Unraveling the Mysteries of Functional Medicine with Paul

Full transcript

Hello and welcome to Health to Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, joining me today at Shigidaa in 12th of Health Fitness. We're going to go to Overcome University to pick back for its fiction and see Health to Fitness and a whole new life. Today, guys, we have a great guest all the way from the UK, which, by the way, I'm going to give you advice that one of my clients told me and I haven't told him. This free show. If you ever go to the UK, english food isn't that good and I heard that all people that live there say that. But instead you got to eat the Indian food because it's out of this world, and we went there, had Indian food and, trust me, it was amazing. So if you live in the UK or you ever find yourself in London, try some Indian food. I'm going to go to the show bar.

Yeah, anthony, great to be here, and you know what actually you're probably accurate on that is that Indian food is probably pretty cool around here and traditional English food like fish and chips and steak pie and everything else. I'm not sure people will shoot me down for this, but it was never great quality, honestly, and but Indian food pretty cool, but anyway, I'm glad you came over and enjoyed it.

I've been to. I'm going to tell you this. But I've been to London personally three times already and I'm a huge foodie and I've always said, like you know, london's nice, but the food is, yeah. And one of my clients is from the UK and she said to me she's like well, did you have Indian food? I was like no, you have to have Indian food in the UK. Ding dong, like that's, that's the food you need to eat. I was like okay, so it doesn't matter where you go, you will thoroughly enjoy it. So we, I didn't think anything of it. We went on a weekday we showed up to one restaurant and they told us I was like how long is the wait? Oh, no, there's no room. I was like what do you mean? Like no, we can't see you tonight if you don't reservation. So we're like okay. So and that's never happened before we're into another Indian place and it was an hour away and the food we ended up waiting there. It was crazy good, like everything I ate. I was like all the Indian food in the US sucks. This is really good.

Oh mate, do you know what the the US? I've been to the US many times and it's like anywhere, right, you can find some really good restaurants and have some really good food, and you can find some real awful food as well. It's the same in London. You can find some great restaurants. Indian food tends to be pretty good. The real, the real way to judge it is how you feel the next morning, because if you're feeling a bit off the next morning, then you know it wasn't great, but it's a. It's a big thing. Over here now it has been since the 60s. Since I was growing up. In the 60s there's a lot of Indian restaurants started coming up and it was. It was such a big kind of novelty thing back then, but now actually Indian food is almost like the traditional food now.

Yeah, it was great and I gotta. I'll say one more thing. I think it's a whole year of things that was in both the UK and in Ireland. They had different menus for those with gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance and when I'm really lactose intolerance and there's always a noise like you don't know what has milk in it especially we're in India like you don't know, I don't know how this stuff is, and you could just order and not have to worry about regretting it the next morning. I was like why don't we do this here? But this is awesome. It's just separate menus and I know, no matter what I get, I'm fine yeah, yeah, they do it really well.

Actually, they cater well for the, for the customer anyway. Yeah, I need to have a food podcast.

This is what I always talk about, but anyway, let's talk a little bit about you, paul, and how you got into the functional medicine realm.

Oh, well, um, it's a very long story, um, and it started in 1966 when I was born and um kind of went from there. But realistically, for me, I've always had a an interest in health and it. I knew you were going to ask this question, because we get some notes on the show right before we come on, and also I've listened to some of your podcasts and I know that that's your first thing and I was thinking about what is my answer to this going to be and I'm hoping that it gives you a little bit of insight into some stuff. In the 60s and 70s, especially the 60s, the way children were brought up was quite strict. They might have been let to run riot, you know and do what they want to do, but when you're in the house there were certain rules and you stuck to them and you would never question them and you would never deviate from them. It's a very strict upbringing and the 60s in London especially was very kind of fast paced. And I say all this because in my childhood it was fine and it was okay. There was no traumas or anything like that, but there was definitely a lack of emotional support or contact or you know, lots of love and affection. There was very little of that in in my upbringing, which is fine, right, but it has an effect on you and one of the things we grow up with are these beliefs around what makes us valuable, and for me it's about I need to show people I have value and I need to either be loved or show love or have some sort of emotional commitment to things, and one of the ways that that presented itself to me was by a health. It's a really odd connection, but from a quite a young age I was very much into health and back then there wasn't health. It was like it was the beginning of kind of freezer foods, convenience foods, and certainly up until about the 80s there wasn't that much junk food, but there was. It was a lot of convenience stuff. Mums were going out to work, they weren't cooking meals all day from scratch, they were doing what they could and all that kind of thing. But for me this is health thing kind of was highlighted to me quite early on. Anyway, fast forward. I went and I worked in the city of London, started the biggest independent investment house in the UK, massively stressful job, hated it, very detrimental to health, stress and all the rest of it. Hey, just didn't like that whole environment and decided you know what? The one thing, the passion that I've always had, is health. I've always exercised, I've always looked at dieting and nutrition and what is that kind of thing? Let's make something out of that. So that's why I did a naturally transitioned into doing something that I was passionate about. And you know, many decades later, we now have a global functional medicine practice that treats patients all around the world, and I love every day of it. It's fantastic.

