00:00:08
Speaker 1: Supplements and longevity hacks. Yeah right, Yeah, so all over social media there is all sorts of hacks about health span longevity. So this supplement, that supplement, what in your view are the things that are promising and what are some of the things that you see out there that are a little bit of hype or or certainly the very very minor benefit compared to things like exercise and sleep and grinding and those sorts of things.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess the first thing to let's just say is that supplements are supplementary. So you don't ever want your strategy to primarily be based on supplements. You can't. You can't kind of supplement yourself out of a unhealthy life. That's the first thing to say. To make that point first before I jump into specific ones that your base has to be. You know, your lifestyle. You know you need to be getting really good restorative sleep, you need to be doing something for stress management, you need to be moving your body. There's no replacement for those things. Yeah. Of course, if you let's say you have one week where you're not able to do those things, well, yeah, sure you can get straight back into it. I'm not saying that you can't miss a single day. Of course, life has all its twists and turns, but there's no overall, there's no replacement for those things. Now, if you are doing those things, or you're doing your best on those levels, can you further enhance the benefit through supplements? I think the answer is yes, and even certain certain targeted medications. So you know, I mean one of the biggest studied ones is rappermisin and so this is all it takes us towards this more complicated discussion on fasting and feasting, and you know, that's that's one of the things that's really really important, you know, And in ancestral societies there would be a good balance between times of plenty and times of famine, and so there would be times where you would have a big feed, then there'd be other times where you would be fasting, and so our bodies were being exposed to adversity. That's a very that's a very important principle in general. And so raprimison basically helps to curb this whole situation of us always being in a time of feasting and only rarely being in a time of fasting or famine. So if that's the case with you and you're adding rap and yeah, it's likely going to help. But I would say that and even better approach is to bring an intermittent fasting.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: So your you.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: Would be a fan of intermittent fasting.
00:03:14
Speaker 2: I think it's it's the simple way to shift the balance between you know, again from we also refer to it as M tour and amp kinase. So in general, most people have an excess of that M tour pathway, which is a growth pathway, and not enough of the a mp kinse. Now, especially now we've talked about having you know, having a decent amount of protein in the diet. Now that means you will be pushing emptor Now I'm not going to say M tour is bad. It's all about balance and getting the.
00:03:54
Speaker 1: Cycling, not being always on exactly, not being always on. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up protein, right, because there is this tension right between constantly being in growth mode because cancer sales love that, right, and then and cycling out and you know the benefits of the fasting. And what's really interesting because when you because a lot of the stuff, there's some of the longevity crowds are in the camp of you should have a low protein that because you don't want to be chronically activating M tour. Right. There are some people who are in that camp. I myself am not in that camp, and I never say never, I never say absolutely, right, but currently I'm not in that camp where I sit. Obviously, we've talked about all the benefits of protein and of muscle I have landed on and I'll tell you how I got there. So I used to do a lot of intermittent fasting and then find that I had lost with it, but a lot of it was muscle, and so I stopped doing it because I thought, I'm not getting into my fifties and I want to preserve muscle. And then I got diagnosed with my aortic valve and it was probably that that was impacting on you know, because you lose weight with that and you can lose some muscle with that. Right. So I'm kind of back on the intermittent fast entrain. But for me, that the tension here is between getting enough protein and not over stimulating M tour exactly. And for me, a lot of people are doing they're stimulating M tour because it's not just because they're they're not having periods of fasting. But when they're eating, they're they're eating. Say they have a breakfast that's a traditional breakfast that's high carbohydrate and low protein. They're going to be hungry in a couple of hours, so they're going to have a small snack, And a lot of people don't realize that carbohydrate switches on the M tour pathway as well. It's not just protein that switches on the M tour pathway. So for me, it's like, we need to go back to eating three meals a day without snacks, or two meals a day if that suits you, because then you're going to get those bricks. And because if you're just constantly snacking here and there and everywhere, that's when you're chronically switching on am tour.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, yes, one hundred. I think that's also a major problem, and just looking at your daily routine. So firstly, I would say intermittent fasting or at least getting to basic levels is not hard. It just takes a bit of attention. So if I go back and think of myself during medical school, I was doing crazy stuff like eating, you know, all through the night, and and you know I was just paying no attention to this concept. But you can start by let's say you eat dinner at six pm. You can start this process, but just making sure you don't eat anymore after you finish your dinner. And then let's say you have breakfast at seven am. You again, you don't eat anything unless you're unless you're a diabetic and you're having a hypoglyceming attack, that would be an exception. But other than that, you don't. You don't eat anything until you have breakfast. So there you go. You're already getting your twelve hours of fasting just through that very basic process of taking out random eating, you know, random snacking. Yeah, yeah, taking that snack out of bedtime. Now, it's fine to have a tea. It's fine to have water, a tea with no milk, that is. So let's say a Herrible tea, cameram ole tea or something like that before bed. I think that's a great idea, no problem with that whatsoever. But having an ice cream or something like that before bed terrible idea because you're not going to digest that ice cream and it's going to block your ability of your body to go into that fasting mode. So then let's say three times a week. You then decide that you're going to finish eating around about four pm rather than seven pm, Well, then you've already pushed that out to fifteen hours on those things. And my understanding is that is the better way to go than trying to extend to your breakfast later on, So that sends to be more physiological, is trying to increase the gap in the evening rather than the morning. So I would say, if you could do that and just and I quite often do it myself. I'll have a smoothie around half past three something like that, and then that's it. I'm done for the evening. I don't have any dinner. The other advantages you find you've got to hit more time available.
00:08:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And you know there will be some people who go, Jesus, half past three and I'm not going to eat again till the morning. How am I going to survey? I would say to these people, because I thought that when I first did that have intimate and fasting. Just run an experiment, right, Just run an experiment, and what you'll find is you won't eat, and you'll wake up in the morning and you won't be dead, and you go Holy shit, look at that. It didn't kill me, and then you can repeat the experiment exactly.
00:09:18
Speaker 2: And I found personally that it's very easy and actually like my body will yearn for that if I haven't been doing it, it'll crave for a bit of fasting after a while. And you know, some nights I'm like, you know, wanting to get an evening meal, and part of me is like, no, don't do that. So I think it is something that the body naturally craves.
00:09:44
Speaker 1: I think that one of the most important things that most people could make is to, as you said, stop eating at least three or more ours before you go to bed. I think, Sandy, Well, a lot of people don't realize is that that digestion and absorption is an expensive metabolic process, and that when you eat just before you go to bed, all of that stuff is switched on and a lot of repair mechanisms in the body are switched off because you're in active mode. So just having that gap before you go to bed, it's it's one tweak that if people don't do that, if they're ale at night snacker like that one tweak I think has a significant impact on people.
00:10:32
Speaker 2: And so for me, personally, being like a midnight snacker didn't really benefit me in any way. It just was just simply lack of awareness. I paid knowledge.
00:10:43
Speaker 1: Just appetite. It's appetite, isn't it. That's right?
00:10:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're up studying, you kind of thinking that, well, maybe I should just eat something to keep my brain going. But I probably didn't need to when I look back. It's just it's just a belief system, isn't it.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, And its habits. It's habits really. And let's talk about then some more advanced interventions around health span. So injectable nutrients and hormone therapy. You know, where do you start on? And we're assuming here that somebody's doing the fundamentals, right, So maybe we pick a female coming into menopause and a meal about vyads in their fifties, and what's your view. Let's talk about hormone replacement therapy. Yeah, first of all, what's your what's your view on that for the middle aged man and the middle aged woman.
