[0:00] Welcome, my name is Dr. Warrick Bishop. I'm a cardiologist, an author, [0:04] And a keynote speaker. [0:06] I'm CEO of the Healthy Heart Network. I'm all about trying to help people. [0:12] Live as well as possible. [0:13] For as long as possible. [0:15] Heart disease is huge in Australia. [0:18] Every 20 minutes someone suffers a heart attack. Most of these could probably have been avoided if only we knew what to do. [0:26] This podcast is all about helping you understand [0:29] Blood pressure, white, cholesterol, [0:32] For better health. [0:33] If you enjoy this podcast, I would be honoured for a five-star review. [0:37] You can share it with your family and friends. It may well save. [0:41] Someone you love. [0:42] Hi, if you're like many of us these days and you're interested in how you're going to live, [0:48] I would like to welcome you to my podcast and videocast station and I would also like to introduce and welcome Professor Pete Smith. Pete how are you? - Very good Warrick, yourself? [1:07] Yeah, really good. I feel really privileged to have Pete on the show today. Indeed, Pete and I, um, [1:18] I did all our medical schooling in exactly the same school. Pete was a year ahead of me and has gone on to [1:26] Great things. He's a professor of immunology. He's interested in the longevity space. He's got other interests outside when it comes to skin care. A very qualified doctor. [1:38] I'm a guest on the show. Pete, just remind me, immunologist, but over 170 odd papers that you've written or been involved with. [1:48] Yeah, the emphasis is not on odd, but I've done a lot of papers, Warrick. Yeah, part of the Alma mater. I started the journey 45 years ago. You started 44 years ago, 43 years ago. So it's a great place to come from. And the opportunity to collaborate is exciting to be able to explore questions. I ended up doing allergy as a career. [2:18] Because it actually was a new in the early 90s when I was looking for what area in general medicine to go into, it was one that was relatively new that was emerging. It seemed to make sense, the bits fitted together in my mind and it was one [2:34] If you got the pieces together, you could change people's lives in the right direction, whereas a lot of medicine is actually stopping disease processes, putting the brakes on. [2:43] If we actually got things right, we could actually dramatically improve people's quality of life. I wasn't prepared for the 500, 700-fold increase in food allergy. I just happened to be at the forefront of that and had wonderful experiences with that. I did a PhD in molecular immunology, which sets me up very well for neuroimmunology. I'm doing work with Griffith University and their Menzhi Center for Neuroimmunology. [3:31] So I've got different hats, but it actually allows me to work at different fronts and with teams as well. That's the important thing, to collaborate and share that knowledge. [3:44] So what I'd like to do is bring it back around to your book. You've written a book and what I'd really like to do is [3:52] I want to share some of the components of that book. Obviously you're an allergist. Does that actually... [3:57] I mean your book is 30 Minutes to Longevity. I mean how did you come up with a name like [4:19] People talk lifespan and longevity and... [4:54] The things of multi-billionaires and people who can biohack themselves, people who can spend half a day trying to live longer and half your life disappears living longer. But I've basically just stood it down to, look, if you can get 30 minutes a day to commit to your health, that will be paid back somewhere between 20 and 50 fold back if you start that in your 40s. [5:21] Well, your book sort of suggests that you might get an extra decade or even a little bit more if you're able to invest that time, Pete. So just in a couple of words, what would that 30 minutes look like for someone who's listening? [5:34] I think early on paying attention to mindfulness, stress in your life was where you'd spend a lot of that to start with as well as paying attention to sleep and the quality of food that we eat. We want to eat the rainbow, we want less processed food, we want to eat in time-restricted windows. We have less inflammation with time-restricted eating. [6:04] So they want peptides, but you make your own GLP-1 and get 40% less spiking sugar which ages us if we eat the right way. So if we eat vegetables first then protein, we don't actually eat as much carbs, but even if we eat that same food, [6:20] The reverse way around, we get 40% less spiking of shoulder, the area under the curve of our glycemic curve, just by eating the Mediterranean way. [6:29] So part of the Mediterranean diet is not what you eat, it's how you eat it. Because the French will often start a meal with a salad, wouldn't they? Exactly. So it tells our body, here's a bit of fibre, get your GLP-1s going because there's food coming. Yeah. And so we'd graze and nibble, have a few olives, have dalmati and definitely start the salads, as well as the not frying food, it's the food. [6:59] I'm a good one. [7:08] I have to say I love my sleep. [7:12] Mindfulness, um, [7:15] Good food, nutrition, sleep, critical, foundational, exercise almost certainly fits in. Absolutely, yes, that's where 20 minutes of your day will end up to 20 minutes that you want to be doing at least 20 minutes a day of exercise and then your other 10 minutes will get split into relaxation, mindfulness, positive thoughts as you wake up, positive thoughts as you go to sleep, which will improve your sleep. [7:41] Don't take the problems of the day to sleep. Don't think about the problems of tomorrow. They belong in tomorrow. So if your brain feels better to go to sleep, if you're actually thinking about happy thoughts, positive thoughts as you go to bed, [7:54] One of the things that I thought was really interesting in the early part of your book is you describe [8:02] A patient who brought in a shopping bag of supplements and basically said, are any of these actually working? And those supplements, is there a role for supplements in this 30 minutes a day, Pete? I think there is. There is data from large clinical trials that actually a simple my dear vitamin can actually improve longevity. Vitamin D is very important, but I mix my vitamin Ds up personally. [8:32] B3 and K2, we need the vitamin K to increase the vitamin D receptor so the vitamin D actually gets drawn to the, um, [8:39] But there is actually different behavior