The Biology of Health & Longevity | Top Expert Insights from 2025

0:00Hello, we are at the end of 2025. What a whirlwind of a year. Now to mark the end of an amazing year of doing Live Well Be Well, I have looked back at some of the top moments in nutrition and fitness because you might be thinking about this right now, what you're going to implement into your new year and I thought this might be really helpful. For me as well, we get so much amazing content through the show and it gives me a moment to look back at those episodes and put the best parts together for you. So we're going to kick off with the highest rated episode of 2025, Dr. Stacey Sims, when she flew to LA to record this episode with me for part two.

0:34We're also going to speak to Doug Evans. If you do not know the nutritional powerhouse of Sprouts, get ready to be amazed. We're also going to speak to Andy Gelpin, who is the godfather of human performance, and then Inego Samalan, who created Zone 2 Training. and lastly we're going to kick off with one of our second biggest episodes of this year Jason Van Blurk who talks to us everything about how the body stores emotion and the fashion so we're going to take you through lots of stages of some of our best episodes it's one of my favorite moments of this year to really reflect on just how much we have learned in 2025 and just making sure that we're taking some of the best parts away so I hope you enjoy and you have part two coming on New Year's Eve so make sure you subscribe and see part two dropping very very soon.

1:19Enjoy. Hey guys, I am very bad at asking for this, but I wanted to stop for just one minute and ask a huge favor. If you want to hear more diverse conversations from female voices such as myself, I would love if you could hit subscribe. We work so hard on this show to bring you some of the best guests in the world and having a female voice sometimes gives a different perspective and I really want to elevate more of that on this channel. So please hit subscribe if that's important to you as it is to me.

1:55We've got gut health issues. Maybe do we have blood sugar issues? Yeah. Is that a thing? We've got brain fog. We've got mood changes, maybe depression, anxiety. Anxiety, I think, is quite a big one that I hear a lot of people speak about. Okay, so this could be happening from 32 onwards. Yeah. So before we get to the menopause stage, which hormone therapy, you know, HRT is speaking about a lot. What do women do in this phase? Like if we're not getting an SSRI because we've not gotten an imbalance, how can women support themselves through this, through this change? Yeah. So exercise physiologists, I look at that and I look at environmental stressors before we go down a pharmaceutical route.

2:34So if we're looking at all the systems in the body that are affected and we see from a metabolism standpoint, we are more insulin resistant. We also have changes in our blood lipids where we start to have an elevation in our LDLs. We start to see an increase in total cholesterol. We also start to see an increase in visceral fat and esterified fatty acids. So as an exercise physiologist, the first thing I think of is high intensity. Because if we do true sprint interval work or true high intensity interval work, then it's such a polarized stress. The body's like, whoa, okay, I better be able to create these changes that's going to allow my mitochondria to work better, to be able to pull blood glucose in, to be able to have these esterified fatty acids reduced into free fatty acids that I can use.

3:28So the liver's not sending it as visceral fat, it's actually sending it to be used by the mitochondria. So we look at exercise as a powerful stress but not modern intensity and low intensity because that's not a strong enough stress to be able to take the place of what hormones used to right that's why we spoke so much about zone two in our last conversation which is why it's not the most useful exactly that's why we want high intensity right okay so can you say exactly what high intensity is so people are like really clearly dialed into it yes so if we talk about high intensity interval training there's a subset in there called sprint interval training and i don't mean running sprints okay it's just the intensity okay so it's 30 seconds or less as hard as you can possibly go with two to three minutes recovery between each of your intervals so when you first do it you might maybe do two of them and then you're completely gassed out so we don't want people to go oh i can do eight of them no problem because by the time we get to the third one you're not truly in your sprint you're dropping in your intensity.

