Sleep, stress and exercise: your longevity toolkit | Kayla Barnes-Lentz

21:59I'm going to start by going straight at you, Federica. Have you ever experimented on yourself?

22:03Dr Federica Amati:Oh, on myself? Yes, I have. So I like tracking, of course, Jonathan. I love taking our gut microbiome tests and experimenting how I can improve on our test results. Some things I've learned through my sleep tracking. So I've learned that for me, I don't drink much alcohol anyway, but if I will have a glass of wine, I need to have it way before I go to bed. Otherwise my entire night, my resting heart rate does not go down. So I've learned things by observing how different behaviors impact my metrics. Another thing I do is DEXA scans. I keep a really close eye on my body composition, making sure that my lean mass is going up and my fat mass stays healthy levels.

22:40And are there examples from history of scientists experimenting on themselves? So many. Should I pick my favorite one? Go on.

22:47Dr Federica Amati:Okay. Because there's some really good ones. I mean, smallpox is really the best known one, I think, but I love the H. pylori story. So the scientist thought that these gastric ulcers were being caused by bacteria. He was like, it's not just stress. It's not just, there were so many theories about why gastric ulcers happen. And gastric ulcers are? So gastric ulcers are these incredibly painful holes, essentially, that happen in your stomach lining. So you can imagine the stomach is extremely acidic. So our stomach lining is very carefully designed to take that acidity level without destroying the tissue and without pain.

23:18Dr Federica Amati:If you have a gastric ulcer, this is an erosion of that layer that protects the tissue. And it is incredibly painful. You can imagine it's like literally acid burning your flesh. Very common. It is absolutely tied to stress, by the way. but people couldn't really figure out what was happening was it genetic is it due to like eating too much hot food is it because you ate like chili there was all sorts of theories but the you know the treatment for it was kind of mysterious and sometimes quite aggressive and you'd have operations so this doctor was like actually i think this is something to do with a pathogen and he was sure about it but he was absolutely rejected by the medical community don't be ridiculous.

23:57Dr Federica Amati:No bacteria could survive and then cause this. So he literally got some H. pylori and infected himself. What is H. pylori? It's a bacteria. Okay. He just drank this bacteria. Yes. He infected himself and then watched himself get stomach ulcers and showed it and was like, see, I caused myself to have the infection. And then he cured himself with antibiotics and it cleared the ulcers. So he literally used himself to prove his theory. That's sort of radical. I'm going to infect myself with a dangerous bacteria to prove that it causes this problem, show it to everybody, and let that's far out. Now, is that an experiment you might do on yourself?

24:36That's not on our docket for protocols to try, but I'm very grateful that he did it because now that we know. So how do you decide, Kayla, what interventions you will try? I certainly have a team that's helping review this all, as I recommend, of course, anyone that is going to go down this path to do. So that's step one. But also, you know, there are some things that are a little bit more out there, but it's all about weighing the risk versus reward. And, you know, there's also some things that I haven't done yet that have been offered and that other individuals in the industry have done, like gene therapies.

25:09So I am only 35. Many of the individuals in this industry are a bit older, you know, late 40s, early 50s. They've already had their children. I still want to have children in the future. So there are a few things I haven't done. And I think for me, the risk just currently would outweigh the reward. So I'd love to go back to this thing you described right at the beginning about having half your blood stripped out and replaced with something else. Could you just talk me through that experience, how you think about it, and then the experiment and how do you decide whether or not it worked? Removing the plasma, it kind of like hooks you up to what would look like a dialysis machine.

25:42So you have one line going into this vein, one line going into this vein. it's actually filtering the blood from the plasma and then it's removing all that plasma. They just dispose of it. They replace it with something called albumin. I am very excited though. So there are new versions of these. They're not available here in the US, but like in-use phoresis or apheresis where you're keeping a lot of the beneficial aspects of the plasma, but you're removing some of the, let's say, microplastics. We'll take that as an example. You can filter just for microplastics. We know that micro and nanoplastics have now been found in every organ of the body.

26:14So I think that this, let's say, plasma filtering, or we can call blood filtering maybe for a simple term, will be something of the future, to be honest, because we are experiencing these incredibly high levels of toxic burden. So it's helping to remove those substances from the body. I don't really understand what's exactly in my blood. So what's the plasma versus what else is in there? Can the two of you help me to understand a little bit more what's going on there? Yeah.

