“I was overweight and unhappy!” Liz Earle’s perimenopause and midlife reinvention

What if your best decade is still ahead of you? At 62, broadcaster and healthy aging expert Liz Earle is fitter, stronger, and happier than ever. In this chat with Fearne, Liz shares how she went from overwhelmed, overweight, and exhausted during perimenopause, to thriving in her 60s. She shares the small lifestyle shifts that transformed her health, and why women in midlife shouldn’t feel selfish moving themselves up the priority list. Fearne and Liz dig into the science of aging well, including the power of sunlight (and whether we should be wearing SPF year-round!), and why we should be prioritising sleep and strength training. Plus, what happened when Liz’s younger boyfriend took her clubbing for the first time at 60 years old...? Liz’s book, How To Age, is out now. Listen to Liz’s podcast, Age Better, here https://podfollow.com/1230372957! If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Naomi Watts https://pod.fo/e/2a7df4 Callie Beaton https://pod.fo/e/329307 Poorna Bell https://pod.fo/e/394770 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:29Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that demystifies all the confusion around how to feel good in your skin. Today, I'm chatting to Liz Earl.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  I feel very fortunate to be here in my 60s now with a great young boyfriend who's kind of given me renewed energy and kind of hope in the future and all of that. You know, when I look back to my 40s, perimenopause, I was overweight, I was unhappy, I was stressed, I wasn't sleeping. And yes, life can be shit. Yes, life is challenging and tough, of course it is. But you know, how we choose to respond to that, that's our own making. And if we can equip ourselves in the best possible way physically, then everything becomes easier as a result.

• 1:15Fearne Cotton?

  I'm really excited about this. I read this book right recently. Me and my kids went to Paris, which was so brilliant. I was very nervous as a single parent to do a city break on my own with my kids. But my God, did we all enjoy it. You know, all the things that you start worrying about, like, are we going to be able to get cabs okay, or certain places walkable, or will I get mugged? You know, like all the silly fear stuff that you've got in your head about going somewhere new, just were totally dismantled within five seconds of being there. We were just stood in awe, looking at the architecture and all the gorgeous little shops and obviously stuffing our faces with croissants and macarons and crepes and all sorts of delicious pastries. It was so brilliant.

• 1:58Fearne Cotton?

  But we went on the Eurostar, so I had a long train journey to read Liz's brilliant book, which is called How to Age. And I loved it for so many reasons that you're about to hear. One of the reasons I'm excited to have this chat is the conversation around aging is always just about like, do women look old and haggard? Full stop. There's nothing else to it. Either like, oh, she looks good for her age. That pisses me off. Two, she looks like dog shit. She's aged badly. It's just always about what we look like. The aging conversation is so much more. And that's exactly what Liz is trying to express, or beautifully expresses in this book.

• 2:39Fearne Cotton?

  Aging is about how we feel, how we move through the decades, how hopefully longevity means being agile and feeling well later in life and how important that is. Not just how many wrinkles you've got, or if you've got saggy tits or whatever other shit is pushed on women. So this is a really important conversation and one that I think, I really hope you get a lot from. Now Liz Earle, of course, was a beauty journalist before founding Liz Earle Beauty in the 90s. I mean, I remember that whole Liz Earle blow up in the 90s. She was everywhere. She's also a bloody good businesswoman. Like, she's got many strings to her bow. She was also at the Happy Place Festival last summer and had a huge crowd of people listening to her talk.

• 3:24Fearne Cotton?

  But she's gone back to her roots in journalism and now spends her time reading all the latest scientific studies about menopause and how to age really healthily. And we're incredibly grateful that she's so brilliant at that hard graft so the rest of us can absorb it in a much more palatable form through her podcast, Age Better, and her latest book, How to Age.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 4:24Speaker 04

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• 5:05Speaker 04

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• 5:15Speaker 05

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• 5:48Fearne Cotton?

  Right, here we go. This is the show.

• 6:12Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, Liz.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 6:14Fearne Cotton?

  So good to see you. Last time I saw you was at the Happy Place Festival.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  We were wandering around in the sunshine and just having a dreamy time.

• 6:21Fearne Cotton?

  It was so hot, wasn't it?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  It was really hot. I had a parasol with me to keep the sun off.

• 6:25Fearne Cotton?

  I know, it was gorgeous. We're going to talk about sun in a bit because, as you can see from this amazing copy of your book, How to Age, I've dogged, like, literally every Every other page.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it's looking a bit tatty already.

• 6:36Fearne Cotton?

  It's very tatty. It's been travelling around with me and I've gained so much from it. And the

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks.

• 6:42Fearne Cotton?

  The whole conversation around aging, when it comes to women more specifically, is usually exclusively focusing on what our faces look like and maybe bodies, but it is a lot on the face. This is so much more and so much deeper. The conversation has been like the tip of the iceberg. You've done the whole rest of it.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I do feel that. I mean, it's years and years of research. You know, I started writing books nearly forty years ago and this is the one. And I kind of feel that this is the one that I've been gearing up to for decades.

• 7:15Fearne Cotton?

  Whoa.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  It's the book that I wish I'd been able to read when I was your age, when I was the age of my daughters. I've got one who's twenty five and one who's thirty five. You know, because I would have saved myself a lot of pain if I'd known this stuff earlier.

• 7:29Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  But it's also never too late. I've also given it to my mum, who's in her late eighties, because she can start to make changes now and make a difference to the last years of her life, to make them, you know, less painful and more mobile and more mentally active.

• 7:43Fearne Cotton?

  This is what I love is that you've got all of this knowledge and wisdom and the research that you've done, teamed with your personal experience of now being in your sixties and I want to say thriving. Is that how you feel?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I'm so thriving. You know, when I look back, you know, I'm now just about to turn sixty three. I am fitter, stronger, more mentally sorted, happier, just living the best life compared to any other decade. You know, when I look back to my forties, perimenopause, I was overweight, I was unhappy, I was stressed, I wasn't sleeping. You know, I had the kind of the weight of the world on my shoulders and I think a lot of women will relate to that because we are multitaskers, aren't we? We're doers, we're caregivers and we are that squeezed generation. We're often looking after younger children and older parents and our community and our friends and trying to hold our relationships together and all of that.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And I think we lose ourselves and not only our identity, but our sense of what we need to do in order to thrive and the importance. Importance of that. So it's about also reprioritising ourselves. It's a bit of a manifesto, if you like, for women, for women kind.

