Midlife Myths Busted: What Science Actually Says About Food & Aging | Dr. Federica Amati

What if the secrets to vibrant aging lie in your daily dietary choices? In this myth-busting conversation, Dr. Federica Amati, author of Every Body Should Know This https://amzn.to/4kbj8aV, reveals surprising truths about protein, calcium, and nurturing the gut-brain connection to stave off cognitive decline and more. You can find Federica at: Website https://zoe.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.fede.amati/ | ZOE Science & Nutrition podcast https://link.chtbl.com/s674_NOy | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/longevity-myth-busting-gut-brain-dr-federica-amati Interested in learning more about Zoe https://zoe.com/? Use code GOODLIFE10 to get 10% off your membership. If you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjUyZWJmZTkyNjgxZWUwMDEyMDljNDJj about the muscle-centric approach to aging well. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ 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.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So have you ever felt like you're doing everything "right" when it comes to nutrition, yet still struggling with all these nagging issues, especially as you get further into life? What if I told you that the keys to vibrant aging and living might lie in surprising places, especially on the nutrition front, that you haven't really thought about? In this conversation, I am joined by Dr. Federica Amati, a true pioneer in the field of nutrition across lifespan and head nutritionist at Zoe, the science and nutrition company. She holds a PhD in clinical medicine research from Imperial College London and is an Association for Nutrition Registered Nutritionist. She's also the author of the Sunday Times bestseller, "Everybody Should Know This: The Science of Eating for a Lifetime of Health."

• 0:43Jonathan Fields?

  So in our conversation, we're on a bit of a myth-busting adventure today. Exploring popular advice around protein, calcium, brain health, and more, Federica draws from cutting-edge research and years of clinical experience to reveal some eye-opening connections between the gut, diet, and graceful aging. So imagine if the so-called "inevitable" cognitive decline, muscle wasting, and other challenges of growing older could be prevented, or slowed down, or even reversed by what you put on your plate. Federica shares some groundbreaking insights into the gut-brain axis and how nurturing your microbiome might be one of the most powerful ways to stave off neurological conditions like Alzheimer's. And you'll discover some surprising insights about things like calcium supplements and bone health.

• 1:25Jonathan Fields?

  And for anyone who's felt guilt or stress around "perfect eating," her balanced approach, just really sort of like open-minded, forgiving approach, favors consistency over perfection. It's an invitation to enjoy food again as a source of vibrancy. So whether you're concerned about aging well yourself, or just supporting loved ones, this conversation will leave you inspired and equipped with practical dietary strategies. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

• 1:57Speaker 01

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• 2:30Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Stihl. So I am not in the studio today. I'm actually out on the trail in the Rockies at about 6,000 feet above sea level in Boulder. The leaves are exploding with color and it's just stunning out. And yes, I'm wearing my favorite Stihl hat. And just last night, I was wearing one of my favorite Stihl jackets, which, if you know me, is not unusual. I wear the hat almost every day, and my Stihl jackets pretty much live on me all fall and winter. There's even a Stihl shop back in town, practically in my backyard. Here is why I love them. Stihl is designed and tested in Jackson Hole at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski and bike and hike and climb and fish there pretty much every day. They have been at it since 2011, so they know warmth and they also know style.

• 3:14Jonathan Fields?

  Everything I have from them, it works great, it holds up in every condition, and also looks awesome. And their hometown down is 800 filled down, but it feels more like just your favorite hoodie than a puffy. And ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stihl.com/goodlife for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash good life. Stihl.com/goodlife. Stihl, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Good Life Project is supported by Ernesto rugs. So a small confession, our front porch has been the most neglected corner of our homes since we moved in. It's the first thing anyone steps onto and it's been kind of greeting people with a sad

• 3:54Jonathan Fields?

  too small mat. Ernesta sent me their samples and now they're making us a rug. And the cool thing is for $10, you get five oversized 12 by 12 samples. So you see the colors at real scale in your own space before you even get it. So we lived with all five colors for a few days and cool morning light and golden afternoon light. And we're sure to be roused in the sky, but Caldwell just kind of kept quietly winning. The thing you're certain about isn't always the thing that fits. And because Ernesta rugs are custom size, cut to the ins, the one we ordered is made to our exact six and a half feet by nine feet space, not close enough. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll

• 4:35Jonathan Fields?

  get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E R N E S T A dot com.

• 4:43Jonathan Fields?

  Really excited to dive in. I have so many questions. Like what I would love to focus our conversation on today is really exploring nutrition through midlife and then later in life. And I know that's something you spend a lot of time really deepening into. I have questions. I know that's a lot of where our audience lies. And there's probably a whole bunch of myths that are out there that I want to dive into with you. So I'm curious, you know, when you think about nutrition during midlife and later years, and how that can really profoundly influence health and wellbeing. I'm curious, just on a personal level, what drew you to want to explore those critical life stages in your work?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Really good question. I think that a lot of my interest in that area of life comes from the fact that I grew up with my grandparents. So I grew up in an Italian, Italian family. So our grandparents moved in with us when they were, when they fell sick essentially. And

• 5:40Speaker 02

  That's always made me very interested in how can we improve quality of life, enjoyment of life. And actually, it's what we would call sort of secondary or tertiary prevention when we talk about lifestyle medicine. People who are older and and in later stages of their lives still want to have a good quality of life. And I felt that that's a conversation that's often missed. So especially in the space of health optimization and all these like wonderful things. Where you talk about like the last one percent improvement. That's great for a lot of people and it's accessible for very few. So my interest really is in helping the majority to harness the power of diet to improve their health, no matter what their age. So I think my grandparents had a big influence.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  I also lost my father when he was in his sixties. And so I've seen sort of firsthand what happens if you sort of don't look after your nutrition and your lifestyle in your midlife. It can actually have quite horrible effects. And so my life experiences have shaped that. And I think also the fact that I see that there's a lack of conversation around it. And of course, like I know I'm I'm still I'm like in my late thirties, so it's not it's not with the life stage I am at. But it's a life stage that I'm interested in supporting. And and now my mum, she is my sort of number one patient. She she has transformed her her life and her diet and her health. It's very rare that it's I'm very lucky to have a mother who actually listens to my advice.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Um, and it's really great to see that there's so much you can do later in life. And, you know, in my research, I've had a lot of interest looking at pregnancy and the first one thousand days of life. So on the other end of the spectrum, before we get started, what can you do? But my real passion for life course nutrition comes down to this fact that actually every life stage offers us opportunity to improve. And to make the most of our health and make the most of our enjoyment of life. And so, yeah, I'm very glad to be talking more about all of the stages of life, not just the ones where you're kind of already. In your, at your sort of peak.

• 7:50Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's so interesting, right? Because I think I so agree. I think so often the cultural conversation is, you know, when you're younger or when you're sort of, you know, in, you know, your mid twenties and thirties. And you, it ranges from weight to athletic performance to now cognitive performance. And there's so much, there's so much of a consumer marketplace that serves that demo and also all of those needs. It's massive.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:18Jonathan Fields?

