Longevity Expert: How To Live Better & Longer and Stop Stress from Aging You

0:00There are many shoddy supplements on the market that can cause more harm than good. The key supplements to invest in, in my opinion, are think about exercise as the number one longevity intervention for your health. Dr. Tamsin Lewis is a world-leading physician and psychiatrist and founder of Welgevity, an integrative medicine clinic focused on longevity, resilience, and personalized health. Following a healthy lifestyle, can those override a negative genetic predisposition? Absolutely, yeah. If you look at your parents, look at what diseases they have, and notice that if you live your life differently, eat differently, sleep, relate, manage stress, then you can, but you can develop your window of tolerance, right?

0:52One of the ways to develop resilience, to be able to buffer, bounce off stress, is... What are the most important biomarkers when it comes to determining our biological age? I represented Great Britain in triathlon leading up to the 2012 Olympics in London. I became Ironman champion UK in 2014. I did a lot of crazy things and I learned a lot about how you can push the limits of your body with your mind. How you fuel your body and how you recover. Muscle acts as a sink to cortisol, the major stress for me. The benefit of exercise comes in the recovery. And to recover you need to... If you could embed one longevity habit into every person's life, starting tomorrow, what would it be?

1:51Dr. Tam, how would you describe what you do and your mission? Wow, that's a big one. I would say that my mission is to empower people to understand themselves and their health so that they can live life in a more robust and flourishing capacity. I have known you from our research as a longevity expert. Would you say that's accurate? I think longevity as a term is having a moment. And I have been in this space quite a long time in various different guises, but in wellness, health optimization and performance medicine for nearly 20 years. So I would say now that all of that information that I gathered has added up to making me somewhat of an expert in longevity medicine, because longevity is a side effect of life or good medicine lived well.

2:49Let's deep dive into those 20 years of experience. So what have you studied? What have you worked on that equips you to be a subject matter expert? I originally trained as a medical doctor at King's College in London with Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospitals, which is one of the top medical schools in, well, arguably in the world. I also at that time, and this was some 25 years ago, did a Bachelor of Science in the biology of aging. So early on, I was interested in the aging pathways, which add up to creating disease over time. So that was a long time ago. I subsequently studied neuroscience as well.

3:26So I was interested, always been interested in how the brain influences how we feel, how we function and the behaviors that we demonstrate. Subsequently, after qualifying, I studied for seven years in psychiatry and I practiced as a psychiatrist in the UK through psychiatry. And the reason I went into psychiatry is because I realized that early on that how we interact with the world, our emotions, our stress, how we manage stress really influences our physical health. And so psychiatry afforded me the option to really sort of uncover the layers of people and understand why they were doing certain what I call self-sabotaging behaviors, drinking, excess food, addiction, etc.

4:17So psychiatry really took me deep into the weeds of human behavior and human psychology. I then sort of fast forwarded over one thing, but I had a traumatic brain injury in my final year of med school after a skiing accident. So I was in a coma for three days in Canada. And the recovery from that and the inability of the medical professionals that I encountered at the time to really understand brain inflammation and to prescribe a path for me that would help heal my brain rather than just suppress the symptoms that were coming from the impact of hitting your head, which were, you know, insomnia, depression, anxiety, binge eating, binge drinking.

4:59And so all the time, it was this plaster medicine approach, which is let's stick on a plaster of the symptom. You can't sleep. Here's a sleeping tablet. You feel bad, low in mood. Here's an antidepressant. And I kept, I, at that point, as a, you know, junior doctor thought, this can't be right like that we're just treating symptoms we're not looking at the root cause which is that my brain had been smashed up and was inflamed so I started to read books in functional medicine someone called Jeffrey Bland who was one of the pioneers of functional integrative medicine and I understood that what you eat your gut health your environment lighting how well you sleep your relationships and also traumatic experience as a child can influence how your body deals with inflammation.

5:47So I basically started to work in this approach which most people know as functional medicine which is like root cause analysis of the symptoms that you present with and it's much more nuanced and complex system-wide approach but it really does help people move forward in their lives and actually feel and function better and create longevity. You don't just have longevity, you architect your longevity. And this is what I would love the listeners to understand that everything that you put in now in your 20s and your 30s is basically building a longevity body, which is going to serve you well into your 80s and beyond.

6:27And I think now more than ever, given that the environment is so, can be so detrimental to us with plastics, with pollution, with poor quality food and processed food, we really need to have an awareness of how what we put in and onto our bodies influences our health span. So I covered a lot of things there, but the one thing I didn't mention was along my journey, I was a professional triathlete. I got into sport again. I was a sporty child, but after my head injury, part of the healing journey was to exercise and I was quite good at exercise because my dad used to be a professional cyclist and I became a Great Britain triathlete and so I represented Great Britain in triathlon leading up to the 2012 Olympics in London.

7:19I didn't compete but I was on the reserve list but I did then go into very long distance exercise and triathlon, Ironman triathlon. And Ironman triathlon culminates in a marathon. And my first Ironman, I'd never actually run a marathon. So I did a lot of crazy things. And I learned a lot about how you can push the limits of your body with your mind. And also how you fuel your body and how you recover in your body allows you to really gain strength and to push through. So I became Ironman champion UK in 2014. And then I was pregnant and so I had my daughter and then I retired. And during this time I was also studying and practicing as a doctor, but accumulating knowledge all throughout that trajectory on how one can optimize one's health in order to perform.

8:14It's so interesting how what we live, especially in those early years of our lives, they set us on this path on this mission yes your injury your exposure to sports having a dad that was a professional athlete led you to be so curious to solve a problem that you were facing that also in my opinion I think a lot of people are facing I fundamentally agree with you And I remember already back when I was in Spain at school, in the infirmary, if I had any sort of pain, it didn't really matter if it was in my head or in my knee, that would give me a painkiller. So it was always this one solution for any problem that you're having, which was medical based.

9:02Let's not understand what's the root cause of your problem, which I find, to be honest, fascinating and also very old. It is. I completely agree with you also that longevity is one of those words that right now is being used in so many different ways. And I think there are so many different definitions of longevity. But let's try to narrow this down into the professional clinical definition of longevity. How is it defined? Longevity is defined as, we use this term health span. So the number of years you live in good health and function, because no one wants to live to 120 if you spend the last 40 years of that not being able to, you know, play with your granddaughter, you're sleeping half the day.

9:48So longevity is about health span. I've said before that longevity is a side effect of a life well lived and good medicine. Right. So you become a longevity person as a side effect. And good medicine too. Good medicine. Good medicine means you have a relationship with a doctor or a team and your data. So you understand your risk profile for certain risk of diseases over time. And then you can implement personalized strategies in order to prevent any disease from developing. That could be heart disease. It could be certain cancer risks that might be in your family. It could be arthritis. It could be autoimmune disease.

10:27but having an early awareness of what you potentially are at risk of developing later in life and then putting in certain strategies, lifestyle strategies could be types of exercise, strength training, it could be increased need for B vitamins or omega-3s, but whatever. But the availability of these tests, which offer you these insights now, are far cheaper than when I was practicing 10 years ago. Which are these tests, DNA tests? A DNA test, a blood test. You can be informed about your risk profile quite simply these days in a much more affordable manner. And I also feel like there's another term, which is biological age, that is constantly used.

