#E34 The 4 Factors That Decide Our Biological Age With Sebastijan Orlić
About Sebastian Orlić
Sebastian Orlić is the CEO of Quality of Life, a health consulting company that integrates science into fiction, nutrition, and supplementation. Sebastian's 10 plus years of experience spans engineering, chemistry, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, nutrition and fitness. He's also a specialist at Glycan Age where he's dedicated to optimizing wellbeing and longevity.
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript.
(00:28) Welcome to Hyperscale. Hi Sebastian, and welcome to Hyperscale. How are you today?
(01:48) Sebastian: Hi, Briar I'm very honoured to be here with you and I'm very good. I hope it's all good at your place too.
(01:58) Briar: Yeah, so I'd love to tell everyone a little bit about how we met. So we met earlier today when I was in Dublin at the Longevity Conference Recently. I had the pleasure of meeting some members of your team from GlycanAge, and we pricked slash kind of stamped my finger and I had some drops of blood come out and then they went away to the labs and they've been testing my blood. And today Sebastian told me that I have a biological age of 38, which is all right, its okay. He's informed me. It's not 78, but it is seven years older than my actual age, which is 31. So let's see where we go from here.
(02:44) Sebastian: Yes, of course, this is something that is just like a sign on the road and we need to use it only as a good motivation to maybe change something. Usually science-based really we know now everything regarding science regarding human longevity science, and it's crucial to make some new habits that is doable in our lifestyle, not just having the intention to change everything because we won't succeed.
(03:16) Briar: What I thought was really interesting about, there were so many interesting things, by the way, but especially interesting about our conversation today was there were kind of four main buckets, you might say. So there was the nutrition, there was sleep, there was stress, and then there was, I've forgotten the fourth.
(03:34) Sebastian: Physical activity.
(03:35) Briar: Physical activity. There we go. And one of the things that I said to you was like, and I think one of the reasons why I was initially a little bit gutted when I saw that 38 is I feel like I'm doing so many things by the book, or I'm looking at other people in society and they smoke and they drink and they're not taking care of themselves and all of these different things. And I'm thinking, well, I'm doing a lot like I'm really trying. I think about what I eat. I don't eat any processed foods. I don't like cake, I don't like chocolate. Thank God I was not born with a sweet tooth. And I'm going to the gym 4 times a week and I feel like I'm doing a lot of good things.
Interestingly, as you pointed out to me, who knows if this 38 number is even an improvement. Maybe I was 58 a couple of years ago and it is an improvement. And the good part is now I have this bench line measure, this baseline measure, and I can start making improvements as you've suggested. So you suggested to me to eat more seasonal fruit and vegetables, which I'm going to start doing to eat more diverse food because I was explaining to Sebastian, I tend to eat just a lot of tomatoes and avocados and eggs and prawns and just kind of rotate through these sorts of ingredients, and cut down a little bit on the cardio. So just do some heavy kind of hike walking and one lot of big cardio a week and obviously keep my strength training three or four times. And yeah, I think that's kind of it really. We decided, oh, sleep quality.
(05:24) Sebastian: Yes, I believe the sleep is maybe the most usual suspect in your case, but in many cases, really, because we know today we live in this hectic lifestyle where we don't hone our circadian rhythm. We live this erratic lifestyle, not taking in account what sleep is bringing to us. Unfortunately today, many people think that it's a waste of time and we don't have these usual supplements that can hack the sleep process. So this is not a waste of time. This is the best possible invest of time. We will maybe sacrifice some part of our social life, but I believe it's for a greater cause. And today we know that lack of quality and lack of duration of sleep are both highly pro-inflammatory actions. And first thing that happened with lack of sleep is the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and other molecules in our gut. And then it goes like with time on all of our organism.
(06:33) Briar: Okay, so 8 hours of sleep, what else can we be doing? Can we have seven, could we have six or does it have to be eight? And how can we also improve the quality of our sleep as well?
(06:45) Sebastian: Yes. So it's not eight usually seven is deal breaker. Seven is statistically like deal breaker. Seven is something that majority of people, but seven hours of sleep not of being in bed. So that total seven hours of sleep with all four phases of sleep is usually enough for vast majority of people. There are like one in a billion people that can strive and thrive on less than seven. But the probability that you or I are one of them is insignificant.
(07:23) Briar: And how can we improve the quality? So good bedtime routine. You mentioned to me, blue light, I'm a sucker for being on my phone when I'm in bed. What other things?
(07:34) Sebastian: Usually what is also not often recognized is that we sleep better when we don't eat two or three hours before bed because digestion process takes some energy and some processes out of that. We are calm and ready to bed. usually also body is slushing some one degree of body temperature when going into sleep phase, meaning that also having a temperate bedroom is really a nice thing, especially if you are living in the warmer areas.
(08:08) Briar: So what kind of temperature in my bedroom, because I love sleeping in the heat and my boyfriend loves sleeping in the cold. So perhaps help us end this argument we have.
(08:19) Sebastian: Usually I would say like, but there is no one size fits all formula, but our body is decreasing our body temperature with the inner regulatory systems. But if we temper our environment temperature in bedroom, the process will be easier. So this is the only thing, but I don't know its 23, 22, 25. It depends, but if lower the better I would say, but out of freezing. Next to this temperature of environment and next to feeding time we are living intoxicated by artificial light. And then if we cannot skip because of the work or anything else, like closed screens, like tablets and mobile phones, TVs are somewhat Okay. Then we should use blue light blockers like just all filters on our mobile phone because it'll give us the signal to our eyes and our brain and our circulatory system that we are slowly preparing for bedtime.
