In this episode of Beyond Longevity, Daphna speaks with Dr David Cox, a health journalist (BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, NBC News and others), who holds a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Cambridge and is the author of The Age Code, about how diet, ultra-processed foods and the modern food environment shape biological ageing.

Dr David argues that the longevity conversation often focuses too heavily on future drug breakthroughs, supplements and biohacking, while overlooking lower-hanging fruit that could already have a meaningful impact on long-term health. He explains why reducing ultra-processed foods, increasing fibre intake and paying closer attention to micronutrients such as vitamin K may matter far more than many people realise.

The conversation explores gut ageing and its relationship with immune ageing, possible drivers behind the rise in early-onset cancers, and practical lifestyle strategies that may support healthier ageing. These include slow cooking, eating more protein and calories earlier in the day, lowering dietary acid load through fruits, vegetables and herbs, and the role omega-3s may play in long-term health.

Daphna and Dr David also discuss biological ageing tests, visceral fat, kidney health markers, the limitations of CGMs for the average person, exercise mimetics, affordability within longevity medicine, and whether governments should take a far more active role in tackling the everyday drivers of chronic disease and accelerated ageing.

The Age Code: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008708878

https://www.instagram.com/drdavidcoxhealth

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-david-cox-6b219666

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

02:00 From PhD to Journalism

03:17 Science Scepticism and Nuance

05:22 Trust Crisis in Health

06:44 Protein Hype vs Fibre

07:40 Micronutrients Matter

09:07 Inside The Age Code

10:50 Early Onset Cancer Clues

12:38 Gut Ageing Explained

14:49 Ten Nutritional Stressors

17:55 Ultra Processed Food Reality

19:32 Personal Choice vs Policy

23:33 Longevity Focus Misplaced

25:00 Ageing Tests and Omega 3

27:39 Advice for Any Budget

29:48 Sauna Protocols

31:04 Metabolomics Health Snapshots

33:16 Testing Anxiety and Rule of Three

35:41 His Own Biomarker Wake Up

37:41 Best and Overrated Biomarkers

41:25 Exercise Mimetic Drugs Debate

48:05 Government and Ageing Strategy

50:23 Kitchen Takeaways and Seaweed

53:18 Rapid Fire Round

56:08 Final Reflections and Outro

Foreign.

Welcome to Beyond Longevity, the podcast that explores not just how we age, but how we can build a longer, healthier future for ourselves. Joining me today on beyond longevity is Dr. David Cox.

Dr. David is a specialist health and medical journalist with a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Cambridge.

He has spent more than a decade reporting on health, medicine, nutrition and aging science for major publications including the Guardian, BBC, the Telegraph, and Wired.

His new book, the Age Code, looks at one of the most important and under discussed questions in longevity, not just whether we can live longer, but whether the way we eat is making us age faster than we should. In this conversation, we look at why the modern food system matters so much for healthy aging.

We talk about ultra processed food, fiber, protein, micronutrients and gut aging. We also discuss biological aging tests, visceral fat, omega 3, exercise, mimetic drugs, and why.

Dr. David believes the longevity conversation may be focusing too much on far off breakthroughs and not enough on the everyday factors shaping our health.

Right now, this is a conversation about aging, but also about trust, responsibility, public health, and what is actually realistic for people to change. Hi David, thank you so much for joining me on Beyond Longevity today. It's such a pleasure to have you here.

I know you're a very busy man at the moment, seeing that you've just written a new fantastic book. We'll come to that a little bit later. You began in neuroscience with a PhD from Cambridge and then you moved into health and science journalism.

Was there a moment or was it a sort of a gradual realization that made you want to step out of the lab and into public facing writing?

I think it was a gradual process. My PhD was all about schizophrenia, but at the same time I was doing a huge amount of health and science writing.

So I was writing a lot for the Guardian at the time vice different publications. And it was funny. I got to the end of my PhD and psychiatry is tough, you know, is one of the toughest areas of health to get new grants.

And you know, I just kind of got to this point where it was tricky to get the academic funding to pursue what I wanted to do and I could just see perhaps lots of more opportunities in health.

But honestly, I finished my PhD and I was like, I'm going to give myself a year, two years to pursue journalism and then who knows, maybe I'm going to end up working for a pharma company and that's going to be my life for the next 30 years. But instead, yeah, nearly 10 years on, I'm still freelancing as A health journalist and absolutely love it.

Did your training as a neuroscientist shape the kind of journalist you became? Are you more skeptical than most journalists, do you think because you know how messy science can be from the inside?

Definitely.

I think it does give you lots of that extra element of skepticism because you just know things all about journal impact factors and you just have this greater understanding of nuance of science and various things like that. Having seen a little bit of it all that are from the inside.

And I just always remember when I was doing my PhD, there was this massive story which it made like headlines pretty much in all national newspapers in the UK about this small study in a low impact journal which found that a link between cortisol distress hormone and depression and this was painted as headline news and something which could be used as a new diagnostic for, for mental illnesses. And everyone in the lab was like, well, that's not new news.

We've known for 30 years that the stress hormone is like elevated in people who are depressed. So I think having that background acts as a little bit of a reality check. And when you're a health journalist, everyone is trying to sell to you.

I'm always getting PR pitches or people, you know, slipping into my LinkedIn DMs trying to flog the latest new thing. And there's always the latest trends in the wellness industry.