11:12But I also have been in situations in which people use it for so many different, in so many different definitions or in so many different examples. Can you clarify what does biological age mean? Yes, and I have a bugbear about this because, you know, you see Kim Kardashian telling us her biological age is 18 or something. Really is that what she says? You should pick me up on exact number, but it's vastly younger than she actually is. So I want to start by saying that there is no one gold standard way currently of measuring biological age in humans. There are many different what we call approximate measures of measuring biological age.

11:55So let's step back a moment. Chronological age is your calendar years, your birth date. So for me, I turned 46 on Sunday. So 46 is my chronological age. My biological age, as measured by certain what we call epigenetic tests, this is expression of markers associated with genes on your DNA. So biological age reflects the health of your cells, and cells, when put together, make organs. So it can reflect the age of different organs in your body and what we call pace of aging of these organs. But it's not accurate. Some of these tests are getting more accurate, okay? So the most accurate way of measuring your biological age at the moment is through what we call epigenetic testing.

12:43and this is a measurement of expression of certain genes in the body that clinical research tells us is associated with an increased rate of aging. So companies like True Diagnostics for example or Genome, a Swiss company, American and a Swiss company, they measure DNA expression and they can approximate your rate of aging. True Diagnostics have taken it further and have have looked at different organ ages. So this is what we're looking at more now, is that your heart potentially is aging slower than your kidneys, for example. And that would depend on your lifestyle, your genetics, etc. So we are able to break it down now into pace of aging of different organ systems, your brain, your heart, your lungs, your skin, for example.

13:31What are the most important biomarkers when it comes to determining our biological age? So this biological age test, as I said, is a blood test which looks at expression of your DNA. Physical markers of aging, biological age that we can look at that are relevant to you because I know you're a fitness fanatic. VO2 max, your ability of your body, your heart and your lungs to, sorry, your muscle tissues to take oxygen from the blood and utilize it to generate energy. vo2 max and that is a test that one can do on a bike or running and you have a mask on and it's measuring that essentially it's measuring how rapidly your body can utilize oxygen and that is the strong determinant the higher that number we know that's associated with a higher biological age and improved health span the next one a simple one is grip strength so you can get little six pound devices on amazon you can measure your grip strength and that is highly variable if you haven't had much sleep or you're uncaffeinated when you usually would be caffeinated, that's going to be lower.

14:41So grip strength is another one. You can do tests like sit to stand tests where you're cross-legged and you stand up without any holding. So gold standard ways, you can do the biological age test, epigenetics, that is, looking at your epigenome, and you can do these physical markers, VOG max and grip strength. They sound to me, maybe I'm wrong, but they sound to me too that they're very functional based and they're very physical based. Are there any biomarkers that relate more towards our mental aging? I mean, again, it's complicated. The reason it's complicated to do this is because everything in the body, we are a human operating system and everything is dynamic.

15:25So your biological age today could be improved if you've had 12 hours sleep, for example, and you haven't been on a long-distance flight. So I want to get through that this is a dynamic process. So your biological age is dynamic. More physical markers, what do you mean by that? As in the test or, for example, how much oxygen are our muscles being able to absorb to then utilize for different functions? I mean, that sounds like a physical way of testing a particular function of our living. Okay, so you're thinking of brain and cognitive health. Maybe cognitive functions, exactly. So this epigenetic test can look at expression of genes associated with accelerated ageing in the brain, so the true diagnostics test.

16:13But also we have what they call questionnaires that can determine how well your brain is potentially ageing. So subjective feedback. How do you feel and function? How's your mood? How's your sleep? We can also do brain scans now, which look at brain blood flow in different areas, and it can also look at any inflammation in the brain. So we are at this coalface of medicine now where we really understand that the brain and the body are intricately connected as an operating system. They're not two separate entities. So we are looking at the dynamic interplay between the two. And for someone that doesn't want to do a blood test, a DNA test or can't afford it and they want to assess themselves at home, as you said I think it's easier to assess yourself externally right do I have wrinkles gray hair but internally what should they be looking for maybe the examples you're giving how many hours of sleep am I getting is my mood changing very rapidly for them to determine if they're aging well or not well I think how there's a few things here how do you feel when you wake up in the morning like five days out of seven because we all have the odd bad night are you waking up with vitality are you looking forward to the day that is a good sign how positive you are that's a good sign of how well how your brain is aging how you know how out of breath you get when you run for the bus or um yeah how deep you sleep how the quality of your relationships how how safe do you feel in your relationships with others do you feel connected genuinely authentically connected And that's also related to our aging well or not well.

17:56It's very highly related to how your nervous system is. And your nervous system, which is the big system running down your spine from your brain, is intimately collected to inflammation, your immune system, everything else. So when you feel calm, connected, loved, safe, that's a signal to your nervous system that everything can work in harmony. and your pace of aging will be slower as a result. You've probably heard about these blue zone countries where they live long, healthy lives, not just long lives. Can you explain to our audience what are blue zone countries? Blue zone countries are places that have been identified in the science that have an extraordinary number of women and men, more women than men, that live a long time, over 90 years of age, for example.

18:45And a quality life. And a quality life. So years, this health span concept, having years of health without disease. And they have something in common, these societies. And it's a lot, it's far away from how we live in London. It is, they have really good quality relationships. So, you know, they have groups, they connect, they're very social. They take time over their meals. they do drink small amounts of alcohol but only small amounts to encourage relaxation and engagement with others they all exercise but slowly not with intensity so they could be they're often farmers they're often living in hilly landscapes so they don't drive up a hill they have to walk up the hill you know carrying bags and things so they're physically quite fit and strong and they tend to sleep better they wake up with the the sunrise and they go to bed relatively with us so they have a strong sleep schedule and they eat from the land so their nutritional density the quality of the nutrition they get from their food is is very good so they're living longer and they're living a quality or healthier life they function but my question would be then are they happier has this been studied yes if you look at them they they tend to be happier people for sure.

20:09And we know that positive mindset and optimism is associated with aging well and a longevity mindset is one of progressive mindsets of optimism. Let's go back to London. So I think there are some contributing factors that a lot of people are aware of that can harm our health span, eating unhealthy food, smoking, overly drinking. What are some less obvious factors that are silently harming people that we may not be fully aware of? I think people have to be aware of the air quality in which they breathe. A lot of us live in busy areas of London and we're inhaling a lot of pollutants. And air pollution basically sits like soot in the lung and causes inflammation in the body.

21:05so we definitely have to be aware of the quality of the air that we're breathing don't go running along a busy high street if you can if you're walking to work step you know go in the back streets so you're even they know that air pollution drops off incrementally if you go away from the busiest roads so small steps like that have a notable impact over time buy a um an air quality um purifier air purifier in your home you know they don't have to be super expensive but they do trap in a lot of that pollution. Light pollution, we don't talk a lot about light pollution. Overhead white lighting is really inflammatory to the brain and it can inhibit deep sleep, even in the day.

