Longevity Doctor: This Daily Habit Will Increase Your Lifespan - Mark Jinks

0:00When we look at different approaches to aging, I think a lot of the care that people get has been quite reactive. Performance medicine is about getting the best out of yourself. What's your nutrition like? What's your screen time like? What's your exercise like? How do all your different body systems relate to each other? When you start to notice early signs of aging before you've developed any conditions, it's typically a good time to start speaking to someone. Can you give me more examples of those kind of problems? So what are the main things we should be looking for? Dr. Mark Jinx is a GP, sports doctor and expert in longevity and performance medicine.

0:30He is passionate about preventative medicine and helps clients optimize their health through a holistic approach to support healthy aging. Having worked as team doctor for Premiership Rugby and Great Britain Hockey, he is now the chief medical officer at Body Brilliant, where he uses cutting-edge medicine and wellness techniques to create personalized treatments. Dr. Mark is the founder of NAD Plus 4U, supplying NAD products designed to boost mental clarity, energy, and well-being. ATP is your body's main energy currency. NAD is absolutely vital in that process. It's also useful in sort of DNA repair.

1:00What are the tests that would give me the right results to be able to decide which supplements to take? I need NAD. Muscle mass is the biggest predictor of longer term frailty. So if you eat the same meal at 5pm versus 9pm, it actually has a different effect on our bodies. So you get a bigger kind of spike in blood glucose later in the day. I hear the term inflammation. So what does it mean? Why is it bad for us? Everyone has like a personal fat threshold where once they get above a certain kind of body fat percentage or weight, they will start to see health problems occurring. Some people who can be very overweight, who aren't diabetic, who seem to do quite well with it, and other people who they put on five kilos and actually suddenly their health starts to really deteriorate.

1:42Well, if I were to start today my wellness journey, what would you advise me to do? Where should I start? Let's talk about biohacking.

2:02Dr. Mark Jinx, in a nutshell, please describe to me the work you do. So I would say that the bulk of the work I do now is in that health optimization space. So I consult with, discuss people's health, people of a variety of different backgrounds, and we go into detail around their lifestyle, their nutrition, their diets, their physical activity, their sleep. We look at the supplements they're taking. And we try and really dial into what makes them tick, what their concerns are, and how we can help them achieve their goals. So I would say it's about helping people live the best they can, and ideally in the longevity space for as long as possible.

2:43So I am kind of branding myself in longevity and performance medicine, but it's really about helping people live longer and better lives. Longer and better lives. Do you feel like sometimes longer equals to better? it's a good question and no i don't actually so i am i've got quite a broad kind of background of experience from kind of nhs work which involves actually a reasonable amount of elderly care so i've seen i've seen the kind of pitfalls of aging and what happens to people towards it towards the end of their lives where you know things like frailty start happening and these these chronic conditions can happen and i think you know we look at these two terms of health which is your quality of life versus your lifespan, which is your quantity of life.

3:27And they don't always tally together. And actually, you know, when we look at these different approaches to aging, I think a lot of the care that people get or has been up until this point has been quite reactive. So we're looking at maybe starting things like, you know, statins or blood pressure medications, but after someone's had a heart attack. So that's kind of based on, you know, we're reacting to what's happened in the body. We're pushing out maybe a few years of life, but actually that quality of life isn't very good. So the answer, I guess, would be no. And I think that's where a real focus of the kind of work that I'm doing and some other people are doing around like preventative care is so important and focusing on giving you that real quality of life, but for as long as possible.

4:08And ideally in doing so, giving you a few more years of lifespan as well. I find this fascinating in the wellness space because preventative work and preventative healthcare and wellness is something that it seems to be like new right now and trendy. But if you look at the same, let's say, analogy or the same method, but you transport that into a different example. So in a relationship, right? We understand that very clearly. We try to be as preventive as possible. So we take care of our relationships. So then problems are minimized. And the frequency of those problems are also lower. but it seems that in healthcare it took us a very long time to reach that conclusion.

4:51Let's deep dive into the experience that you just mentioned, the NHS for example. So what makes you a subject matter expert in this field? So anybody listening to this would think, well, anything else that he's going to say, I'm going to immediately implement into my daily life because he's one of the biggest or the best subject matter experts in the field. Sure, I mean, you'll struggle to find formalized training programs for the work I do at the moment. And that is probably something that will develop over the next few years. I would say my background and my interest in this started from my own personal experience and a lot of people's personal experiences.

5:26So I was a good athlete before I became a doctor. I used to do a lot of rowing and I didn't quite get to Olympic level, but I was decent basically. And I had a real interest in my own kind of recovery, my own performance. How can I get the most out of myself? and then I you know obviously finished medical school became a doctor I've got my medical training my medical background I started work as well doing some surgery training because again I thought I wanted to work with athletes yeah decided that I didn't absolutely love operating it wasn't the right career path for me and then retrained in general practice started doing some work in sports medicine started doing some work in aesthetics my NHS work continued obviously in general practice but obviously doing a wide kind of base of work so I could I might have said earlier with the work in kind of elderly care.

6:12I worked in some community hospitals, which were people who weren't quite well enough to be at home, but didn't need to be in an acute hospital. Combine that with work with companies like Bupa doing health screening. I worked at a private service, which was based around regenerative medicine. I did a master's in sports medicine. And I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've got a really broad set of experiences, both kind of non-clinical and clinical, which has led me down this kind of journey of looking at health optimization, longevity. and then the last few years have really been focused in those areas and doing courses around like functional medicines and how important like lifestyle is but also some more kind of niche treatments there's a training school called a4m which looks particularly at longevity and performance medicine so doing training courses with them so i and i constantly kind of keep myself up to date through different webinars different training courses looking at what's out there you know looking at things like different podcasts social media posts because Whereas the clients that I see are generally super well informed.

7:08And they come to me and be like, have you read this? Have you seen this? And if I haven't, then I need to be on top of it. So I guess in a nutshell, it's because I've got a really broad medical background that's a very solid base. I still do some work in the NHS ad hoc to keep my licensing up. And then I've got this other side of me that looks at all these different areas of wellness, of performance medicine, that I guess I can combine the two and give people a great experience when it comes to their health. Interesting. So you started your career as a traditional doctor for the NHS. For those who don't know the NHS, if you are not from the UK or live in the UK, it's the National Health Service.

7:43And basically a traditional doctor would be, as you were mentioning earlier, very reactive. So I go to a doctor because I have a headache and then they would treat that problem with a medicine, for example. But it would be very much reactive based. what happened in your career for you to transition from being that type of doctor reactive into proactive performance medicine and longevity based i suppose there are a few incidents um i guess from my own my own personal point of view again it's i've always had a passion around that i've always had a passion around how we can you help people as much as possible how we can you get the most out of ourselves and prevent disease i there's been a few times in my career and just to be completely transparent where I've seriously thought about leaving medicine because I've been fed up or unhappy with how we've been practicing.

8:31Once was when I was training in doing surgical training. I looked at what my colleagues were doing, how we were treating people, the effect that we were having, the lifestyle that was there. And I thought, actually, do I want to do this for the rest of my life? So I... Because you felt it wasn't effective enough. I think to a degree, yeah. And I think also just how I was living at the time and just thinking, is this kind of sustainable? I had colleagues who were a little bit further ahead in programs, who were moving all around the country, who were living away from families. And I just thought, this isn't the right way to live.

9:04This isn't the right way to be. And I felt, and again, like we said, it was a very reactive kind of model of care. And people were coming in, not getting great experiences. I took some time out did some training in sports medicine retrained as a GP to have a bit of a broader focus to try and do more preventive care and there's a lot of really great GPs out there I'm not there to bash doctors in the NHS at all because I think everyone is really trying their best it's just how the healthcare system is set up and particularly in general practice there's just not the time the biggest limiting factor is just the volume of people that we're trying to see so I started working in GP He again thought, is this the right thing for me?

9:44I was very fortunate to start working at a regenerative kind of practice, which helped me understand a bit more around kind of hormone therapies, more innovative treatments, have a real focus on prevention. And that sort of really sparked my interest. And a lot of things I would say to people when I would meet people socially who weren't doctors, a lot of my friends aren't doctors because of my other background, I would say what I really don't like is the lack of, I guess, innovation or the chance to do something new in medicine. You know, a lot of time it's protocol-based. a lot of time, again, it's reactive.

10:14We're kind of stuck just peddling the same stuff over and over again. I really wanted the chance to do something more exciting, more interesting, obviously safe, but a chance to kind of work a bit more to have a broader area of practice. And I think that kind of prompted me to go down this route. I think the more and more you look, as you said, you've got your own interest in it, the more you look, the more you find. I think it's just grown and grown quite organically from there. Let's talk about performance medicine because it's right now the line of work that you become an expert on. A lot of people feel like medicine is about just treating a disease.

10:47Imagine I'm a 10 year old. How would you describe to me performance medicine? Sure thing. I would say that performance medicine is about getting the best out of yourself. I suppose it's about, it's not about, you know, treating you when you're sick or unwell. It's about looking at you as a person, talking about what you want to achieve and helping you, helping you get there. So it's helping you get the most out of yourself, helping you optimize your health to be able to achieve the goals that you want to achieve.

11:19And I also hear a lot the term holistic wellness approach. What is it? Again, in very, very simple terms. Sure thing. So I think there's a lot of kind of overused kind of cliche sort of terms in kind of wellness. And probably wellness itself is probably one of them. I agree, 100%. Yeah, I think holistic is, at its core, holistic is great. I think the problem is it gets used and wrapped up in so many different things. But holistic in general means referring to, again, someone as a whole person. So we've already said that a lot of medicine has been reactive. It's been quite siloed. The example you gave is great.

11:57I've got a headache. Here's a pill for the headache. Let's look at why you've got a headache. Let's look at what's your nutrition like? What's your screen time like? What's your exercise like? How do all your different body systems relate to each other? And a really classic example is like your gut health, for example. So we, you know, in the kind of functional medicine space, if we've got someone who's got lots of different issues, and we don't know where to start, we might say, let's start with the gut. And actually, it's not a bad principle for a lot of people. So your gut health, we know relates to your immune system, we know it can relate to your mood, we know it can relate to your skin health.

12:28And you know, I've seen colleagues treat people with eczema by treating the gut, which is really interesting. So they're not just slathering on steroids. So it's really about trying to look at that person as a whole, how all those different body systems interact and where we can make the best difference. Some people may be thinking right now, well, I want to jump on that train, get on that wellness, longevity, lifespan, quality of life journey. But if I go to my doctor in the NHS, he won't be able to offer me those services. So where can I have access to a wellness or longevity professional? And also, when is the best moment for me to seek that assistance?

13:09Yeah, I mean, they're both great questions. To deviate really very, very slightly, I would say the first thing I would do is probably look at the lifestyle measures, those foundational measures first. Making sure that you are being active, making sure that you are kind of doing some exercise. You don't have to hurt yourself with exercise. Just being active in general is a good thing. Looking at your diet, maybe making sure that we're focusing on things like whole foods. making sure that you're trying to get as best sleep as you can, so consistent sleep and wait times, trying to manage stress. These, we'll probably talk about these a bit more in detail, but these are kind of the foundations that make up the longevity side of it.

13:45And then if you're looking to speak to someone, which I encourage you to do, I think I would look for kind of registered practitioners. They don't always have to be doctors. You see some great nurses in this space, some great nutritional therapists, some great physios do a good job in certain areas. it's around looking at people who are you know regulated and qualified so people and and you can look through um certain registered bodies like ifm for example the institute of functional medicine has a list of practitioners and a4m is another institute does a very similar thing there's a lot of noise in this space i suppose i mean it's about trying to to cut through that and and see a person a practitioner a doctor who has a background in this and you'll get a feel from you know when you speak to them or what you see online about whether they're the right person for you in terms of when to see someone it's not quite as simple as the earlier the better you know i was when i talk about elderly care i think people are in there people who are kind of in their 80s 90s have got multiple comorbidities arguably it's a little bit too late at that point we can do we can still help but it's not maybe the right time i would say it's probably when you start to notice like early signs of aging which can be multiple but often it's things like you know brain fog that's just a term that's used a lot isn't it but that kind of lack of clarity of thought it's it's maybe energy levels dropping it's it's maybe it's weight gain like mood changes these are all things that kind of people present with and that typically maybe is is kind of in that space around their 40s i see people in their 30s come and see me though it's typically a good time to start speaking to someone is before you've developed any conditions so we can try and like nip these in the bud as early as possible.