And I think I always go into all of them with, okay, like a bit of a healthy dose of skepticism. And you know, I really want to speak to some impartial experts and find out what scientists actually think before trusting something.

That's what makes you a good journalist in general.

And also the interesting thing is that I think with a lot of stories, what makes the story interesting is the gray areas, the nuance. You know, health care is not black and white.

I'm always battling with my editors when they're trying to sort of put the clickbaity like simplistic headline on some of these really complex topics. And I think that comes from having that sort of background in academia. You appreciate maybe the nuances a little bit more.

Definitely and for sure.

The public health advice often mistrusted because people suspect there's influence from the background from food companies, pharmaceutical companies, wellness brands.

Do you think that has done some damage to the trust that not only you as a, you know, journalist has with what you write and put out there, but the public opinion?

Definitely.

I've been in journalism now for more than 15 years and I think over that time we've just seen this massive Decline in public trust and in health in general. That's of not just what journalists are writing, but scientists. And I think there's a number of reasons for that. Health has become very politicized.

We saw that during COVID I think it's also the impact of social media.

You get a lot of people on their soapboxes who don't necessarily have any real credentials to be talking about the things they're talking about, but they build up big, big followings, and that kind of distorts the messaging. There's a lot of noise out there. And also, health and wellness has become this enormous industry. It's grown hugely over the last 10 years.

So you've got a lot more commercial forces, a lot more people trying to push different messages. And yeah, it's massively complicated health communication.

How much damage do you think that has done to the field of longevity as such?

I feel massive damage, definitely.

I mean, just a key example is there's been this massive trend in protein, like people trying to push more and more protein like Survivor in recent years, and it's fueled by this huge, huge industry.

But really, you know, obviously, while having, like, kind of a certain amount of protein is incredibly important, we don't need these crazy amounts of protein which are being forced on us. And in fact, what aging research shows, and I, I cover this in my book, the age code is actually it's fiber, which is the more important thing.

We need a certain amount of protein, but we need twice as much fiber. And that's for numbers of reasons. And instead we've got protein intake going up and we've got fiber intake going down.

And that's a huge challenge when it comes to how long we lose.

I know you also place great emphasis on micronutrients. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Yeah, I think micronutrients are really underrated part of the aging story. There's been so much focus over the decades on the latter.

Everyone's talking about fat versus carbs, protein, fiber, but is actually a lot of these vitamins and minerals which play a huge role in how well we age. No one really talks about them.

Just to give you one example of that, let's take vitamin K. This is this really, really key, like, group of vitamins which basically play like a huge role in a whole range of processes throughout the body, ranging from your immune health to your brain health. But one of the most critical things they do is ensure calcium. When you ingest that in your diet gets to where it should be going.

So instead of having calcium clogging up and calcifying your arteries, ensuring that it actually goes to your bones.

And there's been a number of epidemiological studies which has shown that people who are getting more vitamin K in their diet, they reach their 50s with less calcification of the arteries, which means their heart disease risk is so much lower. And because more the calcium is getting to their bones, the much less at risk of physical frailty as they're getting older. So that's a huge thing.

And vitamin K, we get this from eating leafy greens, we get it from eating fermented dairy products. And it's something which no one really knows about.

So your new book, the Age Code, is about food and aging, but you spent years reporting on, on places where medicine, wellness and public health can over promise. Did that make you a little bit more careful or even slightly nervous when writing a book in such a commercially charged field?

That's an interesting question. I think when I wrote the Age Code, I really wanted to speak to the scientists behind the scenes.

I wasn't really interested in speaking to any health and wellness influencers.

I wasn't really interested in speaking to that many companies, apart from people who I felt were doing really interesting research projects in this area. I really just wanted to kind of speak to the scientists and the doctors behind the scenes. And so that's what I did. I, I traveled around the world.

I went to places where people were aging badly, places which are quite interesting, which haven't been discussed as much, where people are aging really, really well and trying to understand why, going to different aging conferences and was trying to find out some more of the less covered secrets about how our diet can modify, modulate how we age. Because I do think that nutrition is one of the big drivers.

And it was particularly interesting for me to write this book because we're seeing this trend of accelerated aging, like health span. The number of years you have before you get a disease is now actually declining. And that's really interesting.

We're also seeing this rise, scary rise in cancers in the under 50s. We're seeing more and more younger people getting these inflammatory diseases. We're even seeing a rise in infertility.

And all of these things signify accelerated aging. So it's a big topic now and it's only going to become a bigger topic in the years to come.

You've touched on a few points that I want to delve a bit further into. But you just mentioned that there's a rise in cancer in younger adults.

One of the uncomfortable questions is, I think, whether this is telling us something very bigger about modern life. Diet, obesity, inflammation, and sort of metabolic health.

Are we seeing signs of earlier biological wear and tear, or do you think that's still a bit too big of a leap?

I think potentially. Well, there's a whole range of theories for early onset cancers.

And I think the most important first thing to say, we really don't know at the moment. There's just a lot of theories out there. People are like, is it microplastics? Is it some additives in our food?

There's some people who've like, pinpointed the blame at food dyes.

I think some of the most compelling theories actually so far is related to this particularly pathogenic type of bacteria which actually become established in our gut during childhood. This species produces this toxin called colobactin, which is capable of basically damaging the DNA and cells in your gut.

And that's the strongest evidence that we have. And, and this takes place very, very early in life.