21:45So being cautious of the lighting in your office, for example, if need be, wear some, you know, orange blocking glasses to take down the light exposure. The other thing is ultra processed food. We go to press a manger thinking it's healthy food. we go and buy you know a packaged salad from whole foods we are covering our food in chemicals our bodies have never seen as much chemicals as is being ingested at the moment and that's not nonsense it's true we're seeing you know microplastics building up in our tissues and the reason that and it's it's not funny in a way like people say oh i'm becoming half plastic that means i'm moldable but actually you know our bodies don't know what to do it's seen as a foreign object in our body.

22:32So it creates inflammation and stickiness in our tissues. And that means we don't flow as well. So trying being aware of not buying packaged food. And if you're buying in plastic, wash it before you eat it. Always wash your fruit and vegetables and try and buy, eat less packaged food. I picked up on one common denominator across all of these different factors. So the end result is inflammation. What exactly is inflammation? So what are the areas of our body that are inflamed and why is this bad for us? This is, yes, you're right. Inflammation is being used all over social media as a bad thing at the moment.

23:17So to strip it back, inflammation. So for example, if you fell up the stairs here and hit your knee, you would develop inflammation, you know, as a result of injury. And that's seen as swelling around the tissue. And what that is, is your body trying to heal the damaged part. But inflammation in the context of aging is slightly different. It's chronic inflammation, and it's often caused by things coming into the body that aren't, it's not meant to be there. So our immune system recognizes foreign objects like plastics, like pollution, and goes, oh, I don't like that. I need to get rid of it. Part of the process of your immune system doing this is creating inflammation.

24:01So it's creating, it's trying to get the things out of the body. But these inflammatory, what we call, these inflammatory chemicals attract, they basically cause swelling in the tissue in the body. So it could be in your gut, for example. It can be in your kidneys. So inflammation in the body makes everything a bit more sluggish. And we know that as you age, certain cells in the body, which make up organs, actually start dying off. And as they die off, they release these inflammation chemicals. And these inflammation chemicals interfere with how your body generates energy, essentially. Is it safe to assume that inflammation leads to dying cells?

24:47Dying cells lead to inflammation and the other way around. So, yes, there's this concept called senescence, which you can look up if you're very interested, and this concept of zombie cells, which are dying cells that release these inflammatory chemicals that cause tissue damage in the body. Are there people that are more prone to inflammation than others? Yes. So if you're at risk, if you have type 2 diabetes or you're insulin resistant, which is before type 2 diabetes, which many of us are these days because we live on processed carbohydrate foods. So blood sugar levels, looking at your blood sugar levels and how that relates because we know that that can cause inflammation.

25:29We know that autoimmune disease, which is increasingly common now, can be thyroid disease, inflammation in the gut. But essentially what I want to take away is inflammation is a process that you can modify by how you eat, how you exercise, how you relate and reducing your intake of things like alcohol, cigarettes, vapes, which all cause this reaction in the body. And so taking those examples of following a healthy lifestyle, can those override a negative genetic predisposition? Absolutely. Yeah. To what extent? So it's worth doing this test because we saw this with COVID is that COVID, the coronavirus in certain people unmasked aging.

26:24So a lot of people started to accelerate their aging profile when they were infected with COVID. And they became like they developed diseases that their parents had developed. Arthritis, pneumonitis, so inflammation in the lung. So if you look at your parents, look at what diseases they have and notice that if you live your life differently, if the way you eat differently, sleep, relate, manage stress, we have to come to that because it's the trump card, then you can slow down or even prevent entirely these diseases from developing. Talk to me about stress. Stress. So stress has become this sort of like we're all stressed, right?

27:07So everyone says, well, I can't do anything about my stress. Stress is the impact of stress on your aging, on your longevity, depends on the reaction to the stress that comes in, right? So it's the chemistry in the body that causes the damage. It's not the stressor. So you can modify how you react to potentially, I don't know, like a terrorist coming in now, for example. The way you deal with that, the reaction in the body, is very different from person to person. So things that can improve how you tolerate stress is breath work. Do you know different types of breath work, which activate in and out, nice and slow, in for four, hold for four, out for four.

27:51That's called box breathing. And what that does is signal to your nervous system, that thing again, that it's okay, you're safe. And so the reaction, the inflammation calms down. So breath work is really important. Having fun, having quality relationships, that buffers. Before you continue giving some advices on how to reduce stress, I had a fantastic revealing conversation with a stress management expert on the show. And she broke the solutions down into preventive measures or advices against stress or things that you should be doing even if you don't feel stressed. So then you avoid becoming stressed or you become less stressed.

28:35And then there are other ones that are reactive, which I think are more related to what you're mentioning right now. If there is a terrorist right now coming, that's very reactive, right? So what should I do in that particular moment to go back to baseline and bring my hormones down, the different hormones that are related to stress, like cortisol? Can you segment your advices or recommendations in preventive and reactive? Yes, I can. So I think it's important to get across this idea of being able to buffer stress. Well, we call it a window of tolerance in this world. So how wide is your window of tolerance to stress?

29:15Your boss, you know, shouting at you, your relationship, you know, breaking down, etc. Everyone has a different level, right? Everyone has a different level, but you can develop your window of tolerance, right? One of the ways to develop resilience to be able to buffer, bounce off stress, and that is a preventative approach, is exercise, again, being physically fit. doing breath work on a regular basis. When is the best time to do the breath work? In the morning before going to bed? You can do breath work at any time of day that suits you. I use an app called Othership, no affiliation, really like it, or Calm.

29:53It's a wonderful company. And what it's essentially doing is training your nervous system to not fly off the handle and create all those hormones of stress. Okay? So breath work, exercise, humming, interestingly humming, like mmm, or gargling. You know, when you're doing your teeth in the morning, if you can just gargle water, that strengthens the vagus nerve, your calming stress buffer. Really, I do that every morning? Yeah. But just like to clear my throat. Yeah, gargling is one tip to strengthen the vagus nerve, your rest, calm, compliance system. Yeah. So exercise, breath work, whenever it suits you during the day, you gave the recommendation of perhaps calm the app.

30:40Calm and othership is another one. And gargling, right? Gargling, humming, any types of... Unhumming. Yeah. There's another thing called, you know, we call it cathartic exercise where you shake the body and that basically diffuses the effect of stress out of the body. Yeah. Are there any like myths that perhaps influencers, they tell us online on how to reduce the stress that don't work? Like, for example, I was looking at the other day at this Asian influencer who was suggesting something called the tap therapy. And he would like literally smash his face with his hands and he would be like, I'm activating my blood circulation and so on.

31:23And then I saw like, I started like looking at the people and their comments. And then I went into their profiles and some of them were actually like literally slapping their whole body. And I was thinking, to what extent is this like accurate and really effective? Have you come across any of these that we should not follow whatsoever? I mean, again, it's having a degree of being sensible within yourself, right? So tapping, we do know is it can be good for the body, especially if you're feeling agitated. Because it's, again, it's touch. it might be your touch but it's a signal to your nervous system that it's safe and in that it calms down but this influencer is right to one degree that it stimulates your blood flow and lymphatics your drainage system of the body but you don't want to be slapping yourself to cause tissue damage but a little bit of light tapping I mean I do it with people in natural light in the morning when we do retreats, for example.

32:20But, you know, again, don't overdo it.

