Dr Nichola Conlon on ageing well - and figuring out our biological age

0:00Dr Nichola Conlon:This show is sponsored by Primadine, a clean, natural and science-based spermidine supplement that's been a long-time staple in my own longevity stack. Because studies suggest that through autophagy, spermidine increases healthspan and upregulates a range of health markers, from memory and cognitive function to heart health, hormone balance, fertility and even hair growth. Plus, you can be assured that all ingredients undergo rigorous third-party testing. Buy Primadine now at OxfordHealthSpam.com and use the discount code DrSophie, that's D-R-Sophie for 20 % off. This show is sponsored by Microbes, an award-winning liquid probiotic that's now a staple for me, because Microbes, with a Z on the end, is different.

0:47Dr Nichola Conlon:For one thing, they source directly from the soil on their Wiltshire farm, meaning more diversity, with at least 15 strains of good bacteria in every single shot. It's brewed so it can survive in the stomach and a remarkable 92 % of customers say it makes a difference. Plus they offer micro-friendly cleaning, gardening and even microbes for dogs. Buy now at microbes.co.uk and use the discount code SOPHIE20 for 20 % off. Hi, I'm Sophie and this is Age Well with Dr. Sophie Schotter, a space devoted to all things health, wellness and longevity. because for me, aging well is about looking and feeling like the best possible version of ourselves inside as well as out.

1:31Dr Nichola Conlon:So together with my producer Fee, I'll be deep diving into the latest research, sifting fact from fiction. I'll also be talking to all kinds of trusted experts tapping into their knowledge, along with bringing you conversations from a range of interesting women and men finding out how they age well. So this is my show. Welcome along. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

2:01Dr Nichola Conlon:Nicola, I first want to give a big heads up for listeners that we already did a fascinating interview with you last summer and we focused purely on NAD Plus and your incredible business New Cheeto and the supplement Time Plus, which as anyone who knows me knows is a supplement I'm obsessed with and I know that Fee's now equally obsessed. Yes. Since that chat, so much has happened to you from a trip to Necker Island and time with Richard Branson, which we've got to talk about. And you're now the resident scientist on the brilliant podcast, What's My Age Again? So we'll get into that too. But I do want to flag that this ep is less about NAD +, because we've already covered that and more about you as one of the UK's most inspiring scientists working in the space of longevity.

2:44Dr Nichola Conlon:The most obvious place to start is to ask what your daily habits are. are we talking full-on Brian Johnson biohacker stuff or is it more paired back? Basically, can you give us a very quick walkthrough and overview of your non-negotiables and key habits from when you wake up to when you go to bed? And by the way, we do have a separate supplements question further down, so maybe leave that one for now.

3:06Dr Sophie Shotter:Thank you so much, Sophie. And both Sophie and Fiona, it's so nice to be back on and have a chat with you. And I always laugh when people mention Brian Johnson to me. I get so many questions about Brian Johnson and do I live like Brian Johnson? And I think people will probably be pleased to know that I live a much more attainable life than Brian Johnson. So I definitely am not doing his kind of biohacking routine. But you know, just like quick fire, my non-negotiables are actually really simple. I think my biggest one is getting outdoors. I think in this these lives that we live right now people just don't get outside enough, they don't get fresh air enough, they don't get out in nature enough and for me I find that's one of the things that makes the biggest impact on my day.

3:55Dr Sophie Shotter:I really suffer if I don't just get a little bit of outdoors and I try to have a short walk every morning whether that is you know just around the block or go to the park. I really do try to get that. In the summer, that's great. You get a bit of sunlight in the winter. You maybe don't if you live in the UK, but that really does reset your circadian rhythm and just really helps set you up for the day. Exercise is another thing that is a non-negotiable for me. That is my therapy. That is my me time. And obviously that's very good for health and longevity. And I think probably the other thing that I also find is very important.