15:20So maybe like once every couple of years, you see someone just for a checkup and then we kind of go from there. Can you give me more examples of those kind of problems? So brain fog or maybe you feel like your memory is not as good as it used to be in your 30s and your 40s, because I think like we should set some light into those potential problems so people are watching out and then immediately detect them and then come to the specialists like yourself. So what are the main things we should be looking for? so i guess yeah the brain fog is a good example um a part of the problem i guess with these is that they can be due to so many different reasons which is which is good in some ways because it gives us something to work with and different areas to target a real common complaint around brain fog can be things like yeah memory changes like word finding just lack of clarity of thoughts it can be due to stress i mean all of these i guess again all these areas can overlap so stress lack of sleep can also be due to like hormone changes particularly people in their 40s you know maybe some of their sex hormones are not quite the levels that they need to be you know particularly around like perimenopause but even that like andropause word you know that's maybe later 40s early 50s but andropause is that referral to like testosterone levels dropping in men um it can again be related to brain fog um certain sometimes it can be as simple as things like low vitamin d low b12 so maybe we'll do like a basic blood panel maybe there's some other testing that we can do around nutrition but i would i would look at if you're experiencing things like say brain fog or your energy levels are dropping i think it's worth looking at your lifestyle in a bit of detail and and trying to do a bit of a like almost like an audit on yourself if you can it's hard to be objective sometimes because you know i've got a client at the moment and she's she runs her own business hugely intelligent woman very successful we had a look through some lab data we had a chat with her about how she was feeling and then during our conversation she realized that she hadn't exercised properly for a few months.

17:12And as soon as I said it, you know, it's almost, you know, slapping herself on the head being like, oh gosh, I can't believe I hadn't been doing that. So it's important to kind of take a, try and take an objective look at what's going on at the moment. But I think, you know, we'd look at those kind of presenting concerns, what you're worried about. And then I would try and see if you can identify why that might be the case. And if you're thinking, actually, I'm not sure what's going on, then it's probably a good time to speak to someone. It seems that most of the examples you gave me are brain related, neurologically related are there any other areas of our body that we should be focused on yeah yeah absolutely so i didn't mean to kind of necessarily like focus on the brain in too much detail i think all sorts of areas i suppose i mean from top down i i still do a bit of aesthetic work but aesthetics comes into it so like your hair health your skin health um i would look at you know how your digestion is you know particularly around the guts whether you're experiencing kind of bloating or you know digestive issues your joints you know sometimes people talk about you know aching joints you know back aches knee pains um which can be signs of kind of more i guess chronic inflammation that we need to be aware of um i guess any anything that kind of feels slightly abnormal to you depending on what you how you're feeling in the past you know if you may notice that your energy levels are dropping you may notice that you feel even just more stressed so there's lots of different areas that we can pick up on but i think those there's basically you're feeling that there's something off yeah whether it's in your head or in any other part of your body instead of going and seeing your gp you're you're suggesting that we should go and see a wellness practitioner i think that i think it varies on the person i think it varies what they're presenting with um i would say that your nhs gp is likely to be absolutely excellent they are usually going to be very happy to do like a fairly limited set of blood tests which will give you an idea they're also pushed for time i think i would definitely look kind of inward in terms of you know what are you doing try and be able to object if you can around those lifestyle measures so again the stuff we've spoken about about activity sleep diet alcohol for example maybe there's little things that you can do yourself but if if you're doing all those things you think actually you know i'm doing all those things right maybe i'm taking a couple of supplements it's not quite working then i would say that like a functional medicine a wellness practitioner is it's probably slightly better placed than your traditional nhsgp mainly because they'll have a lot more time and they'll have some access to other tests that can be useful for people so it's in the test that i do quite often would be things like organic acid testing which is a urine test give us an idea about micronutrient needs mitochondrial function oxidative stress microbiome testing as well to give us an idea about how your gut bacteria is working how that's balanced up um and your traditional nhsgp won't really have access to those tests and they're often not so keen to test things at hormone levels either.

19:58So again, I'd probably do that sort of lifestyle audit, see where you are. And if it's still, you know, you're not feeling so great, it probably is worth going down that route of speaking to someone to get some advice.

20:12You've mentioned that you work with high executives, but I know that you also are with top athletes. What do high performance do to take care of themselves? Can you give me some examples? So perhaps we can implement those also into our daily lives. Sure. I think one of the main things that this, I mean, it's a broad category of people, but one of the main things that those kind of people focus on is that they're very self-aware, I think, for the most part. So especially now, you know, maybe five or 10 years ago, it wasn't the case, but I think they're very self-aware, very invested in their own health because they're doing well.

20:44You know, they want to keep up that level of performance for as long as they can. They're spending money on kind of monitoring. they're happy to invest time and effort in their health whereas you know there's still that kind of culture i guess particularly in the uk where people i use my parents as an example who were very much like well the gp hasn't called me so everything's fine and actually that's probably not quite the case for a lot of people so they're they're very invested in their health they're very happy to kind of spend money very kind of motivated so they'll be listening to a podcast looking at stuff on social media maybe they're taking supplements at the moment often they've often they've they've doing so the lifestyle stuff often they've got a personal trainer or a physiotherapist that they're not a physio personal trainer or they've got a good gym membership they're working with um often their diet's good maybe they're doing meal prep services some people even got private chefs um so they're focusing on a good quality diet good quality exercise you're focusing on their sleep and actually even then they're still not quite happy where they are and that's been some of the i guess the more nuanced approaches come in that's where we're looking at maybe some testing you know we're looking at maybe some medical therapies um in terms of what they're doing as well is a big focus on recovery so you know they're they're thinking about the the longer term of their health they're thinking about how they can preserve their function for as long as possible so they're they're not just kind of burning all their matches in one go you know they're trying to um make sure again they're they're sleeping right they've got a big focus on some recovery tools so maybe they're doing a bit of the biohacking stuff which by biohacking again i think it's another term that gets a bit overused but it's really again about trying to make the most of your time i think biohacking and they're doing things like maybe some cold exposure maybe some heat exposure i think that can make a big difference to people's health so that's kind of what what they're sort of doing at the moment they've got this big interest they're quite well or they're very well informed um and they're starting off with with those kind of lifestyle foundations some some supplements that work um and then then they're kind of looking elsewhere if they still need extra support and i think that's something that i think i'd bear in mind for everyone, I suppose.

22:43I want to deep dive into those biohacking tools later in the conversation. But now, walk me through the lifestyle factors that perhaps anyone can relate to that are more approachable for anybody to improve their quality of life, like sleeping, eating, exercising. So let's go one by one. And what are your recommendations on how we can improve in that perspective. Let's start with sleeping. What should we do and what should we avoid? Yeah, no, absolutely. There's lots of different ways to approach this. And again, everyone's got a slightly different, what we call chronotype. So maybe some people like to get up a little bit earlier, some people like to get up a little bit later.

23:26I think as a starting point, I would try and be consistent with the time you go to sleep and in particular the time you wake up. I think the time you wake up, having a consistent wake-up time is really important. Getting early morning light exposure, again is really positive for people again if you're trying to make it personalized to people's circumstances some people live in beautiful houses in the countryside it's very easy for them to go to lovely walks some people live in small flats in this in the center of london it's maybe not quite so nice for them to go for those early morning walks in december but trying to get you know early early morning light exposure is really important we know it's good for resetting that we're not resetting but supporting your body's kind of normal rhythms it's good for your body to start making melatonin so melatonin is your body's kind of natural sleep hormone that regulates sleep weight cycles early morning light helps your body to start making melatonin not releasing it releasing it happens in exposure to darkness so then i would you know do your normal day i'd be careful around caffeine i still drink coffee obviously um i would be careful around how much caffeine you're drinking maybe one or two cups you're trying to stop after midday some people don't have a really good tolerance to it so it doesn't make too much of a difference but i'm always careful i think it does help um towards the end of the day i would try and wind down as much as you can again personal circumstances I've noticed very clearly that if I'm on my laptop past 7 38 p.m my sleep is definitely going to be affected so I would look at I would look at some form of evening wind down so reduction of screen time we talk a lot about blue light I know some people use blue light blocking glasses to good effect I haven't personally got them I I generally try and spend less time on my phone less time on screens in the evening from about 7 p.m I try and read a bit more and then I would if you are going to exercise just to go back very slightly I would probably try and do early in the day.

25:05I would probably not try and do really high intensity exercise later in the day because you get this big rush of kind of stress hormones to help as part of that. And I would... Interesting. So you would, I have some friends that train in the evening. Yeah. You would not recommend them to do this because it would impact their sleep. It depends what training it is. So if it's, if it's low intensity training, like a zone two kind of aerobic activity, I think that's okay. I, again, with my rowing, we used to do all our ERG tests in the evening. And ERGs are rowing machines. We used to do our rowing machine tests in the evening.

25:36And some of those were really tough. You know, the classic one is a 2000 meter test. If I did that at 6 p.m., my sleep would definitely be affected. Because if you're absolutely ending yourself at 6 p.m., half past six, you are definitely not going to be recovering well enough to go to sleep on time. Why not? Because I guess the average person, and perhaps I include myself in that category, might think that if you're working out in the evening, you're tiring your body. So you're going to be naturally more tired. Therefore, you're going to get a better sleep. Yeah, I think it is sort of personalized to a degree.

26:07My view about really intense exercise is that you get this big, I guess, hormone release of like catecholamines and stress hormones that is part of that exertion. And it takes a while for those to come down. So I used to still feel kind of amped going into the evening, even though I was exhausted physically. I think there's still these kind of hormones rushing through your body. I think it takes a while for those to wind down and kind of settle down. that doesn't mean that you couldn't necessarily lift weights or do again like the zone two the aerobic stuff i think that can work quite nicely but i would i would just think about the intensity of the exercise in the evenings because i think that that can make a real difference to people's sleep and their ability to kind of switch off and i think it just takes a bit of time to wind down um and then yeah again you can look at supplements if you need to um like magnesium is the classic one like particularly different forms magnesium so magnesium glycinate bisglycinate or bisglycinate in the evenings.

26:56I often take a powdered supplement that's got magnesium, it's got some camol extract, it's got some theanine in, which is an amino acid that helps people relax. These are the kind of supplements that can potentially be useful to people to help wind them down. Sometimes people take baths. The classic kind of scenario around sleep is trying to increase the body temperature, like maybe via a bath or a shower and then getting into a colder bed. That can help with sleep as well. And then just having a dark room and trying to maintain that consistency. Those are probably the main, I guess, hacks I would talk about for sleep.

27:29I mean, do you implement any of those yourself at all? Many, many of those. Yeah, I'm sure. And why are these important for us? So let's say we implement all of those and we're getting a good night's sleep. What are the benefits of this? I think good night's sleep has a massive impact onto every area of our life. We've got a five-month-old at home. So our sleep has been hit and miss, I say, over the last few months. And there's definitely days when you know that you've been up a couple of times in the night, maybe you've had to deal with deal with a little boy and he's great obviously but you know you wake up your i think your reserve for the day is a lot is a lot less i think your tolerance for simple things like you know traffic bad news stress i think you know your your kind of ability to cope with stresses is definitely a lot lower there's there's a lot of good evidence about um sleep deprivation and like weight gain in terms and also early aging we know that it puts a stress on the body sleep really is the only time that our bodies sort of repair it repair themselves and there's also um there's a degree almost of i'm sort of simplifying here but of sort of cleaning the brain when you sleep as well like the brain getting flushed and removing kind of products that we don't want like waste products and that only really happens in sleep so um actually sleep sleep is so important for for all these different areas of your health and i think sometimes it can be it can be overlooked so it has a massive impact on everything i guess I agree with you 100%, especially because I can relate to the consequences of a good night's sleep or a bad night's sleep.