I love it, and functional medicine means a lot to the different people. So, in your words, what would be your definition of functional medicine?

Very difficult because I think the definition is that you treat the root cause of the individual.

That's really what it is.

Now, what's the root cause? Well, there's never just one thing and this is a really important thing for you to understand it's never just one thing, it's always a combination of things. So it could be a combination of beliefs like me, right, for example? I'm striving to show value and be of value to people and that's why I do things. And your show I listened to recently with Dr Anthony regarding some of these belief kind of processes and where you get your real, true motivation from the real why that is a huge factor in most people's health journey, and so if no one's listening to that, we haven't listened to it yet. Go back and listen to it. I really, really recommend it. But so it could be beliefs that your root cause is coming from. It will also be toxicity generally in most people, be it mold or heavy metals or environmental toxins, chemical toxins. There's going to be some pathogens that you collect along the way. You're going to have some sort of viral issues. All these things you collect as you go, and then you get this kind of build up of a toxic load in whatever form that is, and then you've got to try and peel back Okay, what's really going on? And fix that stuff and it's individual for everybody. You've never the same thing twice, and so functional medicine to me is find out all the root causes that are presented now in symptoms and symptoms are things like cancer, by the way, and if you're not treating the root cause, it's coming back. So you have to get in there. So the functional medicine is treat the root causes, whatever they may be, and then design the right approach to fix them, put them all back into the right places and then create this life that people have, and then you can get into the right places. And then you can get into the right places To fix them, put them all back into the right places and then create this life that people have this capacity now to enjoy every day without having to worry about. You know, is this the right diet for me? Should I be taking supplements? If I should, then what supplements should I take? How do I get the best training for me? What's the anti-aging thing I should do? Am I supposed to cold plunge? Is it supposed to be a sauna? You know, all of that kind of stuff creates this uncertainty in people, so you have the uncertainty of not knowing what to do. That's causing you stress, all of the symptoms, of the problems, because they're not being addressed and the whole thing is just a big mess. So we kind of give people certainty that what they're doing for their health is the right thing for them.

Yeah, and that's impactful and complex because one it's everything you're doing in your life, it's the food you're eating, it's the environment you're located in, it's the people you're hanging out with, it's everything plays an impact on your health. And then it makes it even more complicated for how to treat something like even specifically, supplements, and we could touch on that briefly. There are thousands and thousands of supplements unregulated. Who knows what's really in them? And you have to learn to figure out what brand is right, trust that specific brand and know exactly what we're taking, to take something and not just haphazardly taking a supplement Because you might actually be doing yourself harm if you're taking the wrong thing. So how does a normal person digest the crazy supplement world?

