MYTH: The Medical Medium

Emily: 0:00

Welcome to wellness. Miss the podcast where we take a hard look at the nutrition and wellness industry through a no bullshit lens. My name is, and I'm an anti-intuitive eating ed diet and yoga.

Vanessa: 0:13

And my name's Vanessa. I am also a registered dietician and I specialize in hormone. Emily. And I met back in college when we were studying to be dieticians and we basically never left each other's side. Since the moment we met and post grad, we haven't really left each other's side either we live across the country from each other, but that hasn't stopped us from being business partners and talking almost every minute of every day.

Emily: 0:41

This is all very true. And Vanessa and I decided that we wanted share some of these conversations with everyone. So with that, let's get into this week's welcome to this week's episode of Wellness Myths, where we are going to talk all about the medical medium. And this is something that I feel like everyone has definitely heard of. Like the last couple things we did were maybe a little more obscure than others, but this has been like so mainstream. I guarantee you, your mom, your grandma, everybody knows about the medical medium.

Vanessa: 1:13

Yeah, and we've talked about the medical medium a little bit before when we talked about celery juice. I think that was one of our very first episodes. And if you are unaware of the medical medium, you've probably heard of celery juice, and that's where that came from. So we dove into celery juice in that episode. But we didn't, you know, dive too much into the medical medium himself, and that's something that we've gotten some requests about. So we're gonna talk all about the medical medium and who that is and how he heals people.

Emily: 1:46

And Vanessa just did air quotes in case anyone couldn't hear that through the audio. And the celery juice episode was really one of the first ones we did, which means it's like a year and almost two years old actually. Because we started this podcast like almost two years ago. So yeah, I mean, it was a while ago. So many of you probably haven't even heard that one. You definitely need to go back and listen to it because we're not gonna like really dive into celery juice today. We've done that, but I can't wait to talk about this guy because he's nuts.

Vanessa: 2:16

Yeah. Well, and I also want to add The like caveat here that if you are someone who drinks, and we talk about this in the celery juice episode, but you might be thinking like, Oh, we're saying that celery juice is bad and we're definitely not saying that. We just want you to have the full story. And a lot of what like. A lot of the protocols that the medical medium probably prescribes people probably feel good on. He has a lot of success stories, but as always, we just worry about you know, the, the trouble of people who are not who are not licensed giving medical advice.

Emily: 2:55

It's very scary. Totally. And the fact that regardless if those things are providing benefits to people, like some of the protocols that he says they don't, they're not doing what he says they're doing. So it's still like regardless, a lie and problematic by, on his part.

Vanessa: 3:12

So let's get into it a little bit. Emily, can you tell us who the medical medium is?

Emily: 3:17

Yes, so his name is Anthony William, and he claims that he was born with the unique ability to converse with an angel or. Ghost or something called the spirit of compassion, and this person provides Anthony with extraordinarily advanced healing medical information that's far ahead of its time that's basically pulled right from his website. You might be wondering like what training he has. No, it's literally just this talking to ghost thing. It's just the medium thing. Like it's in his name. I think people literally don't know that. Like he means medium. Like he is medium. So when you see like random information, it's like that's, that's it.

Vanessa: 4:00

and to be honest, I think when I first heard of him, you kind of like latch onto the medical part of it, and I did not. I definitely did not like think, Oh, this person is a medium. I thought, Oh, this person must be a medical professional in some way.

Emily: 4:15

A hundred percent. I mean, it literally says medical in his little name. He had just made his own credential. He's the, a medical medium. Somehow he is the expert on everything. Like he's got books out about thyroid health. He has books about liver health. He knows everything and. Research, or rather, the indication he has for this knowledge is the spirit of compassion. And his training is completely nonexistent. There's a disclaimer on his website that states he's not a healthcare provider like that is not who, what he's trying to do, but at the same time he's trying to provide healthcare. So it's very confusing.

Vanessa: 4:53

He has eight books. Eight,

Emily: 4:56

Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, how it's, It's insane, but I mean, when you're just kinda like pulling stuff out of thin air, it must be pretty easy to come up with them.

