Zoë Harcombe on why being fatter is better for old age | Jerm Warfare

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1:03Zoe Harker, thank you for joining me in the trenches. Thank you for having me. I love chatting to you because we speak about diet and it's probably the most important thing. Yeah, I think it goes with some other things. So I think if you eat really well and you're sedentary and you don't have purpose in life and you don't laugh and you don't have joy and you don't have friends and you don't sleep very well, it's not going to go great. I think it's part of a suite of lifestyle things that we need to do, but it's a really important one. So I have a few vices and I know that you have some views on them, but I want to ask you just right off the bat. What do you know about coffee? I love coffee. I love coffee. I did a review of it. I mean, it's not right at the front of my head, but because you know what I've been doing for 15 years, I take an academic article, makes headlines saying, you know, what's one that's come out today? Red meat is worse than smoking for breast cancer. I mean, I haven't even looked at that one

2:06yet and already I'm rolling my eyes. So that's the kind of thing that I do. So doing that over 15 years, I've looked at pretty much everything. I've looked at fasting, I've looked at dairy, I've looked at coffee, I've looked at alcohol. And I can remember when I looked at coffee and they are association studies. They don't do the randomized control trials where they say, right, you're going to be randomized. You guys have coffee and you guys don't have coffee and we're going to see what happens. Because just nothing really would happen during a trial. You have to follow people over quite a long period of time and see what happens. And then that's only an association study and then you might find an association, then you should go away and test that in a randomized control trial. So I don't see any issues with coffee. I mean, I think if you get the jitters from caffeine and you're having too much caffeine, your body will tell you and you'll get jittery. So just pull back a bit. And if you don't sleep so well, then have less caffeine or maybe have it earlier in the day and then stop at lunchtime, whatever. But I'm not where some of these carnivore guys are. I won't name any names. But oh, I think it's a toxin and I think it's out to

3:09get you kind of thing. It's like, it's one of the great joys in life. You know, that first cup of coffee in the morning, it's just such a joy. Don't make that bad. Don't take that away from it enough already. The thing though is that it's a bit of an enigma because nobody really knows what to make of it. You know, in some sports areas, they classify it as a drug. I think, like, for example, in cycling, you can't you can't have coffee before a race. Caffeine is a powerful drug. If that there is no doubt, I don't know where it spanned and in particular sports. I didn't know that. I actually understood that it was one of the few legal kind of drugs that you could take that could actually enhance performance. So I know there was quite a funny story. Maybe it's changed. Yeah, maybe and maybe it's different in different countries. I'm just not going to claim to know something that I don't know. I do remember quite a funny story and the England football team were due to go over and they were playing a European country like one that they should have beaten sort of 13-0 kind of thing. And they went

4:13over and apparently all the team had taken caffeine, which they typically do before a football match so they're all really pumped and siked and all the rest of it. And then apparently the pitch was you couldn't play on the pitch. It was either frozen or it was waterlogged or something which obviously this local team knew. And I'm thinking, you know, it wasn't Luxembourg but it was a country that small kind of thing. They obviously knew this was going to happen. So all the England football players were like so wired with this coffee. They couldn't sleep at night then. And then it's like, oh, while you're here, we might as well just sort of play the match tomorrow or something like that. And of course they had no sleep and then they weren't, they weren't going to be in a very good state. So I remember reading about that and thinking that's actually quite funny. But yes, it's a powerful drug. It's a stimulant. If you have caffeine regularly and then you don't have it the next day and you've been, let's say I have a coffee every morning when I wake up, which might be five o'clock, five thirty six o'clock or whatever, if I have a lie in, I will get working up with a headache. And I only have one coffee a day. And that's my body saying, I need