We can also suggest few supplements, but we shouldn't rely on that. We know that glycine as amino acid is helping body to lower the body temperature. It's an amino acid that is often used skin health also and recovery processes. And magnesium taurate is a specific form of magnesium, which can go through the blood-brain barrier and it's usually used as enhancer of sleep, but magnesium as a food supplement should have some other forms of magnesium to be effective.
(10:05) Briar: So that's really in a nutshell sleep. And we should be measuring it. I want to get one of those Whoop watches so I can start to see a little bit what works sleep-wise.
(10:18) Sebastian: I don't know if we should measure it, but for education time, we could measure it for a short period of time if we like to know more. Did we sleep well? Did we enter our four phases of sleep? Because today people, because of the other things that we mentioned until now, people usually spend all night in light sleep. They got adjusted to it, then they put the fire down with caffeine in the morning and so on. But we are not sleeping, we are not recovering enough. Okay? When we are having small children, we don't sleep well. But this is something that cannot be influenced, but in all other aspects of our life, we should at least for short time measure with any gadget to see what are sleep architecture and just to see what is happening to us, what alcohol does to our sleep. I'm not feeling well. My clock or my gadget is, is showing us, showing to me that I'm not feeling well. So let's educate ourselves. This is not a mandatory, but if we don't know anything about it, I think it's a good investment of time and funds to be more aware of it.
(11:31) Briar: Okay. And what about like people like Brian Johnson for instance? So when I was at the Longevity Summit, people were really hoping that he was going to be speaking live on one of the panels, but he zoomed on in he was on the big screen. He wasn't with us physically because the reason why he said that he's not traveling large distances at the moment with jet lag and things like this. I live between Dubai and New York. And I was saying to you earlier, I think I've literally spent one week in my house in Dubai the last three months I've been to Australia, I go to London tomorrow, like it's been a little bit crazy, like, do you think that that jet lag and that kind of just moving around all the time is, is probably affecting me and my inflammation.
(12:21) Sebastian: Not sure inflammation, but for start the quality of your sleep and your circadian rhythm. We know today, unfortunately melatonin is something that people usually are using when trying to enhance their sleep. But we must know that melatonin is a hormone and is not sleep hormone. It's like regulatory of our Circadian rhythm. Meaning that melatonin will start the developing and expressing in our body when we are doing things right regarding sleep and habits before sleep and in moving time zones with jet lag. This is one of the few circumstances that really are logic to try to help yourself with the melatonin until you get the new rhythms starting to be your own rhythm. So because we are really creatures from the nature and we are synced with the circadian rhythm, when we sync our habits with circadian rhythm, which is daylight day and night shifts in our environment, we strive even a little bit more than if we are living like this erratic lifestyle eating while we are awake, independent of its day or night in our environment. So Jet lag is not helping you recovering well, but you can help yourself and start this sync of circadian rhythm to be a little bit quicker than if we don't use such habits and suggestions.
(13:53) Briar: Okay, good to know. And what about the fitness side of things? I'd love for you to tell our audience a bit more about fitness because I'll tell you what, I've got a bit of, bit of both worlds. I've got people who don't exercise at all, and then I've got people who go so hard at the gym that they're almost breaking their knees and I'm like, calm down. What should we be doing?
(14:14) Sebastian: Yes, there is always does makes the poison counts for fitness, counts for nutrition. This is something that we shouldn't watch like, Black or white we know from large cohorts of people what is decent, what is good enough and what is maybe too much for our bodies In like an age practice, we see often, rather often people that are over-trained, especially with cardio, it's very much harder to over-train yourself with resistance training, but it's doable also, especially if trying to do all the time high intensity internal training or popular hit. But if people are running all the time and not making like additional work with weights and with lower intensity cardio activities, usually their chronic inflammation is really high and their biological age is really elevated that without measuring, we can see that the people who runs a lot are usually physically much older than they are chronologically. This is practically a sign. One of the signs that chronic inflammation is uncontrolled and it’s only a logical consequence of the fact that we are as a species, we are not efficient runners, meaning that we can be efficient runners, but if we do all the right steps before that, meaning not running because we run in elementary school, I mean we have like 10 or 15 years now when we are older or when we're not very fit, running things being done too really too much. It's usually more harm than good.
(15:57) Briar: Interesting. I was actually looking at some children run through a resort recently as I was staying. And I thought to myself how interesting it would be if, they were running because they were having fun, they were chasing each other, they obviously wanted to get somewhere fast. And I thought, man, if I was to get up and start running, like people would think either A, there's something wrong with me or B, there is a situation that's wrong. And I just thought how interesting it was. And then it really got me thinking about why as adults we don't necessarily run or have the same amount of sort of energy as children do. And it made me think of childlike play and, and all of these sorts of things. But you talking a little bit now about the fact that running isn't good for us is, is making me wonder if that's maybe why we evolve, like we evolve when we're older and why lions don't, they sit around and watch their cubs play for instance. Maybe it is this species sorts of things rather than society.