4:30So it's about the quality of the work. Not the quantity. Exactly. So we're doing that kind of sprint interval work. It's such a strong stress to the body that we start to see these epigenetic changes over time within the muscle that allows more of our GLUT4 proteins in the cell wall to translocate faster to be able to pull more glucose in without insulin. So it becomes, this is the same reason why people who are diabetic are encouraged to go for a walk or a light jog after a meal to enhance this epigenetic change within the muscle. Wow, so it helps lower their glucose. Okay, because there's more uptake into the cells.

5:08Exactly, exactly. We also see that there is a greater release of myokines from the skeletal muscle that then feeds forward to the liver that tells the liver, we don't want visceral fat, we don't want these fatty acids to become esterified. We want these fatty acids to then go to the skeletal muscle little to be stored near the mitochondria to be used as fuel at rest. So we start to see all these little changes through all the systems of the body just by doing some true high intensity work. So how many times a week should we be doing this then? For sprint interval training, two. Okay. But then the other one is what we call high intensity interval training, which is slightly lower in the intensity, but longer.

5:48So instead of 30 seconds or less, we're looking at one to four minutes of 80 % of your max or a little bit higher. And then you have variable recovery. So this would be something that someone would say, if I'm in a CrossFit class or I'm at F45 or some of these other classes where we have every minute on the minute for five minutes, we're doing one exercise and then we quickly transfer to the next exercise. So every minute you're doing something different and the fifth minute's full recovery. And you might go through that three or four times. That gives you your 20 minutes of high intensity work but it's true high intensity because it's 40 seconds of a blast of about 80 20 seconds slight recovery as you're transferring to the next exercise four of those and then one full minute off right so this is true high intensity it's not actually doing an orange theory class it's not actually doing f45 because those movements are so rapid and you're going so quickly for 45 minutes that you are just sitting about that 70 % mark.

6:51Okay. Which makes you feel smashed and people think they have a really good sweaty workout, but it's not truly high enough of an intensity to invoke the change that we want. Right. Gosh, that's so interesting. I think we had this conversation last time where we're talking about how women feel like they have to be smashed every time they go training. Yeah. And that's not what we're after. No, because then also I think when you're super fatigued, you just feel, you just don't feel great in yourself. Right. Right. So how long should these workouts be lasting so we're looking at a sprint interval i mean i often piggyback them on with a strength training session because strength training is the other thing that we have to really be conscious to incorporate if we were to choose between high intensity work and strength training the big rock is strength training for women okay so i tell women look if you have 30 minutes and that's all you have and you have warm up and cool down then you go you do one compound movement of heavy lifting okay so it could be a deadlift it could be a squat it could be a bench press something like that so you're using total body for these movements and then you finish it off with a couple of 30 second high intensity sprints there's two of your exercise sessions of the week done in one 30 minute block if we're looking at having only 10 minutes which i work with some people who are breakfast show hosts and they get up at oh my god it's early to be on set by...

8:16Their circadian rhythm. Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, okay, well, you can get up and you can do a couple of 30-second blasts and then get on with your day. And then at the end of the day, that's when you can do your lifting. So there's ways of breaking it up and we want to really polarize, but it doesn't take a lot of time. Okay. So they're the things we want to be looking at. Does this change when you go into menopause? This formula? So this is a thing. We want people to set up all the habits in perimenopause to help them with all the hormonal changes. But it also benefits postmenopause. So if we start the habits early, and then we're setting ourselves up for better bone, better muscle, better brain health.

8:59And so then when we get into postmenopause, we already have the strong bones and muscle integrity to keep going. Okay. What changes is the load and the relative intensity because that's more of an aging factor. it's not a physicality of all of a sudden i'm 60 and i'm postmenopause i can't do this anymore if you're 60 and postmenopause i've never done any of this it's not too late to start it's all relative it's all relative but when we look at bone health we look at muscle integrity especially we look at the sex differences of cognitive decline and we are we see there's a greater incidence of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline and dementia in women.