I mean, it plays out decades later in terms of someone getting a bowel cancer in their 30s or their 40s. So that's really, really interesting. But we still don't know could, because this bacterium is like, very, very common.

What makes the distinction in those who get these cancers and those who don't, you know, is it the fact that this bacteria is becoming established and they're having too little fiber in childhood, and that is allowing it to really, really, really flourish and maybe do more damage? We don't know. But these are key questions which need to be answered in the years to come.

I know you're very well versed in the field of gut aging. I don't think many people know about that. And if they do, only very minimum.

Can you talk a little bit more about gut aging, what it is, what impact it has?

Definitely. So gut aging has a very close relationship with immune aging. So I think two thirds of your immune cells are in your gut.

And so the two have this really kind of close symbiotic relationship. Basically, the.

The immune system plays a key role in sort of keeping the gut microbiome lots of in check and sort of acting as this kind of gardener which basically prunes and cultivates all the microbes in your gut. And in return, these bacteria, they produce beneficial chemicals which help tune the immune system. So there's this kind of two way relationship.

And what we've learned about the importance of gut aging really comes from studying centenarians. So people, you know, who've reached 100.

One of the key things which pops up again and again is that they seem to have still retained a kind of structure like sort of in their gut that even very late in life.

So what we actually see is from the moment we kind of reach adulthood, for like most of our adult life, there's these kinds of stable patterns in the microbes. In our gut, you can see this really, really defined structure.

But people who seem to age well, they're able to basically retain that structure for longer. And that seems to correlate with better immune health.

And this is really important because your immune system really dictates how long you're likely to live.

If your immune system is still functioning, it's going to be better protecting you from infections, protecting you against different diseases, protecting you from trauma. So that's the real reason why gut aging is key. And we know that one of the ways to basically slow down gut aging is through diet.

Your book argues that diet can influence the speed at which we age. Biologically, what do most people not know about it? And if they do think they know about it, misunderstand it.

So in my book, I basically define what I call these 10 different types of nutritional stress which affect the rate at which we age. And there's some which people will be more familiar with.

So the importance of getting enough omega 3s in your diet, at least through either through basically having oily fish or taking supplements.

But some which people are maybe less familiar with, such as how you cook, how you cook on a regular basis, plays a big role in the rate at which you age.

So we're increasingly finding that rather than grilling or roasting or cooking a lot of our meals at high heat, having more meals where we should slow cooked. So think stews or things like that is really important to healthy aging. And there's a number of reasons behind that.

Some other key reasons, actually the timing of when we eat is really, really important. A lot of us, basically, as we age from our 30s onwards, we're at risk of losing muscle mass.

And we can counteract that by changing the timing of when we're eating protein during the day.

So basically having more protein in the morning rather than the evening actually makes a lot of sense because that's when Our metabolic enzymes are at their most efficient and most capable of basically using that protein to create new muscle.

There's another fascinating field which I cover in the book called dietary acid load, which is this whole concept that as we age, we become more acidic. And the reason for that is because our kidneys play a big role in how well we age. The kidneys are the body's main acidity regulators.

And from the age of about 25 onwards, their function declines at a little rate every single year, until by the time you reach 70, you effectively only have one working kidney. Now, the thing is that a lot of us end up eating what nutrition scientists call a very acidic diet.

So a lot of protein, a lot of salt, a lot of processed foods which contain this preservative called phosphoric acid, and that's metabolized in the body as a really acidic diet. You're giving your kidneys like all these acids, which you've got to cope with. The antidote to that is to get more minerals into your diet.

So that's basically eating more fruits, more vegetables.

Actually eating dried herbs is one of the best ways you can get more minerals into your diet, because the drying process actually concentrates the minerals present in herbs. So there's lots of things we can do.

And as we age, it becomes all the more important to basically kind of give your kidneys a break by eating a less acidic diet.

And the way you can do that is the golden rule is to basically try and eat twice as many fruits and vegetables as you are having protein for every single meal. But instead, a lot of us do the opposite.

As we get older, we eat more protein, we eat more carbohydrates, we eat less fruits and vegetables, and that's the exact reverse of what we should be doing.

You've written a lot about ultra processed foods. Are they harmful mainly because of what they contain, you know, the sugars, the fats, the additives.

Or do you think they point to a bigger problem, a food system designed around convenience, profit over consumption rather than long term health?

I think they point to both, basically.

To answer that question, I'd like to begin by pointing to one of the chapters of the book where I went to Kuwait, which is a country which has one of the highest consumption of processed foods in the world. So the average Kuwaiti basically eats more than 90% ultra processed foods in their diets. And this is for a key reason.

Because of the climate in Kuwait, they had to import lots of a lot of their foods. But as a result of that, they're grappling with this crazy toll of ill health.

People are getting sicker at an astonishing rate, basically rates of almost all chronic diseases in incubator on the rise. And it's really trickling the healthcare system. And the scary thing is in the UK we're sort of on a similar trajectory.

I mean at the moment the average person in the UK eats a diet of 60% auto processed foods. And there's a number of reasons for why this is bad.

So one of the key characteristics of ultra processed foods is that they're full of these pre digested ingredients and simply just through eating them, it's you end up just without even thinking, just ingesting too many calories.

Basically it makes it so much more easier to kind of put on gain like harmful amounts of this damaging internal fat called visceral fat and all of these things which just contribute to faster aging over time.

I guess it's sort of easy to tell people to just eat better. But you've just mentioned two polar opposite social environments.