5:16the caffeine now. I was expecting the caffeine and you're now getting caffeine withdrawal and that's what the headache is. So go get me some more caffeine. And I just go and have a cup of coffee. I don't think, oh, you know, that's something I don't really want to happen again. So I'm just going to stop eating, drinking coffee. No, I wouldn't do that. But does coffee, does it add to weight gain? Okay, so that's quite an interesting one because it's a stimulant. So it's having a little bit of an similar effect on the body to the whole sort of flight, flight, flight mechanism. So it's given you a stimulant. So what it's kind of doing in the body is not dissimilar to what would happen if you saw a wild animal and suddenly had this sort of shock and right, I need to do something. So it's getting the body primed to do something, which is why it will enhance performance. It will enhance athletic performance. It enhances mental performance. You can tell that. I mean, a lot of people say, don't even talk to me until I've had my first coffee in the morning. So it is definitely

6:18doing that. And to that extent, it will be stimulating glucagon. So if you just have a black coffee set, for example, so you've got no calories with it, you've got no milk, you've got no cream, you're just having the black coffee, then it will probably stimulate glucagon. And glucagon, of course, is the sort of antidote, the equal and opposite hormone to insulin. So whereas insulin is taking glucose out of the bloodstream, glucagon is put in glucose back into the bloodstream. So there is an argument and there was a book called the OMG Diet, which was all the rage about 10 years ago or something. And one of the things that it was telling people to do is to have coffee on an empty stomach in the morning, the idea being that it was going to stimulate the body into this alert state and release glucagon. And that is actually the act of breaking down body fat in the body. But you've then got the other things that will happen. So the body says, okay, now we didn't see the wild animal. So I've put all this stuff into the bloodstream that kind of I didn't really need.

7:21And you might, particularly with a caffeine as well, you might get a bit jittery and a bit shaky. Some people get how they feel they're having a little bit of a low blood glucose episode. So maybe the body puts some glucose in. And then when the body says, okay, we didn't need that to fight the wild animal, then insulin, of course, has to kick it and to say, okay, we're now above the four grams of glucose. So we need to start taking that out. So it can stimulate a bit of a sort of swinging roundabout kind of thing. And where the body then settles down or ends up, I don't know. So yes, it can have an impact on blood glucose levels. It can have an impact on what your body is doing to try to regulate blood glucose levels. And it can therefore have a little bit of an impact on weight. But I mean, it's really not going to, in the whole scheme of what you put in your mouth and how non-sedentary you are during the day, you know, the idea that this diet, this was one of their big seven pillars or something. And another one was like, have a cold bath in the morning. I mean, you know, that's me out straight away, apart from I don't need to diet. But, you know,

8:24I'm not having a cold bath and I'm not having a black coffee or whatever and not having my breakfast. I mean, it was all just a bit bonkers, but yeah, it does have some impact on the body in different ways. Will I break that apart by adding cream to my coffee? And that's great. So the body is going to carry on doing what it was going to do. It's going to stop you having a headache. If you have caffeine regularly, it's going to say, great, you've had your regular hit of caffeine. It's going to make you more alert. It's going to make you better able to work. If it's part of your routine, the body's like, great, I was expecting that. I have one of those at seven o'clock in the morning. Happy days on I go. It's about finding out what works for you. I mean, I've been at a carnival conference or, you know, I didn't realise it was a carnival conference, kind of keto conference. And there were some non-keto people there, like me and some keto people there and some carnival people there. And the carnival people are kind of, oh, it's a plant. It's out to get you. It's a toxin and all the rest of it. I'm not in that camp at all. That's just too extreme. That's too

9:30extreme. And it's boring. It's really boring and it's obsessive and back to putting diet in context of having purpose and friends and joy and laughter and good sleep and all the rest of it. The obsession is not good. You know, if you think you're having a healthy diet, but it's basically because you're eating meat and eggs and a bit of salmon every now and again and nothing else and you're religious about that or you're eating within this window. And if some really interesting people invite you for dinner outside your window so you don't want to go. You really need to reassess your priorities. That's not what we're on earth about. It's just not. Tim Knokes has often said to me that the word diet is not the correct word to use because it implies a short term goal. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it. I mean, diet was very much sort of something you went on and then you went off. And I think what people realised when they did these low fat, low calorie diets, you go on one, yes, you will lose weight. But then your