of lipid-based vitamin D. So I'll have some D3 and K2 three or four days a week. I'll have a lipid-based form one day a week, like 5000 international units. So I keep my levels above 100 micro -- it's micro moles per litre, I think it is, or micrograms, I haven't got the head space there. But our reference range is for disease. [9:06] Yes. It's not for health. So the Europeans are talking about levels of... So the endocrinologist talking levels of being above 75 and we're talking about... Actually, I think it's micrograms per litre and you divide by 2.5 micromoles. [9:28] Healty levels are over 100 and there's effects of those on less anxiety, depression, in fact even less allergy when we have vitamin D replete. Even you'll notice that your pathology forms are coming back saying levels under 80 are still at risk of osteopenia. [9:47] I think vitamin D is a good example of that. [9:52] I've certainly heard that vitamin D has a role not only in bones as we would mostly get, but really important in the immune system and you would be very aware of that as I've only just started seeing information about that. [10:10] It seems we don't really understand the broad nature of some of these components of our diet, some of these nutritional components. They must be so intertwined that the complexity still evades us to a degree. It does. I think one of the guys who got the Nobel Prize for Insulence said for every complicated problem there is a simple and wrong answer. But I like to take it back to basics as well. [10:45] And that's part of exercising as well, which I cover in the book. Vitamin D, if we're getting... Most vitamin D that we get comes from the conversion of cholesterol through to vitamin D. So safe, sensible sunshine. We don't want a sunburn, but that's equivalent to a 20,000 unit shot of vitamin D. But it's said 30% of body area, 10 minutes, three times a week will get your vitamin D up. Now, in very, too adequate, if you've got a Fitzpatrick one or two scale. [11:15] If you got darker skin, you might need four or five times that. [11:19] To get sufficient vitamin D. It's hard to get it through diet. [11:23] And so most of the vitamin D supplements we actually have is lanolin from sheep which is being put under light and converted into vitamin D. Okay, interesting. So that's an oil. So cholesterol gets converted to vitamin D. So most of it is lanolin derived and [11:44] I mix mine up a little bit. And there have been studies showing on longevity and actually telomere length that vitamin D has got that capacity. And there's a modify study done which also showed that you could have longevity with a simple multivitamin a day. So these achieve easily not the whole several years of life benefit. [12:14] If there's something that's low cost, [12:16] And has got minimal side effects. We do want to be careful with multivitamins not to have... [12:25] But too much B6, many of them have higher B6 levels of normal we've been recognizing in recent years. peripheral neuropathy is nerve tingling pain, so check your B6 level if you've got nerve discomfort. Pyridoxine for anyone who's listening and doesn't know what B6 is, pyridoxine. It also turns up in magnesium actually. I've found... Yes. [12:45] I found it on a container of magnesium at some stage, but without getting too caught on the details, I want to swing back to some of the concepts in your book and let the people who are listening actually track your book down so they can get some of those details out. One of the really nice components of what you raise in your book is, [13:04] The science and who we can trust and how robust or not that science is. You've talked about difficulty in replicating studies. You've even talked about credibility audits. Would you like to just touch on that a little bit for us? Yeah, look, the, I'll start on one of the first ones, which is a bugbear. The virtual authority these days, we've actually getting, if you've got any form of [13:34] So, you know, if you're playing a game or something just to chill, you're getting ads popping up with promises of health by clearly AI-generated experts. They're not accountable to anybody. They can make outlandish claims. They can say, "This product does this magical thing and see people improve in front of your eyes." And that just stays at the back of the brain. [14:04] You actually can purchase, you'll end up purchasing this. And I've seen people buy stuff from these sources and the ads are there to try and sell. So there's that. We also have the influencers trying to drive popularity. They get paid by clicks and they sometimes endorse products that they get a clip of the ticket for. We have people who are very good communicators who actually haven't even got specials qualifications. [14:34] And some of them have sold millions of books because they're very good communicators. That's not to say they're not a good communicator, they're not a synthesizer of information. Some of them aren't doctors even, which surprises people, or not medical doctors. So that's important. Some of them are great research scientists as well. We have neuroscientists, we have longevity scientists, they all have podcasts, [15:05] And as you're aware, the number of clicks are related to... you can get income generated when you're in the sort of 100,000 plus rate. [15:20] So, [15:21] We get people making claims and sometimes people make claims to be a point of difference. [15:26] Yes. Without that much evidence. [15:30] As well. [15:31] Certainly in the space that I'm in, Pete, which is dealing with cholesterol, I spend a lot of time deconstructing beliefs that people have formed, which have been delivered by individuals who have got an opinion or a particular aspect of cholesterol or stans that they drive very hard, without necessarily the entire picture, actually. [16:01] Yes. [16:02] I don't want to ping you down, but you know there are names like Sinclair who's an Australian. Huberman. These are names and people who we might think would be pretty reliable. Let's take Andrew Huberman top of the list probably a great buyer, great buyer, great buyer. [16:25] "Scientists in neuroscience." [16:29] So very important that neuroimmune has a lot of people chatting and has communicated and has built up his podcast, looks after himself, probably excessively works out. I don't know, um, [16:42] And, um, yeah, uh, very alpha male dominant, but he's, um, and there's nothing wrong with that, um, [16:51] But I wouldn't necessarily have