32:27You founded a company called Welgevity. Yeah. What is it? So I came up with this idea of Welgevity because, again, as we've been talking about, who wants to live to 120 if you're in a hospital bed for the last 10 years? So Welgevity reflects this idea that we want to live well longer, but with this concept of human flourishing built in, like how do you really get joy and health into the years of life that you live in? Because I see people come to me wanting the latest hacks and protocols and biohacking, and they generally weren't very happy. It's almost like they were just trying to win at biology.

33:06And this is a very clever body so and our biology is very clever so well longevity became this methodology and system to approach health with clients individually but also in a group setting retreat setting walk me through a typical client journey so from the consultation stage all the way until long-term transformation so what are the different things that they go through so a client coming into a well-devity methodology would go through, depending on where they're at, you know, financially, what kind of level of testing they'd like to do. Some people want to do all the testing from a blood test to the epigenetic biological age, to gut microbiome, to a full body MRI scan, to what we call liquid biopsy, that's early detection of cancer in the body.

33:55So we can run whatever suite of tests is necessary. If you are younger, like you, we'd probably just do the basics, right? And that's the first step. Very, yes. But getting to know you, like the old school medicine of what we call, you know, a really detailed medical history, getting to know your health risks from your family, how you grew up, early traumatic experience in your life, for example. So really spending time with you, initial assessments can take up to two hours, just talking and uncovering and understanding the human behind, in front of me, or my other doctors. And then we put that together with your tests and we put together a protocol.

34:35So depending on your life and what you want to achieve, you know, you're a successful entrepreneur, maybe you want to run a marathon, maybe you want to do an Ironman, whatever. Or maybe you just want to, you know, be able to sleep better at night, looking at your goals, how that matches with your history, and then putting together a program based on that and referring you out to personal trainer, somatic therapist, retreat, or sometimes people need more thorough analysis by a cardiologist or a rheumatologist, whatever the specialist, for example. But the most important thing is having a relationship with the patient, client, person over time.

35:13And that's where the magic happens, is in the feedback loop between, are you doing these supplements? Are you doing this lifestyle change? Are you eating this way? Are you managing your stress? How are you sleeping? It's the coaching part over time that really helps shift people into enjoying their life more. Interesting. So let me see if I understood the dynamics. A client comes into your practice and you do an in-depth assessment of where they are. And also you discuss with them, where is it that they want to be yes and then based on that you design a comprehensive program that could entail a some sort of physical training a particular type of diet that is defined according to their particular needs and goals and then you outsource those things right so it's not that you have a trainer that then they would they would be trained no i not currently we're looking at different options and then I'm sent to all of these different specialists that you recommend me and then I follow up on my progress with you and then you coach me on that progress, correct?

36:26Yes. And for how long should I be doing this? Is it for the rest of my life or can I check on with you? No, I like to, as I started off the whole conversation, I like to empower people patients to understand and to understand their body and their health and sometimes that only takes, you know, an initial period of three months to really explain what's going on, your risk profile over time, how your lifestyle interacts with your risks, and then, you know, develop this dynamic play. But most of my patients check in at least once or twice a year who aren't even being intensively coached. Interesting.

37:02Once or twice a year. Let's talk about hormones. How do hormones impact our well-being and our longevity? Both, I would assume maybe there are disparities, but both in men and women. So hormones have been talked about a lot on social media recently, and everyone seems to think they have a hormone problem. Let's start by explaining what they are. So you've got female hormones, which are estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. and then the most known hormones for men are testosterone, perhaps DHEA. Male hormones are a lot more simple to understand than females. What a surprise. Men appear to be less complex than females.

37:48But there's no... Actually, from a biological perspective, that's actually true, bizarrely. We are a bit more complex because our hormones interact more. and fluctuate more in a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year trajectory women than men. So men don't go through anything like the menopause like women do, which is a period of time where your ovaries in women just basically shut down. They're like the signal from the brain to the ovaries, which is produce eggs, goes offline. No ovaries, no estrogen. Estrogen is the most potent anti-aging hormone we have in the body. It's known to be reducing the rate of aging of our tissues, of our brain, of our bones, not just...

38:39So menopause I want to get through is far more about treating symptoms with HRT and more about looking at your risk of aging, accelerated aging, if you don't take hormones after you go through the menopause. So I want to get across that estrogen is one of the most powerful anti-aging hormones in women, but it needs to be balanced. Is that something you get supplemented? Yes. So hormone replacement therapy is replacing the hormones that are lost as you go through the transition between having menstrual cycles, periods, and then not. So if you give back the hormones that will stop being produced if you stop menstruating having periods then you can you can slow down the rate of aging so menopause is a big one and I am pro hormone replacement therapy appropriately because of its effects on the tissues in the body but I do it needs to be balanced with estrogen needs to be balanced with progesterone and a little bit of testosterone which is why I think it's helpful to really get to know your body.

39:49And there's many companies now that are making testing of hormones very affordable in the menopause so that you can personalize your hormone replacement regime. And this would not come out from the DNA test that we previously? No. DNA is only looking at the genes in your cell. It's not looking at the expression of those genes. Interesting. Let's talk about menstruation. I was reading that more and more women, especially young women, are having menstrual disruptions due to perhaps maybe different stressors. Can you talk to me about what are the different things that can lead to that? And also, what can young women do, maybe even in her early 30s, to either avoid it or once they habit, overcome it and go back to our regular menstrual cycle.

40:43You're correct in saying that regular menstrual cycles are less common now in Gen Z people, in younger people. And the reasons for that are related to this thing that we talked about earlier on, stress and the perception of stress by the body. Okay. So in order for regular menstrual cycles to happen, the signal from the brain to the ovaries, it's okay to release an egg, which is what you get ovulate in the middle of the month. It's okay. And now we're getting stress from over exercise, bizarrely enough, like women are doing a lot of fasted exercise. And they should not. Not all the time, right?

41:24If you're constantly sending the signal to your body that you need to exercise and there's no fuel available, then that's a stress signal. And your body will go, okay, well, so take it like this. Your body doesn't want to have a baby if it's under a lot of stress. We know this through war and poverty, et cetera. If there's a lot of stress, the rates of successful pregnancy go down. So you need to signal to your body most of the time that it's in a position that it's safe to have a baby. Okay. So if you're stressed, if you're on social media all the time, if you've got this constant sense of FOMO, of missing out, or you should be doing things.

42:00That's a state of tension. State of tension is signaling to your body, I'm not in a state to conceive and have a baby and bring a human into this world. So stress can be social media, like I said, it can be not sleeping or dysregulated sleep, going to bed very late because you're on your screens, right? So not having enough deep sleep, which is again, signal from the brain to the egg, you know, it's not safe. Fastly cardio, just generally not eating enough nutritional dense food. There's a lot of women who are deficient in B vitamins, folic acid, thiamine, other types of B vitamins, because they're not eating quality food like we used to.

42:41Which type of food should they be eating to get those nutrients? I mean, if you can afford it, you know, the more organic foods are denser in nutrients, but just looking at, you know, root vegetables. And I'm a big proponent of quality meat, at least three days a week, three or four days a week, because meat is more than protein, right? The darker meats are very nutrient dense, and the body needs to be nourished. It doesn't just want to be fed calories, it doesn't want to be fed, you know, chemical smoothies, for example, and chemical powders, you know, it wants to be nourished with food. So that's another one.