(16:55) Sebastian: I wouldn't say running is bad for us. Running is just it has its place and time. Usually people are using running to for any cause, for losing weight, for losing body fat, for getting in shape. But almost for every cause that we can remember there are better things to do comparing to running just because of our anthropology, because of our genetics evolution and so on.
(17:24) Briar: What should I do instead of running? Because I think I need to run in order to get some abs. I'm going to be honest, I look less flabby if I run. What can I be doing instead of running so that I look cute and then yeah, I'm not hurting myself?
(17:44) Sebastian: So we are not doing physical activity. Like first goal is to slash calories, it's a consequence, but it shouldn't be. So like goal number one, if we rely on gadgets, we will see total overestimating of our calories consumed or expanded and then we get like license to kill according to calorie intake and then we gain weight because we lose much more calories in real life comparing to what gadgets are telling to us. So we can run even to lose weight and we should run is excellent activity, but just we need to be safe that we are on the right spot. Do we have enough cardiovascular capacity? Is our body composition decent or even excellent or advanced? Meaning our body fat percentages below 20 for men, below 30 for women like this, some like provisional now. If we are more fit both cardiovascular and muscular running will do less damage to. So we don't get to see any food and any activity like black or white is good or bad for me or for humans, but can be good or bad for me for my fitness levels, for my cardio, respiratory fitness, for my lifestyle and so on.
(19:10) Briar: Okay. And what about the nutrition side of things? So obviously you mentioned the seasonal vegetables and fruit, always trying to eat what's in season, which I was not doing. What should we keep in mind? Because some people eat vegan saying that it helps improve longevity. We hear about this carnivore diet, so people eating just like steak and lots of steak and meat and things. What should I be doing?
(19:45) Sebastian: Yes, we live in this polarized world when we like to put ourselves in some tribe. We are stronger when we are part of a group and then we have on the same time on the same planet People that think that eating only vegetables is the only thing to do and total opposite eating only meat dairy and eggs is the only thing to do. So obviously both of them are wrong. There are some genetically people that are susceptible that they strive on that protocols depending on which it is. But there is no one size fits all nutrition. There are people who will strive on veganism. There are people who feel like very poor on the diet. What is scientifically proven that every one of us will strive on different diet. We don't know which it is. We should probably try everything.
And what is maybe the biggest problem today that we live in a time of standard American or standard modern diet comparing to which literally everything is better. So veganism is better, carnivore is better because each and every restriction is guiding us towards less processed food. And then we are better because our food quality is elevated comparing to what is standard and we can, be easily in calorie deficit and then we feel better and then we, because of lack of wide picture and education, they'll say, oh, I'm better because I'm now vegan. Usually person is feeling better because better quality of food, less ultra-processed foods and calorie deficit, which is as we know from animal studies is one of the best predictors of longevity. But we are not those animal species. We are not rodents, we are not mice. And in human we know that what is efficient predictor of longevity is muscle mass and strength and not elite, but above average cardio respiratory fitness, those are parameters that we cannot measure on rodents in lab or in nematodes, worms or flies. But we know that calorie deficit is anecdotally potentially good driver of healthy longevity, meaning that entering in calorie deficit, especially today when we are living in huge calorie surplus is something that give us benefits. And then all those diets are really taking credits of calorie deficit. Nothing else.
(22:29) Briar: What about fasting? Should I be fasting every day?
(22:33) Sebastian: This is very, very good question. All fasting hype and everything else also relies on rodent studies, but there is a first and crucial fallacy. 16 hours in mice is enough time for entering deep autophagy in humans that have like six to seven times slower metabolism. If we count like simple maths, 16 hours in mice is four hours in human meaning that those depotophagy effects is indeed, but we cannot prove it. But most likely is induced after two or three days of fasting water only fasting. But we don't want to lose a single gram of muscle mass if we are working on enough longevity, meaning that also in fasting time, oh sorry, does make the poison, meaning if we are fasting it regularly, we will lose muscle mass. This is something that we're doing totally counterproductive thing for our longevity and if we should fast, but I also, I will repeat from before, we shouldn't fast until our body composition is really good because we will lose muscle mass more than fat mass.
When body composition is good. Okay, elementary school checked, let's go to faculty. Let's try to fast, let's try this longevity protocols. But most often people are using it far too early. And then we know that from mice studies that things are good for their longevity and beneficial, like, I don't know like metformin, like time restricted, eating all the time, every day is good for mice longevity. But it's proven to be not neutral, but even bad for human longevity.
(24:29) Briar: Interesting. Yeah. I've got a lot of friends that do a lot of fasting and some do it up for 16 hours every day. For me, my fasting consists of when I forget to eat or when I'm too busy to eat. So but still I probably do about four hours a day accidentally. Like right now I'm pretty hungry. I haven't had dinner.
(24:50) Sebastian: Fasting is good thing definitely, but it's only time of a mount and frequency. So usually when people are feeling better on a time restricted eating pattern, like 68 or 18, 6 or something similar, also benefits are caloric deficit and usually unintentional sinking with circadian rhythm. So then we really metabolize foods somewhat better. We easily enter in caloric deficit and then we are thinking, oh, I'm better because of autophagy. No, you feel better because you enter caloric deficit. You feel better because you honour the circadian rhythm Unintentional. Usually, and we must know that 16 hours, there is nothing autophagy related happening in human most likely. It's something that we cannot prove, but it's very probable and highly probable that that's the case.