28:53If I don't have a good night's sleep, the day after, I am less in control of my emotions, so I cannot regulate my emotions. So if, again, they're giving me, similar to what you were mentioning, some bad news or there's some traffic, my ability to cope with those in a serene way is much harder. I don't have the same ability to do it but also my mental clarity is not as good and I guess in my particular case as an entrepreneur this is probably one of the most important things that I need to be mindful of so I prioritize my sleep these days above absolutely everything else now let's talk about another factor that contributes to longevity and the quality of our lives which is eating, nutrition so again in simple terms what are things that anyone should avoid and what are some types of foods or quantities or types of diets that we should be following yeah sure i think as a kind of preface to this i would say ideally we want to try and live our lives in some form of balance so i still want people to enjoy their lives i don't want to you know i always make a joke i don't want to lock you up in a monastery or nunnery and you just have kind of water and very simple foods you know you've got to enjoy your life i think in terms of foods that i would avoid um i just be careful around the amount of like processed foods that people eat and the reason for that is that and i i do eat some processed foods like whey protein is a processed food like creatine as well like i do take those um and occasionally you know we'll have things like you know ice cream and pizza occasionally it's just about the balance but in general it's it's things like you know refined carbohydrates and sugars that we just need to be careful of because that can cause not just you know a prolonged raise in blood glucose but also a particularly high spike in how quickly that blood glucose goes up when we're looking at people's health we know that something called insulin resistance is a really big upstream marker of poor health insulin resistance yeah absolutely so it's it's when your body so insulin is not the bad guy so insulin is a vital hormone for you to survive your type 1 diabetics who don't make insulin they'll die if they don't get it and that's what did happen you know in the past and thankfully that's kind of addressed now insulin is it's like a storage hormone i guess it's an anabolic hormone so it causes kind of tissue growth it causes our bodies to store fat it causes our bodies to like retain fat um when people have frequent kind of blood sugar spikes so say they're eating lots of kind of refined carbohydrates even things like lots of like rice and like white potatoes and then obviously things like sweets donuts biscuits that sort of thing we get a spike in blood sugar our body responds by that to that by releasing insulin from our pancreas that insulin drives sugar from our blood into our cells where it's needed the problem is if that happens frequently our bodies become resistant to insulin so we get higher circulating levels of insulin that that leads to more difficulty kind of losing weight more kind of weight gain type 2 diabetes is basically insulin resistance um this an inability to control blood sugars which can lead to problems with blood vessels problems with kidneys with brain with eyes you know these are these are longer term things but i'm just saying that insulin resistance is really important and i think from our from our diet point of view it's just being mindful about those spikes in blood sugar you know how high those go the foods that we eat so i'd be mindful of amplifying carbohydrates.

32:23This is kind of a slightly funny thing that I say, you know, we look at increasing the amount of like essential fats. We look at, you know, a good quality source of protein. You know, there's essential fats, there's essential amino acids, there's no essential carbs. What are some examples of good fats and good proteins? Yeah, sure. So I would say that good fats would be, sometimes like plant-based fats, like omega-3 is a good one, right, omega-3. When we do like omega-3 panels on people, we'll often see an imbalance of like an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which often with a much higher amount of omega-6, and that can be pro-inflammatory.

32:59We want like a good level of omega-3, and that kind of feeds into our protective forms of cholesterol as well. It's good for general kind of heart health. So it's not just plant fats. You can get, you know, like fish oils as well are really important. um i would look at in terms of good sources of protein i would look at like i would probably look at trying to spend money on you know the organic the free range the grass-fed beef like the sort of slightly leaner cuts of meat the fat for meat isn't necessarily the bad thing but it's just being mindful around how much fat you're intaking um so like you know grass-fed beef you know chicken turkey these are all good kind of sources of of kind of proteins i use whey protein sometimes just because it helps me gain you know a useful amount of protein in the day so we maybe mentioned about um how much quantities of like some nutrients should we be eating it varies on the person again i typically say you know like 1.2 to 1.5 maybe higher grams per kilogram of protein per day sometimes may go to 1.5 up to sort of 2.2 it depends on what they're trying to achieve but that we know that's generally beneficial for maintaining kind of muscle mass and good like longer term health um so that those are kind of the quantities i'd be looking at but there's there's different sources which some are better than others so if you're if you've got the resources to do it i would probably look at investing in that i think a lot of people are more prone to do something if they know what are going to be the benefits of doing that so for example or the negative consequences so for example you mentioned that if we are taking refined sugar, our levels of insulin would increase and that has severe negative consequences across multiple systems of our body.

34:43I think when it comes to, for example, protein, almost anybody that goes to the gym may understand that protein may help you with muscle gains. But there's also a lot of people that they're not going to the gym and do resistance training. they do other types of activities so to the general person or general population in this regard can you tell them why they should be eating protein even if they don't go to the gym even if they don't want to become stronger because because of the gym exercises that they're doing yeah absolutely i think it's a great question um because i think there is this misconception about you know seeing seeing someone walk around with a protein shaker and thinking oh they're just trying to become super bulky and like a bodybuilder or something.

35:27And that's absolutely not always the case. I mean, sometimes it can be, but it's definitely not the case for most people. Protein is absolutely a vital nutrient. It's really important for the muscle mass. And I don't mean pure bulk and hypertrophy, but having really big muscles, but maintaining muscle is really important. And if we don't make sure we have a good enough protein, you will start to lose muscle, as well as kind of balancing that with resistance training. It doesn't necessarily have to be heavy weights, but that could be hiking with maybe say a backpack on. It could be walking up the stairs.

36:01It could be picking up your kids. All of this stuff is resistance, right? But protein is really good for helping, one, stopping kind of muscle loss. You do get a stimulus for muscle growth when you eat protein, even without sort of training. I'm not saying that if you just have protein shakes, you're going to become a bodybuilder, but actually it does provide a muscle growth sort of stimulus. I mean, it's important to combine that with some form of exercise. And in older people in particular, that stimulus they get from protein intake actually is blunted. So it's important that actually they get probably more protein, actually more frequent protein than someone who's, say, 25.

36:37But what happens if we lose muscle tissue? Yeah. So muscle mass or sarcopenia, which is the medical term, is at the moment probably still the biggest predictor of longer term frailty. So muscle is something that's often overlooked actually in traditional medicine because there's not really a muscle specialty. There's a cardiologist, there's a hematologist. There's not really a muscle doctor. Wow, interesting. Yeah, so sport and exercise medicine is probably as close as you get to it. But muscle is hugely important from a number of points of view, but particularly around your metabolic health, your body's ability to metabolize glucose and fat.

37:14keeping you strong um is is so incredibly important for your quality of life your mobility just being able to do kind of normal activities and if if we don't keep an eye on that when we're you know in our 30s 40s plus it can tell off quite quickly and it's really hard to get it back unless you start using say performance enhancing drugs which i know a lot of people also speak and rightly so but it's it's something that i spend a lot of time talking to people about particularly in the legs, so like quad muscle mass is super important. So if I've got an older person I'm talking to, it's about getting them mobile and we're not going to get them under a bar in the gym squatting heavy weights, but if they can just get up and out of a chair, that's really important.

37:56And getting up off the floor, those are kind of extreme examples in older age, but actually it's still the biggest predictor of long-term frailty. So it's hugely important. So we're going to be living a better quality life if we're eating more protein because we're going to preserve our muscle mass or we will lose it less. Absolutely, yeah. And I think, you know, up to a certain point, you know, there are people who, if you look at, say, strong men, and they have hundreds and hundreds of grams of protein a day, that's not necessary for the average person. You know, it's not necessary for, let's say, a 30-year-old woman who weighs 60 kilos, who, you know, does some exercise two or three times a week, which is quite a normal scenario.

38:30They don't need to go and absolutely hammer steaks every meal. You know, that's not needed for them. But actually, yeah, you're absolutely right. having a good quality amount of protein, probably above one gram per kilogram up to maybe two grams per kilogram in that kind of range, which is quite a big range, but around that kind of area is going to be helpful for preserving muscle mass and actually ideally gaining a little bit more muscle alongside training. All right. So if I were to simplify this, we need to be consuming protein because we want to preserve as much muscle mass as possible because that's going to help our mobility down the line.

39:04As simple as that, right? Yeah. That's probably the main benefit. mobility and quality of life mobility and quality of life what about fats why should we can why should we be consuming healthy fats so again a number of reasons your a lot of your kind of hormones which is sort of chemical messages in the body are are related to cholesterol and fats so if we have a low level of fat and dietary cholesterol that can impact our body's ability to make hormones. So healthy fats are absolutely essential for cellular health and making new cells. It's essential for hormone synthesis. It's essential for heart health.

39:41I mean, obviously they're all sort of interrelated. I understand the heart health, but why do we need to have this ability to create hormones? So what happens if we don't create those hormones? Yeah, I mean, in really simple terms, you probably won't live for very long if you don't start making those hormones. I can work with that. But in kind of a more serious kind of answer, so hormones are these chemical messages from your body. They control all sorts of body processes, from sleep, energy levels, looking at things like your thyroid hormone, your weight, your sexual functioning, your reproduction.

40:12They have a huge impact on your body. And if you start to, let's use thyroid hormone as an example. If you become low on thyroid hormone, hypothyroidism, you'll notice that you'll start to gain weight, your energy levels will drop you'll start to have other health issues are hormones that trigger for something yeah they so they they will act depending on which hormone they will act generally kind of globally in the body to affect multiple different tissues um and they are yeah they're hugely important i mean again i'll use testosterone as an example because the reason why i'm asking this is because i'm trying to identify a very simple definition of of hormones so for example if you look at cortisol or adrenaline they are basically the enablers or they're triggering a reaction in the rest of our body's flight or fight so how would you define what is the main primary function of a hormone yeah so let's say hormone is a it's a chemical message in our body from from say a gland that acts throughout the body and in particular locations to perform essential processes it's a messenger a messenger it's a messenger yeah absolutely so if we're not consuming enough fats our body won't be able to get the right messages to perform efficiently in a given situation yeah that's a great way to put it yeah absolutely and and not just in times of kind of stress but but sort of globally in in lots of different situations cortisol is a great example but you know in terms of just a general functioning you know it will make a big difference to our overall health is there anything else when it comes to nutrition that we didn't discuss when it comes to longevity and quality of life i think i would probably talk about the the quantities and maybe the timings of food as well um timings of food's important we know that generally if you eat a little bit earlier in the day so before say 8 to 8 p.m for example so if you eat the same meal at 5 p.m versus 9 p.m it actually has a different effect on our bodies so our bodies react to it differently so you get a bigger kind of spike in blood glucose later in the day um just because of how our bodies work and the dienol variation in our bodies so how they vary kind of throughout the 24 hours that we get so i would try and i would try and eat sort of earlier in the day your last meal and have a period overnight where you allow your body to kind of rest obviously digest that food unintentional rhyme but you know trying to use those nutrients and then develop that sensitivity to insulin and in the mornings you know start the day with that kind of window overnight where you have sort of fasted i guess um we can go into that in more detail but that's just a quick kind of point that i think is useful when we talk about timers and meals.