00:11:39
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you need you know, hormones are a very very key part of longevity. There's no doubt about it. And we're not saying that you know, you need to keep your levels of hormones at the level of a twenty year old for your entire life. It's okay for them to ease off a little bit, but you don't don't want them to. Like, let's say you're a male in their fifties, you don't want that testosterone in DHA to be in your bootstraps at all. You need to keep them because again, we're talking about muscle mass, we're talking about blood sugar control, and we're talking about cardiovascular health, so testosterone is important for all of those, as well as mood. So a lot of people think of it as more being related to vanity that you're wanting to maintain your testosterone levels, but no, it's actually important for a huge amount of functions and therefore, and so for me, quite often, what I would suggest is to build up the DHA. So many people may not have heard of the hormone called DHA, So it stands for dihydro epi and asterone, so I'm sure you're all going to remember that, but it's like a precursor hormone of testosterone. Now, if you at least have good levels of DHA, it's much more likely you're going to have good levels of testosterone. So then the other thing that's important to know is you want to test your free testosterone. You don't want to test total testosterone because it's very much affected by approachin which we call SHBG. So the free hormone levels are much more important now in Australian units. Once again, you generally want them to be something like three point fifty to six fifty I think that's an animal's polyda, so it's it's the top half of the reference range roughly. So if you're in the bottom of that reference range, well it's not showing as abnormal frankly abnormal on that blood test. But you're you know, you're right here.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: You're not optimal. You're not optimal.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Optimal, Noah, that's right. You want to get towards that top end of the range because that's going to be where you're getting all of those blood sugar and mood and cardiovascular benefits and you've got the benefits on your muscle. So in many if it's early stage, you can just use herbal medicine and DHA. The other big thing is if you want to test your estrogen as well, because if your estrogen levels are going up now that can be related to environmental toxicants, plastics and other things are pushing that up. You need something to block the testosterone getting converted into estrogens, like dim or indole three carbonyl. These are all compounds that come from cruciferous vegetables. So those compounds will help us to maintain the testosterone. So in many cases, those kind of three categories of supplements slash hormones will be enough. Now, in some cases when people just you know, basically the system is failing, they may just have very low testosterone levels, and in that case you may need to then supplement testosterone.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: I like the way you go to the DHA first, because once somebody goes on to t RT, you've got to be on it. Yeah right, yeah, don't you, because that's it. You're on that tree, and you're on that tree for life and and and you know, for me, it's like I'm going to wait until I can't get it through all my strength training that and then first of all DT and everything that you said, and then t RT at some stage if it drops over, because some people will will get to their eties with reasonable amounts, won't they.
00:15:29
Speaker 2: Yes, And you know there's other little tricks you can do. Sometimes the h CG program I also help a lot, but yeah, I mean strength exercise for me doubled my test after and levels.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, Well a brilliant way to increase stress officer and growth. Hormone is the lift heavy ship, really, isn't it. So let's let's go and talk about the female. Now, who's who's going through menopause? What what's your view on on HRT because it's still is a little bit controversial. You'll still have some people say, oh that courses breast counts a risk, But tell us what there is the research actually say, and what do you talk about in your practice.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Women's Health Initiative was a very very large study and it looked at synthetic hormone replacement, particularly what's called premarin, which is pregnant mays urine and Provea, which is a synthetic progesterone. Now, one of the problems with that is synthetic hormones are never going to have exactly the same effect on the human body as bioidentical ones are. So bioidentical means they're the exact same compounds, not just a similar compound. So in the case of PROVEA or other synthetic progesterones or progestogens they're often referred to, they will have the same effect as progesterone in the womb, but in the rest of the body they can actually have the opposite effect, the effect more as estrogen, and therefore these ladies are actually getting a double dose of estrogen in their breasts and so on. So when you think about it, it's actually no wonder. There was a slightly greater risk of breast cancer in some cohorts of that study, and that was one of the biggest findings that raised concern. Now, when we go bio identical, we're not using a synthetic progesterone. We're using actual progesterone, so that should act. It will act in the same way as our own progesterone when it comes to the tissue in the womb or outside the womb. It used to be taught at one point that you only need progesterone if you have a womb.
00:17:55
Speaker 1: All right, wow, really yeah, yeah, for a long time.
00:17:59
Speaker 2: I think it still is in many circles and obstetrics and gynecology. So if you're doing hormone replacement. You give estrogen and then you give progesterone if the woman has a WORMB So what about the rest of the body. What on earth? Progesterone is hugely diuretic, it's anti anxiety, it promotes bone health. It has such a diverse range of actions that it's absurd to think of it as only being important for the worm.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's only important for the moon. That would only be receptors for it in exactly.
00:18:40
Speaker 2: Exactly, So, yeah, it's it is. Unfortunately, it's one of those doctrines that is just stuck and nobody's questioned it or not enough people, not enough doctors have questioned it, and so basically bioidentical hormone. The first thing about that therapy is we're trying to find the correct balance. We're trying to give, you know, big doses of hormones and only give progesterone when you have a womb. We're talking about getting the correct ratios of estrogen to progesterone and estrogen to testosterone, et cetera, et cetera. Now that's the key in my view, is that you're looking for the correct ratios of these hormones and not necessarily the levels, but of course the absolute levels will matter to some degree. And so you know, it's quite common that you'll use creams for progesterone, estrogen, and then DHA and testosterone. They are also important for women, not just for men, and progesterone, for that matter, is also important for men. And so quite commonly what you'll find is that women have something called estrogen dominance, where there's too much estrogen relative to progesterone. But once they've gone through menopause, they still may need a small amount of estrogen as well and DHA and other things, but the emphasis is on progesterone. And as a result of that, the studies have been quite reassuring so far.
00:20:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, problems, and it's highly likely that that is going to lead to much much better longevity than having imbalanced and low levels of those sexual.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: Modes, and not only longevity, but quality of life. And you know, I know a number of women who've gone on to bioidentical HRT and it has transformed.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes when women go through menopause, they feel like they just don't know themselves anymore. They don't react the way they used to. They're developing much greater anxiety, and it's just like they they've lost the person that they were.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it just goes to show the role of hormones in mental health as well, So not just for for females, but for meals. I mean we mentioned it earlier on and most blokes have never heard of andropause. And you know, those those changing hormones when your hit, whether it's your forties year, fifties, whether it is, but it can massively affect your your physical fatality and your mental health as well, right.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I've actually seen seen men crying and then saying, look, there's nothing upsetting me. I simply you know, it's simply my hormones have gone. I've lost the testosterone. You bring that testosterone back in, or you do it through those other methods that we mentioned d h A and herbal medicine, et cetera. And then all of a sudden, you know they're back to an even keel. So there they're definitely, I mean, there definitely is a big role there for restoration of hormone balance. We're not talking for me, it's not talking about crazy levels of hormone.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: Super physiological Yeah, we don't need that No, that's right.
00:22:09
Speaker 2: We're not trying to do everything through hormones. We're just trying to get balance.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: And I think that for me, the the emphasis of hormones, particularly on mental health is I know a number of bodybuilders who have told me that you know, that they were on anapolic steroids and then they came off those anabolic steroids after years on them, and said that for a year, maybe two years, they were an absolute wreck, complete reck mentally emotionally just because of those changing hormones, and it took them a long time before they restabilized. So I think that's a lesson for everybody. Now we've talked about we've talked about the big ones, right, so we've talked about all the chronic diseases, things about that. We've talked about diet, we've talked about that exercise, we talked about sleep, we talked about stress management. We've talked about hormone replacement. You did mention rapamyocin. Maybe let's talk about another couple of classes of maybe pharmaceutical drugs. I just wanted to get your opinion, particularly when we're thinking of you know, the big things the diabetes are metabolic conditions and then cardiovascular what's your view on SGL two inhibitors and PCSK nine inhibitors in terms of maybe a lever to pull around helps.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so the PSK inhibitors we're talking about.
00:23:40
Speaker 1: And maybe explain this far can you explain it for the late people?