• 8:51Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, it's hard, like you talk about in the book, your 40s being a time of physical and mental pain. And you had a lot of stuff going on and relationships breaking down, divorce. I'm in the middle of all of that right now and I'm looking after kids. And it is so overwhelming. Obviously, in hindsight, you can look back and think, I wish I'd done things differently or prioritised myself. How would you, lots of my listeners will be a similar age to me. Where do you begin with that? If you've never prioritised your own wellbeing or yourself, where do you start?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I think the first thing is, is just to make that decision, that you're going to move yourself up the to-do list. You know, you can't just leave yourself at the bottom. And it's not selfish. You know, self-care isn't selfish, because if we can't cope, then we can't cope to help others. So, you know, it really, really is that important. And I think it starts small. There's a lot of noise out there in the wellness space that feels really overwhelming. You've got to eat this, you've got to move like that, you've got to take this, you've got to buy this gadget. You know, what I say in How To Age is, I come back to really simple basics. So it's working on a cellular level. Because what I really identified with all the research about ageing is it comes down

• 10:02Speaker 02

  to these little teeny, teeny things in our cells called mitochondria. And mitochondria is a word that we're going to be hearing so much more of in the future. All the longevity researchers, all the academics, the medics, they're all focusing on mitochondria. So mitochondria are basically little organelles in virtually every cell in the body. And they're like batteries. You can think of them as tiny microbatteries. They make our energy. So we need that energy for everything, from brain health to literal energy for moving around, for controlling our hormones, for repairing DNA damage, for creating skin cells. Everything revolves around our mitochondria. And once you kind of take that on board,

• 10:43Speaker 02

  you then think, okay, so if it all revolves around mitochondria, how do I better protect them? How do I look after my mitochondria? In the same way that I think we've got used to thinking about our gut microbes. How do we look after our gut microbes? How do we get beneficial gut bacteria going? We're eating yoghurt and all that kind of stuff, which is great. But nobody's really talking about mitochondria. So what I did was I went back and I looked at what mitochondria need to thrive. And they need really simple things. They need daylight. They need plenty of the right kind of water. They need connection with nature and earth. Even things like standing barefoot on the ground is actually helping to support your mitochondria. So these things, they're ancestral.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  You know, we've evolved over time, we've forgotten them, we've moved indoors. We're sitting under LED lighting, which is like the junk food equivalent of ultra-processed food. Basically, these LED, these single wavelength blue light bulbs are so destructive to our mitochondria. And, you know, in trying to be energy efficient, we just didn't look at the long-term implication of how lighting can make you sick.

• 11:52Fearne Cotton?

  No, I mean, that's what I loved about this book is that, first of all, I'd never heard the word mitochondria. And I was talking to my kids about it, we're on a long train journey and I was reading your book. And my son was like, oh yeah, I've done that in science. I was like, Christ, I'm so stupid. Like, I had no clue, but he was obviously learning about it.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  From a cell point of view.

• 12:09Fearne Cotton?

  And whatnot. But it was so fascinating to get into a conversation with him about it because he's also a 13-year-old boy who wants to like mainline junk food and play computer games. And all the stuff that as a parent, you're thinking, oh, I know this isn't great because it doesn't feel good. But actually, when I apply all of that to my own body, a lot of the time, I'm not picking up the signals. And that's why I love that you really deeply dive into the basics. So you've touched on light, let's talk about light, because it's a big subject in the book.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  It is a massive subject. The whole book could have just been about light, frankly, but it's only one section.

• 12:42Fearne Cotton?

  But again, it's something that in the wellness space and in the conversation of aging, I've not heard it being mentioned at all, I wouldn't say. You know, we get told, eat this, do this exercise. You know, all the stuff, put this face cream, whatever is LED mask, but not

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:00Fearne Cotton?

  the natural free sunlight that we have available to all of us is not included in the conversation. So how important is natural daylight for our bodies?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  It's 100%, it's everything. It's, you know, there's an expression, Tina, you know, there is no alternative and it is literally everything. And I think that the skeptic in me would say, well, of course it's not promoted because there's nothing to sell. It's free. We get out there and it is crucial. So for example, I'm sure you've heard of the circadian rhythm.

• 13:34Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  And the 24 hour biological clock that we all run on. And in fact, even more than that, each cell in the body has its own circadian clock. So you know, when you start getting into circadian rhythms, it's a fascinating subject. So the circadian clock in the body, which is part of our biology, it's what gets us up in the morning and helps us sleep at night. And it's this lovely sleep wake cycle. It controls our hormone release and our cortisol and all of these great things. It runs on light and it makes sense because when you think ancestrally, we were outdoor beings. We got up when the sun came up and we worked outside and it was daylight. And then when it got dark, we couldn't do anything anymore. So we had to come in. And if we were lucky, we maybe lit a lamp or a fire and we could just about see.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Then of course, when the electric light bulb came, that completely changed. Nothing, I think more in the history of time has changed mankind more than the invention of the electric light bulb. Because it brought us indoors, it brought us working all hours. It brought us, you know, obviously later on, we've got, you know, screens now, we've got, you know, we're scrolling in bed, we're binging box sets at night. We've got that blue light that's pinging at us all the time. And our body is not responding well to that.

• 14:44Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  It really isn't. And when you get up early in the morning and you look at the daybreak, for example, light is not static. It changes throughout the day. So first thing in the morning, I'm not a morning person. I don't know about you.

• 14:58Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I am a hundred percent morning.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Well, then you'll love this.

• 15:00Fearne Cotton?

  I'm terrible at night. My personality dies after 5pm.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Well, I wish we could swap because I struggle to get up, but I know how important it is. If you can get up and get outside within the first 60 minutes of daybreak, much easier for me in the winter because it's later.

• 15:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Much harder in the summer when that's like 4:30 in the morning, you know. But as close as you can, if you can't physically get outside, open a window. You need that real light. You don't need it filtered through glass. You need to get your eyeballs seeing the daylight. So even on a cloudy day, it's not about sun, it's about light. And what happens is the sun comes up. In the beginning, there's no UV. You just get all the near infrared and the far and the red light and the green light and the blue light that comes up. And your brain recognizes it. So these little mitochondria I talked about, the highest concentration of mitochondria in the body is in the eyeball, in the retina.

• 15:52Fearne Cotton?

  Wow.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  And there's a reason for that, because the mitochondria are controlling all these things and they're taking signals, light cue signals, they're telling the brain to produce various neurochemicals and everything then starts to gear into action. We start to wake up, we start to feel energized, we've got the ability to carry on and get on with the day. It also sets our clock. It's a bit like a kind of, you know, one of those timers that you can do for lighting later in the day, you know, you set the timer. What it does is that early morning light signal primes the production of melatonin, and that's the sleep hormone, and that's going to help us sleep better. So by getting up, looking at a bit of daylight, doesn't have to be for very long, the longer the better, but you know, five minutes is better than no minutes.

• 16:36Fearne Cotton?

  God.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  And then the light changes through the day. So then you start to get, UVA starts to rise, that's the first thing. Then, depending on the time of year, around 11 o'clock, you might start to get UVB, then that peaks around kind of the solar noon, and then it tails off again. And then by the time you come into sort of dusk and sunset, the UV has gone and you're just left with that lovely red light. So it's the same red light that people are going out and spending hundreds of pounds on LED face masks.

• 17:03Fearne Cotton?

  No way.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  You know, to get the red light. Go and watch the sunset, you know, and it's, it's free and it will do more for your mitochondria.

• 17:09Fearne Cotton?

  Do you know what? I love that you're breaking down the science of it so we can really hear what it's doing. Cause I got told, I don't know, maybe four years ago by a friend, go and stand outside every morning for 10 minutes when you wake up. And I thought, what the fuck is that gonna do? I literally just thought, I'm not doing that. Like, that just sounds ludicrous.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Great advice.

• 17:27Fearne Cotton?

  Cause I didn't understand.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yes, when you know why.

• 17:29Fearne Cotton?

