Dr. Ken Walker and Diana MacKay

Common Sense Health with a 101 year old doctor with Dr. Ken Walker and Diana MacKay

Aired on: Apr 18, 2025

Show Notes

Common sense, simple approaches will be discussed to help us on our paths towards optimal wellness and to help avoid chronic diseases.

About Dr. Walker

 Dr. Ken Walker (who writes under the pseudonym of Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD) is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million.

His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of at least ten books books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and his latest book, “90+ How I Got There!”.  Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients

Diana Gifford Jones

Diana MacKay (who writes in collaboration with her father, under the pen name Diana Gifford-Jones has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy  She served as a special advisor with the aga Khan University in Karachi  (a city I used to work in) and also worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the world Bank, including health policy  and economics, nutrition and population health.  For a decade, she managed health related executive networks at the conference Board of Canada including the roundtable on Socio Economic determinant of health, the centre for chronic disease prevention and Management, the Canadian centre for environmental health and the centre for health system design and management. She is the author of No Nonsense Health Naturally published in 2019.

Common Sense health with a 101 year old doctor with Dr. Ken Walker and Diana MacKay

(AKA Dr. W Gifford-James, MD and Diana Gifford-Jones)

Website: www.docgiff.com

www.Giffsown.ca

His journey

  • He had interviewed Dr. Linus Pauling perked Dr. Walker’s interest in natural supplements
  • In 1974, he had a heart attack, and a triple bypass.
  • Rather than taking the statin his doctor offered him, he took vitamin C and lysine
  • He believes statin drugs are dangerous.
    • He describes an astronaut in Houston who did not recognize his family after he was prescribed a statin
    • They could not find the etiology, but the astronaut’s symptoms disappeared after stopping  his statin.

Vitamin C

  • He takes 10,000 mg vitamin Cdaily
  • Recommended doses are 90 mg it prevent scurvy .  Rather, he recommends thousands of grams per day
    • Split the doses to different times as vitamin C is water soluble and is peed out
    • Vitamin C makes the bowels looser and can be used for constipation.
  • He had recommended vitamin c and lysine for heart health
  • He believes that vitamin C will help prevent type II diabetes
    • Diabetes has many complications and cost a lot
  • Vitamin C helps with immunity, with sepsis (Dr. Thomas Levy)
  • Dr. Richard Cheng was stuck in Wuhan during the covid outbreak.  He successfully treated covid patients
  • Note, CEO of YouTube reported YouTube was going to censor information on vitamin C and curcumin
  • The genetic SNP for G6PD, he recommends being more cautious

Approach to Heart Disease

  • Vitamin C and lysine
  • Lysine provides structure to the cardio vascular system decreasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and seizures
    • He used to use lysine to clear up infections

Health in Uganda

  • Previously Uganda had been grappling with infectious diseases such as HIV (which wiped out an entire generation 20 – 30 years ago)
  • Rates of chronic diseases are increasing
  • There are sky rocketing rates of diabetes II, obesity, kidney disease, and skckle cell anemia
  • The youth don’t know about these diseases
  • Contributing to this increase in chronic diseases are life style changes
    • They used to work on crops, but now have a sedentarylifesyle
    • Diet too high a glycemic index, insufficient fiber

Viruses

  • Covid has reactivated many dormant viruses
  • He used lysine to clear up infections
  • Zinc also helps by stopping virus replication
    • It needs quercetin of hydroxychloroquine to bring the zinc into the cell

Covid

  • Vitamin C could have saved many
  • Vitamin D
    • Studies show people who had difficulties with covid had lower Vitamin D levels
  • Magnesium
  • Zinc

Fats

  • Eskimos ate a lot of fat, yet are healthydue to eating a lot of omega 3 fatty acids
  • Diana and Dr. Gifford-Jones ate a lot of fish, and noticed that his omega 3 ratio was not good
    • Current quality of fish is not as good
    • Certified naturals omega 3 x
  • There is a problem absorbing fish oil as our bodies have a lot of water

Kidneys

  • He states we are ruining our kidneys by “taking a lot of junk”
  • Medications, he believes, can harm the kidneys
  • Kidney disease is a silent disease
  • By the time laboratory values show a problem, a large part of the kidneys has been destroyed

Children Health

  • Obesity
    • Poor quality food, not getting exercise
    • This occurs over all economic statuses
  • High incidence of fatty liver disease

Bone and muscle health

  • He states we can lose 10 % of our bones per year
  • He’s observed that with weak muscles, people can’t get off the toilet
    • This happens gradually
  • He does exercises
    • For example pressing hands together, press for ten seconds and repeat to build up his biceps
    • leg muscles.
      • Get down and up off the floor
      • Stairs
  • Calcium is important
    • Source is important
  • Vitamin K2 is important to make sure the calcium goes into the bone and not the arteries

Sugar belly

  • Most people take 15 teaspoons of sucrose/ glucose per day
  • He believes the number of calories are important

Pain

  • Pain medications have side effects
  • Massage can help

His approach

  • Try something natural first
  • It is good to start doing this early
  • Buy a bathroom scale to track weight

Attitude

  • Is important to do little things every day to protect one’s autonomy

Supplements

  • Certified Naturals Supplements
    • Use high quality ingredients with quality control
    • Omega 3 x
    • Has patented predigested element
    • Converts triglycerides to monoglycerides
  • www.Giffsown.ca
    • cardiovibe
      • Dr. walker devised this cardio supplement
      • Vitamin C, lysine, proline, quercetin, co enzyme Q 10, magnesium