00:23:45
Speaker 2: Well, the PSK inhibitors relate to cholesterol, right, so you're you're looking at not only lowering your cholesterol but also a compound called lipoprotein AM so, so this takes us to cardiovascular health. And so one of the most important things with cardiovascular health is, as we've discussed before, is getting your metabolic health right. And you know you need to you need to be relatively free of insulance resistance. And you know, one of the simplest ways of measuring that is looking at your waist circumference. Generally want that to be less than around eighty five centimeters and and so that's very very important. Now on top of that, you want to look at homossysting, you want to look at vitamin D, and you want to look at lip approtein A and then general cholesterol subfractions. I guess so lipid lipid panel, so, lipe approtein A is one that's less known, but it's a combination of a fat and approtein molecule, and some people genetically and also epigenetically, which means, according to you know, the way they're living, tend to run very high levels and that's kind of like an unknown contributor to to athlosclerotic heart disease. So it's very important to look at bringing that down.
00:25:19
Speaker 1: Now.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: One of the simplest ways is niosin. However, the studies haven't shown long term benefits in cardiovascular outcomes with the use of niosin, so then what has So if you just go on a statin medication, that can actually raise your levels of LiPo approaching A paradoxically, so that's worth being aware of.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: Now.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: PSK inhibitors are a form of injection therapy, and so you might inject them once a week or once a month, but they reduce generally the LDL cholesterol and the apple lipe approaching B which has now been found for be the ApoB has been found to be one of the most accurate markers, and the lyypoprotein A, so so there does still seem to be some importance of those. Now we know there's many influencers who are going away from this and saying, look forget cholesterol altogether and the sub fractions of those and just get your you know, get your metabolic health right. Go carnivore for instance. And for some people that may be the case. I have seen someone recently who was on a carnivor diet and checked his current with calcium and it was zero. So it may be for some people that that is the case that the metabolic health fire outshines anything else. But there does definitely seem to be cases in which having high levels of LDL cholesterol, particularly oxidized LDL or hyperprotein A, can lead to the development of athloscortic heart disease. And so PSK inhibitors are just a class of drugs that can be utilized. They're generally prescribed by cardiologists, but they can be prescribed by by someone like me as well. But that can be a very useful strategy to try and to keep all of those markers well. On the lipid side of things, we still have to work on the vitamin D, we still have to work on the home assystem. We still have to work on CRP as well, which is to do with inflammation. So there's I guess you could say it is a much more broad way of looking at cardiovascular disease. But if needed, these class of medications can be used to keep that lipid side of things under control.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think people need to realize that the old cholesterol testing, you know, that's a mass population mass screening based on pretty flimsy evidence. You know, you've just talked about things that are much more impactful than your tall cholesterol or your LDL cholesterol, right, you know that doesn't tell you about the particle sizes, doesn't tell you about other things that that we nine or are increasingly important. Let's switch over and talk about metabolic health and and SGL two inhibitors. What's your view on on on the use of that as a maybe, Well, obviously if somebody has got an issue with their insulin and their blood sugar, and that's one use KISS, but another use KISS around getting your controlling your insulin and getting your blood sugar to optimal. Do you think there is a use KISS for that in from a longevity health spun perspective.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're referring to like semi gluetide and living glue tided. Okay, cool, cool, cool. I wasn't sure they're for second So yes, those those class of medications. So semi glue tide is you know, it's become become the fad drug, I guess you could say now. And it's been used for weight loss all around the world now and if you're you know, celebrity in Hollywood, it's pretty likely you're taking it. But you know, and it's not without any risks whatsoever, these kind of compounds, So semaglue tide is one of the most common. Then we have monjarro, which is it's a combination of working on two different receptor syites. Now, they do appear to for some people they can just start the process of weight loss. Some people, even despite changing their diet and exercising very diligently, their weight may not shift. And one of the reasons can be due to a hormone called leptin, and leptin is a hormone produced in the hypothalamus and when again, just like the insulin resistance, you can develop leptin resistance where the body is not really sensitive to the effects of this hormone anymore, and therefore exercise and diet may not work. So what we need to do along with the diet and the exercise is give something that's going to unblock the leptin receptor. Now, other things like intermittent fasting, all of that's still really important. Avoiding nighttime eating altogether is apparently very very important, and left and resistance. But even just bringing in like a microdose of semiglutide or manjarro or whatever it is, it can it can help people to just to start the process of weight loss. Now they've got to continue that through their lifestyle. Of course, it's no good stopping them and then the weight rebounding back up again. So you know, there's also been some studies looking at those kind of medications plus HDG at the same time being very useful for weight loss. So I guess where we're going here with this discussion is that excessive weight is going to get in your way of longevity, and excessive insulin resistance, left and resistance, et cetera. They are all blocks to having ideal longevity. And so the first thing is to identify that you have these problems and then exploring the different possible strategies. Sometimes just good old met Foreman can be very useful for people. One downside to met forman is if you take it before a big workout, you can inhibit effect. So what I do I don't I don't exercise, I don't do a big workout every day. I take met forman on the days I don't work out, So that can be that can be quite a good strategy. That's often a first more like a starting point to you know, to help with insulin resistance and wait, and then you might then progress to things like the semaglutide, manjaro, HGG, et cetera. But I'm not against using these kinds of tools to help us to achieve the goals that we're looking for.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I guess there's other things. You know, you've got met form and you mentioned there's things like for zayga, what's that's a life losing Yeah, which is is less extreme than than the manjaro and those sorts of things, but can can actually help control that without some of the side effects of these other drugs, because I think educating people that when they when they take these these amazing weight loss drugs, they lose a shipload of muscle as well as that, which is not good. Interesting. I don't know if you've seen tan san deep the the recent clinical trials where they've added in a mile statin blocker into this. So maya statn is the it's the one mile kind that inhibits muscle growth. And so when they block that, the people that were taking the myostatin blocker with the that was the version of manjar or whatever, we're losing weir it but preserving muscle.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, it's very interesting.
00:33:09
Speaker 1: It is very interesting because I was talking to someone, I said, you know, they're going to start adding in malekines to these things. I wasn't expecting them to work on my statin, but once I thought, Jesus, that makes a lot of sense. And so that's an interesting next generation of these drugs that's actually coming out.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: But we're talking about the field of precision medicine really, where we're using using medications in a much more targeted fashion rather than just using them, you know, using it as a road thing. Okay, you've got high cholesterol, here's your stat and we're trying to use it in a much more precise way to achieve longevity goals.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: Now, what's your I was just asking your opinion on men an are and these sorts that that you see everywhere, right, particularly influencers promoting them. And you know, the theory is is reasonably signed, like an E D is really critical as we it is we drop an E D and that's that that's important. You know, it impacts on our energy. And there are some studies showing that these molecules can increase an A D. What I haven't yet seen is obviously impacts on longevity. But where where do you sit on it? Because I'm a little bit on the fence until I see some more data come out. But you may, you may, you may have a different view on it.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Well, I think they come under the broader category of mitochondrial support, and so I think it's important to know that mitochondria is not just about an A D. There's you know, there's there's much more to mitochondria and and there's many things we can be doing in our daily life which are you could say they're all longevity promoters that assist the mitochondria. So we're doing saunas regularly, we're doing ice baths, we're doing intermittent fasting, red light therapy, hyperbaric all of those things are going to help the mitochondria. Hydrogen water. That's one of the recents that also seems to help the mitochondria very much. Now NAD My approach to this is, why wouldn't you check your levels? You know? And so I do NAD testing. It's a blood spot test, just like the true age, and you find out your levels. Now, so far everyone except myself and one other has been low. And the difference of why am I the difference, Well, I've taken a lot, so it probably does come down to supplementation at this point, you take it a lot. I've taken R well, no I an NAD IV. I'll take some NMN as well orally. So my approach is usually starting with more injectable forms if someone's low, and then then seeing if they can, you know, getting their levels up, and then seeing if they can maintain them with precursors. I don't think it's quite as easy, and I think some people may not convert convert the precursors efficiently, and it's you know, there's no way to know until you just do an experiment. Do an experiment, find out. Okay, let's do NMN, or even let's say someone's very low and they just want to start with NMN. They don't want to do any injections, no problems. Take a certain amount for three or six months, and then we'll recheck your levels and let's see if it has made a meaningful difference.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: And I didn't know you could do blood spot testing of ND.