Vanessa: 5:06

Yeah. Well, and he has a lot of backing by. Big names. So if you go on his website, he has all of these testimonials and it's from people like Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, Sylvester Stallone we have Hillary Swank on here, Tony Robbins, Pharrell Williams. There is literally so many big names. Like he has quotes from them, you know, talking about how much he did for them. Of course our, our best friend, Gwyneth Petro is on there talking about how great he is. And I think that this is something really dangerous too. And we see this all the time where celebrities endorse someone. Or, you know, they maybe have their own comments about health things. Quick reminder, they are celebrities. They might be actors, singers. Most of them are definitely not in the medical field and definitely don't have any idea like science background. Don't actually know what's going on here.

Emily: 6:16

Totally. It's like they're basically like influencers with the amount of knowledge they have. And I just, I had in my notes two of his reviews because I'm like, Everybody has to hear this. The Gwyneth Ptro one, when I read it was like, Ooh, this sounds familiar. I think that we had actually read this one before in another episode, but I'll do it again because it's really good. She says, While there is most definitely an element of other worldly mystery to the work, he. Much of what Anthony Williams shines a spotlight on, particularly around autoimmune disease, feels inherently right and true. What's better is that the protocols he recommends are natural, accessible, and easy to do. But the, the problem that I have with this is like, it feels inherently right and true. Like that is just so bizarre. That's not usually how we look at medical information. We don't really go with what feels inherently right or true. And when we do, we end up with things like fat phobia or we end up with things like you know, I think we've talked about. Phenomenon before where people thought washing your hands was like stupid. And like a lot of doctors latched onto that, and that's a whole other story, but they're like, Oh, you don't need to do that. Like, it's a good thing to like carry the blood of other people on your hands. Like it just feels inherently right and true. And it's like, no, like that's, that's just not like a way that we find out medical information. And the other one you, you actually miss Adam Sandler was one of his people that really endorse him. And his review just cracked me up. It was like Anthony William has been there for my wife at all times to make sure she is as healthy as she could possibly be. I will always thank him and I love him for that. It was just bizarre and the way they'd put it to like Adam Sandler, star of hustle grownups, and the wedding singer, as if like people don't know like what Adam Sandler has done for us.

Vanessa: 8:02

Well, and the interesting thing about this too, so with all of these reviews, I'm really interested to see like, what kind of protocols was he giving these people? Cause again if we're talking about situations where people don't have like any major medical issues, and maybe he puts them on some protocol such as drinking celery juice every morning, and we talked about this in the celery juice episode, if you're substituting that for maybe a heavier breakfast or you weren't hydrating enough, yeah, you're probably going to feel really good after doing that. It's not that I doubt that some protocols, like people probably feel good on, but like Emily mentioned before, they're not necessarily doing what he's saying they're doing.

Emily: 8:50

Right, exactly. Like it's, it's not the benefit that he thinks they're providing. And because there's literally no information, like he claims himself, he's ahead of the times with what he knows. And the other problem that I had with the Gwyneth P one was like, they're accessible and easy to do. Like a lot of these protocols are ins. Sane. Like, no, like they, he basically asked you to eat like barely any fat. Protein doesn't seem like a big concern here, which I think I've said a lot. It's like sometimes for some reason, healthism and wellness culture really forget about macronutrients in general, like, especially protein. Like they're just so worried about fruits and vegetables. It's like, you gotta think about the protein too.

Vanessa: 9:27

Mm-hmm.

Emily: 9:28

And he's really concerned with you know, added sugars or oils is a big no. I mean, there are so many things that are on the no list of food that he claims is feeding disease and it's. Really baseless, and not to mention the risk for disordered eating when you're vilifying these foods like this, but it's just, it's not accessible. Like you can't go out to dinner the way that he is asking you to eat. And it's just, it's, it's really absurd and not easy.

Vanessa: 10:02

And I mean people really love him. I was just perusing around podcasts and he has his own podcast, but there is also a podcast that's just medical medium fans,

Emily: 10:15

Oh,

Vanessa: 10:16

someone has taken it upon themselves to just make a podcast about like how much they love Anthony Williams

Emily: 10:24

you know, there's a lot of people. That really like Anthony Williams and his protocols. And are you thinking of the person that I'm thinking of? Vanessa?