4:34Dr Sophie Shotter:And again, it probably sounds a bit boring and people are probably thinking you know you're not doing anything more wacky and crazy but diet a big thing for me is trying to find the time to prepare home-cooked food I think again people really don't realize the impact that a lot of the ultra processed food that we're having is having in our bodies so I actually really like cooking again I find that quite a relaxing thing and trying to have home-cooked food freshly prepared not all the additives and preservatives and ultra-processed things I find is again a non-negotiable for me.

5:11Dr Nichola Conlon:I know that like me you're an advocate for a really individualized approach to health maintenance and tracking and unfortunately a lot of NHS test baselines can be very different to what we ideally need for optimal health. Fi and I did a really popular at home health test kits episode last year and we both found it to be so interesting. So what does an individualized approach to health and wellness look like to you? Do you track? Do you test? I know the answer. But as you share, please do let us know any brands that you use.

5:43Dr Sophie Shotter:Yeah, I always talk about the fact that we need to understand our own bodies and we really don't understand much about them, which for me is quite scary. The fact that the only time that we ever go and get any testing done is when we don't feel well. usually. You know, we go to the doctors, we get our bloods done. And unfortunately, at that point, we are usually in some sort of, you know, state where we don't feel great. And that means that we don't know what our baselines look like when we're well. So I'm a big fan of testing. I use a company called Thriver to measure all the basics. They do a lot of at-home blood tests, simple finger break blood tests.

6:26Dr Sophie Shotter:I do everything from my hormones. I think that's a really interesting one for women to track their hormones just to see what their normal levels of things like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, FSH, things like that. Just what is normal for you, because we know that can be wildly different for each woman. And when you go into things like perimenopause, you don't know if you're going to go and get your levels tested because you're not feeling great. But are those levels normal for you? Are they abnormal? Who knows if you don't know what your baseline is. So hormones are one that I get tested.

7:03Dr Sophie Shotter:Thyroid is another one that I always just keep an eye on because, you know, a lot of people do have thyroid issues and it's something that you can change with lifestyle if you catch it early. So I think keeping an eye on thyroid. I measure that. I also do like my liver function, my vitamin D's, my B vitamins. And also another one is omega-3 and omega-6 ratio. Again, this is something that a lot of people don't have a good omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. And that often reflects the type of diet you're having. So I do like to keep an eye on that one every now and again. Do you do your omega-3 Thriver as well?

7:45Dr Sophie Shotter:yeah I actually do them all through Thriver I know that there's a lot of different kind of companies doing all these tests but Thriver have been around for a long time and I started measuring this years and years ago gosh I'd probably say about eight years ago now and that was when these at-home blood tests were really just starting and again and I just think they've got a really efficient service and they have a good app and it's very easy to track and again for me because I've been measuring so long any changes in the app you can literally see all my different blood markers across the years so I really like that as a scientist.

8:22Dr Nichola Conlon:So going back to what Sophie was saying last year amongst the many tests that we did we both did genetic testing thanks to I think it was body fabulous wasn't it Sophie very good now I through researching you I heard that you two have the MTHFR gene mutation Sophie doesn't I do you do what I do to manage this based on advice and just deep dive googling as I take methylfolate to help promote optimal methylation. Diet is key so I have a very gut-friendly plant-forward diet. I was also told to take a glutathione supplement and get enough sleep. I wondered what you do to manage MTHFR if it's stuff I haven't mentioned here.

