SPECIAL LIVE EDITION: It's Time To Stop The Wellness Scam

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid, and what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello, sir. Good morning. I'm the Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their staff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

0:38Now, you actually knew Princess Diana. I think one of the ways she acquired power was through that relationship with the president. But before that interview, no one had really spoken and been so open. Was that a game changer? So join us every week wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube and on Saturdays on 5 as we catch up with the royals. welcome back to this week's special episode of the unprocessed truth where we're doing an amazing live episode with three amazing guests all at once so we can get to the truth of what's really going on in the wellness industry and how you can stop being scammed by all the hype and the claims and the trends that just aren't true so you can focus on real health and wellness and we're now live on YouTube so you can watch the whole thing in full HD from the comfort of your living room.

1:30So please like and subscribe there and give us a follow. This episode is recorded on location in Shoreditch so the audio quality may be a little bit noisy with a few chatters and bangs in the background but please forgive us and we hope you enjoy listening.

1:46So first up Dr. Emily who's a PhD nutrition scientist. Get on up here.

1:56Then we have the dietician Nicola Ludlam-Rain, who has 15 years clinical experience. And the chef, men's health cover model, legend, Chris Baber. Let's go.

2:15Right, guys, welcome to the Unprocessed Truth. This is our podcast. This is our pop-up where we're all about stopping the scam. And I don't mean that in a bad way, because there's fantastic products out there. There's great things happening in health and wellness, which is amazing. There's more and more companies doing the right thing, which I love to see. But the reality is, it's got a bit cool. It's got a bit trendy. It's got a bit hypey. It's got a bit mushroomy and this and that and expensive and crazy. And sometimes it's just bloody confusing. And the reality is real health, I believe comes from the foundational stuff, getting the 90 % right.

2:52And it doesn't have to cost the earth, right? I want to reach as many people as possible and help them be healthier, right? We've got 63 % of the UK overweight or obese, yet most of them aren't going to just go on some crazy expensive greens powder. That's not going to make a difference to their health. So we have to educate, we have to try and help as many people as possible. And so tonight, we're going to get into the wellness fads the wellness scams with these amazing experts who are going to join me and give that you guys the tips of what real foundational health looks like can't wait to get into it you up for this let's go you're ready gloves are coming off the gloves are coming off right and as it says here we're drowning in in information but starving for wisdom.

3:38Wow. Look at that. Okay. So part one, the first bit, the wellness scam, we're going to get right into it. So Dr. Emily, this is for you. You're going to kick us off. From a scientific point of view, what's the wellness claim that keeps getting pushed despite weak evidence? I think it's how black and white everything has become. You know, whether it's don't eat red meat or you absolutely have to eat red meat or it's then keto and whatever. When it comes to nutrition science overall, it's very rare for anything to be black and white. There is so much nuance. And unfortunately, you can't get that over in 60 seconds.

4:19The algorithm does not favour like credibility or accuracy. It just like favours. Controversy. Yeah. And like, you know, the minute you can engage in it, that's it. It's on that kind of misinformation loop. So trying to break that is something that can be really, really difficult. And I think that all of this kind of like silver bullet, massive claims, there's no silver bullet when it comes to health. And I think what is going to be the general message of tonight is the things that matter and really move the needle when it comes to health are the things that you've got to keep showing up for yourself day in, day out.