They don't, and this is like you know. there's a big thing that I talk about, a lot when I speak to groups of people and we have a company that trains practitioners to do what we do, and the biggest issue we've got currently is that there's too much information available and it's freely available and none of it is vetted. So the best way to explain it is that, as humans, we are naturally problem solving people, problem solving organisms. That's our natural default. I've got a problem, I need to solve it and then we solve the problem based on our history. How did I solve a similar problem before? Well, nowadays, that similar problem would have been solved by Googling it or YouTube, or you know, whatever the Instagram account is that people follow, whatever it is right. So, naturally, people are right. For arguments sake, my sleep's poor. How do I fix it? Google YouTube, how do I fix my sleep? Millions of a plot, millions of sites. Right, okay, cool, I should take magnesium. But this one says you have to know which magnesium. Is it 3N8? Is it by glycinate? Is it citrate? When should I take it? Is it at night? Is it in the morning? Is it during the day? What shall I do? Yeah, but that's not good enough, because if you don't take something to calm down that forebrain and stop the talking and the chatting going on and take some epigenin or use something else that's going to make you know an alphaionine that's going to calm you down, or GABA. That's not going to work either and it's like whoa, hang on, hang on. How is somebody who's not educated in the field going to decipher what's right, wrong or indifferent? It's impossible. Same with dieting right, and I will come back to supplements, I promise you. But the same with dieting, because that's the big thing that bothers a lot of people. Initially, there are lots of nice people on there saying if you're not carnivore, then you will never be cured of your illnesses. And then there are other people that say if you're not vegan, you will get cancer. And then there are other people that say if you are not paleo, then there's no way that you're going to survive the next 10 years. Or and they've all very compelling Right. You've got direct opposing opinions that are very compelling, superb presentation and marketing, all the research to back it up, and it's all nonsense, because no one is giving you advice based on you. They don't know Anthony Aiman. They don't know his age, his weight, his sleep, his hydration, his toxic load, his blood profile. They know nothing about him. What they're saying is you've got to be carnivore because this friend over here did it and all his autoimmune issues went away. No, they didn't. They're still there and as soon as you start seeing vegetables again, it will all come back to you, because the amyloids in the vegetables will kick it all off again.

So don't tell me you've cured it because you haven't, or how about just as simple as the type of foods you need to eat. A good example is no carbs, high carbs, low carbs it's very high carb. I need carbs to operate them very active, always on my feet. Without that it would be horrible for me so understanding that.

Because that's your metabolism and that's your specific DNA set up and that's perfect because you understand it. Going back to supplementation, like you said, hundreds of thousands of different supplements on the market, all promising the most incredible effects. I am yet to take a supplement that gives me the promised revelationary effect that it has been touted to do. Now, it doesn't mean you shouldn't take supplementation, but very few of them actually deliver what they're supposed to. And then the other thing, which is something people do not take into account. So, through our practice, we only supply nutraceuticals which are basically natural forms of that will have pharmaceutical effects. So there's no pharmaceuticals, but they're natural products that have the pharmaceutical effects, so like turmeric, for example, you could look at that. Boswellia, if you're looking at anti-inflammatories. But here's the. Here's the other key thing that people aren't aware of. When you get a combination product, so say, it's got half a dozen or a dozen different molecules in there. So some of them are anti-inflammatories, some of it is maybe amino acid, some of it is maybe a vitamin. Whatever it is, this is for improving male testosterone levels. Let's just say, very rarely has that combination been tested in that combination. So that might look at things like, say, macarote or deaspartic acid or something else, and they all individually may have potential benefits. Ok, well, if those six things are all good for testosterone, for argument's sake, or those 10 things are all good for sleep, or those things are all good for liver, we'll put them all together, then you're going to have this magic product. But you have to test them all together as well, and there are very few companies that do that.

I think a great example of this is multi-s 100%.

I'll use your word all rubbish Right, because well, you get a good one, get a very good one that is tested in combination, there's liposomal and you can actually absorb, then you're probably going to get some value out of that.

But if you get Hang on, I'm talking more from mainstream. If I wrote I live in the US, I'm going to Walmart, I'm picking up a multivitamin from Walmart or from Costco. It's. I'm going to tell from the first ingredient, which is calcium, the type of calcium they're using. It's the least absorbing calcium because it's the cheapest.

