone is. For kids that were under six years old, if they were sick, I was telling that mama, get at least a teaspoon in them every couple hours for the first day as much as they’ll tolerate. The breastfed babies, I was telling them to get a syringe. Whatever they’ll tolerate, squirt it. In mama, you get it in. keep feeding breastmilk. The actual dosages are based off weight and how sick they were.

Dr. Ben, you mentioned terrain, and I’d like to go down this path with you. I know that you’ve had some thoughtful conversations with Dr. Tom Cowan. I’m curious if your views have changed at all in what you believe about terrain versus germ theory. How has your thinking may have evolved over the past few years?

Shifting Focus From External Threats To Internal Resilience

Shout out to Dr. Tom Cowan. That man is an outside-the-box thinker and a leader to help lead the rest of us into this territory that might seem crazy at first. As you continue to explore that territory, it starts to make sense. That’s the beautiful thing about how Dr. Tom Cowan teaches. It’s like, “That makes sense,” and that doesn’t make sense over there, what I was taught.” To answer your question, yes. Over the years, both from my clinical experience, but also from reading the literature, and especially Weston Price.

He noted in his seminal work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He would consider some of these villages tuberculosis resistant. TB is in the country. It’s in the region. In this village, they’re not succumbing to it. The village down the road, that’s eating modern food like white flour and white sugar, is dying from TB, and this village isn’t. The difference is modern food versus ancestral food. That’s big. It’s not just Weston Price. There’s lots of other published authors on this topic. Whether you go back to 1918 supposedly influenza.

Although, I’ve read firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses that there was some experimental meningitis vaccination going on and other experimental vaccines at Fort Riley, Kansas, happened to be the first outbreak of this “influenza.” As you start to dig into the literature and some of the studies where they would try to infect people with the snot, the mucus, the saliva from a sick person directly into, I think these are inmates in the study I’m thinking about. Probably not ethically acceptable these days to do a study like this, but they couldn’t induce the same illness from the excretions directly from the sick person.

You start to read enough of this stuff and as I mentioned earlier, the 99% drop in mortality. Those germs didn’t go anywhere like diphtheria, scarlet fever, pertussis, all of it. Those germs or whatever it was, are still around. How do you get that 99% drop? We mentioned refrigeration, nutrition, all that. It becomes overwhelming at this point. We see it with COVID. Who is more likely to succumb or be hospitalized or die? They are metabolically unfit. That’s terrain. If your mitochondria is not stewarded well, you don’t make enough ATP cellular energy and you make way too much exhaust, free radicals, just like in your vehicle with low miles per gallon and lots of black smoke coming out the tailpipe.

You need to tune up that carburetor. Americans do not have tuned up carburetors. The last study I saw was like 97% maybe of Americans are not metabolically fit, meaning their carburetors are broken and inefficient. They’re blowing a ton of black smoke, free radicals, and oxidative stress. That damages your terrain, meaning your immune system cells that are designed to detect germs, toxins, and cancer and destroy them. Break them down and excrete them. You have systems to identify foreign junk, encapsulate it, and excrete it.

Those systems need to have cellular energy to function. Whether it’s COVID or influenza or measles or anything, it’s clear healthy people overcome these things and unhealthy people don’t. What I consider terrain is all the diet lifestyle things, including your thinking. Sitting all day is a terrain disruptor. Blue light and artificial light in general is a terrain disruptor as opposed to sunshine. Not being in touch with the earth, meaning grounding. Your microbiome is huge for terrain.

De-escalating Fear To Protect Immune Balance

Also, nutrition, movement, and resistance training. Those carburetors I’m talking about, the mitochondria, 80% of them are in the muscle. If you don’t load that muscle regularly, and the studies show about 60 minutes a week, it’s not crazy. The 60 minutes a week of resistance training increases your mitochondrial efficiency, your metabolic health and longevity. It’s all the diet and lifestyle choices we make. Fear kills your terrain. Your ability of your white blood cells to function.

