Brave New World Preview: Dr Sabine Donnai on Mapping the Microbiome and the Secrets to Longevity

0:04Evgeny: Hello, you're listening to The Standard Podcast and today we're sharing a preview of our sister podcast, Brave New World. In this episode, the standards Evgeny Lebedev is joined by Dr Sabine Donnai, who's a physician specialising in precision medicine and preventative health and is also the founder of ViVi Healthcare. care. So Sabine actually looks at Evgeny's own test results to put her theory into action of why she believes long-term cognitive resilience starts not with extreme biohacks, but with fixing the basics, particularly the gut. So this is just a preview. In the full episode, the two explore brain health beyond standard scans and discuss how gut function, inflammation, environmental exposure and stress interact over time.

0:50Evgeny: To listen to the full episode, just search brave new world standard in your podcast app the problem with the gut buying is twofold one is we don't really feed our bacteria sufficiently and we don't have the diversity anymore because a lot of people tend to eat the same things all the time so you feed the same families of bacteria all the time so you you don't bring in the variety plus on top of that we're killing a lot of bacteria whether it's with antibiotics which clearly have a good benefit if it needs to be for a throat infection, but you're killing at the same time those families in the gut.

1:27Dr Sabine Donnai: Welcome back to Brave New World, the standards podcast where we explore the cutting edge of science, medicine and the future of humankind. I'm your host, Evgeny Lebedev. And in this series, we're venturing into the realms of neuroscience, longevity, consciousness and the extraordinary breakthroughs reshaping the human experience. Today, my guest is Dr. Sabine Donai, a consulting physician, world authority, and leading thinker in proactive health management. She specializes in genomic medicine and works with advanced brain imaging and biological data to better understand long-term health. In this episode, we'll explore the work she's done in her Malibon clinic, VRV, where I've undergone a lot of different tests and discuss how small practical adjustments can help us all live better healthier lives.

2:25Dr.

2:26Dr Sabine Donnai: Sabine Donai, a huge welcome to Brave New World. It's a great honor to have you as a guest and I first learned about you when I read Tim Spector's article in the Times. He's been a guest on this program before. And he was very surprised to find that despite all his healthy living, he was heading towards a neurodegenerative disease. And that caught my attention. So that was a very well-placed article. And since then we've met and we've carried out some investigations on my brain. But first of all, I'd love you to just tell readers, viewers, listeners a little bit about yourself, what you do and about your organization, VRV.

3:16Evgeny: Yes, well, thanks for having me here. Gini, thank you very much. I mean, I'm a doctor, as you know, and I specialize in what I call precision medicine. So our aim is to really give people a strategy on their health. And for obvious reasons, the brain becomes very crucial in that whole area of whether we think of healthy longevity or just preventive health care. I mean, originally, I'm from Belgium and I qualified as a general doctor, the physician. however I got very frustrated with medicine thinking after seven years of study I kind of knew it all and I felt really that I missed this massive part as in how do we stay healthy I had learned about symptoms and matching that with a diagnosis and matching that with a treatment which was either medication or surgery what I really did had not learned about was really understanding what would keep people healthy, which was for me more of a fascinating area than trying to backtrack health.

4:23Evgeny: So I've gone on this long journey throughout the world, literally, to try to find out what actually constitutes good health and how can we support people with a personalised strategy to really make the most of their lives for as long as possible.

4:37Dr Sabine Donnai: Where did you go?

4:38Evgeny: Oh, well, I worked in Africa. I worked in South Africa for many years. I worked in Australia with the Aborigines for many years. Then I studied acupuncture and homeopathy in Sri Lanka and went to India for Ayurveda. So really, really tried to understand the ancient ways of treating because they did not have medication, neither surgery, as in what did they do to really support good health?

5:03Dr Sabine Donnai: Is there a common thread you found in all of them?

5:05Evgeny: Yeah, very much so. The most common thread was actually, strangely enough, was not, I mean, herbals and things like that, for sure. I mean, what I found super interesting was when I worked in South Africa with the Sangomas, the witch doctors, they used to treat, for example, a frozen shoulder. They used to make little cuts on their knee in a particular area for a frozen shoulder, which at that time didn't make sense to me. But then when I went to study acupuncture, they used the same place for the acupuncture needles for frozen shoulders and said, oh my gosh, okay, they had nothing to do with each other but the most common trend was definitely the ability to create what I now call a parasympathetic state as in calmness within the system to heal and that is something that in our current way of treating medicine we have seemed to have forgotten completely.

5:59Dr Sabine Donnai: Yeah that's true but But it's even in the new frontier of longevity and preventative medicine and longevity and even rate reversal, that is not very present either.

6:15Evgeny: No, no. I mean, the problem with the gut, of course, has come with our current lifestyles. I mean, what they had 20, 30, 40 ,000 years ago, they didn't have gut problems because they were eating from the nature. They had a lot of fiber because most of the foods were still eaten raw other than the meats. But their fruit, their vegetables was full of fiber, was not broken down. They were eating now. They didn't clearly have no foods that were processed as the vast majority of our foods now are, of course. So the gut biome was way, way healthier. I mean, they've done research on gut biomes, on mummies that they still find some bacteria there.

7:02Evgeny: And it's the diversity. It's got no comparison with our gut biome now, even in the gut biomes that we're having to date. It's got no comparisons with the variety that existed tens and tens of thousands of years ago.

7:16Dr Sabine Donnai: Why is that?

7:18Evgeny: Because our foods have become a lot more, the variety is not there and we don't feed our, the problem with the gut biome is twofold. One is we don't really feed our bacteria sufficiently and we don't have the diversity anymore because a lot of people tend to eat the same things all the time. So you feed the same families of bacteria all the time. So you don't bring in the variety. Plus, on top of that, we're killing a lot of bacteria, whether it's with antibiotics, which clearly have a good benefit if it needs to be for a throat infection. But you're killing at the same time those families in the gut.