4:57It's kind of hard graft. there is none of this like quick fix silver bullet and unfortunately everyone's flogging something that is that kind of silver bullet and there ain't one. Mic drop. Mic drop, great answer. Nick, tell me what's damaging people's relationship with food the most? So hi, my name's Nick, I'm a dietitian. So I wrote a book about 18 months ago called How Not to Eat Ultra Processed and I think the thing that's damaging relationships is thinking that there are good foods and bad foods a bit like what Emily said this whole black and white because there's no such thing as good and bad foods just good and bad diets because it's the portion size and frequency in which we eat all foods that matters most so an apple isn't healthy if that's the only portion of fruit and veg that you're having in a week a biscuit isn't unhealthy if you know you're having it with a cup of tea with a friend on a Friday afternoon what is unhealthy is having three packets of biscuits on a Friday afternoon because you skipped your breakfast and you skipped your lunch and entering that or entering a binge restrict cycle where you're saying I'm never eating biscuits again because we're not robots and that's what I see a lot in my I work in weight loss in bariatric surgery and you know people I work with might be 20 or 30 stone and before surgery if I ask them to do a diet history it's often well it depends if I'm on a diet or not so they either give me a really really healthy day quote unquote or a really really unhealthy day and so what I strive for I know you said 90 % I'm a bit more realistic so I've got two little children um I aim for the 80-20 rule if you are doing things 80 % of the time you know whole foods or quote unquote healthily the other 20 % can totally be for your soul foods and it's I think the people that miss the mark so it's about finding the balance between eating to live and living to eat as opposed to the extremes are we still friends because i call my book the good the bad and the healthy so i name checked some bad foods but no look it's all we're all trying to do the same thing so chris from where you sit been on the cover of men's health oh legend should have led with that that was a dream when i was 21 you achieved it legend but you're also a chef and you've done loads of work with food so from where you sit what's the wellness scam you get annoyed with the wellness scam i get annoyed with there's a few i mean i've worked i've been in the industry over a decade so i've worked with retailers i've worked fine dining loads of different areas i've seen a lot but the wellness i think the scam is it's like the marketing of foods and obviously something we all follow you for is i think the whole high protein thing people assume is a healthy product and it's obviously a way to draw people to a certain product turn over the back it might have 20 grams of protein but it's also got 20 other ingredients and you know see the protein bars but not even just that there's just like it might be a salad it might be this but it's still pumped full of rubbish and i think just the the marketing of stuff i mean i spent so many years traveling around the uk meeting farmers and suppliers and producers of like the beautiful food we grow on this island and you just think why they adding all this rubbish to what we already have and i think yeah it's it's the marketing and probably the the laws or the legislations around how they're allowed to call things health healthy on a packet because it's incredibly misleading

8:16i was just going to add um so i mean the technical term of what you're describing is like a health halo and i think a great example is on a packet of marshmallows it's labeled as fat free or even um my friend wouldn't send i once took a picture for my instagram stories of like the strawberry yogurt flakes and my friend saw it and thought oh Nicola you know eats them and then you know I said below it beware you know look at the ingredients list the first ingredient was sugar it wasn't yogurt it wasn't strawberries so their health halos where this mass marketing directs you to one part of the product and it completely misses the bigger picture okay I'm going a little bit off field here but it's only because I've settled in now so I feel less nervous and there is something that grinds my back teeth like nothing else and it is that the wellness industry has lost its way and lost its science, but I would say it is built on the backs of women.

9:07And when it comes to that science, if it is ever present, it is based on male data. And so as women, when we then, you know, take on the latest trend, be it cold plunges, intermittent fasting, and our body doesn't respond the way the internet tells us it should, we're left questioning ourselves, thinking that there's something wrong with us, rather than questioning the science that was never built with us in mind. So there is nothing that pisses me off more than that. I would say it goes in line with that, that there was a study done in 2024 with Dublin University and MyFitnessPal and it showed that only 2 % of the time, what you see on TikTok, social media, what you are faced with is accurate when it comes to health and nutrition.

9:49So 98 % of the time, what you are seeing on your feed is total and utter, are we swearing? Yeah. not our content though we're more right than two percent of the time we're the two percent okay it's cool um but listen let's get into upfs because there is so much crazy health halos stuff going on chris you're saying what crap are they putting into our food adulterating all this wonderful british grown food that we could be eating that's real it's whole food it's nourishing but instead what are we now 60 of our diet is ultra processed in a kid's lunchbox one study showed it to be 82 percent and the problem I have with ultraprocess food is that's going to be probably higher in calories or makes you eat more than you should because it's not very filling and it's going to be low in nutrition often it's just wheat or sugar or nonsense it's not giving you the nourishment you need so when we get into UPFs Nick I know you talk a bit on your social about how some UPFs are kind of fine and you shouldn't worry about it but what's your perspective?

