Does an authentic video show naturopath Barbara O'Neill recommending oxygen pills for tiredness, as a video on Facebook claims? No, that's not true: This is not an authentic video of O'Neill, but one that appears dubbed. Lead Stories traced the clip shared on Facebook to the original video shared on YouTube. O'Neill did not make the statements expressed in the audio portion of the video on Facebook. Rather, she was discussing the role of salt in the human body. Furthermore, O'Neill speaks with an Australian accent, and the narration of the clip on Facebook appears to be American, indicating that the latter was dubbed.
The claim originated in a video shared to Facebook on April 24, 2024, (archived here) with a text overlay that reads, "Dr. Barbara O'Neill was silenced for saying this publicly 😳." A caption with the video read:
Dr Barbara O'Neill is silenced by saying this publicly! #healthylife #healthychoices #helthytips #fypシ゚viralシ #barbaraoneill
Below is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Apr 30 18:30:41 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories has debunked a number of O'Neill's claims and claims falsely attributed to her. In nearly every video, she is heard speaking with an Australian accent. (For examples, see here, here, here and here.) In the video above, however, the voice purporting to be O'Neill appears to be dubbed, as her lip movements do not match the words that she is speaking. Furthermore, O'Neill is speaking with what appears to be an American accent to state the following:
If you are sick, drink. If you are always tired, take oxygen pills. If you have acne filled skin, eat more beef. If your joints always hurt eat a spoonful of turmeric powder. But if all this sounds like you, it may actually be a sign that your body organs are damaged and not functioning properly. Did you know that around 3,000 to 5 million people worldwide suffer from nutritional deficiencies without even realizing it?
Support me by pressing follow button.
Previous reporting by Lead Stories revealed that Living Springs Retreat (archived here) had posted many of O'Neill's widely shared clips to the group's YouTube channel (archived here). This Alabama-based retreat center describes itself (archived here) as a "non-profit organization that strives to meet the personal and health needs of others."
To source the original video, Lead Stories searched through Living Springs Resorts videos and narrowed these down to each clip that featured O'Neill in the same outfit. In doing so, we found that the original video was posted on June 26, 2022 (archived here), and was titled "Salt & Water - Barbara O'Neill." At the 3:00 mark in the video, O'Neill is writing "POD" -- the same action seen in the clip shared on Facebook. In the authentic video, however, O'Neill said the following:
The highest concentration of mineral inside the cell is potassium, the highest concentration outside the cell is sodium. And in this [inaudible] membrane that is around every cell, there are sodium potassium pumps and these sodium potassium pumps are ever going like this [gestures with hands] maintaining the balance between potassium and sodium. But when someone's not eating enough fruits and vegetables, and that's where you get most of your potassium, and they're putting table salt on everything -- far too much -- what happens now is sodium levels rise and potassium levels drop.
Below, the clip shared to Facebook is shown on the left -- it appears to have been cropped vertically -- compared with the original horizontal clip shared to YouTube on the right:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot compilation captured Tue Apr 30 19:00:41 2024 UTC)
A caption with the original video shared on YouTube read:
How much water do you drink? Water is the 2nd most vital element needed for life, which is why you can only survive a couple of weeks without water.
The description of the YouTube video included listings of products sold on the Living Springs Retreat website.
The Facebook page that shared the video that is the focus of this article is not affiliated with O'Neill. It is titled Barbara O'Neill Lovers. According to the page transparency information, the page was created on January 26, 2024, and is managed in Macedonia.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken Tues April 30 18:29:15 UTC 2024)
As Lead Stories has previously reported, O'Neill was permanently prohibited by Australia's New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) in 2019 from practicing any form of health care after an investigation concluded that her spread of misinformation breached New South Wales, Australia's Code of Conduct for Unregistered Practitioners. In a news release published on September 24, 2019, HCCC stated that O'Neill made "dubious and dangerous health claims" that were "not evidence based or supported by mainstream medicine."
Lead Stories has debunked other claims related to O'Neill, which can be read here.