26:35Dr Federica Amati:So if you think of the plasma, like the liquid that transports your red blood cells and your white blood cells around the body. It also contains a lot of the messages signaling. So like your hormones, the peptides that are sending information about your health status from tissue to tissue, from brain to gut, and also vitamins. So the plasma is really the liquid that transports everything around your body. So there's a lot of information in the plasma. So the total plasma exchange, TP, removes all of it together and then replaces it with albumin, which is another like protein-containing liquid, essentially.

27:08Dr Federica Amati:Both of these, by the way, Jonathan, are used in medicine. So if someone comes into the hospital and they have horrendous poisoning from an exposure to a well-known toxin, they will get hooked up. And dialysis is another great example. If your kidneys are failing, your kidneys are the organs that naturally sort your plasma out, remove the things you want to remove and excrete them. So if your kidneys have failed, a machine has to do that for you. And that's very similar. I think what's really clear now is that the filtering Kayla's talking about, that has real future for removing things like microplastic and PFAS because you're not removing all of the hormones and peptides and the other parts of your plasma that are actually integral to your homeostasis.

27:46Dr Federica Amati:So your body likes to remain in balance. And a lot of the information it gets on how things are going is from this plasma. So when you strip it all out, I mean, it's interesting, there's not enough data on this, but we don't know how your body then goes, whoa, what just happened? Like, where is everything gone and how it resets? So I'd love to hear what your markers showed for that. But yeah, I think I'm much more positive about the filtering. You know, I'm actually going to have my microplastics and PFAS measured this month. And if I find that they're higher than I would like, I would not go for TP.

28:21And you've mentioned PFAS. Yeah, Forever Chemicals.

28:24Dr Federica Amati:Forever Chemicals are a group of, and PFAS is just one of them, that are very persistent in our environment. The biggest exposure we get is from tap water, but they're found in all sorts of things like plastics. PFAS is also what makes things waterproof. So unfortunately, it's a big part of our environment, but there's better data for Forever Chemicals and its impact on health than microplastics. Microplastics, we still don't really know what's happening with, but they have less of an irritating effect, whereas Forever Chemicals are not a good thing. So you've done this experiment, you've hooked yourself up.

29:00How do you decide whether it's a good idea and you should do it once a week or actually you tried it and it's a bad idea you described and actually I need to not ever do it again? There was one significant event that I for sure knew I wanted to do it for. So I was living in L.A. during the L.A. fires and, you know, thank God we didn't have to evacuate. Our home wasn't lost. But because of all the wildfire smoke and the burning of materials that just simply shouldn't be burning, I've been doing the total toxic burden test, which is looking at environmental toxins, heavy metals, molds and mycotoxins for six years.

29:30So I'm very clear on my baseline. I do it four times a year. When I tested in the middle of the fires, it was this contamination on my body like I've never seen before. Went from having zero toxins in the high range to having over 30 toxins in the high range nearly overnight. It was unbelievable. So at that point, it made enough sense because I actually – I agree with you. that I think the future is the filtering because there are a lot of positive things in the plasma that I would like to keep. But at that point, it's again, we weighed the pros and cons like, wow, we've never seen a toxic burden like this on you.

30:00We know that these toxins are related or sometimes correlated to a variety of negative health outcomes. And I also felt symptomatic, you know, so I was starting to get some brain fog. I had a couple of rashes developing that I had never developed before. So we decided it was the best case to do the plasmapheresis at that time. and then we retested and I saw a pretty significant decrease in all of those toxins that had been elevated and it was immediate, right? So this would have taken months to reduce on my own. It would have taken months even with other interventions like sauna, which I'm a huge fan of.

30:32But this was the quickest way to help rid those toxins from my body. So what happened? There was about an 11 % reduction across the board. So if we took the averages, but some were more than others, right? So maybe some heavy metals were pulling out of maybe 20 % maybe some mycotoxins being pulled out at 5%. But across the board, it was about 11 % reduction, but that's in one treatment. So I thought that was quite good. And then I was able to resolve the rest of that with the next treatment session I did. I didn't do all the plasma. I did about 750 mLs versus, I believe, 2.5 liters. So I kept some of the good stuff, got rid of some of the bad stuff, but then now they've been completely eradicated from the body.