10:36body starts working against you and it's not very long before you're not losing weight anymore. And then you have to eat less and less and less and less to get the kind of results that you were getting when you first started. And you're just in this terrible vicious circle of, you know, sort of what do I do? So you can't keep that going. So I would often say to me because I've worked with people trying to lose weight over quite a long period of time. If you're about to embark on something that you can't sustain, don't even embark on it. It's just no point. Why is there any point? So you go on it and then you come off it and you regain everything and you've actually slowed your metabolism and you've lost lean tissue and you've lost muscle and you've become a bit obsessed with food and you've developed some really bad habits and maybe you've stopped eating healthy foods like meat and and oily fish because they're high in calories. You know, you've done it like a million really, really bad things and you couldn't keep it up because your body is not going to leave you in a calorie deficit situation for any period of time, certainly not longer than

11:38about six months and and then you're in a worse place than before you started. So, you know, sit down and be grown up with yourself and say, right, what can I achieve? What are my goals and what am I prepared to do to achieve those goals? And you might say, I'm not prepared to give up red wine, I'm not prepared to give up dark chocolate, I'm not prepared to give up a dinner in life if I get one and I'm not going to have any rules when I go out to dinner. So I've got to be able to do something that lets me just be completely flexible every now and again. I don't want to eat within a six hour window, you know, what, make a bargain with yourself, what are you prepared to do? And if you're not prepared to do anything and yet you want to look like, I don't know, Sydney, Sweeney or whatever, you know, that's probably not going to work or Brad Pitt if you're a bloke, you know, you are going to have to put in a bit of effort to get a bit of return. But, for right contract with yourself, what are you prepared to do for what are you prepared to

12:38get back? And if you can't keep something up, then just don't even start it, there's no point. I think Brad is like 60 years old and he looks really good still. Yeah, or RFK Jr or whatever. Yes. I mean, you know, he looks really, really good. I think he's over 70, isn't he? You know, so all of your listeners probably are going to be under 70s, like yeah, you just aspire to look that good. And what are you prepared to do to look that good? Because I'm sure he has a cup of coffee and a glass of wine, right? I hope so anyway, otherwise it'd be a bit sad. So, I mean, often we talk about losing weight, but I know somebody who got very stressed out over a space of a few months and lost a lot of weight, ate badly, all that kind of thing. How do you pick up weight? Right, my best tip for gaining weight. I mean, yeah, you're going to need to eat

13:38more than your body needs, but that alone isn't necessarily enough. And you still need to eat real food. You still need to eat healthy stuff. So I would never say to that person, you know, maybe somebody's had cancer treatment or something and then they're trying to regain weight or whatever. It's like, no, never go to the place of eating junk and all the stuff that is just bad for you. But the single best thing that I found for gaining weight and also the converse for losing weight is about what I call the mixing rule or the no mixing rule. So when I study studying nutrition and I mean studying it because nobody teaches you this at school. So I'm this curious, nerdy, logical person or whatever. So I go kind of looking at food and then I realise one day, it's really interesting. When you look at real food, nature puts it into groups and when you realise protein is in everything, that's one discovery, protein is in everything other than sucrose and oils. It's like, okay, that's interesting. I didn't know that. There's not much in lettuce, but there is some protein in lettuce and then of course there's a lot of protein in a

14:42chicken breast or eggs or whatever. But then you realise that nature naturally provides carb proteins or fat proteins and not so much any combination thereof. So your carb proteins are fruit, vegetables, grains and legumes. So it's things that vegans would eat and then your fat proteins and meat, fish, eggs and dairy, things that vegans wouldn't eat. Now really rarely in nature, she puts carb, fat and protein, all in good measure in the same food and that's basically nuts and seeds and whole milk has got, you know, a reasonable amount of fat, reasonable amount of carb, reasonable amount of protein, but basically it's sort of nuts and seeds in the natural world. And if you've ever stood next to nuts at a cocktail party and you start having them, you'll notice that you just can't stop having them because it's that fat carb combo that just doesn't happen in the real world. So if I sat you down and said, right, I want you to just eat butter on its own,