  I wonder if you see sometimes like there's this assumption that says, you kind of like, when you get a little bit further into life, when you're forty, fifty, sixty or beyond, that you've sort of like, you've passed the point where you can really do much. So even if you're like, okay, so I want to make a change. I'd love to reclaim my health or my vitality, my mobility, my, that people hit a moment where they're like, well, but isn't it just too late? Is this something that comes up in conversation with you?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, all the time. So especially, you know, people often like, oh, it's too late for me, or I haven't done this. Or there's a narrative of, you know, there is a lot of research that shows that your dietary patterns in the first like three decades of your life have an impact on your cognitive function. It's true, but it doesn't mean it's too late to change it. And so actually, there's some, some really lovely research that's been done looking at what is the potential gain in healthy life years if you make a diet change aged forty and age seventy, right? And age forty, we see that there's the potential to add eleven life years to your life by just switching from a sort of standard fairly poor diet to a Mediterranean dietary pattern, right? So it's, and it's, so we're not talking about

• 9:28Speaker 02

  changing to a very difficult to achieve protocol set out by a multimillionaire. It's like a very well understood evidence based dietary pattern that's very affordable. And similarly, the same model applied to like a seventy year old person still looks to improve length of life to increase life years by like seven years. That's 10%. That's a lot. So I do see that people often, oh, it's too late for me. Or the other side of the coin is also People say, well, I already have like this condition. I've already had, you know, this diagnosis. Does it mean it's too late? And that's why I think we don't often talk about the role of lifestyle medicine and nutrition for

• 10:11Speaker 02

  not just primary prevention, so not just that, like, let's prevent this from happening in the first place, but actually secondary and tertiary, huge role and huge potential to improve not only longevity and like the remainder of the health in your life years, but also quality of life. So we mustn't lose sight of that because it's actually never too late. Some of my favorite trials, right? There's this one randomized control trial that was run in a care home. And participants were like in their seventies and eighties with existing frailty. And they, it's called the new age one trial for anyone who likes reading papers. And they gave these participants a Mediterranean dietary intervention

• 10:55Speaker 02

  and looked at frailty markers, cognitive function, and it was beautiful. So within a few weeks, there was all these improvements across the board. And what was really nice about this particular study is that they looked at how the gut microbiome mediated some of these changes in their physiology and cognitive and function. There's some lovely examples of where you can have transformative impact at any age, to be honest, and at any state of existing health condition. So it's never too late. And I really hope people feel encouraged to know that, that it's like, it's always worth making that change and embarking on a journey to improve your health.

• 11:32Jonathan Fields?

  I love that. It removes the barriers of, you know, futility and fatalism and saying all this. I guess I've just reached a point where there's so much damage or there's so much to reverse that why even bother? It's not going to be possible or it's just, you know, there's too much that I have to deal with. And it's like, no, actually there's plenty that we can do no matter where you are. It's interesting. I think it's probably a month or two ago from when we're recording this, there was a paper hit a lot of sort of the public conversation that sort of showed that we don't age in a linear fashion, the way that we thought, that there are these two really big bursts of aging. I think it was in the early forties and then right around sixty, where you saw these sort of like big declines in, in all sorts of things. It wasn't this linear, like every year is a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

• 12:16Jonathan Fields?

  I wonder if you saw that data and if in your mind, there is any tie in to nutrition there.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so I think that certainly what we see for the sixties, it tends to be this cumulative effect of nutrition. So poor nutrition, poor dietary choices, they tend to manifest themselves in metabolic disorders in the sixties. So it's sometimes referred to here as Sniper's Alley. I don't know if you've heard that.

• 12:44Jonathan Fields?

  I haven't heard that, no.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  It's quite awful, but it does, it does.

• 12:48Jonathan Fields?

  It really is.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Quite visual. So um it's this idea that you get to a certain age where your biolog- you're still, you know, young, but suddenly the, you see, you see this slight uptick in, in sort of deaths at this age, chronic conditions. So this is where before sixty, it's often the higher incidences of death come from accidents or so like infections, things that are sudden, whereas suddenly you see this uptick in chronic deaths at sixty, and they are diet-related chronic diseases that lead the pack. So it's, you know, the heart attack due to undiagnosed untreated hypertension, it's the colorectal cancer, there's this uptick. And so we see that for the sixties.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I think, I haven't actually looked at the data, the original data set. So I'd be interested to see whether the uptick in the forties is likely to be more related to, it's things like early deaths from, I don't know, actually. I'd be interested to see what that one, that is. Is it deaths or is it, is it diseases in that paper?

• 13:54Jonathan Fields?

  I'm trying to remember what they actually were measuring as like the fundamental metric, which is what sticks in my mind is that they were looking at the progression of markers for aging and not necessarily disease.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 14:05Jonathan Fields?

  And that they saw like this, this big sort of like, you know, these two cliffs, basically.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yes. So it's interesting. So we do see like in the late thirties, early forties is when you start seeing a big uptick. So when we're thinking about markers for aging, if we're thinking about the, the classic markers, so things that you'd correlate to cardiometabolic markers, so HbA1c in the States, your cholesterol levels, your blood pressure, all of these start to play out in your. Instead of thirties and forties, if your lifestyle has been such that you haven't supported your health. And I would say, of course, nutrition plays an absolutely pivotal role in this. But what's quite interesting is that from the work I've done clinically, and I have a few, fair few patients who fall into that bracket of you're young, you know, you're like mid

• 14:51Speaker 02

  thirties, early forties, and you see this increase of the markers that we're looking at, so that your cholesterol levels are not great, your high sensitivity CRP, which is a measure of inflammation, is not great, and all of these markers start going up, fasting glucose levels, and actually, often it's a combination. So it's like a diet that's not ideal. So like, it's often eating out a lot, quite irregular in terms of the patterns. Very, very often, you know, more than ninety percent of adults in the US and in the UK don't get enough fibre every day, and that is fundamental. Fibre is so fundamental for maintaining healthy blood pressure and healthy cholesterol levels.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  And that's a really big trend that you see, there just isn't a focus on fibre, but also really high stress levels, less time spent socialising with loved ones, very high pressure jobs, a lot of like economic stress. So there's, it's a combination of factors, I would say, for, for the forties increase in risk. But it's, it's interesting to see how these risk factors and these markers are now being paid more attention to. It's a good thing, I think. So we're at this point where people are interested in understanding where they sit in terms of risk. Risk is much better understood than it used to be, and I see that there's more interest

• 16:15Speaker 02

  in actually trying to move that risk back before it becomes a full-blown issue. And that's exciting. So even though it's not exciting to think that you can be as young as forty and at risk, but it's important for people to be aware of that, because I think by being aware of that is how you avoid sniper's alley. So if you, if you know to look out for the initial red flags in your forties and to act on. That then it can prevent you from becoming one of the statistics in your sixties. And here in the UK, the one paper that got loads of attention a few months ago was a paper that said essentially your diet at the age of forty six, forty seven was the best predictor for dementia risk age sixty nine.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  And everyone was like, oh, my God, I'm like fifty three. What does this mean?

• 17:06Jonathan Fields?

  Too late.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Right. It's not so much that like, it's not the magic. The magic is not in the age of prediction. The the point is, is that lifestyle and in this paper particularly dietary choices were pointed out as the biggest factor. So it's about understanding that your everyday food choices have a compound interest on your health outcomes later in life. If we can get, if we can understand that, if we can treat it in that way as an investment in our health in the future, then it's also easy to understand why small incremental deposits into your health bank are brilliant. It doesn't have to be perfect. There'll be times when you're withdrawing some cash.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  But if you're constantly investing, then, you know, your compound interest will be in your favor later.

• 17:55Jonathan Fields?

  I remember actually hearing about that paper also, and you know, my eyebrows were raised, but it really just reinforces the fact that I think when we think about lifestyle so often, which is a great thing, no matter when you think about it, it's a great thing to start really thinking about and taking action on. But so often the time horizon that we think about affecting is it's fairly short, you know, months to a handful of years, you know, not realizing that we're we're setting in motion, you know, like patterns, levels of inflammation, physiological changes that if sustained on even the lowest level over decades can lead to these really profound limitations in our lives and illness and chronic conditions. You know, like twenty, thirty years later, and that it really, I think we are waking up. I mean, at least I hope.

• 18:37Jonathan Fields?