31:14I also did sauna throughout that time and some binders.

31:16Dr Federica Amati:So how long did it take you to get from the elevated back to zero elevation? So I tested within a three-month range. So I did one right before the TPE, one right after, the week after, and then one three months later. That's impressive. Three months is quick. You know, the other thing that I found interesting is that obviously like these TPO antibodies, right? So I've never had TPO antibodies. It's essentially a marker of your thyroid kind of building up some defenses attack against itself. And it's very common. For the first time, when I had that toxic burden, my TPO antibodies started to increase.

31:48They went from non-detectable to about 12 to about 20, which is still low. But after the therapeutic plasma exchange, they went back to zero and they stayed there. What you're saying is you've been measuring yourself four times a year for the previous six years. You were living in LA. Then they had these fires. I think everyone around the world has seen this on TV. And you're saying that there was lots of chemicals in the air that wouldn't normally be. and that's not from the burning trees? Well, I think some of the molds and mycotoxins were probably from the burning fires, but then a lot of the environmental toxins and forever chemicals and BPA, my BPA went through the roof.

32:23So, you know, that was, you know, so many plastics melting businesses. So yeah, there were a lot of different toxins that were in my body that had not been there before. What about supplements? How many supplements are you taking each day? Yeah, I mean, I take around 30 or so, it changes. So I'm constantly amending my supplementation and I do my supplements in kind of a unique way. So I think about supplementation in three buckets. So I have what I call my foundational supplements or things that I'll probably always take. So high quality omega-3, a magnesium and a vitamin D, depending on how much sun exposure.

32:56Obviously, you should test your levels of vitamin D, but I aim to keep mine between about 60 and 70, which is higher than the standard ranges. But then I use something called a micronutrient test to actually determine what I'm deficient in. So instead of just randomly guessing of what supplementation I should be taking or anything an influencer posts on social media, I look at my blood and I look at the cellular and serum levels of the nutrients. So am I low in vitamin C or B vitamins or aminos or minerals? And it'll actually show me. So I do that test as well every quarter and then I amend my supplementation.

33:28I also have gut tests, like let's say I have a few findings on my gut tests that will be in my protocol supplements. And then I have a third bucket of what I call longevity supplements. So these are things I'm testing, things like NMN or NR, spermidine, urolithin A, different compounds like that.

33:45Dr Federica Amati:And not everyone has access to this kind of micronutrient testing, but that's a very smart way to do it. And how do you figure out whether this is good or maybe even potentially harmful? How do you know? Yeah, I mean, I really believe in the testing, right? So we'll incorporate the intervention, let's say this supplementation for one quarter, and then we retest. and are the levels adequate now? Are they optimal or are they too high? And then obviously we can bring that back. I mean, also you can self-report, like, are you feeling better? Are you having more energy? Are you sleeping better? And then I have at home, kind of let's say diagnostics or biomarkers that I look at as well.

34:20Dr Federica Amati:Do you change your diet as well? So if you see that there's a deficiency, for example, in vitamin C is a good example, do you then look to increase vitamin C intake from fresh fruits and vegetables, for example? Yeah, I certainly try to put a food first approach whenever, you know, practically possible. So certainly making changes to my diet, nutrition all the time. I aim to get about 50 different plant species per week. 50 is great. We love that. Yeah. So that's why sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's not. Those are also incorporating like some sleep supplementation, things of that nature. But yeah, it varies.

34:52Do you ever worry that some of these supplements might interact in some way with each other and cause a problem? Yeah, I mean, it's a really valid concern. I think we need more information on this. There's some apps being developed, and I am starting to try to play around with them a bit, but it's all new, right? Like, people haven't been taking many supplements for a long period of time.

35:13Dr Federica Amati:So this is fascinating because it's a new area of medicine. So polypharmacy has been a very long-standing problem in medicine. People get prescribed too many medications, and then they interact with each other, and they cause more of a problem, right? And now there's polysupplementation. So now we're seeing more and more patients coming in with liver problems, kidney problems. So oftentimes people also don't think about if they're taking a prescription drug, some supplements will interact with it or decrease its efficacy. Yeah, I agree with that. I will say we do monitor like my liver and kidney function, you know, constantly.