Correct. But then you come back to the real issue. The real issue is do you not walk into Walmart or CVS or Whole Foods and buy supplements Because you don't know if you need them? You're taking this online advice or your friend's advice, or you know, oh, I took a B complex and I feel all this energy, I feel amazing, I'll go and get one then, Well, why? Until you know it's right for you, and so my honestly, I'm people are going to hate me for it, but my viewpoint is do not try and treat your own health, even if you're a practitioner. But unless you are a practitioner, do not try and treat your own health, because it's not your job. It's a very, very complex piece of engineering and it changes by the second, unless you're massively experienced in it and you know exactly what you should be doing, and I wouldn't go near it. What you do is you get somebody whose job it is to do that, like yourself, for example, who's a good coach and says right, let's have a look at you properly, let's have a look at everything that's going on, and then we can give you some specific direction that says this is the right thing for you. Then you've got some half a chance of it being good for you, right? You can't get it by doing something on Instagram or YouTube or whatever. I don't care how many followers somebody's got. It's got to be done individually for people. So go and find somebody that is a professional coach, that does everything properly and honestly. Invest the time, money and effort into that and your outcome in 5, 10, 20 years will be significantly different.

Yeah, and just to add to it, even on top of that, I feel like the psychology side of it we're horrible at monitoring ourselves. I don't, we don't. We think we're the best, we think we can handle what we're doing. But I see it in the gym all the time. When someone's working out, I think they have perfect form and you're looking from an outside and you're like I'll fix that, fix that, fix that, fix that. And it's because we're so bad at looking in mirrors. You want to give an example and it might sound silly. I look in the mirror and I think I have zero muscle on my body, because we all have body dysmorphia, right. We all see something else in the mirror. That's maybe not necessarily true, but that's the same thing. When we're testing our own health, that's the same thing when we're looking at our form. We don't really see what's really there. When we're looking in the mirror and like somebody else from the outside who doesn't have those biases, looking at you to help go through and really get you on the right track.

Well, we can always justify everything that we do. Yeah, and that's it. So you know it's fine for me to eat this. I know I wouldn't say that to other people, but it's OK for me to do it. Or, yes, I know I shouldn't be doing that on the front squat, but it's fine for me because you know I've got tight ankles and it's OK for me to do it. And you go, well, work on the ankle stuff. Then, like you would tell your client, right, let's mobilize that, but it's OK. Well, it's not OK, and you're absolutely right. We are. We've got every excuse as to why we can have a comfortable life and therefore it allows us to get away with all of these things. And then someone outside of that, who has no interest in you having a comfortable life they just want you to have a healthy, amazing life they're going to pull you up and say, no, I don't do that, do it properly, do it this way. Very hard to keep ourselves on track.

Yeah, and I couldn't, couldn't agree more, and I actually. This leads me right to our brand new company that we launched, f Squared Consulting. Myself and my buddy, keith have come together to bring you guys physical and financial freedom, so I'm taking care of the health, fitness, the goal side, motivation, help get you back on track, especially with the other fitness schools, because, like we said here in the show, you need somebody else looking on the outside to help you keep stepping in to do all things. Finances what's the difference between IRA and a regular 401? How do I get out of debt? How do I track my personal finances? How can I save money? What is compound interest? All those things that no one ever really taught you in school. We are here to teach you this company. We didn't start to sit here and be your consultants forever. We started it so we can teach you to be literate in all of these things, so you can learn it on your own and be a better you. We all understand, especially for those entrepreneurs, that you are very busy taking care of your business, building your, growing it, and we get that, but you need to take care of your cell. It is the most important thing, whether it's your financial or your physical cell. So, that being said, guys, check us out FitBodies, fatwalletscom Again, that's fit bodies, fatwalletscom. We're offering 10% off for all the podcast listeners. Please go check us out and we hope to hear from you all soon. That was a great segue, paul, but I do want to ask specifically about what you do when functional medicine. I want to dive a little bit into blood work, because we've talked about it once or twice on the show, but it's been a while. So, when you've drawn somebody's blood panel, what are you looking at, like what are some big red flags that you're seeing? That a general practitioner is not, because I know they're looking at your basic samples, like your blood blood cell count, your blood cell count. So what are you looking at differently?