One, the super rich Middle Eastern people, but also the poorer society that just cannot afford the organically grown vegetables and fruits. Where do you stand on your personal responsibility? At what point does choice become an unfair word?

That's a very good point. I think it's really key to this debate. I mean, I think to begin with, there's definitely little things that we can do.

Like even if you just shift that balance between processed foods and whole foods in your diet a little bit. So let's say you're eating 60% processed foods, 40% whole foods, even if you just reverse that.

So let's say you're eating 55% whole foods and 45% processed foods, then you're already going to age better. I think that's a really, really lots of important point.

It's not about completely excluding all the processed foods from your diet because as you said for a lot of people that's impossible. We know that whole foods, there's some stats saying they cost three times more per calorie than the equivalent processed food.

So it's not just about like so kind of completely like so cutting them out, but just trying to reduce them a little bit in your diet. And I think the government also has a hugely important role to play.

South America is like leading the way with a number of pioneering initiatives, finding new ways getting people to eat whole foods and reduce processed foods in the food system. I was in Brazil recently reporting about this.

Brazil is one of the countries who's led the way with this incredible school feeding program where and now all public schools in Brazil are prohibited from selling ultra processed foods. The government provides money to ensure that these children want free meals a day are coming from like local farm sourced foods.

And the government in the UK can definitely implement similar measures. I mean, for the book I spoke to Henry Dimbleby.

He's been one of the leading voices in this and he's had this idea of eat well prescriptions which is where, you know, let's say you come to the GP with pre diabetes and the GP can actually prescribe you vouchers for fruits and vegetables. And it's quite a radical idea, but it's been shown in some really interesting small pilot studies to be really, really impactful.

There was one in the States where they did this in 120 people and they basically found that in a fairly short amount of time the calories they're ingesting dropped by 50%. They lost weight. There were other improvements and markers of health.

So I think going forwards to reduce the strain on the nhs, it's something we just really need to consider more.

Oh totally. But how do you think this can become a reality?

I think it just needs the government to become more bold. The government needs to do more to stand up against the food industry. I mean we are already seeing progress. I want to be optimistic.

We're streeting is cracking down a little bit on the marketing of ultra processed foods. But we need some more radical ideas. I think we maybe need a push for perhaps a wider tax on ultra processed foods.

That money could then be used to subsidize fruits and vegetables.

Well, in that same timeframe the cost of ready meals have gone down. Cost is one of the big drivers for people and the reason why they're eating so many ultra processed foods.

So that's where the government needs to step in, come up with some radical solutions which could actually tackle that problem.

Now I speak to many people in the longevity field and very few, if any, mention industrial food production and raise that as a red flag. You're one of the very few that does so openly. Do you think the longevity conversation is too quiet about industrial food production?

100%. I mean, I think the Longevity movement is focusing too much on the wrong goals.

Everyone is talking about rapamycin and metformin and all of these geroprotected drugs NAD and you know, all talking about Canada to 150, can I live to 200? I think they're kind of missing the key point. I think when it comes to human lifespan there's still, it's very, very far out there.

You know, only one person has ever lived to 120. So there's some pretty defining limitations on human lifespan. And who knows, we've always investment, maybe we can push fat in the decades to come.

But right now the bigger issue is the fact that the average person is aging quicker. The fact that there's this new study which has just come out showing that in the past 10 years healthy life expectancy has gone down by two years.

That's really, really worrying. That's going to place a huge amount of more pressure on the healthcare system and the longevity movement.

They're really focused on these far out goals. And I think it will be better if more than we're thinking about what's happening in the short term.

I agree with you, but how do we get that message out there?

I think these new biological aging tests are really interesting and as they become more established in the health care system because they can tell in real time what your rate of aging is.

And I would love to see in five years time, 10 years time, like maybe an NHS health checkup would incorporate a biological aging test, maybe assess the age of your immune system or just simply your pace of aging. I think that is a new way of like looking into how healthy you really are.

If you had to choose one route to improve population health span, would you put more hope into anti aging drug breakthrough or in making ultra processed foods much less dominant in everyday life?

I think the latter. I'm fascinated by the longevity research. I'm eagerly monitoring all the clinical trials.

I'm fascinated to see whether some of the NAD trials and Parkinson's or Alzheimer's can like really, really kind of make a difference. But so far we haven't really had that sort of big major game changing breakthrough.

I know there's the, the Xprize health span which is this big 100 million prize for someone who can reverse biological aging by 10 years across three different organ systems. And if someone can do that, I mean that will generally be game changing for public health.

But we've yet to get any evidence so far at least that that is possible.

So I think at the moment we should be putting A little bit more emphasis on some of these low hanging fruits, such as finding a better way of like reducing auto processed foods or new ways of pushing food manufacturers to reformulate and use lots of more healthy ingredients. And there's different things they can do on that front.

Or I think one of the most exciting anti aging studies which I've seen so far was actually on Omega 3, something which people have been talking about for decades. It came out last year and it was led by Steve Hallvath, who's the godfather of biological aging tests.

And it showed that out of all these interventions, the best thing which you can do to age slower at the moment is to simply take a gram of omega 3 a day. And that's a very simple low cost method which everyone can do.

So you know, my message to the average 55 year old who's looking to improve her health is to get the hyperbaric oxygen chamber kind of for now just simply take a gram of omega 3. That's potentially the best thing you can do. And maybe in 5, 10 years time we'll have some more exciting fancy new.