a neuroscientist be advising you on nutrition. [16:56] I wouldn't have a neuroscientist be saying, "Hey, have these peptides." And those have been discussions. And David Sinclair is an anti-aging scientist, brilliant guy, has done work on Yemen archivectors and is now using those in human trials, which is fascinating. You might be able to return aging back 20 years. [17:18] With a combination of these, OSK, the abbreviation for those Yamanaka factors, those three factors that will tell yourselves, "Hey, we can turn your clock back a bit," and you can do it again. He's actually done experiments where you've got mice that made them, turned them back postmenopausal mice to premenopausal, had a litter of pups, gone through menopause again, done it back. But when they turn them back, they have increased muscle muscle strength, they have better bone, they have better bone, they have better lung function, they have a. [17:48] So he said there's nothing, well ethics and something, but possibly thinking the 55 year old woman in five or ten years who comes in and says I'm going to turn my clock back 20 years. [18:02] Um, [18:03] Now, women aren't looking forward to the menopause two or three times, but that 20 is sort of talking about living 100 years healthy. 130 might be possible, 150 might be possible in our lifetimes if we do this. There's one of those Yemen-arca factors that they've dropped off which is involved in possible malignant change, and that's one of the careful things we don't want to [18:28] He was a good one of the researchers in his group, once they found that they could actually do this via a gene transfer mechanism, [18:45] They cured blindness in mice. They crushed the optic nerve, dead cells. They transferred these factors via a viral vector. [18:57] And they had switched on and off with tetracycline. So tetracycline could turn the gene on [19:04] And withdrawals. So a ted on, ted off switch with a viral gene transfer. So they've transferred this virus, switched the genes on and they could regenerate the optic nerves and people could see again. They're now doing it in trials that have started this year in people who are blind. [19:23] This will be in the realms of six figures plus US, but if you're blind, [19:28] Yeah, par per million dollars to get your eyesight back. Great. And ultimately he wants to, there are small molecules that will turn on these genes, but that's going to need a lot of work and a lot of funding. But the funding is there, this is David who's doing it out of Harvard. [19:49] He's a prominent research scientist. So again, talking about sleep, nutrition. He's headlined lots of meetings where people are talking about that and he's written books. But is he a total health expert as well? Has he got that balance? He's doing exciting work. Peter Atiyah is a great communicator and people are paying $100,000 US apparently. [20:19] He has not done even specialist training of any sort. He did a few years of research, he's got a few papers, but it's very, you know, pretty modest. But he's synthesized information, he's got a team, and they do that sort of in-tepth concierge health, so they can do deep dives on billionaires. Again, is he going to take that back to the common man? [20:49] You get lost in knowledge and you get lost in information. I wanted to say it's achievable for everybody and without too much commitment you can reach high goals. Brian Johnson is another person, buyer hacker. And Brian, he's made money selling, I think it was something to eBay or some system, it was a payment system. [21:16] He would mark himself as the most studied human ever because he would be spending up to a million a year, even two, investigating his health and self-biohacking and self-reporting. So he's not published in peer reviewed, but he's self-published. And that is important to have the independence of somebody reviewing the literacy. Is it reproduced or is it done in a control manner, not self-experimentation. [21:46] Recently he's developed an autoimmune gastritis. [21:49] I'm speaking to... [21:54] I'm a colleague about this, you sort of think the self-experiment as having [22:02] I'm a good one. [22:05] Now, stem cells are made in response to tissue injury. Great, they can repair you, invigorate yourself, but they're often associated with a whole pile of other mediators of a cellular injury. [22:18] So if you're having that all the time, [22:23] Your body thinks it's in danger, has the capacity to say, "I'm in danger." If your body thinks there's a fight, it's going to go looking for a place to [22:32] So that's a working hypothesis, but that's one that he hasn't. So his body's ended up taking his stomach. So from a longevity champion to somebody who is going to have a worse quality of life and probably need to be on immunosuppressants. It's a very interesting place to come from. [22:54] It certainly raises the issue of where good data is and what the common... [23:00] The common man, woman. Yes. Looking to maximise their journey, what they can take. I think, I mean, my quick read through your book, [23:10] Really, you outline very simple fundamentals that anyone can follow without complexity, without difficult science. And we know people get caught up in [23:22] Wanty a bit more. We, for example, in your book, you even mentioned that they looked at several million cancer patients who all looked at complementary medicine and actually found that a large number of those individuals have put themselves at greater risk of death by following alternate paths. So, yes, that was when they gave up on conventional medicine for complementary medicine because the promise was bigger by those people. [23:52] I'm not saying there's not a role for complementary in conjunction with conventional therapy. It's when they went that they did the divergence, there was actually a rapid increase in mortality from those cancers. I don't think we've got every aspect of medicine right in some forms of hypersensitivity. And we just disordinary, for example, that I see, [24:22] I think medicines can help maybe 50, 60% of the case. The other part is lifestyle, which is where I really became interested in this because our medicines are band-aids. We've got to get the lifestyle right if we're going to get the maximum effect of our medication. You'll see patients with hypertension, [25:12] I think this is a really good lead into the foundations that you really discuss in your book and you put such a priority on sleep even