Vanessa: 10:36

Oh, I think so.

Emily: 10:39

Yeah.

Vanessa: 10:39

your life?

Emily: 10:40

Yeah. Someone in my life that's not in my life anymore. But this person was actually the first way I found out about him. And the thing is there's this big army of people that apply the information from Medical Medium and make it like their own practice as well. Again, like they're not dieticians obviously. It's just like not happening. You know, there's a lot of weird stuff that these people are talking about. And these medical medium practitioners, They might call themselves. I don't know what the exact proper word is, but you know, one of the things that the medical medium claims is that MSG is very bad for you. That it's a food additive that can cause brain inflammation and swelling. It can create confusion and anxiety. It can lead to micro strokes, and that MSG is gonna injure the central nervous system. Like once again, this is all information he's getting from the spirit of compassion. We don't have any information about that. And you know, like just on this particular infographic, they're talking about how there's like soy sauce and stock and broth and like all of these different things that have MSG in it. And it's like, not only did we find out that MSG is not any more harmful to human health and other salts the fact that it's just that that description, like all of that is misinformation. It's not true. So it's very scary to think that people could see that and be like, Oh my God, I'm so afraid of all these foods now, when there's really no reason to be afraid of them. There's no reason to be afraid of any food, but especially when it's based on misinformation and also it's generalized advice, which as we know always means it's bullshit.

Vanessa: 12:25

And I think what really gets me with him outside of that is, so something I'm looking at right now is he, so he has, you know, all of these different therapies and different like juices for different things and he has a juice on here. That is called the obsessive thoughts shifter.

Emily: 12:45

Oh, Jesus Christ. He's really into this like emotional connection with

Vanessa: 12:49

yes and okay, don't get me wrong, like this juice, it would be like a, you know, nutrient dense juice to drink, but promising people that it's going to cure the, their obsessive thoughts. Just seems harmful to me because if someone's having obsessive thoughts, they need to go to therapy. And yeah, maybe they, you know, can work on their diet and how that, you know, might be able to crack some anxiety too. But it's, there's more than one thing that needs to happen here. And just drinking juice is not going to cure your obsessive thoughts. This juice is one radish, one eighth cup of sage, half to one apple, and One stock celery.

Emily: 13:38

Wait, one eighth cup of sage, that's gonna produce like a little drop of juice. How's that even gonna work?

Vanessa: 13:46

I. don't know. It's about eight leaves of sage they have on here, and this is this is what he says about it. So try this shot one. You're trying to break repeated, painful thought patterns resulting from a difficult situation or hardship. You experience chronic O C D or you're going through a relapse or heightening of OCD symptoms. The brain shot covers all forms and varieties of OC. A song you don't want to hear anymore keeps playing in your head. Repetitive thoughts are disturbing. You continue to replay, you're hearing voices in your head or experiencing thoughts that are upsetting, unproductive, and or highly questionable, and maybe telling you to do things that aren't good or smart, like so your schizophrenic, and you should just drink juice. Because I don't know like what that definition, that last one that I read sounded like to you, but to me it sounded like schizophrenia.

Emily: 14:44

Holy shit.

Vanessa: 14:45

And the last one is a memory of a past experience keeps arising in your mind and it's not helpful to keep thinking about it. So ptsd. So he's saying that this little juice. Is for you if you're having ptsd, schizophrenia or ocd.

Emily: 15:02

What kills me the most about this is that all of these protocols are like, like, you know, if they medical medium, medical medium practitioners, if they list like, they're like butter, lettuce will cure your anxiety, will help you remove unhelpful relationships. They list like 800. Side effects or like benefits of each food and they're all over the map, like it's so wild. Like this will like cure your life. It's just so weird how there's like 18 different benefits listed under everything, but it's like, why not? I guess when they're just making it up. So it's like why not put all of those things really.

Vanessa: 15:44

And he can say all of this stuff too, because he has, you know, a like disclaimer underneath literally everything that again says, you know, the information is not intended to be a substitute for professional health or medical advice or treatment, nor should it be relied upon for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of any health consideration He mentions. He is not a licensed medical doctor or nor does he have any formally licensed healthcare practitioner or provider. Like, he literally like basically says he's an unreliable source and that's why he gets away with this. But you know that people, they see big names like Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, Gwyneth Ptro, Adam Sandler that are saying, He's done so much for me and they're not looking at those disclaimers.