9:40Well, it's also the biggest color in the UK. Right, right. So we look at what's happening there. And a lot of it is a combination of metabolism in the brain of a lack of lactate metabolism. Because if we talk about our zone two training from last time, we know that women have more of the endurance fibers and have more of the capacity for using free fatty acids, and we start to lose our fast twitch fibers that produce lactate as we age. This is another reason why we want to do the high-intensity sprint work, is so that we maintain them. Because the brain needs lactate to work well. If we don't have lactate and the brain doesn't understand how to use it, we're losing a key metabolite for brain health.

10:24And this is one of the things that we're seeing as a precursor for cognitive decline. the other thing is strength training as i mentioned earlier yes it's really great for bone and muscle but it's the neural stimulus and neural growth patterns that we get from strength training that really does help reduce the risk factor for cognitive decline in alzheimer's so when we look at what are we doing in perimenopause to benefit our bodies and our minds while we're having such severe hormonal shifts we're also looking at the eye of longevity because if we start the high intensity work or we're doing the high intensity work, it's great for our brain.

11:00We do the strength training. That's great for our brain, our bone, and our muscle. Creatine. It's the best thing out there. I knew you'd say that. Okay. How should people be looking at creatine and how much should they be taking? Yeah. So your body naturally produces around two grams a day. If you have a diet that is meat oriented, then you're also ingesting a lot of creatine that way. Most women don't eat enough to actually provide as much as the body actually goes through. We see there's a change across the menstrual cycle of how your body uses and regulates creatine. So we see that there's a increase in creatine kinase, which is your breakdown in the high hormone phase.

11:42Cause again, progesterone is trying to provide all the building blocks. So really having the availability of more creatine helps with that too. If we're looking at supplementing with creatine, we went creatine monohydrate. And I don't get any kind of kickback from this company, but the company that produces CreaPure, this is a German B2B, meaning business to business. CreaPure is patented. And so it uses a water wash. There's no real side effects from using it. It's pure and it's in almost every high quality creatine monohydrate product that's out there. So if you're looking at something that has CreaPure on it, you want to start with one to three grams and work your way up to five grams over the course of about three to four weeks.

12:30And that's going to attenuate any possible side effect. Okay. If you're looking at a cheaper version of creatine monohydrate, it comes as an acid wash because it's cheaper to produce it through acid um evaporative and other things in the lab than it is to use a water wash which is really specific and this is why we start to see a lot of bloating and stomach discomfort and some of the other side effects that we see okay so again being consumer be aware be aware yeah and a lot of people talk about creating with doms yeah should people be having it a specific time after they exercise where should we be consuming it no no because it doesn't have an acute effect it takes about three weeks for the body to be saturated okay so you need to that's why you're building up yes yes and once it's saturated and has enough that's when you start to see the performance effects we see that over the course of three to four weeks of consistently using three to five grams every day you get that full saturation muscle works better brain works better guts better because anything that has a fast energetic requires creatine so we see that you know the brain fog starts to be attenuated with creatine use we start to see gut issues with women who i go for a run i had to find a bathroom every time i go for a run using the three to five grams over the course of a month then that starts to dissipate as well wow because it maintains the gut integrity of the intestinal cells you don't have as much of that separation because now you have creatine that's going to work in those energetics to hold it together.

14:07And then also we see for mood and mood health, creatine is really beneficial for that too. So actually most women are perimenopausal, maybe all women, but I'm just really thinking about the things, side effects that we were talking about, or, you know, the physical sides that we might see in oneself when we're perimenopausal. This could be an amazing supplement. Absolutely. Absolutely. Gosh, it's interesting how it's not spoken about more. It's very much spoken in the sports domain, I think, but just general health for women, it's just not spoken about. Yeah, so Crea Vitalis and Creatine for Life.

14:39Creatine for Life website has all the stuff that creatine does for health. And there are a lot of my colleagues in the sports science and supplement world that also are doing research on creatine for health. And so all the peer-reviewed studies that you can find are on Creatine for Health website. Crea Vitalis is an offshoot of Crea Pure that is designed specifically for health and not bodybuilding. So it's a lower dose and it's a very high quality protein or high quality creatine supplementation. So there's definitely stuff that's coming out and it's a push to get into the health space for both men and women.