43:17So we have seen a lot of gut health problems. We know there's a signal from the gut to the brain in women. So if you are nourishing yourself, if you're feeding your gut with, you know, root vegetables, leafy greens, grains, you know, whole grains, nuts, seeds, quality meat, fish, etc., a variety of foods. So think about variety in your diet. Don't just go to the same place every day for lunch and eat the same foods. Try and encourage variety into the diet and notice what makes you feel good and notice what makes you feel bloated and a bit stodgy. Interesting. So not working out while fasted, eating organic healthy foods, trying to use less social media, get quality sleep.

44:01Anything else? Relationships, the quality of your relationships. Really invest time in eye-to-eye contact and time like connected hugs, those kinds of things with not just your potential sexual partner, but your friends. Take time to go for walks with friends, like, you know, exercise together, this concept of social wellness, saunering together. There's all these places popping up now, social saunering. And that's having a really beneficial effect on your health. Is there an ideal frequency to see our friends or our relatives to achieve these? Look how we evolved as humans. We evolved in groups.

44:36You know, we weren't sitting at home in isolated ways like this, reading a book. We evolve to be part of a social group and we know that your biology responds to being as part of a social group. Even if you're more introvert and you need to take time out, it's very important to see your friends as often as you can or at least speak to your friends. Once a week, twice a week? More than that if you can. Okay. Yes. Interesting. But it doesn't have to be just your close friends. It could be just having a good interaction with people at work, for example. Let's talk about exercise. Which exercises support a healthy lifespan and which ones harm it?

45:24So think about exercise as the number one longevity intervention for your health. and that is because it builds heart strength and lung strength but it also builds muscle and muscle on the body protects your physique over time from becoming frail and decrepit right so think about muscle and bone as your as your structure right they aren't just there to support you from, you know, harm if you fall over, but they're there as they're active in our day to day. So muscle acts as a sink, for example, to cortisol, the major stress hormone. So if you have this surge in cortisol, stress hormones, adrenaline, whatever, and then sit there writing emails like this, that cortisol is going to fizzle around, it's going to raise your blood pressure.

46:23But if you were to go for a walk or do some squats, for example, your cortisol levels are going to sink down and it's going to sink into your muscle. And the reason why cortisol flooding the system is so bad, potentially over time, is because it raises blood sugar levels. And our body is not meant to be bathed in sugar through the blood the whole time. So think of it like that. Exercise sinks glucose, blood sugar into the muscles, away from the blood where it causes harm. Interesting. I think a great takeaway for that is if someone is feeling stressed at work, in the office, they should go for a walk.

47:00You should definitely go for a walk. Even better getting natural light and looking up from the phone. We know that if you look up to a panorama, for example, away from your phone, your nervous system calms down. So get out, natural light and look up. Is there such a thing as over-exercising? Yes, and I have learned that the hard way, given that I was a former endurance athlete. if you over exercise especially if you don't fuel the exercise it's the fuel that's important right so your body needs to again going back to this safety signal your body wants to know that it's not at risk of you know not having enough fuel on board or potentially you know it could burn out and die so if you exercise you need to you need to fuel it and there's a lot of people now that are going to the gym, having had a black coffee or some MCT.

47:50And what that does over time is it can age your immune system. So your immune system doesn't work as well. And you raise your levels of this stress hormone cortisol. So it's a balance here, right? For both men and women. Men and women. Okay. So men, because you don't ovulate, have eggs, you know, are less likely to to be impacted. But again, it's important to, in general, we don't have an over-exercise problem in this country, but some people are stressing themselves. But some people are stressing themselves too much with exercise because they're going to the gym and then they're, you know, they're having an ice bath, they're having a sauna, and then they're going for another run.

48:36So you have to understand the benefit of exercise comes in the recovery and to recover you need to rest and you need to fuel with good food and potentially some supplements like creatine. How many days during the week should we be exercising? You should move every day for sure. The first thing you should do in the morning is not go on your emails but do some form of movement in the morning and that doesn't have to be HIIT high intensity exercise. It's walking, it's gently getting the lymphatics moving after being laid down overnight. So I need to go to the gym in the in the afternoon that's fine go to the gym in the afternoon find what works for you but gentle movement throughout the day in addition to doing some strategic exercise so a gym class or a run is is most important we weren't designed to to go to the gym for an hour and sit all day it's it's not we're designed for low level activity a lot of the day we're now being told that we should be walking 10 000 steps a day is that a myth or something that we should be actually following.

49:41No, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, like I said, you don't want to do 10 ,000 in all in one go and then lie on a sofa for the rest of the day or at your desk. It's important to develop a habit of exercise, snacking, right? Your body wants to, because when we move, we are encouraging digestion, we're encouraging blood sugar to sink into the muscles, for example. So moving a little bit after meals is a very good way to counteract the effects of storing those calories as excess energy and fat. Interesting. I can totally relate to that because I've been working out now for many years and it wasn't until very recent that my mindset was, I worked out already in the morning and I'm a morning person.

50:24So the first thing is during my mornings is to work out. So I worked in the morning, I'm done when it comes to exercising for the day. So if I'm going to walk, it's for functional reasons, because I need to go to a meeting or I need to buy something, but not walking for the sake of walking because I've already exercised. And I did realize that then if I was at the office or I was in a very long meeting and I would get stressed, even though I exercised, that stress would stay with me. and then I bought a dog and you have to walk the dog and I was naturally forced to still walk the dog obviously even though I already exercised and those walks did wonders for me it made me feel so good it also had actually an impact on my body and how much I weight and body fat percentage and so on but definitely when it came to reducing my cortisol levels and just feeling less stressed every time I was feeling stressed I got an email that I didn't like or I needed to speak with someone about something that was going to be uncomfortable from a professional perspective, I would take my dog for a walk, as simple as that, and I would feel so much better with myself.

51:35It's so important, we need to get out of this idea that we need to have meetings sitting around a table. Let's go on more walking meetings and take them outside. That's what I'm about. Oh, I like that. I think I'm going to test that. Do you think, interesting, obviously the question would be if the people within your team can be as productive doing that, right? So I guess some people might be, because I'm already imagining some people in my team, might really love the idea and they might think that it's so innovative and they're still going to be very delivery focused while some others still think it's like a field trip, right?

52:07Oh, we're walking around Hyde Park and they're going to be so stimulated by other things. You have to set the expectations and I think that's important. I think what's really nice sometimes is the leader of the meeting to have headphones on. Everyone has headphones and you're speaking to people as you walk, right? So you're not communicating like this. You've all got headphones and you're the one talking through the agenda. And what you're doing is you're actually increasing people's productivity because their brain will work better in natural light with movement. There's more blood flow. So I think you don't have to do all the meetings like that.

52:39But if you did one, you set expectations, we're doing this because we're going to increase our productivity. These are the set goals that we need to get out of this. I love that. Plus, also, if you don't have that much time to get those 10 ,000 steps that you're killing two birds with one stone. Great, I'm definitely going to test that. Let's talk about some of the protocols or like I call them gadgets that you've mentioned before, like eye spots or red light therapies. Do you recommend this? Because we're being told that this, that's my perception through social media, that they are going to change your life profoundly.