00:36:53
Speaker 2: That's interesting, it's actually, yeah, I think. And it looks at a number of the different ratios as well, like the NA D to n A d H ratio and the n A D n A d p H ratio which is actually very much related to blood sugar control m hm. So I am finding that to be That's another test that we do routinely. We also do the hormones, as you suggested, a wide range of nutrients on people, and then hair mineral analysis. It's actually quite important, I believe just looking at the minerals in the in the body as being an important determinant of longevity.
00:37:30
Speaker 1: Because your hair is a is a more long standing marker then getting blood, isn't it, because it it's pretty transient in blood, but it stays in her exactly. I'm a bit I'm a bit challenged in that department.
00:37:42
Speaker 2: But well, you've got hair elsewhere.
00:37:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
00:37:47
Speaker 2: That gets me.
00:37:48
Speaker 3: Used, so it's it's a more long term marker. It's a marker of tissue levels and uh. And there's various patterns that can show up in the hair that may well not sharp in the blood.
00:38:01
Speaker 2: So if you're really depleted, and if you're in like a collapse pattern and there are certain patterns on hammer or analysis that suggest that, then you may need to just focus on building your body up and actually not going to heavy exercise straight away. So there can be little variations like if you're too I don't know what your view on this is, but if you're totally burnt out adrenally and so on, you know, yeah, you know you may not recovered. Yeah, you've got to recover before you can start doing really really.
00:38:32
Speaker 1: Heavy Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely yeah. Whenever you're in the hole, you've got to get yourself out of the hole before you start to optimize. But the last couple of questions I'm aware of your time is heavy metals, heavy metals in the body, testing for them, do you find it useful? And then if you find that people do have presence of heavy metals, what's the appropriate intervention.
00:39:04
Speaker 2: I feel I do feel heavy metals are very important firstly, yes, and they are very important biochemical disruptors, and so the basic concept is that they will replace nutritional medicine metals rather such as zinc and selenium and many many others in enzyme binding sites. So basically those nutrients are vital for enzymes working. Enzymes are like biological catalysts of reactions in the body. So if you have if you have an enzyme that's dependent on zinc and you have a heap of cadmium from smoking in the past, then that cadmium will go and replace the zinc, and that enzyme might only work at thirty percent. Well, that doesn't sound like it's going to help you to get to your longevity goals, does it. So it's important to know that these pounds in the body. I'll also add micotoxins to that list. If you've got mold toxins in the body, that's also going to greatly affect things, you know, chemicals probably as well. So you need to identify them.
00:40:13
Speaker 1: Now.
00:40:14
Speaker 2: One of the simplest ways is doing hair mineral analysis.
00:40:18
Speaker 1: Now.
00:40:18
Speaker 2: The thing you need to know though is they may not show up on the first analysis, and you may and they've really you've got to come from the fundamental assumption that everyone has a degree of heavy metals.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: If you've been on this planet for a while, a strong likelihood in there.
00:40:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I had quite a lot of mercury myself. I had some cadmium. I've had some aluminium, very high levels of aluminum, so, you know, and that's not from doing anything really crazy, it's just from living on this planet. So most so, basically, I think everyone has some degree of heavy metals, and everyone needs to build up their minerals. Everyone's somewhat deplete in minerals. So the first step actually with heavy metals is to build up your mineral reserves and your your antioxidant and reserves, and your detoxification capacity, and then too, you know, sometimes to then assist the detoxification systems to rid heavy metals from the body. Whether that's using things like coriander and chlrella, et cetera, or you know, there's many many other approaches. Some people use d m s A et cetera, et cetera, or some people are more fans of just doing detoxication procedures really regularly, like saunas and coffee animals.
00:41:37
Speaker 1: And charcoal and sweat, and you gotta you gotta sweat, right, sweat that stuff, lots of cruciferous vegetables, lots of onion sky like click, fears one and fears two, detox pathways.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Right, exactly right, So look, I do think it's very important to know there are also more specific tests for it, which we call urinary provocation tests. It's not done as commonly anymore, but I certainly have used those tests and they can be very useful at times. And you know, people can if they've got very high levels or they're being affected by the heavy metal. So for instance, let's say you've got a lot of lead and you've got cardiovascular disease, Well you might want to do something called et aculation IV, which can help you to rid your body of the lead and just to help your your circulation.
00:42:31
Speaker 1: Very cool. And last question, what is either the biggest anti longevity habit that you see in people or or or what would be the one thing that you would say to people to do less of or to stop doing In terms of longevi we've been talking about lots of things that we should do. What should we be stopping doing or doing a shitload less.
00:42:56
Speaker 2: Of Okay, some of you may not like me for this that I think. My answer is just drinking copious amounts of alcohol. It is probably the biggest anti anti longevity habit. And you know, of course, we all like to have fun, and we're not saying don't have fun, but if it becomes like a habit, you know where you're you're having four, five, six, seven alcoholic drinks a night. And I think a lot of people who are under pressure CEOs, et cetera, you know, because they may not have time to find other strategies, tend to adopt this habit of just drinking very, very large amounts of alcohol. I think that is going to cause problems when it comes to longevity. I think, yeah, I think it's it's going to inhibit many of those helpful biochemical pathways, and.
00:43:48
Speaker 1: So I screw up your metabolic health at the same time.
00:43:53
Speaker 2: Exactly, that's right. So you know, I would say, try to get high on life without all the alcohol. Try and just get high through you know, connection, through getting into nature, through you know, being in connection with wonderful people, through exploring new interests, you know, through all those variety of means. Try to just be high on life. We all want to be happy, of course, but we need to find a more holistic way. I think of trying to find that happiness rather than just through alcohol.
00:44:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if your happiness is in a bottle, that's probably not a good thing.
00:44:31
Speaker 2: That's a good This has.
00:44:33
Speaker 1: Been awesome And now you do run longevity programs. Yes, so we're where do we send people to find out more about your longevity program if they're interested in increasing their health spun and potentially their life spun.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go to our website, it's Lotus Holistic Medicine dot com dot au. So there's no w in the holistic just hate your well is s t I C so Lotus Holistic Medicine dot com dot au. And if you just click on longevity, you'll see that there is a there is a button there to organize a discovery call with one of our health coaches and we can chat with you about whether it's right for you or not, because you know, it's not right for everyone if you're not at the stage in your life journey where you can invest on all levels, like there's a bit of a you know, there's there's an investment of energy there's an investment of money as well, and so yeah, if you're at that stage and you you know you really want to do it. I myself, I'm doing a long devity program at the moment and loving it and looking at doing my next true age test in February next year and trying to get my biological age down more and more. So if you want to join me on this fun adventure, yeah, come and chat with one of our health coaches and what we'll let you know what's involved.
00:45:54
Speaker 1: Awesome, Sandy cooped up. Thank you very much. Keep doing what you're doing and and and good for us all that you manage to get out of the traditional and sick cour system.
00:46:06
Speaker 2: Thank you, Paul. It's been a pleasure chatting with you and also hearing some of your amazing knowledge. So thank you, and you please keep doing what you're doing too. It was very inspired by your talk at ACNAM last year.