  I sense we're waking up a little bit more to the the genuinely long term impact, like sure, it's great to feel better in the next couple of weeks, months and years. That's amazing. And, you know, I think especially when you hit a certain age or in a certain season of life, you're starting to wonder about because. Maybe you're seeing your parents, maybe you're in your forties or fifties. If you're fortunate, you still have your parents with you and but you're starting to see declines. And you're starting to think, huh, I'm realizing because I'm living through these, you know, like as the child of a parent. And I'm seeing sometimes the devastating effect of this thing. And you're starting to wonder, is there something I can do now to stave this off or to avoid or to minimize this happening? And I feel like oftentimes it's it's us entering sort of like a certain season of life.

• 19:21Jonathan Fields?

  Seeing the effect on those we love that really lands the plane on on making a change.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  I agree, and I think what I often see is people who have lived through losing a parent or that if they're a specific disease that they are afraid of because it runs in their family. That activates that a bit sooner. So that's sort of response of like, okay, what can I do? Like, what are the things that I can put in place to try and minimize risk? And it's, you know, I think they it's about striking a balance between being aware that there's so many things you can do to help reduce the risk. But at the same time, making sure that those changes that you're making are accessible to you to make sure that you're still unlocking joy.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  So what happens sometimes is that people become very hyper fixated about being healthy all the time. And actually, then you're tipping into like unhealthy behavior. Because part of the magic of having a good relationship with what our health might look like is to actually embrace the fact that life is unpredictable. And that there is a really good level of resilience that our body has. So our bodies can take some challenge and leaving yourself open to that unpredictability and leaving yourself open to the fact that some days won't be perfect. And that sometimes you won't be able to move your body how you wanted to,

• 20:49Speaker 02

  or you won't be able to eat the foods that you'd planned. But if you're the majority of the time, if you're consistent with your health behaviors, if you offer your body that lovely safety net of knowing that the majority of the time you're looking out for it and you're helping it achieve its. Sort of goals of homeostasis and allostasis and responding to the environment in the best way possible, then you'll leave yourself sort of less stressed to achieve perfection. And also leave yourself space for joy because when we have conversations around lifestyle and diet, you know, people often ask like, what's the perfect time to have dinner?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  And, and listen, the science tells us that ideally, we don't eat past nine o'clock at night if you're going to bed at sort of 10 to 11. But if you're going to your best friend's dinner and you're spending time with loved ones and you're enjoying, then that's okay, like have, go do that. And then you can go back to your regular schedule, regular schedule tomorrow. So that, that we have to make sure that we approach it with some common sense.

• 21:57Jonathan Fields?

  And forgiveness, right? It's sort of like forgiving your humanity along the way. Um, as you're describing that, I'm like, if you live in Barcelona, you're just so busted. If you try and follow those guidelines, it's like.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Right. It's like, but so in Barcelona, people go to bed at like one or two in the morning.

• 22:12Jonathan Fields?

  So they eat dinner nine or 10, you know? Right. So everything's just, yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  It's relevant to your lifestyle, to what you can do. People often say, well, okay, I'm a shift worker. I'm like, okay, well then this, that timeframe is different for you. And what's going to work to support your body through that work is going to be different. So understanding your context, understanding what your needs are, is really important. And that comes with having that level of flexibility to embrace the fact that life is not the same for all of us. Otherwise it'd be very boring.

• 22:44Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And also, I mean, you brought up the ideas of stress and perfectionism, right? And this is, stress is a, is a major potential contributor to all of the things that we don't want to happen in our lives. So when we hold ourselves to this ideal of perfect exercise, perfect nutrition, and then we fall short, because we're gonna fall short, that's life, right? Then the stress of you then telling yourself, I have failed.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:06Jonathan Fields?

  At being the perfect human that I am, it actually probably does equal, if not more damage, if you keep repeating that, than like that occasional like thing that you just, you're out with friends and you want to have something that's good.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:18Jonathan Fields?

  So it's like, it's being just human and forgiving about this. I think that really matters. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiiatry. So you know that moment when you finally say, okay, I need some help? That takes courage and then you start calling psychiatrists. And here, we're not taking new patients or our next opening is months away. Talkiiatry exists to change that. Unlike therapy-only platforms, Talkiiatry is psychiatry. It's a 100% online practice where a medical provider can diagnose conditions like anxiety, ADHD, depression, and more, and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All 800-plus clinicians are in-network with major insurers,

• 24:03Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:45Jonathan Fields?

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• 25:28Jonathan Fields?

  Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about us, let them know it was Good Life Project. It's the best way to support the show. Good Life Project is supported by Kachava. So I used to think being salty was reserved for bad moods and pretzels, but lately I have come to realize that a little salty edge actually makes life and especially dessert way more interesting. Any pastry chef will tell you that a pinch of salt isn't there to ruin the party, it's there to make the sweet parts just really shine, which is exactly what Kachava pulled off with their new salted caramel. First sip, I actually laughed. It's that good, rich caramel, a little salty edge, and none of the sugary

• 26:08Jonathan Fields?

  drawbacks. And it's still the Kachava that I count on. Two scoops for complete nutrition with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, no nonsense, which if you're feeling a little salty yourself is kind of the point. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use the code GOODLIFE for 15% off your order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code GOODLIFE. I'd love to dive into some specifics, focusing in on midlife season here. And I guess let me, let me just ask the question to start out. When we're talking about midlife here, like around what age is, you know, what's the window we're talking about here? When you think about it?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Thinking about midlife, really, we're talking about mid 40s onwards. Life expectancy now is sort of 86, 87 years of age creeping upwards, hopefully again soon. It hasn't been creeping upwards for a while, but we're hoping to return to a public health state where that does start creeping up again. So if we think, say, like, you're aiming to live to 90 as a good aim, then midlife, mid 40s, you're sort of approaching midlife, right? And we think about this life stage as well, because for women, certainly, it's nearing the end of the reproductive phase of life and entering perimenopause and menopause. And there is obviously a less marked change for

• 27:34Speaker 02

  men, but there is also a shift for men, sometimes called the andropause, where physiology and hormones and a lot of other factors start to change. So that's the sort of typical, sort of, say, 45 to 65 is what would consider midlife. I think 60, some people might say 65 is generous.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Often midlife is called out a bit earlier, but I think the way that our perception of living longer is changing how we refer to older people as well. So there's, there's a, there's a lot of narrative now to say that age sixty five, many people are really still very active, still working, caring for their kids, caring for their grandkids, caring for loved ones, incredibly active society members. There's some beautiful work done around the economic contribution that people in the age bracket of sixty five to seventy five make in looking after the communities, in unpaid childcare, frankly. So I think that that

• 28:38Speaker 02

  bracket is slightly stretching. And when I refer to older adults in my book, I mean, I've had people write in to me saying, hey, I'm seventy five and I'm offended by how you like talk about looking after old adults. And it's like, there's a real range, of course. There are some people who will enter their sixties with already one or two or more chronic conditions. So there is a really big spectrum. But if we think about midlife, forty five to sixty five ish, where there are these pretty major shifts in physiology, hormone, and there's also major shifts in our body composition. So the way that our metabolism starts to work. Yeah.

