Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Exploring Integrative Medicine and Holistic Health with Dr. Sandeep Gupta - Part One

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Exploring Integrative Medicine and Holistic Health with Dr. Sandeep Gupta - Part One · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

0:09
Speaker 1: Doctor Sandeep Gupta, Welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Paul. Excited to be here and
0:15
Speaker 2: to chat to you.
0:16
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm excited as well. Maybe so you you've had
0:22
Speaker 1: an interesting journey, right You started off in the traditional
0:28
Speaker 1: GP clash hospital environment and then you have focused more
0:34
Speaker 1: on an integrative being, an integrated GP and longevity and
0:40
Speaker 1: health span. Why the shift and when did that come
0:44
Speaker 1: in year career?
0:45
Speaker 2: So the shift happened around about six years after graduating
0:50
Speaker 2: from that school. And so, as you say, initially I
0:53
Speaker 2: went down the more standard pathways of working in the
0:57
Speaker 2: hospital and doing emerging medicine, anesthetics and intensive care, and
1:06
Speaker 2: really any interest I had in holistic approaches to health
1:10
Speaker 2: were really beat out of me in my first couple
1:13
Speaker 2: of years of being a junior doctor. And it wasn't
1:19
Speaker 2: until I myself had a brush with health in two
1:22
Speaker 2: thousand and five that I started revisiting some of this.
1:26
Speaker 2: And so if you go back to my med school days,
1:29
Speaker 2: I used to you know, I've had an interest in
1:31
Speaker 2: meditation for a long time, and I started getting interested
1:34
Speaker 2: in ari verda, which is an I guess it's a
1:37
Speaker 2: Indian traditional medicine. And then also just holistic medicine in general.
1:41
Speaker 2: I remember I drove past a holistic medicine center one day,
1:46
Speaker 2: and I remember the thought came into my head, why
1:48
Speaker 2: wouldn't you do that? Like you know that, you know,
1:52
Speaker 2: that just makes so much sense to take that approach
1:54
Speaker 2: to health But as I say, I went in a
1:58
Speaker 2: different path and it until I myself had to be
2:02
Speaker 2: a patient that my interest in a more holistic and
2:08
Speaker 2: comprehensive approach to healthcare came back up again.
2:12
Speaker 1: And when you say it was beat out of you
2:15
Speaker 1: as a junior doctor, I think I know what you mean.
2:18
Speaker 1: But just explain that to our listeners.
2:20
Speaker 2: Well, I guess you could say there's a certain narrative
2:23
Speaker 2: that's given to junior doctors by the more senior consultants,
2:27
Speaker 2: if you like, whether that be in emergency medicine or
2:32
Speaker 2: general medicine, general surgery, etc. And yeah, one of them
2:37
Speaker 2: is almost general practitioners are not very bright. Anyone who
2:42
Speaker 2: gets into anything slightly slightly holistic is you know, slightly
2:47
Speaker 2: less intelligent. And if you're an intelligent young doctor, the
2:51
Speaker 2: only option for you is to get into the most
2:53
Speaker 2: technological forms of medicine available. So whether that be you know, cardiology, radiology,
3:01
Speaker 2: anything highly technological ticks the boxes. But anything where you're
3:07
Speaker 2: starting to look at building blocks for health doesn't tick
3:12
Speaker 2: the box at all. That's like, you know, the people
3:15
Speaker 2: who just muck everything else up, and you know, we
3:17
Speaker 2: were taught that nature paths are generally people who you know,
3:22
Speaker 2: just delay cases until they're incurable.
3:26
Speaker 3: Right.
3:27
Speaker 1: It's It's interesting, isn't it the that the general medical
3:34
Speaker 1: system tends to look down its nos on anything that
3:38
Speaker 1: is a bit more holistic and often slags it's evidence
3:42
Speaker 1: bace and what what? Why do you why do you
3:47
Speaker 1: think that is?
3:50
Speaker 2: Well, I try not to speculate, but you could say
3:54
Speaker 2: that the history, and that I've been told by some
3:58
Speaker 2: slightly older doctors, is that it used to be that
4:02
Speaker 2: in the early eighties, late seventies and so on, doctors
4:06
Speaker 2: used to get together in the hospital in the tea
4:09
Speaker 2: rooms and do their journal club. Now, these journal clubs
4:13
Speaker 2: were totally independent. They would each of them will pull
4:18
Speaker 2: an article and try to interpret that article for the
4:22
Speaker 2: mutual benefit of all the doctors there. Now, towards the
4:28
Speaker 2: late eighties and early nineteen nineties, there were a group
4:34
Speaker 2: of super drugs that came out. Now, those were referred to.
4:39
Speaker 2: And this is doctor Andrew McIntyre, a colleague of mine
4:42
Speaker 2: here who was a gastron rollers, who shared this knowledge
4:45
Speaker 2: of me, and he said that these three classes of
4:48
Speaker 2: drugs were ACE inhibitors, statins and proton pump inhibitors. These
4:53
Speaker 2: were the super drugs because they were huge sellers. They
4:58
Speaker 2: could they were used on very large patient groups. There
5:02
Speaker 2: were massive studies which were run on them that showed benefit,
5:06
Speaker 2: and therefore the pharmaceutical sales escalated a lot of that time.
5:13
Speaker 2: And so at that same time they started to approach
5:17
Speaker 2: doctors and say, you know, do you want to be
5:19
Speaker 2: sitting in this tea room at seven am? Or do
5:22
Speaker 2: you want to come to our fancy education sessions where
5:27
Speaker 2: we do all the work for you. You don't have
5:29
Speaker 2: to read those journals anymore. At six am in the morning,
5:32
Speaker 2: we'll do all the work for you. You come along
5:35
Speaker 2: and we'll tell you what to think. You don't have
5:38
Speaker 2: to you know, you don't have to work so hard.