15:43you would have a limit. And if I said, right, I just want you to eat bread on its own, you'd have a limit. The minute I say you can have bread and butter or cheese and biscuits, you've got no limit or baked potatoes with, you know, butter and cheese on them. I mean, oh, melted cheese on baked potato, man, that is so good. But that carb fact combo doesn't happen in the natural world, it happens in the fake food world. So the fake food manufacturers, every combination they're offering you cakes, biscuits, even crisps, they put sugar and carbohydrate in crisps and they also put the fat and the oil. So that's what we find irresistible. And that is therefore the way if you want to gain weight. So I still say, don't eat the crisps and all the junk, but mix your facts and your carbs. So have potatoes with your steak, have rice with your fish, have porridge with your cream, you know, because oats are a natural single ingredient food, they're fine, they're not cornflakes or all brand or anything like that, you know, they're a proper cereal. Have that bread and butter, have those cheese and oat cakes and whatever. So mix your facts and your carbohydrates

16:46because you will be able to eat a lot more, you won't reach that point of, I'm not interested in the butter anymore. And it's just a fantastic way of gaining weight because what the body will say is right, if ever I see a carbohydrate, I want to take that for fuel, that's the easiest thing for me to get the fuel from. And I'd quite like to be able to store some fat because the body is always trying to store something for later on because we're hardwired to store food for later on because that's how we stay survived. So you have your porridge and cream and the bodies like great, I'm going to take the glucose from the porridge, I'm going to need to get some out of the bloodstream, but I'm only going to pack it away as glycogen. If you don't eat for a few hours, I'm going to be shipping it back into the bloodstream so that we can use it. And hey, by the way, I wanted to store the cream for later on and I can store cream if I've got insulin because that's my hormone that helps me store stuff. And I've got insulin because you eat porridge at the same time as the cream. So happy days, I've got the perfect fat store in environment. And conversely, if you don't

17:47want the perfect fat store in environment, keep your carbs and your fat separate, kind of eat in the groups that nature has provided for you. And eat a whole pile of eggs every day. Well, if you like them, yeah, I'm not like a massive fan of eggs. I just not, you know, I would prefer yogurt, for example, Greek yogurt. If scrambled eggs in butter, they're pretty nice every now and again, and omelet with cheese. That's quite nice every now and again. But my habits, bacon and eggs, for breakfast every morning, I kind of look over and I'm like, no, I don't fancy that. Not first thing in the morning, that's just too much. What's the difference between Greek and Bulgarian yogurt? I don't know. I've never had Bulgarian yogurt. We get Greek yogurt in the supermarket. I imagine it's just thick yogurt that you get in a Bulgarian supermarket. In Greece, I mean, obviously it's to die for. Local Greek yogurt is, you know, like you can stand a spoon up in it. It's so thick. It's so high fat. We get some pretty good yogurt in the super

18:52markets in the UK. I've been to conferences in the US. And one of the first things I do is to go out to a local supermarket to get some yogurt in the fridge so that if I need something, because of crazy hours of conferences, I've got some good fat protein in the fridge. And I'm looking all the way through the cabinets for something that's more than about 7% fat in the UK. We can get 10% fat quite easily, but they're not so good. Queen South Africa have a lot of built on. I mean, it's part of our culture. What do you have in the UK? A jerky, I think, would be the equivalent. Yeah, beef jerky. Yeah, you can get built on. And I know people who make their own, so they'll get sort of very thinly sliced meat, heavily salted it, and just sort of leave it somewhere. It's not the same thing, just so that you're clear. It's not the same. No, but they're kind of trying to make the notion of dry, very salty meat, something that you can just snack on or have for a minute or whatever.