• 29:13Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I remember years ago, I was actually in the fitness industry and I owned a facility and I would go to the events and everyone, you, you'd read about, you know, people trying to attract different demographics and stuff like this. And, and back then, it's really the hot demo that everyone wanted in their facilities was what was called the quote, silver sneakers generation. And that was designated as fifty five and above. I'm above fifty five. So I'm like, wait a minute. I am not a silver sneakers guy. Like, I'm a hiking six hours a week in the mountains. I'm like, like, really? You serious? But it is, and this is probably twenty years ago. It's like perceptions have shifted really dramatically over the last chunk of time. Let's talk about some specific things to

• 29:55Jonathan Fields?

  think about then, and sort of like this season of life. I think one of the things that comes up on a really regular basis, and I know you've done some work around this and spoken about it, is protein, protein needs. We've got, you know, in the US, we've got the RDAs, we've got a bunch of research now, some of it coming out of Stanford's Longevity Center that actually says those numbers are way too low for the fifty plus generation. You know, it really needs to be boosted. How do we think about protein, the midseason of life?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  I love talking about protein because I think what happens, and I I still sometimes like it's hard to get the nuance right with this. So people are very interested in protein. There's a very big industry around protein and lots of marketing. Now, protein is essential for life, is essential for good health, is essential for longevity. And no one debates that. Everyone's on board with that, I think. But the question here is really like, how do we advise on protein needs and protein levels in a way that's helpful to the individual and that doesn't impact negatively impact

• 31:01Speaker 02

  the rest of the dietary pattern. So I think the research around, I would say more seventy plus. So the really compelling research and evidence I've seen around increased protein needs in any sort of significant way has been for people seventy plus. Or, and this is another big caveat, or people who have existing conditions, which means they can't nourish themselves appropriately or don't absorb food efficiently, which obviously happens from the sixty sixty plus, right? It is a problem. Now, protein requirements across the lifespan vary quite a lot.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  So the highest protein needs in terms of grams per kilograms or pounds per kilogram or whatever way you guys go, grams per pound are highest in childhood. That's obvious when you think about it because there is so much tissue being built. Your these little humans are literally growing at incredible speed. Now, we don't talk about protein deficiency in children, luckily, in high income countries that have access to food, even though they have the highest requirement. And that's because if a child is eating enough food, they will be absorbing enough protein. And that's even with these much higher requirements, right? For building new tissue.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  As we age, that requirement starts to come down in terms of like, how many grams per body weight you need. The exception to this rule is in pregnancy. So pregnant women have a sudden increase need for protein because they're building a whole person and a whole new organ to house the new baby in, right? But interestingly, supplementing with protein in pregnancy can be dangerous. So you would never recommend that a pregnant woman takes a protein supplement. Because counterintuitively, it can actually cause interuterine growth restriction. So there is something about the availability of protein from food and the way that we have designed our bit evolved to absorb it, which means that we actually don't want to supplement it. Okay.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  So that's like an interesting fact. I want people to hold that in their minds. As we age, the biggest factor that that is front of mind for a lot of people is this sarcopenic effect of aging. So after the age of thirty, we all start to lose the ability to build and retain muscle mass. And why does anyone care about that? Not because we all want to look like Baywatch on the beach, but because actually our musculoskeletal mass is what keeps us upright and it's what keeps us independent. So again, thinking ahead, like in your eighties and nineties, you wanna get out of your own chair unassisted, you wanna be able to walk down the stairs, you want to be able to pick up your shopping bags and take them home.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  All of these seemingly mundane movements that you might take for granted in your thirties and forties become the difference between independent living and dependent living in later life. And they are very heavily reliant on your musculoskeletal system functioning well. So to make sure we maintain that, there's two things need to happen. We need to have regular movement that challenges our musculoskeletal system to keep strong. And that's number one. Okay. So if you're not moving every day, and I would argue that this needs to start, ideally it starts in childhood, regular movement. And then in your twenties, thirties and forties, you make it.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  A practice where you're like, I'm going to challenge my body to make sure that my muscles are strong. And they are flexible and they can do different movements in different ranges of motions on different planes. So really varying that up. And secondary to that increased movement or that regular movement and that challenge to our bodies. Comes the need for protein. Now. I say it that way around because if you're somebody who exercises regularly and moves their body regularly. Our body is very clever. It makes us hungrier. So if you're somebody who regularly engages in strenuous exercise. Of whatever ways, it might be dancing, it might be weightlifting, it might be running, it might be a combination of these things. You will feel hungrier than if you don't move.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  So our body naturally encourages us to eat more food when we do this kind of exercise. And more food contains protein. So naturally. We start to actually eat more protein. The critical factor here is the quality of the food. If we eat a variety of whole foods. Plants, animal based, if we animal based, doesn't have to be. Plants contain all twenty amino acids. It is slightly. You have to think a bit more about getting. Adequate protein amounts from plants, but it's completely possible to do. There are plenty of examples of vegan athletes that do this very well. But we have to be eating quite good quality food to help.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Our body achieve not just the protein requirements it needs. But also all of the other macro and micronutrients and bioactive compounds that aren't even part of the macro micronutrient list. Now, when we think about, so I don't like to. Think too much about the point eight three gram per kilogram. Recommendation or is it one point one or is it two point, you know. The reason I don't, and there is, listen, there is good evidence to support that actually the naught point eight three goes up to one gram per kilogram. After the age of sixty. And then there's good evidence to support that actually. Women who are exercising to maintain muscle mass can go up to one point six gram per kilogram. And if you're an.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Athlete of an endurance athlete, then actually it's two grams because what I'm saying is like it depends. So like your recommended amount of protein depends on your life stage, depends on your activity level. It also then depends, we add other layers in, like, do you have a gastrointestinal issue, which means you you have malabsorption? I think fixating too much on, there's a big argument in academia of should it be higher or should it actually be lower? There's a whole field of nutrition science that that actually suggests that lowering protein recommendations could help improve longevity.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  The way I look at this is to say, look, there's this agreement uh within science about what the perfect number is. There is consensus that the naught point eight gram per kilogram recommendation ensures that ninety seven point five percent of the population are getting more than they need for good health maintenance. Uh there's a bit of a myth going around that that number is what's needed to not be deficient. That's not the case. The deficiency number is naught point seven. So the naught point eight recommendation is above that and it covers the vast majority of the population.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  But to your point, Jonathan, like when we start thinking about later life, so if you're somebody who's like late sixties, early seventies, then it is worth prioritizing protein when thinking about the foods we're eating. And we still need to ensure the movement part is there. So like movement is still critical. But it is true that later in life, so after our sixties, mid sixties, our ability to absorb protein starts to wane. So we just become a bit less efficient. And we also, our appetite starts to wane. So that natural way that our body would normally say, oh, I've actually exercised, I'm a bit hungrier than usual, starts to serve us less.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  So knowing that, it becomes less of an issue of like, oh, we need to increase protein, have protein supplements, and more of a make sure you're eating regularly and make Sure, you're having plenty of nutritious foods that are high in protein, but ideally are also nutritious in lots of other ways. Because your body is just getting a little bit less efficient at absorption. And your hunger signaling is becoming a bit less efficient. So that's how I frame it. Um. Now, I want to caveat it loads because it's a complex topic that no athletes ever care. Because athletes are so used to thinking about their nutrition on a personal level for their specific performance and their specific sport.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And whether they're competing or not, they know this stuff, like they know that it's nuanced and that it depends. But yeah, just caveating that of course, like, uh, athletes have special considerations to make with tissue repair and tissue maintenance.

• 39:38Jonathan Fields?

  Like the big quote here is it's complicated and there's, there's no one number that is consistently right for anybody. And in fact, there's no one number that's consistently right for a single person over a window of time.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:51Jonathan Fields?

  Maybe you're in a season where you've been really sedentary, you know, like that's going to affect it. Maybe you're in a season where you're just, you know, like you're really excited and you're recommitting to your lifestyle and you're, you know, you're, you're working out on, on a daily basis and, um, and your body is then going to ratchet up the demands. Um, but I, I like the way that you tie these two together and that you start by saying like movement is actually the first thing that we talk about here. Because that is what sets up and helps determine what your actual demand for protein is. And then as, as we age, you know, like, so if we start out midlife saying like, we really just need to, like, let's focus on movement a lot.