Ideas other than taking Omega 3 supplements. Imagine two people listening to this. You know, one is a wealthy biohacker who can afford every test under the sun, all the supplements they are.

And the other one is a single mother on a tight budget who wants to age well, but has very limited time, money or even real knowledge what to do for herself. What advice should be exactly the same for both of them? And also what advice would be completely different?

Interesting question.

I mean, I think if I was going to look at the advice which would be same for both of them, you know, if money really, really is an issue, I would focus on diet as a simple low hanging fruit.

Like again, just shifting that process to whole food balance is, would be one of the biggest things which can make a difference both in the short term and long term. The long term, take a daily Omega 3 supplement and just do some more slow cooking.

Even if that's just two dinners a week, that's something which can make a big, big difference. Perhaps also trying just alter the timing of when you eat a little bit.

Like we know that there's a lot of research showing that to age better we should be eating more of our calories earlier in the day.

Start trying to have at least some days it's not always practical, but at least some days where you maybe have a big breakfast, a big lunch and a small dinner and that pattern is something that no matter how much money you have is something all of us can implement, I guess, in terms of what would be different, like let's say money is now no object. Some of the strongest evidence is actually for regular saunas.

Now again, that's something which is not accessible for a lot of people because going to the sauna can be quite expensive. But if you've got the money, there's a lot of research showing that regular saunas can improve heart health and even brain health over time.

And a lot of it comes down to these things called heat shot proteins. So when exposed lots of the heat, basically these proteins kind of ramp up light, so kind of their like protective capabilities.

And there's a lot of really interesting research coming out now on the benefits of that.

You've touched upon the benefits of going to the sauna.

There are two different, I think protocols on that one is doing 15, 20 minute sessions, two or three times, one after the other, and the other one is sort of staying in there for 30, 40 minutes to really ramp up your core temperature. What side of the partition are you on?

I think like, so the latter actually.

I think there seems to be a dose response relationship with saunas where it's not only like the longer you do it, obviously, you know, don't go to extremes. But having slightly longer sessions and doing them more regularly seems to be where the real benefits lie.

There's been some really, really fascinating studies looking at different populations of people in Scandinavia and also like sort of in the US and it seems to be the people who kind of go five, six times a week, like most days, who have this incredible protection against heart disease, even lots of different brain diseases as they get older.

So I think that's compared to some of these kind of longevity interventions, it's relatively low cost, it's cheaper than therapeutic plasma, for example. And the evidence at the moment in my view is stronger for soreness.

Let me go back a little bit. You've mentioned you visited many countries, many places around the world.

What are some interesting ideas that you've picked up that really had an impact?

Well, I mean, one of the most fascinating trips I took for the book was actually I went to Helsinki, met this company called Nightingale Health, who are one of the leaders in this emerging field called metabolomics.

So basically using machines called NMR machines, it's been likened to like an MRI of the blood, basically screen hundreds of metabolites from your blood.

And because this company has done this already across the entire UK Biobank, which is this enormous database of samples of several hundred thousand people, they've Got this incredible like ability to, they can sequence your metabolites and look at how well you're aging compared to like some, all these other hundreds of thousands of people. So they can basically take this snapshot of your health and basically say you are aging well.

You will, you appear to be aging well now in actuality like so you've got some longer term disease risks which you're not aware of.

You know I, I did it and at the start of the book and they told me that if I didn't change my diet I had a 75% risk of getting chronic kidney disease in 20 years time, which was a big, big, big shock. So they can pinpoint these early warning signs and this is already starting to be implemented into Finnish healthcare.

So this company has basically partnered with like the main private health care providers in Finland which is like a third of the population. And so now a third of Finns are able to get this snapshot of their health on a yearly basis.

And it's part of his whole push and than then towards creating a healthier society which is aging better. And I think it's a really, really fascinating idea.

Can we use metabolites as a way of spotting lots of disease way ahead of time and then like incentivizing people to make changes which they can then see the next time they come get their healthcare checkup and fascinating idea.

So I think I already know the answer to my next question. I was going to ask if you think that all this testing empowers people or does it create just anxiety and noise or a bit of both?

I think it has the potential to empower people. I think where there's anxiety is where you've got a diagnosis and there's nothing you can do about it.

Obviously the thing which we all dread is being told you've got Alzheimer's or you've got a cancer or like you've got type 2 diabetes and there's relatively little you can do and you're just going to have to now live with this disease.

Whereas if we can spot the warning signs way ahead of time and it's like okay, you're outwardly doing okay now, but you're actually aging too quickly. And if you don't make a difference then in 10 years time you're going to be at a much greater risk of having this particular disease.

I think in some ways that's a great motivation, is a little bit of a kick to be like, okay, I need to do all of these things, whether it's doing more exercise or revamping my diet, which can turn around my health. I mean, for me it was like a massive, massive kick. You know, I did like a whole bunch of tests with a book.

And at the start of the book I really wasn't aging particularly very well, and I didn't know that. And by the end of the book, I'd made all of these changes to my diet, a lot of which I'm still doing now a year after I finished writing the book.

So.

So I think it can be a really big, powerful motivating tool.

Aren't you afraid that we're going to create a class of healthy people who are constantly told, you know, they're not optimized enough and they need to do more?

It's true. I did speak to one doctor for the book who told me that he tells all his patients, you've got a new part time job and that's your health.