35:43I'm kind of trialing the rapamycin protocol from the Vibrant study. It's not peer reviewed. The study is not done yet. But I'm very excited about the potential to delay ovarian aging with this rapamycin. Have you seen that? So I am trialing that, but that's really the only pharmaceutical that I'm using. I'd like now to start to talk about actionable advice. I understand the two of you had a little chat and have come up with five topics that we can cover. Is that right?

36:09Dr Federica Amati:Yeah. So what's the first going to be? The first one's kind of a new one for us, Jonathan. It's oral health. It's not super popular yet, but it should be. I mean, we have known for a long time the link between brain health and oral health, right? And cardiovascular health and oral health. So I think it's really important that we don't just gloss over the oral microbiome. So, I mean, I do a test. It's an oral microbiome test, just like a gut microbiome test. But just the basics, right? Ensuring you're seeing your dentist as often as you can, getting the proper cleanings, the checkups, flossing.

36:41I mean, it's so boring, but it's so important. So important. The obviously adequate brushing. A few more advanced things from like an oral protocol that I do is I do a little bit of coconut oil pulling. You take coconut oil, organic coconut oil, and you swish it around the mouth. It can help with any bad bacteria. Also, it can potentially whiten the teeth. And do you do that after you brush your teeth? Yes, after. And then I kind of like do a quick re-brush at the end because it will leave a bit of a film. But yes, and I do that like once a week and not on a daily basis. I also use, you know, an anti-hydroxyapatite toothpaste with prebiotics in it.

37:13So it's feed your good guys. So looking at the quality of the toothpaste for oral health. The other thing I'm excited about, though, is red light therapy for the gums or the mouth. It looks like a mouth guard and you just slip it in. And so gum inflammation is a very common thing, right? So that helps to, we know, red light therapy, good for inflammation. So that's another part of my oral protocol. And the last thing I will say, I'm not sure if you have these in the UK, but here in the US, we have something called a biological dentist. So it's like the functional medicine of dentistry, right? It's like root cause, whole body.

37:44They do really interesting scans. They do something called a comb beam scan. So I was having a chat with one of the biological dentists here. His name is Dr. Dome. And he was explaining this massive link between even some cancers and cavitations in the mouth. So the cavitation is like an ongoing infection in your mouth. And, you know, I'm not saying it's necessarily causation, but it seems that, you know, sometimes when they scan mouth, they find these. So very important to just take a deeper look. And standard dentistry doesn't always look for those things.

38:14Dr Federica Amati:It's fascinating because actually sort of oral health and specifically gingivitis, so gum disease, has been linked to increased risk of heart attacks for decades. It's not new science, but I think it is becoming more popular. And it's interesting because whenever you speak to people who've really suffered with their gum health and they lose teeth later in life, they often say, I wish someone had told me just how important it is to just brush your teeth and floss. It makes the world of difference, Jonathan. And what's beautiful about oral health is when we think about our GI tract, you know, the mouth, the throat, the stomach, it's all one tube.

38:48Dr Federica Amati:So what's becoming clearer now with the advancements in science is that when you detect certain dysbiosis, so bad microbes in the mouth, it often correlates with bad microbes in the gut. Everything's talking to each other. And when you have higher inflammation, so bleeding gums, sore gums, swollen gums, it's a massive red flag. I first got really into this looking at pregnancy. So women who are pregnant and have bleeding gums and gendivitis have a much higher risk of preterm birth. It's worth knowing your mouth, loving it, go see your dental hygienist. It is worth it. What's next on the list? So next on the list, we have sleep.

39:25Dr Federica Amati:I mean, we could do a whole podcast on sleep, I think. So tell us your sleep protocol. Yeah. I mean, I really build my life around sleep. So I go to bed at eight o 'clock every night. wake up naturally around like 4, 4.30, somewhere around there. But I have a bit of an intense sleep protocol. So I'll actually start in the morning. So I get morning sun to really like optimize my circadian rhythm. So it tells my brain and body what time it is because obviously light and food are two major influences on knowing what time it is. So get morning light, watch evening sunset if I can to really just anchor that circadian rhythm.