19:53Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. So, I mean, it's essentially just meat was fat on it, so it's obviously a good snack. Yeah, having said that, you shouldn't be snacking, ideally. If you have a bit of a chaotic lifestyle and you're doing a podcast one minute and you don't know when your next going to be able to get a meal and you just feel you need a bit more fuel, then yeah, fine, reach for something. But ideally, most days we're able to work to some kind of a routine of, we have breakfast at a certain time and we have dinner at a certain time, and we also like lunch, although that's not the biggest meal breakfast and dinner, definitely the sort of the biggest two. And if we know we're having a later meal, we did last night, we were out with friends, we would normally have dinner about 4.35 o'clock. If we're at home, we knew last night it was going to be 7.30, 8.30 maybe, and then we might reach for some cheese mid late afternoon just to make sure we're not starving hungry at the point the meal comes.

20:56But ideally, we shouldn't be, it shouldn't be needing to reach for something. It kind of if you need something in between, there's something wrong with your meals, your meals weren't satiating you or giving you what you needed, so best not to snack if we can. Where did this idea of multiple meals a day come from? Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Dietitians and the fake food industry, and if you look at the fabulous work of Belinda Fecki, you'll see how closely aligned they are as in serial companies in all the countries I've looked at, UK, South Africa, America, New Zealand, Australia, the serial companies and dietitians are very closely aligned, you know, gold part and a level closely aligned so that then the dietitians are saying, oh, you should have serial for breakfast and then a snack mid morning and then a nice sort of low fat lunch and then maybe a snack mid afternoon and then a nice sort of car-based meal in the evening and then a snack before bed and all the rest of it. And then they wonder why

22:00we have an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes. It's just the most disastrous advice you could ever give a human being, both in how often you're eating and what you're eating. So just like throughout all of that advice, don't go low fat, don't go low calorie, don't graze, don't eat little and often, don't favour carbohydrates over real animal foods, eat good meals, eat decent meals so that you're not feeling hungry in between. What about the idea that they are levels? I mean, most of my friends drink Diet Coke or Coke Zero. Not so sure, actually. I mean, if you look at the evidence against Shukho's versus the evidence against Aspartane, I don't think Aspartane, which is the main sweetener in those kind of drinks, I don't think it fares very well. There's a passage in my obesity book, which was written back in 2009, where I look at some evidence against Aspartane and of course, if you look at the evidence that's been prepared by

23:04the Aspartane company, it's the fate food companies. It's like, oh, nothing to see here, this is all fine. And there's sort of one study I think it was that had been done by non-fake food companies, whatever, non-diet drink companies. And of course, it's like, this is potentially cast an agent, it's a little bit cause for concern, needs looking into further and all the rest of it. So, no, they'll come up and say it's okay. On, I mean, Diet Coke, you can get caffeine free, Diet Coke, but if you don't, then you're getting caffeine. So we're back to where we were at the top of the show, which is caffeine is going to have a stimulant. It might impact glucagon, it might then in turn impact insulin. You don't want to be doing that several times a day because you're going to bring on type 2 diabetes at some point. Anything that is not water between meals, you need to give some serious thought to. So, coffee with caffeine is going to have an impact. Things aren't going to have an impact are basically water herbal teas generally,

24:07unless they're kind of green tea, green tea's got a caffeine content. But if you're looking at things like peppermint or chamomile or making your own tea from herbs that you've got from the garden or whatever, then you're okay. But no, Diet Coke, you've got to think caffeine, you've got to think your spartane, you've got to think the body registers the sweetness. The body doesn't know this wasn't, this was just a sweetener. The body says, the body you have the Diet Coke and the body thinks, wow, that's really sweet. You must have had, I don't know, three or four teaspoons of of sucrose. So I'd better get ready to deal with that. So the body starts then saying, right, okay, and then where's the sugar? You know, I released insulin ready to mop up all of that sugar and then you didn't have all of that sugar. So there are also studies showing that sweetener has a similar impact on the body to caloric sugar because the body just doesn't know the difference. How can it know? At the point it goes in your mouth, you know, carbohydrates start being digested