Emily: 16:36

And there's some people too who like, have actually been like really affected by him. And there was a case of a woman who she was scanned. The medical medium on a TV program, and she was found to be completely healthy by spirit, but then she was diagnosed with a serious blood disease that the medical medium and spirit were not able to detect. And this person was like, Oh, I'm fine because like Anthony Williams scanned me. And so there's definitely been some pushback with that, but the fact that he continuously claims I'm not a health provider. You know, there's, there's a couple things also that I think will just round out like your knowledge of him. Basically he believes that the Epstein Bar virus is responsible for so many ailments like cancer. He claims there is zero genetic component to cancer, despite, we have a lot of scientific evidence To the contrary of that, I mean, you can literally be tested for a gene for breast cancer. He claims to be the originator of lemon juice in the water in the morning, like, which I didn't really

Vanessa: 17:35

How do you even claim that?

Emily: 17:37

Yeah, I know. Talk about white guys. Dude, Jesus. Then the celery juice fad, obviously that's from him. He can, he can take claim for that for sure. But he has also, like, he claims. He has also improperly solicited positive Amazon reviews for his books. He has asked like, Oh, okay, I'll, I'll put you in this raffle if you give me a good review on my book. There's been a lot of pushback from him and he claims that like the ability that he has to know this information, we've talked about spirit, his connection to the spirit of compassion, but he says it's a voice outside of his head and it's next to his right. And that he can scan bodies to diagnose all blockages, infections, trouble areas, past problems, and even sole fractures. And that this assists in his claimed ability to diagnose other people's of various illnesses as well as offer treatment, which is literally providing healthcare. And. In addition, he talks about angels. He believes in the existence of 12 different angels. He encourages his followers to invoke the names of specific angels to ask for help in various circumstances. And I wanna give this disclaimer too, like I have an energy work provider. I see this person regularly. I get energy work done by this person and I really enjoy a lot of this, these kinds of narratives, but not mixed in with medical advice. Like that's the problem. Like it's not like you couldn't be like, Oh, like this is interesting or, you know, whatever. I believe in energy. Sure. But like, why is that impacting healthcare?

Vanessa: 19:08

Well, and I think too is that, I mean, energy healing truly is complimentary care. It's, it has never been intended to be your primary care. It should complimentary to, you know, whatever other care you are getting or have. the thing too. And I mean, are you not just like getting like mega church pastor vibes from him?

Emily: 19:36

Yes, honestly, yes. It's like he's like one of those people that's like, He's so far left. He turned right, like he just, it just feels like this weird cult following and like energy in general, and this is like a whole separate conversation, but even my energy work provider You know, she lost a lot of her spiritual community over the pandemic because they won't get vaccinated. They don't believe that Covid is real. They believe in 5g, they believe in chem trails, like all of this absolutely crazy shit. That's really problematic because these people just really take a hard veer out of reality sometimes. But there is a way to, that this can be done as a complimentary situation where you're still accessing all your other parts of healthcare. And what cracks me up the most is that these people think they're so holistic, right? Like, they're like, I'm a holistic provider, and blah, blah. It's like, dude, no. Like, you're not looking at all the different aspects of everybody's being like, or if you are, you're using all this faulty information. You're like, I care about emotions eve, butter, lettuce, it'll cure you.

Vanessa: 20:38

It just, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, and I, I hate that too, that it becomes something where sometimes people like want you, you can be one thing or the other. Like you're someone who believes in energy and like energy healing or you're someone that's with the medical community and it's like, there is definitely. Crossover where we can live with all of the medicine. And I think that's the biggest issue with medicine. Like that's our biggest issue with modern medicine is that like we like have these like two sides and there's very few people that are willing to take from each of them. They wanna be like, either it's modern medicine or nothing. Or you know, we hate modern medicine.