before diet and exercise and in my own mind I used to think of sleep as one of the pillars of good health with diet and exercise and stress minimization. [25:42] I've now moved, and I think I'm aligning with you here, to sleep being foundational and the other pillars sit on top of that. So just walk us through why sleep is so critical from your perspective, Pete. [25:57] Sleep is the time that our brain gets cleansed. Our toxins from our brain get washed away as our glial cells contract and allows toxins to get out. This is the glial, sorry, glymphatic network. And we learnt about lymphatics in medical school, but the glymphatic system was only described in 2013. So many doctors wouldn't have heard about it. [26:24] So we need quality sleep for the release of that. [26:28] There's ongoing neuroinflammation. The body that hasn't rested is going to feel at danger. [26:35] It's more on guard. If somebody's had a poor sleep, [26:38] In my world, it only takes half the dose of allergen to cause anaphylaxis. [26:43] Wow. So people have been sleep deprived given the same dose of peanut that they had when they had a good sleep compared to sleep deprived. They were actually only allowed two hours sleep in a hospital, which is not surprising if you've ever been in hospital to get only a couple of hours sleep. And they found half the day, it was actually a 45% reduction in the dose required to induce anaphylaxis with peanuts. So bad things happen. [27:13] If anybody is going to go and look in the world of sleep, I wouldn't go further than Matthew Walker. A great starting point. He's got his own podcast, his book, Why We Sleep. But he's got a YouTube video about this. He talks about a 24% increase in heart attacks on the first day of daylight savings. That's one hour less of sleep and about a 20% reduction on the first day of when clocks go back that extra hour. Similar increase in car accidents. [27:42] So the body gets stressed out in many ways of lack of sleep and compared to over 100 years ago, it's an hour, at least one hour, maybe an hour and a half less sleep we're getting because we're trying to pack too much into our lives and then we're too tired to actually live it all. We have accelerated inflammation. It's a big deal, isn't it? Look, one of the other things in the foundational component of your book is you talk about a breathing trick called cyclic sign. [28:07] Yes. Do you want to tell us about that? How does that work? Just telling the vagus, the autonomic nervous system that the sighing breath is you're allowing yourself that comfort to... ...that you're not on guard. [28:21] It's the parasympathetic, the prolonged expiration. And when we hold an expiration out, you'll actually know as your heart rate goes down, as a cardiologist, you know with expiration, heart rate drops. So it's just prolonging that and telling the body it is safe. So we can, there's many autonomic exercises that we can do to recalibrate. One of the, the police and ambulance drivers and fire engine fireys uses something called butterfly tapping. [28:51] And, um, [28:53] I just cross the arms, tapping across the arms and just doing the breath in, box breathing, in for four, hold for four, [29:33] I prefer butterfly tapping, but if you're actually on the way to the car after work and you're just trying to get rid of stress, you can do the double... [29:44] In, double breath in and then [29:46] I.e. [29:47] Prolonged expiration or just the, ah, 'cause you're just letting it all out. [29:53] And this might sound woo, but it's true. I like that term. Because some of these do sound until you've tried them. So... Well, we know breath work's really powerful for resetting the nervous system and things like box breathing are well recognized across first responders as you were describing, but also military and all sorts of situations where high stress and high pressure could be... [30:19] I mean, there's no question that [30:31] Yeah, yeah. And we often probably don't think about it as much as we should. [30:37] You talk about strength and grip strength, muscle strength, [30:58] I can't wait until... [30:59] I came across something that was fascinating the other day. In fact, I did a podcast on it, I think. Pretty sure I did a podcast on it, but [31:09] But the premise was the group strength wasn't necessarily related to people's exercise, their obesity and various other lifestyle factors. It was almost, it almost stood alone independently. And that really surprised me. Is it something that, [31:27] You're alluding to, is it something you're born with being stronger or is it...? No, I think it's one of those core muscles and again, growing up as a doctor, sometimes you say, "I don't know." That's an important skill, "I don't know yet." Yes. [31:45] It's probably going to be related to core strength, our ability to sustain ourselves, but how [31:53] How long we can stand on one leg is actually related to mortality and risk of fall, which as you know, a fractured femur has got a terrible outcome with immobility and actually being immobile for a while, the body says it's in danger, it doesn't exercise, it doesn't move. In hospital, low vitamin D, [32:18] I think there's a receptor I'm really interested in called the receptor for advanced glycation end products, the RAIDH receptor. Now that RAIDH receptor goes down if we exercise. Because if we're exercising, we don't need to look for danger. [32:32] If we're not exercising, it goes up saying good for danger and it binds to ligands in our diet. So if fried food, bacon is evil. Bacon is really high in advanced glycation and products. Chips, if we eat a lot of sugar, sugars bind to proteins and form these compounds that look like damaged tissue and that creates inflammation. So a low advanced glycation and product diet is a Mediterranean diet. [32:55] Rosemary, acid rosemary actually is the only compound that's been shown to reverse glycation. [33:00] So glycation is one of the ways we age. We get these compounds sticking to our tissues and they become stiffer and harder. [33:09] And they cause inflammation at the site of damage. And some of them will carry methyl groups which will damage DNA. [33:17] Smokers will have high methylglyoxal because that's one of the top tissue toxins from cigarette smoking. As you know there's over 2000 chemicals but glycation is one of those things that we can measure. [33:29] It's like your body rusting really, isn't it? It is. We oxidize, we glycate and there's an inflame