And I don't think that's really healthy, helpful advice at all, really. You know, that's just creating more health anxiety. The reality of life is we're all juggling multiple things.

At the end of my book, my main takeaway is like, okay, I've mentioned all of these tips. If you were going to try and do everything, you'd probably make yourself a bit of a hypochondriac.

My main advice is basically just pick three things which you think you can stick to each day.

And there's a little bit of psychology in the, in the rule of three, because if you go for free things, you'll probably only end up doing two of them. But those two things will still make a difference to how well you age and your like, risks of disease in years to come.

You said that throughout the research of your book, you've learned a lot of things about you and you've made some changes to your lifestyle. What have you learned and what are you doing differently now?

So at the start of a book, I mean, my diet wasn't the best, but I didn't think it was horrendous.

You know, I was snacking probably way too much, which is an easy pattern to fall into because as a journalist you have lots of deadlines all the time and lots of newspapers coming to you, being like, I need this in five hours. And you know, you've got to turn around a piece under a lot of pressure. And so that was my way of coping with it.

I still felt I ate a reasonable number of, of healthy foods. And then I got all these tests and I found that repeatedly you know, on not just one biological aging test, but more multiple.

I was two years biologically older. So that was a big like wake up tool. I had all this chronic low grade inflammation in my body which I wasn't aware of.

I had elevated levels of this biomarker which indicated my kidneys were under more stress.

And then I got an MRI scan and I found out I had, you know, a worrying amount of visceral fat in my body and I had almost 10% liver fat, which basically is early stage fatty liver disease. So, you know, it was a shock. But learning that was very empowering because all of these things were things which could be reversed.

And over the course of the book, I did these two experimental longevity diets. One was two months, one was five months.

And even in the first one, which was just eight weeks, I was able to make a massive number of improvements in a really, really short space of time just by revamping what I was eating.

And I've now tried to take all of these principles which I gained from doing those two diets and just trying to implement a few kind of key things which I feel are manageable for me to do over the longer term. And it's been really fascinating and I feel in a much better place than I did when I started.

What biomarkers do you think are the most important to test?

I think visceral fat is a very underrated one. If you can afford it, definitely go and get an MRI of your body.

One thing which has been pushed a lot in recent years is DEXA scans, partly because they were featured a lot in Peter Tia's outlive.

But I feel like city MRI scans are just much more powerful because DEXA can sort of estimate visceral fat and tell you a vague approximation of how much you've got.

But is MRI which really tells you how much Vistal fight you have and where it is, and that's one of the big things we're learning is like a really hidden driver of aging.

There was this fascinating but terrifying study which came out in the US a couple of years ago where they took two six year old women and they had the same BMI but markedly different levels of visceral fat. And the one who had much more visceral fat, she had significantly more brain atrophy. Like you could really visibly see it on the MRI scan.

And that's because visual fat is such an inflammatory substance and that can affect all the organ systems in your body. So I feel that's one of the biomarkers which isn't really talked about enough. Again, lots of creatinine. That's a really key kidney biomarker.

And as we know, kidney aging is again, it's one of the things which hasn't really been talked about in the whole aging context. Effects.

But if you can maintain the function of your kidneys for longer, they play a huge role in terms of like regulating toxins and clearing things out of the body, which you don't want. So I think that's another one. And a lot of us, our kidneys are under way too much stress in midlife.

So that's a second, like sort of underrated by marker. I mean, I think those are the top two. I mean, I also think pace of aging, you can learn a lot from like so your pace of aging.

And it's something which you can modulate in a fairly short space of time.

And I'm also fascinated by some of these, you know, more expensive but newer aging clocks such as systems age, which basically it's the idea of like you're only as old as your weakest organs. So they basically specifically look at like the rates of aging of individual organs.

So you know, you might be doing really well in your lungs, but your brain is aging too quickly. And that's sort of a next generation idea for how to spot problems ahead of time. I find that so fascinating.

And what biomarker do you think is just overrated and not really worth testing?

I think there's been a little bit too much focus on CGM recently. I think CGM patterns can be lots of really interesting. There's been so much focus on that at the expense of other things.

You know, you might be incredible at normalizing your unpreventing blood sugar spikes, but that's not picking up the fact that you've got chronic low grade inflammation or the fact that your immune system is aging too quickly. So I think definitely that one is overrated.

On the other hand, one which is often missed is this biomarker called glycae, which is known as the biomarker of death.

And it's because in Finland again they did this study where they looked at key biomarkers which could predict a short term risk of dying in the next year or two years. And then it was glyca, which popped up again and again. And it's because it's this really, really good marker of low grade inflammation in the body.

I just wanted to throw in a little tidbit for listeners that don't know what CGM stands for. That's the continuous glucose monitoring. That's when people have what diabetic people used to only have that glucose monitoring device stuck to them.

Is that a good explanation?

Yes.

Great. Something else that you've written about that I found very interesting is an article in the Guardian a few years ago about exercise mimetic drugs.

Those are drugs that are designed to copy some of the biological benefits of exercising.

The article you wrote asked whether such drugs could help create a healthier society, especially for older people or people with disease or disability. Do you think now, a couple of years after you've written that article that this is a serious medical frontier?

Or do you think this creates a risk of becoming the perfect symbol of, you know, our wish to outsource efforts and just sit on the sofa and have a drug exercise for us?

Yeah, it's a really interesting one. Of course, if people manage to develop like an effective exercise mimetic, we're talking about a blockbuster drug.