Emily: 21:22

Yeah. And I think like it goes back to our Covid episode when we were talking about, we're like, Dude, you can still do things to help your immune system even if you're taking the vaccine too. Like those are all really important things. it's

Vanessa: 21:35

a like one or the other. We always want you to still be supporting your immunities because we know like doing one, like it's not enough. You can't just do one thing and think that,

Emily: 21:47

Totally,

Vanessa: 21:47

that's enough.

Emily: 21:49

totally. You're trying to get all of your. Bases covered and his last little pieces of advice from them that if you're not convinced by now that he has no idea what's going on, this will help you. He contends that dairy bogs down the liver. He thinks eggs feed viral explosions. He thinks corn is no longer nutritious because of GMOs. He thinks wheat feeds pathogens in the body. He thinks canola oil destroys the lining of the stomach, the veins, and the heart, and that food additives described or labeled as natural flavors are actually a neurotoxin called msg, which destroyed brain and nerve cells over. So it's like he's literally even claimed that natural flavors equals msg. It's not true. Like that's literally, it's very factually false. Like it is not true chemically It is so concerning. So he's absolutely bullshit. One kind of thing that I have to say about him is that he has a supplement page on his website. He has a lot of brands that Vanessa and I recommend to clients all the time. And so when I'm looking at that, I'm like, Okay, yeah, like this, this is kind of making sense, right? But the problem is he's still like telling everybody you need to take like 18 of these. And he's making money off of all of those, like they're Amazon storefront links. If anyone's ever been influenced by anything in their lives, you know what that is? You're clicking the link from his webpage and then he's getting a part of. Money that he's making from that part of the profit. And that's obviously, that makes sense. Hold on. I don't wanna say that one second. So I didn't hate like absolutely everything from that section. I felt like maybe there was like, okay, peer encapsulations, magnesium, Like that sounds good. And the last thing that I wanted to say, In the recipe section. There's so much cashew, so much chickpea and so much potato. Like that's just like, like so much. I'd be like, open something. And I, because mostly everything's pretty much vegan. I don't think he like ever recommends animal products. And so I was like, Wow, okay. Like, what's this? Oh my god. Cashew, Oh my god, potato. Like every single thing. And vegans eat a lot of cashew shirt. Like I can attest to that, but Wow. And the other thing too was like some recipe. Are like, This is free of sugar and since sugar kills you, this is good. And then other recipes have coconut sugar in them. And I'm like, Okay, like so, And I know there's different, he thinks there's different like protocols for different people and different levels of healing, blah, blah. But I'm like, how can, in one recipe, it's like you're directly contradicting yourself, which is really another red flag.

Vanessa: 24:21

Well, and I think, you know, something to remember here too is you can, you know, if you are curious about the medical medium, you could definitely peruse his site. Some of his juices look like they probably taste good, like the one that he's claiming is going to help with obsessive thoughts. That sounds kind of good to me. But it.

Emily: 24:41

I knew you like that juice?

Vanessa: 24:43

Yeah, go ahead. Try the recipe. But just with the knowledge that if you are someone who has PTSD or you're schizophrenic or you are having intrusive thoughts, drinking a juice is not going to cure that. And. Having a claim out there that says it could to me is causing harm. I know he can say that it's not directly cuz he has all of his disclaimers and things like that, but at the end of the day, you are kind of tricking people. And to me that's, that's causing harm.

Emily: 25:17

A hundred percent. And we see this all the time in the nutrition world which I guess technically, like he really is in the nutrition world, I don't know. But he we see this all the time with people that aren't licensed healthcare providers and it's. It's really concerning. And even through his website, he does say like, Oh, you should seek out a licensed healthcare provider about this. And it's like, Okay. Like, But you are not one. But you're telling me it's, it's just, it's super confusing and I don't think any civilian would be able to figure this out because it's even challenging for us to look at as providers who are licensed and it's, we were duped by him at first too. We're like, Oh, is this a doctor? Like who?

Vanessa: 25:58

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I would just assume that he is a doctor and how many people actually read disclaimers, You know, like the things in tiny printing at the bottom of the website, nobody reads that

Emily: 26:11

A hundred percent. They're just seeing Gwyneth Paltro and Adam Sandler's words like in lights on the top, talking about how much love they have for him.