10:49Great question. So when you look at the data, of which most of it is fairly poor and most of it is observational, you can obtain that the higher your UPF intake, the worse your health outcomes. However, new data from I think it's 2023, really big umbrella reviews, has showed that when you delve into the subcategories of ultra-processed foods, not all UPFs are bad for you. and I'll give an example so my son is allergic to dairy eggs and some nuts so I rely on these healthful ultra-processed foods to feed him a nutritionally balanced diet and also to feed him so that he doesn't feel left out for example at parties so ultra-processed foods come on a spectrum of health at one end yeah you've got the HFSS UPFs the high in fat salt sugar why are they so bad um like we've said they're hyper palatable they encourage what we call the passive over consumption of calories consuming too many calories without realizing it they're so morish they melt in the mouth they're also devoid of fiber and nutrients and they crowd out the healthful foods like chris has mentioned like the single ingredient whole foods but then at the other end of the spectrum you've got the foods that are not linked with disease risk like fish fingers baked beans.

12:07The hummus in my fridge is technically under Nova who came up with the UPF definition classed as ultra processed. It's not linked with disease risk. So even fortified oat milk. So the UK government haven't adopted a definition of ultra processed foods and there isn't one globally agreed upon. I would like to see a definition that encompasses a concoction of different additives, let's say more than two, and low in protein, low in fiber, low in nutrients, i.e. that product is linked with disease risk in large amounts. So when you look at the research, the plant-based foods, the high fiber foods, even wholemeal sliced bread, or for example, Weetabix isn't linked with disease risk, categorically not.

12:46It's the sugar and artificially sweetened beverages. It's the processed red meats, like Emily's mentioned. This quote unquote junk foods, it's kind of a bit of common sense, foods that you wouldn't eat thinking, I'm going to be healthy today. There is also the question on emulsifiers, which I'm sure Emily can touch a little bit more on. But again, not all emulsifiers are bad for you. There are the red flag ones, PAT, CMC, I can't remember what the corresponding E numbers are. Again, they're not really found in the healthful foods. I have found them in my tin coconut milk. We have it once a week.

13:24I've rationalized it. Do you know what? I'm making a curry from scratch with chicken, with broccoli in spinach because i feed my gut microbes enough fiber it can cope with the odd emulsifier and again most of the data is on rodents and it's in large amounts so your soy leptin and your dark chocolate again like the data isn't there to support that it's negative on gut health i could carry on talking but you've carried on but you've mentioned gut health which is your specialist subject so what is upf doing to the gut when it comes to gut health um everyone or we all love it don't we at the moment um so emulsifiers they are not absorbed in your small intestine so they reach your colon where the majority of the bacteria live so if you're not familiar this is what we call your gut microbiome it's the community of microbes living in your gut they are not passive passengers like we once thought we thought they just merely kind of like helped us poo they are not they're chattier than me they're talking to every system and organ in your body and so when these emulsifiers reach your colon they have the potential to interact with your gut microbiome And because I believe the gut microbiome is the conductor of our health, it seems like we should figure out what they're doing.

14:32So when it comes to animal studies, just as Nick said, like they use sort of animal studies, but also like where they make fake guts. There was a study done in 2022 where it tested lots and lots of different emulsifiers. And it showed that the kind of very common ones, soylectin, those kind of things, they had no effect on your gut microbiome. Great. There were ones that did seem to have very detrimental effects. but they are found in like if there are is there like six six thousand um emulsify like foods that contain emulsifiers and of those it's like 1.4 percent for p80 i think and for cmc it's like 0.06 percent so again i think it comes back to that like like zooming out when it comes to your diet like how much of an impact are they having one thing that like grinds my gears when it comes to ultra processed foods is I straight out of my PhD, I worked in policy.

15:26I was a research fellow for all of our sugar tax, national food strategy, all of those things. And when it comes to moving the dial on people's health, we can, we always focus on this kind of like negative nutrition, what we should be taking out of our diet. And as a woman who grew up in the nineties, you know, it was fat free, carb free, fun free. It was a pile of crap, wasn't it? And so I much more prefer like talking about positive nutrition if we look at the global burden of disease which looks at when it comes to the dietary factors that determine basically death rate the first one is salt we absolutely need to lower our salt intake but the remaining like the following eight that are contributing the most to deaths that can be attributed to diet are things that we're low in low in fiber low in whole grains low in fruits low in vegetables it's only when we get to around 9-10 that it's high sugar kind of HFSS stuff so I think when it comes to this kind of like thing on ultra processed foods yes they are such a big part of our diet right now but it's often because the healthy choice is often far more expensive and that's the problem.