8:58Dr Sophie Shotter:It's exactly the same. The number one thing that works for me is methylfolate and again 100 % and really interestingly I actually like many people didn't know that I had this mutation. And I think this particular MTHFR mutation has become quite popularized now. There are a lot of people talking about it online and people have heard of it now. But back when I found out that I had it, it was still quite an unheard of thing. And the reason I found this out was again by doing this testing. So this again was about eight, nine years ago, I was starting my Thriver testing and I was like why on earth is my folate always so low like I have a good diet but nothing is getting it up I tried taking the folic acid just on the floor like literally on the floor and then I had some genetic testing done at the same time again this was like years and years ago before it became really popularized it was actually a 23 and me test and was how I found it out and I realized that I had this mutation and then it all made sense because basically this gene encodes something that converts basically folic acid into methylfolate which is like the active form in your body and if you can take all the methylfolate you want you can get it all from your diet but if you do not have the enzyme that's going to convert it into the correct form then it's pointless so for me I was like wow this explains everything I'm literally taking the wrong form so I started taking methylfolate instead of folic acid and you can literally see in my graphs the folate going up like completely fixed it back to normal levels very simple thing very simple change and now that is one of my non-negotiable supplements that I take and again continuously because I even did my own little experiment where I stopped taking it just to see what happened try to manage it through diet and it went way back down and hit the floor again so as soon as I started taking it again it fixed it so for me as a scientist that was my little any clothes worn experiment that is absolutely what I need yeah and in fact we'll

11:04Dr Nichola Conlon:link into that episode because it was such a good one because I also have a comp mutation which is a whole nother thing which was fascinating to me in terms of I guess mood and stress also I want to thank you because I'm convinced that since getting my husband on Nuchido his sleep has radically improved and I'm not sure whether you heard we had the telegraphs Lisa Armstrong on the show earlier this year but she is also convinced that Nuchido has finally cracked her sleep issues I know that as Sophie said, we've already covered Nuchido on our episode last year. So we're going to link into that and talk all about Nuchido.

11:34Dr Nichola Conlon:But we just want to mention it. I wondered if you have any new sleep data coming through on Nuchido, because it does seem to be a missing piece for lots of people.

11:43Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes. So I think last time I was on, we hadn't even done any sleep studies. I don't actually think we'd done any officially. But we were getting so much feedback from our customers saying how much Nichito was improving their sleep. And we were like, we actually need to get some hard data on this to see what's going on. Now, theoretically, it makes complete sense. And again, sleep in NAD is something that is not spoken about a lot. But if you look at the science, NAD is actually very important for regulating your circadian rhythm. What it does is as NAD rises and falls throughout the day, which again is something that people many people don't realize it actually fluctuates throughout the day it actually switches on and off to transcription factors called clock and b-mal which are very important for switching on and off the different phases of our circadian rhythm so when this clock and b-mal transcription factors are actually flicked on or off it literally changes about 20 000 different genes that are expressed in our body to flip us from that you know awake and alert state to that rest and repair for the sleep phase.

12:54Dr Sophie Shotter:And that means that as NAD declines, as we get older, that influence on our circadian rhythm isn't as strong. So we know that as, you know, we start to suffer from things like difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, not as good sleep quality. So a lot of people, again, were reporting that as they were taking the Cheeto, which is obviously clinically proven to boost NAD, that their sleep was incredible again. So we did a sleep study. We had 30 people and we looked at sleep quality. Now, this was not measured using wearables. This was actually a self-reported questionnaire. It was something called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Analysis, which is used in officially for many and approved for many clinical trials for sleep.

13:38Dr Sophie Shotter:And out of the 30 people, 26 experienced a significant improvement in sleep quality. And the four that didn't, didn't, just didn't notice a difference. their sleep was already okay. So for us, that was like, wow, okay, this is really something. And actually, now we're looking at doing another clinical trial where we're actually going to have wearables. So we're looking at using the Oura Ring to actually really track what is it about the sleep that is changing? Is it more deep sleep? Is it more REM? Is it affecting HRV? And again, again, and just digging in and getting that data. Because as a scientific company, we love having the data and not just anecdotal evidence but honestly it's so good to hear people talking about their experiences because we know sleep is such a critical part of health that if you don't have good sleep it's really damaging and if your sleep suddenly improves it literally improves your whole life.

14:34Dr Nichola Conlon:Just tacking on to Fee's comment on supplements maybe now's a good time to ask you what you take besides new Cheeto of course and the methylfolate and also if you wouldn't mind name checking any brands that you love yeah so aside from nishido of course

14:50Dr Sophie Shotter:the other one that i probably is a real og one that i've been taken for a long time is by a company called vitel or vital i don't know how you say it but they kind of do more personalized supplements and it just means that instead of taking a lot of different pills that you can kind of get a few different things that you need in one pill. So in my kind of personalized one that I have, it has my folate, methylfolate in it. But it's also got my vitamin D3, my K2, it's got my zinc in it, selenium. So it's got a few different things in there that I kind of would take anyway, but it just gets it into less different bottles and pills.