  Why?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you know why.

• 17:30Fearne Cotton?

  You need to know the why. So, okay, we can, most of us can hopefully do that, if not every day, even at weekends.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:37Fearne Cotton?

  Those 10 minutes.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Well, the key, actually, the key thing, that the body loves rhythm. We talked about circadian rhythm. And again, this, this was a real learning for me because I used to, you know, work really hard during the week and then think, right, I'm gonna have the weekend off, I'm gonna lie in, get up late, potter about, no. The body likes consistency. So if you're up at seven every morning, Saturday, Sunday, up at seven.

• 17:58Fearne Cotton?

  Do it.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Because it really helps the body kind of feel grounded and for all our circadian clocks to just be in balance. Otherwise, you're kind of living in a bit of jet lag.

• 18:07Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  And then you pay catch up in the week. So I know it's hard. The key thing is to try and get to bed that little bit earlier, or maybe just have a nap in the afternoon if you're tired.

• 18:16Fearne Cotton?

  So, so we understand the huge benefits now of getting that natural light. Let's talk about the other end of the spectrum, which is junk lighting.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:25Fearne Cotton?

  So we're sat under a lot of artificial light now.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  One of my favourite favourite subjects is junk lighting.

• 18:29Fearne Cotton?

  This is making me look better, but it's doing my mitochondria.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  I brought these just in case.

• 18:35Fearne Cotton?

  Love.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, these are my blue blockers, so I carry them with me all the time. I was walking through a train station the other day, it was really brightly lit, it was just like white light, there was no daylight anywhere. And I began to feel a bit edgy because I think once you start becoming aware of how the light makes you feel, you can react to it. And it's like a lot of people who might get migraine, for example. They find that coloured lenses are really beneficial for them, different colours, because it's blocking certain wavelengths of light. So a couple of things to do with light indoors. So yes, LED lights, really not great. If you can get just one incandescent light bulb, you know, the old fashioned kind. Pop it in a desk lamp, say you're at work and you can't obviously go and change all your office lighting,

• 19:19Speaker 02

  but you could bring in a desk lamp, you could put an old fashioned lamp in it, have that on your desk or your workspace or at home or wherever. And that is giving you some of the broader spectrum light frequencies that will counteract the LED.

• 19:33Fearne Cotton?

  So what are, what is the junk lighting doing to our bodies, our cells?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  It's, it's basically blocking, or it's not providing the full spectrum of wavelengths that we need. It's just providing one very short wave, very intense, highly stimulating form of light. Which, if you're under it 24/7, you know, one of the things that that really scares me is I had to go and visit a friend in hospital recently. And, you know, you go into the intensive care unit, 24 hours of bright blue LED lighting. And there was a guy I interviewed for the book, amazing guy, Professor Glenn Jeffrey. And he is a neuroscientist, professor of neuroscience and ophthalmology. So he kind of combines brains and eyes and he's passionate about light.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  And he says, you know, one of his big missions is to try and get LED lighting out of hospital environments, out of schools, out of nurseries, out of care homes.

• 20:26Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, bloody everywhere.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  It's everywhere, you know, I mean, the road to hell is paved with good intention, isn't it? You know, we introduced all this lighting thing, oh, it's also energy efficient and it's so bright and uplifting, without looking at the science of actually what it's doing to our bodies. But the good news is that A, we can switch it off.

• 20:43Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  B, we can go to old fashioned light bulbs, even not the whole, you know, caboodle, but a little bit. Turn your dimmer switch down. If you want to scroll at night or you want to be on TV, get your blue blockers on. Just be aware of it, start being light aware. And it's amazing how much better you will feel almost immediately, it's like an instant effect.

• 21:05Fearne Cotton?

  And when we look at phones, which, you know, we've all got phones, we all know we're on them too much. We all know that we're probably imbibing too much content, looking at this blue light too much. But that's not the end of it, it's also what the phone is emitting.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 21:18Fearne Cotton?

  How is that impacting us again? Because there's a conversation, we go, yeah, yeah, we know, I've been on it too long and I've looked at too much. But it's kind of, it's more than that.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Well, this is where you get into really interesting territory when we start talking about energy and invisible, other forms of invisible wavelengths. So light is obviously visible. Then I talk about things like sound, because you've got sound waves, which is, you know, you can't see, but you can hear and that has an impact on our cells as well. And then EMF, so electromagnetic frequency. And there's a lot that's natural. So lots of things, walking barefoot on the ground that we were talking about, that gives you your lovely natural, you know, non-negative ions, for example, which has been shown to reduce inflammation in the body. It's very calming. When you stand beside waterfalls, that's producing all these lovely negative ions and we feel better for it.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, we've also got all these, what they call NN EMFs, which is the non-native EMFs. So these are new frequencies. So as a human being, as a race, as a species, we have never been exposed to 3G, 4G, 5G. We've just haven't been exposed to, you know, microwaves and, you know, all these, you know, wifi and all of this stuff. This is very new. And there are ongoing studies looking at the negative impact on a cellular level. Nobody really wants to talk about it because it's kind of here.

• 22:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  So I think for me, it's about mitigating it. So I've, I, when I was researching the book, I bought quite a, an advanced reader to see where the EMF radiation was coming from and what I could do to reduce it. So simple things like switching off your wifi router at night.

• 23:01Fearne Cotton?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  You can do that. So you're not sleeping with it. I noticed that the readings were highest when I was charging something. So I used to sit with my laptop plugged in all the time on my desk, charging, because, you know, I want to keep it, keep it going, full of juice. And that is really high. That gives off a lot of EMF radiation. So I now unplug it and when I'm away from my desk, I plug it in and it's charging. I don't charge my phone next to my head at night when I'm sleeping. I make sure the kids don't do that either.

• 23:32Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  So it's little things and I think, you know, it's cumulative. People will say, yes, but you know, there's no evidence. Well, there is some evidence and I've got a whole section of references in the book because I want to be able to say to the skeptics, hey, let's just go look it up, you know, it is there. But when you think about it, who is going to fund studies showing that, you know, plugging your phone in could have a disruptive effect on your cells. You know, the tech giants certainly aren't going to do it.

• 24:01Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  And nobody really wants to hear that. So it's not about saying, let's go back to the Stone Age. It's about saying, there could be potential damaging effects from this. How do we mitigate those?

• 24:12Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And how are we, you know, let's just be sensible about it. Let's just have a measured approach and do what we can do. We know that cells behave better if they're in a more natural environment. So stands to reason.

• 24:24Fearne Cotton?

  And like you've just said, it's as simple as not charging your laptop or your phone by your head. Like, we can all do that. It's not like we've got to

• 24:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:31Fearne Cotton?

  overhaul our whole lifestyle. It's just a tiny change that is going to benefit us in, in all areas.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Well, hopefully, you know, I think I'm more concerned, I mean, I've got five kids and I, you know, I'm concerned about how, I mean, they're older now, but you know, growing up, what's the impact on youngsters, on a growing, developing brain? And you know, you've obviously got all the issues about content, about what they're watching for sure. But you know, the actual act of of all the the radiation that's surrounding them, how can we minimise that for them and give them some of the other benefits? And it's just getting into the habit, isn't it really?