(25:48) Briar: So obviously we spoke about how bad processed food is and I, I really do try and stay away from it, but sometimes when I'm out and about, I think to myself, God, it is so much easier and more convenient if I was to eat processed food I turn up at Starbucks or I'm walking down the streets of New York and I'm like, oh my God, I'm so hungry. But I'm looking around and I'm like, what can I get that's super quick and super easy and everything is either processed or it's bready or it's unhealthy. And I just think what a weird society it is that we live in. And I was reading some research recently that just shows how much worse obesity has become in the last 20 and 30 years. And I was reading that there's so much food in America that there is enough food for us all to have a 4,000 calorific diet a day. So that's why they like to push, eat more, get bigger sizes and stuff like this on us, but why is everything so backwards? I really don't understand the world sometimes.
(27:01) Sebastian: This is modern food environment. With capitalism with everything. Our world evolves. We don't have time now. And then this is convenient. And what is most important it’s supernaturally tasty. We don't have like tools to even try to stop on one cookie to stop on because this is designed to be eaten more.
(27:28) Briar: Oh yeah. Give me those additives. Yeah. Yum, yes. It's true.
(27:34) Sebastian: Some experts spent like years and years in the lab to find something that is unnatural in Appetite properties.
(27:43) Briar: Yes. There was a cooking show on Netflix and just even the way that they sometimes design the shape of the crisps so that you just want to, they just fit so nicely in your mouth. Like this is the kind of level of detail people go to make you want to keep eating those Pringles.
(28:01) Sebastian: And we really don't have like tools beside motivation and education to stay away from it because it's almost impossible to be calorie deficit while in the same time on ultra-processed food. This is something that, it's a very thin line between health eating and health eating disorder, meaning that OrthoX is now really a big issue because people frightened of all the social media bold statements and so on, are not afraid to eat majority of food. And what is also proven for mental health is to eat according to, I don’t know, there is no meaning that you go with Tupperware on some social gathering because you are now overstressing yourself. But what is like golden standards for healthy eating is like keep your ultra-process calories, 10 to 20% of your overall or intake and you're good.
(29:03) Briar: How many calories should men and women eat?
(29:06) Sebastian: It depends on size, on expenditure, on thousand factors. This calories thing is really polarizing because we don't know exact numbers. We don't know how many calories we are taking. We don't know how many calories we are spending, but for sure there, if we eat more calories than we spend, we'll gain weight and vice versa. If we take less, then we will lose, lose weight, but we don't know the exact numbers. And then people are telling like, calories all bulls**t. No calorie counting is so wrong process because all the errors that are everywhere around it and the people think that calories are bulls**t, that would be the same like we say, all second cell bulls**t or grams are bulls**t. This is like a measure measuring unit, but we don't know exact numbers. And then all the processes really, maybe I would say calories are not bulls**t, calories are real, but calorie counting is heavily over, I don't know what to say.
It's process of, it's so much error that really doesn't make any sense. So gut microbiome is really a hot topic, but it's deserved. We didn't know much about it until really recently. And now we today also know that unbalanced and undiverse, so, or less diverse gut microbiome is more inflammation prone. Meaning that there, we know that on gut health optimization will also modify our chronic inflammation levels in our body. And what you mentioned, eat the rainbow, eat as many plants as possible, different plants. This is also a great tool to enhance gut microbiome diversity and functionality. That's also one reason why the first thing, you are speaking in this nutrition part is so beneficial that each and every plant having different colour, different taste. This colour and taste is property of some chemicals in that in the plants. And those chemicals are phytonutrients, are polyphenols are fibre, other phytonutrients, which are highly beneficial to us and we don't have those chemicals in processed foods.
(31:26) Briar: What about organic versus non-organic? The supermarket I goes to has some very beautiful apples and oranges and things like this. And one time I accidentally left an apple in my fridge for a month, but don't worry, it still looked the exact same a month later. Should we be eating organic? Is stressed fruit and vegetables important? I saw a recent podcast with David Sinclair and he spoke about how when little insects and stuff like this eat fruits and vegetables, it releases a chemical. Tell me a bit about this.
(32:03) Sebastian: Yes, not only when insects eat it, but also when those plants are living in heavy situations like in Siberia or very cold or very hot parts of our planet, they develop like those defensive chemicals, which are really good also to us. But there is also always thing does make the poison. We know that resveratrol like heavy and strong antioxidant is really detrimental to our health and our physical activity adaptations when intake in such high doses. So meaning there is also like a big area between black and white telling that this is great for us. We need to eat like as diverse as possible. Very probably not in the form of supplement, but in form of real food. And then we get all the benefits because in food there is really a real amount, good amount of those chemicals, those defensive chemicals. Also, what I believe that is very correct, that organic things won't be one month like untouched in the fridge. So this organic is really something that is highly commercially used. And I wouldn't say that price elevation due to like organic thing is proven in regarding to quality.
(33:26) Briar: Do you know what I was thinking the other day about how funny it is that we pay more for an organic slash normal piece of fruit or a vegetable and we pay less for something that's been sprayed with like pesticides and stuff like this? I thought, how strange is it where normal is like, I don't know, something different and unique?