So there's a couple of big differences. One is that generally, especially if it's in the US, a lot of it is insurance-based, and so they will only allow certain markers. They'll think it's OK. Here's a thyroid marker, like TSH, for example. Or here's your general cholesterol panel Total cholesterol, triglycerides, hdl, ldl. They're cheap and they tell you very little. And so when you get a proper panel done, it costs money and it's not covered by insurance. And I don't want to start talking about why insurance is actually not great and how it's driven by big pharma and all the rest of it. But they don't want you to get fixed because if they do, they lose a customer Right. We know that. So what we'll do is we do a very comprehensive panel that looks at pretty much every aspect of the body in detail. So let me give you a quick example Thibroid, which is a lot of people know that is. It's in charge of metabolism. It's in charge of a lot of other things as well. This basic one that they take is called TSH thyroid stimulating hormone, and that just tells you if your brain is sending a signal to your thyroid to make thyroid hormone, that's it OK. And there's a range, and it sits in a range, and if it's in the range, then that's fine. We will talk about ranges shortly but it doesn't really tell you anything, because it tells you that TSH is working, that signaling. But then, ok, how much thyroid hormone is your thyroid making? And that's something called T4. And oftentimes they'll check for T4, though that's all lovely, but T4 is a very inactive form of thyroid. So then you need to know how much T4 is getting converted to something called T3. T3 is an active form, and then you have a feedback loop E3, if it's too high, will tell the brain to reduce the TSH, if it's too low, it will push it up. However, if that feedback loop is broken or you're not converting T4 to T3 effectively, all of that is non-consequential if all you're seeing is TSH. So just don't go deep enough. Another example would be cholesterol. Everyone will hear it cholesterol HDL, supposedly good, cholesterol, ldl supposedly bad and something called triglycerides, which is the facts in the blood. Triglycerides, for example, can tell us a lot about how your adrenal stress is, how your body is coping with pressure and all that kind of stuff. This is facts in the blood. But it can also tell us how well your glucose metabolism is, and so it's really important that people understand there is a component that tells you facts and glucose have an effect on each other. It's not just glucose is about insulin and carbohydrate. Facts are about fat and fattening intake. They are connected in a very specific way. But those numbers the cholesterol and the HDL and LDL the basic ones you get really then tell you a great deal, because you can have perfect numbers. But it's what is the LDL made of, what the particle size is of that. They're the ones that will tell you about real cardiovascular risk, because if they're the small, very hard types that damage the endothelial lining of your cardiovascular system, so your circulatory system, all your veins and blood vessels have this thin lining, hard pellet like small particle. Ldl will damage those linings, cause inflammation that starts to bleed, that starts to create a blood clot. The clot will then just get covered with plaque and that's how it will get protected. But if you've got lots of these little ones, you've got a good idea that you're going to get more cardiovascular risk than if they are big, fluffy ones that don't do that. So knowing your LDL is irrelevant if you don't know the particle size. So that kind of tells you how much more in depth it goes, and it goes throughout everybody's system. Whether it be liver, hormones, immune, doesn't matter. We look at everything. Then the other thing is the range. The ranges that we generally get from the doctor, which are the standard ranges, are huge. They're very wide and, to illustrate a point, a lot of people will go to the doctor and say I'm not feeling well, I've got these symptoms, and say, great, no problem, let's get a blood draw done. So they do the bloods and then you ring up a week later and the receptionist tells you everything's fine. They go, oh, okay, well, why do I feel like this? And they said well, we're not really sure. Here's some Prozac, right? Because the ranges are so wide that everyone falls into those ranges. If you fall outside of that range too high or too low something's really wrong. And now it's about okay, we need to medicate to you to fix this problem and it's probably going to be for the rest of your life and you're in the way.

I just want to try it here because this is something we've talked about. I want to reiterate a point where your ranges quick story. I know some people have heard this, but just to reiterate a point for you. When I had a fever and I was at my uncle who's a doctor it's office, I didn't know how to fever at the point. But the first thing that goes up is your heart rate when you're sick. And my heart rate right in at 95 beats per minute and the nurse that was checking my heart rate goes, oh, you're normal. I was like, no, that's really high. She goes no, you're in the normal range. I was like no, that's not good. And she's like, no, you're fine. I told my uncle he goes no, you're fine, you're fine. Needless to say, an hour later fever hit, chills, sweats, but point being, 95 beats per minute is in that huge average range. That went up to 100, they said. But somebody like me who's resting heart rates down to like 6870, that's a huge jump.