• 25:05Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Realising that this is something that you can do. It's like I say to my kids, don't have Bluetooth earbuds, just plug in. Because again, Bluetooth, what's the impact? You know, it's very close to your brain.

• 25:19Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and I guess we don't know at this point.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  We don't know. Of course, we haven't heard long term studies. It hasn't been around long enough to know for sure. So I'd rather be cautious.

• 25:27Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, which is totally understandable with the the science that you've got and the research that you've got. Why would you not make that change?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Once you start looking at mitochondria, and I think, you know, you can you can track this. So for example, when I was doing the whole section on EMF, and I had my little meter and everything, you know, I had various sleep trackers and sleep gadgets. And I tested my sleep and I, you know, I slept with the phone right next to my head. And then I tested it with my phone plugged in right next to my head. And then I tested it with my, you know, wifi router switched off. And guess which one gave me the best night's sleep?

• 26:02Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  You know, no prizes for guessing. So, you know, that's, is it a randomised controlled trial? No. Do I feel better for doing it personally? Yes. So it's something that I would advocate.

• 26:12Fearne Cotton?

  And then let's talk about water. This is a big, big subject. And it's it's not news to any of us that our water is shitty, quite literally, but also just full of, you know, I I've read this in studies before, where you know, you've got, whether it's HRT or the pill in there, or antidepressants, you've got

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Sure, you have.

• 26:37Fearne Cotton?

  So much shit in our water. And, you know, we asked, a lot of people are just like, I've only got tap water. I don't want to keep buying bottled water, or maybe haven't got access to to buy a filter to put under your sink or whatever. What can we do about that? Because again, that seems to be having a hugely negative impact on us in in all areas.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  I think potentially, and I think, you know, first of all, we have to say that here in the Western world, we are very lucky. We turn on the tap, we get clean drinking water. You know, I've just come back from East Africa and that's not the case. So, you know, this is not about being one of the worried world. It's about kind of saying, okay, what we have is is good, but it's not as good as it could be. And how can we make it better in a simple, to your point, you know, effective, affordable way? I would say, you know, getting some form of water filtering is really useful. It depends where you live. When I go and stay with friends, you know, up in the Lake District, for example, I taste the water and it tastes different to my London tap water. Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  I don't taste the chlorine. It just doesn't seem, I don't know how many times, is it seven times that the water's been through a human body when you pour it out of the tap in London? You know, because we're recirculating it all the time. It's going into the sewage system and it's being cleaned and then it's, you know, it's coming back out again. And yes, it does, depending on your area, it does contain traces of pharmaceuticals. You've got pesticide residue, you've got agricultural runoff from soil. You've got, they've obviously got to chlorinate the water to make it safe and all the rest of it. So you can get different types of water filters. You can buy a simple jug. So that's the least expensive. You can then upgrade it to an undersync unit. You can actually do something really simple, like stick a stick of charcoal in your water flask and that will help.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  It won't clear things like fluoride or chlorine, but it will, you know, do a certain amount, make the taste better. And then you can really go up to things like reverse osmosis filtration systems if you're really into it. And yeah, then you start to get into all sorts of other properties that water has, because again, water is, it's not static. It's it's an energetic thing. And we need it. And I think as we age, what's quite interesting is that our thirst signals blunt. So we don't realise as we get older that we need to stay well hydrated. That's really important for women because we're much more prone to things like recurrent UTIs. And you need to have a lot of, you know, water, stay really well hydrated.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  And the problem is, is that, you know, for, for women especially, I think, you know, you're going out and about. Just practical things like where are all the public loos? Where do you go when you want a wee?

• 29:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  And so you, do you think when you're travelling, oh, I'm not going to drink that extra glass of water because I'm going to get caught short.

• 29:16Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, God, I think about all the, I've got the weakest bladder of all time and I.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  And that's so bad, isn't it? You know, why, why, why, why isn't the mayor of London, all these cities prioritising safe public loos for everybody? That would be just a really simple, great healthcare message.

• 29:32Fearne Cotton?

  It would.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  And particularly for women.

• 29:34Fearne Cotton?

  So many coffee shops don't have toilets these days. So you can't even rely on going to like buy a drink, you don't want to use the toilet. And I mean, I know that is one for me where I know, me and my brother talk about this quite a lot because we're slightly water obsessed. That we feel like shit if we don't drink enough water. Instantly a bit headachey.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 29:52Fearne Cotton?

  Foggy. Our parents are of the generation, I mean, they come around to my house and they're like, oh, how can you drink water? It's so gross. And I'm like, I would feel like death. They drink none.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  I know, it's extraordinary.

• 30:03Fearne Cotton?

  They just drink tea.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  The older, the older generation, they never walked around with water bottles.

• 30:06Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  But they did drink a lot of tea, which is quite hydrating.

• 30:09Fearne Cotton?

  My mum drinks like 20 cups of tea a day.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you see, that, that is good. I mean, she's drinking liquid and tea is good because it, it has, um, it has a little bit of magnesium in it. It's got a little bit of L-theanine that helps to keep you calm, a little bit of caffeine give you a lift. So, yeah, I think tea is, is a health drink.

• 30:23Fearne Cotton?

  I was glad that you said coffee's good. Because I was thinking, if you had written that coffee was bad, I'm going to have to throw this book in the fire.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be here.

• 30:30Fearne Cotton?

  Luckily, coffee, fine.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Studies show that those who drink coffee live longer than those who don't. So, and it's not the caffeine.

• 30:38Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, what is it?

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Well, they don't think, well, it could be, the caffeine could have a stimulating effect. It kind of helps you work out a bit harder in the gym for sure. So it could, could, could make you a bit more motivated to, to move. But it's more the chlorogenic acid. So it's more the polyphenols in coffee.

• 30:52Fearne Cotton?

  Right.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Which again is coming back to cell protection. You know, everything, when you think about it on a fundamental level, is coming back to what's the impact on our cells? What's it doing to ourselves? Because we are a collection of cells. And as we age, our cells die off or they misbehave or they mutate. Or we might, you know, become susceptible to diseases or develop cancers and all these kinds of things. If we can prioritize keeping ourselves as healthy as possible and really start thinking inwardly about, you know, every mouthful you eat, you can just, you don't have to be obsessive about it, but it's like, hmm, what's this doing to my cells? Is this building them or is this knocking them down? This movement that I'm doing, this, you know, this way I'm living, this light that I'm sitting under, this drink that I'm drinking.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  It's just an interesting exercise to say, is this a positive or a negative or a neutral? And just try and incorporate as many of the small little positives as we can. And before you know it, you'll start to feel so much better. You'll want to do more and more.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time, or tech in steps. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an exclusive offer.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  That's G A B B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab, tech in steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

• 33:18Speaker 05

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• 33:52Speaker 02

  It's the most wonderful time of the year.

• 33:54Speaker 06

  Halloween.

• 33:58Speaker 06

  And you guys know we don't do Halloween by halves. Full costume, full prosthetics, full commitment. I'm a rat. And I'm the chef. It's our Ratatouille special. Then we're grabbing our broomsticks for the witches.

• 34:11Speaker 06

  We've got a spooky hotline caller. An update from our woman who was in love with the ghost of Prince Albert. And your tarot card dial letters. Listen to our Halloween specials, search for The Girl's Bathroom.