• 40:31Jonathan Fields?

  And we have hunger signals that are better correlated to the deficit, the caloric deficit, maybe that, or whatever the other signals are in our system. That could trigger to make us hungry and want, want to eat more and have more protein naturally when we're exercising, when we're moving our body. But that, that correlation from what, and tell me if I'm getting this right, the correlation starts to break down or those signals. Start to break down a bit when you move into your late sixties, maybe seventies and beyond. So we need to be more conscientious about saying, I mean, I actually now need to pay more attention and also. So I guess in I've seen some of the research in your seventies where they mentioned this thing they described as anabolic resistance.

• 41:13Jonathan Fields?

  Where if I understand it correctly, it literally takes more protein. I've seen this compared to a twenty year old and a seven year old. And it takes literally twice the amount of protein to effectively wake up your body's system and let it know it's time to actually use this protein. To build muscle or to sustain muscle so that you're not dropping into sarcopenia and lack of mobility and disability. Do I have that right?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. So the stimulus needed, it actually, you know, it starts, so the stimulus needed to build muscle is because it gets higher and higher and higher as we age. So like both from the exercise front, so you need to put much more effort in to build muscle mass as you get older in from an exercise perspective. And from a protein availability perspective. So like, yes, as you get older, not only do you actually have to like lift heavier, if you will. But also you need to make sure that you have more than enough protein so that your body can use it more efficiently. And it goes back to this concept that we just become a little bit less efficient in absorption. If you think of the way that our nutrients are distributed in the body, it's like there's a central post office, which is the liver.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  And it just after, as we age, it just gets a little bit less efficient as packaging things up nicely and sending them out to the tissues. And the tissues themselves, like the locks and the doors to access to cells are a bit jammed. So it's the whole picture is that it just needs a bit more work, a bit more encouragement. But again, like if you have maintained metabolic flexibility well in your life, for some people, that's going to be much later than others. So you can't even really put a cutoff point. It's just a gradual thing, but it's worth having that in mind. And you know, the appetite, the loss of appetite is a really well known factor in why people in older age, especially those who live alone.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Or who suffer from loneliness, they are at much higher risk of undernutrition and malnutrition. Because the actual stimulus, the actual appetite. Similitude really goes down. So just being aware of that can help, even if you're supporting someone you love, right? You can say, oh, okay, that's why this person I love has like forgot to eat today because their actual physical similarity has gone down. So making the time and the effort to say, right, okay, it's lunchtime, I'm going to eat something, even if I'm not super hungry. Which is different to earlier in life, right? And going back to what you said, I love how you kind of played back the appetite increase with movement.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  So what I love to focus on with people is, okay, you're going to do more exercise, it's going to stimulate your body to need more protein to build the muscle that you're stimulating it to build or to maintain. So there is a caloric, there's a caloric need, of course, but there is also nitrogen balance. So our body is very well equipped to maintain good nitrogen balance, which of course comes from amines and proteins. That system, like the amin, the nitrogen balance system actually calibrates quite slowly. So it takes about six weeks. So if you're someone who wants to is feeling really motivated, actually, I really want to work on maintaining my muscle mass this year. So I'll use myself as an example, right?

• 44:29Speaker 02

  So I've like decided that this year I'm going to up my weight training schedule and like do it more frequently. I I like to engage in lots of different types of exercise, but I've decided that this is the year I'm going to lift heavier. Now, I haven't consciously rapidly increased my protein intake because what we don't want to do is be in a position where we over index on protein because we're in this like frame of mind where we want to really focus on that. And then our body takes about six weeks to get to a place of like, okay, this is our new nitrogen balance. This is how much we expect. And this is how much we expect to get rid of. And then after like, I don't know, two months or three months, I'm like, oh, I'm quite tired and I have a couple of weeks off because I my kid catches a virus and I still don't train.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Suddenly my nitrogen balance is impacted. I'm eating instead of like taking my protein supplements I stock because I'm not training. And it goes down. It takes another six weeks to recalibrate. And this is something that bodybuilders are like hugely aware of. Because they see it. So, you know, in bodybuilding, you have this massive ramp up step phase just before the competition. Huge amounts of like protein and and tissue and water retention. And then after the competition, it's like, woof, right? When the nitrogen balance is impacted and it falls off a cliff, it goes down very rapidly. Our body's always trying to maintain homeostasis. It doesn't like big things changing. And so you can imagine that if you suddenly go from having like lots of protein every meal, because that's what you're indexing on,

• 45:54Speaker 02

  to suddenly not, your body tries to keep that meaner, that nitrogen balance by finding nitrogen from somewhere to maintain it. Now, why do you think it gets it from if we're not eating it?

• 46:07Jonathan Fields?

  Body tissue, muscle.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:09Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  So what we really want to avoid is getting into a place, and I see this a lot with um clients of mine who do have been on a yo-yo dieting journey and they'll sort of go really big on gym and protein shakes and protein for breakfast and dinner, and then they'll get tired of it. And then they will start eating like more normally again, and they'll see this body composition change. And it's because your body is trying to understand what's going on, trying to recalibrate. So remembering that there's a six week window is really important. So start, start your training and instead of obsessing about protein, really think about the quality of your food. Are you eating whole foods that present a variety of nutrients?

• 46:51Speaker 02

  So when your appetite goes up, are you eating this like wonderful variety of foods that are supporting your body for lots of reasons? Because if you're also someone who's suddenly training a lot harder, you also want to have plenty of bioactives that reduce inflammation so that you're less sore and your muscles recover faster. You also want to make sure you're getting plenty of minerals and electrolytes and salts to help you replenish after like a really sweaty workout. And that does not mean you have to take um supplements. You get that from your fruits and your vegetables and your nuts and your seeds. So if we actually help people to engage with what are the foods that offer all of the elements to support your health journey, then it's going to work so much better for your body and it's going to be much more sustainable.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Because one thing that I have seen in my clinical practice is that having chicken breasts for breakfast is not fun. And and there's a point at which you just get a bit tired of trying to reach the really high goals.

• 47:48Jonathan Fields?

  I think I tried that once. I lasted maybe halfway through it. That was it.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:55Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, I love sort of like just the realistic approach here. And also, it's so good to know that, you know, like, when you really think about it, our body wants to maintain a certain homeostatic. And there's, and there are delays in the ways that the systems function together. It takes time to ramp up. It takes time to ramp down. When different things fall out of sync with those sort of like ramping windows, then stuff goes a little bit haywire. And we probably just notice it in our physical body and we have no idea what happened. We just think like, everything I'm doing is wrong and just shut down. And because it's too confusing, I can't even figure it out, rather than saying, no, let me actually just take a longer term horizon. So much of what we're talking about is actually taking a more forgiving expansive, longer term horizon and being really grounded in what you're thinking about.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  And I think if we could make consistency the word. So it's like, instead of striving for optimal or like perfect or consistent. It sounds quite boring, doesn't it? But actually, consistency is king. So if you can just be really consistent with the quality of the foods, with the kind of variety, consistent with thinking, like being really quite conscious of the way that you're feeding your body. And it's not just you. When I say body, by the way, it's body and mind, right? It's all connected. So if you're thinking that way about food and about your diet and about your lifestyle habits,

• 49:20Speaker 02

  then you're not posing your physiology constant challenges of huge change. Because as we said earlier, it's like, often people will start something and they'll ramp up, ramp up, and then they'll, oh, failed, and they'll stop completely. And then there'll be something else, ramp up, and fail. And if you look at that from your body's point of view, it's like, oh, new thing, new thing. Oh, my God, the thing's gone. Oh, new thing, new thing. Oh, my God, the thing's gone. It's like panic. What's happening? Because I think people often forget that our bodies don't know what we're doing. They just get the signals from what we're eating, what we're drinking, the air we're breathing. So our body functions. On the way it reads the external environment,

• 50:01Speaker 02

  you know, the perceived stresses and the real stresses all have the same impact internally. Because if we're stressed about a meeting that we have with a really important client, the stress signals are the same as if we're stressed because we're being chased by a lion. So we have to remember that our body is interpreting signals without knowing what the thought process is behind them. So our body doesn't know if we're just going on a juice cleanse or if we're actually starving, because the changes are similar. And so if we think about that and we think about how kind consistency is for our wellbeing, it changes the way people think. We're not here to punish ourselves, right? We're not here to strive for perfection and then fail.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  And then we're here to just offer as consistent and kind an approach to our health as possible. Because at the end of the day, well, that's way more sustainable as an approach. And it also means that you're likely to enjoy it along the way.