53:15Yeah. Are they that big of a deal? Are they useful? So like I said, biohacking has become this phenomenon that everyone wants to get into because it's trendy. But hacking biology has never been my thing. It doesn't make sense. The body's too clever for that. So with every action, there's a reaction, right? Okay. Ice baths, red light therapy, compression boots, sauna. What are compression boots? They're like you put them on like sleeves and they squeeze your legs to increase the way your body deals with waste products. So I've been using these for, you know, 25 years as an athlete. Because if you increase the rate of recovery, you increase the weight at which you can exercise, train and get a physical fitness benefit.

53:57So there is some value in these. Okay, so, but you shouldn't do them to the extent of nothing else, right? I use these biohacking therapies to get people to feel better in the moment. If they feel better, they're more likely to choose healthy food options. they're more likely to want to move more because the the feel-good chemicals have a knock-on effect on what they do so saunering for example is what we call a proxy for exercise it stimulates the same things in the body that exercise do if you sauna after exercise you're getting a incremental benefit so better to stack your sauna with your exercise but if you just go in a sauna you're going to get some benefits we know from studies in in finland that people that sauna three times a week live it's it's extraordinary number i don't quote me on far longer than people that don't sauna if you go three times a week yes i'm definitely doing that from now on sauna because it's good for the brain it stimulates but the sauna not the steam bath it's about the temperature temperature so if you it's the heat stress to the body and and the the reaction of the body to the heat stress so you can get that through a hot bath you can get it through a steam you can get it through a sauna.

55:08The heat into the body is triggering the beneficial effects on the brain, antidepressant, on the heart, stimulating how well it contracts and flows. And yeah, lots of feel good factors. Would you say extreme heat is more beneficial to the body than extreme cold like ice baths? I'm not a huge fan of ice baths, especially for women. I don't think most women should be doing ice baths below 12 degrees centigrade unless you're a trained professional and because I think it's it's an intense stress on the body to go in an ice bath and the reason you feel so good is because your body's releasing a ton of adrenaline right and dopamine yeah because and that's it's it's like and then your body's oh look I survived and that's where the euphoria comes true I feel like that every single time exactly so so proud of myself.

56:01I mean, it's possible. It's a placebo. More of a placebo then. I can't say it's a placebo because placebo means that it's not having an impact on your physical, on your biology, because it is, it's having a really strong impact. But the point is that you, we weren't, look how we evolved. We weren't designed to be jumping in cold bodies of water every day, right? Your body doesn't want to have stresses constantly going. But you know, the odd one to wake you up it's probably a good thing cold showers no doubt are good for us i do them every morning should i be doing them every morning i don't mind you doing them every morning i can't imagine you get out and you feel awake you don't feel traumatized

56:44right there is a rule called 25-3 if i'm correct um and it's recommended to slow physical and mental aging. What is this rule? Do you know the 25-3 rule? Okay, so the 25-3 is this longevity principle whereby if you do 20 minutes of walking per day, we've already talked a lot about that, and you do five resistance sessions per week, which is actually quite a lot, but that doesn't have to mean going to the gym lifting weights. It could be just doing, you know, 20 press-ups or squats and lunges. So 20 minutes of walking, five resistance sessions a week, and then they say, three HIIT sessions a month, which isn't very much.

57:25It's like on average, you know, one a week of that, of really getting your heart rate up. But the key there is, as you've seen, this isn't going to the gym and nailing it every day. Three a month is not much, right? So the point is more resistance and then a little bit of intensity, 20 minutes walking, five resistance sessions a week, and then three high intensity a month. That's the 25-3 principle. I feel like if I start following your recommendation and doing walking meetings, it's not going to be 20 minutes for me. I'm going to end up walking for like five or six hours. Yes. Let's talk about nutrition.

58:02So when it comes to anti-aging, what are some foods that support our health? And what are some less obvious ones, right? Because fast food, processed foods are clear examples. But even perhaps there may be some whole foods that when we over consume them, we should be avoiding. So what are some things that we should be eating? And give me some clear examples and some other types of foods that we should be avoiding altogether. Again, going back to food quality and avoiding ultra processed foods. There's a great book called Ultra Processed People. I highly recommend it so you get an awareness about the amount of processed food that you're eating and the disruption that causes to your gut health.

58:45So an example of foods that you could be eating, I use a lot of frozen fruit because actually you preserve a lot of vitamins in the freezing process. So frozen fruit, frozen veg are actually a very high quantity of vitamins and minerals. So you can make a smoothie with frozen berries, dark, dense berries. I don't tend to have too much banana because it spikes your blood sugar. But you can add in a quality whey protein like goat sheep whey is very good. Avoid ones that have added sweeteners and chemicals. You can use a good quality like a coconut milk, which is full of good fats for the brain. Adding in nuts, seeds, flax.

59:28So sometimes stacking a nice smoothie is going to get a lot of goodness into you. Berry powders, for example, high in antioxidants. That's a good example. And then using, if you think about decent types of grains, like I really like really dark bread, you know, like dark sourdough or seeded bread, for example. If you do well with nut butters, tahinis, those kind of things, black sesame seeds. So think dark, dense foods being really helpful. And then obviously be mindful of how you're eating. A lot of us as we get older don't digest and absorb things from our foods. So actually really taking time to chew and acknowledging that it's not just what you put in, it's how you assimilate all the goodness that's coming in.

1:00:14So chewing well, taking time over the food. I encourage people to have protein at their meals two or three times a day. I'm so bad at chewing well. Yeah? Yeah. I feel like I'm so bad at it because I eat very quickly. So I would assume that that means that I'm not chewing long enough. No. It obviously depends what you're eating as well and if you're hungry. I feel like I'm hungry most of the day. But no, I eat a very healthy diet. I would assume most of the important micronutrients are there. Healthy fats, proteins, good carbohydrates, fiber. But I do eat fast. So I do know that I need to chew more.

1:00:56Because I was told many years ago that that would make my stomach age faster because I am forcing it to work at a different speed and perhaps more. Because I was told that we break down the food in two different steps, right? Step number one is when we chew. And then the step number two is our pancreas is releasing some liquid to decompose that food. And then our body starts to understand what to do with that food. And I was told that I was getting it fundamentally wrong on the first step. And then hence why on the second step my body would need to overcompensate. Does that make sense? It does.

1:01:30it obviously depends the complexity of what you're eating right if you're eating a piece of white toast that's not going to take much digestion if you're eating spaghetti bolognese that's going to take quite a lot of digesting because it's a complexity of carbs fats and um and and protein so what should which foods should we be avoiding that perhaps maybe some people have everyday thinking oh this is healthy for me i think what people think is healthy is again going back to like prep salads for example there's not a lot of goodness in them to be honest you'd do better just making taking some leftovers from the night night before meal at home in a you know some kind of non-toxic tapu air to to work so um i i think we now know that you know oat milk isn't particularly healthy for us it's full of sugar and other chemicals you know unless you get a really good one so you've got to be really mindful of added sugars in things right so takeaway food is notoriously added chemicals and sugars etc um so the the cleaner and you can eat the better so if you'd make choices like you can have like you know the salad bars where you can go and have your protein and your vegetables and then you can add in the dressings later i think we need to state that you know high quality olive oil is really good it's really good for us you know so don't be afraid of fats you know olive oil shots are going around at recent conference a longevity gravity conference size out.