In fact, white blood cell production tanks. When you go into fight or flight mode, the body’s real smart. It’s going to conserve certain systems, energy, and shut certain systems down to shunt your energy to life-saving systems, meaning a tiger jumps across your path. You’re going to engage your cardiovascular system. Your heart rate’s going up. Your breathing rate’s going up. Your pupils dilate. Your reflexes engage. Your flexor muscles engage. You’re shunting your blood flow, your energy and your resources to those so you can run regularly or fight.

You’re going to shut down the GI tract. Stomach acid production goes down. Peristalsis goes down. All your entire GI tract. You’re going to shut down your hormones because you don’t need to worry about fertility and making a baby in the next five minutes when you’re trying to save your life from a tiger killing you. You don’t need to worry about killing germs at that moment when you’re trying to save your life from the tiger. We turn down immune function, hormone function, and GI function in the fight or flight mode.

 

We’re not supposed to have a tiger cross our path, but once in a blue moon for five minutes maybe, it’s done. You’re back to that sympathetic stress, fight or flight, versus parasympathetic, rest and digest. Immune system function back up. Fertility hormones, thyroid, and all the hormones get normalized. Americans stay in a chronic state of fight or flight. That’s all of it. That’s where the holistic approach comes from. Nutrition and Weston Price found this from a mental health standpoint. He didn’t see psychosis, depression, anxiety and all that.

When you’re nutrient replete, B vitamins in particular, the fat soluble vitamins in particular, the brain’s healthy and less inflamed. I read an article that depression comes from inflammation of the brain. Inflammation is coming from a poorly stewarded mitochondria, meaning you’re not giving it good nutrition. It’s the other things too, so it’s all of it. We learned it during COVID. The first thing we started doing with patients is dealing with fear.

If we could address the fear while we’re hooking up their vitamin C or giving them their budesonide, ivermectin and such, they did way better. You can’t ignore the psychological component of this for sure. Which goes to the Mennonite community, that helped more than anything. Knowing there was an answer. There are people that believe in you, love you, will support you and help you. Tune the media out and help each other. We’ll help you. That turned it. You could feel the fear leave the community. That’s a big deal.

I couldn’t agree with you more about fear. It’s such a hot topic to try to address one’s fears and try to transcend that. I had Dr. Ladapo, Florida Surgeon General, on. He wrote a whole book on transcending fear. It’s such an important part of our well-being that we don’t always think about. I’m so appreciative that you are interested in the terrain. You mentioned earlier that the Mennonite community was suspicious that their skies were polluted. They were in the middle of the cotton growing season with the glyphosate exposure.

You also mentioned that you’re very respectful of Dr. Cowan. I don’t want to speak for him, but I’m going to guess that if he was here, he would suspect that measles is the actual rash and the measles itself is more of a detoxification process rather than a viral disease. I’m curious what you think measles is, if you were to guess.

That’s a great question. I don’t obviously know, but what Dr. Cowan explains, especially in his book, which I happened to grab here right before we started the interview, which is Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness. He makes a great case for this process of detoxification. You’ve got to heat the body up, meaning temperature. That liquefies that fourth phase of water that Gerald Pollack discovered and teaches on structured water. It’s like that gelatin-like phase, but it liquefies that so you can excrete that. It makes a whole lot of sense.

Are there DNA particles? We know exosomes. Those are lipid-encased. Little blebs that come out of organisms that do have genetic material in them. Trees even excrete exosomes. The little bit of studying I’ve done in nature, this is just a communication mechanism amongst the trees and amongst mammals and humans too. We’re trying to communicate to those in our immediate environment. There’s this potential threat or toxicity or whatever it is. Here’s what you need to do about it.

Prepare for this or get ready to detoxify yourself because of this. That theory makes a lot of sense to me. There’s questions about it, too. I don’t get too hung up in all that. I trust that this amazing, pointing at myself, engineered creature is way smarter than me. My own intellect is able to try to figure all this out. What God put into this thing, the self-equipping, the ability to detoxify itself, repair itself, regenerate itself, the instructions for that’s all in there. Let’s trust that, support that, and don’t be scared of it. We teach and even the conventional literature teaches, don’t suppress those fevers in those kids.