7:53Evgeny: on top of that the environmental toxins the the the um the kind of water we're drinking the heavy metals that we're in contact with the molds that we're in contact with all that actually has an influence on our bacteria so the varieties is far reduced and and the vast majority of people have a biome that is completely inefficient well antibiotics particularly in this country i find

8:17Dr Sabine Donnai: that given out too liberally you have anything cough is antibiotics you have running nose has antibiotics. Yes.

8:24Evgeny: Yeah. I mean, we don't tend to check anymore whether you actually have a bacterial infection that requires an antibiotic because not all bacterial infections require an antibiotic in the first place. But as you say, I mean, it's the easiest thing to do. Somebody's poorly. I'm not going to take a risk. Okay. It might just be bacterial. Let me just prescribe an antibiotic and then even above resistance that we have created already. The bigger problem almost is, is that we've destroyed our gut biomes.

8:51Dr Sabine Donnai: It could be viral though. Yes, exactly. And then on your life's journey?

8:57Evgeny: Oh, my life's journey. Then I, so after all my travels, I finally felt and said, fine, prevention is where it sits. And I've got a really good understanding. So eventually I ended up in the UK thinking this was the hub of where really innovation can happen. Used to be, used to be. Exactly. Okay, but so I felt like I'll settle here because that's where my skill set would be appreciated. I worked for Bupa first, okay, because they had a big screening center and really made some progress there, but felt quite frustrated with the innovation I could bring in because it's a very big organization. It couldn't really, really move forward very fast.

9:40Evgeny: But anyway, went through those journeys, set up a known business, which then was sold into Nuffield Productive Health and was a medical director there for about five, six years, leading the national screening services and many thousands of clinicians. when I decided to set up VFV about 17 years ago, when I felt there's a need for somebody that actually delivers something that is highly personalised, very precise, without having to really worry about any kind of limitations, limitations on both the type of investigations I can do and the type of advice I can give to people. In those days, nobody spoke about biome and longevity and there were words that were not really used in the medical world.

10:29Evgeny: So it was either going to be, it was going to work or I was just going to fail. And we just took the chance. And thankfully, after 17 years, we're still here and growing strong. And now the world has woken up to the word longevity and preventive healthcare, which is very helpful now for ourselves.

10:46Dr Sabine Donnai: So would you say those are the three areas that you specialize in, the longevity biomembrane with preventative as the as the underlying focus exactly so it is it is

10:59Evgeny: all about identifying what the right strategy is for your health I mean it is it is more precision than prevention I would say I mean prevention automatically comes into that I mean it's almost the consequence of being precise and what I've learned throughout my experience in in in life seen many, many thousands of people is that there is not one size fits all. And I got very frustrated with the screening world, as in people tended to go and say, oh, I'm going to have my MOT next month, so I better get myself in shape because otherwise I'm going to be told off. And I said, well, it just doesn't make sense, that mentality.

11:33Evgeny: I mean, you're doing that for me as a clinician, you're doing this for yourself. So how can I somehow change that mindset that you're saying, actually that prevention should almost be in your general strategy you're doing it with your car I mean I often use the analogy and say if you if I would give you a car any car you can choose any car in the world every me okay but you're only ever going to get one in your life okay you will choose a very nice car but what you're going to do you're going to really take care of it because you're only going to get one in your life and I think we should treat our body exactly the same way.

12:06Evgeny: I only have one. So, and yet we still don't have that mentality. The vast majority of people don't have the mentality as in, and I need to take care of it. So what I specialize in is a, trying to educate people as in, there's so much you can do that is in your hands to try to stay well because nobody wants to be poorly. Then you start backtracking all the time. You waste time, energy, and often it's got a bad ending. So what I specialize in is create that awareness and actually help people give that strategy that actually helps them actually avoid as much as possible, as we know, okay, the nasties in life.

12:44Dr Sabine Donnai: Does it work? I mean, does it work? I'm changing the mentality because I find it's very hard for people to change, even unless someone gets seriously sick. It's very hard to teach people.

12:55Evgeny: I think data helps. I think you're seeing black and white and say, well, this is what's happening and that makes sense. So intelligent people will grab that most of the times with both hands and say, well, fine, there's a number that needs to change and this is why. Does a change in habit, is that difficult and most people don't want to do that? Absolutely. It's the most difficult thing because we all get into a routine in life that somehow feels comfortable and that we somehow just want to make a compromise. I mean, we all make a compromise. I drive a car. The likelihood I'm going to have a car crash is higher than if I don't drive a car.

13:31Evgeny: but I wear a seatbelt and I try to buy a car that is safer than an old car that might not have good brakes so and I think we need to do the same with our health and say is life still a compromise yes it is do I live the perfect lifestyle no I don't at all but do I do I know which compromises I'm kind of okay with yes and that's where the data helps me that I'm saying okay that I live by the 80-20 rule. I say 80 % of the times I'm doing the right thing for me because I enjoy the energy. I enjoy that I'm not aging faster than I should. I enjoy that my cognition is as sharp as it was 20, 30 years ago.

14:13Evgeny: So I enjoy that because I enjoy living life to the full. But 20 % of the time, I'm just saying, oh, you know, what the heck's I been? Okay. You just just have some fun, just go for it. And I do, but I know where I can do that and where the impact might be. So I know how to compensate for it. And that to me makes all the difference. That's it for the preview. If you'd like to hear the full episode, search Brave New World Standard in your podcast app. We'll be back here tomorrow morning with a new episode of The Standard. See you then.