Vanessa: 26:20

So, I mean, in summary, obviously it's a no for us. It's not backed by any, any kind of science. It's, you know, it's fine again if you wanna try recipes or things like that. And I think. You're probably wondering, Okay, but then how are the, there all these success stories? And my answer for that is that like, these are probably people who were not seriously ill in any way. Were just like looking for some more wellness in their life. And they started like eating more nutrients and they felt better. And I mean,

Emily: 26:53

hundred percent. And, and the,

Vanessa: 26:55

honestly think that's it.

Emily: 26:57

and the placebo effect is so real, especially if it's intention behind thought, like when you're drinking that juice. And if you're thinking like, Okay, I'm calm. You know, especially with O C D, like if you are having the way to like, talk to yourself and take yourself down from those symptoms you know, that's, that's huge. And if you're mindfully sitting there drinking the juice, concentrating on things like who's to say that, that wouldn't promote a feeling of wellbeing in everybody. So it's just one of those things where it's easy to kind of feel the short term result, but even if like you did get a short term result and it's great, it doesn't mean that. Potential negative side effects aren't still there and that those really far outweigh the benefits that you might be receiving from that. And those are also things that we won't see until a while from now, right? Or people aren't gonna say like, Well, I developed disordered eating from this, because that's not something that people like to talk about anyways. Much less like blame on someone or you know, can find. Sort of the root of the issue of these things anyways. But I can guarantee you, and this is a studied effect, that following advice like that and following very strict protocols, not only has no scientific backing, but it does have scientific backing when it comes to the negative potentials with these restrictive protocols that he is. That he is prescribing to many people.

Vanessa: 28:18

And do we even know, is he even like trained in reiki or anything like that? Like does this guy literally have zero training at all?

Emily: 28:27

Wait. Also, let's say, can you re-say that and say energy work? Just cuz Reiki got like, there's like a big huge, like the guy's like a big sexual predator and stuff now. So just say re-say it, but say energy work.

Vanessa: 28:39

Do we know if he is even trained in any kind of energy healing at all?

Emily: 28:47

I would imagine that he would put that on his website. But he doesn't, he, the about section is like so sparse. Like that thing that I little blurb I read at the beginning, and that's, that's really all we've got. So I think he's trying to fly a bit under the radar with that. So he's been on like a million TV shows. I don't know. That counts. Maybe. I'm not sure. I mean, he's basically like the a Doctor Oz, which we all know how that's going. So I actually, I think it's going pretty poorly for him. I think he, he just lost his race today, actually. Happy day after election. But yeah, it's, we really gotta be careful about these people because it can run really rampant. And everyone I ask about celery juice, I'm like, you know about this? And they're like, Oh yeah, they have no idea that it came from him. So, It's like nobody has any idea what's going on, and his ideologies are becoming very pervasive. I've seen definite uptick in hate on canola oil and all of these things, especially in the vegan community in the past couple of years. So it's, it's getting out there and we're here to provide the alternative message that.

Vanessa: 29:57

Yeah, I mean some of his recipes too, like you mentioned, like he has like a carrot hot dog on here and. You had mentioned that he doesn't seem to pay much attention to protein, so, and I'm looking at the recipe thinking like, obviously he doesn't pay a lot of attention to like blood sugar management either because he just has like a gluten-free white bun with a carrot inside it and he's saying that's like a great meal.

Emily: 30:24

Oh my God. Yeah. No carrot hotdogs. That's my final piece of advice, everyone, is that carrot hotdogs are a total, no other vegan people try to pass those off to, and I'm like, No, today's actually, I've been vegan for nine years and I can say I've never, I know. Isn't that fun? I can say I've never once enjoyed a carrot hotdog, and I've never made it on myself, and I don't advise anyone else to do it. So there's my final piece of advice for y'all in this recipe. No carrot, hotdogs and my experience. And my credential for that is being vegan for nine years.

Vanessa: 30:59

I love it. So if you have any more questions about the medical medium for us, let us know. Or if you have any experience with the Medical Medium protocols, please let us know. We wanna hear about how it went for you, good, bad, and ugly. And with that, we will talk to you next week.