(33:49) Sebastian: Yes, but also we don't know if this normal is really normal because we didn't-- we can know what is this really only if we plant it in our garden and so on. So unfortunately I think there are investigations and scientific research that show that inorganic food is not so rarely to be seen similar amounts of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals that really are not good for us. So it's modern times. It's modern food industry. It's, that's why it's important to buy if possible, local grown seasonal, which is grown not so far from home. It's much less potential. We cannot know for sure, but much less potential that there are numerous like chemicals used in that production process. But really until we really plant this in our garden, we cannot know.
(34:47) Briar: It's interesting, a lot of the PR and the media and the lobbying and stuff like this and the kind of impacts it has in food trends that it results in. You mentioned earlier about diets and you know how perhaps dieting is not the best and how I shouldn't do keto and again, it's just eating a whole range of things. What I think is very interesting is, I remember it was probably about four or five years ago now, and everyone was promoting vegan as being this extremely healthy sort of diet. And I started eating a lot of those meat patties, those vegan meat patties. And I just thought it was so much at the time, I was like, oh, this is so much healthier than me having a steak because of, what I'd been hearing from everybody. And I remember once I looked at the back of the packet and actually gave it a proper look and it's, I can't read half the stuff that goes in on it, the chemicals, the numbers, like it was kind of crazy.
(35:51) Sebastian: Sorry, it's also ultra-processed, so it can be ultra-processed keto or ultra-processed vegan food, but it's still ultra-processed. You just have this aura of healthy, but it's really not so healthy for us. So if you're eating any restrictive protocol, any restrictive diet, but you rely on ultra-processed food, it's not healthy for anyone. And today we know that last year it was like a great investigation, priority micronutrient density in food. Like in top 10 there are animal sources vegetables, there are like fish sources. So whenever we cut whole part of ingredients from our diet, we have maybe some benefits, but for sure there are some disadvantages, especially if we cut unprocessed food. First thing that come to mind is red meat because it was demonized for a long time. Now we know that problem with red meat is that usually it's consumed in processed option. Unprocessed red meat is probably closest thing that can be called to superfoods according to mineral density, vitamin density, protein intake or proteins quantity. But it's something that will be very hard to now change mind to majority of people that may be doctors frighten them. You shouldn't eat meat, its high cholesterol cardiovascular disease and so on. But okay, today we have carnivores who eat only red meat.
(37:26) Briar: I follow a girl on Instagram, she's the daughter of Jonathan Peterson. And his daughter just eats meat because she's got an autoimmune disorder. And over the years she started cutting out certain food groups to try like its bad, her autoimmune disorder. It started eating away at her ankle and her knee at like 19 or whatever. And yeah, she literally just eats meat and olive oil and apple cider vinegar now. And people are like, what did you have for breakfast, lunch and dinner? And she'll be like, meat and it's bison or steak. But yeah, I think it's very interesting to hear her story.
(38:11) Sebastian: Yes, it's all high quality meat. There is no doubt about it. But what about fibres? What about all those polyphenols from vegetables and so on? So it's really highly restrictive diet, but okay, I think the first disclaimer is here. We as a people from some funny reason, we think that something that help sick people is beneficial to not yet sick people. It's total bias and total delusion. Then people, I don't respectively the whole reason that the industry is still existing, because I know from my private practice that people asking me, should I take this? Should I take this tea? I ask them, why? Because my neighbour is poisoned with lead. Did you have poisoning with lead? I didn't. So why would you take it? So it's like this cognitive dissonance and it's, I would say worldwide phenomena that we want to think that something that help sick people is good for healthy people, but it's really total nonsense. I don't have better world.
So the woman is having autoimmune disease, probably she now has less processed diet, but I doubt that, I don't know, intake of fermented food, intake of different colour vegetables would do her harm. I highly doubt it, but we never know. She’s an individual, she's having her MD in her team. So I think we should do what is best for us, but only we can know what is best for us, but we should try as more things as possible, not to be biased, not to be seduced with these bold social media statements and try to eat as diverse as possible, at least from microbiome point of view.
(40:08) Briar: You know what I was reading about your gut health is actually so much of the chemical transmitters. So I believe its serotonin. A lot of that is made in your gut. And so serotonin is what affects your mood and your emotions. And I just think it's so interesting that saying we are what we eat. Like if our gut or that you get that gut feeling, that saying is actually affecting how we react.
(40:40) Sebastian: Is really not bulls**t. This is really actual thing and it's a real thing that gut feeling is often telling us something is wrong around us. Go away or do something, something different and so on. Yes, gut health is, as I said, a really emerging field, but I believe it's here to stay. It wasn't before here because we didn't have the tools to analyse microbiome. Today we have it. And really what we needed as a scientific society is I would say from Zinberg lab from Stanford, this study from 2021 of importance of regular intake fermented foods. I believe they did a study, the control group was high fibre and I'm pretty sure that they believed before that, okay, high fibre is like a golden standard and let's see what is fermented food Comparing to that what was shown after this study that fermented food showed better result comparing to high fibre diet regarding gut microbiome diversity.