• 50:59Jonathan Fields?

  That makes so much more sense. And again, we're not putting our physiological and our mental states through the stress of having like dun dun dun dun dun, fallen off a cliff, failed, judge ourselves, stress like piling on. And then then the next thing, just kind of repeating that cycle, which like does its own damage.

• 51:19Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 51:23Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Bombas. So my wife Stephanie has been one of the great gift givers in our family. And her secret is that the best gifts often aren't the flashy ones. So the ones that people reach for on any given day without even thinking about it. That's why so much of my list ends up at Bombas. Fuzzy Sunday slippers for the friend who lives in sweatpants from November to March. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for anyone who runs cold. That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water resistant suede booties. So cushy, my executive producer Lindsay actually more or less lives in hers. And here's what else makes it a good life kind of gift.

• 52:03Jonathan Fields?

  For every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting. So every gift you give is really two. So head over to bombas.com/goodlife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S dot com slash good life, code GOODLIFE at checkout. Your Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were gonna go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes.

• 52:47Jonathan Fields?

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• 53:31Jonathan Fields?

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• 54:14Jonathan Fields?

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• 54:22Jonathan Fields?

  So we've gone pretty deep into this fascinating relationship between protein, muscle, sarcopenia, whole foods, how to get it in all sorts of different ways and how that shows up through different age cycles. One other thing that I think starts to come up fairly often as we move into midlife and then later in life is bone density, bone loss. Like, I think this is, and I think it's an increasing thing that's coming up earlier in life for so many people as nutrition that is not wonderful and so much sedentary living. There was a time where if you went to your doctor, you got your physical in your late 40s and you got your first bone density test and there was a little questionable, immediately the first word out of the mouth was, okay, you need to start taking calcium.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:05Jonathan Fields?

  It sounds like the research on that has changed pretty radically over the last decade or so. So take me into this.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Yes. Now it's not considered best clinical practice for most people. Again, caveat that if your doctor has prescribed this for you, there'll be a reason. But calcium supplementation itself carries risk for cardiovascular disease risk. So we don't generally recommend calcium supplementation, which is, I think, actually, this is a really nice example of where we see that there's a real benefit of calcium-rich foods to improve bone density. But if you then just take the calcium out and give that as a supplement, it does not have the same effect. So there are like, in some cases, vitamin D, WK, magnesium and

• 55:53Speaker 02

  calcium as a combination supplement can be beneficial. It really depends on like life stage, the, the stage at which your bone mineral density is as well. So there's, there's a scale, of course, where you intervene. The researches that's coming out now really suggests that there's mechanisms by which you can improve or at least maintain bone mineral density without further rapid deterioration with a combination of things again. So when we think about bone tissue as a live tissue, often people just think, eh, it's there, it's dry, it doesn't do anything. But it's a very live, spongy, blood vessel-filled tissue with, that has lots going on and there's cells that are continuously breaking it

• 56:37Speaker 02

  down, building it up, breaking it down. But it's just that as we age, the breakdown definitely supersedes the buildup. And

• 56:45Speaker 02

  But there's really like, so the availability of calcium for the buildup is very important. But there's other signaling involved. You know, the one I find most fascinating is the relationship between the gut microbiome and the bone. So there's a gut bone axis and gut microbes, specific gut microbes, produce metabolites that essentially either encourage the bone tissue to re-mineralize and to increase bone density or the other way around. So there's a lot going on with signaling outside of the simple like calcium and build the bone. And as with a lot of supplements and a lot of like recommendations, it we have to tailor it to the individual. So for instance, if you had somebody who had an increased risk of cardiovascular disease,

• 57:29Speaker 02

  or I would struggle to to think of an example where that would, it would be a good idea to supplement with calcium in that case, right? But would you recommend that they eat calcium rich foods? Absolutely. Does that mean drinking glasses of milk? No, actually. So there's again, like dairy as a bucket of food is so diverse. It's almost counterintuitive to put it all together. So you have dairy milk by the glass and butter that don't seem to have anywhere near the same beneficial effects as cheese, yogurt and kefir. So butter, right, unfortunately, high saturated fat will put up your cholesterol if you eat it like a lot.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  And actually glasses of milk don't seem to have this really sizable beneficial impact on the bone, on the health. Whereas regular yogurt, kefir, cheese consumption, good for the gut, good for your bones, good for lots of things. So we have to understand that and also remember that calcium is present in so many other foods outside of dairy. Green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds. So getting it from a variety of sources with different minerals within that same food. And ideally that also support your gut health for that gut bone axis to be helpful. And Jonathan, you won't be surprised to hear me say that again, if you want to maintain your bone mineral density, the bone needs a physical.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Physical stimulus to continue staying strong. So you you refer to sedentary lifestyles. Massive culprit for this, you know, some I spoke to a wonderful doctor who's a specialist, a her her name is give you will come to about to me later. And she was telling me that um in her clinical practice, she has seen women as young as like twenty four come in with low bone mineral density. And that's a combination of sedentary lifestyles and undernutrition, malnutrition, so restrictive dieting, avoiding foods, really detrimental, like taking away the building blocks for a healthy body. So we need to stimulate that bone to want to repair and grow,

• 59:38Speaker 02

  and then offer it the right minerals, including calcium, but it's not the only thing. The right pathways need to be activated to make sure that then that bone mineral density is maintained, or sometimes even improved. So that um we had a a wonderful specialist, an expert in osteoporosis and bone health on the Zoe Science and Nutrition Podcast. And I think it's the best explanation I've ever heard of how bone mineral density is maintained. Uh so I I would encourage anyone interested in this specific topic to really go and listen to that. Because the science has evolved. We understand bone mineral density much more now than we did sort of ten fifteen years ago. And again, we're trying to take a more holistic approach in how we advise people

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  to maintain good bone mineral density, because it is important for, again, maintaining that independence later in life.

• 1:00:29Jonathan Fields?

  It's so fascinating how so so many things are tied back to um the gut microbiome these days also, you know, like I never actually heard the phrase that there's, you know, like, there's like a bone gut access. I'm just so excited for the research that's going on there. It seems like we're so in the beginning of that. But the data is coming fast and furious. Like I I in ten years, it I think it'll be really exciting to see what it's really telling us. On a prescriptive basis, especially like when we can go more from correlation to causation and then from causation to like if you do this, like then. So that's calcium. Calcium matters, but just taking it basically as an isolated supplement, probably not the thing to do unless, again, if you have a qualified healthcare provider who has given you this, don't just stop doing what you're doing. Like, consult

• 1:01:14Jonathan Fields?

  them and have a conversation about this. The other thing that I think, you know, we really are starting to think about as we move through midlife and then into later in life is how nutrition impacts, we touched on this a little bit earlier in our conversation, how it impacts our cognitive health, you know, like our, whether it's just a slow decline in cognitive function, or whether it's risk for Alzheimer's or dementia. What do we know about like, how to think about nutrition and, and this, both in the midlife and then later in life if we're already starting to experience something?