• 34:27Fearne Cotton?

  The only incentive that works is that because when we're doing something, whether it's to look better or even if it is for longevity, that's kind of a slightly more abstract concept, isn't it? Because we're so in the immediate life we're living. But I think especially when it comes to women and so much is focused on what we look like, unless we feel that there are immediate results, we're like, I'm, I'm binning this. And actually so much of the time we continue with habits that we know aren't working for us. Whether it's just we're in the habit of it, it feels too much effort to change, or we've read in a magazine once that you should eat this, or you shouldn't eat that, or you should exercise like this. And I mean, is it the case that it is, some of this stuff is bespoke?

• 35:10Fearne Cotton?

  You know, for some people, a certain diet will work, or for some people, a certain exercise regime will work?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think certainly when you look at food, you know, we have genetic variations. So they're called SNPs and you know, they are basically determining how our own personal makeup is. And I think in the future, we're going to be seeing more personalized medicine because we know that certain medications work for certain groups of people who have this particular genetic variation. So if you know what your genetic variation is, then you can be better helped with healthcare. So for example, I have a variation in my genes that I don't make glutathione. And glutathione is like the master antioxidant. It's really, really important. And we make it, most people make it by using other antioxidants like vitamin C, for example,

• 36:00Speaker 02

  and turning that into glutathione. And glutathione is one of the key things that helps our mitochondria. So it's very good for aging. So what I do is, because I did a genetic test and I discovered that I don't make it, I now take glutathione as a supplement. Right. And that's actually very useful. And when I was researching the book, I discovered that about a third of us don't make glutathione, because we haven't, particularly in the Western world, we don't have the genetic makeup to do it. Somewhere along the, in the, you know, mists of time, we've lost that capacity to make it. Now, you could do an expensive genetic test to find out for sure, or you could just try it. Yeah, see how you feel. Buy some liposomal glutathione, take it at bedtime, and when you wake up in the morning,

• 36:45Speaker 02

  do you have more energy? If you find, wow, that was good, that probably means that you're not making it. Right. If you have no difference, then fine, save your money and don't buy it. So, you know, I'm trying to give people little insights into things that will really move the needle, you know, things that will really make a difference. And you talk there about skin, for example. You know, and obviously you can spend a lot of money on skincare and all of that. And, you know, me having had a past life working in skincare, you know, I know a bit about what goes on with the skin. But don't forget that we make our own skin. We make our own skin cells. So how do we get better skin? We get better skin by having better skin cells and we make our skin cells through better mitochondria.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  So if you come back to like the early morning protocol, what's happening when that early morning light begins to appear is some of that light signalling is talking to the fibroblasts, which are little cells in the skin that make collagen. And they're giving those little fibroblasts a message saying, okay, guys, it's time to wake up and make some more collagen. Because collagen makes your skin slightly thicker and it's a protective mechanism. So we want collagen, that's why we buy expensive collagen supplements, because we want our skin to be all kind of plump and springy. But our skin will make more collagen if the fibroblasts are told to do that. And they're told to do that by the light signals that we get first thing in the morning. So this is.

• 38:10Fearne Cotton?

  A big conversation that we haven't touched on yet. But the whole sun factor discussion, should we be wearing SPF all year round, all day long? It's much debated online, but I loved your approach to it, which is complex and nuanced.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  It's nuanced.

• 38:28Fearne Cotton?

  And has to be talked about sensibly. It's not never wear SPF or you have to wear it all the time.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I think, you know, I know that I'm anticipating a lot of comments on the whole SPF thing. And I'm going to say, listen, you know, read what I have to say because there is, it's a lot of detail. It's not simple. For number one, there's no one size fits all. So in terms of sun and sun exposure, sun can be very damaging, you know, there's no question. You need to respect the sun. It's not always your friend, you know? So particularly if you're very fair skinned, particularly if the sun is very strong, particularly if you're outside and exposed to it for a long period of time. So it's about being measured, depends on your skin type. It depends on the time of year and it depends how long you're exposed to it. And it also depends on how you've set your skin up.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  So that early morning light signalling is prepping our skin to have some UV exposure later in the day. So it's actually producing anti-inflammatory signals that say, hey, okay, it's daylight. Let's wake up, let's get the skin ready because later on, we're going to be outside, working in the fields or whatever. We need some protection from the UVA that will rise and then the UVB. So it's giving us that mechanism to build in inner protection. If we miss that early signal, we stay indoors all the time. Midday, we go out and we eat our sandwiches outside. Suddenly broad sunlight, you know, strong UV, middle of the summer, our skin's going to burn and get damaged.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Why? Because we haven't done that early morning bit of setup. And we've just gone out at a time of day which is not, not appropriate for our skin type. So short answer, do we need SPF all year round, wherever we are in the world and whatever our skin type? No, because why would you need to be protected from the sun when there's no sun?

• 40:22Fearne Cotton?

  So first thing in the morning, crucially, you're not wearing any.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  First thing in the morning, no, no, you're going out. Well, there's no, there's very, very low UVA, there's no UVB because that doesn't come till much later in the day. Even in the height of summer, we're not getting UVB till like 10, 30, 11, depending on your latitude. So yeah, I think it's it's about being measured. For me personally, I prefer to cover my skin with clothing or a big hat or both, stay in the shade. I don't go out and seek the sun when it's when it's really hot. Do I use sunscreen? Yes, absolutely, I do. You know, I use it when I need to, when I'm out in strong sunlight. But you know, even if you look at the nice guidelines, you know, it's saying, you know, be very careful at peak times between eleven and three. That's the key time. But also remember that we make

• 41:10Speaker 02

  vitamin D through sunlight. And vitamin D, it's actually a misnomer. It's not really a vitamin. It's it acts more like a hormone. And it has so many activities within the body. We're not really fully understanding what vitamin D is doing, but it's certainly controlling all sorts of things. And we know that it's implicated in our immune system and, you know, so and hormonal activity. So we need vitamin D. And yes, of course, you can go and buy supplements, but actually, they probably don't work on all the pathways that natural vitamin D does. Because again, it's it's it's complicated. You have researchers and academics who spend their entire lives just studying vitamin D. And even they're not aware of all the things that it's it's doing for us. So.

• 41:53Fearne Cotton?

  I want to get on to supplements in a minute, but prior to that, I think we need to sort of dive more deeply into diet. Because again, whenever I've watched TV shows about the blue zones, where you've got en masse centenarians who are living these brilliant lives, you see several themes that you talk about in the book, whether it's the level of community, which we'll get on to, and and and physical activity. But diet seems to really be the cornerstone of a lot of those areas, how they're cooking, but also fundamentally, what they're eating. What can we learn from those areas and what for longevity? And this is not just about, you know, looking younger, about having that agility later in life, to have the wellness later in life, to enjoy that period, if we're lucky, between like seventy and ninety, where we are still, we're not.

• 42:38Fearne Cotton?