1:02:57So, you know, really thinking about what you take in with the olive oil, but also avoiding processed foods like packaged crisps and, you know, like all these different protein bars with 5 million ingredients. If you're eating something with that many ingredients, it's not food, it's chemicals. Is there a max count of ingredients? I think, you know, you have to be sensible here. If you're looking at the back of a pack and you're seeing um there's there's apps now that can scan products and tell you this is a good choice and not um if you just look at food food apps there's um so you can just scan the market you know and it gives you some idea but don't you know try to avoid not every day but try to avoid things with over you know 20 ingredients what about coffee is it good for us because i think that's that's a very divisive topic some people say and claim that it's fantastic and some others they say that It increases our cortisol levels and it dehydrates us.

1:03:59I love coffee. So again, it comes back to being sensible. It does potentially kick your adrenals and increase a bit of cortisol. But, you know, you adapt to that very quickly. You might do it. That's why you notice if you haven't drunk coffee for a week, you know, you get a bigger benefit. I'm a fan of coffee. I think we know from the research that coffee drinkers actually have a better longevity, to use that word, than non-coffee drinkers. Again, because it's high in polyphenols, it's high in antioxidants if you use quality coffee. So quality coffee first, don't add sugar. Nespresso is not a quality coffee.

1:04:39Nespresso? Yeah. So the problem with Nespresso and those machines is that you're getting aluminium into, you're getting heavy metals into your body. which is okay once a week but it's not four a day you know so we have to be mindful that i go through like four of those every day no you should you should get a coffee like purity or exhale and do a stovetop or a filter yeah i mean this it adds up if you were to test your heavy metal levels in a few years you'll have a higher level of these things which your body again yeah It's having to process. What do you think about diets like the ketogenic diet?

1:05:17I think the ketogenic diet can potentially be very helpful for therapeutic indications, right? Head injury, for example. Certain types of cancer, it can be useful. It's not meant to be used all the time, right? This is the point. This goes for my twin brother. It's not meant to be used all the time. Thank you. Yes, we are not meant to survive in ketosis all the time. I think we need to cycle back in carbohydrates quite often in order to signal and to maintain what they call metabolic flexibility. Your body needs to, it will lose its ability to process carbohydrates and sugars if you avoid them constantly.

1:05:55And it's also stressful on the body to maintain ketosis constantly. You're going to notice slightly higher cortisol levels. Can you explain in very simple terms, imagine I'm a 10-year-old boy, what is ketosis? Ketosis is a state in the body where you have high levels of what they call ketone bodies. And the ketones in the body can be used as an alternative to glucose, blood sugar for fuel. So when you are in a fasted state or you avoid carbohydrates, sugars, your body will go into what we call ketosis. And your brain can use ketone bodies for fuel. your muscles use them less better. But yes, ketone bodies are an alternative fuel to the body from glucose.

1:06:41Let's talk about sleep. We've covered it at surface level, but let's look at it more through a scientific lens. So when we get consistently not quality sleep, what is that doing to our body, to our brain or to different organs within our body? So sleep and exercise are the two most potent, two of the most potent longevity interventions that you need to be aware of. And we do neglect sleep, thinking that it's just rest and we can get by without it. But actually, reframing sleep to the period of time overnight when your body is cleaning, repairing and regenerating is super helpful. so if you neglect the amount and the depth of the sleep you get then you will be increasing your pace of aging over time so do prioritize quality sleep at least 80 percent of the time and the way you get there is through avoiding screens and phones late at night turning the light right down teaching your body getting into a bedtime routine so that you your nervous system calms down and having a cool dark light free bedroom is super important also.

1:08:01And what are the negative long-term effects of someone that just doesn't get that good sleep? If you don't have good sleep over time then everything in the body suffers over time. Your increased risk of cancer, of obesity, of high blood pressure, of depression, of cognitive decline like Alzheimer's. So you really, I can't stress enough that 80 % of your sleep, I know that we're all young and we like to go out and we like to have late nights. That's fine. But allowing yourself at least 80 % of the time to really prioritize on the quality of your sleep, I cannot emphasize how important that is. I was recommended, maybe wrongly recommended to take magnesium before I go to bed.

1:08:44Is this something you recommend? Magnesium comes in many forms. Magnesium, glycinate and bisglycinate and threonate are very helpful to help calm the body and ensure a deeper rest overnight.

1:09:00Again, the quality of supplements matters. There are many shoddy supplements on the market that can cause more harm than good. The key supplements to invest in, in my opinion, are vitamin D, creatine, which is known in the muscle building world, but it's actually really helpful for all system health, three to five grams of creatine a day. Omega-3, so that's fish oil, but you need to have a quality fish oil and you need to keep it cool. And then magnesium at night to help really increase the amount of deep sleep that you get. Those would be the main ones that I like. Are there any other ones that you believe that a lot of people buy and they are more of a placebo?

1:09:47I think the whole idea of a multivitamin is potentially not that helpful, especially for young people. But it all goes down to the quality of your diet, right? Increasingly, we are becoming nutrient deficient. So potentially multivitamin can be helpful for a lot of people these days. But these stimulant supplements aren't potentially any good. You know, ones that contain high levels of caffeine aren't potentially any good for us. And collagen? So you do not need collagen as a healthy young individual if you are a meat eater, because collagen is very, you know, is present in meat. So if you're eating meat, you know, three or four times a week, you're not going to get an additional benefit from collagen.

1:10:37although it is a good source of protein but without leucine which is a muscle stimulating protein so collagen if you can afford it can be a useful addition to the diet but if you're a meat eater it's not necessary. I've recently been introduced to IV drips and I personally found them useful what do you think? I think always going back to quality what's going in these intravenous drips there there's a high variety of uh of quality you also have to be mindful that in these iv drips you're getting uh plastics delivered so you're through the drip itself we know that plastics are coming into your bloodstream because he's using plastic tubing uh so i am i'm concerned by people doing regular iv drips i mean if you're doing one twice you know every three months or once twice a year potentially but i would not be recommending people do these things regularly because you're getting plastics through the tubing into the blood.

1:11:41Interesting. Interesting. And your body is very good at absorbing nutrients and food when you're young, especially if you digest the food well. The only indications for IV drips would be if you've been doing a lot of travel, if you have been very run down, perhaps you've been ill, maybe you need a higher dose of these, you know, antioxidants, vitamin C, glutathione, etc. But be mindful of how you're getting these delivered. What are your thoughts on drugs like Ozempic? So Ozempic, Monjano, the GLP-1 medications can be very helpful. And I've just returned from a longevity doctor's conference in CAMS.