So now we have the tools to have this stool test, to have this test properly analysed by the expert. And then from species balance and species diversity, we can give you really some solid advices. Okay, you should incorporate this and this maybe even you should incorporate more anaerobic training because there are anaerobic species are somewhat in less number in your stool and so on. So I believe this is here to stay. And fermented food is something that modern food industry neglected because we can do it at home. Ingredients like starting materials are really cheap and there is no big expiry date all things that modern food industry don't like.
(42:32) Briar: Perfect. I will enjoy my kimchi. Then
(42:36) Sebastian: Of course there is like a team spectre, say four K of fermented food. It's kimchi, kombucha croute or sour croute. And the fourth one is kefi milk fermentation.
(42:50) Briar: Cool. I like all four of those, so I will do that. Thank you. I'll let you know how it goes. Regarding stress. So this was something that we spoke about as well and I think that stress is a very interesting topic. I live a very busy life. I, as I said, split my time between countries. I've got multiple businesses. I've got a large team in New York and also Dubai as well. So, I do lead quite a busy life, but over the years I've tried to be quite mindful or quite conscious really as to how I'm living it. So when I first became an entrepreneur, it was quite stressful. It was very much start up, my business started on my kitchen table. I downgraded my room into a small maid's room. It had no window.
I ate frozen vegetables and instant noodles for the month and I was like, go hard or go back to New Zealand sort of thing. So this is how it all started. So obviously that was quite stressful and I think what happened over time is that my brain perhaps got used to this kind of way of operating this fight or flight type response constantly. And then it's taken me many years to actually I think kind of train myself to kind of get back to how I was and, and to be more, more calm. So I do a lot of like breathing exercises and I love exercise. I think I go slightly crazy if I don't exercise. So exercises is very important, otherwise I might have like an existential crisis, like why are we here on this planet sort of thing. But exercise solves that. So that's all good.
And it's just really interesting learning about this. And over time I was reading that people have come to have attention deficit traits, so different from ADHD. Lots of people are going to the doctor saying, Hey, I think I have ADHD. And they're saying, well, let's talk about your childhood. They talk about their childhood and realize, you know what your symptom are from technology and the way that we are living our life in today's society. You can't concentrate on things because notifications are pinging at you. Like it's all slightly crazy at the moment. So I would say that it's quite in today's concrete jungles, in the cities and things, it's actually a relatively stressful sorts of places. What's your thoughts?
(45:18) Sebastian: Of course, we know also the scientific papers that people that spend time in nature are having lower, like baseline cortisol levels. So it's not something that is so weird because we are creatures from the nature and as you said, notifications so many triggers, so many information, we are not built for that. So, they said before, the best asset is gold and the best asset is oil and so on. And now today they're having best asset in midlife is to have body and to have attention span focus. This is because majority of people don't have that today. So usually as we spoke before, during our consultations, stress is most individual thing. Out of all four of these pillars of chronic inflammation, what is highly stressful for one person is like walking in the park for the second one.
And also that mean that all of us should have some different stress relieving techniques that work for us. For some people it'll be box breeding. For some people it'll be journaling for other meditation, for other physical activity, like a form of meditation. And also what we know, we are built for movement and after every practice we feel much more focused, relaxed. Our endorphins are in our system. And usually I can say it also from my side, the best ideas for, I don't know, podcasts and for social media posts came to me during or after the training just to get clearance of all the fuss of everything you are doing during the day. So really we are built to move, but our earlier generations. They had to work physically to live and to eat. We are in coziness of our home or our office, but this is something that we are not built for.
(47:19) Briar: Is it really bad for us? Like, I know it's bad, but is it really bad for us to be sitting all the time? Like I was reading somewhere that sitting's like the new cigarettes
(47:30) Sebastian: Sitting, sitting is the new smoking? It depends. I have really good experts in my team regarding physiotherapy and they are saying, which is the best position? The next one, whatever it is. So we don't, we can have movement snacks, but also we can sit eight hours, if we don't have alternative, it's not good, but then we can mitigate the effect of this with proper training, with proper nutrition and so on. It's surely not best. But what we focus on our consultations that steps are really like hygiene and the base of our health. If we are sitting eight hours, it's not so probable that we will manage to collect this 7 to 8,000 steps per daily average. But if we can do it and if we can practice resistance training and cardio respiratory fitness, then all the damage from sitting will be very, very, I would say diminished. But if we sit16 hours per day, we can diminish that. It's always does make the poison.
(48:39) Briar: So I understand stress is a relatively personal thing. As you mentioned, what's really stressful for someone might not be stressful for other people. We get used to these different baseline levels of stress, I guess, and ways of coping and things. But what should people be doing and what even is stress? Like, I obviously know when I feel stressed, but a couple of times I've heard you mention like, stressing over the small things and how bad that could be. So like things that I wouldn't even get stressed over. Like for instance, taking Tupperware containers, to a person's party the stress of that, the chemicals will be worse of the actual chemicals themselves. Like these sorts of things. Because I don't really feel that stress as such is that having an effect on my body?
(49:30) Sebastian: Usually what the most important thing is the deal breaker is the stress acute or chronic one. Acute stress is something that keep us alive. We will jump in front of the car that is going to go over us, but, and this is what they say, like also does make the poison. Low amount of stress is prolonging our life. But today we are living in the world. But stress is only chronic one. A chronic one is devastation because it's like an incubator of pro-inflammatory cytokines, cell molecules running through our body. And it's only a matter of time when the system is going to break down. So acute stress is good, chronic stress is a silent killer. It's really that's important and is very such a big thing. And really acute stress is something that we need. For example, if we don't stress our body in physical activities, and resistance training, we won't have adaptation and we won't grow and be stronger.