5:41
Speaker 2: You can come and drink wine and eat our beautiful food.
5:47
Speaker 1: And the and have the jollies as well. My view
5:52
Speaker 1: that I have formed over the years is that the
5:56
Speaker 1: medical system and inverted Commas isn't a healthcare system, It's
6:00
Speaker 1: a sick care system in that and what I mean
6:04
Speaker 1: by that is that the vast majority of spending and
6:08
Speaker 1: resources and focus is on treating disease, not on optimal health.
6:15
Speaker 1: And and and my personal experience both with my son
6:19
Speaker 1: who had Cushing's disease and me who went through which
6:23
Speaker 1: as you know, is pretty rare, but me also going
6:25
Speaker 1: through the open heart surgery last year because I found
6:28
Speaker 1: out I was born with a dodgy aortic valve. I
6:30
Speaker 1: was born with a by customer, no, no, no, it's
6:34
Speaker 1: all good. But the system was brilliant up until the
6:40
Speaker 1: time that we got released from the system, and then
6:44
Speaker 1: it was shithush. And what I mean by shithuse no
6:47
Speaker 1: focus on the optimal health, on returning to optimal health.
6:52
Speaker 1: Basically all the focus was don't fuck us up and
6:56
Speaker 1: come back in, so completely conservative and really no focused
7:00
Speaker 1: on optimal health. So that then leads us nicely into
7:05
Speaker 1: this whole idea of medicine three point oh or focusing
7:09
Speaker 1: on health span, focusing on life span, what's your particular bent.
7:15
Speaker 1: Do you focus on extending people's longevity or do you
7:19
Speaker 1: focus on extending their health span or have you got
7:22
Speaker 1: a little bit of a foot in both camps.
7:25
Speaker 2: Well, it depends on people's goals and their particular view
7:30
Speaker 2: on this. However, my personal view is it's all about
7:34
Speaker 2: having those you know, those quality years of life which
7:39
Speaker 2: you can do the things in life that bring you
7:41
Speaker 2: passion and joy and meaning. And for me personally, it's
7:44
Speaker 2: not about the number of years of life. However, if
7:48
Speaker 2: that came along as a side effect, sure yea. And
7:52
Speaker 2: my suspicion is it probably will with any with any
7:56
Speaker 2: really good longevity program, the number of views probably is
8:00
Speaker 2: going to increase as well. But the thing for me
8:04
Speaker 2: is that I want to be, you know, into my
8:07
Speaker 2: eighties and hopefully the nineties. I want to be functioning
8:10
Speaker 2: at a level where I'm doing the things that bring
8:13
Speaker 2: me joy and meaning and passion.
8:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I want to go out and maybe
8:19
Speaker 1: play a bit of golf. Catch up with me, it's
8:21
Speaker 1: catch up with family, have a nice dinner, good to sleep,
8:23
Speaker 1: and never wake up.
8:25
Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, that's that's a good one.
8:28
Speaker 1: Not like the average Australian who lives the last ten
8:32
Speaker 1: years of their life riddled with chronic disease. Right, so exactly,
8:36
Speaker 1: and that's the difference between health span and lifespan. So
8:41
Speaker 1: what let's let's dive into the sort of stuff that
8:46
Speaker 1: you do. So when somebody comes to see you, I
8:49
Speaker 1: know you have longevity programs. What's the starting point is there?
8:55
Speaker 1: Is there a number of different screens that you put
8:58
Speaker 1: people through and nitche to get a bit of an
9:01
Speaker 1: assessment of where they're currently at. Top talks through what
9:03
Speaker 1: that looks like. Yeah.
9:04
Speaker 2: Sure, So the first thing is just taking the history,
9:07
Speaker 2: as with any other consultation, but I guess one of
9:11
Speaker 2: the big parts of that is just working out what
9:15
Speaker 2: what's the client's goals? What do you want to be like,
9:19
Speaker 2: So if we're if it's you, for instance, and you're
9:21
Speaker 2: telling me you want to be playing golf until the
9:24
Speaker 2: you know, until the day you die pretty much, so
9:28
Speaker 2: you could make an estimation of that. You could say, okay, well,
9:31
Speaker 2: roughly you want to have a biological age of sixty
9:34
Speaker 2: when you're ninety. Would that be a would that be
9:37
Speaker 2: a reasonable thing to say for you?
9:39
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, let's go for that.
9:40
Speaker 2: Let's go with that, okay, And then of course we
9:42
Speaker 2: you know, we need to delve into any medical problems
9:45
Speaker 2: you've had in the past, et cetera, and what could
9:48
Speaker 2: be getting in the way of your longevity family history,
9:51
Speaker 2: et cetera. So if you've got a really strong family
9:54
Speaker 2: history of something, we've most certainly got something there that
9:58
Speaker 2: we've got to We've got to look that and try
10:00
Speaker 2: and prevent and then we generally go into a standard
10:05
Speaker 2: set of testing. So one of the big ones is
10:07
Speaker 2: the biological age testing with true age.
10:10
Speaker 1: Okay, you use true age diagnostics, which I had used
10:15
Speaker 1: with doctor Denise Furness. We did a study recently that
10:21
Speaker 1: we published in ACNEM where we took a bunch of
10:25
Speaker 1: people and reverse their biological age through through the true
10:28
Speaker 1: age diagnostics. So we're we're kind of in the same field.
10:33
Speaker 1: You just you just do it more often than I
10:36
Speaker 1: do it. So so when we're talking about that, so
10:40
Speaker 1: somebody comes in, we're looking at looking at the goals.