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, this is one of the areas I think is the most exciting. So, brain health. And, you know, we've moved now away from this idea that the blood-brain barrier kept everything out, and that the brain was somehow magically encapsulated away. We've moved past that. And we now understand that, especially what we eat, has literally a direct connection to our brain. And this is in actually several ways. So there's, a lot of people will have heard of the gut-brain axis, and this idea that our gut microbes, our gut microbiome talks to our brain and impacts it. And it's true, but it's like

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  in several ways, right? So, the first thing to note is the, the main way we think about the gut-brain axis in terms of neuronal connection is the vagus nerve. And so the vagus nerve is like huge, and it's massive, it goes through the entire body, it connects to other organs as well, but primarily connects to the gut. And what I find fascinating is that the majority of the traffic in the vagus nerve, so if you think of the vagus nerve as like a massive highway. The majority of the traffic of information used to be thought to be going from the brain to the gut, so like telling the gut what's going on and how to react. Then it was thought that it was about fifty fifty and now it's well established that it's about eighty percent gut up and twenty percent brain to the gut.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  So there's this real, I was sort of talking earlier about this idea that our, our body reacts to external stimuli to understand what to do and what's going on. A ma- major part of this is our gut telling our brain like, this is what we've come into contact with, this is what we swallowed, this is what's in our food, like so many things. This is the, these are the drugs that we've got in the system. This is how much excreted cholesterol we have from our blood back into the faeces. Like, there's so much going on, right? There's this like really interesting connection. There's a relationship between the enteric nervous system, so this second brain, as we call it, huge network that feeds into vagal nerve, vagus nerve communication in the brain. And then there's the chemicals that the gut microbes actually produce.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  So the chemicals that they produce directly impact the signalling, but they also impact how well regulated the inflammation in the gut is. So the gut barrier is one cell thick, it's fairly fragile considering how much goes on there. And it relies really quite heavily on having a really lovely thick mucin layer that keeps the excretion products inside the gut away from the gut barrier and away from the immune system cells that sit just outside the gut barrier, ready and waiting just in case a pathogen comes through and we need to sort of react, right?

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  So this mucin layer is critical and a lot of the mucin layer is, is encouraged, so the cells that make it feed off of short chain fatty acids, which is one of the primary metabolites of gut microbes. By the way, gut microbes make hundreds, so I should state that they make neurotransmitters and enzymes and vitamins for us, but short chain fatty acids have this really specific and important role in providing energy for the gut cells to do their job. When our diets don't support this sort of activity and the mucin layer becomes degraded. What happens is that, so the gut microbes that are starved of the prebiotic fibres of the polyphenols in diet. They actually start to eat the mucin, which is not what we want.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  And then the barrier becomes compromised. And we have what is sometimes referred to as increased permeability. Some people love calling it leaky gut. I hate that term, but you know, you get, it gets the picture, right? And this directly impacts inflammation of the gut. Now, this is important because it's not comfortable and it leads to, you know, gastric effects. So like irritable bowel syndrome obviously has increased inflammation. But for the brain, this is especially important because those inflammatory cytokines in the gut, which are proteins that send out the signals saying, hey, something's wrong here, like we're not happy, travel to the brain. And inflammatory cytokines are small enough to cross the blood brain barrier.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  They affect the inflammatory status of the brain. Now, this is a huge, this is not actually a massive, it's not a brand new theory. It's a few years old, but it's so powerful that there is now a real understanding that increased inflammation and systemic inflammation, which is often in most people driven by gut inflammation. Now, there are obviously conditions like rheumatoid arthritis where it's systemic because of autoimmune conditions. It's directly linked to your risk of brain health diseases, including depression and anxiety, but also risk of Alzheimer's, risk of Parkinson's and other diseases.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  What's really amazing about brain, thinking about the future of brain health is actually brain health and gut health are becoming so interconnected. And I love thinking about evolutionary theory and I love thinking about how we form in the womb. And when you think about how we form in the womb, it comes from the same tissue, like the initial folding, right? So when you think about it that way, it's not that surprising, but it is to think that we can directly impact the risk of brain diseases by influencing gut health. And you've already, you probably already know this Jonathan, but you know, there's theories around the origins of Parkinson's disease in the gut.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  And now Alzheimer's is the more recent theory that we think there's actually certain. So Professor John Crean, University of Cork, he's like the leading world expert in this. And he recently wrote a paper explaining his, you know, one of the working theories that there's microbial translocation from the gut to the brain that is causing inflammation that is triggering plaque formation as a inflammatory response. I mean, that changes the way we think about Alzheimer's. So in some ways, what this means is that like, we can actually act to change this risk. So we, we know this genetic predispositions for some of these diseases.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  But these are predispositions, they're risks, they're not necessarily, they're not certainties. There's very few purely genetic conditions that means you will a hundred percent get this, right? Huntington's disease is one of them, one of the most famous. But there's less than two percent of diseases have that. Now we have this clear picture building up of how the brain, brain health is affected by the gut. It helps to explain why diet plays such an important role on brain health. Like, why is it that certain dietary patterns seem to reduce the risk of dementia so much? How is it that an intervention giving people with severe depression,

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  a Mediterranean dietary intervention reduces the depression risk, the depression score by thirty percent? Like, how did that, how? So what the gut microbiome offers is understanding the pathway, that what is the mediating factor between consumption of this food and a health outcome. Now, of course, it's not purely through the gut microbiome and the gut-brain axis. There are also important factors in the diet that are themselves cognitively protective because they protect the neurons. So neuroprotective elements, one of the most famous is that caffeine consumption, which is known to be neuroprotective, to improve cognitive function. The other, but some people are caffeine sensitive. So it's like, we don't want people to heart palpitations

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  and lose out on sleep. There's lots of other ways that we think about how food protects the brain. Having a healthy dietary fat profile in your diet is incredibly important for brain health. So making sure that you are getting a variety of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet, of poly and monounsaturated fatty acids in the diet. Blood flow to the brain is incredibly important. How can we protect cardiovascular health to make sure that your brain is getting enough oxygen essentially, because your arteries are blocked? So how can we make sure your vascular, vascular health and brain health are like that? Like, they coexist, right? So again, it's like thinking, thinking about all these different things, but hypertension's a huge risk factor for cognitive decline. The last thing that

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  I think is talked about, but sometimes it's missed, and I'm fascinated to see in clinical practice, not just my own, but others, how this can sometimes hold the key to transformative cognitive improvement in people, in older people, specifically sort of over the age of sixty-five. And that is alcohol.

• 1:10:41Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  So there's a sort of narrative, I think, that exists that having a drink a day, if you've had a drink a day all of your life and you're okay, then you can continue to do so into older age. But the effects of alcohol, especially the neurotoxic effects of alcohol, are worse when we're older. So like, you might be able to drink quite regularly in your twenties and thirties and forties and still go to work and function and have, you know, it's not ideal for anyone, let's be honest. It's a class-one carcinogen, senorotoxin. It is a teratogen. It's not something we definitely want to have every day. But the effects, the neurotoxic effects get worse as we age. So you can sometimes have a transformative effect on someone's life by just asking them to reduce their alcohol intake later in life.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  And that's worth mentioning for anyone who's listening who thinks, huh, maybe I do drink every day and maybe I shouldn't.

• 1:11:33Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and maybe for reasons different than they were thinking about. If we zoom the lens out, it's like so much of what we're talking about. I think we've learned so much more about the mechanisms of why all these things are happening now. We can now like draw these connections that we haven't been able to draw before and measure things we haven't been able to measure before. And, you know, a lot of myths have sort of like fallen to the wayside. But it's funny because, you know, if you really zoom the lens out here and you say, okay, so like, what do we do? It's kind of what like, you know, parents have been like, sort of like telling their kids to do like, yeah. Fifty years ago, it's like, you know, go move your body on a regular basis, you know, like challenge your mind, be social.