16:32So we will get into cost of living in a second but Chris you've come at it from the other angle you're a chef you've worked with farms tell us like how we can avoid more ultra processed foods and get real food in our cupboard because you're saying it's about adding nutrition in not necessarily taking stuff away yeah i agree it's about what you add into your diet and it costs another thing we can come on to but i'll touch on it briefly if you go to like south of france or spain the rich guy at the top of the hill and the working class family at the bottom of the hill both go to the same market buy the same chicken buy the same apples and i think in a lot of european countries it's a very different culture around food i think when people say we're proper foodies in britain i think in london maybe maybe you're in a bubble here but the rest of the country on it's strictly driven by price and price will determine the amount of crap that's in your cupboard versus not but i think the messaging you know i've probably been about 50 different farms all around the uk and people think it's expensive and this that and the other it is if you're importing things in and eating them out of season but if you eat with the seasons it tastes better it's more nutritious and it costs less like people might think strawberries are on offer because Wimbledon's on tv well incorrect they're in season there's a glut of them so the price comes down and the farmers have to get rid of them so I think like learning to shop and eat with the seasons is a more cost-effective and easier way to get more nutrition in to the point on ultra processed foods you know I'm friends with plenty of Italian chefs like Chris no one in my family has got any allergies, none of them are overweight, like gluten-free or milk-free or whatever all that rubbish is, like no one has a problem, but they eat fresh seasonal foods.

18:08And I think it's just such a simple fix to a lot of health problems. And the more ultra-processed food we eat, especially for the kids growing up, I've done a lot with getting kids into the kitchens, the more they're used to eating things from a packet, the skill set goes of just learning to cook for yourself and and I think that's a massive part of education of getting younger people into food getting them enjoy being around food and learning to cook even the basics can make a big difference in the long run so I'm going to give you the mic right back because I want you to tell us the one meal that's fast easy for everyone to cook and will stop them ordering on Deliveroo and getting takeouts when cooking real food can be quick I mean this is one of the positives of social media anything it's not just one recipe pretty much all of the stuff you order on Deliveroo If you typed it in and then the word recipe, you'll probably find some great recipes.

18:59And a lot of, I used to work in a Michigan Indian restaurant. I learned so much about cooking stuff that I grew up ordering online. I could make a chicken booner in like 20 minutes with peppers, onions, tomatoes, some basic spices, some chicken breast or thighs. No cream, no sugar, no MSG or anything like that. And I think like you can pretty much do everything because there's a recipe for everything. and that's one of the positives of social, but it's just making the effort to go and do it. But yeah, try a chicken booner. I don't know how to cook a chicken booner and I think I can cook, but no, it is about speed and efficiency and making it easy for people and getting over that fear of learning to cook with real whole foods, which we love.

19:43But Nick, you're a busy mum. Cost of living, it's expensive. Kids are expensive, God help us all. But essentially, what do you do to save your family money, keep them healthy? Of course, if you can't tell, I live in Yorkshire. I also spent over a decade working in Bradford, BD1, which is one of the most socio-economically deprived areas. You know, my patients would visit food banks, etc. And it's not a case of, you know, go to a supermarket. It's like, what's within your vicinity? You know, mobility issues. And it's called food deserts, where there is literally a lack of healthy food within the vicinity.