I mean it would be one of the best selling drugs of all time. It would be equivalent to zembic. And I think there has been some progress.

One of the main things I've heard about is identifying some of these hormones which are released once do exercise and maybe trying to sort of create synthetic versions of those in a very similar way to how Semaglutide and Manjaro likes to mimic the GLP1 hormone. Maybe we can do that with some of these exercise hormones.

I think it's always going to be a little bit of a stopgap because exercise for the average person, it's not just a single benefit. There's so many likes of different benefits like which it has and all kinds of body bodily systems.

And I don't think we will ever be able to kind of like generate an exercise mimetic which captures all of those many benefits in the single pill or injection or whatever it is.

I feel where they really could slot into the market is maybe helping people who are like in the early stages or later stages of frailty who find it difficult to exercise. Like people who are already in a wheelchair or their likes of house back bound and in terms of like keeping them healthier for longer.

There's a lot of interest at the moment in taking elderly people who are frail and trying to find new ways of reversing frailty.

One way which is being explored is either giving them fiber supplements such as inulin to try and revamp their immune system, revamp their gut health.

All likes of giving them high dose omega 3s and there's a key reason for that, which is because we now know that really high doses of omega 3 can basically stimulate the body into generating lots of more muscle. And that could be a way of reversing some of these symptoms of frailty.

Maybe one some of these exercise mimetics could play like a similar role, maybe like revamping muscle health, revamping brain health. So I think those are going to be the real target population.

But I struggle to see a world where like it's better for a 30 year old to be taking an exercise mimetic rather than just hitting the gym or the treadmill.

You're definitely right with what you've said in an ideal world. But nonetheless, if a drug like that does exist, do you not think there's not even room for abuse?

But do not then think that that again is going to go to the rich people that want easy and a quick result rather than going to the gym just to sit on the sofa and pop these pills and have the effect of being actually at the gym. Do you think there is a way to make sure it goes only to the frail people that really need it?

Do you think that's again going to become a drug for the rich who can't afford it?

Well, I think there's two key points to make there.

I think the first one is, let's say this drug does become available, it will be down to regulators to make sure that it's aimed at only the target populations.

Of course, as we've seen with the GLP1s, you know, where everyone's likes to kind of want to them is ended up being a world where it's not just people who are like so morbidly obese, but everyone is like trying to get this drug through different ways.

And that leads me onto my second point, which is yes, on the one hand, if you've got enough money, you might be able to procure one of these drugs in future. But it could actually potentially impact your aging in a negative way because as we know there's the benefits of exercise are not just one hormone.

There's a big social benefit which really plays out in how well you age from, from exercise, from let's say playing sports and being around other people or even being around other people at the gym.

One thing which we know from gut aging, which keeps your gut healthier for longer, is that having your microbiome being exposed to more microbiomes from other people is really, really beneficial because your immune system basically recognizes these microbes coming from other people. And that helps keep it tuned for longer.

There's an amazing saying in the aging field that how well you're aging can be measured by the number of people who attend your 70th, 80th and 90th birthday parties which reflect your social circle. And so you might be incredibly rich, you might be a billionaire who's 60 who's like, you know what, I'm just going to buy the new exercise drug.

But actually because they're missing out on like some older, many social benefits of exercise, we're going to end up aging worse than if they just got to doing the standard things.

What you said makes complete sense.

But just to push you a little bit further on this, don't you think that there will be room for abuse or misuse rather when people do have the choice of just popping a pill instead of going to the gym, meeting people and how, how can we control this? How can we avoid this?

Definitely, definitely. I mean I feel like so with any drug like so there's always room for abuse. And you've seen that massively with the GLP1s.

People who have a very normal BMI but just want to take it to look good on the beach are now kind of getting these drugs, procuring them lots of on the black market and now lots of hospitals like dealing with like a big rise in cases of pancreatitis. This pancreas inflammation which can be one of the side effects of the GLP1s and that's all come through misuse and abuse.

I think it just comes down to strong regulation. Governments have to learn from where things have gone wrong in the past and figure out a better way of controlling the supply chain of east drugs.

It's not an easy problem. But if an exercise memetic was ever to become available, that's something we should really have to be looked at very carefully.

You spoke about government regulation.

Do you think that governments are taking aging seriously because you know there's so many low hanging fruits that you mentioned that are not being acted upon by the governments.

Do you think that is due to the long term it takes to see results so there's no quick input output benefit or why do you still think that governments are not really wanting to get involved in the field of longevity?

In some parts of the world we're seeing governments taking aging very seriously, like Singapore for example, because they've got this silver tsunami problem where there's so many like people over the age of 60 and the government's like okay, basically we need to find new ways of keeping people healthier for longer because otherwise we're facing economic Armageddon. I think in the UK aging is still seen as this intractable kind of problem.

You're only really going to be able to assess that and half a century's time when you see whether more people are living longer. I think the key message is more that you could go on and tends to focus very much just on like ultra processed foods or chronic diseases.

But the unifying thing underneath all of this is accelerated aging. That's the reason why people are getting different diseases sooner. That's the reason why lots of the NHS is under pressure again.

I'm optimistic that over the next 10 years the standard NHS health checkup can perhaps be revamped as the biological aging clocks kind of get not refined.