25:08in the mouth. So the minute you put a carbohydrate, in fact, it's even earlier than that, walk around a supermarket, go past the bread counter and they pump out the smell, which is to try to get you to buy bread. Now you can be literally salivating as you're walking around the supermarket because the supermarket knew how to stimulate your body to make it realize that there's carbohydrates potentially on the way. So you're like a Pavlov dog, you can be salivating before you've even put the bread in your mouth. The minute you do put the bread in your mouth, yeah, then your sly free enzymes are really kicking in because they're going to start digesting the carbohydrate and then digestion of protein in fact goes on elsewhere in the body. I know somebody who is very fat and is pre-diabetic as a result and decided to buy diabetic snacks, diabetic food and I'm looking at this thinking, what? I was really sad. It's like when people have gluten intolerance and then they buy all these gluten-free products. It's like your body is really just trying to tell

26:10you something right now. What it's trying to say is, can you eat some real food please? And that diabetic, the body is just trying to say, look, can you just eat some real food please? And you know, I'm sure I've shared my sort of three rules before, you know, number one, eat real food. Number two, choose that real food for the nutrients it provides. That's what that poor diabetic body is trying to say, you know, and what is that real food that has the nutrients that we need? It's red meat, it's oily face, it's eggs, it's whole dairy. Yeah, you can have some salads and vegetables and berries and dark chocolate and wine and all the rest of it, but it's your meat, fish, eggs and dairy that the body really wants to get the nutrients that it needs in the form, that it needs them. And then rule number three, don't eat all the time, like maximum three times a day unless you're trying to gain weight and then you can sort of break the rules. Raw milk. What do you know about that? Not a great deal. I know it's almost certainly really good for us because anything that they try to ban and stop a seat in is almost certainly

27:11really good for us. When I can get it, and I can get it sometimes, there's a farm, springs up new wells and then we suddenly hear there, they've got raw milk or whatever, and then we can stock out with freezes just fine so you can freeze it and then take it out of the freezer. But I get through quite a lot of milk from the coffee that I drink in the morning and putting in kefir, which we have every day as well, both me and hubby. So we can get through a lot of milk, so I need a really local supply to be able to drink it all the time. If I could drink it all the time, if I could access it all the time, I would absolutely convince that it's going to be more natural better for us. But there's parts of the US, I think, that they've legislated, you're not even allowed to consume it. You know, it must be the pasteurised version and every now and again, they say, oh, there's somebody who's been made really ill by drinking raw milk or something, just to kind of remind you, oh, don't go off and do anything like that, you know, that's what's a crazy health conscious people go and try and do. So anything they demonise just tells me it's

28:15got to be good for you. Yes, but Zoe, trust the experts. What, the ones that tell you to eat five a day and fibre and fat is bad and carbs are good and Covid's going to wipe out the planet and, you know, take this job, we've tested it and it's super safe and effective and don't worry about my card haters, especially, especially don't worry about that, you know, even though we knew that one, even before it was in arms. No, I mean, that's why I rumbled Covid because one of the first wake-ups for me, I guess, was public health. You know, the minute you start looking at it, why, we're starting to get an obesity epidemic. You know, this is what I was thinking around the 90s. It's like, okay, I'm literally watching people around me get larger and larger and more and more people are going on these calorie control diets and they're starving and then they binge because they're just so hungry that they can't sort of stop the binge and then they feel really bad and they're told they're greedy fat pigs and you're only obese because you're a greedy fat pig and

29:17you're lazy actually as well. And all you need to do is just to eat less and do more and then everything will be okay and I'm looking at, I'm thinking, people want to be slim more than they want anything in the world. You know, you say to them, do you want to be slim or, you know, do you want to marry David Beckham or something and they say, well, I want to be slim. You know, do you want to win the lottery or be slim for life? I want to be slim for life. You know, I mean, it's just like something so strongly that people want to achieve and and yet if it's really as just as simple as just eat less and do more, then why wasn't achievable and you suddenly realise that eat less, do more drives you down the route of eating the wrong things, it makes you hungry, starts your body working against you and from that, it's kind of like so, where does this calorie theory come from and why do they say five a day and and why do they say this and why do they say that and and then just everything crumbles in front of you. There's just no evidence for any of it and then you just start looking at everything else and it's like, well, you know,