20:20People can't get there. But what do I advocate? I think one of my biggest tips is to go frozen and tinned. Frozen fruit and veg actually contains more nutrition than fresh. It's so accessible. It doesn't go off and tinned as well, you know, tinned pulses. When I was like looking into ultra processed foods, I joined quite a lot of Facebook groups on ultra processed foods to see what the lay population were thinking. And people were so extreme. They were like, is this tin of chopped tomatoes ultra processed? Is this tin of kidney beans ultra processed I'm sorry but if you're asking the question is this ultra processed or not that's the wrong question it's what is the food made up of mainly um you know if it's citric acid as a preservative you know if we removed all the preservatives there wouldn't be a cost of living crisis there'd be a cost of food crisis so go for tinned if you worried about the calcium carbonate which is just a type of salt in your kidney beans just give it a rinse first but not everything has to be cooked from scratch or dried lentils and even for example when I make a bolognese with mince I add kidney beans I'm really sorry I don't make my sauce from scratch because like like I don't you know I've got like a four-year-old going mummy mummy and seven-year-old saying he's hungry and you know I've got a work email on the side though I but I do buy a decent jar of pasta sauce and um you know for example you've got to meet people where they are I personally so I I buy sourdough bread by Jason sourdough um I did a podcast this morning she lives in London she buys sourdough from bakery great like I don't have time for that um also you know my husband would not let me pay you know six quid for a loaf or whatever um but a lot of my patients I'm not going to mention you do you want to go for sourdough I'm getting them to move to more whole meal so it's about meeting people where they're at 100 it's small steps from wherever you are which is why I say eat baked crisps if you eat loads of crisps because it's a step in the right direction for you but emily gut health bloody confused i don't think science even knows everything yet it's still learning but would you say if we all just prioritize sleep and eating whole foods would like the whole gut health issues go away i don't know about all gut health issues um but yeah um you're absolutely right like we are at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gut health and understanding what these microbes are doing inside of us it's only in the last decade that we've actually been able to measure them in any meaningful way which is when like gut health exploded um but yeah what I always talk to people about is and to be fair to be fair I know we're kind of like bashing the wellness world but I'm not against it like I'm I love to be the ultimate wellness girl you know I want to see what everyone's taking and like the people in the room today like we are coming from this from a different lens like we are more of the like privileged we probably are buying the supplements and these kind of things but when it comes to gut health and I have so many people asking me like which probiotic which prebiotic and they don't really know the difference anyway and then they see like the ultimate symbiotic and then they're like this must be it they're what I like I grew up with two older brothers so when I try and describe um like science and supplements and things and how they work I tend to just use football analogies so bear with me it's also the moment when any man has ever mansplained this offside rule this is where I take my moment back.

23:32So if you think of supplements as like your upfront players, right? So you can take as many as you want. You get all the best goal scorers in the world, you know, Messi, Ronaldo, put them all on your team, right? Take the lot. They cost a bomb. Great. They're scoring goal after goal after goal. But if you don't have a strong back for your defense, which is a diet that is balanced, maybe if you want to process foods, 20%. um but typically you know whole balanced food diet mediterranean great you've got enough exercising exercise you're moving you are prioritizing sleep and managing your stress if those back four are in play or if if they're down actually but you're taking all your up front players it doesn't matter how many supplements they score like is this making sense it doesn't matter how many of your up front players like kick the ball in the back of the net because if you don't have a strong back four, you're always going to be conceding.

24:25So on the school board, you're always going to be down. And I think this is our problem. I think when life gets busy and lunch gets beige at the same time, and we're not eating colourfully, like those back four go down, but we always think, oh, must be, I need to go and get that supplement and that supplement. And actually it's taking a breath and saying, okay, which of these foundations do I need to prioritise? And I think the one that gets missed in the wellness space, because it is so noisy. and I say this from the lens as a woman because I do think a lot is marketed at us and often if a man is taking something it's often because their woman has bought it so they're then taking it and things like that I think it can feel really stressful for us and I think that's the point where we need to realize that actually how much good is this perfectly like balanced bowl that I put on my Instagram how much goodness is that actually giving me if I'm in a constant state of stress you know the amount of people that are in my dms going like i don't know what milk to drink like everything says i'm going to drop down dead if i have an oat milk flat white and i'm like oh honey it's not the milk that's going to kill you it's the stress that's going to put us on our deathbed at the end of the day and i think if we are just so hyper fixated with biohacking and like waking up at the crack of freaking dawn like are we actually better to have a little lie in i love that analogy i like football so i understood it fully i knew we'd get on but also So like, you know, the point about stress, if you look at all the blue zones and you look at why these guys are living to 100, only a couple out of the 10 things they have in common is actually diet related.

25:56A lot of it is purpose, it's community, it's family, it's stress, it's exercise, it's all these other things. So we can't just think about, oh, my God, this milk's going to kill me because obviously it won't. Let's go on to some action points now. We've talked a lot of theories. We've talked some good stuff. But I want some actionable things you guys can take away. and do today so Chris I'm going to start with you what's one thing people have in their cupboard that you want them to throw away now personally because I hate it tofu but if you like listen that's just personal preference because I think it's rank and the the one for me and I think we've come away from is all the fake meats and stuff that was just a complete load of rubbish like for me it was like what you got this pea protein chicken you've got these peas in a field you're drive them to a factory, ultra-process them, wrap them in plastic to make them look and taste like chicken, put the price up and then sell it to someone.