00:46:18
Speaker 1: Oh cool, excellent good stuff. Thanks Matte
Speaker 1: Supplements and longevity hacks. Yeah right, Yeah, so all over social media there is all sorts of hacks about health span longevity. So this supplement, that supplement, what in your view are the things that are promising and what are some of the things that you see out there that are a little bit of hype or or certainly the very very minor benefit compared to things like exercise and sleep and grinding and those sorts of things.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess the first thing to let's just say is that supplements are supplementary. So you don't ever want your strategy to primarily be based on supplements. You can't. You can't kind of supplement yourself out of a unhealthy life. That's the first thing to say. To make that point first before I jump into specific ones that your base has to be. You know, your lifestyle. You know you need to be getting really good restorative sleep, you need to be doing something for stress management, you need to be moving your body. There's no replacement for those things. Yeah. Of course, if you let's say you have one week where you're not able to do those things, well, yeah, sure you can get straight back into it. I'm not saying that you can't miss a single day. Of course, life has all its twists and turns, but there's no overall, there's no replacement for those things. Now, if you are doing those things, or you're doing your best on those levels, can you further enhance the benefit through supplements? I think the answer is yes, and even certain certain targeted medications. So you know, I mean one of the biggest studied ones is rappermisin and so this is all it takes us towards this more complicated discussion on fasting and feasting, and you know, that's that's one of the things that's really really important, you know, And in ancestral societies there would be a good balance between times of plenty and times of famine, and so there would be times where you would have a big feed, then there'd be other times where you would be fasting, and so our bodies were being exposed to adversity. That's a very that's a very important principle in general. And so raprimison basically helps to curb this whole situation of us always being in a time of feasting and only rarely being in a time of fasting or famine. So if that's the case with you and you're adding rap and yeah, it's likely going to help. But I would say that and even better approach is to bring an intermittent fasting.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: So your you.
00:03:10
Speaker 1: Would be a fan of intermittent fasting.
00:03:14
Speaker 2: I think it's it's the simple way to shift the balance between you know, again from we also refer to it as M tour and amp kinase. So in general, most people have an excess of that M tour pathway, which is a growth pathway, and not enough of the a mp kinse. Now, especially now we've talked about having you know, having a decent amount of protein in the diet. Now that means you will be pushing emptor Now I'm not going to say M tour is bad. It's all about balance and getting the.
00:03:54
Speaker 1: Cycling, not being always on exactly, not being always on. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up protein, right, because there is this tension right between constantly being in growth mode because cancer sales love that, right, and then and cycling out and you know the benefits of the fasting. And what's really interesting because when you because a lot of the stuff, there's some of the longevity crowds are in the camp of you should have a low protein that because you don't want to be chronically activating M tour. Right. There are some people who are in that camp. I myself am not in that camp, and I never say never, I never say absolutely, right, but currently I'm not in that camp where I sit. Obviously, we've talked about all the benefits of protein and of muscle I have landed on and I'll tell you how I got there. So I used to do a lot of intermittent fasting and then find that I had lost with it, but a lot of it was muscle, and so I stopped doing it because I thought, I'm not getting into my fifties and I want to preserve muscle. And then I got diagnosed with my aortic valve and it was probably that that was impacting on you know, because you lose weight with that and you can lose some muscle with that. Right. So I'm kind of back on the intermittent fast entrain. But for me, that the tension here is between getting enough protein and not over stimulating M tour exactly. And for me, a lot of people are doing they're stimulating M tour because it's not just because they're they're not having periods of fasting. But when they're eating, they're they're eating. Say they have a breakfast that's a traditional breakfast that's high carbohydrate and low protein. They're going to be hungry in a couple of hours, so they're going to have a small snack, And a lot of people don't realize that carbohydrate switches on the M tour pathway as well. It's not just protein that switches on the M tour pathway. So for me, it's like, we need to go back to eating three meals a day without snacks, or two meals a day if that suits you, because then you're going to get those bricks. And because if you're just constantly snacking here and there and everywhere, that's when you're chronically switching on am tour.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, yes, one hundred. I think that's also a major problem, and just looking at your daily routine. So firstly, I would say intermittent fasting or at least getting to basic levels is not hard. It just takes a bit of attention. So if I go back and think of myself during medical school, I was doing crazy stuff like eating, you know, all through the night, and and you know I was just paying no attention to this concept. But you can start by let's say you eat dinner at six pm. You can start this process, but just making sure you don't eat anymore after you finish your dinner. And then let's say you have breakfast at seven am. You again, you don't eat anything unless you're unless you're a diabetic and you're having a hypoglyceming attack, that would be an exception. But other than that, you don't. You don't eat anything until you have breakfast. So there you go. You're already getting your twelve hours of fasting just through that very basic process of taking out random eating, you know, random snacking. Yeah, yeah, taking that snack out of bedtime. Now, it's fine to have a tea. It's fine to have water, a tea with no milk, that is. So let's say a Herrible tea, cameram ole tea or something like that before bed. I think that's a great idea, no problem with that whatsoever. But having an ice cream or something like that before bed terrible idea because you're not going to digest that ice cream and it's going to block your ability of your body to go into that fasting mode. So then let's say three times a week. You then decide that you're going to finish eating around about four pm rather than seven pm, Well, then you've already pushed that out to fifteen hours on those things. And my understanding is that is the better way to go than trying to extend to your breakfast later on, So that sends to be more physiological, is trying to increase the gap in the evening rather than the morning. So I would say, if you could do that and just and I quite often do it myself. I'll have a smoothie around half past three something like that, and then that's it. I'm done for the evening. I don't have any dinner. The other advantages you find you've got to hit more time available.
00:08:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And you know there will be some people who go, Jesus, half past three and I'm not going to eat again till the morning. How am I going to survey? I would say to these people, because I thought that when I first did that have intimate and fasting. Just run an experiment, right, Just run an experiment, and what you'll find is you won't eat, and you'll wake up in the morning and you won't be dead, and you go Holy shit, look at that. It didn't kill me, and then you can repeat the experiment exactly.
00:09:18
Speaker 2: And I found personally that it's very easy and actually like my body will yearn for that if I haven't been doing it, it'll crave for a bit of fasting after a while. And you know, some nights I'm like, you know, wanting to get an evening meal, and part of me is like, no, don't do that. So I think it is something that the body naturally craves.
00:09:44
Speaker 1: I think that one of the most important things that most people could make is to, as you said, stop eating at least three or more ours before you go to bed. I think, Sandy, Well, a lot of people don't realize is that that digestion and absorption is an expensive metabolic process, and that when you eat just before you go to bed, all of that stuff is switched on and a lot of repair mechanisms in the body are switched off because you're in active mode. So just having that gap before you go to bed, it's it's one tweak that if people don't do that, if they're ale at night snacker like that one tweak I think has a significant impact on people.
00:10:32
Speaker 2: And so for me, personally, being like a midnight snacker didn't really benefit me in any way. It just was just simply lack of awareness. I paid knowledge.
00:10:43
Speaker 1: Just appetite. It's appetite, isn't it. That's right?
00:10:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're up studying, you kind of thinking that, well, maybe I should just eat something to keep my brain going. But I probably didn't need to when I look back. It's just it's just a belief system, isn't it.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, And its habits. It's habits really. And let's talk about then some more advanced interventions around health span. So injectable nutrients and hormone therapy. You know, where do you start on? And we're assuming here that somebody's doing the fundamentals, right, So maybe we pick a female coming into menopause and a meal about vyads in their fifties, and what's your view. Let's talk about hormone replacement therapy. Yeah, first of all, what's your what's your view on that for the middle aged man and the middle aged woman.