42:43Let's discuss that in detail. Yeah. Sure thing. So I think there's a lot of kind of talk around fasting, intermittent fasting in particular that people use, and I've certainly used before. So intermittent fasting is essentially eating within, I mean, you can also call it time restricted eating. So eating within a certain time window. So that could be, you know, I mean, it wasn't 16, eight is the common one, right? So you eat within an eight hour window, you have 16 hours off. The idea is that that gives that, it gives your body time for your gut to kind of, well digest the food for the transit time of the food to go through your body it gives your body time where it's not dealing with kind of spikes of you know like the blood sugar allows us to become a little bit more sensitive to that hormone insulin again i feel like a bit like a broken record talking about insulin the whole time but it is it is useful um and that and actually you know because of those variations if we do eat later in the day and then we're eating first thing in the morning we don't get that sort of that time to rest and rest either and we don't get that kind of reset um it varies person to person if your if your goal is around longevity and preservation then doing sort of time restricted eating can be really helpful it's going to help with weight management again instant sensitivity it can help with kind of longevity benefits if you're trying to put on muscle and this is where there's a slight kind of difference between kind of performance and longevity there's definitely a big overlap there you know the the best example i think of the overlap would be something like vo2 max where vo2 max is really important has a number of kind of links with improving overall health overall over time that that level will drop so if you start at a higher point obviously when it does drop you've got more reserve performance however I think is more related to I guess like specific goals maybe it's shorter term goals and the point I'm trying to make I guess is that if you're trying to put on muscle then actually doing time restricted eating probably isn't necessarily the best thing you want to probably eat a bit more regularly to allow your body to get the nutrients in to build the muscle that you're trying to achieve.

44:37But then when you get to the point where you're looking at kind of preservation and longevity, that's where some of those fasting windows can be quite useful. Okay, so I do follow the intermittent fasting program and I've been following it for many years and I can 100 % confirm, at least within my life, the sets of benefits that I have unlocked because of it. So from a neurological perspective, my mind is clearer, less brain fog, my memory has improved. I'm also more agile in the early hours of the day, which is when I usually do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to my work or my professional life.

45:17So to me, there are a range of different benefits that back up this decision long-term, right? For me to follow this plan long-term. Having said that, based on your advice right now, it seems to me that if I want to live longer, because you've mentioned the word longevity when it comes to intermediate fasting you should follow it but if if you want to be performance-based so if you're following a performance-based approach you want to perform better in life you should not be fasting so to me i don't want to live longer and and and underperform i'd rather live shorter and perform so i'm getting something wrong here no no no you're absolutely fine i apologize because i probably not made it particularly clear i guess it it depends on what the goal is yeah i think you know the the mental clarity the kind of experience you've got with the kind of the intermittent fasting is something that we see a lot of and it's great and it we use kind of slightly cheesy terms if you think about evolution from an evolution point of view it would make sense that if you if you aren't eating and you're hungry you actually are very alert because that allows you to go and hunt for the food so you know it makes sense that you've kind of got that clarity in the morning where your body is not kind of digesting food and you're ready to go and you're very sharp and that's when you yeah kind of like you say do the heavy lifting when i say from a performance point of view i guess i mean i mean very kind of specific particular examples so say say you've had a big change in your in your life and you thought you know what uh mark i'm gonna i'm now gonna be a bodybuilder i want to become you know mr universe in 10 years and that's kind of my my focus right the intermittent fasting isn't going to get you there yeah like you know if you want to if you want to kind of put on muscle say you with someone who is sarcopenic, which you're not, obviously, then I think that's where the fasting doesn't help people.

46:57And that's where we need to kind of think about eating a little bit more regularly, eating a little bit more food. And for the average person, someone that wants to feel good, perform well at work in their personal and professional lives, would you recommend them to follow the intermediate fasting program? I think for some people it can work really well. I think particularly if you're someone who is kind of struggling with weight management, I think if you're someone who, you know, maybe you've been to your doctor and they've said, you know, you're borderline diabetic or, you know, it's maybe not quite as good as it could be.

47:27And then I think if you're looking at that kind of mental clarity, I think sometimes it can work really well. It's worth trying it. Interestingly enough, because of kind of hormone fluctuations, there were times in kind of women's cycles, like menstruating women's cycles, where actually it's not the best idea to fast because it can make them feel slightly worse. That's not a sexist thing at all. It's just a genuine kind of phenomenon. Um, but actually for most people, they do tend to respond quite well with it. And it's not something that I would probably do continuously for the rest of their lives.

47:56It may be something that you do for kind of three to six months. You evaluate it, maybe you make some changes. So I guess the short answer to that question is, is yes, I think it can work really well for people. Um, but it's, it's something that people, it's something that we'd be flexible with and try and think, you know, like you said about that kind of lifestyle order, is this working for you? You know, maybe in a few months time you think maybe not. and for someone like me that yeah follows that should i come off it at some point and then get back it again just to maybe regulate my body i think it depends on how you're feeling and what you're doing so if you start noticing that if you start noticing that there's benefits that you were getting aren't maybe there if you start noticing that your weight's changing that your energy levels aren't quite as good it may be something that you reconsider actually it's time to make a change and adjustment because i guess myself i'm at the maintenance stage yeah but i don't want to lose that also yeah i think i think it's fine to keep going you know i did i i did it for a long time like the 16 eight the kind of two meals a day i would occasionally do like one meal a day so typically eating kind of early evening i think that really helped particularly when i was when i was working and i wasn't quite as active because i you know i was sedentary a lot of the time and actually it allowed me to kind of manage weights quite effectively and managed it allowed me to feel good um i think if you if you start i guess i'd ask you how much how much kind of exercise are you doing at the moment six times a week yeah do you know what time do you tend to train early in the morning around 6 30 a.m seven and would you notice any kind of have you noticed any kind of problems with that have you noticed any kind of changes in energy levels or your performance when you've been exercising not long term but you always have this odd day in which your energy levels are lower yeah yeah absolutely so i think it's i guess trying to provide like a clear answer for people to to give kind of clear guidance i would say that it's something that is is flexible i think yes it's a good thing to do and you can continue it for as long as you want to if you start noticing it's not working for you anymore then it's probably time to make a change if you were to massively increase your training volume again for any reason then we might have to look at the nutrient levels and maybe actually that you may need to add in an extra meal for example so a good example i give is i've got a client who um intelligent guy he he got quite sick on a mountaineering expedition and he's quite a big guy he's probably 90 plus kilos he lifts weights he's on trt so testosterone therapy he lost a lot of weight as part of his illness he got he got altitude sickness really bad kind of chest infection they weren't sure whether it was pneumonia or whether he had a blood clot in his lungs really really long-standing illness he lost about 15 kilos so so for him yes from a longevity point of view he was still doing the fasting but we were talking he said his energy was low he had brain fog he was trying to put the muscle back on and i said listen you know you've just got to eat more you know not just you know eat the right quality foods you probably got added an extra meal when you kind of get stabilized when you put that muscle back on then we can look at again about the fasting i'm not trying to be evasive in what i'm saying i'm just saying that we're trying to make this kind of nuance to people But yes, you can absolutely continue it for as long as you want to, as long as it's working for you.

51:04You've mentioned several times throughout our conversation, weight management. I think a lot of people can relate to the necessity of being in their optimum weight when it comes to looking good, right, from an aesthetic perspective. so what are the negative consequences of being overweight from a longevity and quality of life perspective sure thing there's quite a few unfortunately so everyone has everyone has like a personal fat threshold where once they get above a certain kind of body fat percentage or weight they will start to see health problems occurring that is different for everyone it's not easy to work out where exactly that is for people that's why you see some people who can be very overweight who aren't diabetic who seem to do quite well with it and other people who they put on five kilos and actually suddenly their health starts to really deteriorate but but in general terms increased adipose tissue increased fats is pro-inflammatory we know that it puts more weights on joints and can lead to joint problems we also know there's there's a quite a strong link with a number of different types of cancer and other kind of chronic health issues like heart disease for example um it varies person to person i'm not trying to fear monger i'm not trying to be sort of fat phobic in any way but actually in terms of what do you mean by inflammation because i feel like i'm you know the child that is asking always the basic questions i hear the term inflammation like if if if you're into for example podcasting and you listen to different wellness podcasts they're using that that term every now and then so what does it mean in very simple terms otherwise is it bad for us yeah absolutely so i guess inflammation is information is again vital for for life and it refers to where where tissues just get i mean i'm trying to figure out the right words because i'm going to just repeat it and say tissues get inflamed so a good example is say if you were to bang your elbow on the door you'd notice that it gets sort of swollen swollen yeah and that's part of the body's healing process so you get this swelling this build up a fluid it's sort of allowing you know white blood cells and other kind of healing or healing kind of components of your body to get to those areas to allow the body to repair um inflammation is a vital kind of part of life in terms of that repair mechanism what we what we kind of see from a negative point of view chronic inflammation exactly yes exactly it's chronic inflammation right chronic inflammation not in response to an acute stimulus but in response to just general kind of not so good lifestyles that that can put more stress on our body we know that chronic inflammation unfortunately can be linked to like a variety of health conditions you know raised kind of yeah looking at those pathways that are related to kind of cortisol levels yeah um and actually chronic inflammation puts more stress on our dna repair mechanisms and can lead to increased risks say cancer for example so chronic unmanaged inflammation is a is one of those core tenants of longevity.

53:55So if you look at, it depends where you get your inflammation from, the hallmarks of aging, like dysregulated chronic inflammation is one of them. Can you get inflammation in any part of your body? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, you can. The gut's a big one, I suppose, and that has kind of major effects on the rest of your body. But you may look at, there are tests that you can do to kind of check it. And there's this kind of foods that can unfortunately be kind of cause more sort of inflammation, but there's tests that you can do to sort of measure it. So blood tests, some of the functional tests that we spoke about earlier, like some of the urine tests that look at organic acid levels, looking at oxidative stress, for example.

54:32You can get inflammation sort of anywhere in the body, but it can be just a very systemic, general thing. Let's talk about exercise. Again, I feel like there are right ways of exercising and wrong ways of exercising. If we look at this from the lens, again, of wellness, longevity, and quality of life, What would you recommend? So how does good exercise look like? And how does bad exercise look like? Shooting. I suppose I would always be cautious around using bad exercise because I would say that I would always try and encourage people to be active and I don't want people to be kind of too worried about.

55:10Is bad exercise better than no exercise? Well, I guess it depends what we mean. So I guess when I, if I was talking about, I'll use good exercise as an example first, then maybe use that to kind of pivot and then talk about bad exercise. So I suppose good exercise is exercise that has all those kind of health benefits we're looking for. So, and there's different types of exercise, as you know, right? So there's this kind of general kind of walking. I guess if we look at like different training zones from a cycling, running, any kind of cardiovascular point of view, different heart rates and different kind of thresholds from breathing and lactic acid.

55:42In simple terms, there's kind of very gentle exercise where you'll be happy to have a conversation while you're doing it. And that could be like a zone two exercise. You can specify in terms of heart rates and all these different areas, like exertion levels and things. But generally, if you can hold a conversation while you're doing it, it's probably going to be zone two. If you can't, it's going to be above that. And sometimes it gets polarized into like a zone two training and then maybe like a zone five which is harder harder training which is hard to hold any kind of conversation um those sorts of form of training are going to be improving your heart function they're going to be improving your blood vessels and your body so they're more compliant so they can dilate and constrict more easily which is good for your health um it's going to improve your mental health it's going to have a number of benefits on your body um particularly the more intense stuff which improves what's called your vo2 max which just to explain that's the amount of oxygen that your body can take in in that time frame which is which has also got a good link with longevity and other health benefits um you want to sort of combine that with some form of resistance training you know i'm not telling you you've got to go and try and do a lot of crossfit and lift super heavy weights or you know but generally keeping yourself strong so whether that could be in the gym it could be at home that will improve the muscle mass it will improve your joint health it's going to keep you mobile you know from a longevity point of view that's going to mean you can keep living the life you want to leave even as you live even as you get older and sometimes we do talk to people about their goals that'll mean that they can you know get up a flight of stairs quite comfortably when they're sort of 70 or 80 they can pick up their grandkids and like throw them overhead and stuff that's all really important stuff um i suppose bad exercise um i mean there's definitely been times when i've when i've overcooked it and i've gone a bit i've gone a bit too hard um i suppose bad exercise would be things that I guess there's different ways to look at it I suppose there's exercise that could potentially endanger your health and I suppose there's exercise where it would be far too much you're not allowing the time for you to recover so if you've um let's say if I was to dive into a an Olympian like Olympic swimmers training program like Michael Phelps's training program back when he was at his peak I couldn't physically do it but if I was trying to do that then I would I would burn up pretty quickly I wouldn't be having the recovery time in I would be putting my body in lots of chronic stress.