15:17But yeah, it's slow coming. As someone who has spent a long time studying the mind-body connection, I'm constantly asked what do I use to track my health? Since April, you've probably seen if you're watching the show me wearing a piece of tech on my arm. and that is NoWatch, because I genuinely believe it has been one of the most thoughtful and mind-aware pieces of tech that you can wear. Unlike most wearables that focus just on your steps or your sleep, NoWatch is a bit different. It gives you real-time insights into your nervous system, the invisible engine that calibrates everything from your stress to your sleep to your recovery, your rest, and ultimately your health.

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17:02One thing that's a massive topic of debate when we get to nutrition, food and fat loss is seed oils. Oh my God. Okay. I can't not have this conversation. Go ahead. What's your thought and take on seed oils? Because honestly, it's probably one of the most trending, polarizing topics in the health space right now. All right. I love the deep breath that you just took. Thank you. I'll try to avoid banging my head off the microphone here. You can probably tell by the context in which I'm approaching this question, my overarching feeling on this one. Much to say, like anything, nuance and context is the most appropriate and fair answer here.

17:46To say that, though, good grief are people wasting time with seed oil. The research of potential negative effects of seed oil are so weak. That doesn't mean there's nothing there. If you go, okay, and you give six caveats to that, you can find some examples of seed oils being concerning. okay so if it was left outside for seven days in the sun and it's gone rancid and someone's in a hypercaloric state and they over consume these things in the presence of alcohol okay yeah like all right the other only semblance of an argument here that makes sense there's two they're bad they're mental gymnastics and for the record i have many many people who i deeply respect and friends who are as far into like the seed oils or the devil camps as possible.

18:44I would name them by names, but it doesn't matter. That's one argument that they can make. The second argument is, it's not that the seed oils are that bad, but they are so commonly consumed in the presence of other really bad behaviors and actions that they're, it's the old gateway, drugs sort of thing. Again, in my opinion, that is enormous mental gymnastics. Like, then say that. If that's the true case, say C-dolls aren't bad, say that this is the problem, you're consuming too much bar food and so on and so forth. Don't bait and switch, though. Don't be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, C-dolls, Oh, but they're not really the problem, they're just putting people in a bad position to eat other things that are the problem.

19:35Okay, that is not at all what you're saying, right? So that's my pushback on that. And then number three, the other ones in the States, at least, because of what's happening with the Maha movement, the third argument that they'll generally make is, it's not necessarily about the CEDOs per se, it is showing how, though, when the people speak, we can make changes to massive food conglomerates. again then just don't lie about the fact that the CEDOs are so detrimental and okay so there's a lot of nuance and complexity to that thing but overwhelmingly I just don't think that's a good approach and there's so many other things you could do to demonstrate that when the people speak and that people are interested and there is financial rewards for companies who make healthier products those are good things but to ban an oil like that and to then come out and say things like oh yeah beef tallow is perfectly healthy so as long as you fry your burgers and beef tallow i mean you have to have a special level of like nuts but there is a lot of nuts online but like how can you cogently say that and be like yeah that makes sense it just like does not so it's unfortunately one of those things where I understand marketing enough and I understand public health messaging, you can't speak in nuance in those positions, or at least people traditionally don't.