00:11:39
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you need you know, hormones are a very very key part of longevity. There's no doubt about it. And we're not saying that you know, you need to keep your levels of hormones at the level of a twenty year old for your entire life. It's okay for them to ease off a little bit, but you don't don't want them to. Like, let's say you're a male in their fifties, you don't want that testosterone in DHA to be in your bootstraps at all. You need to keep them because again, we're talking about muscle mass, we're talking about blood sugar control, and we're talking about cardiovascular health, so testosterone is important for all of those, as well as mood. So a lot of people think of it as more being related to vanity that you're wanting to maintain your testosterone levels, but no, it's actually important for a huge amount of functions and therefore, and so for me, quite often, what I would suggest is to build up the DHA. So many people may not have heard of the hormone called DHA, So it stands for dihydro epi and asterone, so I'm sure you're all going to remember that, but it's like a precursor hormone of testosterone. Now, if you at least have good levels of DHA, it's much more likely you're going to have good levels of testosterone. So then the other thing that's important to know is you want to test your free testosterone. You don't want to test total testosterone because it's very much affected by approachin which we call SHBG. So the free hormone levels are much more important now in Australian units. Once again, you generally want them to be something like three point fifty to six fifty I think that's an animal's polyda, so it's it's the top half of the reference range roughly. So if you're in the bottom of that reference range, well it's not showing as abnormal frankly abnormal on that blood test. But you're you know, you're right here.
00:13:43
Speaker 1: You're not optimal. You're not optimal.
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Optimal, Noah, that's right. You want to get towards that top end of the range because that's going to be where you're getting all of those blood sugar and mood and cardiovascular benefits and you've got the benefits on your muscle. So in many if it's early stage, you can just use herbal medicine and DHA. The other big thing is if you want to test your estrogen as well, because if your estrogen levels are going up now that can be related to environmental toxicants, plastics and other things are pushing that up. You need something to block the testosterone getting converted into estrogens, like dim or indole three carbonyl. These are all compounds that come from cruciferous vegetables. So those compounds will help us to maintain the testosterone. So in many cases, those kind of three categories of supplements slash hormones will be enough. Now, in some cases when people just you know, basically the system is failing, they may just have very low testosterone levels, and in that case you may need to then supplement testosterone.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: I like the way you go to the DHA first, because once somebody goes on to t RT, you've got to be on it. Yeah right, yeah, don't you, because that's it. You're on that tree, and you're on that tree for life and and and you know, for me, it's like I'm going to wait until I can't get it through all my strength training that and then first of all DT and everything that you said, and then t RT at some stage if it drops over, because some people will will get to their eties with reasonable amounts, won't they.
00:15:29
Speaker 2: Yes, And you know there's other little tricks you can do. Sometimes the h CG program I also help a lot, but yeah, I mean strength exercise for me doubled my test after and levels.
00:15:41
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, Well a brilliant way to increase stress officer and growth. Hormone is the lift heavy ship, really, isn't it. So let's let's go and talk about the female. Now, who's who's going through menopause? What what's your view on on HRT because it's still is a little bit controversial. You'll still have some people say, oh that courses breast counts a risk, But tell us what there is the research actually say, and what do you talk about in your practice.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Women's Health Initiative was a very very large study and it looked at synthetic hormone replacement, particularly what's called premarin, which is pregnant mays urine and Provea, which is a synthetic progesterone. Now, one of the problems with that is synthetic hormones are never going to have exactly the same effect on the human body as bioidentical ones are. So bioidentical means they're the exact same compounds, not just a similar compound. So in the case of PROVEA or other synthetic progesterones or progestogens they're often referred to, they will have the same effect as progesterone in the womb, but in the rest of the body they can actually have the opposite effect, the effect more as estrogen, and therefore these ladies are actually getting a double dose of estrogen in their breasts and so on. So when you think about it, it's actually no wonder. There was a slightly greater risk of breast cancer in some cohorts of that study, and that was one of the biggest findings that raised concern. Now, when we go bio identical, we're not using a synthetic progesterone. We're using actual progesterone, so that should act. It will act in the same way as our own progesterone when it comes to the tissue in the womb or outside the womb. It used to be taught at one point that you only need progesterone if you have a womb.
00:17:55
Speaker 1: All right, wow, really yeah, yeah, for a long time.
00:17:59
Speaker 2: I think it still is in many circles and obstetrics and gynecology. So if you're doing hormone replacement. You give estrogen and then you give progesterone if the woman has a WORMB So what about the rest of the body. What on earth? Progesterone is hugely diuretic, it's anti anxiety, it promotes bone health. It has such a diverse range of actions that it's absurd to think of it as only being important for the worm.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's only important for the moon. That would only be receptors for it in exactly.
00:18:40
Speaker 2: Exactly, So, yeah, it's it is. Unfortunately, it's one of those doctrines that is just stuck and nobody's questioned it or not enough people, not enough doctors have questioned it, and so basically bioidentical hormone. The first thing about that therapy is we're trying to find the correct balance. We're trying to give, you know, big doses of hormones and only give progesterone when you have a womb. We're talking about getting the correct ratios of estrogen to progesterone and estrogen to testosterone, et cetera, et cetera. Now that's the key in my view, is that you're looking for the correct ratios of these hormones and not necessarily the levels, but of course the absolute levels will matter to some degree. And so you know, it's quite common that you'll use creams for progesterone, estrogen, and then DHA and testosterone. They are also important for women, not just for men, and progesterone, for that matter, is also important for men. And so quite commonly what you'll find is that women have something called estrogen dominance, where there's too much estrogen relative to progesterone. But once they've gone through menopause, they still may need a small amount of estrogen as well and DHA and other things, but the emphasis is on progesterone. And as a result of that, the studies have been quite reassuring so far.
00:20:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, problems, and it's highly likely that that is going to lead to much much better longevity than having imbalanced and low levels of those sexual.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: Modes, and not only longevity, but quality of life. And you know, I know a number of women who've gone on to bioidentical HRT and it has transformed.
00:20:44
Speaker 2: I mean, sometimes when women go through menopause, they feel like they just don't know themselves anymore. They don't react the way they used to. They're developing much greater anxiety, and it's just like they they've lost the person that they were.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it just goes to show the role of hormones in mental health as well, So not just for for females, but for meals. I mean we mentioned it earlier on and most blokes have never heard of andropause. And you know, those those changing hormones when your hit, whether it's your forties year, fifties, whether it is, but it can massively affect your your physical fatality and your mental health as well, right.
00:21:27
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I've actually seen seen men crying and then saying, look, there's nothing upsetting me. I simply you know, it's simply my hormones have gone. I've lost the testosterone. You bring that testosterone back in, or you do it through those other methods that we mentioned d h A and herbal medicine, et cetera. And then all of a sudden, you know they're back to an even keel. So there they're definitely, I mean, there definitely is a big role there for restoration of hormone balance. We're not talking for me, it's not talking about crazy levels of hormone.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: Super physiological Yeah, we don't need that No, that's right.
00:22:09
Speaker 2: We're not trying to do everything through hormones. We're just trying to get balance.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: And I think that for me, the the emphasis of hormones, particularly on mental health is I know a number of bodybuilders who have told me that you know, that they were on anapolic steroids and then they came off those anabolic steroids after years on them, and said that for a year, maybe two years, they were an absolute wreck, complete reck mentally emotionally just because of those changing hormones, and it took them a long time before they restabilized. So I think that's a lesson for everybody. Now we've talked about we've talked about the big ones, right, so we've talked about all the chronic diseases, things about that. We've talked about diet, we've talked about that exercise, we talked about sleep, we talked about stress management. We've talked about hormone replacement. You did mention rapamyocin. Maybe let's talk about another couple of classes of maybe pharmaceutical drugs. I just wanted to get your opinion, particularly when we're thinking of you know, the big things the diabetes are metabolic conditions and then cardiovascular what's your view on SGL two inhibitors and PCSK nine inhibitors in terms of maybe a lever to pull around helps.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so the PSK inhibitors we're talking about.
00:23:40
Speaker 1: And maybe explain this far can you explain it for the late people?