15:34Dr Sophie Shotter:So that's kind of one that I have taken for a long time and take every day. And again, my other one that is my go-to that I take every day is primidine. And again, now this is a spermidine supplement and spermidine is something that's kind of been on the radar in the longevity space for quite a while and is, I think is definitely breaking now through into the more mass because it's a compound that actually is really important for switching on autophagy in our bodies. So autophagy is like your cell's natural recycling process that helps to get rid of junk out of the body. And again, this is something that's got some really good data coming out.

16:14Dr Sophie Shotter:And again, I would only recommend this brand Primadine by a company called Oxford Healthspan. And again, because they have a natural version of spermidine, which is a polyamine. There's a lot of companies out there that are using synthetic versions and the evidence shows that they just don't work the same. And again, which is why I really like that brand. The other ones that I like are magnesium. I use a brand called Bio-Optimizers because they cover all the different types of magnesium. So you've got things like magnesium citrate, magnesium glycinate, there's magnesium malate. There's many different types of magnesium that all work slightly differently in the body and that one actually has and again all the different types of magnesium in it creatine that's another one i as i mentioned i exercise a lot i go at the gym i take creatine not only for the benefits it has for our muscles and in energy but also there's a lot of great research looking at it for brain health especially in women and again so creatine is a one that i am a fan of and again what else i'm trying to think because I'm all off the top of my head.

17:24Dr Sophie Shotter:Oh, mushrooms are one. I know you're both a fan of mushrooms. We are. And one that I like is reishi. Now, I travel a lot and I like to try and keep my immune system in check. And reishi has actually got some good evidence for your immune system. So that is one that I will definitely be upping at this time of the year when everything is going around. and also I'm traveling a lot and the company I really like for any sort of mushroom products is Hifas Deterra now they have just great ethics great quality do a lot of education in the space so I really rate those guys as a brand as well they're a great brand and I we also love Dirty

18:11Dr Nichola Conlon:and I know you know Dirty as well and the Bristol Fungarium tinctures I think are fantastic as well

18:17Dr Sophie Shotter:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:18Dr Nichola Conlon:Are there any other health-driven devices or apps that you're into? And also, who do you follow online in the wellness space?

18:26Dr Sophie Shotter:Ooh, okay. I'll start with who I follow. So I follow a very diverse range of people because I kind of like to see what's going on at both ends of the spectrum. So I go everything from the really scientific people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who I think is great because she really backs everything she says with scientific research, quoting research papers. And I think that's really important because I think there's a lot out there of people that are promoting wellness, but actually are saying a lot of things that are not backed by science. Another one that's really interesting in the space, especially for women, is Dr.

19:05Dr Sophie Shotter:Stacey Sims. Now, she talks a lot about like how women are very different to men. We've had her on the podcast. Oh, amazing. Okay, you're a fan linked to that episode that I don't even need to explain how cool she is. But she's a great one. Another person who I came across recently, who's not as big, but I think definitely worth a follow is someone called Dr. Emily Pripper. Now she's a nutritionist and talks a lot about gut health. And again, I think gut health is something that's kind of become really trendy. And there's a lot of people talking about a lot of stuff that hasn't got a huge amount of evidence but she's actually really good at not only breaking it down and making it understandable but also actually having factual content that's backed by science she's really interesting and definitely worth a follow so those would kind of be my my ones I can call off the top of my head that I've been watching and listening to recently and then in terms of devices I am a huge aura fan for tracking sleep.