And also I will mention resveratrol here because we want that stress and adaptation of stress to be done via after training. But if we ingest high amount of antioxidants and or resveratrol for instance, it'll like burn the fire, oh, sorry, it'll put down the fire. But we need this small fire for start of healing process. But if we put that down immediately, we won't get this adaptation and we will get much less stronger, less muscle mass and so on. So it's always depending on the dose and we need stress in proper and smaller amounts and it's acute and not chronic one.
(51:20) Briar: Let's talk about supplements. So you touched on supplements before and spoke about how it's a lot best to obviously eat lots of different foods and things like this. There were quite, when I say quite a few, there were about three people at the longevity conference that I went to in Dublin that were taking like 80 to a 100 supplements a day. And I was just like, wow what do you, what do you take them all for? But like, should we be doing this? Like what's your thoughts about supplements? Are there any like, you should take this, this is something I would recommend for you Briar
(52:00) Sebastian: It really depends. But we want to have our diet as diverse as possible, as quality as possible to avoid the situation, to have like huge supplement stack. I know longevity thing is very big hype and we as Homo sapiens are really evolved as a species to find like shortcuts. To find any way to spare energy to save resources and energy and supplements is something that like first things, the first that came on my mind, I should use some supplement to strive to live healthy long life. I would give her a big shout out to Andrea Meyer. She's very, I believe some of top three or five longevity scientists in the world. Not so much publicly exposed, but I was listening her excellent lecture a few days ago. And after that it was a discussion regarding this longevity molecules.
Everybody knows I believe, what are they? But we don't have long-term studies on humans yet. So whatever people are telling to us, you should eat this and this or supplement this and this is have great result. But those results are on mice. When we saw--- these 16 hours doesn't have any connections in human and in mice organism. I wouldn't be so optimistic that the results on humans will be better. So the resveratrol was the first or among first longevity molecules 10 years after or 50 years after. We know it's practically doing damage to our body if used in large amounts. We have like big long-term study on many people. It's not opinion, it's scientific, proven fact.
Also pharma industry was like shined with this potential and they bought like resveratrol plants and research centres and now they sold that or transformed that to something else. What we know from supplementation, creatine is the most investigated and most proven supplement. I believe every person above 16 maybe should take it until the end of the days every day it's so proven, it's so safe, it's so beneficial for cognitive health, for physical, for especially for high intensity bouts. And it's something that I would say its performance supplement, but from performance supplement stack, it's for sure number one,
(54:49) Briar: I've been taking creatine and I saw a massive difference even after a week my trainer in New York ED was like, you have to take this. And I'm like, oh, but won't it make me bloated and things like this. But my trainer in Dubai had also been telling me the same thing and I was like, well if both of these guys are saying take it, I was like, why not? And actually after taking it, I didn't experience any kind of bloating or anything like this and I did a bit more research into it. I don't know if even bloating is such a common symptom.
(55:21) Sebastian: There are also many meats in creatine supplementation because people are telling these damaging kidneys, it's causing baldness,
(55:26) Briar: Baldness?
(55:29) Sebastian: Yes, it's insane. It doesn't really doesn't water retention and so on. Today we know that we don't have to do this fast fuelling fast what is it say, accumulation with 20 or 30 grams per day. If we eat three to five grams per day in three to four weeks, we'll have full stores of creatine monohydrate with this lower dose. We don't experience almost no one experience bloating and so on. But we must tell that like 20% of the population are non-responders to creatine. But 80% of people are having huge benefits when taken. This is like performance supplementation is totally different topic. I would like to discuss basic supplementation.
This is intended to be taken just to fill the holes in your diet. Meaning if you are vegan, you must take one type of supplement. If you are carnivore totally opposite things, what is the scarcest in modern nutritional? Few things? Magnesium out of minerals. Vitamin D is practically not in food. Omega 3 is only fatty fish, which also from, I don't know, pollution of the water. We probably shouldn't eat more than twice a week. And I would say this is the top 3 supplements that, or ingredient that will lack even in high quality diet. We wouldn't have like clinical deficit, but we wouldn't strive on optimal levels. And there is a huge difference between minimum and optimum. And that's also what people are often mistaken about it. But it's always the best thing. Make blood work, see what is deficient, find decent, great proven supplements with third party tested and it's go to fill your holes in your diet.
(57:35) Briar: What brands would you recommend? Because I hear that there's a massive difference between qualities of brands and sometimes I'm taking a supplement and I'm like, am I taking something with micro plastics? I've got no idea.
(57:49) Sebastian: Yes. It's really I was working in the supplement industry closely for three full years after I moved from pharma to this, I would say nutritional longevity space. And then I learned that even in one brand there are excellent and terrible product. So really we shouldn't speak about this brand is excellent. Is this product is excellent or not? So usually I wouldn't mention any brands. I would just mention what we should look for when we search magnesium. We would like to have as many magnesium forms as possible in one product because magnesium is a really tricky Mineral. Somewhat tricky regarding the absorption. Every form is having good or bad sites. And I believe from scientific papers that those producers that have like five or even seven magnesium forms in one product, they are making the best products out there regarding magnesium.