00:23:45
Speaker 2: Well, the PSK inhibitors relate to cholesterol, right, so you're you're looking at not only lowering your cholesterol but also a compound called lipoprotein AM so, so this takes us to cardiovascular health. And so one of the most important things with cardiovascular health is, as we've discussed before, is getting your metabolic health right. And you know you need to you need to be relatively free of insulance resistance. And you know, one of the simplest ways of measuring that is looking at your waist circumference. Generally want that to be less than around eighty five centimeters and and so that's very very important. Now on top of that, you want to look at homossysting, you want to look at vitamin D, and you want to look at lip approtein A and then general cholesterol subfractions. I guess so lipid lipid panel, so, lipe approtein A is one that's less known, but it's a combination of a fat and approtein molecule, and some people genetically and also epigenetically, which means, according to you know, the way they're living, tend to run very high levels and that's kind of like an unknown contributor to to athlosclerotic heart disease. So it's very important to look at bringing that down.
00:25:19
Speaker 1: Now.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: One of the simplest ways is niosin. However, the studies haven't shown long term benefits in cardiovascular outcomes with the use of niosin, so then what has So if you just go on a statin medication, that can actually raise your levels of LiPo approaching A paradoxically, so that's worth being aware of.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: Now.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: PSK inhibitors are a form of injection therapy, and so you might inject them once a week or once a month, but they reduce generally the LDL cholesterol and the apple lipe approaching B which has now been found for be the ApoB has been found to be one of the most accurate markers, and the lyypoprotein A, so so there does still seem to be some importance of those. Now we know there's many influencers who are going away from this and saying, look forget cholesterol altogether and the sub fractions of those and just get your you know, get your metabolic health right. Go carnivore for instance. And for some people that may be the case. I have seen someone recently who was on a carnivor diet and checked his current with calcium and it was zero. So it may be for some people that that is the case that the metabolic health fire outshines anything else. But there does definitely seem to be cases in which having high levels of LDL cholesterol, particularly oxidized LDL or hyperprotein A, can lead to the development of athloscortic heart disease. And so PSK inhibitors are just a class of drugs that can be utilized. They're generally prescribed by cardiologists, but they can be prescribed by by someone like me as well. But that can be a very useful strategy to try and to keep all of those markers well. On the lipid side of things, we still have to work on the vitamin D, we still have to work on the home assystem. We still have to work on CRP as well, which is to do with inflammation. So there's I guess you could say it is a much more broad way of looking at cardiovascular disease. But if needed, these class of medications can be used to keep that lipid side of things under control.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think people need to realize that the old cholesterol testing, you know, that's a mass population mass screening based on pretty flimsy evidence. You know, you've just talked about things that are much more impactful than your tall cholesterol or your LDL cholesterol, right, you know that doesn't tell you about the particle sizes, doesn't tell you about other things that that we nine or are increasingly important. Let's switch over and talk about metabolic health and and SGL two inhibitors. What's your view on on on the use of that as a maybe, Well, obviously if somebody has got an issue with their insulin and their blood sugar, and that's one use KISS, but another use KISS around getting your controlling your insulin and getting your blood sugar to optimal. Do you think there is a use KISS for that in from a longevity health spun perspective.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're referring to like semi gluetide and living glue tided. Okay, cool, cool, cool. I wasn't sure they're for second So yes, those those class of medications. So semi glue tide is you know, it's become become the fad drug, I guess you could say now. And it's been used for weight loss all around the world now and if you're you know, celebrity in Hollywood, it's pretty likely you're taking it. But you know, and it's not without any risks whatsoever, these kind of compounds, So semaglue tide is one of the most common. Then we have monjarro, which is it's a combination of working on two different receptor syites. Now, they do appear to for some people they can just start the process of weight loss. Some people, even despite changing their diet and exercising very diligently, their weight may not shift. And one of the reasons can be due to a hormone called leptin, and leptin is a hormone produced in the hypothalamus and when again, just like the insulin resistance, you can develop leptin resistance where the body is not really sensitive to the effects of this hormone anymore, and therefore exercise and diet may not work. So what we need to do along with the diet and the exercise is give something that's going to unblock the leptin receptor. Now, other things like intermittent fasting, all of that's still really important. Avoiding nighttime eating altogether is apparently very very important, and left and resistance. But even just bringing in like a microdose of semiglutide or manjarro or whatever it is, it can it can help people to just to start the process of weight loss. Now they've got to continue that through their lifestyle. Of course, it's no good stopping them and then the weight rebounding back up again. So you know, there's also been some studies looking at those kind of medications plus HDG at the same time being very useful for weight loss. So I guess where we're going here with this discussion is that excessive weight is going to get in your way of longevity, and excessive insulin resistance, left and resistance, et cetera. They are all blocks to having ideal longevity. And so the first thing is to identify that you have these problems and then exploring the different possible strategies. Sometimes just good old met Foreman can be very useful for people. One downside to met forman is if you take it before a big workout, you can inhibit effect. So what I do I don't I don't exercise, I don't do a big workout every day. I take met forman on the days I don't work out, So that can be that can be quite a good strategy. That's often a first more like a starting point to you know, to help with insulin resistance and wait, and then you might then progress to things like the semaglutide, manjaro, HGG, et cetera. But I'm not against using these kinds of tools to help us to achieve the goals that we're looking for.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I guess there's other things. You know, you've got met form and you mentioned there's things like for zayga, what's that's a life losing Yeah, which is is less extreme than than the manjaro and those sorts of things, but can can actually help control that without some of the side effects of these other drugs, because I think educating people that when they when they take these these amazing weight loss drugs, they lose a shipload of muscle as well as that, which is not good. Interesting. I don't know if you've seen tan san deep the the recent clinical trials where they've added in a mile statin blocker into this. So maya statn is the it's the one mile kind that inhibits muscle growth. And so when they block that, the people that were taking the myostatin blocker with the that was the version of manjar or whatever, we're losing weir it but preserving muscle.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, it's very interesting.
00:33:09
Speaker 1: It is very interesting because I was talking to someone, I said, you know, they're going to start adding in malekines to these things. I wasn't expecting them to work on my statin, but once I thought, Jesus, that makes a lot of sense. And so that's an interesting next generation of these drugs that's actually coming out.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: But we're talking about the field of precision medicine really, where we're using using medications in a much more targeted fashion rather than just using them, you know, using it as a road thing. Okay, you've got high cholesterol, here's your stat and we're trying to use it in a much more precise way to achieve longevity goals.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: Now, what's your I was just asking your opinion on men an are and these sorts that that you see everywhere, right, particularly influencers promoting them. And you know, the theory is is reasonably signed, like an E D is really critical as we it is we drop an E D and that's that that's important. You know, it impacts on our energy. And there are some studies showing that these molecules can increase an A D. What I haven't yet seen is obviously impacts on longevity. But where where do you sit on it? Because I'm a little bit on the fence until I see some more data come out. But you may, you may, you may have a different view on it.
00:34:44
Speaker 2: Well, I think they come under the broader category of mitochondrial support, and so I think it's important to know that mitochondria is not just about an A D. There's you know, there's there's much more to mitochondria and and there's many things we can be doing in our daily life which are you could say they're all longevity promoters that assist the mitochondria. So we're doing saunas regularly, we're doing ice baths, we're doing intermittent fasting, red light therapy, hyperbaric all of those things are going to help the mitochondria. Hydrogen water. That's one of the recents that also seems to help the mitochondria very much. Now NAD My approach to this is, why wouldn't you check your levels? You know? And so I do NAD testing. It's a blood spot test, just like the true age, and you find out your levels. Now, so far everyone except myself and one other has been low. And the difference of why am I the difference, Well, I've taken a lot, so it probably does come down to supplementation at this point, you take it a lot. I've taken R well, no I an NAD IV. I'll take some NMN as well orally. So my approach is usually starting with more injectable forms if someone's low, and then then seeing if they can, you know, getting their levels up, and then seeing if they can maintain them with precursors. I don't think it's quite as easy, and I think some people may not convert convert the precursors efficiently, and it's you know, there's no way to know until you just do an experiment. Do an experiment, find out. Okay, let's do NMN, or even let's say someone's very low and they just want to start with NMN. They don't want to do any injections, no problems. Take a certain amount for three or six months, and then we'll recheck your levels and let's see if it has made a meaningful difference.