Yeah, that's like a 40% increase. But and you're right so that's a really good example actually that the whatever they're looking at blood pressure, heart rate, whatever it is there's such a huge top and bottom that most people fall into it. Now we're going to get a little bit in the weeds here and people are again gonna start. You know you're gonna get some bad comments. Probably Big Pharma are very keen on the ranges being as wide as possible, because what they want are people to be sick outside of those ranges when things are really going bad. When things are really going bad, there is no really turning around other than with medication and the medications that get prescribed things like blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular, like statins, the things that you stay on for life that don't cure anything. Right, if your, if your cholesterol is up and you're given a statin, it brings down your cholesterol level. All is well, okay. Not so much, because the reason your cholesterol went up has not been addressed. You have artificially reduced that marker. So the thing is still going on underneath, right? Whatever the fire is that's causing that to be driven up the inflammatory response or the pathogen, or the blood glucose management problem, or whatever it is still going on. But now we put a lid on that thermostat so it doesn't look bad anymore and, yeah, everything's good. And yet people that take statins have a higher all cause mortality rate than people that don't take them Because they die from something else that was always still going on. And blood pressure meds same thing. Right, it doesn't stop what was causing the high blood pressure, just treats the symptom Diabetes medication, metformin, for example, of one of them, insulin, slightly different. But you know, here's metformin 500 milligram twice a day. If you can tolerate it in your gut, if you can tolerate it, you can do 500 milligram three times a day or even four times a day. What about my diet? Yeah, your diet's fine. You can eat what you're eating, but just make sure you take the meds and that will keep your blood glucose down. And I've dealt with people and I say, like you know, we'll use the USA as an example, but all over the world where they're being told by their doctor that these astronomically high blood glucose levels are fine. So, as we keep you into this like 150 milligram or depends where you are in the world, but I know in the US it's like you want to be sitting in around 75 to 85 of a morning and some of the doctors say 120 is fine, 140, that's fine, no problem. You've got diabetes, just keep taking the meds. It's not fine in the slightest. And the meds are not doing anything, they're just artificially bringing it down. So ranges, treating symptoms, all that kind of stuff. It does not work Because if it did, we would not have the highest rates of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, alzheimer's and dementia that we've ever had in the history of the world. You know, we're supposed to be the smartest we've ever been and yet we're the most broken and sick we've ever been.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, there's a couple examples in there. They're saying by 2030, half of the population of the world is going to be considered obese, not the US. The globe, and we're all worried about malnourishment, but yet we're eating ourselves to death on the exact opposite side of that. So more people are going to die from being obese than malnourishment.

I put a post up. I don't know what it came up. You know, every some often they say well, this is a memory from 10 years ago and it said it was 10 years ago I posted. It says the first time in history, people are dying from overconsumption of calories than underconsumption. You know, when I was growing up, famine was very widespread, especially in East Africa and places like that. A lot of very unfortunate humans dying of starvation. Now you've got 600 pound people walking around or trying to walk around or you know whatever it is and the dying of overconsumption. And it's not even calories, really, right, it's just. I try to liken the food, the junk food. It's not a food, it's like a material that your body kind of tries to process. There's no real food in it. You know the vitamins, minerals, the phytonutrients, the antioxidants, very, very little of it in there. But it's a material that your body can survive on where it can't actually survive on it healthily. It can just get by on it and it's made to be hyper palatable. Right, it's the most amazing taste ever, and so people will gorge on the stuff because it's so tasty, but they're always hungry because there's no real value to it. There's no nutrient value. Therefore, the body is always saying feed me something that I can do something with.

Yeah, the body is starving, but the stomachs full.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, so I kind of want to get into it. I know we've gotten a lot through different parameters and stuff, so what are some takeaways we can give people that I mean a lot of people just want to do things on their own right? We talked about you should get someone to look at me outside, but you know they're skeptical. So what would you think that the top three things that somebody should do to help be healthier Like? Is it greedy more?

greens.

Is it walking more? Is sleeping better? What do you think is the number one or number two thing? Like hey, go do this, do not I would say there's no generic.