39:57I stop eating at 4 p.m., but I would definitely say at least stopping eating two to three hours prior to sleep because we know that if you're eating food, it's not telling your body it's time to go to bed. It's obviously time to eat. So it can suppress your melatonin production. Also, if you are eating these meals late at night, it can potentially keep you out of the deeper stages of sleep, like deep in REM, because you're digesting your food. So eating early, super important. I keep my room completely dark. So dark room, cool room. And then getting your resting heart rate as low as possible, you know, relaxing before bed.

40:28I think this is a huge part that people miss. we have to relax because if we go to bed stressed, we're not going to be getting the hikes while I sleep. And how do you achieve that? So I love to do some breath work. I also like to take a long walk with my husband and nature really like wind down. So after dinner, we're off our phones. We are doing very non-stimulating activities, not watching something scary or anxiety inducing. So we just try to make it very calm at night. Sometimes a warm bath. Sometimes I'll do a sauna about two hours prior to bed. I switch with my sauna sometimes either right after exercise to continue those benefits or about two hours prior to bed.

41:05You don't want to do it too close to bed, though, because it does increase your heart rate.

41:07Dr Federica Amati:So having a hot bath before bed or if you don't have access to sauna, that change in temperature from being very hot to cool gives your brain that sign, oh, it's time to go to sleep. To tie it back really quickly to the women's aspect. So, you know, I think the research suggests that women need between about 11 and 20 minutes more of sleep. I believe the Aura data set, which is obviously a massive data set, So just about between 20 and 30 minutes more of sleep. And just for me, my N of 1, depending on where I am in my cycle, if I'm in the late luteal phase or early follicular phase, I sometimes need even more sleep than that.

41:40So I think that has been a big learning for me doing this protocol as it relates to sleep that, yes, the science supports we need more sleep, but it might be even more than we originally had thought.

41:50Dr Federica Amati:And our Zoe studies, Jonathan, showed very clearly that eating closer to bedtime does impact sleep quality. And actually, just making sure that you don't eat. Most people go to bed between half 10 and 11 p.m., so later than you. But so not eating past 9 p.m. has a really important impact on your sleep quality and your metabolic health the next day. Yeah. And high-quality sleep, I mean, instead of all the negative side effects, right, like increased hunger hormone, ghrelin, reduced natural killer cells that are fighting off cancer, reduced immune system. you know higher blood pressure all of those but also you're going to have you know less adherence to any nutritional plan potentially the next day because you're you have these cravings and you're hungry and you didn't sleep well I mean you know we've all been there so it's like if you just walk away from this podcast with one thing and that's going to bed early tonight and getting high quality sleep it'll be a game changer and for women you know it's so tightly regulated with their hormones as well so very important.

42:43Dr Federica Amati:Also anyone listening who's a new parent there's also very good long term data to show that you can have periods of poor sleep and you do recover. And so what's number three on the list? Exercise. So I would actually love to understand your exercise protocol and how you treat exercise in this context. So we know exercises, you know, if there was like one pill for longevity, it would be exercise. But we think about my protocol in hitting every area of longevity. So we want to think, of course, cardiovascular health. And a couple of metrics to measure on that is like VO2 max, right? We know that VO2 max, the higher your VO2 max, it is actually pretty well correlated with how healthy you are, but also potentially how long you would live.

43:21So we have cardiovascular training, then we have zone two training, but it's a little bit difficult. So about 158 minutes of that per week, one to two higher intensity zone two trainings. Also, I love to track this on my Oura Ring. So I have like cardiovascular age in my Oura Ring and I took my cardiovascular health from negative six and a half to negative 11 and a half. Could you help me to understand what that means to go from minus six and a half to minus 11 of something? Yeah, you know, it's not a perfect metric, but Oura Ring will give you an estimate of cardiovascular health. Maybe you know exactly how they do it.

43:54I know it's the pulse wave, I believe.