So if we take only magnesium oxide or only magnesium citrate, we miss all the benefits of other parts of this magnesium spectrum. Regarding omega 3, there is usually a problem with purity with oxidation peroxidation and so on. I would say from literature also that the best thing is to find omega 3s from species that are not cultivated like from wild fish. But also we cannot know because we weren't there when this fish was caught. But usually anchovies, sardines, those small types of fish that are not like, they're always wild but we don't have pools of them like organized. So I believe those omega 3s are having the biggest potential to not be contaminated and oxidized. So there are few companies, I am an ambassador. One of them is from Finland, but I'm not here to make any marketing claims. My intention is to educate and to have as least bias as possible.
(1:00:10) Briar: Very interesting. I'll look for those little sardines. With
(1:00:17) Sebastian: Anchovies maybe
(1:00:18) Briar: And anchovies. Okay noted. Today's society is very much built around this whole sick care system rather than a healthcare system. And I think one of the things I love most about what you guys are doing is for one, I now know my baseline age today. So today my age, my glucose age is 38. Okay. And we're going to--
(1:00:47) Sebastian: Glycan age or biological age is 38.
(1:00:53) Briar: Okay. So yeah, it's not quite 31, which is what I actually am. So this is what we're working on. So this is very interesting. So it's 38, so this is my baseline now. So now I need to work on getting this closer to 31. If I'm doing all--
(1:01:09) Sebastian: Even below that
(1:01:09) Briar: Or even below that God love that make me 18.
(1:01:13) Sebastian: The youngest you can get glycan age test is 20. Because while we are in puberty and in adolescence, we are highly inflamed in a good way. After 20 usually, our immune system is now more guided with lifestyle than with genetics an evolutionary side of thing. So really we cannot get any under the 20 and that is good thing because we don't know how our body will react on such information level that we go through. But we're and prosper and growing in every means.
(1:01:54) Briar: Yeah. Makes sense. So if we're pushing my age towards 20, I think that sounds quite nice. How long? And I understand every individual's different. I'm probably asking a question that, that you're not necessarily able to answer, but if I'm doing all of the steps that we've discussed today at least trying them, who knows, maybe I'll do another test and now it would've gone up even more. Like we don't know, but how long could I expect? Like could I do this in like six months? Is this like a two year thing? Like how long does it take to create some change in my body?
(1:02:32) Briar: Yes, as we discussed, it really is not responsive to any drastic radical changes and it wouldn't have any sense. That I believe is also one additional proof that glycan age is the real thing. Usually below 3 months. It's too quick. We cannot establish new habit in less than three months, from literature they are saying like 66 days of new habit is needed to become a new habit. 66 days of new, new things incorporated to our lifestyle. So we usually say to people when there is much work to be done, the lifestyle is total mess then three months. In your case, your lifestyle is decent. You have a space for optimization. I would say four to six months. Not before, because you won't experience like a huge changes, but you'll experience some benefits in months’ time. Let's make it maybe half a year of new habit of balance of something that is slowly incorporated and is here to stay not for only for test, but for life.
(1:03:49) Briar: Because yeah, I think part of the thing that I'm quite interested in seeing when I read test is if it's going to be going down. Because I was very curious when you said 38, I was thinking, oh gosh, like this is probably the healthiest I've ever been. Could have been so much worse a few years ago had I have done this test and maybe this 38 isn't it going down? So it'll be interesting to retest in six months’ time and see if it's like 37 or 36 or 20.
(1:04:21) Sebastian: Yes. It's somewhat influenced by genetics. We cannot say how big the magnet of a change will be, but it's highly probable that you will go back in time, I would say. But the magnitude we will see, it's really a long run. It's a marathon race. We are racing anyone, okay? The earth is circling around the sun, but we really age differently. Each and every one of us mostly determined bad by our lifestyle. Genetics is not irrelevant here, but lifestyle is really what pulls the trigger. Genetics may be is what they say the bullet in pistol, but lifestyle will always pull the trigger.
(1:05:08) Briar: Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was very interesting to be honest. I could have kept going for another hour, but we'll stop it here let the audience process what you've told them today and we'll have to do a follow-up session another time as well. But it was really interesting to hear what I should be doing, what we should be doing, what's true, what's not true, what we should think about.
(1:05:34) Sebastian: Yes, science is really alive. There is nothing that is definite, but I think we should follow the latest research and always speak in the right manner and always be prepared to change your attitude because we don't know, in few years maybe we'll learn something new, but it's most important to be up to date and to be like open-minded and never, it's not written in stone. 10 years ago resveratrol was like huge thing, like, so beneficial today from study from 21, 22, 23, we know that's not the case. So we must be up-to-date. It's so fast part of science, especially nutrition. And we should be always open to potential change and believe that someone who is here to educate you doesn't have any agenda or any not so I would say sincere manners and beliefs.
(1:06:40) Briar: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.
(1:06:43) Sebastian: Thank you very much. I'm really honoured to be here. I'm looking forward for the next session, for your next test, for whatever the future has in store for us. I'm very blessed. All the best and I wish you very best.
(1:06:58) Briar: Thank you. Bring on 20 Woo.
(1:07:03) Sebastian: Yes. Let's see it. Maybe it'll be in one year.