10:43
Speaker 1: You're looking at their family history and say they want
10:46
Speaker 1: to have a really good health span and a long life,
10:50
Speaker 1: and do you have a focus on reduced looking at
10:56
Speaker 1: their risk of the big chronic diseases and trying to
10:59
Speaker 1: minimize those as part of the entire program, and then
11:04
Speaker 1: add acing onto the kick so to speak or do
11:07
Speaker 1: you take a different approach.
11:09
Speaker 2: I think you need to. I don't think there's any
11:11
Speaker 2: getting away from that, because let's say, let's say it's
11:14
Speaker 2: you again with the goal of being sixty at ninety, Well,
11:19
Speaker 2: if you were to develop any of the major illnesses,
11:23
Speaker 2: whether it be heart disease, cancer, et cetera, well that's
11:28
Speaker 2: going to derail the whole process. So we need to
11:32
Speaker 2: make sure that in those ninety years you don't develop
11:36
Speaker 2: one of the major illnesses, the major degenerative illnesses, that
11:41
Speaker 2: that is going to derail the whole process and threaten
11:44
Speaker 2: your life expectancy as well. So there needs to be
11:48
Speaker 2: a Yeah, cardiovascular is a really big one for me. Yeah, yeah, cardiovascular,
11:54
Speaker 2: metabolic and cancer would be the biggest ones.
11:58
Speaker 1: And what about neuroty generative because we're starting to see NI,
12:02
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly if you look back at the at
12:05
Speaker 1: the history of the biggest killers. Let's just take Australia
12:09
Speaker 1: and you know, traditionally cardiovascular disease has been the biggest
12:12
Speaker 1: killer by by far and away. But I believe NI
12:16
Speaker 1: that in women it is neurodegenerative diseases that have just
12:22
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere and right up to the top,
12:25
Speaker 1: so do you focus on neurodegenitive diseases as well as the.
12:29
Speaker 2: Other three hundred percent? And it does tie into cardiovascular
12:33
Speaker 2: and metabology, so there's a tie in with the different conditions.
12:36
Speaker 2: But yeah, one hundred percent, there's no use getting to
12:39
Speaker 2: ninety and you're incredibly fit, but you've got no ability
12:45
Speaker 2: to recognize anyone around you. That's not going to work either, right,
12:48
Speaker 2: So that doesn't fit with those goals either, And so yeah,
12:52
Speaker 2: that's that's extremely important. And you know there's some very
12:56
Speaker 2: basic things you can do for people like you know,
12:59
Speaker 2: to start off with having look at the appo E
13:02
Speaker 2: between typing and so on, as thing, are they particularly
13:05
Speaker 2: at higher risk of Alzheimer's or other forms of neurodegeneration.
13:10
Speaker 2: So for instance, there's a very strong history of Parkinson's
13:13
Speaker 2: in my family, and so you know, I would need
13:16
Speaker 2: to definitely embark on a prevention program for neurodegenerative disease.
13:23
Speaker 1: And maybe talk our listeners through the interactions between those
13:29
Speaker 1: diseases because, as you very rightly pointed out, you know,
13:33
Speaker 1: you develop one and your risk of the others goes
13:37
Speaker 1: up significantly. So what are you seeing today like as
13:44
Speaker 1: the primary driver. Is it justsregulated metabolism, Is it poor
13:50
Speaker 1: cardiovascular health? You know what if you were to depeck,
13:54
Speaker 1: like what is what's coming first and that's driving some
13:58
Speaker 1: of the others in general, what would your thinking be.
14:02
Speaker 2: I think I think generally it's going to be metabolic.
14:05
Speaker 2: And so that's that's where we talk about insulin resistance syndrome.
14:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm surprised how little talk some deep there is
14:15
Speaker 1: about metabolic syndrome these days. And maybe just talk our
14:21
Speaker 1: listeners through metabolic syndrome and this whole idea of your
14:26
Speaker 1: metabolism that when it starts to go awry, it's just
14:31
Speaker 1: creates carnage at a system level, at an ecosystem level.
14:36
Speaker 2: One h And I'll start off as saying that when
14:39
Speaker 2: I was working in intensive care at one point, we
14:43
Speaker 2: used to have often people in their fifties who would
14:46
Speaker 2: come into the hospital with pneumonia and other conditions like that,
14:50
Speaker 2: where they would often be an intensive care for weeks
14:54
Speaker 2: to months. And I remember I wrote in one of
14:58
Speaker 2: their chart one day, fifty three year old jentlemen fit
15:02
Speaker 2: and healthy, type two diabetes. And so the consultant at
15:09
Speaker 2: the time said to be something, look at this guy,
15:12
Speaker 2: Do you think he's fit and healthy? Why are you
15:15
Speaker 2: writing that? And then that was actually a bit of
15:18
Speaker 2: an aur harm moment for me because we used to
15:21
Speaker 2: It's almost like, you know, we felt like we had
15:23
Speaker 2: to just fill the chart in with something. And so
15:28
Speaker 2: if someone doesn't have a medical condition, so usually you'd
15:30
Speaker 2: write fifty two year old gentleman with diabetes. But if
15:34
Speaker 2: they don't have that, you just write fit and healthy,
15:37
Speaker 2: had a car accident. And so it's almost like you're
15:41
Speaker 2: using that to fill in the lack of a diagnostic condition.
15:45
Speaker 2: You're not using that to actually evaluate whether they really
15:50
Speaker 2: were healthy. That's an interesting little, a little sidetrack, but
15:56
Speaker 2: on that thought process, as I say, if you develop diabetes,
16:01
Speaker 2: or you develop obesity or anything like that, your risk
16:04
Speaker 2: of having major medical problems even as you go into
16:07
Speaker 2: your fifties is very greatly increased. So what causes these conditions?