57:55I would likely get injured very quickly. And then I would suffer in my other areas of my life would suffer. And I suppose that would be what I refer to as bad exercise. So making sure that you've got the level of conditioning that is appropriate. So if you're somebody who's never run before, I wouldn't just sign up and try and do a marathon. I would try and start by doing gentle exercise, build up the strength in those softer tissues around the body, the connective tissues, and then allow you to kind of exercise at the level you want to the reason why i bring up bad exercise is because um we've released a fantastic episode with a love anthropologist probably one of the best ones in the country and she yeah she works at oxford university and she unveiled something that i found profoundly interesting which was that uh basically our amygdala which is the limbic side of our of our brains the limbic system of our brains, which registers all different kinds of emotions.

58:50In women in particular, defines what is it that they're looking for in their partner, in their heterosexual partner, initially without having spoken with them. That's when the neocortex and our thinking brain kicks in. And basically you walk into a bar and the woman scans the room and if she's single, she would be looking for a man that looks like a sort of triangle, so white shoulders and quite a thin waist. And then when we released this episode, we started getting so many different messages across different social media platforms and also emails saying that right now they're training five times a week, just their shoulders and their back.

59:27So I immediately thought that's bad exercise because you're training the same muscle group five or six times a week, right? So that should be bad exercise because you're not allowing enough resting period. I think that's a really good point, actually. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So again, I guess it dials into allowing yourself to recover. And also like a balance, I suppose. You know, there's that kind of old joke about not skipping leg day. And I think it's important, right, to not just, you know, maybe it works in the bar, but not just to hammer your kind of back and shoulders and actually occasionally look at your legs and look at the other muscles that you should be developing.

59:58So yeah, I think that's a really good point in terms of making sure that you've got quite a rounded kind of view of exercise and the different types of training you're doing as well. And then let's talk about supplementation. So I am the kind of person that if you stay at home with me and you spend one night with me at home and you wake up in the morning, you're going to see me in the kitchen having all kinds of things, right? Some for my brain, some for my gut microbiome, some for my skin, some for my hair. I guess I buy a lot of those thinking that I'm doing something good for myself. Even if it's a placebo effect, I feel good with myself, which I think it has some benefits.

1:00:31but I would like to know for the general let's say person or the average person what are some supplements that you would recommend anybody to take because we cannot either absorb the nutrients from the food that we take as well for that particular nutrient or maybe because we are not able to absorb the sunlight because we live in a given country that doesn't have as much sun exposure or give it that much sun exposure and also what are some supplements that you think are absolutely unnecessary and we're spending our money on. Yeah, that's a good point. I generally, I mean, always follow like a food first approach, but I think there are some supplements I think would be really useful for people.

1:01:08A lot of people don't get enough fish in their diets or omega-3s. So I would generally, I take an omega-3. I think that's really important for most people to help with cholesterol profiles, to help with cellular health. I think that's really important. I take omega-3 every morning, but I eat fish, I would say almost once every day or every two days. yeah so how do we know if we're not eating enough fish or fish oil yeah i mean i think i think if you're eating it a couple of times a week that's probably okay like two or three times a week is good um i don't think you need to eat fish three times a day i always make the joke it's it's not a particularly nice joke but a lot of people don't eat enough fish they don't get enough omega-3 but if you do eat enough fish you may be getting too many heavy metals that's the kind of trade-off so to simplify this so if if anybody's eating fish three times a day three times sorry three times a week yeah they don't need to take omega-3 supplements i think it's you're probably less likely to need it it depends on what fish you're eating so i think about really fish rather than say cod for example um i would probably still at some point even if it's just once a year or once every couple years look at getting like an omega-3 panel to see where you are you can do that through you can do that through various kind of testing companies but it just gives us an idea about where where you are on that spectrum if you are eating kind of fish three times a week you're probably okay but you're not going to do yourself any harm by taking a bit more omega-3 um like everything too much of something is necessarily bad for you it's very hard to overdose on omega-3 okay um vitamin d you hit the nail on the head in terms of sun exposure even like someone like me who's like super light-skinned you know and i absorb vitamin d very well um i still take vitamin d i mean i actually get i actually get an injection of vitamin d like one or two times a year and keep an eye on my levels that way i've run people sort of fairly high on vitamin d you know not like super high but say the normal range is 75 to 250 i kind of run people north of 100 like 125 150 that's kind of where i i think people feel better and report they're feeling better on that kind of interesting you just you just mentioned something that blew my mind so my general understanding of the different skin types and how much sun exposure we need or we can take yeah was the following so if my skin is naturally darker I can tolerate more sun exposure and also I think I'm better at absorbing vitamin D but you're saying the opposite it's the opposite you're definitely better at tolerating sun than I am I'm not going to argue with that but in terms of absorbing vitamin D if you're darker skinned it's harder to get it from the sun so that's why my skin perhaps can tolerate it more because it needs more sun exposure to absorb it yeah and I think you've obviously got more melanin in your skin as well which is protective but I think it sometimes interferes with vitamin D absorption.

1:03:40Does it, but yeah, so carry on, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Because my brain is starting to connect dots and I just want to make sure that those dots are well connected or accurately connected. So if, for example, my partner, she's German, she's, I would say, whiter than me or less tan than me or darker than me, does that mean that she doesn't need as much to take vitamin D or vitamin D3 supplements because she's able to absorb it better from the sunlight? If you live in the UK, I'd still say you probably need to take vitamin D. because the sunlight's just not very strong. And it's only really sunny for about two or three months in the year.

1:04:12And you see you've got nine months or 10 months of, well, like it is now, which is pretty great. I still think most people, particularly in the autumn, winter months, it's useful taking vitamin D. I generally think, you know, get your levels tested, obviously. But I think it's useful. I think it's useful pretty much all year round to take it. If you ask someone, you know, I see it a lot with populations who've got like an Asian background, like low vitamin D, particularly older people who maybe have been born in say india who've come to the uk they get a lot of bone pains and actually we take the vitamin d and it's really in their boots and actually by getting that level up it does make a difference um so yeah it's i know it might sound a bit funny it's a sunshine vitamin it makes a huge difference to people's quality of life if we get that level right and yeah if you're if you're darker skinned it's harder to get the vitamin d from the sun but you can obviously enjoy the sun more like i have to stay in the shade a lot more um but so i think omega-3 the vitamin d magnesium is generally good for people like the different forms i think you know there's there's different forms like citrate and glycinate and bisclisinate or bisglycinate it's the it's the kind of glycinate form that's generally good for sleep so i take it in the evening you know it's helpful for relaxation it's helpful for kind of yeah just helping you get to sleep really um creatine seems to be something that gives a lot of positive benefits with very little side effects so you know a lot of people take about five grams a day under this people who are taking kind of big loading doses of about 20 grams a day and what is your recommendation i would probably i think the evidence is there it's growing to look at higher doses i take about five grams a day um just not to go into unnecessary detail i think it upsets my stomach a little bit if i take too much um i think you get a lot of kind of water kind of it brings in a lot of water so i think it can upset the stomach a little bit if you get on well with it it's fine you can't really take too much unless you know unless you do sort of something silly but i think that kind of area is fine i think just taking five grams seems to work pretty well um i suppose they're without kind of knowing anything about the person without kind of getting any lab results they're the ones that i would i probably focus on a general you can do worse than taking a general kind of b vitamin so just to kind of make sure that your b vitamin levels are pretty good you know the b vitamins are important co-factors for a number of different reactions in your body particularly kind of methylated B vitamins and that's probably it the gut support you mentioned the probiotic, I've definitely taken probiotics before they are useful I try and do again as much from food as we can so try and make sure we're getting enough of the different coloured foods for the polyphenols but if you're interested in gut health it's definitely something to try so omega 3, vitamin D and creatine and potentially magnesium And potentially, yeah, magnesium to sleep better.

1:06:53Yeah.

1:06:58Let's talk about alcohol. I think it's a very big topic probably in the last few months because we are seeing more and more high performers, entrepreneurs, athletes, openly disclosing that they gave up alcohol and sharing all the different benefits of giving up alcohol. what are your views on alcohol and and what are the the consequences when it comes to again longevity and the quality of our lives i think that that point of longevity and quality of life is a really important one i think alcohol i'll be honest i don't really drink alcohol um i'm not against it i'm not a die-hard teetotaler i don't chastise people who drink alcohol in any way shape or form um i think generally cutting down is a good thing i think if you can get close to stopping I think it's positive.

1:07:50I do think that alcohol can probably be enjoyed in moderation. It's something that you enjoy and it's not, you know, I think having it occasionally, so a glass of champagne at a family wedding is obviously absolutely fine. But I think alcohol can very easily creep up on people. And it's something that I see quite a lot of where there's always that kind of joke about, you know, what people really drink versus what they tell their doctor. Even what they tell me seems like quite a lot. And the negatives, I guess, are it puts a strain on the liver alcohol gets converted unfortunately into something called acetyl aldehyde which is quite a potent carcinogen or something that can cause cancer it can affect you know your weight it can affect hormone levels particularly kind of sex hormones it can affect your mood you know low mood anxiety there's a lot of there's a lot of problems i guess with alcohol that really does catch people out i was i mean interesting enough um saturday so a couple of days ago i was speaking to um she's a psychologist psychologist and she was saying that you know she gets referred a lot of people for anxiety and low mood and actually a lot of it is underlying alcohol use so i think you know from a longevity point of view although there's some evidence that small amounts can be helpful i think generally it's it's good to try and avoid it if you can and maybe just use very small amounts but still enjoy your life yes and one gusp isn't going to hurt you but if it's kind of half a bottle a bottle every day that definitely is going to catch up with you, unfortunately.

1:09:15I find this topic very interesting because I quit drinking a few months ago, completely. And it's interesting to see the reaction of people when you disclose this news because you go out to dinner to France that they've known you for so many years and they immediately either already order your usual drink or they ask what is it that you want to drink. And if you say, I don't drink, their reaction is pretty interesting. They always think or they tend to think that you stopped drinking because you had a problem. Again, it goes back to the medicine example. So reactive rather than proactive. So I don't need to have a problem to improve my life, right?

1:09:56And then you end up in a situation where you almost feel like you are excusing yourself or you need to justify yourself. And for anybody that is right now on this wellness journey or in this alcohol-free journey, All I can say is I cannot speak through the lens of science or medicine, but definitely through the benefits that I've experienced in my life. And there have only been benefits to this transformation. Number one, I am much more capable of regulating my emotions. You go back to the examples that we discussed in the initial parts of our conversation. If there is traffic, I can deal with it much better.

1:10:35But if you, let's say, take a stressor and you put it on steroids, like, for example, having to deal with something that is very negative towards my business or my relationship with my fiance, I am able to regulate my emotions, keep a serene mindset, and then be able to choose with a much more logical approach rather than emotional and sort of like losing yourself with a roller coaster of emotions. So that one has been incredibly important. Then on the other hand, from a neurological or from a psychological perspective, my brain is just wiser and deeper. And I guess it's also related to being able to be calm and serene, but it's just sharper.