43:56Dr Federica Amati:Yeah, so they actually use the data from the Oura Ring to try and work out what your VO2 max would be if you did the VO2 max test. And it's a good way to understand cardiovascular age. So Kayla was already at six and a half years younger and got it to 11 years younger. And you'd want your heart to be as young as possible, right? It will keep you alive for longer. Yeah. So that's cardiovascular training. And then, of course, we have strength training. So I strength train about four to five times per week, really focusing on progressive overload, meaning adding more weight to get stronger. I measure my muscle mass.

44:28I look at my bone density. But I'm doing, you know, compound lifting. Of course, if you're just starting out, work with a trainer or watch videos. I'm very glad that we're past the days of like these tiny little weights. You know, I was in the gym, you know, doing some presses this morning with like 35, 40 pound weights. I mean, I'm trying to go. And, you know, I see it in my grip strength. I mean, my grip strength right now is 100 pounds.

44:47Dr Federica Amati:And interestingly, grip strength is a really good marker of health. So we use it usually in older populations. If you measure grip strength, you get a sense of how much frailty that person has. So using it earlier in life to really see whether you should pay more attention is a good idea. Stability, mobility, and flexibility. As we age, we will also lose in these areas. So I'm doing balance work. I'm doing small joint movements, mobility. So wanting to keep those also as optimal and young and healthy. Is there anything different that you would be thinking about as a woman as you're thinking about exercise versus like the advice that might be beginning to everybody?

45:22This is a super interesting topic right now because the internet is very divided on either cycle syncing, which means you would upregulate training in the follicular phase because we have more estrogen. You would probably do your max at the ovulation phase. And then you would downregulate training in the luteal phase because, you know, our progesterone increases, we're a bit more sleepy. But the way I do it is by my data. So if we were downregulating our training for half of the month every single month, then we're going to miss out on those longevity benefits, right? Right. Consistency is so key with exercise.

45:53So what I do is I wear a wearable of some sort at home and also self-report. You know, I don't have PMS symptoms. If I did, I'm sure that I might want to downregulate more often. But for me, I feel good. So I'm not making too many tweakments. But I think this is an important conversation because I think it should be more bio-individual. There's also women that are not ovulating, you know, in ovulatory cycles. So then estrogen is higher the whole month. So, you know, maybe they're downregulating and not needing to. But I also think as it relates to programming exercise, the bone density and the muscle mass, right?

46:23So women have less muscle mass originally. So we need to be focusing on adding that on. So I think for women, getting a DEXA scan, looking at the amount of muscle mass you have, and then strategically planning your exercise programming. I do jumping, a lot of jumping for bones. I do jump roping, box jumps, because I'm trying to load the bone. Same thing with heavy lifting also loads the bone. So I think that would be a couple of unique takes that I would consider as it relates to female exercise programming.

46:51Dr Federica Amati:And I think what you just touched on, Kayla, about personalizing exercise. So lots of the scientists we've worked with, including Stuart Phillips, have done good randomized control trials that show that actually the best way for a woman to understand how hard she should go in the gym is just to listen to her body. Move your body every day if you can, but you don't need to sync to your cycle to adjust your training program. The bone mineral density is a huge thing. And another thing I think I would add to that is to really think about your pelvic floor. so making sure that you're engaging your pelvic floor muscles with exercise in a really healthy way maybe get some training go to like a pilates class with someone who's well versed in this it can really help to support pelvic floor health for the rest of your life if you have children you'll need that pelvic floor strength and it really serves you later in life so start that as early as possible and integrate that into how you breathe like when you lift heavy weights making sure you're engaging properly is a really useful thing to think about for women specifically as Adding it to my protocol.

47:47Oh, there you go. What's next on the list?

47:50Dr Federica Amati:Diet and nutrition. I'm not surprised. There would be many Zoe podcasts that aren't going to touch on diet at all. What does your overall diet look like? Overall, the diet is Mediterranean. So I've found that to be the most science-backed for longevity. And I also mentioned the 50 plant species. So really trying to focus on getting a diverse diet with organic plants when possible, biodynamic, you know, the cleanest that I can. I do consume meat in small quantities like grass-fed, grass-finished. I actually do sometimes more so load that in the early phase of my cycle when I am menstruating because the iron.