30:20is there any evidence for 14 units of alcohol? Women are supposed to most are supposed to drink in a week for women. And for men, it's 21 units. Is there any evidence for that? No. One of the guys on the committee just said, oh, it's a number. We just picked out of the air. It just, you know, five a day was a number that was just picked out of the air. Eight glasses of water, number that's picked out of the air. I just don't trust them. I just, I trust them on absolutely nothing health. If they told me, you know, sleep eight hours at night, I'd probably say, all right, that's that's now rubbish. You know, I also only need to sleep four or ten. But anything they say, it's just it's like almost the opposite is true every single time. Just to be fair, I wouldn't want to marry David Beckham. Yeah, I mean, you know, that was in his heyday or whatever and mostly it was women at that time who were trying to lose weight. Well, if I did, if I didn't marry him, my wife would leave me. Yeah, probably. Yeah. I don't like tattoos anyway. So I, I, I, it would never interest me.

31:24I don't like to, if you got tattoos, have I just upset you now? No, no, no, I've got no, I'm still part of, I'm still part of the of the resistance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't. Everybody has tattoos these days. Yeah. No, I don't like tattoos. No, like, no, I don't. A big part of my life is good. And this has been an ongoing battle. How have you tried up all side of vinegar? In what way? Just like drinking it as, as it is. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Before you go any further, a big debate. And I remember seeing a doctor and he said, look, you need more acid in your, in your body. Yes. But other doctors have said, no, no, no, you, you've got too much acid. So your stomach is the most acidic place on earth. It, you know, it's kind of like battery acid level or whatever. So in what universe does it make sense to try to make it less acidic?

32:29Because it's got to be at that level of acidity. So when I was talking earlier on about when you consume carbohydrates, they start being digested in the mouth of your saliva enzymes. Protein is mainly digested in the stomach. That's where it's broken down. And then fat is sort of lower down the digestive system in the intestines. So the stomach has to be, but you're breaking down protein, which is a pretty serious structure into the amino acids that we need. The sensual amino acids and other non-essential amino acids. So your stomach is an incredibly acidic environment. So there is just no logic to me that says, trying to make it less acidic, which is what these amethasols and these antacids and runny and protein pump and all the rest of it. They're trying to make it less acidic. There is no logic to me whatsoever that says that's going to be a good idea. I'm going to send you a video after this by a health influencer who I must have come across about 15 years ago. And he's a guy called Sean Croxton. And he used to, I mean, even before Instagram and TikTok were a thing, he was making little videos

33:31on YouTube and he went by the name of Underground Wellness. And he does this little 10-minute video about acid reflux, gird, heartburn and all the rest of it. And the logic of it being too little acid versus the logic of it being not enough acid. And hopefully by the end of that 10 minutes, you think, how did I ever take anything that would try to lower my acid? And then you start having apple cider vinegar. Right. So in terms of eating real food, what real food is high in acid? Well, food is what food is. It's not necessarily that. I think you probably didn't have an acidic enough environment to start with. And then if you've gone the kind of a mech-resol, lower in the stomach acid route, you've had your body starting to fight against you. So ideally, what would have happened then? I did that for like 15 years. Oh, crikey. Okay. So yeah, it's going to take a bit of time to reverse things. But we've had friends who've come with this and they've been on, you know,

34:32the doctor has gone, I think, a very dear friend, very close quite recently, had gone to the doctor with this and doctor was straight for the mech-resolence. Like, oh, you'll be on them for life. And you really don't want to look at the association between those tablets and stomach cancer. I mean, that is going to be a, even though it's just an association, it's a number that's going to scare you. So you really don't want to be going that route. And we said to him, look, would you think about not caching that prescription and maybe just going the apple side of vinegar route? He was infinitely better within days. So what? Do you just think it in a glass? How much is it? So you can buy apple side of vinegar, mix it to a sort of level that works for you or there might be some instructions on the side of it. My hubby, every now and again, he sort of feels that he has a need to settle his stomach or make it more acidic or whatever. So he'll put maybe a tablespoon of apple side of vinegar in a nice glass and then put half the rest of the glass with some sparkling water. So you're kind of turning it into a pretty sharp apple juice kind of thing.

