Klaus Schustereder

Full transcript: Klaus Schustereder on London Real

0:00 I am here with Klaus Schustereder, our recent graduate of the Business Accelerator. Klaus, for people that don’t know, tell us about yourself. Where are you from, what have you been doing the last ten years? Well, as I said, my name is Klaus Schustereder, and I’ve got a medical background. So I attended medical school in a university, and then was working first in contact surgery, left character tree to work in general surgery, and then switched to internal medicine.

0:37 And after a couple of years experienced in different hospitals, I went to Africa, which was an amazing experience. I was working in Northwest Central African Republic, closer to Cameroon and the Chadian border, in the bush, and that really had life-changing impacts. And I got very sick there after working there for a couple of years, which was quite stressful.

1:06 I came down many times with malaria, and it made me thinking a lot about the disease, and experiencing myself, having been sick so many times, was actually quite a helpful experience for me to understand what my patients are experiencing. So I know what it means to be the patient. Yeah. And then we went back to Switzerland then.

1:28 What’s it like to have malaria? Yeah, malaria has got lots of different faces. I mean, it can come very quickly, can come slowly. Sometimes it just starts with being irritated, and then for a few days, and having a headache, and then the fever may kick in, and then throwing up, diarrhea or muscle pain, back pain, joint pain. But it also may come within a few minutes.

1:55 And what really blew my mind about malaria was that I’ve seen many patients, and me included, actually triggering malaria by emotional stress. So at medical school I was not really, I didn’t learn anything about the mind-body connection, and the whole concept of mind-body, actually, I personally abandoned. I think, I think the separation between mind and body is a human-made thing.

2:29 It’s part of the Newtonian, Cartesian view of life we have, which basically is telling us that we are a complex molecular machine, you can fix it with a molecule, a drug, not really thinking about the inherent properties we have to heal ourselves. And malaria finally became a huge inspiration to me. So you got home after you’ve experienced that disease. Yeah. And what was this more recent part of your journey?

2:55 Yeah, well, that was 2007, my last malaria attack, in the mountains in Switzerland. And then I was working really hard to get out of it. I did a lot of research how to treat maybe malaria in different ways, because I saw that conventional treatments we have currently, and the concept basically developed by the big structures like WHO, are difficult to apply in traditional societies.

3:25 Like the Central African Republic: it is a big country, like France, but when I was living there we have about 30 doctors living and working in the country. There was a nice group of doctors in Bangui, in the capital, but most of them don’t want to live or don’t want to leave. So we have basically about 30 doctors, and I was working within the state, the government system, in the government hospital, which is not like a church hospital.

3:51 So I know what reality is, and I saw that actually simple approaches need to become more simple in order to integrate them and to make really an impact on public health. So basically current treatments are very limited because at some point they are too complex. We need to make things simple. And so I got interested in research, and how to, and what I was thinking and dreaming, basically it started with a dream, how to develop a new malaria treatment.

4:32 And then you start searching, looking, and you find. That’s what happened. But there was something else that actually is very important to say, because for me, getting out of my malaria crisis, I mean, I came back to Europe, I had 65 kilos of 83 kilos, so I was really not in good shape. And of course I didn’t like that. It was a kind of victim role: why did that happen to me, and so on.

4:56 But finally it really became an inspiration, and it started with doing lots of sports, and I really tried to understand what is exercise doing on a systemic level for human beings. It’s not just on a physical and emotional level; fundamentally, I would even say on a spiritual level. I came across a lot of very interesting information about oxidation: we oxidise, we produce lots of molecules with oxidative properties when you exercise, because we take a lot of oxygen on.

5:30 Okay, and you started getting interested in all these, basically systemic… okay, what’s happening with us when we exercise. And what brought you to go ahead and take the step and join us on the Business Accelerator? Why take that step?

5:51 Yeah, well, later on in 2010, I decided to work in psychiatry for a while, because I really wanted to learn more about the mind. So I did a couple of years of psychiatry, and then I became independent, as an independent medical doctor within the Swiss system, and I was quite busy within a very short period of time. But I felt stuck. I felt, after four years working hard and building up my practice, and everything worked very nicely, I saw, I need to go back to Africa.

6:31 I need… and I didn’t, I didn’t have the tools actually to get out of this crazy rhythm. I caught myself working every day 12 hours, and I was so caught in my routine, I thought, how do I get out of that? And when I saw the first episode of London Real, which was with Rupert Sheldrake, and because I came across this book, last book, and then I discovered other people, and I thought, that’s interesting.

7:07 I really love the episodes. Some of these episodes I listened to probably 50 times, because I love them so much. And I thought, okay, at some point, in the beginning of September, I said, tomorrow I just go to London to participate in this super focus group. So that’s what I did. I wanted to feel a bit the atmosphere, and still I wasn’t in good shape at this moment.

7:31 And then I was a bit, yeah, I wasn’t sure if I should do that. Yeah, sure, I wasn’t doing it in good shape at this point, but it was about the time: how do I get out, how can I break out of this crazy rhythm, working every week, every day, to avoid the weekends as well? You’re a very successful doctor and you’re seeing patients every day, you’re busy. Yeah, I’m busy, and that’s what I was going for, yeah. But after a few years I thought there’s something wrong, I need to do something different.