26:52Or you could have just had the peas and got the protein in the first place. So any other fake food, effectively, that's what I want in the bin. And tofu. And tofu. But, yeah, you know, look, tofu's actually one of the good ones, right? I just don't like the taste. Tofu, yeah. Tofu and tempeh, one of the good plant-based meat alternatives. Yeah, we love it. They're fermented. You know, fermented, real whole foods. arguably so I'm not I'm going to stick up for tofu sorry about that Chris but Nicola what's the biggest red flag on food labeling that you want to see changed do you know what it's when you see all green on a traffic light but it's on the side of a diet coke so and you know when you see a red and then you think it's bad and then it's on an oily fish or it's on nuts so this is where common sense comes in and you know things like diet coke have them in your diet but don't fuel your day on them you know pre-surgery my patients might have one to two liters a day and that's because the caffeine and the sugar is fueling them or a lot of them if they've been on slimming world might have the diet one that's still fueling them all day but then they get to the end of the day and they're so deprived of nutrients and energy they then order a takeaway and then it's a massive binge in the evening it's really hard front of pack labeling they've got a hard job traffic like labeling can be useful but it's about not taking it at face value i always say flip the pack over look at the first three ingredients on the ingredients list because that tells you the majority of what you need to know and if he doesn't have an ingredients list then great it's a whole food stick it in can i just start with a tofu point so there is a bit more to it than that it's um for me stuff like tofu avocados it like from an environmental standpoint like it the soy being the production of all of that in different parts of the world it can be incredibly bad for them right avocados the amount of water irrigation so something different would be like if you were some peas up with a little olive oil some mint some garlic you could do your like a local version it's less expensive there's more protein so i think it's everything in moderation don't be putting tofu in your booner every night but maybe once in a while um you can get away with it but think about the environment i love that because eating locally and in season is honestly if there's one thing if we care about sustainability to eat locally and in season it's not whether it's plant based on meat it's like get your eggs from your local farm two miles down the road that's where we're going to have the real sustainability wins and environmental wins because we're not sending trucks and planes all over the world so that i think is one of the biggest things a health halo tries to miss from a sustainability point of view because even oatly this is one that grinds my gears, I'm going to tell you one.

29:28Oatly on all their marketing put, this reduces your CO2. And they did a study and the study is great. And no one reads a small print. And the small print says, if you ship milk from Europe to the UK, then Oatly is lower CO2. But we buy all our milk from the UK. So it's bollocks. Buy your milk from the local farm. It will have lower CO2 than your oat milk could they ship it from Sweden like it doesn't make any sense so let's go back to the gut okay the back four I'm interested I need a strong back four what's the main thing everyone in this room should do for their back four prioritize them all four of them whole food like plant forward diet no I'm not saying you all have to turn vegan but we are not eating enough fiber um say fiber is found in your whole grains your fruits fruits your veggies your nuts your seeds and your lagoons beans are having a moment aren't they they come in nice jars these days so get on that bandwagon then also when you up your fiber please also up your hydration because you need it to keep everything ticking over nicely shall we say um and then prioritizing your sleep um yeah that is a big one um get off your screens try and have your meal at least two hours before bed um you don't need to do intermittent fasting maybe someone can ask that question um yeah just an overnight fast is great for your gut.

30:51And then exercise any movement, move your body in a way that feels good for you. And stress management is a massive one. So you might be familiar with your vagus nerve. This is what connects your gut to your brain. And you know, your brain is talking to all the organs and systems in your body, but your gut is talking back to your brain. And in order for you to even really get the benefits of any workout that you do through to the food that you eat. You need to be in rest and digest. And I'm pretty sure that we spend 99 % of our time in the other nervous system, which is fight or flight when we are stressed.