16:12
Speaker 2: So the condition is, as you said, metabolic syndrome, which
16:15
Speaker 2: is also known as insulance resistance syndrome. So the explanation
16:20
Speaker 2: I often give people is that, let's say you were
16:24
Speaker 2: to go have a can of coke, healthiest food on
16:27
Speaker 2: the planet or drink rather, so I think there's something
16:31
Speaker 2: like seven to eight teaspoons of sugar in like a
16:36
Speaker 2: can of that. It's huge, and that's the case for
16:39
Speaker 2: most soft drinks, by the way, if people aren't aware,
16:41
Speaker 2: it's absolutely part.
16:42
Speaker 1: Of and that's a three thirty mil can right in there.
16:46
Speaker 1: Often people are taking five six hundred mil bottles with
16:50
Speaker 1: like fourteen tea spoons of sugar in there.
16:53
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, thank you for pointing that out. So what
16:55
Speaker 2: we're getting at here is the amount of sugar in
16:58
Speaker 2: the Western diet. It laid somewhere around the nineteen forties
17:02
Speaker 2: to nineteen fifties after World War Two. And so if
17:06
Speaker 2: you were to drink a can of coke or a
17:08
Speaker 2: pepsi or whatever it might be, then your blood sugar
17:12
Speaker 2: so normal blood sugar's around four to five let's say. Okay,
17:16
Speaker 2: so if you to have a.
17:17
Speaker 1: Huge sorry just for overseas listeners, we're talking Miller moles
17:22
Speaker 1: per liter here, right, So we do have some overseas
17:26
Speaker 1: listeners we can just google and do the translation.
17:29
Speaker 2: I forget the conversion myself, but it's very different in
17:32
Speaker 2: yes units. Yeah, So then what happens is your blood
17:38
Speaker 2: sugar might shoot up to fifteen all of a sudden
17:41
Speaker 2: or at least ten, and so you know which is
17:44
Speaker 2: which is a very high level. So what happens is
17:46
Speaker 2: the pancreas, which is an organ which is located behind
17:49
Speaker 2: the stomach, has to do something about the situation. And
17:55
Speaker 2: so the response is it shoots out a hormone called insulin. Now,
17:59
Speaker 2: the insulin opens the doors in the cells, particularly in
18:03
Speaker 2: the liver to accept that glucose or sugar and to
18:09
Speaker 2: store it as glycogen or to use it, you know,
18:12
Speaker 2: use it in a majority ways. It can also store
18:14
Speaker 2: it as fat. But the key thing is that the
18:18
Speaker 2: blood sugar will then drop back to four to five
18:20
Speaker 2: again and every and the crisis was averted. So it's
18:25
Speaker 2: a very effective hormone and that's a very effective response. Now,
18:29
Speaker 2: the problem is if the next day you come back
18:32
Speaker 2: and the next day after that with another huge amount
18:36
Speaker 2: of sugar or refined carbohydrates of any type. So let's
18:39
Speaker 2: just include any white flour product into this. It doesn't
18:43
Speaker 2: have to be just sugar. It can be any type
18:48
Speaker 2: of refined carbohydrate. So in nature, carbohydrates are generally unrefined
18:54
Speaker 2: and therefore they take a lot more time to break
18:59
Speaker 2: down into glucose. So any refined carbohydrate will shoot your
19:05
Speaker 2: blood sugar up. So then let's say you do it
19:07
Speaker 2: for the next thirty days. On day thirty, the same
19:12
Speaker 2: thing happens. Your blood sugar shoots up again. The pancreas
19:15
Speaker 2: releases inchulin. But then the cells, just like a child
19:19
Speaker 2: who is starts to become resistant to the parents who're
19:24
Speaker 2: pestering him or her all the time. They start saying,
19:27
Speaker 2: hang on, hang on, stop shouting at me all the time.
19:29
Speaker 2: I don't want to listen to you anymore, so they
19:32
Speaker 2: become resistant. So what that means is that the effect
19:36
Speaker 2: of insulin is nowhere near as powerful as it was before.
19:42
Speaker 2: So therefore, let's say the blood sugar only drops to half,
19:48
Speaker 2: the pancreas then says, oh, okay, I'm going to have
19:51
Speaker 2: to shoot another amount out to have the same equal
19:56
Speaker 2: amount out to have the same effect as I previously had. Okay,
20:00
Speaker 2: now that's all well and good. But the problem is
20:03
Speaker 2: if this problem keeps on going up or keeps on going,
20:07
Speaker 2: then the rising levels of insulin itself have problem creates problems.
20:13
Speaker 2: It inflames the arteries to some degree, so high blood
20:17
Speaker 2: pressure can start to develop. It starts to push metabolism
20:21
Speaker 2: towards formation of visceral fat, and that's one of the
20:26
Speaker 2: most harmful forms of fat. So often faty liver, faty pancreas, etc.
20:32
Speaker 2: Will start to form, the weight will start going up
20:36
Speaker 2: and that's not muscle. And finally, somewhere along this road,
20:43
Speaker 2: the pancreas cannot keep up with the needs of the
20:46
Speaker 2: blood sugar and therefore the blood sugar rises and that's
20:49
Speaker 2: where you start getting pre diabetes and then finally diabetes.
20:54
Speaker 2: But the key thing to yeah, but the key thing
20:56
Speaker 2: to know is there's many, many stages before you become
21:00
Speaker 2: overtly diabetic. Yeah.
21:03
Speaker 1: And people's metabolism is often under massive pressure before they
21:09
Speaker 1: get the diagnosis. Right, It's not like you just wake
21:11
Speaker 1: up one day and there's a problem. The system is
21:16
Speaker 1: under pressure for many, many years before exactly. And then
21:20
Speaker 1: people think they're just going to be able to reverse
21:22
Speaker 1: it like that. Well, guess what took you twenty or
21:24
Speaker 1: thirty years to develop it. It ain't going to get
21:27
Speaker 1: reversed super quick. Now, this leads us in quite nicely
21:31
Speaker 1: because you were talking about diets and deep so I'm
21:36
Speaker 1: guessing from what you were talking about that's kind of
21:40
Speaker 1: leading me a little bit to what sort of diets
21:42
Speaker 1: that you recommend from a longevity perspective, but what would
21:46
Speaker 1: be your preferred way of eating for most people? And
21:51
Speaker 1: then what nuances are that well you might steer someone
21:54
Speaker 1: down a different path.
21:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my belief is that there's no one diet
21:59
Speaker 2: for everyone, but there are some key principles.
22:02
Speaker 1: So glad that you said that. You know what I
22:03
Speaker 1: often say, anybody who says there's one diet we should
22:06
Speaker 1: all be eating is either demented, they're trying to sell
22:09
Speaker 1: you something, are they're a member of a cult.
22:12
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm glad. I don't fit into those categories, not yet.
22:18
Speaker 2: So there are definitely some nuances, but definitely the number
22:23
Speaker 2: one enemy for almost everyone is sugar and refined carbohydrates.
22:27
Speaker 2: So I don't think everyone needs to eat carnivore or
22:31
Speaker 2: anything like that. And I don't think everyone needs to
22:35
Speaker 2: be vegan. I think everyone's I think everyone somewhere in
22:40
Speaker 2: between needing to be a raw vegan and a carnivore.
22:46
Speaker 2: That's a pretty wide scope there. So if you're so.
22:51
Speaker 2: In the metabolic typing system, they break it up into
22:53
Speaker 2: three categories protein type, mixed type, and veggie type, let's say,
22:59
Speaker 2: and so sixty percent of people in Western society seem
23:03
Speaker 2: to be more in that protein type where you're generally
23:06
Speaker 2: going to need the majority of your meal, or let'say
23:09
Speaker 2: at least fifty percent to be proaching and fat and
23:12
Speaker 2: a smaller amount of carbohydrates. Again we're not talking refined carbohydrates.
23:17
Speaker 2: We're talking about non starchy vegetables in general. So everyone
23:23
Speaker 2: still needs some degree of proaching and fat either way,
23:26
Speaker 2: but it's about the proportion. So if you're what we
23:29
Speaker 2: call a veggie type, you may be able to get
23:33
Speaker 2: away with a higher amount of your plate being plant based,
23:36
Speaker 2: so you know, quite a lot of veggies and salad
23:39
Speaker 2: on your plate, but we're not talking about grains. Still
23:43
Speaker 2: a significant amount of grains, maybe a little bit of
23:45
Speaker 2: quen while or something like that may be doable for
23:48
Speaker 2: you depending on your metabolic type, but you're going to
23:51
Speaker 2: still everyone still needs to get a minimum of protein,
23:54
Speaker 2: which's probably somewhere around sixty or seventy grams.
23:59
Speaker 1: And on that. It's it's quite interesting, isn't it the
24:02
Speaker 1: research coming out around protein requirements, especially as we each
24:08
Speaker 1: and I think it's important for people to understand that
24:11
Speaker 1: the old recommended daily alliances that that was done many
24:16
Speaker 1: decades ago based on nitrogen balanced studies and was not
24:21
Speaker 1: never meant to be optimal. It was what is the
24:24
Speaker 1: minimum that you need to not cause an issue? But
24:28
Speaker 1: I think since then we realized that as you get older,
24:31
Speaker 1: muscle protein synthesis degrades and you tend to need more
24:35
Speaker 1: protein as you ege. That's right, And they're they're the
24:38
Speaker 1: people who often eat less protein as they start to eat,
24:41
Speaker 1: isn't it.
24:42
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, exactly. You know, if you look at
24:44
Speaker 2: elderly people's diets in general, you know there's a lot
24:47
Speaker 2: of biscuits being eaten. Yeah, and generally speaking, people aren't
24:52
Speaker 2: having really good quality food. So as we say, some
24:57
Speaker 2: people are saying more closer to the one point five
25:00
Speaker 2: to two grams for a kilogram pada. I think I
25:04
Speaker 2: heard you say that in your life.
25:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of that, particularly
25:09
Speaker 3: as you're aging, because I think just let people know,
25:14
Speaker 3: like sarcopenia for me, yes, you know, obviously there's a direct.
25:19
Speaker 1: Effect of syclopenia in terms of falls, and if you
25:23
Speaker 1: fall and break a hip in your sixties, you got
25:26
Speaker 1: a fifty percent chance of being dead in the next
25:28
Speaker 1: five years. But for me, it's the thing that people
25:32
Speaker 1: aren't talking about is if you become sarcophenic, if you're
25:37
Speaker 1: losing significant amounts of muscle, you're losing bone. That as
25:43
Speaker 1: a risk factor for other chronic diseases, especially metabolic disease,
25:48
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease. Can you can you just educate our listeners
25:52
Speaker 1: a little bit on those indirect risks of becoming sarcophenic.
25:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, huge if yees. So, if you develop cycopenia and
26:02
Speaker 2: lose a large amount of muscle volume, you're going to
26:06
Speaker 2: develop a certain amount of inflammation in the system. And
26:10
Speaker 2: so inflammation is a common denominator between all degenerative disease.
26:16
Speaker 2: So there's going to be a greater risk of cardiovascular problems,
26:19
Speaker 2: there's going to be a greater risk of diabetes and
26:22
Speaker 2: other metabolic problems. Cancer maybe a thing I haven't looked
26:26
Speaker 2: at the research at that just recently, but there is.
26:30
Speaker 2: You know, it's something that's worth investigating. So really yeah,
26:35
Speaker 2: as you say, Paul, you know, one of the really
26:37
Speaker 2: key goals of a longevity program is to maintain muscle mass.