00:36:50
Speaker 1: And I didn't know you could do blood spot testing of ND.
00:36:53
Speaker 2: That's interesting, it's actually, yeah, I think. And it looks at a number of the different ratios as well, like the NA D to n A d H ratio and the n A D n A d p H ratio which is actually very much related to blood sugar control m hm. So I am finding that to be That's another test that we do routinely. We also do the hormones, as you suggested, a wide range of nutrients on people, and then hair mineral analysis. It's actually quite important, I believe just looking at the minerals in the in the body as being an important determinant of longevity.
00:37:30
Speaker 1: Because your hair is a is a more long standing marker then getting blood, isn't it, because it it's pretty transient in blood, but it stays in her exactly. I'm a bit I'm a bit challenged in that department.
00:37:42
Speaker 2: But well, you've got hair elsewhere.
00:37:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
00:37:47
Speaker 2: That gets me.
00:37:48
Speaker 3: Used, so it's it's a more long term marker. It's a marker of tissue levels and uh. And there's various patterns that can show up in the hair that may well not sharp in the blood.
00:38:01
Speaker 2: So if you're really depleted, and if you're in like a collapse pattern and there are certain patterns on hammer or analysis that suggest that, then you may need to just focus on building your body up and actually not going to heavy exercise straight away. So there can be little variations like if you're too I don't know what your view on this is, but if you're totally burnt out adrenally and so on, you know, yeah, you know you may not recovered. Yeah, you've got to recover before you can start doing really really.
00:38:32
Speaker 1: Heavy Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely yeah. Whenever you're in the hole, you've got to get yourself out of the hole before you start to optimize. But the last couple of questions I'm aware of your time is heavy metals, heavy metals in the body, testing for them, do you find it useful? And then if you find that people do have presence of heavy metals, what's the appropriate intervention.
00:39:04
Speaker 2: I feel I do feel heavy metals are very important firstly, yes, and they are very important biochemical disruptors, and so the basic concept is that they will replace nutritional medicine metals rather such as zinc and selenium and many many others in enzyme binding sites. So basically those nutrients are vital for enzymes working. Enzymes are like biological catalysts of reactions in the body. So if you have if you have an enzyme that's dependent on zinc and you have a heap of cadmium from smoking in the past, then that cadmium will go and replace the zinc, and that enzyme might only work at thirty percent. Well, that doesn't sound like it's going to help you to get to your longevity goals, does it. So it's important to know that these pounds in the body. I'll also add micotoxins to that list. If you've got mold toxins in the body, that's also going to greatly affect things, you know, chemicals probably as well. So you need to identify them.
00:40:13
Speaker 1: Now.
00:40:14
Speaker 2: One of the simplest ways is doing hair mineral analysis.
00:40:18
Speaker 1: Now.
00:40:18
Speaker 2: The thing you need to know though is they may not show up on the first analysis, and you may and they've really you've got to come from the fundamental assumption that everyone has a degree of heavy metals.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: If you've been on this planet for a while, a strong likelihood in there.
00:40:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I had quite a lot of mercury myself. I had some cadmium. I've had some aluminium, very high levels of aluminum, so, you know, and that's not from doing anything really crazy, it's just from living on this planet. So most so, basically, I think everyone has some degree of heavy metals, and everyone needs to build up their minerals. Everyone's somewhat deplete in minerals. So the first step actually with heavy metals is to build up your mineral reserves and your your antioxidant and reserves, and your detoxification capacity, and then too, you know, sometimes to then assist the detoxification systems to rid heavy metals from the body. Whether that's using things like coriander and chlrella, et cetera, or you know, there's many many other approaches. Some people use d m s A et cetera, et cetera, or some people are more fans of just doing detoxication procedures really regularly, like saunas and coffee animals.
00:41:37
Speaker 1: And charcoal and sweat, and you gotta you gotta sweat, right, sweat that stuff, lots of cruciferous vegetables, lots of onion sky like click, fears one and fears two, detox pathways.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Right, exactly right, So look, I do think it's very important to know there are also more specific tests for it, which we call urinary provocation tests. It's not done as commonly anymore, but I certainly have used those tests and they can be very useful at times. And you know, people can if they've got very high levels or they're being affected by the heavy metal. So for instance, let's say you've got a lot of lead and you've got cardiovascular disease, Well you might want to do something called et aculation IV, which can help you to rid your body of the lead and just to help your your circulation.
00:42:31
Speaker 1: Very cool. And last question, what is either the biggest anti longevity habit that you see in people or or or what would be the one thing that you would say to people to do less of or to stop doing In terms of longevi we've been talking about lots of things that we should do. What should we be stopping doing or doing a shitload less.
00:42:56
Speaker 2: Of Okay, some of you may not like me for this that I think. My answer is just drinking copious amounts of alcohol. It is probably the biggest anti anti longevity habit. And you know, of course, we all like to have fun, and we're not saying don't have fun, but if it becomes like a habit, you know where you're you're having four, five, six, seven alcoholic drinks a night. And I think a lot of people who are under pressure CEOs, et cetera, you know, because they may not have time to find other strategies, tend to adopt this habit of just drinking very, very large amounts of alcohol. I think that is going to cause problems when it comes to longevity. I think, yeah, I think it's it's going to inhibit many of those helpful biochemical pathways, and.
00:43:48
Speaker 1: So I screw up your metabolic health at the same time.
00:43:53
Speaker 2: Exactly, that's right. So you know, I would say, try to get high on life without all the alcohol. Try and just get high through you know, connection, through getting into nature, through you know, being in connection with wonderful people, through exploring new interests, you know, through all those variety of means. Try to just be high on life. We all want to be happy, of course, but we need to find a more holistic way. I think of trying to find that happiness rather than just through alcohol.
00:44:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if your happiness is in a bottle, that's probably not a good thing.
00:44:31
Speaker 2: That's a good This has.
00:44:33
Speaker 1: Been awesome And now you do run longevity programs. Yes, so we're where do we send people to find out more about your longevity program if they're interested in increasing their health spun and potentially their life spun.
00:44:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go to our website, it's Lotus Holistic Medicine dot com dot au. So there's no w in the holistic just hate your well is s t I C so Lotus Holistic Medicine dot com dot au. And if you just click on longevity, you'll see that there is a there is a button there to organize a discovery call with one of our health coaches and we can chat with you about whether it's right for you or not, because you know, it's not right for everyone if you're not at the stage in your life journey where you can invest on all levels, like there's a bit of a you know, there's there's an investment of energy there's an investment of money as well, and so yeah, if you're at that stage and you you know you really want to do it. I myself, I'm doing a long devity program at the moment and loving it and looking at doing my next true age test in February next year and trying to get my biological age down more and more. So if you want to join me on this fun adventure, yeah, come and chat with one of our health coaches and what we'll let you know what's involved.
00:45:54
Speaker 1: Awesome, Sandy cooped up. Thank you very much. Keep doing what you're doing and and and good for us all that you manage to get out of the traditional and sick cour system.
00:46:06
Speaker 2: Thank you, Paul. It's been a pleasure chatting with you and also hearing some of your amazing knowledge. So thank you, and you please keep doing what you're doing too. It was very inspired by your talk at ACNAM last year.
00:46:18
Speaker 1: Oh cool, excellent good stuff. Thanks Matte