1:11:15And my memory has improved so much. So I could be having a conversation with you and enrich the conversation through things that I've read, listened or discussed one day ago or a month ago. And that was something that perhaps either before I was able to do, but with more effort, or I was just not able to do it as frequent. And then the last benefits are more related to my gut microbiome. So I'm able to digest better and also more from a beauty point of view. So if you are into beauty and you want to look better, you're definitely going to look better if you stop drinking. So your skin improves, your hair improves, but also the shape of your body changes, right?

1:12:01Absolutely. So I can only recommend this, but at the same time, similar to what you were saying, I don't want to be preaching this so everybody quits alcohol. Because I don't think there's a solution that would fit everyone, but there are definitely gains to explore through diving into this journey. yeah i think it's really i think it's really interesting that i think alcohol is the only thing that you have to give a reason why you don't do it do you know what i mean it's such a it's such a funny experience something i've i've definitely experienced in terms of people look at you and as you say they they think you've got a problem that you're an alcoholic or something and i said oh no i just i just don't want to i and i think thankfully the non-alcoholic drinks have got better and you can if it's in a glass you've got a non-alcoholic drink it's not as noticeable but it's weird that you have to feel like you have to make those excuses sometimes isn't it And I feel, I echo exactly what you've just said in terms of the benefits, in terms of like emotional regulation.

1:12:53It's not just the day after, it's two days after, three days after, like being a bit more anxious, not sleeping as well. Yeah, I think there's a lot of benefits to it, essentially. I went yesterday for lunch with some friends and one of them, he's a friend of mine for a number of years. And he told me, I told him I gave up alcohol and then he told me I gave up too. And then I was like, when did he give up? and he actually gave up way before me. And I was like, well, I'm not going to name his name, but I was like, we were driving together and I was like, why didn't he tell me? And then it's like, well, because I feel like I always have to excuse myself.

1:13:28So his wife is pregnant now. So he's been giving the excuse that he's just basically like doing it with his wife. So it makes the pregnancy easier. But he said, to be honest, I quit alcohol and he works for a financial institution. So in those type of environments, it's even harder, right? In the corporate world, because perhaps you've got to meet clients or you've got to connect with your colleagues. And they feel like if you're not doing that, you're going to be left out, right? And I feel like, unfortunately, in our generation, it's still something that you need to defend yourself or excuse yourself if you're not drinking towards your personal life and your professional life.

1:14:09But I feel like, for example, maybe in my kids' generation, So several years down the line, this is going to be absolutely normal. So perhaps 50 % of the new generation won't drink at all. And if they go out for dinner and they're asked, what do you want to drink? And they say water. They won't be asked, why is it that you're not having wine? It's just normal. It would be absolutely normal. But if I take the example of my grandfather and I would tell him, well, grandpa, he's in his late 80s, I don't drink. He would not understand it because he still has to today a beer or a glass of wine every day.

1:14:42And I'm Spanish. So imagine how embedded this is in my culture. And my grandfather has never got drunk. I've never seen him drunk. And I'm 30 years old when I'm in, but 30 years old. In the 30 years that I've been alive, I've never seen him drunk. So he would not understand it. But it's not about fixing a problem, but it's about enhancing your life, living a more meaningful life, being more in touch with yourself, with who you are, with who you were also, and healing those past memories and who you want to be. So again, I don't want to preach this to the worldwide population and I don't want to say that everyone should do it, but I do recommend for people to definitely reduce their alcohol consumption.

1:15:20And if you're willing or brave enough to do it, you're doing it for yourself, not for anybody else, to give up alcohol at some point of your life. Yeah, I think it's really good. I think it's a really positive step that people can take and one that trips people up, I think, as well. Let's talk about the past. I think that trauma and the pain that we have in our head due to trauma can have consequences severe consequences into our quality of life what are those consequences I think trauma has a massive impact on our lives and I think what's interesting with trauma is that you know it can be carried through generations and sometimes for people that seems like quite a like a woolly concept but there is like generational trauma like there's this kind of trauma from your parents when you were kind of being carried in terms of their relationship if there was like domestic problems that goes on through like childhood trauma adolescent adulthood etc etc you know trauma is trauma you know your body makes a note of it you know and it can impact us on so many different ways it can change there's without kind of meaning to go too scientific there's there's your epigenome which is the environment that surrounds your genes and determines which genes are expressed or upregulated or downregulated trauma can impact that and upregulate kind of stress and inflammation pathways it can it can shorten our kind of telomeres which are the protective ends of dna um and they and it can lead to you know signs of early aging basically you know it can have a huge impact on our on our day-to-day lives there's when we look at i guess childhood trauma there's there's these things called adverse childhood events and again you know we're talking about like the chronic stress that can cause you know persistently chronically raised cortisol again cortisol is not the bad guy but you know it's it's something that actually in high levels can be negative for us um we know also that it's not just it's not just those things it's also the behaviors that allows people to do all the behavior changes that people experience so you know examples i give is that if someone has um a lot of childhood trauma then their kind of self-esteem their kind of place in the world feels sort of less than other people so if you're if you're kind of well adjusted if you don't have that same level of childhood trauma you you know you can invest in like delayed gratification and you know you can go to university you can work hard at jobs that will give you like an entrepreneur give you a reward a bit later down the line because you know somewhere deep in your brain that you're going to be there in 10 years 20 years time you're still going to be around so you can invest in those kind of behaviors if you're someone who's got these kind of traumas you you don't necessarily feel that your place in the future the certainty doesn't maybe quite feel quite feel like it's there so you then are kind of geared towards more instant gratification alcohol drugs you know sexual deviating you know you know you know sleeping with lots of people you know that kind of stuff you know these are kind of behaviors that put you at more risk of health problems because you don't you don't somewhere in the back of your mind you don't see that future isn't necessarily there for you because of the trauma you've experienced your self-esteem doesn't put you you know high on that kind of ranking poll amongst other people so it's it has a huge impact in our lives, you know, from like a genetic kind of point of view, you know, which genes are kind of upregulated, the chronic stress, the persistently raised cortisol, which puts stress on our bodies, obviously increases our heart rate, increases our blood sugar, leads to premature signs of aging, and also our behaviors.

1:18:38So there's increased risk-taking behaviors as well. That's such an enriching reflection. I never thought about it in that way. So a trauma leads to you leaning more towards instant gratification rather than delayed gratification, which I think for people that ends up basically confusing it confuses the person in between long-term happiness and having fun i think a lot of people confuse having fun yeah with long-term happiness and i guess that's instant classification that dopamine rush that you get and and validation that that you need i've never thought about it in that way that's that's very interesting let's talk about also slightly different thing which are health mistakes so anyone aside from obviously from which are perhaps something that are more complex to unravel and to deal with.

1:19:27But in our daily lives, what are some mistakes that you think that people are making without knowing that those are mistakes negatively contributing towards their health? So we've already touched on one being sort of alcohol. I think a lot of people, they're not lying to themselves. I don't mean like that because that sounds unnecessarily harsh. They're just maybe not quite aware of the kind of damage that they're doing or maybe the amount that they're sort of drinking. That's something that crops up a lot, you know, and it's only when I really talk to people about it. And we might ask, you know, a classic example is, you know, do you drink much alcohol in the week?

1:20:05Could you tell me a bit about that? And they might say, yeah, I drink a bit, you know, maybe it's 12 units a week, right? And then I say, oh, could you tell me a bit more about that? Like, what does that look like in terms of like glasses of wine or cans or bottles of beer? Like, what does that look like? And then when they go through it, I'm saying, well, actually, you know what you've described is actually quite a lot more than those units that you've that you've said and how long have you been doing that for and again it's not you know you used a great word it's not preachy i'm not trying to like catch people out or be nasty um but i think it just it kind of shines a light on something there were people who just they maybe don't want to look at it they're sort of like actually you know i don't i just want to kind of move on this conversation a bit but actually it's really important um i suppose other areas where people are making mistakes probably around nutrition it's that it's that classic thing i read something not that long ago which was around the size of the plates that people use and a dinner plate within the 1970s was like a side plate now and that people are just eating off much bigger kind of plates and that's leading to like a higher portion size yeah and people are then just eating more but unknowingly because i think a lot of people have been kind of raised the mindset of got to clear your plate it's wasteful to waste food like you know you need to be respectful to the host or whatever reason and they're eating maybe more food and they're eating more regularly than they sort of realize I think a lot of people are they're not really aware that maybe so much of what they're eating how much they're eating in the day I think these are common things that kind of trip people up and I do have a few people a few clients who are on those weight loss injections as then pick manjaro etc and you know they're they're on it for short courses a few months at a time but when i speak to them and they talk about their diet they sort of say to me you know i didn't realize how much i was eating i didn't realize that actually i needed a lot less to live on than i than i thought i did i thought thought i was eating well but actually when i really reflect on it when we go through their food diaries they're eating a lot more than necessary they they might need and actually that's a big thing for them um and again without meaning to kind of sound overly repetitive i think a bit around activity and sedentary behavior i think a lot of people they they're doing their best and that's you've got to be credited but they'll they'll do a sedentary job quite often like i do and they'll be sat down for 10 hours a day and they might go and run a 5k and they might be like i ran a 5k and that's great fantastic good for you but they haven't moved for hours and hours in the day and actually if they were to i'm not saying they shouldn't do the 5k but if they were to have got up you know gone for a walk gone up and down the stairs done some squats at their desk or something actually that's going to make a really big difference to their long-term health and i think all these things kind of they just trip people up sometimes an example that i was thinking about is is in relation to nutrition i think if people are on a wellness journey they try to eat healthier so they may have it they may try to eat whole foods yeah steak a piece of fish chicken veggies but then probably a mistake that i see in many friends is that they think they're eating healthy because they're eating those things but then they start putting like weird sauces on top of them.

1:23:12And those sauces, they have so many additives and sugars. And they feel like, no, no, but I'm having a steak. No, you're having a steak with five different barbecue sauces that have all these different ingredients that you cannot even pronounce them, right? So that for me, it's a clear one. And then I guess you don't see the benefits from a weightless perspective, from a physical, aesthetical point of view, but then from a functional perspective. yeah i think that's a great i think that's a great tip yeah um similar with salad dressings right and not all not all kind of food types are kind of equal as well so people talk about like the when they go like fast food places and they think they're making the healthier choice but actually like you say it's 100 percent yeah there are so many especially in london but if you live in a cosmopolitan city like london which could be for example new york or dubai There are so many new salad bars that they are labeled as or marketed as a healthy to-go option, right?

1:24:11On the go. But if you actually look at the ingredient list, especially within their sauces, you're not eating anything that is healthy whatsoever. Yet you're going there and thinking that you're doing something good for yourself and you live thinking, well, I did something great. Like I'm going to feel so much better. And then you eat it and probably two hours afterwards, you're like, why do I feel so tired if I had a salad? well he did not have a salad right you just you perhaps forgot to put the two buns on top to make it an actual burger but if you put two buns on top of that that's a burger right um and unfortunately people don't don't go to those levels of of of depth when it comes to to wellness they they touch the surface and they feel like oh if i'm doing that that's enough yeah and i also see the same example in the gym so i feel like some people they just feel healthier because they have a gym membership and they maybe go twice a week but then you see them in the gym and they're like scrolling up and down tiktok and instagram and you're like walking on the treadmill that's a placebo right there like you probably feel great on your lululemon or whatever and you're in the gym early in the morning but you're not working out yeah yeah there's definitely a difference between like going to the gym and and like you say working out and that's another great tip actually though yeah you see people who maybe go to the gym and just sit there and actually you have to so many still do the hard work and and you can do that at home if you needed to there's um i don't want to deviate too much there's a really trashy old show from uk television called called secret eaters which is it is proper it's almost like love island s kind of trashy tv and it takes people who are struggling with with losing weight and it follows them for the course of the week and then they go through and show them the footage of what they've eaten and they've come on the show because they can't lose weight and then they go through what they've eaten it's a bit of kind of like gotcha moments like oh but look at you eating this but it on the point of hidden calories and the point of kind of that that sort of area it's it's really great like if you if you want to just if you've got 20 minutes something just have a quick look at it because it's not great television but it's certainly interesting and then i i guess this comes back to your area of expertise so basically having a holistic approach towards health i have some other i'm not going to name them because they're going to stop being my friends.