26:41
Speaker 2: As you well, first you've got to first you've got
26:43
Speaker 2: to create decent muscle mass if you don't already have it,
26:48
Speaker 2: and then you need to maintain it into your later years.
26:53
Speaker 2: That's very very yea.
26:55
Speaker 1: And I think people need to realize that we we
26:59
Speaker 1: naturally use it as we tend to earge, and it
27:04
Speaker 1: seems to be once you hit you into your sixties,
27:07
Speaker 1: it really starts to fall off a clef and that's
27:10
Speaker 1: where strength is feeling. I think in your forties and fifties,
27:14
Speaker 1: it's absolutely critical. And I always say that, you know,
27:18
Speaker 1: everybody should be lefting heavy shit, and the older you are,
27:21
Speaker 1: the more important that statement actually is.
27:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that, And yeah, I think I heard
27:26
Speaker 2: Peter Aartilla making the statement that when you're only starting
27:30
Speaker 2: to get into your late forties, that's really the time
27:35
Speaker 2: that you need to start putting a lot of effort
27:38
Speaker 2: into your health, because you know, it's kind of like
27:42
Speaker 2: the higher you are, the better state you reach before
27:47
Speaker 2: any kind of decline starts, the more likely you are
27:51
Speaker 2: to maintain a good level.
27:53
Speaker 1: I think that absolutely it's about having a reserve, right
27:57
Speaker 1: because I think the other thing people don't understand about
28:00
Speaker 1: muscle is that that when you're using your muscle you're
28:03
Speaker 1: producing a wide range of myokines, these these messenger molecules
28:09
Speaker 1: that that basically signal to all of our organs to
28:13
Speaker 1: be healthier. And for me, it's it's nature's polyphormacy myokines.
28:19
Speaker 1: And so if you lose a lot of muscle, you're
28:21
Speaker 1: losing some of nature's best medicine. That's that's really I
28:25
Speaker 1: don't think people are thinking about that exactly.
28:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, these signaling molecules
28:30
Speaker 2: are signaling to your body that you are safe and
28:33
Speaker 2: you are healthy, and so you need to maintain a
28:36
Speaker 2: certain amount of muscle mass to be able to have
28:40
Speaker 2: that signaling. As Paul said, a very good point.
28:43
Speaker 1: And let's bring this back to inflammation. So, as you've
28:47
Speaker 1: rightly pointed out, you know, chronic systemic inflammation is the
28:51
Speaker 1: driver of pretty much all of the degenerative diseases. And
28:56
Speaker 1: I mean muscle is anti inflammatory, exercises anti inflammator. But
29:01
Speaker 1: for people who are concerned about inflammation, and is there
29:06
Speaker 1: in your longevity program certain foods that you would steer
29:10
Speaker 1: people towards, uncertain supplements that you have seen or used
29:16
Speaker 1: that can help to combat inflammation.
29:19
Speaker 2: One hundred percent I think actually the top one I
29:21
Speaker 2: believe is vitamin D M. That's you know, terms of
29:25
Speaker 2: in terms of just the scope of studies, and that
29:29
Speaker 2: the most ideal thing is to try and get your
29:31
Speaker 2: vitamin D from the sunlight if you can, yeah, because
29:35
Speaker 2: then you're getting sulfated vitamin D, which is the ideal.
29:40
Speaker 2: But I'm not against using supplements, particularly if you're using
29:44
Speaker 2: vitamin K and other fat soluble vitamins at the same
29:48
Speaker 2: time and magnesium, et cetera. And the key is you've
29:52
Speaker 2: got to be quite broad in your supplementation. You don't
29:55
Speaker 2: want to be just doing one thing like I'm going
29:58
Speaker 2: to have a heap of vitamin C and nothing else,
30:00
Speaker 2: because that's when you can start developing oxalate problems, you know,
30:04
Speaker 2: same thing. So you don't want to hear if you
30:06
Speaker 2: just have vitamin D and nothing else, again, you haven't
30:09
Speaker 2: got balance. You can start bringing calcium out of tissues
30:13
Speaker 2: and so so. So vitamin D is huge. I think
30:18
Speaker 2: vitamin vitamin is important for cardiovascular inflammation. And then there's
30:24
Speaker 2: many kind of what we call phenolic compounds, which are
30:27
Speaker 2: just natural plant compounds, and that's that's where you talk
30:31
Speaker 2: about circumen and vera trill and green tea extract, broccoli sprouts,
30:38
Speaker 2: and interestingly those same compounds turn out to be anti
30:42
Speaker 2: cancer as well.
30:44
Speaker 1: And curcumin is pretty interesting. And and your heritage, I
30:50
Speaker 1: presume is from India. Yes, And it's really interesting, isn't it?
30:55
Speaker 1: The soaring reates of obesity and diabetes, but relatively low
31:01
Speaker 1: levels of Alzheimer's and dementia, Because often you would see
31:07
Speaker 1: with those high rates of diabetes, like you know, type
31:11
Speaker 1: three diabetes, Alzheimer's is often called tapti diabetes. I've heard
31:16
Speaker 1: some people suggest that it could be the high amounts
31:20
Speaker 1: of curcumen that that's in the diet from the turmeric
31:24
Speaker 1: that's in the curry. Any commentary on that.
31:26
Speaker 2: It could well be. And there's many other I mean,
31:29
Speaker 2: you could say in the Indian cooking system, there's many
31:32
Speaker 2: many spices used, like so the gunr is also useful.
31:36
Speaker 2: Coriander can be helpful with heavy metals, et cetera, et cetera.
31:42
Speaker 2: There's many many compounds. The black peppers in there as well,
31:45
Speaker 2: which helps the turmeric, the kirkumen from the turmeric to
31:48
Speaker 2: be better absorbed. So there's many many compounds that are
31:53
Speaker 2: being used in the food which are really making that
31:57
Speaker 2: food more medicinal.
