The Laura Dowling Experience

Kenneth Keavey has a PhD in chemistry and spent his early career in pharma and biotech. He now grows organic vegetables on twenty-five acres outside Galway, and he's the first to point out the irony: he was an organic chemist, and now he's an organic farmer.
In this episode he takes Laura through what's actually on the food we eat, and how little of it we're told. Around 95% of conventional fruit and veg has had some treatment or another. Citrus is dipped or sprayed after harvest in waxes containing quite toxic, in some cases carcinogenic, chemicals to stop fungus growing on the skin. Most of it is legal, disclosed somewhere, and almost never read.
Then comes the detail that stops the conversation. In the EU you're allowed 10mg of glyphosate per kilogram of wheat and 20mg per kilogram of oats — twice as much of a probable carcinogen in your porridge as in your toast. Kenneth and Darina Allen went to the Department of Agriculture to ask why. They were told that people eat less porridge than they do toast.
It isn't all alarm. Kenneth refuses to scaremonger and is as clear about what isn't known as what is. He's also quietly hopeful: his own land is full of insects and birdsong, and he has watched how fast nature comes back when you let it.

🔑 Key Points

He was an organic chemist before he was an organic farmer
His PhD is in chemistry and his first career was in pharma and biotech, which is where the caution comes from.

Around 95% of conventional fruit and veg has had some treatment
Post-harvest waxes on citrus contain toxic and in some cases carcinogenic chemicals, and some produce carries up to fifteen applications.

You're allowed twice as much glyphosate in porridge as in bread
The EU limit is 10mg per kilogram of wheat and 20mg per kilogram of oats. Kenneth and Darina Allen asked the Department of Agriculture why, and were told people eat less porridge than they do toast.

The safety data usually comes from the manufacturers
Unlike medicines, pesticide safety data is largely supplied by the companies selling the chemicals, and permitted limits have risen since the 1990s as application increased.

80% of the world's insect biomass is gone
A test anyone can run from memory: a windscreen after a night drive used to be covered in insects, and now there's virtually nothing on it.

Ireland has gone from 600 vegetable growers to about 60
The sector has hollowed out in twenty years, we import 85% of our fresh fruit and veg, and vegetables are the one thing that hasn't risen in price — which is why a 39c bag of carrots is a problem, not a bargain.

Nature comes back faster than you'd think
His farm is full of insects and birds, with nine native Irish honeybee hives that out-produce every other apiary his beekeeper runs.

📚 Resources

Green Earth Organics
Kenneth's organic farm and nationwide home delivery service in Co Galway

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson's book on the effects of blanket pesticide use, discussed in the episode

IARC (World Health Organization)
The classification of glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans

⏱️ Timestamps

01:26 — Twenty years of Green Earth Organics
02:35 — From a PhD in chemistry to organic farming
03:57 — Around 95% of conventional fruit and veg has had some treatment
06:34 — Glyphosate, the most applied chemical in history
06:59 — Twice as much allowed in your porridge as in your toast
07:17 — What the Department of Agriculture said when they asked why
10:39 — Silent Spring, and the year the birdsong stopped
12:25 — 80% of the world's insect biomass is gone
22:15 — From 600 vegetable growers to about 60
50:06 — Five summers of farm work, three sheep, and the leap
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, Prof Robert Kelly admits he lost his own balance after a TED Talk and book launch, then shares the pillars-of-life exercise and a patient's story that helped him refocus on family and friends.

What happens when a cardiologist looks at his own heart health and realises the answer isn't his diet, it's his diary?

🔑Key Points
• A busy run of a TED Talk, a book launch and Christmas left him with no space in his day for three months
• Taking one full week off showed him just how stretched he had become
• He learned a pillars-of-life exercise from another doctor's podcast: financial health, family, friends, own health and work
• Looking at his own pillars, he realised work was crowding out everything else, especially his own health

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, Siobhan Murray, psychotherapist and burnout strategist explains why she has banned the phrase self care, and shares the small daily habits, walks, box breathing and a mindfulness trick called the purple alien, that she uses instead to avoid burnout.

What if self care isn't a retreat or a spa day at all, but something you can do in the two minutes it takes to boil the kettle?

🔑Key Points
• Siobhan bans the phrase self care and replaces it with care of self, something practised daily, not as an occasional treat
• A one-off pilates class, a retreat or getting your nails done is maintenance, not care of self
• She does four ten-minute walks every day without fail, even in the rain, simply to change her physical state
• She practises box breathing, in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, while making a cup of tea

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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Laura is joined by Dr Cillian Keogh, a GP and co-founder of Dublin City Clinic, for a frank and surprisingly funny conversation about haemorrhoids — what they actually are, who gets them, and why almost nobody wants to say the word out loud.

Cillian explains that haemorrhoids are anal cushions that swell under increased pelvic pressure, and goes through who is most at risk: pregnancy, obesity, chronic coughs, straining, long hours sitting and heavy lifting in the gym. He also describes a newer group he sees far more of now, people staying on the toilet much longer than they need to because their phone is in their hand.

From there, he walks the treatment ladder. Creams like Anusol and Preparation H settle a flare-up but, in his words, only paper over it. At the far end sits the haemorrhoidectomy, a hospital operation with weeks of recovery — the thing he says, with his GP hat on, you want to avoid. In between is the electrotherapy his clinic offers, where a small current constricts the blood vessel feeding the haemorrhoid so it shrinks, with no real downtime.

