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