aging. So those are probably our three methods of wear and tear. [33:44] Okay. Well, let's keep rolling on with some concepts within your book. One of the things that you talk about is testing yourself and you tested yourself actually during a biological age. Tell us a little bit about that, Pete. [33:57] There are many ways of looking at your cell ageing, various proteins, your telomere length. And I did one with a group of people probably back in '22 as a fingertip blood test. And I think I came back, currently I'm 63. [34:21] And when I did this a few years ago, I'm pretty happy I came back in my like 42. And then we did some interventions in health and we said, I guess, see if we can move the clock. So about a couple of months later I did it again. And I had aged 15 years. So that to me raises some questions about validity of it. It's a product that you shipped over to America. So that can take several weeks. [34:51] I was during the COVID time, so postage could be delayed. [34:56] So that's let me question the inter-test reliability, but also I've just reviewed a paper and written an editorial for related to inflammation and our clocks, we have a [35:15] We have more inflammation at various times a day. So we probably should be doing our tests at fixed time. The paper that I was actually reviewing was talking about inflammatory mediators. The epithelium itself has its own circadian rhythm. These are cells which had changes in inflammatory outputs depending on time of day. We normally would think of [35:57] You look at the lining of your gut, for example, the cells there can have a variation of, um, [36:06] Inflammation associated to an internal clock. To a dienal pattern, yeah. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? Yeah. So I think the original, it was a French scientist, I think in about 18, it was an 18th century, might be the turn of 18th century, basically put a mimosa plant into a cupboard and still found that it would actually flower. So that was the concept sort of actually plants having a succumbensi. [36:36] I've got to show off because I have my glycan age. It was a glycation clock that I did last month and my glycan age came back at 37 which I'm really happy with. So what I'm doing is seeming to be working. So 26 younger. Well, following my book. So I'm now going to be working. [37:06] I now like glyconate. So that's looking at glycosylation, sugars sticking on tissue with age. [37:15] You probably don't eat much sugar anyway, I'm guessing. I try and minimise that and... [37:21] One of the really big wins is looking at ancestral patterns of eating, so time-restricted windows. That's such an easy win. It's got to suit you and suit your lifestyle, and it's not strict. The Zoe project, Kim Spector is really big on this, if people wish to go and look at that further, not to drag them away from your podcast worry, but the Zoe podcast, [37:51] Thank you. [37:52] It really had a lot of focus on this time restricted eating windows where they say men 10 hours, women often, men 8 hours, women 10 hours, because we have most inflammation in our body, [38:05] After we eat microbes, eat the food and lipopolysaccharides get released as bacteria reproduce. So our most sensitive bacteria are the ones that actually have that long term relationship with us which reduce inflammation in our body. But they only come out when there's not inflammation about. So their most active things like agamanca is a [38:29] So, it may start to come out when you have them even for eight hours, ten hours. So, if we're nibbling all the time, we've got the sure that our bad bacteria like. So, [38:37] There are people that talk about if you start a time restricted eating window in your 40s, you might be able to add 10 years of lifespan just from that. [38:49] And if you do it in your 70s, four years. [38:52] So all is not lost. Zets eating, I have myself, I'll have black tea or black coffee, no not a sweetened one which will give you a little bit of like an Earl Grey, that sort of bergamot, it will give you flavor. It don't have artificial sweeteners that tells your brain you've got something and you're a bit hungrier. [39:13] And water till about 11.00, I do, I break my fast at 11.00 and try and eat by 7.00. So that time-restricted eating window gives my gut a break and it actually takes about three weeks as you know to have a good healthy habit. And it doesn't matter if you're going to have breakfast with friends one day, you're going to have a late meal out and eat a lot. It seems to be associated with this information. That is a really easy win. [39:43] I was a little bit of the time in the early morning. [39:45] I think that diet is better, so if you do a breakfast and then a lunch supper and then don't eat in the evening, that would be better and might get people to bed earlier as well to avoid the hunger. [39:58] And that nibbling eating that you might do in the evening. But time-restricted eating is a really good thing to move that clock. I can certainly validate that in my own experience. I tried time-restricted eating because I wanted to... [40:15] I encourage some of my patients who are insulin resistant, [40:19] And I thought before I advocated for them, I should make sure that it's possible. And so it took me a little while because I was a sworn breakfast eater. But over the course of a few months, I extended, extended. And honestly, Pete, these days I do one meal a day. I do it about 5.30 at night. So as soon as we wrap up here, I'll go and make myself something to eat. [40:49] It's worked very well for me. I was getting some arthritis and pain in my hands. [40:56] It's much better when I'm eating this way and if I am traveling, if we're with friends and doing three meals a day, immediately I'm sort of aware of the change actually. So for me, I'm very tuned into that. [41:14] Diff'rendi. [41:17] And it's probably our microbiome having the anti-inflammatory effect versus the pro-inflammatory effect when they reproduce. [41:25] They will release lycopolysaccharides, which is pro-inflammatory, which generates cytokines. But there's also [41:33] Other bacterial products, micro kinds that are with a good bacterial tend to support our mitochondria for cell energy and we're going to hear a lot more about mitochondria being the basis of health in the next five years. [41:50] I don't think we've got space to get on to mitochondria and mitokine is a word I want to dive on to and learn more about. Micro-kine. [41:59] A