31:28And we continue to be. And the one way that you can get out of fight and flight and into rest and digest is by stimulating your vagus nerve. And you can do that with a fantasy yoga class and all those things, or you can literally do it with your breath as you sit here now, taking in three deep breaths and let your belly expand girlies like undo the trousers if you need to and stop wearing high-waisted trousers because it's one of the worst things for your gut health

31:57can i have a fifth player go on there's a fifth back five defensive i don't follow football sorry be the goalie um it's kind of linked with stress but social connection yeah because people can get so consumed with doing all these wellness hacks that they forget to actually connect and that's like a big thing for me like if anyone's got kids you almost like you're either working or with the children so what I try to advocate is trying to do something for me so I'm telling them all now I'm gonna start paddle I've been saying this for about a year now but yeah so it's social it's about meeting up with friends and yeah booking that into the diary because as you said in the blue zones that's a massive thing I think that's such a good point um Nix because we all talk about wellness in this like commercial world I would call it I have never once measured wellness in my almost 15 years of being a scientist there is no measure for wellness okay we talk about well-being and I think there is a big difference between wellness and well-being wellness is in all the little habits that we like makers are part of our personality these days and then there's well-being which is emotional well-being social well-being and obviously physical and mental well-being they're the actual things that matter it's a state of being and we're all chasing this wellness ideal and i'm like what even is that like it just isn't a thing and it's not tracking your health on a whoop for sure it's actually not it's kind of fun and interesting but it's because i geek out on the data and it's interesting but really that isn't health and wellness i totally agree but it brings me on to my last and final question it's a big one and let's start with you chris what does health mean to you wealth health is wealth yeah like For everything, it's hard to sum up what does it mean to me.

33:43My background is athletics. That's what I wanted to do. Exercise is a big part of my life. Wellness, I think just not going into the nitty-gritty, but just having a sense of well-being. But it's hard to summarize what does it mean to me. I think it means everything because without it, you've got nothing. What's that saying? It's like you can have 100 problems, but when you've got one with your health, you've only got one. So I think it's like something that has to be a priority. You only get one chance at this life. So like just watch what you're eating, do some exercise and have fun with your friends, I suppose.

34:14But that's a big question. I should have thought about that before I turned up. Well, your body is your car that takes you through this life and you can't trade it in and get a new one when the engine breaks. So you do have to look after it. And we don't do we do an MOT for our car, but we don't do an MOT for our body on a regular basis, which is kind of wild. But Nick, over to you. What does health mean to you? That's a good question. For me, I think health is being able to thrive in what you value. And everyone here will have different values. We are on this planet for such a relatively short period of time.

34:47You know, we're just literally, you know, passing through. So what are your values? What, you know, what is your legacy? Where do you want to spend your time? And how can you do that? Like not only feeling physically good, but also mentally as well. So it's waking up and feeling good. And also, you know, not succumbing to illness or burnout too often. So it's about checking in with your body and realizing that you're not a robot and you have to put the right fuel in. Emily, you've had time to think. This better be good. I would honestly just echo what you guys said. So I might take a different spin and add a study in, let's say, because I think we're all chasing health in a way.

35:22But health to me is sort of happiness. If you look at one of the longest, the longest studies that we have on health and happiness in the world, It is called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It was originally called the Harvard Man Study. But I am pleased to say, ladies, we are now part of the cohort, 85 years and running. And what it did is it followed these people over the course of their lives and it measured everything that they could measure of them. They took every blood sample, every, you know, fluid that they could take, they took. And at the same time, they asked them loads and loads of questions about their current like social state, their relationships, things like that.

36:00And this has now been replicated not just in the US, but lots of fancy institutions around the world. And there is one single conclusion from all of these fancy institutions and that the single most important factor determining how long and happy you will live is not your cholesterol levels at 40, but whether or not you have a consider yourself to have a significant relationship in your life. and that doesn't need to be, you know, a spouse or anything like that, but you feel like you have meaningful relationships in your life. That determines how long and happy you will live. That is amazing. And I've seen the study on grandparents live longer if they live near their grandkids.

36:38I told my dad that the other day, he's got another 10 years, can't check out just yet. But anyway, listen, that was an amazing podcast. Thank you so much for coming. We had a great conversation. It'll be on YouTube, follow the unprocessed truth, everyone in the audience. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. It's amazing to have real people in the room and have real conversations and get to the truth of wellness. So as ever, it does help us to do more of these cool things, get amazing guests if you can just like, subscribe or follow and help promote the podcast wherever you can.