There’s worse outcomes if you do that. We don’t need to attack cell-mediated immunity, meaning the anti-cough medicine, the anti-fever medicine, the anti-mucus medicine, the anti-nausea, vomiting, diarrhea medicines. Let that all flow. The body’s doing that for a reason. I lean more towards the Tom Cowan camp on the body’s trying to deal with the toxicity issue for sure. That resonates with me.

We, here at the Weston A. Price Foundation, would say that we don’t have any proof of viruses. Back to the idea of fear. Why are we so afraid of something that we don’t even have proof of? All of these public health officials and stuff, they push the vaccines and they do all of these things. It seems like we’re coming at it all wrong. Whereas, the way we should be coming at is what you’re talking about, from building up our terrain and making ourselves as healthy and vibrant as we can be. We’re going to be less resistant to whatever it’s out there that’s making us show symptoms and be sick.

What never gets entered almost into the conversation is the benefits of overcoming these fevers and rashes and what we’d call childhood illnesses. The literature is clear on that. These kids who get whatever these are, measles, chickenpox, and overcome and therefore have robust immunity for life. They have less heart disease, less cancer, less arthritis and all these chronic diseases. Something about that early exposure and overcoming it appropriately and supportively, trains the immune system for things later in life. We’re in a chronic disease epidemic, and most of that disease is all inflammation.

What’s inflammation? It’s the immune system out of balance. We’re pushing that immune system out of balance on day of life one if you’re following the conventional guidelines with that hepatitis shot. We’re suppressing all that cellular immunity, the anti-fever, anti-vomiting, anti-cough and mucus, all that I said. We’re asking the antibody production to come up with all the vaccines early and often, suppressing the cell mediating.

We’re getting what we’re asking for, a completely imbalanced immune response. That stays with us. Autoimmune disease through the roof. There’s over 100 autoimmune diseases now. Kids are being overrun with autoimmunity. It’s not just autoimmune. Cancer is an immune system disease. Heart disease, your number one killer, is a disease now we know of inflammation. Not cholesterol. We’ve completely missed it. We’ve forgotten the benefit of overcoming these childhood illnesses for long-term health.

When you build a strong internal terrain, your reliance on artificial intervention drops naturally.

An interesting note. That lady in the Mennonite community that called me the very first time and said, “Could you come on behalf of the family?” She had measles growing up. She was by my side that entire three weeks down there. She made a number of personal house calls herself to give encouragement and support. Meaning she was around that measles as much and more than I was with no problem at all. As for me, I was vaccinated as a child.

I was fully vaccinated with MMR. I got the measles during this time. Which speaks to the natural immunity that this lady, Tina, had, and it worked for her. This unnatural vaccine “immunity” that I wanted didn’t work for me. I got the measles, or whatever it was in the environment there. That was interesting. Nobody wanted to talk about that. They did want to talk about the fact I was treating kids while I was sick, but that was a very calculated decision. There were only going to be measles cases there.

I can’t give measles to someone that already has the measles and these kids had nowhere else to turn. They weren’t going to go. They refused to go. I even told the state health department that these babies are going to die at home if you don’t put a notice out that there are other doctors who will treat you and other clinics. Do not wait at home and die, but they wouldn’t put that out. I felt a lot of pressure . If I don’t get down there, evaluate these kids and see them, they’re going to stay home. If they’re not educated on what to do and what to look for, it’s a red flag that this kid is about to crash. We could have another bad outcome.

It’s interesting that you got the measles, but it’s quite likely that you didn’t catch the measles from somebody else. You could have been exposed to the same environmental toxins that they were being exposed to. Perhaps you needed to express an illness in order to detoxify at the same time the same symptoms as the patients that you were seeing.

I for one think you were very brave to be in the spotlight and to have served all of those children. I certainly appreciate that. As we begin to wrap up, I also want to be sure that our readers know that you are new to the Weston A. Price Foundation board. You are a wonderful addition. I’m curious. What drew you to working with Weston Price?