micro-kind. A microbial product that has either benefit or deleterious effect to host or other bacteria. Urolithin A, which is a pomegranate derivative, comes from gut microbiome break. But you need a gordonaceae bacteria to metabolize it. So walnuts and [42:29] Your epicalactins and your pomegranate and your berries are useless unless you've got that bacteria. So urolythanae is a mitochondrial support mechanism. So there are already mitophagy-related products out there that encourage health of mitochondria and reproduction of mitochondria that are available as commercial products from urolythanae. [42:59] Cows make lots of it. Cow urine. So they've found reduction in allergy. [43:07] I'm a full-fold reduction analogy in people that have their cattle and like the Swiss Alp experiment. So people who have cattle farms will get more environmental exposure, eurylithinase, they'll breathe it in. [43:22] Wow. And that's when you have your cattle living under your house and you're living with them rather than out in pasture. It's not for people who've got goats or sheep or chickens, it's actually cattle. [43:35] Wow. Look, you flag wearables and collecting data through your book as well. Yes. [43:44] Is that always a good thing or are there loopholes with that? What are your thoughts about it? [43:49] When we are scared, information is good and we crave information. [44:29] So I think once you get your patterns right, it can give you some good clues. But many of these devices come [44:38] With subscriptions and all of a sudden you're paying $10 a month for your own data. And that can all add up. I'd rather spend the $10 a month in a multivitamin and vitamin D and maybe a good omega-3. So maybe that costs 20. But getting the feedback, getting the heart rate variability, seeing your basal heart rates under 60 is nice to see because you're fit. [45:08] Seeing you getting your heart rate up. These days we're actually getting those with Apple watches or Samsung watches. So the smart watches are getting smarter and you're not having to pay a premium for them. And some of them will also sell your health data. So the privacy of your health data. They're saying we're collecting it for the greater good of the company. And Apple are actually ultra secure with your privacy. [45:38] So that's one thing. You talk about what's Apple's biggest gain in its 50 years, which has been argued their stance on data privacy. [45:50] They have great inventions, but it's about data privacy. So you get a lot of good information with your Apple Watch. [46:27] That I'm doing it on my terms. [46:29] So when I have stress in my life, [46:31] It knows that signal is not one to be worried about. So that hit is important. People who do ultra training, it's a J-shaped curve. So you're getting benefit and when you over exercise, that rate receptor will go up, will go down with exercise. But if you're doing a lot of exercise, it will go up. [46:52] It's thinking, gee, this person is in danger having to exercise so much. So you'll actually be in a pro-inflammatory state. So we see these super athletes who suddenly died from cardiovascular events in their 60s. [47:04] We know they have more coronary calcium endurance athletes. We also know that they run a very high risk, almost inevitable if you're a high enough level rower, for example, cyclist, for example, to develop atrial fibrillation in later years as well, regardless of ongoing exercise, believe it or not. Have a look at the RAID receptor, the receptor for advanced glycation end products there as well. [47:34] Thank you. [47:35] Yeah, wow. Tell me a bit about genetics. I've seen patients who wander in and they're looking in pretty good nick in their [47:44] Mid 70s or even early 80s and they say, "Oh, Doc, everyone in the family has lived over 100, is it?" Where do genetics fit in with this longevity caper? [47:54] Yeah, look, I've seen figures with genes reported as high as 55% in the genes, then I've seen figures as low as sort of 10% to 20%. So even if we do have a gene, [48:08] And we're getting smarter about understanding our genomes, we can modify genes. [48:15] Like we talk about ApoE4 and dementia. There are a lot of things we can do if you exercise well, eat a sensible diet, that risk factor of having a four to eightfold increased risk of Alzheimer's gets reduced because of the lifetime modification. So if you got good genes, fantastic. If you got some genes that put you at risk, knowing about them, [48:44] Thank you. [48:44] And in your space, if you've got poor lipid genes, we can actually modify those genes and have better health outcomes. [48:55] I sometimes wonder if the genetic inheritance is not just the DNA, but also lifestyle, dietary choices, responses to stress, all of that, you know, the whole family dynamic, even beyond just the DNA. It is, yeah, I think there's some epigenetic, and that's in the environment that actually affected maybe family lifestyle driven. The microbiome that you get given at birth is maternal derived, so her micro, if you're healthier, and they've actually looked at, [49:25] I.t. [49:26] Thank you. [49:27] And microbiome and they've actually transpired microbiomes into myocin chone shorter lifespans as well. So that early dose as well as the factors you're saying, "Yeah, let's not worry about things." I must say I go back to the Japanese with stress [49:46] There's the Buddhism sort of mantra of if there's a problem we can fix it, no point worrying about it. [49:56] Don't trip over what's behind you. So I certainly use tools like this so I don't get worried about things because we do get so much information, we do get fear that drives us. Our news is terrible. It's parasitic when you actually look at it. [50:16] Advertising, sound, people yelling at you. When I grew up last century, they would do the talking interviews. Now it's a reporter yelling at you. And a hundred years ago, it was a newspaper at your pace, you could read it, two hundred years ago. It was a town crier. And it was hearing it at not immediate full screen, vivid colors, stress. We now collect the stressor, [50:44] I'm a funnelled from around the world and distill it into panic. Now we may not say it doesn't worry me, but it all adds up. [50:52] And we feel safer by having information. And it gets sold as information. We didn't need to know for almost a year about the mushroom chef. But it was drama. It got people's attention. It was something that they wouldn't like to happen to