1:26:19But I have some other friends that, for example, they train regularly, but then they go and they smash at night the burger and a cheesecake. So they feel like because they trained, they should be able to... But no. If you're training one hour a day and then the other 11 hours of the day that you're awake, you're doing unhealthy things, you are living an unhealthy lifestyle. So I'm not saying that you should live a perfectly healthy life, but probably 80 % of your life should be healthy and then 20 you should do anything that makes you happy in the short term or more than happy have fun in the short term again making that difference in between long-term happiness and having fun yeah i completely agree and i think that whole um i've been to the gym i've burnt off 400 500 calories now it's kind of open season for the food and stuff like i think that yeah again that does definitely trip people up and you'd be surprised how quickly how quickly the calories that you've burnt off i know it's not just calories calories out but just if we're using that as example how quickly that can go if you start eating a meal and suddenly it's like oh i'm gonna have this like croissant or this like cake or something and suddenly you're gone that's all that's all yes and then you're wondering why am i not losing weight but yeah i think it's uh yeah you're absolutely right and really really kind of interesting that it's quite a universal experience seeing people do that i'll give you another funny example so i am i'm the founder along with my twin brother of of a hospitality group and we have multiple different types of restaurants and cuisines and experiences and one of the things that I find fascinating without naming the brand where I saw this data from, but basically you see a table and they're ordering pasta, pizza, desserts and a Coke Zero.

1:27:53I mean, I'm really wondering, what is the psychology behind this? So I deep dived into that and I started researching on Google, but also through different AI platforms. Why do people make those choices from a psychological perspective? And for them, they feel like if they are having a diet coke for example just to give it that example yeah they they're able to eat all those other things so it's a trade-off and they're actually thinking that that is a real trade-off and that is actually bringing the balance to an equilibrium yeah like they really think that yeah um which i find fascinating um but yeah that's perhaps a conversation for a completely different type of podcast that is not this one no no right so because right now also we live in a world in which yes some people are not healthy but also we live in a world in which if you go online there are so many different wellness advices and this can be overwhelming for someone that wants to start and have their day one if i were to start today my wellness journey what would you advise me to do where should i start yeah i think it kind of dials back to what we've maybe kind of touched on already and that a big part of this is going to be that lifestyle stuff and a lot of it is kind of common sense stuff that it's advice that's been around for generations in terms of getting outside getting active um keeping yourself strong eating in kind of moderation eating kind of whole foods you know stuff that maybe your grandfather who's in his 80s was probably doing when he was a younger man you know it's the stuff that's kind of survived the test of time that we know that kind of works um you can you can look at like blue zone data which is those kind of areas in the world where people have you know longer lifespans they do have quite a lot of overlap where you know they talk about like pretty near constant low levels of physical activity you know good good kind of social connection and social connection actually is something we haven't touched on too much today but those are kind of areas where i think you know we'll keep those lifestyle foundations that's definitely the place to start and that's going to make a huge like the bulk of our plan in terms of helping you then i would probably look at kind of the basic supplements that we spoke about earlier there's a few things that you can take you know trying to get as much you can from the diet but we know that actually unfortunately our food isn't quite as nutritious as it was say 50 years ago um and then if you're still kind of interested i would look at following kind of regulated bodies on on kind of social media platforms listen to podcasts you know similar stuff that you do where we can get some really good people on to talk about you know really sensible health information people who are kind of regulated who have to have kind of appraisals and monitoring as part of their careers because then you know that they're accountable to something um and then you know then if you're still interested maybe start speaking to people who work in the industry and get more personalized advice but i would really kind of start with those lifestyle foundations start with the stuff that stood the test of time you know getting active getting outside eating well you know being with family and friends um you know i probably similar to yourself um i kind of compartmentalize my day and there's definitely hours where you know that's solid work time and then towards the evening it's it's kind of solid family time and you know i get a bit kind of upset in a way if i'm kind of working into those kind of family hours because i think it's such an important part of our lives for all sorts of reasons where we dedicate time to be with you know my wife with with our new boy you know it's so important if work bleeds into that then yeah it's it's not it's not great and i try and make sure i keep that time protected yeah you're so right we we spoke about recovery nutrition exercise but not relationships and i feel like there's not a doctor that would prescribe you to meet a real friend once a week.

1:31:30Yeah. As a real prescription, like I want you to do this for the next six months and then come back and tell me how you feel. And I personally think that that is so powerful for so many reasons. Yeah. So yeah, thank you for shedding light on that. I want to talk about some of the trendiest biohacking tools, starting from NAD. I feel like perhaps the Kardashians started talking about it and then the rest of the world followed. So in very simple terms, what is NAD and what is its primary function? Sure. So NAD, nicotinamide, adenine, dinucleotide. I know that's not simple, but I just wanted to kind of go through it.

1:32:11It is, we'll keep it as NAD for obvious reasons. It is, it's a form of the vitamin B3. So it's essentially a vitamin in nature. Wow. It's a really important like coenzyme. So it's almost like a catalyst or involved in probably over 500 different reactions in your body. So it's really like ubiquitous in the body using loads of different reactions in the body to keep you kind of going. But it's kind of most common and probably known use is involved in the production of energy. So it's one of the main things that helps your body produce energy in the form of ATP. So if you go back to your high school, senior school, chemistry lessons, ATP is your body's main energy currency.

1:32:49NAD is absolutely vital in that process. It's also useful in sort of DNA repair. So energy production, DNA repair, sort of longevity, that's where NAD kind of comes in. Your levels do drop over time and they drop for a number of different reasons. We become less good at making it. We become less good at kind of recycling it. We get exposed to more kind of stressors. So, you know, there's more DNA repair, which again uses more NAD up. And, you know, we look at ways to kind of boost NAD levels to try and help with those things like energy levels, like brain fog you know just feeling better in yourself and there's lots of different ways to do that um when we look at i guess these kind of hacks these kind of wellness treatments again a bit of a broken record i always try and help people to do it either for free or as cheaply as possible i think that's really important so lifestyle factors periods of hormetic stress so that's not oh i've got a deadline i've got to reach you know like heart's pounding because i'm trying to smash out a little work it's it's cold exposure heat exposure fasting exercise these kind of things that put stress in the body that help with nad production they're really important um okay diet changes we can't take nad directly we can make sure we've got a good level of b vitamins because that's helpful for nad production tryptophan as an amino acid is useful for nad there's nad precursors that you might have seen like the nmns the nrs niacin and also there's complementary supplements that help with those kind of recycling processes um there's things like cd38 inhibitors again i'm trying to keep this kind of just kind of so we can all kind of follow it properly but there's different supplements that can help your body kind of make nad or help help reduce the kind of breakdown of the nad pathways so it help you kind of hold onto NAD levels.

1:34:40And then we may look at kind of supplementing it. So again, there's precursors, there's obviously like the subcutaneous pens, then there's kind of the IV drips as well. And these are kind of things that we can potentially look at for clients. So NAD is a coenzyme in which its two primary functions are on one hand, increase our energy levels, right? And then number two, repair our cells? Yeah, I guess like DNA repair. So if there's, yeah, I think it's making energy in general terms. But just like, for example, let's say a steak has protein, there is no food that has NAD. So we produce it. Yeah, so we can make it from like tryptophan and those kind of B vitamins that we spoke about, like B3.

1:35:25But we also have like a certain amount and our body sort of recycles it in this sort of system in our cells. And we're generally pretty good at that. We're pretty good at that when we're younger. And that's probably the main, it's called like the salvage pathway. So we're generally pretty good at recycling it. So NAD gets broken down into like different substances and then they kind of recombine to make NAD again. We're generally pretty good at that process, but over time we become less good at it. So NAD total levels start to fall. And at what age, more or less? Typically kind of over 40, I would say.

1:35:55Over 40. So there's different stats out there. So some people say that it falls 50 % every 20 years. Some people say over 40. I would say probably over 40s. It depends on the lifestyles that people lead. If you're someone who doesn't really drink alcohol, keeps themselves active, sleeps well, nutrition, all the stuff we've spoken about, you're probably going to hold on to your NAD better than someone who is an alcoholic, who is overweight, who stays up all night, who does all these kind of negative health behaviors that we don't want. They're probably going to be more NAD depleted. But right. I can understand it related to the energy dropping.

1:36:30So if my energy drops from my 40s, that means that perhaps my energy levels are lower. But what about the other primary function? So the DNA repair. So how can I feel that my DNA has not been repaired? So I guess you would probably, it's not something you'd feel in the same way as energy levels. I suppose they're both sort of related in terms of how well the mitochondria, which are the batteries of your cells, are functioning. and in terms of DNA repair when your when your cells divide when your DNA replicates or when it gets kind of damaged by these kind of stresses we need it to repair properly and if it doesn't then the cells don't really function as well they don't kind of reproduce as well so you might start to notice things like I guess in in kind of stronger terms organ dysfunction but more subtly I guess you might notice again some of the symptoms you've experienced you might notice that maybe your skin quality is dropping maybe the hair quality is dropping maybe you know your your kind of mood is starting to get a bit less you know you're not feeling quite as good in yourself um again the kind of unfortunately the same thing the brain fog maybe the tiredness a lot of these things it's difficult to isolate because they sort of link together but that that's kind of what you probably start to notice is that actually you probably notice that you just don't feel quite as good as you did really early signs are those those energy levels those skin changes and actually when we do kind of get do those other therapies to boost nad you you actually do notice kind of a quite a global improvement, which is really nice.

1:37:54And what about IV drips? Yeah. Would you recommend them? So I've been doing IVs probably for six or seven years. And the way that I practice has definitely changed and evolved over time, as you'd hope it would. I would say that I've become more prescriptive with IVs than I used to. So I think I use them for people as part of a plan. I use it as part of a plan that integrates lifestyle supplements other medical therapies to try and help them get the best results i'm using i've got a client at the moment who had shingles she's got a basically what's called a post-hepetic neurology but basically like some skin pain and some tiredness post the shingles which is like a virus that she'd had and we're doing some ivs because on testing we noticed that she had quite a lot of oxidative stress we know that mitochondria weren't working quite as well and we're hoping to kind of boost it back up a bit faster than she would do.

1:38:49Oxidated stress means that the mitochondria is not functioning well. You can't release energy or you can't have enough access to the energy. Yeah, more or less. So oxidative stress will put more kind of stress on the mitochondria and stop them maybe functioning as well. Apologies for not being super clear with this. I know it's a complicated issue that I'm trying to... So oxidative stress is essentially kind of the stress from our environments and that affects a lot of our body systems, but it can put stress and the mitochondria and the two are sort of linked. But yes, as you've explained really nicely that when you've got mitochondrial dysfunction, you're not working as well, the cells aren't working as well and you just won't feel quite as good as you could do normally.

1:39:24It seems to me that your recommendation towards getting IV drips is getting a tailored IV drip towards your needs. But if you're right now going to many wellness clinics that have these prepackaged - The menus. Exactly. So it almost seems like you're going to join the juice to a juice bar. So you have the detox one, and you have the, I don't know, whatever other health benefit one. Would you recommend the average person to take one of those or to get tested and then sort of like do a tailored version of an IV drip? Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a great question because there's lots and lots of businesses.