8:02 And then I participated in the course, and that was a really important thing for me, because I learned so much tools, the tools to learn to develop the business, and mindset. And there is something else, that’s the community: all those dedicated, ambitious people who want to develop their business. So that really, you know, really gave me the energy to stay up till 2 o’clock in the morning and to write my first blogs and to do the videos and so on. And that makes a huge difference, having a peer group.

8:33 Those first few weeks, what was the biggest challenge for you? What do you remember about those first few weeks? Yeah, you have to break out of my rhythm, because you… and I mean, your habits. So we’re still conditioned by our habits. And the family: when you come back home, you have the kids, and, yeah, you want to spend some time with them as well.

9:07 And then, I mean, tiring, but I really changed a lot of my habits, actually going to the gym 10 o’clock in the evening, to go back home and to work from 11:00 to 1:00. Yeah, well, then you need to get some sleep, otherwise the next day will be a mess. Well, yeah, having other people around, that makes the difference: the community, other people in the class helped a lot.

9:30 Your biggest challenge on the course, what did you struggle with? Yeah, I was, I am, you know, I didn’t even have a Facebook page. I’m not good with social media. I was kind of, yeah, is this really something I can do? And I wasn’t aware of the potential of social media. And so, yeah, just to do the first step sometimes, that’s it.

9:57 I think it’s something we see very often: just to do the first step, not to think, just do it, and then it starts rolling. Yeah, nothing particular, there’s nothing exotic about it, just to do it. And what are you gonna take away from the course for the next year, for 2017? What do you think you’re gonna implement that you learned?

10:24 I might say that the course gave me a lot of confidence that basically what I feel I should do, I can do. And what the course did, and that’s really, I’m very grateful for that.

10:50 Because what I learned from the course, it made me aware of… I was so focused on the research, you know, about malaria, and I was so focused about methodology and results produced and so on, and always had the feeling it’s not good enough because I’m not really integrated on an academic level, having a great contact with the Institute fostering Bunge. But the course really helped me to become aware of what I could learn from malaria, how it impacted me on so many different levels.

11:22 And I really had the feeling I need to write a book, I need to write about it now, and to produce more blogs, and to produce, really, to write a book, which actually I felt since many years. I felt that and didn’t listen to it, or I was too lazy. Now there is no excuse anymore. I’m so aware of it. It’s a question of awareness: when we feel something inside us, we know exactly what we need to do, but for some reason we don’t do that.

11:52 And it’s certainly, there’s so much more, because during the course I became aware. There is a lot, a question in medicine today, there’s a lot of question, and I didn’t have the balls to say it, because, you know, you stick out, and colleagues, what do the colleagues think about you, and so on. And it’s quite a tough thing to stand up to say, well, listen, I mean, I see lots of end-of-life situations and old people, and they get so much drugs, and I think, should you do that? There’s a whole movement in medicine today to de-medicalise the population.

12:31 And you feel confident speaking your mind? Yeah, not every day. Right. You’re writing a lot of great… and I really encourage you to keep writing. I would love to see that book, because I feel like you’re really coming into your own, expressing yourself. Yeah. And like you said, when you first came on the course it was very much about the science, but now I feel like it’s more about your philosophical ideas about the impact of that science.

13:01 Yeah, and I think once you get those people behind you, that’s when you see things happen. So yeah, there’s a real… Science should serve the heart, that’s the way I would put it. And I was kind of somehow, for many years actually, hijacked by the mind, still happening to me many times. Well, you know, science can be a great thing, but it can be a dangerous thing as well if it doesn’t serve the heart. I think that’s what makes the difference. Yeah, definitely.

13:35 If you hadn’t taken this course, where would you be right now? Well, where I would have been back a few months ago. The course gave me a lot of self-confidence that basically I should just listen to myself, and then if we do that, we find the tools to develop. And if someone’s thinking about taking this course, what advice would you give to them? It definitely is worth the money. I think there’s no question about that.

14:13 I think if you see the benefits you get, and the price you pay, that’s just fantastic. I don’t mind a single pound having paid. So I think you can just win. You need to invest: the more you give, the more you will receive. And, you know, it’s this thing, it’s great, it’s a great course, it’s a great course.

14:36 And lastly, talk about the classmates you met. I mean, there’s people from all around the world. What were some of the connections you made? Yeah, actually I was astonished that there were so many people interested in health, that was one thing. And I’m a great believer that actually we will make progress in understanding our healing capacities when we become less reductionist in medicine.

15:08 Incredible reduction, which definitely has helped tremendously in medicine, but we need to become much more interdisciplinary, and we need to listen to people not in medicine, because the great innovations are coming from there, like the Dutch guy, the Iceman. Yeah, he’s a great inspiration to me. Yeah, it’s a great inspiration, and he’s talking from first-hand experience.

15:33 So in the course we have had lots of people interested in nutrition and exercise, and we need to develop them. Well, that actually really supports my understanding of a systemic concept, of the systemic view of life, health and disease, and we need to listen to people not in science. Peter Sage, for instance, great inspiration for me when we talk about health.

15:59 Klaus, I’m looking forward to your next year and the big things you’re gonna do, so thank you for joining us on this program. Keep blogging, keep producing video content too, and please write that book. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. All right, thanks for having me. Thanks.