We get ways in which it becomes standard practice to check your biological age, check your rate of aging, and we get some more sophisticated biomarkers. Like at the moment, the NHS checkup really isn't very sophisticated at all. It's just cholesterol, PSA, if you're lucky, blood pressure and your BMI.

And that hasn't really changed in 50, 60 years.

What I think is the real opportunity for aging science is to shift that and bring in some of these much more sophisticated biomarkers, which can provide an indication of how different organs are aging and what that might look in terms of someone's disease risk in 10, 15 years time.

We're almost at the end, so I just want to come back to your book. What do you hope people will do different next time they go into the kitchen or into a restaurant or into the supermarket?

I hope that people feel empowered after reading the book that there are some very simple things that we can all do which can make a huge, huge difference.

Like having cocoa in the evening, have unfermented cocoa, because that can make a big, big difference in terms of your blood pressure over time, perhaps even if you don't lots of like spinach and kale, perhaps consider adding an extra portion of leafy greens a few times a week just to get some of those key micronutrients and get a bit more vitamin K in your diet.

Consider having a few slow cooked, cooked meals, because that can make a big, big difference in not just your risk of different diseases, but how you visibly age over time. And there's lots and lots of simple tips in there which can make a big, big difference.

I mean, one thing which I guess I'd like to conclude on which was one of my favorite stories in the book is dried Seaweed. So there was a fascinating study called the Hawaiian Lifespan Study.

They were trying to look at what was common in the diets of people who aged really, really, really well. And they found that all of them like consumed like a lot of seaweed.

And it turns out that seaweed is particularly rich in this plant chemical called astaxanthin, which activates this gene called FOXO3, which plays a really, really key role in like ramping up like the body's repair mechanisms.

And it turns out that there's actually centenarians who have a particular version of this gene which is way, way more active and that means they can do a lot more damage to their body and their body would just clean it up a lot more quickly. You can actually achieve the same thing simply by getting enough astaxanthin in your diet, taking as a supplement maybe or just buying dry seaweed.

And that has the same effect on this gene. And it's a simple thing which we can all do to give our body a chance of repairing better.

I'm going to have a very unfair last question before we move on to the rapid fire questions that I ask all my guests. I'm going to ask you to name your favorite child out of all the supplements out there, if there's only one you could recommend.

I know you've mentioned Omega 3, seaweed and all these things. What is your favorite child out of all the supplements out there? If you could name just one.

I think it has to be Omega 3. I think that's just where like the most evidence lies at the moment.

And particularly because there's taking Omega 3, it impacts so many different bodily systems. That's going to help you with your immune health, your brain health, your heart health and your muscle health.

It really hits all the big ones and it's relatively low cost as well.

Great. Now as mentioned, I've got the rapid fire questions here. What is the single best piece of advice you would give your younger self?

I have an incredibly sweet tooth. Alcohol has like natural never really been my poison but sugar has and I think like.

So yeah, just to, to try and do more to kind of keep that in check and you're not going to be young forever. That's of take your health seriously while you can.

Name one habit everyone should adopt for a longer, healthier life.

I think just adjusting the timings of your meals, you know, having lots of bigger breakfasts and lunches and smaller dinners and particularly trying to have more protein in the morning and like less than that.

If you weren't in longevity science. In the health field, what career would you have chosen?

I think I probably would have continued in psychiatry. I was a re as a researcher.

My whole PhD was all about schizophrenia and understanding lots of the brain's immune system and the role that plays in psychiatric diseases. So probably would have continued with that.

What microdose habit? 5 Minute routine or small daily action yields outsized longevity benefits?

Actually, we never really talk about microdosing in the context of food, but it's a big thing. You can microdose these plant chemicals called cellolytics, which are contained within foods like blueberries, strawberries, even onions.

And they play a big role in basically removing these things called senescent cells, cells which are really important in all aspects of aging, particularly the aging of the immune system.

And actually, one thing which people don't realize is that simply by eating a handful of blueberries each day, you are basically microdosing senolytics. So that would be my tip for.

Microdosing, just to sort of throw in quickly for people that are not familiar with senescent cells. Those are the zombie cells that release inflammatory signals and they damage tissue and, and just age you all around.

What's the craziest longevity myth you've encountered and is there any truth to it?

I think the craziest myth has to be just Brian Johnson's claims that he's going to reach immortality within the next 10 years. I mean, honestly, you know, I would love to see, like, the human lifespan being extended, but it's such, such a big unknown.

I mean, I think before we can make any claims as to whether it's going to be possible for people to live to 130, 150, we need to see a bit of a shifting of the boundaries. Like, can you lengthen a woman's fertility window by five years, by 10 years? That would be a real sign that you're modulating human lifespan.

So there's all these big claims which the biohackers are making at the moment, and there's no real evidence about them.

David, thank you so much. What an insightful conversation.

Thank you. Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to speak about all of that with you.

What I take away from this conversation is that longevity does not only belong in laboratories, clinics, or expensive biohacking routines.

It also sits in much more ordinary places in the food we eat, the way that the food is produced, and the daily choices that shape our health over time. Dr. David also pushes back against the idea that aging well is only about more testing, more supplements or the next anti aging drug.

Some of those tools may become important, but his point is very clear. We still have a lot of lower hanging fruit that could make an enormous difference to healthspan. That starts with the food system.

It starts with reducing ultra processed foods, getting enough fiber, protecting gut health, and taking everyday nutrition much more seriously. Thank you for listening to Beyond Longevity. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe on your preferred podcast podcast app. Thank you.