1:39:56I work with a business called Body Brilliant that does kind of IVs, and there's lots of kind of people out there who do it. And I've had, in the clinic I work at elsewhere, I've got like a bit of a menu for people, which really serves as a guide. We can always personalize it from there. but a lot of people they they kind of call or they email or they come in and they say i want to talk about ivs like what do you do and it gives people a bit of options i wouldn't say that ivs are for absolutely everyone i don't think necessarily everyone needs them um i think i i do think i guess in broad terms that they they work uh and that i've seen really positive results from the ivs from clients that i've worked with um i think that when you've got someone who maybe is i mean a good example i guess would be something that focuses on your immune system so say something with vitamin c some minerals some zinc for example those b vitamins if someone's coming in and they've got you know they're recovering from a cold or a flu or they're not quite feeling themselves because they're a bit run down that's quite a simple intervention which i do you know whether it's you know placebo or not does seem to make quite a big difference to people so i think if you're if you're coming in for like a wellness sort of experience you want a bit of an energy boost and to feel good i think there's a for the IVs and obviously there's you know there's a business in a market there that people want you know people are curious about it and I think that's where these kind of businesses have come up and you know my role in those kind of businesses I would see is is kind of a regulatory one so making sure that we aren't or that we are doing the right things that the formulas that we're putting together are are safe that they're beneficial that you know I feel very confident when people come in and say you know can I have an IV and they really want to have one I know that it's going to make them feel good or give them a difference but i think in an ideal situation which is what a lot of the work i do with kind of individual clients we have a really good conversation about their health like i said the goals concerns we'll talk about testing and then we'll make it a bit of a plan so i think that's probably the gold standard from my point of view but i can definitely see where those other businesses kind of work and actually they can have some benefit to people it seems to me that both for example the iv trips and nat are reactive initiatives or reactive measures because well i'm in my 40s or my 50s my energy levels have dropped so perhaps i need an energy boost so that's reactive i'm i'm basically taking this because i have a problem yeah i'm not feeling great with myself for whatever reasons you've mentioned your patient that she had a disease or a problem and then hence why i'm on an iv3 program would you say that this is accurate so they are if you're living a healthy lifestyle you should not be having IVs or NADs?

1:42:24I think there's a bulk of our clients where that is definitely the case. I think there's still people who, I guess from an NAD point of view, let me phrase this properly, I think from an NAD point of view, so I had a conversation with someone quite recently who was doing cold exposures every morning. He was doing saunas in the evening. His diet was good. He was exercising every day. He'd lost quite a lot of waste, was in really good shape. And he said, do I need an IV NAD? And I said, no. I said, I don't think you do. I think from a preventative point of view i think i would try and boost nad before you start to feel unwell again starting with the natural measures i would then consider things like the subcut pens it varies also really depending on where you get your stuff from um a lot of the companies i'm not you know i'm not here just to kind of promote the stuff that i do but a lot of the companies that you know i work with they put a lot of time and effort into kind of testing making sure there's good quality products it's an unregulated industry so you do have to be careful i think there's definitely there definitely is an angle for kind of preventatively trying to maintain nad levels but i would say the bulk of our clients are probably coming in because they notice and they they are looking then at the reactive side of it let's talk about other biohacking sure hot topics yeah sure hormones and peptides what are they and what role do they play in longevity so hormones are sort of like we just hormones are they're chemical messengers chemical signals from from our body they usually release from glands in our body they go into the bloodstream and they go to lots of different sites in our body to have numerous different effects they're really important from a longevity point of view because they regulate just a wide number of bodily functions so you know like i said like sleep energy metabolism you know reproductive health they make a massive difference and those levels can reduce over time um the classic example i guess is around like perimenopause menopause testosterone for men we still do testosterone for women as well but just at lower doses we know that with perimenopause there's a really big impact on quality of life some of the symptoms they women experience are again classic ones fatigue brain fog dry skin hair loss hot sweats those kind of things with menopause when those hormone levels drop we know that actually there's an increased risk of loss of bone density an increased risk of cardiovascular disease so it's important you know for most women there's obviously some women who can't have hormone replacement therapy but it's important for a lot of women i think to consider hormone replacement therapy to kind of keep those levels up and make sure that you're staying healthy for as long as we can similar with trt for men now peptides are slightly different so peptides are short chains of amino acids they um they're there for very specific functions i suppose and they again are signaling molecules that help support body's own processes but usually more specific more precise they broadly fall into lots of different categories so you've got peptides that are involved in like growth hormone um there's growth hormone releasing hormone growth hormone releasing peptide they they're used to help your body produce basically your own growth hormone a little bit better so it's not like taking growth hormone from somewhere else and you know trying to become like a bodybuilder it's trying to help maybe get growth hormone levels of when you were say sort of 35 when you're a bit older than that there's peptides involved in tissue recovery there's peptides involved in mitochondrial health um you know there's peptides involved in like telomene lengthening and longevity it really i guess it depends on what we're working with and the kind of person but both of those so hormones you know obviously from inside your body those levels will start to drop and affect your body's own processes and and you potentially cause ill health so actually maintaining those will help with healthy aging peptides i suppose are really around i guess quite specific kind of markers that we're trying to improve um and again you know your peptide levels won't necessarily drop but the peptides are there to kind of support your own processes and help with kind of, I guess, short courses.

1:46:14I'm a person that likes to tailor my life according to my needs. Let's say that that would also be the approach that anybody starting a wellness journey would take. What are the tests that the market offers nowadays that would give me the right results to be able to decide which supplements to take, if I need NAD, if I need to be on an IV-3 program? Yeah. there's a lot of testing out there. You've probably seen, it's part of that, it's quite a lot of general, the term noise in the wellness space, right? Which ones do you recommend? So I would look at, as a starting point, like a basic blood panel is a great place to start.

1:46:54So we can look at things like your full blood count, check your red blood cells, check for your anemia, general kind of liver and kidney functions, some micronutrient levels like vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, B12, folate, those kind of things, hormone levels for example on blood tests um if we're looking specifically around supplementation i would look at something called an organic acid test or it's a metabolomics test that's a urine test it looks at how well your body's metabolizing things like proteins fats carbohydrates give us an idea about like micronutrient needs give us an idea about amino acids give us an idea around um yeah again around levels of oxidative stress mitochondrial functioning you know related It's particularly around like NAD.

1:47:36And then microbiome testing, I think is really important for a lot of people. We know that how important your gut health is. So looking at the balance of gut bacteria, whether there's inflammation there, whether you've got something called leaky gut is important in terms of nutrient absorption. Those are probably the tests that I do the most of. You've got two other tests, which are kind of more popular. One is sort of DNA testing. Benefits of DNA testing is you only have to do it once, obviously, because that doesn't really change. That can give us, so your genes, your DNA, isn't necessarily deterministic of your health, but it gives us an idea about your predisposition to certain conditions.

1:48:11Interesting. They don't determine our health. Not necessarily. So it's around your epigenome, which is the environment which surrounds your genes. That sort of determines, I guess, which genes are upregulated or expressed and which genes are not regulated as much. To alter your epigenome, it's the same stuff that I talk about a lot in terms of the lifestyle, the benefits of the exercise, the right diet, making sure you're sleeping well, all of these things feed into kind of helping a healthier lifestyle, regulating the kind of beneficial pathways for longevity. However, so Chris Hemsworth is a good example.

1:48:46So Chris Hemsworth, obviously very famous guy, very wealthy guy. He's done a documentary like Limitless, his kind of series about himself. He's got two copies of a gene called APOE4, which means he's got an increased risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, that doesn't mean he's going to get it. That doesn't determine everything. It just means his risk is higher. So he's doing everything that he can to reduce that risk. I've got a three and a four, which means my risk is about two to three times higher than the baseline population. Dementia and Alzheimer's is more complicated than just that one gene, but it serves as a nice talking point for these kind of talks.

1:49:25So the DNA test is useful because it gives us an idea about how maybe aggressive we need to be or how strong we need to be on certain interventions it doesn't mean you're going to get those conditions but it gives us an idea and then your epigenetics there are different kind of epigenetic tests which sometimes you might have heard them refer to as like biological age testing and they might do like organ ages that can also be sort of useful but i think for most people i would look at like a basic blood panel make sure that kind of we've got a lot of kind of good information maybe that's once or twice a year the urine testing is good because it gives us an idea about there's micronutrients, mitochondrial functioning, and then the microbiome I think is really important as well.

1:50:01So we've covered the benefits of living a healthy life or transforming your life into a healthy one from a wellness and performance perspective. The benefits that you get from a neurological or brain perspective and the rest of the systems of your body, like your digestive system, you're not going to get a stomachache and things like that. But I guess some other people, they also are triggered by other factors when it comes to driving change in their lives, in this case, living a healthier life. And this could be more in relation to beauty and aesthetics. So in very simple terms, in your experience, how do we change from a beauty point of view or aesthetic perspective?

1:50:40So we become more beautiful, more handsome, more pretty, but just living a healthier life. Yeah. So I think all those kind of areas that we've discussed in terms of the lifestyle, the supplements, So we're trying to get your inner body working as well as it can. And that definitely is reflected on the outside. So when we've got a diet that's got appropriate amounts of healthy fats, good protein, you'll see it in your skin quality. You'll see it in good muscle tone and muscle mass, not in a bulky bodybuilder way, but you'll look good. You won't have very small, spindly physique. That's what we're looking for, isn't that very athletic and toned physique.

1:51:19you'll see your skin quality be good you know you'll see like a brightness in in kind of people's eyes and their you know their hair looks nice because they've got the right levels of nutrients in they're exercising you know we've got a control of the the kind of the stresses in the body that will kind of lead to premature aging you know we're regulating those better and that's going to lead to you know a better kind of appearance on the outside and obviously we can look at we would age slower that's an important aging aging slower yeah so we're that's that's what we're trying to do and ultimately we want people to look at you and say you know people look at you think oh she look great you know then if they tell me your age you're like oh my gosh that's incredible yeah um and that and that genuinely happens you know i've got um a friend of mine she's a very good nutritional therapist and she's in her 40s and everyone's amazed when they see her that she's in her 40s because her skin looks great her hair looks great um she keeps herself fit obviously with training but like her nutrition plays a really big part of that and i think that yeah it just comes out organically when you start correcting the body systems dr chinks we've discussed longevity through various different angles but if you were to compress all your knowledge into one essential piece of advice that we must implement into our daily lives what would it be that's a good it's a really good question um i think i'm gonna i'm gonna gonna go back to what my own personal interest is and my own passion i'm gonna say it's going to be around like moving more that's probably my big thing is it's kind of move more be more active there's a there's a phrase where like your your your best position is your next one so keeping yourself kind of moving keeping yourself active is super important i think you could easily answer this question with with all the things we've already spoken about but i think my my personal interest and my passion is around kind of sports and exercise and i think that doesn't mean you have to be a high level athlete but if you can reduce the amount of time you spend sedentary if you can get active, get outside, get the natural light, get the benefits of the colours, the blues and greens of nature, the kind of symmetry of nature, alongside kind of aerobic and strength activity.

1:53:19I think that makes such a huge difference to your overall health from all these different areas, from your heart health, your lung health, your muscle mass, your mobility. It's going to, it will absolutely change your life compared to someone who just, you just sit still all day. And it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be time consuming. It's just doing as much as you can it really will make a difference thank you thank you for sharing all your knowledge and your experience because i think this is profoundly useful for anybody that is looking to transform transform their lives and just live a more meaningful life i'm personally on a wellness journey and i am always trying to adopt proven practices or natural remedies that will improve the quality of my life.

1:54:07But unfortunately, I believe that the topic of wellness or the industry of wellness comes with a lot of nuances in this day and age because it is mainly driven by non-experts, by the so-called influencers. Unfortunately, I think they're leading the conversation and a lot of people are adopting advices that are non-medically approved or scientifically corroborated. So I thank you for coming and I thank you for being in this line of work and clarifying some of these nuances. For those who want to follow Dr. Jinx's journey, you can find him at Body Brilliant, which is a network of wonderful, and I've been to some of them, wellness clinics across Europe.

1:54:54And you serve there as a chief medical officer. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah. So I will be adding a lot of information about their clinic and how to reach Dr. Jinx in the description of our episode. But you can find him there. Abadir, thank you very much for your time. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you very much.