You should do this and it will help because there's like a healthy is much more complex in that I see what does work really well for a lot of people is watching programs on the blue zones, right, so that the areas in the world that people live to over 100 and are healthy, and Dan Boutner, who has done a lot of that stuff. There's a good Netflix documentary at the moment called live to 100. There's lots of this. They've gone on for many, many years, but every so often they bring out a new series and it's about what do people do to live to 100? What are the commonalities? Right, and it's eat less than they need. They never overeat. They're all active in their local community. They will sit down to eat, they all have a person life and they're all active every day. But they're the kind of the main things that people do, right? Yeah, that sounds great. And whatever, what do they eat? Well, they all eat different stuff. Funny enough, right? Some are in Okinawa in Japan, some are in Icaria in Greece, some of them are in Sardinia in Italy, some of them are in Costa Rica, Some of them are in America. So they're all different kind of foods, but they tend to be, as we all know, whole foods, locally grown prepared, seasonal, all that kind of stuff, right? So there's no right magic bullet for this thing. You just look at what are they all doing and you have that image, that visual image in front of you and it kind of gives you this motivation to do more of that. So that's where I would say people should start putting images in front of you of very healthy, very long-living people and their lifestyles. They are okay. Well, they can walk every day up the hill. Maybe I'll do more of that. Or are they eating a lot of those beans and pulses? Hmm, I've always been told beans are bad for me. Well, the lectins are going to kill me, and all that kind of stuff.

I love beans.

I'm just laughing. Listen, if you've got cholesterol or you're an APRE4 genotype beans, pulses, lentil they are like the life-saviors for you. They're an amazing product, right? But if your gut is broken for other reasons, you're going to find it really difficult to eat those. So it's a bit complex. But if you're putting images in front of your face, it is like this is how to live a long life. These are the things that they do. They all drink a bit of wine. They all have very little stress, right? They're not living in New York City with the pollution and the fast-paced lifestyle, and traveling the subway with their gym membership and their you know, their Starbucks and everything else. That's not what they do. None of them, none of the people in these areas have got gym memberships. So that's got to tell you something, right? The longest-living people do not have gym membership, but they do have access to clean air. They aren't running off of a diary that's making them be somewhere at a certain time. They all sit down with their family and eat. They all have very modest living standards. So the houses are very modest. You know, if they have a car, it's a very old one. Majority of them get around by the bicycle or foot or whatever it is. You know it's a very simple, traditional lifestyle in these areas and actually all these things lead to people living longer. So if you're always looking at that kind of stuff, it kind of encourages you to start looking at your own life. That's how, that's what I would look at and then from that it's not a denominator or stress.

I mean, a lot of the stuff that you were mentioning, it all links to stress and I've watched a couple of those. And that's the biggest thing. One of the cultures doesn't believe in time. It prevents them from stressing. They're just like, oh, whatever time it is, it is, and they get there and they do what they have to do for the day and they live to like 105, 104. Like that's because they're not stressed.

But not being held together with pills and potions. They live to that age and they're still active and they're like okay, I'm done now I'm good.

Let me be clear. They're mentally sound. Yes, at that age. Age is relevant if you don't have the capacity to live. That's a quote, wow.

Because if you're, you know it's about this long, healthy lifestyle, not just a long life. And if you're, if you're compromised in any way with your mobility, if you can't think straight, if you've got dementia, if there were issues with any kind of daily living tasks, then it's just horrible. There was one or watching a couple of years ago I think it was now, and I'll tell you what it was. Zac Efron did a series, the first series he did, and again that was on Netflix, I believe, and they went to Sardinia and they talked to this 93 year old guy and his house was this really modest, almost like one room downstairs, maybe two rooms, kitchen table, wooden chairs, no flash car, no big watch, no, you know, handmade suit, none of that kind of stuff. He was just very happy doing this thing. Every day. He, 93 years old, every day walk to the bar, the local bar, with all his friends and sit there, have a glass of wine, chat, walk back up the hill to his house, take his time, do whatever it was. And they were talking to him and he got very emotional about the fact his wife died a few years earlier and he'd been with us for 20, no, 60 years or something crazy and that was the biggest problem in my life. And he said but you're 93, now how do you feel? And he said something so important for people to understand. He said I feel amazing. He said I will do another 93 years if they'll let me. Most people at 93 are like when will this be over? I'm done getting out of here. Whereas he's going, I'll do another one and I love this. I feel so great. I'm mobile, I've got friends Important, I've got friends. I've got friends. We're a community. We all laugh together, we all chat together, we talk you know it's a purpose to live and that's I mean.