21:02And this is, one of the problems this introduces is when you have the speaking heads, the same person as a scientist, you force the scientist into a marketer. And that leads to problems because then that person has to say, like, you have to say one clear message, the message to the public, seed oils are dangerous, seed oils are dangerous. if you have any nuance two stories mean no stories and I hope we made it through COVID with the realization of like okay enough of that like enough of that we have to treat adults like adults and this is one thing I will say what the Maha people are doing is that is one of their principles that I fully endorse and support and thank them for yes give the public more credit for intelligence I don't care that if you feel like you're going to lose them we should know as close to the truth as there and don't whitewash it over because you think everyone is a low intellect person so tell people the truth and with as much reason as possible as you can and and as close as you can tell us the truth so i appreciate the fact that they're like trying to do that but yes the seed oil push and so to my dear friends on that side of the aisle your your arguments are terrible as plainly as possible how do you have this conversation off air with your friends that are like very against seed oils i don't you don't it's like politics you just don't do it i generally this is the most political thing i've ever done in public probably in my life so you're welcome that you pulled that one out yeah thank you because i i generally hate to do it because i'm just going to get a onslaught of comments um and i don't think any of them will beat those four general positions that i just said but we're still going to get it And it's just not helpful.

22:43Like, this is the thing we're talking about. Of all the other interesting ways and things and tools and stuff we can do for improving humankind, like, what we're spending billions on is fucking seed oils? That was our shot? Like, you had one shot to change how healthcare works in America, and the bullet you've towed to fire was seed oils? Do you know where it's actually, like, this mental hype? Because I've just seen it. I see it everywhere. Of course. Where did it start from? Well, I'm not going to answer that question. I know the answer, but I'm not going to. Because it would involve name-calling and putting it on people.

23:19And I don't like to do that, positive or negative. That's something I never do, and I won't start that here today. You can tell me all that. I'll answer it this way. My assumption when I hear and see people do these things, I actually assume it's good intention. but my issue has been if you look at the breadth of things that people are doing the terrible sleep mental health the environmental stuff we got going on water and seed oils were your shot like oh my gosh it's just like the food quality and kids like so they are doing some really awesome things but for whatever reason they chose seed oils as that big flag to fly to people's attention and I'm like oh man like so many other cooler ways you could have approached it so last thing I'll say is I'm not in those rooms so maybe my tune would be different if I was in those rooms and I understand like public messaging is a very difficult thing but yeah I just wish they would like find a more interesting thing to hang their hat on and to gain attention with so I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor please subscribe to the show this helps it grow more than you know and I'm so bad at asking this from you I'm so bad at thinking about this but you know my goal is a hundred thousand to get to on YouTube and I really want to bring you more content and better guests and bigger episodes and we can only do that with your help together so please do hit subscribe thank you

25:01I think something that people might be surprised about is that the protein quantity of sprouts, because I think the first thing that people think about, and maybe not from our show, because we speak a lot about plant-based diets here, is the protein quality. And I think I read in your book that sprouting increases protein by 20%. Yes. How? I mean, it's nature and it's science. So what happens is when you have the legume or you have the seed and you cook it, you're basically making it edible by removing the starches and the lectins and the like. When you're sprouting it, you're partnering with the natural process of nature.

25:49So by activating all of the biological metabolic processes, it's making the amino acid profile expand and it's making it bioavailable and it's increasing in the journey. There's nothing else like sprouting in the world. like the fact that you could take some seeds you got some broccoli some broccoli seeds you know we can here you can take these seeds yeah right the fact that you could take those seeds yeah and when you soak them you reduce the lectins the enzyme inhibitors the phytic acid but you're triggering this metabolic process that is literally greater than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

26:45And if you think about a little caterpillar and it builds a cocoon and it bursts its way out of the cocoon and these wings flow and it can fly, that's a pretty magical natural process. Every one of those seeds contains that level of energy and that level of life force. it's interesting because as I'm looking at this, what's coming into my mind is, I know the UK are five years behind America. And I used to live in New York. I lived there for five years. And I always remember when I lived there, which was about 15 years ago when I first moved there, chai seeds were coming up, flax seeds were coming up.

27:25There was a lot of these types of seeds. And I remember people all of a sudden were making chai seed puddings and soaking them in oats. And And that was like one of the things that now is abundant and it's on a lot of menus and a lot of healthcare stores, but you don't have to be in the health circle to have heard of a chai seed now. Whereas 15 years ago, you had to be kind of in that health circle to know about it. That's right. I'm looking at these and I'm thinking, are these the next chai seeds? Are these things that are gonna be coming up? It's really beyond. Like sprouting is a time that has come.