Underneath it all is why the episode matters. Haemorrhoids are, as Cillian puts it, the last taboo of healthcare, and people live with them for years rather than mention them. He also makes the case, carefully, that bleeding is worth having looked at rather than assumed.

🔑 Key Points

Haemorrhoids are not a growth, they are cushions under pressure
Cillian describes them as anal cushions that become engorged and swollen when pelvic pressure rises, which is where the bleeding comes from.

Almost everything that causes them works the same way
Pregnancy, obesity, chronic coughs, straining, long hours driving and heavy lifting in the gym all raise pelvic pressure.

Phones on the toilet are a genuinely new risk factor
Cillian sees a group he did not see ten years ago, people sitting far longer than they need to because they are still reading the headlines or scrolling.

They can sit there silently for years
Internal haemorrhoids often go unnoticed until a flare-up, while thrombosed ones stay permanently outside, lose their blood flow and come close to a medical emergency.

Creams and suppositories only paper over the problem
Anusol, Preparation H and the prescription versions settle a flare-up without treating the cause, and once you have had them the threshold for getting them again drops.

The operation is the thing worth avoiding
A haemorrhoidectomy means a general anaesthetic, a hospital stay and weeks lying on your front, which is exactly why Cillian would rather catch it earlier.

Electrotherapy sits in the gap between creams and surgery
A small electric current constricts the blood vessel feeding the haemorrhoid so the tissue shrinks over a few weeks, and you go back to work the same day.

The real barrier is embarrassment, not treatment
Cillian calls it the last taboo of healthcare, because people cannot imagine raising it without being met with an eye roll.

📚 Resources

Dublin City Clinic
Dr Cillian Keogh's clinic in Dublin 2, where the electrotherapy is carried out

eXroid
The non-surgical electrotherapy treatment discussed throughout the episode

BowelScreen
Ireland's national bowel screening programme

⏱️ Timestamps

04:19 — What a haemorrhoid actually is
04:58 — Who is most at risk
05:12 — The newest risk group: phones on the toilet
08:33 — Anusol, Preparation H and the limits of creams
09:19 — Where electrotherapy sits on the treatment ladder
10:05 — The haemorrhoidectomy, and why you want to avoid it
11:40 — “The last taboo of healthcare”
17:54 — What applying an electric current actually does
24:06 — Bleeding, bowel cancer and when to get checked
29:01 — The privilege of being let into people's lives
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this episode, former Connacht rugby player Fergus Farrell tells Laura what happened after he lifted a metal bench in his own yard in October 2018 — and severed his spinal cord by ninety per cent.

He was paralysed from the ribcage down and told he had a five per cent chance of walking again, on the condition he moved within seventy-two hours. He didn’t move. Instead he lay in a bed for twenty-one days and built a picture in his head: a circuit board for his brain, a light switch for his big right toe, and a wire he had to run between them. At half two in the morning on day twenty-one, the toe flickered. When the doctor came round, he watched it move three times before he’d call it anything other than a spasm.

Fergus is candid about what recovery costs — pain around the clock, no balance, no feeling from his feet to his waist, and the hidden disability nobody sees in a big man walking down the street. He talks about the businesses he lost, the family who carried it, the guilt of being one who got back on his feet, and why he now calls the accident the best thing that happened to him.

In August he set out from Brooklyn Bridge to walk 4,500 kilometres to Santa Monica Pier for Spinal Injuries Ireland — six million steps, and each one as important as the next.

🔑 Key Points

The injury came from lifting, not impact
He carried a 60–80kg bench about fifteen metres, dropped it, took a breath and lifted it again. The second lift ruptured a disc into his spinal column and severed the cord by 90%.

The five per cent came with a condition
A 5% chance of walking again if he moved within 72 hours. He didn’t. The toe moved on day twenty-one.

Visualisation was a tool he already had
He’d used it to win selection and to build his business. In hospital he made it concrete: a circuit board as his brain, a switch as his toe, and the work of wiring them together.

The doctor called it a spasm — twice
Dr Cullen made him move it three times before saying “that’s most unexpected, Fergus.”

Not every disability is visible
He walks, so people assume he’s fine. Zero balance, no feeling from his feet to his waist, constant pain on 3,000mg of gabapentin a day.

The people around an injury carry it too
His then-wife finished the house, worked and raised three young children. “The person that’s left behind injured affects so many different people.”

He never visualised himself walking
He started with the smallest thing he could actually see: one toe, with the blanket off. Setting the finish line at walking would only have set him up to fail.

The walk is the same method at scale
Brooklyn Bridge to Santa Monica Pier, 4,500km, six million steps, 75 days as a target rather than a deadline.

📚 Resources

Fergus Walks
Fergus’s walk across America for Spinal Injuries Ireland

Spinal Injuries Ireland
The only Irish organisation dedicated solely to supporting people living with a spinal cord injury and their families

Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation
Supporting the American leg of the walk

National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dún Laoghaire
Where Fergus did his spinal rehabilitation

Fergus Farrell on Instagram
Following the walk day by day

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
02:10 — Lifting a metal bench in his own yard
05:35 — The disability nobody can see
06:44 — Pain 24/7, and refusing it attention
08:46 — A five per cent chance, and the seventy-two hours
10:00 — The circuit board, the switch and the wire
12:04 — Day twenty-one, half two in the morning
13:11 — Dr Cullen: “these could be involuntary spasms”
17:50 — The guilt of getting back on his feet
19:42 — What it did to his family
21:53 — Losing the businesses
25:09 — Walking across America
30:56 — “Every day is a new day to improve”
32:42 — Advice for young people, and the meaning of life
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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