  In a hospital or having to sit in a chair that we can still move about and live vibrantly. What should we be eating or is there a way that we should be eating?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  I think for women particularly, you know, from sort of midlife onwards, we need to really prioritise protein. You know, protein is what's building our muscles, it's maintaining muscle mass. It's helping to prevent things like sarcopenia when we start to lose our muscle and that's what creates frailty. So we want to keep our strength going. And so, you know, whenever I look at a plate of what I'm eating, it's like my first thought is where's the protein? And then I'll build around it and I'll put, you know, green veggies around it and low carb is probably the golden rule. And making sure that you are getting enough things like omega threes from fish. So oily fish is really good or a similar omega three supplement if you don't want to eat fish.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  But, you know, protein for me is always the kind of the first thing and then building things because, you know, women were likely to be low in iron. So, you know, where's your iron coming from? You know, you've got to look at if you're having a restricted diet, where's your B12 coming from? Are you getting enough B6? Where's your iodine? Where's your taurine and your choline and your, you know, there is just so many other things that you just need to make sure that you're getting a wide variety of foods and ideally food first. You know, I talk a lot about supplements in the book, but they are supplementary. They're not instead of, you know, when you think about what the word supplement actually means. It means supplementary too. So it's not, it's not, you can have this or you can take a pill.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  It's like, let's do food first, pile all the good stuff onto the plate and then see what we might be missing. Or what's been taken out through food processing or factory farming or intensive, you know, rearing of, you know, animals or crops. For example, and, you know, then you get into all the spraying with glyphosate and all the other disrupting chemicals that go on.

• 44:35Fearne Cotton?

  What can we actually eat? God, it's crazy.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Eggs, number one, that would be my thing.

• 44:41Fearne Cotton?

  Eggs are your number one?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  I would say because they are the most complete form of protein. They're inexpensive, they're easy, they're versatile. And yeah, it's how I start every day. It was Fay Weldon who drew that amazing advertising slogan. I think it was in the seventies. She used to work for an ad agency and her slogan was go to work on an egg. And then there was a little cartoon, I think of somebody like bicycling along on an egg. And you know, and it is true, you know, you can go to work on an egg or three. And yeah, lots of, lots of great things. And you've got to eat the yolk.

• 45:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Because that's where the goodness is. And when you think about what an egg does, if it's fertilized, it grows into a chicken. And all the nutrients needed for that kind of genesis within the yolk of the egg.

• 45:22Fearne Cotton?

  Well, this is it. Like the good fat conversation is necessary because I certainly grew up in like such a toxic time where there was not only a lot of processed foods and ready meals, but it was also like, don't eat fat.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:34Fearne Cotton?

  And now I would say my body craves good fat. I'm obsessed with eating like nuts and peanut butter.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:41Fearne Cotton?

  And I've just.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Extra virgin olive oil.

• 45:43Fearne Cotton?

  I've gone back to being veggie. I was vegan for a bit and this pisses off vegans all the time, but it's my, it's my story.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  It's your body, your choice.

• 45:50Fearne Cotton?

  My body. And I crave like cheese and outside of the veggie conversation, olive oil. My body craves fats more than anything else. And I'm sort of, I think you get to an age where you're much more in tune with, okay, I'm hungry, but what do I really want? And what do I desire? And it's usually what you need. I crave fats. And I think rewriting that whole diet story that we grew up with in the nineties about, don't eat fats, have an egg white only omelette and don't eat this, don't eat that. And actually, good fats are so essential for us.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  So especially for women, because you know, cholesterol, you know, which is the kind of the good fat, the good building blocks had a very bad press, but it's actually really important. That is the mothership from which all our other hormones are created, our progesterone, our estrogen, you know, all comes from those healthy fats. And we do need, I mean, the body makes the majority of its own cholesterol anyway, but we do need to have good, healthy fats in the diet. And actually, my very first book. Which I wrote thirty five years ago was called Vital Oils. And it was totally counterculture because it was all about healthy fats.

• 46:57Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  And at the time, it was like, oh, my gosh, what are you saying? Everything was low fat yogurt and low fat cottage cheese.

• 47:04Fearne Cotton?

  And I was nearly. Oh, my God, I remember eating cottage cheese in the nineties.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Well, now it's come back. Cottage cheese and pineapple chunks. Everyone's into cottage cheese now because it's high in protein.

• 47:13Fearne Cotton?

  Right, OK.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  But but full fat, you want, you know, you want really.

• 47:16Fearne Cotton?

  The full fat stuff.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Full fat cottage cheese. Yeah, I love that.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time. Or Tech in Steps. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an exclusive offer.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  That's G A B B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab, Tech in Steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

• 48:46Speaker 07

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• 49:00Speaker 07

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• 49:19Fearne Cotton?

  And then when we move on to exercise, again, I think it's a very confusing time being my age where you're told, do short bursts of HIIT exercise, don't do HIIT exercise, run, don't run. You're like, oh my god, wait, what am I, you know, am I meant to do a bit of everything or stop certain things? Is there a golden rule to how we should be moving?

• 49:38Speaker 02

  I think it depends on what works for you, because I think, you know, I don't want to be too prescriptive, but I think overall what the body likes is variety.

• 49:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  So, you know, in the book I talk about doing my own routine. As I do a yoga class on a Saturday, I run maybe twice a week, not for very far, because I think you get to a stage, certainly when you're older, where you overtrain.

• 49:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  And then it impacts your immune system negatively. So you need to do enough to be cardiovascular and to, you know, help your VO2 max and for kind of to get slightly breathless, but not enough, you know, to really risk injury. That's the other thing. Weights, do you lift weights or do you do pushups?

• 50:16Fearne Cotton?

  No, I do a lot of pushups.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Great.

• 50:18Fearne Cotton?

  I love doing pushups.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  That's a win.

• 50:20Fearne Cotton?

  And also in yoga, there's a lot of like the chaturanga pushup, but I do a lot of, that's been my thing in the last few years, like body weight stuff. But I don't lift weights, but this is something, again, that from many of my friends, who, one of my friends is very into weightlifting and it's changed her life for the better.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I think, yeah, I agree.

• 50:36Fearne Cotton?

  So this is key for us at this age.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yes. If you can get into that as a habit, I didn't start lifting weights until I was kind of late 50s. I wish I'd started earlier.

• 50:44Fearne Cotton?

  Really?

• 50:44Speaker 02

  I really do. And I get heavier and heavier. And my Christmas present to myself every year is the next size up of dumbbells.

• 50:50Fearne Cotton?

  Love that.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  So, I mean, how geeky is that? But I'm now on, I lift, so I squat 44 kilos. So my new, my new friends are 22 kilos and then I'm kind of working up. And you just, you just get progressively heavier. And the great thing is, is it doesn't take very much time. So it's really quick. And it builds not only muscle, so it's improving the condition of your arms and your shape. Physically, it's enabling you to, you know, I've got grandkids, I'm kind of lifting up and carrying around. I feel mentally and emotionally more resilient because I know I'm physically more robust and stronger. And it's good for our bones. You know, we've got to look after our skeletal system as we age because that's what's literally keeping us up and supporting us.

• 51:33Fearne Cotton?

  And also, you hear, and this is, you know, if people listening are my age, you sort of, again, it's quite abstract to think of yourself as a much older person. But, you know, I've had people in my life who have been elderly and a fall has been the downfall.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Oh, literally.

• 51:48Fearne Cotton?