20:07Dr Sophie Shotter:Again, for me, sleep is just one of those non-negotiables where it's so important. And, you know, if you're not getting your sleep right, you might as well not be bothering with all the supplements and everything else because, you know, really focus on that first rather than trying to fix everything else with expensive devices and supplements and things like that. And the other thing that I always think everyone should do once is something like a glucose monitoring device, something like Zoe maybe, where you do a continuous glucose monitor because it shows you in real time what your body is going through every single time you put food in your mouth.

20:50Dr Sophie Shotter:And it really does make you think twice about whether you're going to be snacking throughout the day, whether you're going to be drinking those sugary drinks. So for me, I think that's something that's sometimes controversial. People say, if you are not diabetic, then why would you want to monitor your glucose? For me, I just think it's something that makes people more aware of how much their body is doing under the surface, which a lot of people don't think of.

21:16Dr Nichola Conlon:Naturally, we'd also like to talk all things skincare, treatments and tweakments. So what's your current routine, including any injectables or clinic visits? and within all of this what are the skincare products and brands and treatments that you will

21:29Dr Sophie Shotter:never be without so sophie you probably know this i am the most unloyal um skin brand person as i'm constantly trying everything like i know that you've like given me some things before and people send me things and i'm like oh this is interesting i'll try this so like constantly my skincare routine is just trying everything. So I wouldn't say that I do have a particular brand that I am really faithful to. Having said that, there are a couple of things that I always kind of ingredients that I look for. I think a really good quality vitamin C is always good and just always does wonders for my skin.

22:18Dr Sophie Shotter:The other thing that I've been a fan of for many years and probably one of the things that I have stuck to using are copper peptides. Again, because I think that they do have some really good research for collagen production. And really interestingly, there was a study showing recently that combining copper peptides with red light actually increased the efficacy. So that's something I've been doing recently because I do use a red light panel and I'll put my copper peptides on my face and then, you know, I use the red light panel as well because the study, although it was on cells and not in people, it did show that there was an additive effect, a cumulative effect when you use both things together, which I thought was really interesting.

23:05Dr Sophie Shotter:And this is probably if you think of the science behind it, because infrared and red light is known to stimulate cellular function by improving energy production in the cells. And then copper peptides are known as signal repair pathways. So when you're kind of putting both together, you're almost giving the cells the energy they need to do the repair that they're trying to do. So I think that's a really interesting combination that I've been trying out. And certainly I do think my skin is benefiting from that. The other thing I've tried recently, which I think you're a fan of Sophie is Sunica which is like an injectable skin booster with different I think tyleronic acid and a combination of different amino acids you probably better to talk about what that has in it than me but I tried that because I one thing I do suffer from I mean I generally have okay skin but is dark circles so I tried that under my eyes and again I would say that that has had a noticeable benefit.

24:03Dr Sophie Shotter:So I'm quite impressed. Brilliant.

24:06Dr Nichola Conlon:So going back to the podcast that you do with Catherine Ryan, What's My Age Again? I'm a huge fan. I was listening to loads of them heading when I was driving back from London last night. I am, by the way, super impressed that you've got to meet Adam Buxton, who's one of my all-time favourite podcasters. So just going to put that out there. I'm so jealous. So I would really recommend the show. We'll link into it. I watched a clip with Katie Price where she found out that her biological age is 70. And just to give some background, the age is all about your biological age as opposed to our chronological age.

24:35Dr Nichola Conlon:It's really good. Can you just recap what you told her about inflammation and trauma? Because I found it really fascinating.

24:42Dr Sophie Shotter:Yes. I mean, it's been so interesting doing the podcast. We've had so many different guests. And for me, it's been a sort of pinnacle moment where I can't quite believe that I'm sitting on a podcast talking to celebrities about their biological age because you have to understand that for years and years and years I've been talking about this and like nobody wanted to listen and everyone thought I was crazy and weird at this concept that we could age backwards and now people actually want to listen so for me it's amazing so yeah to say that I'd be sat on a sofa talking to Katie Price about a biological age I don't think I could have ever predicted that but that was a really interesting episode what I didn't realize about her is that she, you know, obviously love her or hate her.