48:23But lots of wild-caught fatty fish like salmon. I love to rotate the proteins too like maybe some day a branzino, then a wild salmon. Lots of avocados, olive oil, sprouted nuts and seeds. Lots of blueberries. Love blueberries, blackberries. Definitely no ultra-processed foods. and I focus on the highest quality I can get. And then I also use things like the micronutrient test. And there's also an app called Chronometer. So you can plug in exactly what you're eating. So it'll not only give you your macronutrients like protein, fat, and carbs, et cetera, but it'll also give you an estimate of micronutrients.

48:57So I do try to optimize for both, of course, micro and macronutrients in my diet. That sounds pretty yummy. Yeah, and I also make all of the meals for my husband and I at home. I have in different phases of my life had very similar meals on a day-to-day basis. But from what I understand, that's not optimal for gut diversity and overall gut health. So I also try to do local as much as possible in small farms near me. So I try to be really thoughtful, but I also want to enjoy the process of making the food and enjoying it. I mean, there's even something to it when you're smelling your own food cooking, your digestive enzymes increasing because you're making it yourself, which is better for the nutrient uptake, also relaxing while I'm doing that so I can have better nutrient absorption.

49:39Jen?

49:39Dr Federica Amati:So there's really elegant science that's been done looking at how time spent sharing meals at tables correlates with health outcomes across the world. So countries like the US and the UK that spend very little time tend to have worse dietary patterns, whereas those countries where they take an hour and a half for lunch tend to have better diets. It's a correlation, of course, but it just goes to show that when we treat food in the way that we should, which is an essential part of how we live and how healthy we are, but also a source of connection with the people we love, It helps us to actually slow down and focus on one thing at a time.

50:13Dr Federica Amati:So something we're very passionate about at Zoe is mindful eating. And it's like this idea that we need to give this food the proper attention that it deserves. What are we putting into our bodies? How is it nourishing us? How is it helping our gut microbiome to thrive? And so what you just described is so good. And the seasonality, trying to get some local produce that helps to switch things up, helps to get more diversity. And you haven't mentioned fiber, but that's okay. No, actually, in my brain, I was like, as soon as I forgot to mention that. So yeah, I'm aimed for actually quite high level of fiber, about 40 to 50 grams per day.

50:46Dr Federica Amati:And that's excellent because we have good data from RCTs that shows that there doesn't seem to be an upper limit to fiber. So one RCT from that wonderful podcast we did with the scientists who looked at the African heritage diet, they had 90 grams a day and saw even better health outcomes. So, you know, I always say 30 grams a day is a minimum recommendation. So going above that is perfect. and the omega-3 rich fatty fish. We always want to encourage people to include whole grains and legumes. So these are the beans, the peas and the lentils. They're really nutritious foods. So nutrient dense, diverse diet.

51:21Another thing I didn't mention was fermented foods. So I do have, that's kind of like the base of my plate for each meal is like a protein, a fermented food, some sort of usually like legume or lentil and then a huge like slot of plants, you know, some sort of vegetables. But also, yeah, I've really enjoyed the process of making the food. And it's also kind of a love language, you know? It is. And it's a skill. It's like a life skill to be able to cook delicious food, right? Yeah. I just started making, I got excited about making seed crackers. I also love, there's a product actually, it's called Zen Basil.

51:51Have you ever heard of this? I've seen it here in Palm Beach. Yeah. It's like double the amount of fiber. So it's a basil seed instead of a chia seed, which people love for fiber. So I've been doing the basil seed pudding. Tastes amazing and great way to get in a lot of fiber. I don't want to wrap up without asking Kayla about the one piece of advice you'd give to a listener who is hearing this and saying, oh, I'd like to sort of start on my longevity journey. And like, what is, what's the one thing that you would say they should do first and maybe they could set out to do, you know, even today?

52:22Can I have a small preface before that? We've talked a lot about these advanced therapies and kind of like interesting devices and tools, but without a doubt, if you master the basics, you're going to be healthier than 99 % of people, right? So start slow, start easy, master those basics. Social connection, we didn't talk too much about, but a little bit about social connection, stress management, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and you will be absolutely thriving. So if you want to start with sleep tonight, I think that's a really great place. And then maybe add on exercise in the morning. Beautiful.