  It's not a big illness, it's not an accident, it's they've had a fall, literally like from standing up to they've tripped over or something.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:56Fearne Cotton?

  And that has been the very quick descent from there. So I think leg strength is something that we do need to keep cultivating.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  You know, if you can just get into the habit of brushing your teeth, standing on one leg, ideally with the wrong hand, because then it's also kind of a good brain exercise.

• 52:11Fearne Cotton?

  Good for the brain, yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  But yeah, and then you shut your eyes and that's, that's really hard. That's why I do tend to fall over. So you've got to do it next to something that you can hold on to. But balance, you know, when you think about, you're right, a friend of mine broke her hip recently, she literally just slipped off the curb. So, or you just trip on that last step in the stairs.

• 52:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  And you've got to be strong enough to be able to get up when you do fall. But then, you know, let's keep our bones strong so that if you do fall, you know, you kind of bounce.

• 52:37Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, absolutely. What I love is, as well as the really like full on scientific stuffing here and looking at the intricacy of cells, et cetera, towards the end of the book, it is a lot more about stuff that, again, we know and we could go, yeah, yeah, whatever. But connection, human connection and its importance. And we know that there's been, certainly since the pandemic, this kind of loneliness epidemic going on, how much it's impacting not only our mental health, but it's actually affecting, again, our cells and our physical bodies, how so in a detrimental way.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Very much so. And, you know, there have been studies that show that loneliness is quite literally a killer. You know, people who live on their own. Now, there's a difference between being alone and being lonely.

• 53:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Some people would just love to be alone. They're happily single, they're living their own lives and they like their own company and that's great. That's different. But when you are feeling lonely or excluded. Yeah, and you talk about blue zones and, you know, I've been, I was filming for this morning, a long time ago, looking at all the blue zones. And we went to various places, Icaria in Greece and Sardinia. And it is true, there is this strong sense of community. And if you can find your tribe, you know, hopefully you're fortunate enough to have family. If not extended family, your local community, your faith group, your school, your workplace, you know, whatever it is. A local hobby club, it's really important to have people that you can physically connect with.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  And, and also give back, you know, I think when you get to an older stage in life. You kind of think, I don't want to get to the end of my life and think, well, what was all that about? Was, was, was that it? You know, did I leave the world a better place, hopefully for me having been in it? What have I learnt that I can pass on? And you get so much out of doing something like volunteering.

• 54:26Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Helping other people, it doesn't have to be, you know, giving lots of money to charity, it could be giving your time, giving your knowledge. Even for those who, who can't get out, you know, you can train to be a Samaritan, you can help on the end of a phone, you know, you can do it wherever you are. And you feel better for it, you know, you're producing all those happy chemicals in your brain.

• 54:44Fearne Cotton?

  Maybe that is even actually an easier way to initiate that if you are feeling in a bad place. Cause I think back to like a time in my thirties where socialising almost felt unsafe to me. Because I would spiral so massively after into, what have I said? Was that bad? You know, I would just, so I started to slightly ostracise myself from people and become a bit of a hermit. Cause it was just, this is safe, I'm home, I'm on my own, I'm safe. Because the thought of integrating into any group just felt like that's not doable for me right now. But I think actually if I'd had the wherewithal to go, oh, I could be, it doesn't have to be this kind of like, we're having small talk moment. It could have been that, that could have been something very helpful to me back then.

• 55:28Fearne Cotton?

  Cause I think it's hard when you feel you're out of practice, you haven't really socialised for a long time. Or maybe you're a new mum and you're trying to get yourself back out with adults, it can be really laborious.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, you know, during the pandemic, particularly there was a group, you know, you've got students or young people starting in the workplace. Who didn't have that social connection. And then going back into it now, and I think, you know, older people can actually play a huge part in that, in kind of gathering round. And, you know, maybe learning some of the whizzy tech skills from the younger generation, but actually teaching some of the younger people. To socialise and actually to interact and what it's like to be in a meeting with somebody or to start a conversation with somebody that you don't know and to feel comfortable with it.

• 56:11Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, and also I guess to sort of be all right when it doesn't feel comfortable because

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:15Fearne Cotton?

  I think, you know, I know somebody who finds it really hard to be around people. They would prefer just to be around animals. And I totally get it, but I also think that that's potentially because it is hard being in a relationship or a friendship or a friendship group. It's not always easy. We're not looking for this like it's going to be a perfect, sunshiny experience every time you go for lunch with someone, have dinner with mates. There might be a conversation that's a bit irritating or someone's doing something you don't like. And being able to rub alongside, that's quite important.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Hmm, no, definitely. And I think also it's important to protect your own space and to know your boundaries as well.

• 56:53Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  You know, I've included a little section in the book on how to say no. Because I think as women, we're quite bad at that.

• 56:59Fearne Cotton?

  We are. I've wrote a whole fucking book about it. I mean, it is so hard.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:04Fearne Cotton?

  When you're a mum and you're trying to do well at work and you've got, and you feel like you can't say no to anybody. It's really hard.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:11Fearne Cotton?

  If you could go back and sit here right now with your forty something year old self, who was having a really shit time.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:20Fearne Cotton?

  What three things would you say to her or advise she changed in her life?

• 57:26Speaker 02

  I would say number one is prioritise daylight. You know, you really, Liz, you really have to get out more, you know? And I don't mean clubbing. I mean, you get out, you know, you're out more, you're in the morning. I know you're not an early bird, but you're just going to have to suck that one up and get out there. Or very least, open a window. Because being outside, ideally in nature, if you can find a park, if you can find a green space and just enjoy those few moments of enjoying, listening to the birds, looking at the shape of leaves on a tree, just if you can, take your shoes and socks off, you know, but you don't need to. It's actually really about connecting with the light. I think the, the second thing I would say is.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, which one am I gonna, which one I gonna, gonna choose now? I think sleep is a superpower. If you can prioritise your sleep. For me, I have a very clear sleep routine. The things I do at night. I take my magnesium bisonate, I put lavender drops on my pillow, I sleep with a blackout blind, I have my earplugs, I have a bit of mouth tape. You know, for me, it's a whole ritual and I'm telling my brain, right, it's bedtime now. Anything that's worrying me, I write it down on a notepad and I leave it alone. I say to my brain, you don't need to chew over that at night, because I've written on a piece of paper, you can come back to it in the morning.

• 58:40Fearne Cotton?

  That's a big one for me. Get it out of your head.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Get it out and then, you know, the monkey brain will hopefully stop. And I think probably the third one is, um, is lighten up. You know, I've always been quite serious and, uh, and I think, you know, life is for living. I feel very fortunate to be here in my sixties now, you know, with a great young boyfriend who's kind of given me renewed energy and kind of hope in the future and, and all of that. And, you know, took me clubbing for the first time when I was sixty years old, you know, having, having never been. So I think I would say, don't shut yourself off to possibilities. Don't think it has to be downhill. Because life can and will get better and it may take a bit of time.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  But the key thing is to prioritise yourself and just to start those little steps. Because they'll build and build and build and you'll start to feel better and better and your cells will start to respond, your skin will start to look better, your eyes will be brighter. You'll have more energy and you'll want more. And that is quite simply what I want for all women.

• 59:42Fearne Cotton?