31:59
Speaker 1: And that brings you back to earlier on when you
32:03
Speaker 1: were talking about polyphenols and flavonoids and all of these
32:08
Speaker 1: plant compounds, that that we are really only beginning to
32:14
Speaker 1: see what these things do, and I think that leads
32:19
Speaker 1: towards that we should be getting we should be eating
32:23
Speaker 1: real food that has this stuff in high amounts, right
32:29
Speaker 1: in a in a manner that's easily digestible by the
32:32
Speaker 1: human body, you know, you know. So my thing is
32:35
Speaker 1: we've been we've been around for hundreds of thousands of
32:38
Speaker 1: years as our species and back in our lineage millions
32:41
Speaker 1: of years interacting with these compounds that we now know
32:46
Speaker 1: play lots of roles in chemical reactions inside our bodies.
32:51
Speaker 1: So from that, do you emphasize when people are on
32:56
Speaker 1: a diet, are you emphasize eating a broad reinnge of
33:01
Speaker 1: foods so that they're getting a broad reich of these things?
33:04
Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent, and particularly getting a broad range
33:08
Speaker 2: of colors means that you're getting a range of different
33:12
Speaker 2: phytochemicals in your food. So yeah, if you want to
33:16
Speaker 2: have a diverse microbiome, you have to have many, many
33:19
Speaker 2: different foods Now, Unfortunately, when people get on well, quite
33:23
Speaker 2: often their diet becomes quite restricted because there's various foods
33:28
Speaker 2: they become intolerant to. But one of the big things
33:31
Speaker 2: I talk about, Paul, is that when you start recovering
33:34
Speaker 2: from a chronic illness, you shouldn't just relax and do
33:38
Speaker 2: nothing else. You should be thinking of then going into
33:41
Speaker 2: a longevity program because you probably have affected your longevity
33:47
Speaker 2: through that illness process. And so therefore, yeah, it's very
33:51
Speaker 2: important once you recover from an illness to then bring
33:54
Speaker 2: in a much greater diversity in the range of foods
33:57
Speaker 2: that you're eating, and also then start getting the exercise
34:01
Speaker 2: and the fitness going again, getting your strength training going,
34:05
Speaker 2: et cetera. So it's not enough to just feel like
34:08
Speaker 2: you no longer have a specific condition. You really want
34:12
Speaker 2: to get to the stage where you're truly achieving health
34:16
Speaker 2: that's going to be enduring health.
34:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, look, that's a very good point. So on
34:22
Speaker 1: the topic of the microbiome, are you a fan of
34:27
Speaker 1: microbiome testing or do you think that it's not yet
34:31
Speaker 1: at the point where getting the testing can lead you
34:36
Speaker 1: into tailored interventions, whether their dietary or supplements to improve
34:41
Speaker 1: I mean, do we know enough about the microbiome yet
34:44
Speaker 1: to start to play believers?
34:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a great question, and I think
34:51
Speaker 2: we are getting there. I think we are getting there.
34:54
Speaker 2: I guess what we don't have at this point is
34:56
Speaker 2: the studies which give us the you know, the long
34:59
Speaker 2: time data on you know, for instance, adjusting someone's microbiome
35:05
Speaker 2: with prebiotics and probiotics and etcetera. So we still I
35:10
Speaker 2: still see it as being fairly early stage, but the
35:13
Speaker 2: technology is improving very greatly, and so you can quite
35:18
Speaker 2: easily find out, for instance, is someone low in those
35:21
Speaker 2: beer rate producers that just keep the gut healthy, do
35:25
Speaker 2: they have massive pathogens in the gut? Like, I think
35:29
Speaker 2: those broad categories are significant for sure.
35:34
Speaker 1: And interestingly, talking about pathogens, I remember we were talking
35:38
Speaker 1: the other day about our dogs and womming our dogs
35:41
Speaker 1: right and doing that regularly, and then it brought me
35:46
Speaker 1: back to when I was a kid, that we would
35:50
Speaker 1: regularly get warmed, right, And that seems to be something
35:54
Speaker 1: that has just gone nigh that you know, I don't
35:58
Speaker 1: even think of you worming on my kids right, Like,
36:03
Speaker 1: what is that? Because there is less of those infections
36:10
Speaker 1: around today? Or is it just something that was actually
36:12
Speaker 1: a good practice that we've just lost sight of.
36:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. I haven't looked at the incidents specifically
36:20
Speaker 2: of worms in this generation since the last one, but
36:23
Speaker 2: in general, we're moving towards you know, greater hygiene, and
36:28
Speaker 2: of course that's that's had its benefits, but there's also
36:32
Speaker 2: the downsides of that. And you know, there's the whole
36:35
Speaker 2: hygiene hypothesis which suggests that the shift towards allergic and
36:41
Speaker 2: autoimmune disease maybe because of the lack of exposure to
36:46
Speaker 2: certain microorganisms in young life. So there may be something
36:51
Speaker 2: to be said for that, The fact that we used
36:53
Speaker 2: to play in the dirt and and you know, and
36:55
Speaker 2: eat a little bit of dirt, et cetera, and have
36:58
Speaker 2: this wide array of different microorganisms that we were exposed
37:04
Speaker 2: to and developed immune our immune systems from.
37:07
Speaker 1: Mmmm. Yeah, I think I think that is is pretty important,
37:10
Speaker 1: and we see it consistently, right, people who are born
37:13
Speaker 1: in farms have much more diverse microbiomes than people who
37:18
Speaker 1: are born in cities, and its diversity seems to be
37:21
Speaker 1: pretty key, doesn't it Having a wide which is why
37:25
Speaker 1: you know, often, particularly in the fitness industry, standard I've
37:28
Speaker 1: been involved in fitness industry for nearly twenty years over here,
37:31
Speaker 1: and and there's a lot of people in the fitness
37:33
Speaker 1: industry who are very regimented around their diet, and they
37:37
Speaker 1: eat very healthily, but very narrowly, okay, and they're they're
37:42
Speaker 1: eating pretty much the same food week on week. Is
37:48
Speaker 1: that a potential problem in your view?