I would say Weston Price did amazing work. The fact that he was positioned at that moment in time when, what I call the big three, the grain started to change, meaning processed grain. The traditional fats started getting replaced with cottonseed oil and the vegetable oils, and processed sugar started to be consumed at a higher degree. All that happened in the early 1900s, and that’s right when chronic disease started happening. The first heart attack was in 1912, one in the whole country.

The fact he was positioned right then, right there, and had the intelligence to notice and then to go and find people that weren’t starting. It’s incredible. His story and his work is what first drew me. Also, the foundation’s work to keep his name, his work, and everything he stands for, keep it going. The fact is it is so rooted in education. That’s a big thing in my clinic. I tell every patient, “I can’t fix you, but I can teach you.”

The fact that the foundation is so big on teaching, educating, supporting, and showing people, and the fact there’s so many fad diets. I’m in integrative medicine. Been in it for almost fifteen years. Some people go plant based when they get more holistic or keto low carb. All the anti-inflammatory diets. A lot of them I’ve recommended over the years and they’ll work for a season. They’re anti-inflammatory. You’re restrictive. You’re removing pro-inflammatory things. It’s not sustainable. The Weston Price diet, I’ll say, or just that way of eating, that’s been there forever.

Reclaiming Ancestral Habits For Future Generations

Ancestrally, that’s never ever changed. These fad diets, whether it be carnivores or whatever, it’s going to come and go. I’m not knocking those guys. Again, I’ve used those in the past, but this has stood the test of time. Eat real food. Eat nutrient-dense food. Eat foods prepared in a certain way that our ancestors released even deeper nutrition, like the organ meats, soaked in the grains and sprouting and different things. More than anything, it stood the test of time. My patients get well when they eat nutrient-rich foods. The foundation stands for that message of ancestral eating and continuing the tradition. Don’t let the knowledge die and the wisdom die from our ancestors. That’s what drew me.

When you build a strong internal terrain, your reliance on artificial intervention drops naturally.

My final question to you is, if the reader could do just one thing to improve their health. What would that be? I’d like you to pick something outside of nutrition since we just discussed that.

I’m going to cheat a little bit. I’m going to say, stand up, go outside, get into nature, walk without your phone or ear pods in, and start talking to, I say, God. Now, if that’s not where you’re at, creator or whatever. I believe God created us and we can resonate at a frequency of peace and joy when we’re dialed in with our creator. You’ll get a sense from that truth of next steps in your health journey. Whatever that may be. Being quiet, getting outside, getting in nature and moving in the sunshine. That’s what I would say. Start there.

That’s fabulous advice. Dr. Ben, thank you so much for being with us. I also want to let our readers know that you’re going to be at the conference and you’re going to be speaking. People can come and find you and meet you in person if they come to DC in October. Thank you so much for being with me.

Thank you so much for having me and for the foundation, all they do. I’m excited to be at the conference in October. Readers, get your tickets and we’ll see you there.

Thank you, Dr. Ben.

You’re welcome. Thank you.

 

About Dr. Ben Edwards

I was born and raised in Belton, Texas. I grew up watching both of my granddads practice “old school” country doctoring. They were general practitioners who might be found doing anything from delivering a baby, to amputating a leg, to sitting for an entire hour counseling a crying patient. Early on, I knew that I wanted to be that kind of doctor, one who took care of the entire family from cradle to grave. I wanted to work with the whole body and the whole family. I received my undergraduate degree from Baylor University, and later graduated from UT-Houston Medical School. Then my wife, Jamie, and I moved to Waco to complete my training at the Waco Family Practice Residency Program where I was Chief Resident. After graduation, the Lord directed us to West Texas and the Garza County Health Clinic in Post, TX. Then, I had a divine appointment that would change the course of my life. Through witnessing an “incurable” disease in my nurse practitioner actually be fully reversed, I was introduced to an area of medicine I had never been taught. It was time for me to move on to what the Lord designed me to be – a physician who treats the whole patient – mind, body, and spirit.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Ben Edwards on YouTube
• Dr. Ben Edwards on Instagram
• Veritas Wellness
• Dr. Tom Cowan
• Transcending Fear With Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo – Previous Episode
• Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness
• Nourishing Our Children

 

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