  Yes. Sorry, but we need to hear this constantly because the narrative has been forever that women exclusively get to a certain point, probably my age, and then it's all fucking downhill. Get ready ladies, you've got menopause to look forward to.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and incontinence and grey hair and you're not gonna be attractive.

• 1:00:00Fearne Cotton?

  You're screwed. It's such awful messaging. And I'm lucky, I've got lots of intergenerational friendships. Friends in their fifties, sixties, seventies. I had a friend in her eighties who, who sadly passed away. But they, those friendships have been so integral for me to understand that truly, to see women going, I don't give a fuck anymore. I'm having a great time. I'm doing what I want to do. And that's the message we need to hear, rather than just start panicking at my age, like, oh my god, my best years are behind me. That's so bleak.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Oh, the best years are ahead. You know, they seriously are because we know our own minds. We know what we like to do. We know how we like to spend our time. We've gathered, hopefully, you know, probably a small but very good group of solid friendships. And yes, life can be shit. Yes, life is challenging and tough. Of course it is. But, you know, how we choose to respond to that is our own, that's our own making. And if we can equip ourselves in the best possible way physically, then everything becomes easier as a result. And it's definitely, I want to be sitting here with you in my seventies, you know, in ten years going, hey, yeah, you know, my sixties, we're okay. But boy, do I feel great in my seventies. And then my eighties, why can't that trajectory continue upwards?

• 1:01:14Fearne Cotton?

  I agree. How wonderful for us to contemplate that. It feels like a weirdly new way of thinking, and it shouldn't be. It's such a positive way to look at life.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  It's almost like aging for women is like the last taboo.

• 1:01:28Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  We're not allowed to age, are we? We have to look young and we have to, you know, feel young and be relevant. Otherwise, it's time just to sit quietly over in the corner and let the younger ones take their turn. Well, no, I think that's, that's not right. We've earned it. By the time we get to, you know, forty, fifty, sixty beyond, boy, have we earned it.

• 1:01:45Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  And now is our time. This is our time to enjoy it. You know, my kids, now that I've only got one left doing GCSEs, the rest are all gone. And it's like, bye bye, bye bye. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you for coming. And it's like, yes, great. Now it's time for me.

• 1:01:58Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. What has Liz won? This is so exciting. I love it. I just love the messaging of all of it. And I urge everybody listening to this to read the book because

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:02:06Fearne Cotton?

  we've literally skimmed the surface. It's not possible to have this conversation unless we were to sit here until next Tuesday, because there is so much in there that needs to be read and understood. And I think it's also, there's loads of points where they're brilliant springboards to go off and go down a rabbit hole of interest.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, exactly. So I've put all the science in there, but I've also said, listen, you can skip this bit. And there's a little summary at the end of each chapter. Just do this checklist. And if you then want to go back and kind of, as you say, go down the rabbit hole into it, then you can.

• 1:02:35Fearne Cotton?

  It's great. As I said, I've dogged a million pages. And before we wrap up, I mean, there's things I'm even looking at now, thinking, oh, fuck, I didn't ask about the mouth and all sorts. But anyway, we'll have to do a part two.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the oral microbiome, that's a good one.

• 1:02:44Fearne Cotton?

  Like scrape your tongue.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Totally scrape your tongue.

• 1:02:47Fearne Cotton?

  Every morning. And clean your teeth, obs. One thing that we want to do on this podcast is make a playlist of really feel-good music. Maybe this could be a song that makes you feel

• 1:03:00Fearne Cotton?

  Vibrant and all the things we've talked about today, what would that song be that you would put on our playlist?

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, what would I put on your playlist? So because I was introduced to kind of clubbing later in life when I was in my 60s, I got massively into David Guetta.

• 1:03:19Fearne Cotton?

  Love.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Is that even how you pronounce it?

• 1:03:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yes, it is.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Okay, great. Getting a bit embarrassed here, have I said that right?

• 1:03:24Fearne Cotton?

  You mustn't be.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  And yeah, I mean, just some of his tracks, you know, cinema, control, you know, I just, you know, what are the lyrics of control, you know, you have to let go of control.

• 1:03:39Fearne Cotton?

  I couldn't tell you, but we're putting it on there.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Which is great because you're just, it's just about losing control in a good way.

• 1:03:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  It's about letting go of all the stuff that has been controlling and holding us down and it's like, let's just, let's just rock it now.

• 1:03:53Fearne Cotton?

  I love that. And where is your happy place, Lizelle?

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my happy place, my happy place is actually sitting in my pond in my garden.

• 1:04:02Fearne Cotton?

  Oh gorgeous, is that your cold water exposure?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is my cold water, yes. And I actually dug it at the bottom of my garden for the wildlife and like for the dragonflies and stuff. And then one day I looked at it and I thought, I could sit in that. And yeah, so I put in probiotics and stuff, which so it's kept really clean. And yeah, and I go most mornings and I try and watch the sunrise if I'm at home and I just sit in my pond, not for very long, just for maybe one or two minutes as the sun comes up and I've got some little trees at the bottom of the garden and I just kind of look up at the sky and I'm just so grateful that I have all of that and it just puts me in the right mindset for the day ahead.

• 1:04:42Fearne Cotton?

  I love it.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Can imagine me in my pond.

• 1:04:45Fearne Cotton?

  You in your pond with your biohacking in your pond. I love it. Look, this has been so fascinating and I know that, you know, so many of my listeners who are similar age to me are at a point in life where it all feels quite overwhelming, just need to hear all of this. So thank you so much for your wisdom.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:05:02Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my God, Liz, I'm so, I'm like.

• 1:05:06Fearne Cotton?

  I'm in love with Liz. I'm just gonna put that out there. I just think she's incredible. And we should all be aiming to have that thought, that it just gets better. And that's not to be reductive, you know, like, I know shit happens to all of us all the time and life is hard, but we should still be allowed as women to feel optimistic that aging is really exciting and means liberation, expansion, growth, and just feeling fucking fabulous. And Liz is that personified, embodied. She's sat there sort of glowing, like radiating just gorgeousness and strength and wisdom and just intellect. She's just amazing. Her

• 1:05:47Fearne Cotton?

  new book, How To Age: Supercharge Your Health and Feel Better Than Ever, is out now. Go get it. It's brilliant. Right, back in a couple of days' time, we are relentless here at Happy Place at the moment, and it's one you're gonna want to listen to if you feel constantly pulled between your work and your family, or if you have real ambition and drive but aren't sure what your next steps should be. So really helpful episode, this one. Until then, a massive thank you again to Liz, to the producer, Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios, and to you. Take care of yourselves, gang.

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:07:21Speaker 04

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• 1:08:02Speaker 04

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• 1:08:43Speaker 08

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

• 1:08:45Speaker 09

  And I'm Marco Bortella.

• 1:08:47Speaker 08

  And this is Boots Off.

• 1:08:50Speaker 09

  We are friends who've spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.

• 1:08:58Speaker 08

  And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.

• 1:09:05Speaker 09

  This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.

• 1:09:08Speaker 08

  The adventures that lead to adversity.

• 1:09:10Speaker 09

  And how life can be one big adventure in itself.

• 1:09:13Speaker 08

  Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.