• 1:12:15Jonathan Fields?

  And then just eat a lot of really good whole foods that are, you know, like as as close to the earth as you can get. And and clean proteins. It's funny. It's like we've become so obsessed with measuring everything and finding all of the individual nutrients and supplements and vitamins and micronutrients and macronutrients. And like that, but at the end of the day, it sounds like what you're really talking about is is so much more basic.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Jonathan Fields?

  Than where I think so, so often we're headed.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  You're so right. So it's so funny because I think there's two faces to nutrition. There's food wisdom. I love that term. Food wisdom is what your grandma would have told you to eat. Like eat your greens first or, you know, make sure you get, you have some fruit today. So things that a lot of people listening would be like, oh, yeah, like actually in all cultures, by the way, there is always like this food wisdom of eating herbs, eating greens, eating vegetables, eating seasonally. It's really interesting because a lot of the science we have now explains the complex mechanism. Isams behind why these things work.

• 1:13:24Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  But the actual advice is not massively different. So we, I think we have to give credit to ourselves and our ancestors that we evolved as a species. Centering our entire lives around the food we eat. So when we think back to hunter gatherer times. We would spend many hours of our day hunting and gathering food. And then we would come back to our tribe and we would share the food. And then we would draw pictures on the cave walls of how we found the food. Okay. Now, there's also this beautiful theory that we co-evolved with the gut microbes that we have.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Which is why we have such an unusually long, large intestine with an unusually large surface area for mammals. And the most recent theories around why we evolved to have such big brains and be so smart. Actually centre around the role of the gut microbiome in helping us to achieve that. So we've literally co-evolved with this wonderful community of microbes that allow us to. Absorb nutrients from the plants and the roots and the fruits and the nuts and the seeds that we used to forage. That we do not code, our genetic code does not code the enzymes to break down. So we would have never been able to extract nutrients from these foods, had it not been for the co-evolution with our gut microbes, right?

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  And now here we are, many thousands of years later. And what's happened is that we've, our food culture has shifted very rapidly in the last sort of hundred years. Away from food being a central tenet of what we do and towards convenience. And it's suddenly like, you don't need to think about what you're gonna eat because you can just drink your lunch. Whoa. That is not what we evolved to do, right? So what's happened now is that our science is actually bringing us back to. Hey, look at how clever that evolution thing was. And look at all the mechanisms in place that allow us to thrive and survive. Eating this variety of.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Foods and making the most of this variety of other foods that are actually less accessible historically. And have a very resilient system that can store different things in different ways. So when we start to appreciate that, I think we start to view food differently as well. So sometimes the narrative that like, oh, science is just telling us what we already know. I think that's wonderful. What science is helping us do is understand how this is working. And why it's working, like nutrition science is at the point now where we can. Literally say, okay, this pathway is leading to this and this metabolite is causing this effect. And how amazing that we understand that, but it doesn't change what works.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  So I'm always very cautious of people who try to overcomplicate nutrition advice. Nutrition science is complex, sure, and that's why it's its own science. And that's why we should always ideally seek nutrition science expert advice on nutrition. Because it is its own thing, right? So I would never go to a um gynecologist to ask advice on my cardiovascular health. Because it's a different system. And so I would urge people to really look to nutrition professionals to find out about nutrition, basically. That I'm not taking that away, nutrition science is complex.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  But the simplicity of good food advice and the simplicity of the diet that actually helps us thrive. Comes from our biology, comes from evolution. When people try to overcomplicate that is for me the biggest red flag. So when people are saying, you know, lectins are killing you. Or the fructose pathway explains everything and therefore you should avoid all fruit. Or this fear mongering around food is completely unfound. It's unscientific, basically. So people just should be able to embrace the fact that food is there to literally support our health.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  It's we have evolved to thrive off food. If you find yourself fearing food and embracing unregulated supplements, the balance is off. Like, we need to return to what we know has helped us strive and get here as a species. Now, there is also a lot of concern specifically in the US around the quality of our food, around the nutrient composition of food, around farming practices. And listen, these are very valid points. There is overwhelming science to suggest, right, and that not just suggest, there is overwhelming science to confirm that eating a whole food diet that is predominantly made of whole plants,

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  not all made, as I said, we don't have to be vegan, but mostly plants, including nuts and seeds, whole grains, legumes, beans, chickpeas, legumes, like all those wonderful foods, mushrooms, aubergines, tomatoes, whatever you like to eat, herbs and spices, is going to support our health and it's going to allow us to thrive and continue to live a long and healthy life. If you're worried about the quality of the food that you're eating, then there is always a way to slightly improve that. But for the majority of people, affording food is the primary barrier. And so if you find food that is affordable for you and your family, that is as minimum price as possible, that is the most important factor.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Whether it's organic or grass-fed or from a biodynamic farm is a secondary factor. That we're moving from a size effect that is big to a relatively small size effect. So I think the really important job we have now in public health nutrition, which is sort of my, my branch, is to remove the fear of food and help people to reconnect with food as a really powerful ally that we need to embrace. Because otherwise, the way we're headed, well, the way we are now, is that diet-related chronic diseases are the number one killers. So that's not working.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  So we need to re-embrace the power of food as a health ally and do that in a way where we take personal agency. So as much as we can have power to choose, we do. But we also put huge pressure on government and on policymakers to make healthy food a priority for everyone. Because we can make changes ourselves, but we don't all have the same access to change. So to level out the playing field, pressure needs to be put above to stop putting profit over people's health and regulate some of the food industry to make healthy food, healthy whole food accessible and equitable for everyone.

• 1:20:23Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Return to our roots. That is the future of public health nutrition. And that includes supporting our farmers. It includes making our food systems more efficient. It actually also includes working with the food industry to make processed foods healthier, because that is possible. And then the part that I'm passionate about and that I hope to be doing by talking to people like yourself is to educate people on the power that food can have for them to help improve their lives, their enjoyment of life, their longevity, and that it doesn't have to be complicated or scary. It can be pleasurable and fun. I mean, I love food, right?

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Some people don't have the best relationship with food, but at a very primordial level, very, very sort of biological level, food is enjoyable. Eating is pleasurable. So reconnecting with that, even if it means starting with a square of dark chocolate and letting it melt really slowly on your mouth. There's so much to be gained from embracing food as a health ally on all levels, social, physical, mental, like it's amazing.

• 1:21:32Jonathan Fields?

  I love that. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  I think for me to live a good life is to really, I, I, I live my life enjoying every day, doing my best every day, knowing that I've been true to myself and my values. And that includes investing in myself for me to be the best person I can be for myself and my work, but primarily for my two children, my girls, because I want to be around to enjoy them and, and enjoy life with them for as long as I can.

• 1:22:16Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Thank you.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:22:19Jonathan Fields?

  Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, safe bet, you'll also love the conversation we had with Dr. Gabrielle Line about the muscle centric approach to aging well. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just

• 1:23:02Jonathan Fields?

  one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:23:26Jonathan Fields?

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Are you on track for financial independence? If you're on track, the same way you're getting back to the gym, as in maybe next year, then this one's for you. NerdWallet Wealth Partners offers free tools for high earners who'd like an actual answer instead of a vibe, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Think of it as a fitness test that you can take sitting down. Their wealth building checklist for high earners. It's a step by step guide for prioritizing your dollars. Once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Good news, this is one workout you can actually finish.

• 1:24:09Jonathan Fields?

  Find out more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/good. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

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• 1:25:01Speaker 04

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• 1:25:44Speaker 04

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