them. It was something... So it had a morbid fascination. The media just fed on it and fed the population on it. So you had to hear about what was going on. [51:22] It didn't really matter. And again, you go 100 years ago, it would be, oh, somebody's in prison for killing their in-laws. And that would be it. [51:32] No drama, no excitation, no... and again, that fear builds up and you may not recognise, but it all accumulates to a bucket of issues. I had a husband and wife see me as a patient a couple of years ago, in fact, during COVID and they were... [51:53] They had all sorts of symptoms, including palpitations, and I really sensed [51:58] A high heightened sort of level of energy around them, sort of an anxiety state and just probed a little bit and asked them what they were, you know, [52:09] What their day looked like and it turned out that they were getting up in the morning checking out the ABC news then reading the times then reading the New Yorker then reading the Mercury then reading the Mercury then reading they basically had a whole day structured. [52:23] Reading different papers from different parts of the world or watching different TV or radio, [52:29] Pogba, I said, this is not, this can't be healthy for you, why don't you just [52:40] "Pack it all away and I'll see you in four to six weeks." They came back in four to six weeks and I'm cured their palpitations and... [52:48] And they were different people actually. But if you gave them medicine, you would have got the same result but not their brain set. So yeah, it's smart work. A lot of us were doing that. We were reading the death rates occurring in real time. We had so many deaths in this state, so many, oh, I'm glad we're here. And it was a morbid fascination, but we feel safer with information. [53:18] Here's the term, mercury poisoning. For those of you outside Tasmania, Mercury's Hobart's newspaper. But no, it's not just the mercury, it's the drama. It's the whole pitch and sails that you've got to know this. And even when they go off to a break, they'll say, "After the break, something really important that you...". And when you take a breath and think, [53:40] I don't really need to know that. What offers for old age pensioners in some other city? No, it doesn't really... but you sort of, oh gee, I'm curious, because we want to know, we feel safer knowing. But too much information, we just aren't designed to cope with. Well, I think you're right. I think you're right. Look, um... [54:04] Thank you. [54:05] Let's swing back to your book again. You do talk about where the future may be with longevity and lifespan and healthspan and living as well as possible and you touch on [54:16] PEPTIDES and people listening will have heard of peptides. Just for those as a quick reminder those listening who are not sure what a peptide is, if you think of a hormone like testosterone, it's a protein. It's got lots of amino acids floats around. It's generally got an active end and that active end binds to a receptor on a cell and that kicks off a chain reaction. A peptide is really just the small bit that's active. Would that be a fair call? That's a fair call. [55:46] We know there's actually some very rare visual disturbance that have been reported recently. But overall, and again, there's not been large randomised controlled trials in microdosing, but there is collective data now. [56:06] I was at a longevity meeting last month and some of that data was being talked about there. There's a group in the US who health...you can actually sign up to this group and they monitor all your health metrics. And for those people on GLP-1, they actually have shown better outcomes on about a third of the standard dose. So now we're actually dealing with evidence base. But people want peptides as a quick pill to a fix. [56:33] And like, [56:36] The most popular one at the moment is BPC157. It's involved if you've had an injury, it's involved with growth, tissue repair, blood vessels getting in and repairing. It sounds like an ideal product to take. [56:52] But, and great animal models of this showing repair and injury. But if you actually look for the data, [57:01] The data in humans at this stage as of the 20th of July 2026, the number of published papers in BP157 accounts to 30 humans. [57:20] Yeah, wow. So we see influences saying they've had this, they've got these results. People feel good on it and it does work. But caution, because you simulate blood vessel growth and tissue repair, you would never give to somebody who's in an active phase of cancer recovery or at risk of cancer. [57:55] Thank you. [57:55] So, and also counsel the fact that those, that data in 30 people is not even randomised controlled trials. These are two case series plus one small phase four type study. So, that's extraordinary for the airplay that BPC157 gets. That's absolutely extraordinary. 30 people. [58:49] But somehow Lillian NovaNovaDisk managed to get paid in GLP-1s. So we may find products like that do [59:02] I think in the U.S. at the moment, it's going through, I believe, Senate or the FDA, a relaxation on, I think, 13 peptides at the moment in some states are compounded, but they all have to be supervised. And you realize you're coloring outside the box and the patients need education about where the evidence sits, what benefits are likely to. They're quite an expensive product. [59:32] It's useful if you haven't got the basics right. It's like having the best steering wheel on your Maserati but no wheels or no petrol. You've got to get your sleep, nutrition, movement, posture, sense of purpose and your tribe, your meaningfulness. Aristotle, [59:54] I sort of talked about this concept of eudaemonia, which if we talk in the closest English word we have is flourish. [1:00:03] Not Joyce, Ben, we want to flourish, so we want to have... [1:00:09] Do things in moderation, we want wisdom, we want virtue. We want to have great function and we also need to be actively engaged. Not have a peptide that's going to give you a little bit of a boost and make you feel good. You've got to be eating well, eating sensibly. [1:00:24] And again, you've probably seen the meta-analysis of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation and saying, yeah, the meta-analysis suggests they don't work. [1:00:39] "I don't know how to move the needle that much." So it's information in context and same with these peptides, it's got to be in context of a bigger health picture and you'll move the