52:57I would like to do a quick summary, like we always do on the show. And please correct me if I got any of this wrong. So I start with the fact that you think you can live till you're 150, which I think is amazing. And as a goal is pretty spectacular. And you're very dedicated to get there. So there is a submarine chamber in your house that you go into regularly. You have literally filtered the plasma out of your blood in order to remove like these forever chemicals and plastics and things like that, which is really amazing. And despite that, actually, I think that there's a lot that we've been talking about that feels very relevant to me, for example, who definitely doesn't have the dedication to go that far, nor probably room in his house for a submarine chamber, and talk about like these five core things that actually seem quite similar to things that we touch on many of the different podcasts.

53:43Though the first was really interesting that the oral health was so high on the list. And we did do a podcast on this a while ago, talking about just how important that was for risks and things like that. So it's fascinating to me that that's so high. Then sleep, you have this like very structured routine, right? Where you're saying you're going to bed at 8pm, you're not staying up late watching Netflix, that's just, you know, keeping you up for no good reason. You've got the discipline and therefore waking up quite early in the morning, but just sort of naturally because you've had enough sleep, really focusing on getting morning sun to get you going, all of these things that feel in line.

54:15Relatively short, therefore, period of time that you're eating, because you said stop food at 4 p.m., so probably about eight hours or something that you're eating. Somewhere around there, yeah. Going outside, and you talked about that has been a very important part also of getting ready to sleep, and therefore not shutting yourself away from the outside environment, but embracing it. Then the fourth thing you talked about was exercise, how important that is, and how that's even more important probably for a woman if you're listening to this than it is for a man because you have to think about things like bone density, pelvic floor exercises, but a lot about muscle mass and how do you do all this stuff and embracing the idea that strength as well as cardio is really important.

54:53And I answered from Federica that there were three of you in the gym this morning. So the two of you are clearly serious about doing this and I wasn't in the gym, so I apologize um and then lastly of course we touched on food you know 50 plants a week i love because we talk a lot at zoe about like hitting 30 plants a week being the thing that unlocks like really big benefits for your microbiome but of course that isn't a ceiling right i track it with my app all the time and i'm normally actually around that 50 level which i feel very proud of define it as like plant species right so it can be plants or like uh seeds or spices right so yeah Yeah, it's important to include.

55:30They all have their own benefits. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I love, that's one of the things I love actually is tracking. I love to hear fermented food. That would make my co-founder, Tim Spector, very happy. More than 40 grams of fiber. Like these things sound very similar, I think, to what we talk about here. You mentioned you do have some meat and you're also thinking about timing that to do with your own cycle. But then I love also talking about this sort of social nature of this, that you're cooking the food, you're having the food with your husband. And so there's this sort of social nature that comes up a lot.

56:00And the last thing I learned is that there's something better than a chia seed. And I think it's called a basil seed. And Federica, I'm very disappointed that you haven't already tried it.

56:08Dr Federica Amati:I'm just going to have to get some and check it out. I need to find out what's in it. I expect you to report back and we will talk about it on the next podcast. Wonderful. Professor Sarah Berry here. We've all experienced that familiar 3 p.m. slump, that moment where your energy dips and you find yourself aimlessly rummaging through the kitchen. for a quick fix. Biologically, that typically happens because highly refined, soft textured processed foods can cause rapid, sharp peaks and subsequent drops in circulating blood sugar. Our data shows that these kind of sharp drops can actually leave you seeking out more energy, forcing you to ride a metabolic roller coaster that can drive people to consume an average of 300 extra calories later in the day.

56:52To address this challenge, the team developed the Zoe Gut Health Bar. It's a snack bar built with over 10 distinct plants formulated by our scientists to offer high plant diversity. When making this bar, our primary objective was to break the rollercoaster cycle. We prioritised the food matrix, leaving as many of the natural plant structures as intact as possible. Because the structure isn't broken down by heavy processing, the nutrients enter your system at a much more measured, predictable pace, supporting a steady release of energy. And we topped it with real dark chocolate or raspberries and goji berries, proving that prioritizing your gut health can also hit the exact right note you're looking for in a snack.

57:36Find out more about the Gut Health Bar at zoe.com forward slash snack bar.