You see it, I thought about this a couple of times, but my wife's a nurse, as everyone knows, and she tells stories about how those that want to live to certain things get to that thing and then die Like. My great grandpa was a perfect example. He wanted to make it to the turn of the century, the year 2000, and fall dropped January 1st 1215. In the morning, my mom and said Gina, I'm done, died a week later.

Wow, like that's how powerful is that psychological influence you have on your health?

Right Crazy, I mean absolutely crazy, fantastic example Really. My wife was just had a patient she's telling me the family was in his room, he was in a hospice and he barely could speak. But he kind of like nubbed to her like he wanted them out of the room because he wanted to die and he didn't want to die in front of them. So she got them out of the room. She said no joke, anthony. They walked out of the room. I turned around to come back in and he died right there. Yeah.

Yes, purpose Having purpose, and I think sometimes when you have an end goal, the fact that that sentence has end goal in it is a problem. But when people are living a long, healthy life and they're enjoying every day and they just can't wait for the next one, can't wait for the next one. That has a huge amount of influence on longevity. The other thing I want to mention quickly I know we're running out of time but your company, your consulting company, see this financial component that is a major major player in people's health and if people don't understand that, they need to understand what poor financial management does to their health. Right, the stress, the worry, the long-term effect that has. Oh, I will sort this next time. You know I'll get it done in the next few years. Right now, I just need to do this. No, that's not what you need to do. If you want health in general, you need to be a happy person and you cannot be happy when you've got financial stress. And if it's not your job to be a financial advisor talking like as someone that started the biggest financial investment in independent financial investment company in the city of London if it's not your job, get someone who knows what they're doing like Anthony's friend to do that for you, because it is a key component when it comes to overall health.

One of the many so, don't just, I just use the example of somebody else. I was like this is what people don't get your physical health. The healthier you are physically, the more financial success you have, because your brain will be motivated. You'll be thinking, you'll be able to come up with new ideas and save. The more financial health you have. The less stressed you are, the better your physical health. So the easier it is to lose weight, the easier it is to build muscle because you don't have that burden. They are so intertwined in each other that you can either get both running a negative feedback loop a plummet or both running a positive feedback loop and really escalate your life to the next level.

That's why we decided to put it together. But it's true, but they run naturally in a negative feedback loop. Yes, that's the natural default, unless you have somebody looking after you professionally in both areas.

I'm financially stressed, I'm going to go McDonald's because save money I'm going to get burgers, which is going to hurt my physical health. Now I feel like shit. Now I can't get to work the next morning because my stomach hurts. So I'm burning off time of the day doing that and I can't make enough money now because it's just. You get the point. But, paul, I want to ask you the final two questions because we did run out of time here. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would you take on message?

It would be. If you want certainty in what you're doing for your health is the right thing for you. Get a professional to help you.

I couldn't agree more. On that one Couldn't agree more. And the second one how can people find you get a hold of you? How can they turn that more about what you do with functional medicine? Get involved in all this stuff.

Easiest thing is go to paulbergistuk Website. You will find all the resources. There's loads of free downloads and all that kind of jazz. There's information about what we do. All the social media links are there as well. You can book a free call. One of the things that people should really do is click the link that says book a free 30-minute consultation. It's no charge. I'm very happy to speak to people about anything, because very often it's not just the health aspects. It's, like we said, the beliefs, the mental aspect, the fact that they feel in a rut about something and how we can kind of encourage them to get out of those things. And so what we do on those calls is just talk basically about concerns people have and then potentially give them a direction forward and say to them maybe you need to do this test or maybe you look at reading that book, for example, listen to Anthony's podcast, this episode or whatever it is. So that's a really useful thing for people to be able to do and paulbergistuk is the website and that's the easiest thing and do that and listen to more of Anthony's episodes. They're all very useful.

I appreciate that a lot. Thank you, paul, for coming on and being here. You guys will be listening to this week's episode of Help with Fitness Redefine. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and turn us next week as we dive deeper into this ever changing field and remember fitness and medicine until next time.