needle more but realise the limitations, realise that they're not for a long term supplementation. They can be used short term for repair but with the counselling, [1:00:59] That there is limited human data. [1:01:02] Look, I think we'll wrap it up here, Pete. This is the longest podcast I've ever done, but I couldn't [1:01:11] Couldn't for the life of me think of a spot where we could have a natural break because all this just ties together beautifully. For those listening, if there was one habit that they could start tonight, [1:01:23] What would that be? What would you recommend that they do? If there is something they could change? I'm going to say two things. Because you can do two things in one and this is part of the book. And again, the book is not published yet. When it does, I'll let you know and your listeners know. It's try to get to sleep. Love your sleep. And when you go into bed, relax. Drop the shoulders. Breathe. [1:01:53] About the best things of the day. [1:01:54] Not tomorrow's problems, not today's problems. The best things, your brain will go to sleep happier and healthier. So love your sleep and you're going to wake up happier and healthier. [1:02:07] Uh, [1:02:08] There was only one thing. Were there two things? That was sleep and mindfulness. The happiness. Sleep and mindfulness. Beautiful. And because this area is moving so rapidly, what do you think... [1:02:21] The sort of longevity or health span might look like in five to ten years. Any thoughts there? [1:02:27] It's exciting because we've got... [1:02:31] The start of use of Yamanaka factors. Yamanaka described four factors. [1:02:36] That could actually turn back the cell aging clock. [1:02:42] He described that in 2008 and got the Nobel Prize in 2013, so five years, really rapid. Wow. The Nobel Prize group used to give the Nobel Prizes relatively quickly but moderated that in about the six years to wait to see the impact of the discovery. So we'll often see 10 to 20 years after a discovery to see its importance. So that's one of the fastest ones. But again, we've talked about David Sinclair. David's done great work work and showing that. [1:03:12] If his Yaman architect is the small molecules that simulate those for several weeks and turns back our clock, it would be fantastic. We're looking at gene editing. One of the... [1:03:24] We're talking about hyperbaric oxygen and having better oxygen carrying capacity to reduce oxidative, to reduce, sorry, the stress on our body and oxygen being carried to tissues. More effectively, one of the ones was, as we all had a gene called HbF, the fetal haemoglobin. [1:03:45] And so if we actually switch that gene on, [1:03:49] We actually can carry oxygen more efficiently. [1:03:51] The important thing is the Hbf will bind oxygen more avidly than the mother, so it won't be an opportunity for women of reproductive bearing years to have, because if they have that genome, they won't transfer oxygen to the fetus. So the fetus has that extra strong hemoglobin. So if we have that, it may have the capacity to switch that on. We will have [1:04:18] More evidence on the longevity. I take a few steps, not too many, but I'll probably vary them. [1:04:26] I go in and out and see what they do. One piece of advice is if you don't find the needle moving on something, stop it. We see people getting a stack of things and it has to be balanced and do things in moderation. I've seen people get copper deficient from taking too much zinc. [1:04:46] And then you've got to have zinc with copper. And the best vitamins you can have is simple, whole, fresh food. So that has become more expensive to have as we see the relative price of fast foods with storage become cheaper. [1:05:02] But if we go back 50 years, the majority of our, a lot of our income was spent on food. It's now become a fractionally less in the Middle Ages. It was almost the majority of our money was spent on food. [1:05:19] So it's become less because we've been able to mass-produce long-life preservatives, which we're allowed to have preservatives [1:05:27] Because they don't affect humans, but they affect our microbiome, which affects humans. So we need to be careful about that. So going back to nature, it's not hippy, it's actually healthy. [1:05:40] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Pete, I'm going to wrap it up there. [1:05:45] Last sort of comment for anyone who's listening who'd like to get hold of your book, I know you haven't quite published it yet. I'm going to call this podcast 30 Minutes to Longevity so people know the name of the book. Presumably it'll be available through Amazon. It'll be Amazon and we'll get a digital print. So hopefully it'll be in the next month. [1:06:06] And do you have a website where you would have... We'll probably end up putting... it'll probably be a website 30 minutes to longevity. We'll put it up in info about it. [1:06:14] I feel pretty confident that if anyone's listened to this and you'd like more information searching 30 Minutes to Longevity Professor Pete Smith, you'll find it. You won't have any trouble. Okay, thanks very much for it. Let us know. Other than that, Pete, I thank you so much. It's... [1:06:34] I know how busy you are. It's taken us about six weeks or more, maybe two months to five. Yeah, I think it was early May, it's about ten weeks. [1:06:44] I know you've got so many things on your plate, so I really do appreciate you finding the time for this. I find this space also fascinating. I'm a convert like you. I believe all of us should be looking to help people live. [1:06:56] Not just as long as possible, but as well as possible. I think that's so important. To flourish. [1:07:03] To flourish, yeah, beautiful. Pete, again, thank you so much for those listening. I hope you've got as much out of this. [1:07:10] Out of this interview as I have, it's been an absolute pleasure. Till next time, I hope you live as well as possible for as long as possible. Take care and bye for now. [1:07:19] Hi. Ever wondered what your risk of heart attack is? You should. It's the single biggest killer in the western world. We're talking one death. [1:07:30] Less than every 30 minutes in Australia, one death, [1:07:34] Less than every 60 seconds in the United States, 9% [1:07:38] Million deaths globally. [1:07:40] Well, how do you check your risk? Well, you can go to [1:07:46] www.virtualheartcheck.com.au. You'll find out about your risk and what can be done beyond that to be even more precise.