1:12:29but they should not be used by what we call metabolically healthy slim people. So I think there is an overuse of these medications potentially but there is no doubt that they can help you retrain how you see food, drink and other behaviours. So because they reduce your desire for certain foods, even alcohol and smoking, they tend to act on this gut-brain axis. You can smoke less if you're on a sample? You can smoke less, you can drink less, yes. You can have less desire for things. But what about sexual desire? It sometimes can go down, yes. But, you know, some people offset that by giving people, you know, sex hormones.

1:13:18But I would say that they can be very helpful in reducing inflammation in the whole body. and they obviously can reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer and neurodegenerative conditions too. But it sounds like a drug that has so many different effects and that can be so powerful, it should come at a cost. So there is a metabolic cost of using these drugs like Xampic over time in that the body becomes dependent on them. it's very difficult to get people off these drugs the weight comes back quite quickly so i would suggest that if you go on it note that if you're coming off you have to do it slowly so you need to find a doctor that's willing to you know monitor you coming off these substances over time because it takes time for the body to adjust and reset but they are becoming what we call physical physically dependent on them people are let's talk about alcohol because you've briefly mentioned it before I think right now slowly and gradually people are becoming more aware about the negative consequences of alcohol towards our health but can you give me a medical description on what happens to our body when we drink for extended periods of time so no one can claim that alcohol is a health drink, right?

1:14:47I think small amounts of alcohol can be potentially helpful allowing people to engage socially and also potentially digestive like red wine, for example. But alcohol is a toxin and it needs to be processed by the liver, okay? So if we are chronic, if we are constantly drinking alcohol most nights or even in excess at the weekend, then that's a strain on the liver. It's going to have to be constantly detoxifying it and excreting it. You can support your liver by having lots of broccoli which contains sulforaphane and other ways looking after yourself. But it will be accelerating your pace of aging if you drink heavily constantly, for sure.

1:15:40And can you reverse that? So perhaps some of our listeners might be in their 50s. Yeah. And they've been drinking for most of their lives. Also because I believe that there was less information in the past about what are the long-term effects of drinking regularly. I can take even my grandfather as an example. So he, I think I've never seen him drunk in my life, but he's from Spain. and in Spain, particularly people from his generation believed that at least one glass of red wine every day is good for your heart. And there's even a phrase that rhymes that says that one glass of wine a day, you know, keeps your doctor away.

1:16:20So we have a similar analogy to that in Spanish. And he drinks one glass of red wine a day or at least one beer every day. And he's been doing that for his entire life. Is this bad for you? I would say that think about the Blue Zones again. again, they drink alcohol in moderate quantities as well, and they actually live longer, right? So if your, you know, your grandfather's been doing that his whole life, his body can deal with that quite well, you know, it's, it's, he's clearly relaxed, it clearly helps him to relax at the end of the day, and maybe become more sociable, and maybe even reduces blood pressure.

1:16:55So I think in that setting, your body can really, it can handle that amount of alcohol. What it can't handle is, you know, drinking half a bottle or, you know, two pints every day, for example. So the body needs two or three days per week, alcohol free in general, unless you're having, like you say, a small amount every day, but you're also moving a lot, you don't have much stress in your life, you're not using the alcohol to anesthetize yourself, essentially. let's um let's talk about a case that i see in people from my generation so i'm 29 but friend my friends are in their late 20s early 30s they're working and usually they go out once a week maybe sometimes twice but let's say once a week and they go out for dinner and then perhaps maybe 12 more afterwards that one night a drink that one night a week they can um they can get tipsy or maybe drunk is that bad for us if we do that once a week again it depends on how well you look after yourself the rest of the time right so and it also depends on what you're drinking you know if you're drinking vodka tonic versus you know alka pops or you know the added chemicals with the alcohol that you're drinking.

1:18:16So, I mean, I think there's a lot less binge drinking amongst youth of today because there's much more awareness about it than there was when I was growing up. I think people are using alcohol-free drinks containing other things that stimulate their brain. So, their reliance on alcohol is way less. So, you know, if you look after your body, if you take, you know, some things to support your liver, you can Google what they are, you know, things like, like I said, sulforaphane in broccoli, NAC, which is a type of supplement, N-acetylcysteine is an antioxidant, you know, then your body can potentially handle a night out.

1:18:52But always encourage you to drink less and look at other ways to have fun and pleasure. Are there any particular types of alcohols that you, I wouldn't say recommend, but they are preferable? So for example, tequila, drink tequila. Yeah, I think tequila has got a reputation now that it's a mood lifter, which is true in part. So it has an additional benefit of blocking this enzyme in the body that can raise dopamine and serotonin and mezcal. So they can be drugs in drinks of choice for people going out. But, you know, again, it's how much you have is the issue. This is a bigger question. if you could embed one longevity habit into every person's life starting tomorrow what would it be my one longevity tip if i was to only have one when you wake up in the morning go outside just for a few moments for a few minutes and get some natural light before you look at your phone anything just and allow yourself to really take a few deep breaths outside in natural light any time of year to regulate your system before you start your day because that puts you on a path of regulation for the rest of the day beautiful i'm definitely going to try and do that if you were to compress all your knowledge into one essential advice that we should that we must implement in our daily lives, what would it be?

1:20:28I would say that longevity starts with self-awareness, with getting to know yourself, with listening to your body, learning to note its signals, how it reacts to different situations, and really, really knowing how to regulate yourself. So giving yourself time, self-compassion, and knowing that you have the capacity to build your longevity. How can we know that what our body is telling us is something that we should follow? Because sometimes I can't tell if my body is telling me if I'm hungry or not, for example. Maybe I should not be eating what my body is telling me, eat, or vice versa. So how can I know that this is the right little voice within my head that I should follow?

1:21:16I think wearables are getting clever nowadays. So you have your aura ring, you have your continuous glucose monitor, you know, like a patch on your arm that's becoming more utilized. But with hunger, you need to drink first. You need to make sure you're hydrated and you need to wait 20 minutes. So have a conscious wait. And then if you're still hungry, you need to fuel yourself. You're a growing man. You have a lot of stress and you exercise a lot. So your demands for fuel are high. I think the wellness sector has been undergoing a profound transformation in the last probably five to ten years.

1:21:54And many companies that are leading the way, they have one core benefit or one core aspect as the leading factor in this transformation, which is looking good. There are a lot of different companies, like for example, Ozempic, in which they, I think, wrap themselves around the notion of being a wellness company, But ultimately, what they're trying to tell you is maybe a shortcut to look better or maybe just feel better, but in the short term. And I very much appreciate that you are an expert, that it is very much the opposite of that. So your entire practice, your entire scope of work is first predicated around the notion of getting to understand yourself and who are you.

1:22:46because we're all profoundly different from a genetics perspective, but also from a lifestyle point of view. And upbringing. And upbringing. And then based on that, we can have a good understanding of where we are. And then together we can define where is it that we want to be. And then based on that, we can design a roadmap of different types of things that we should be doing, i.e. nutrition or exercise, that are fit for purpose for us. because I also believe that right now we live in a world in which they're all trying to catalog us into this one box, one size that should fit everyone and we should all be doing the same thing and get the same benefits.

1:23:25And I just don't think that that just makes any sense whatsoever. So I appreciate meeting with experts like yourself that are trying to disseminate knowledge that is actually real, useful, backed by science, but also individualized. So thank you. No worries. It's been great to talk to you. Thanks.

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