37:52
Speaker 2: Well, it's not gonna Yeah, it's not going to encourage
37:55
Speaker 2: new bacteria and organisms to come in. Uh So, you
37:59
Speaker 2: know what one of the advantages of that, And I
38:01
Speaker 2: have heard certain personal trainers recommend that one advantage of
38:05
Speaker 2: that is you know, you're getting a certain amount of
38:08
Speaker 2: approaching and fat and carbohydrates, and you can regulate that
38:12
Speaker 2: by having the same meals. But yes, one of the
38:14
Speaker 2: downsides could be on the microbiome. And just the other
38:19
Speaker 2: thought I wanted to complete was that it's not just
38:22
Speaker 2: what you eat though, it's also what you breathe in.
38:26
Speaker 2: And so you alluded to that by talking about the
38:29
Speaker 2: microbiome of those who were brought up on a farm.
38:33
Speaker 2: So one of the big things I wanted to talk
38:35
Speaker 2: about is going back to a life where we explore
38:39
Speaker 2: nature in various elements and not just through screens. So
38:45
Speaker 2: the move to words a much greater connection with the
38:51
Speaker 2: Internet and social media and so on has meant that
38:54
Speaker 2: the average time a person spends in nature is much
38:58
Speaker 2: lower now. If you would if if you had asked me,
39:02
Speaker 2: what's the first thing you could do for your microbiome,
39:05
Speaker 2: I would probably say, get your shoes off, go for
39:08
Speaker 2: a walk in the grass and go out into a
39:13
Speaker 2: forest or some kind of natural environment and take do
39:19
Speaker 2: some deep breathing because we also breathe.
39:22
Speaker 1: Very interesting, Yeah, this is there's such interesting reach. I
39:27
Speaker 1: actually wrote a chapter in this in my book. And
39:29
Speaker 1: you know, all the studies coming out about forest bathing,
39:33
Speaker 1: and I think it's Yoku in Japan where they're seeing
39:38
Speaker 1: when you spend time in a forest there's lower levels
39:40
Speaker 1: of inflammation and and other things in your blood are changed,
39:44
Speaker 1: but your microbiome actually improves because you are ingesting some
39:50
Speaker 1: of the microbiome from the forest, which just you know,
39:54
Speaker 1: kind of spins you out a little bit, doesn't it.
39:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. It changes the way you think about it,
39:59
Speaker 2: because I guess you could say the way we've been
40:02
Speaker 2: brought up to think is very narrow variables. It's like, okay, microbiome.
40:08
Speaker 2: It's about what we eat. Okay, change this little variable
40:12
Speaker 2: and we should be fine, right, But actually we probably
40:15
Speaker 2: need to be a lot more broad in the way
40:17
Speaker 2: we're thinking about it. And really it takes you to
40:20
Speaker 2: thinking about life in a different way, doesn't it. It's like,
40:25
Speaker 2: you know, it takes us back to this concept of
40:28
Speaker 2: health is connection. Health is about connection with the food
40:32
Speaker 2: we eat. So ideally the most ideal way of getting
40:36
Speaker 2: your food is through farmers' markets and through local farmers
40:40
Speaker 2: who themself produce that food. When you think about that,
40:44
Speaker 2: you're then only one step removed from being the person
40:49
Speaker 2: producing that food, which is you know, of course ancestrally
40:54
Speaker 2: the way we used to do things. So you're developing
40:58
Speaker 2: much more of a connection to that food through through
41:02
Speaker 2: taking out all of those intermediate steps, and then connection
41:08
Speaker 2: with the living planet. So again not just walking on
41:13
Speaker 2: it with shoes on and you know, basically looking at
41:18
Speaker 2: things from a distance, but actually getting your shoes on
41:21
Speaker 2: and your shoes off rather and your feet on the ground. Well, firstly,
41:26
Speaker 2: that has a huge amount of benefits in terms of
41:29
Speaker 2: grounding and normalizing your circadian rhythms and discharging EMF or
41:35
Speaker 2: electromagnetic frequencies that we're being exposed to all day long,
41:41
Speaker 2: assuming you're in a normal urban environment through Wi Fi
41:46
Speaker 2: and through mobile phone radiation.
41:50
Speaker 1: So I if you cendy. But if you'd have asked
41:52
Speaker 1: me ten years ago about grinding, I probably would have
41:57
Speaker 1: said it's fluffy bullshit toted by the crystal waving brigade.
42:01
Speaker 1: But I have completely changed my mind about it that
42:07
Speaker 1: to the point where you're talking, because I dug into
42:10
Speaker 1: it and read lots of studies on it. And when
42:13
Speaker 1: you get your feet or your your body surfaces in
42:18
Speaker 1: contact with the surfaces of the earth, as you said,
42:20
Speaker 1: whether it's grass or sand, you know it has to
42:23
Speaker 1: be the earth, and it has to be our contact.
42:26
Speaker 1: There's the electrical charge in your body actually changes, doesn't it.
42:33
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, we pull electrons from the earth and our
42:37
Speaker 2: positive charge, which comes from being in contact with electromagnetic radiation,
42:44
Speaker 2: is discharged into the earth. So there's an exchange that
42:48
Speaker 2: takes place, and that's very beneficial for us.
42:52
Speaker 1: And we mentioned earlier on about inflammation. I've seen some
42:56
Speaker 1: studies showing that it can regular grind. It can actually
42:59
Speaker 1: lure it in inflammation as well, right, which is is
43:03
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff, h