27:57Yeah. And so what's happening now is there's never been a greater need for high quality nutrition. And now with the new administration in the US, like going after additives, preservatives, food colorings, and going back towards a more simple plant-centered diet, like there's a need. The average leaf of lettuce in the United States travels 2 ,000 miles till it gets to the grocery store. So sprouts are traveling two feet. Like they're fresher. They're more nutritious. And strangely and oddly enough, like how did I become the sprout guy? I am nature's greatest miracle. I have the energy. I have the intelligence.

28:50I had the experience and I had the unique perspective of being a raw vegan living in a food desert that was uncompromising in my standards of what I would eat. And out of all of the possible solutions, like I could grow oyster mushrooms or I could grow microalgae or I could grow a garden. It's not too difficult to do a complete analysis, like a McKinsey study, and come up with sprouts. And now anyone could do this analysis quickly with chat GPT or Gemini or AI, and all answers will lead to sprouts. I love that. Well, I'm just thinking, if I think about sprouts, I'm thinking about an old lady, like my grandmother, like standing in her greenhouse, you know, sprouting.

29:46That's like the image that I get. Yeah. And I think - Well, but now it's going to be you, Sarah Ann, and you are young, vibrant, vivacious, educated, you know, goddess with a platform and a megaphone. And that's what's happening. And we talked about this before we started the show. I didn't pitch you and send you emails. Like all of a sudden you show up in my messages and I'm like, oh, do you want to be on the podcast? I'm coming in. I'm like, yeah, of course. So that's the power. Yeah. And it's not me. No. Like I am just in the ether. I'm doing my part. But the sprouts have taken over my microbiome and they've taken over my intuition.

30:33and now I'm in the place of just following the divine order of this. Well, your name came out twice. Do you want to know who said it? Yeah, please. So I was in London and I was interviewing Dr. Gemma Newman. And as she was coming to the studio, she was like, I just bumped into Doug Evans. And I'm like, who's Doug Evans? And she was like, the Sprout guy. This is why now I call you the Sprout guy, because that was the first thing that came into my mind. And I was like, that's interesting. I haven't heard of the Sprout guy. who is this? Obviously, I'm a nutritionist. So for me, I'm like, I need to know who this person is.

31:06Then I'm coming to LA to report the show. And I'm speaking to Dr. William Bolsiewicz, who's been on loads. We do so many - Two New York Times bestselling books, fiber-fueled cookbook. He's like the American sweetheart over here, is how I would describe him. Everyone loves him. I love him. And he mentioned your name. And he was like, it would be great for you to talk to Doug. So it was interesting within the space of like a couple of weeks from you were kind of coming into my vicinity and I was like, I want to know more about the sprout guy. And it's interesting because it's very rare that I sit down and do a podcast on nutrition.

31:44I mean, we do a lot on live well, be well. But, you know, we had Dan Butner here yesterday talking about the blue zones and that's someone who, you know, I've known for a long time and followed his work. We had Stacey Sims come on and talk about women's health and that's something I'm very well versed in, especially being a nutritionist. And I was like, I need to think about what are the kind of scientific studies that I know, apart from broccoli sprouts, that I really know about sprouts being as a nutritionist. And I was like, this is the first time when I really know actually quite little about this, which surprises me because it's in my field.

32:19That's right. And it shows actually how there isn't as much conversation. And I was thinking, well, where are we going to go for an hour on sprouts? And the amazing information that you're coming out of is just how powerful and nutrient rich these are. Yeah, it's interesting. Do you know Dr. Robin Burzin from Parsley Health? No. So Parsley Health is a functional medicine health program in the US where they have functional medicine doctors, nutritionists, dieticians, health coaches, and nurses. And they believe food is medicine. and they have tens of thousands of patients that say, I am interested in food as medicine.