35:37And I mean, I'm not saying it's the most pleasant thing in the world. I mean, I go near the cup thinking, oh, there's a bit of water left over, you know, great. I'll switch that off, I go near it. Oh, okay, that's his apple side of vinegar. And it's, you know, it causes quite an aversion in your smell when you actually just smell it. But if you can get past that and say, okay, look, I just need to do this because it's going to sort out my good. And the two things that I think are best for stomach health is kefir, kefir, however you pronounce it. First thing in the morning or an empty stomach, great to make your own grains, make your own kefir and have a glass of that first thing on the empty stomach and then have your breakfast. And then Andy tends to have sort of apple side of vinegar probably later on in the afternoon, maybe before dinner. I don't think there's any great religious time of day that he takes it, you know, if he might be feeling a little bit like he needs it, you know, he'll have some in the evening or in the morning, just sort of any time that he's thinking, oh, you know, maybe I should have a little bit now. Or then he'll

36:39just get in the habit of having some because I'll find him a new brand and he's like, oh, I'll try that. That looks fun. And just never has any problems. There's no kind of acid reflux or girly tummy or problem. You just got it again. Do the opposite of what you've been told to do. Okay. So an obvious trigger is sugar. Why is that? You may be affecting, I mean, I'd probably be affecting the acidity of the stomach at some level. I mean, certainly sugar has more impact on glucose and the bloodstream generally, but it is also going down into the digestive system. So it's sort of trundling along with the other things that you're eating. So yeah, maybe a trigger just for that reason. It may be feeding, okay, here's another thought off the top of my head. It's almost certainly feeding bad bacteria in your gut. There you go. So it's going to be feeding things like candida, candida, all because

37:41this whole book's been written about candida, all because the yeast syndrome could use to be your problem when people have quite a carbid diet, which quite often comes with people who've been dieting. So they've gone low fat, which is inevitably high carb. Or they don't think about the quality of what they're eating. They're just thinking about the calories. You know, I went through a period of calorie counting when I was a teenager. I used to get like a packet of these fruit gums, like gummy bears or whatever, and a hundred calories. And I could just kind of chew on them through an afternoon. So I was just dripping glucose into my bloodstream all afternoon, you know, lucky I didn't end up with type two diabetes. But they were only a hundred calories and hey, they would stop me eating other things all afternoon, the fact that they had no nutrients whatsoever. And we're probably feeding the bad guys in my gut. And if you look at the other things that come along when you've got a gut flora imbalance, particularly when candida has taken hold and you don't have the sort of lactobacillacus and acidophilus and all the good guys to count a balance set,

38:45you can get all sorts of symptoms, you can get brain fog, you can get tiredness, fatigue, irritability, get up and go, has got up and gone, bloating, wind, constipation, diarrhea. Your gut is the second brain of the body. You know, if your gut health is not good, your whole body is going to be feeling it. But you can count to all of that with diet, you don't need medication. I don't think so. No, I mean, I certainly would never, ever, ever go the immepraisal route. If I developed acid reflux, I do exactly what hubby is doing. I do, I send you as I say that Sean Croxton video. I definitely really does help because it's just such a fantastic amount of all the good guys, all the gut flora. I mean, it really is, you know, it's going to take you to a sort of step change level. But what else has that if you don't want to make your own kefir or get some from the supermarket, natural life yogurt. So look for the stuff that says natural live yogurt. Look on the label where it says contains acidophilus, lactobacillacus. Those are the kind

39:50of good guys that you're looking for. Blue cheese, naturally fermented. I don't like it either. Naturally fermented food. So pickled food. Again, we're back to vinegar and vinegar reflux. So when you're having a salad, you know, consider putting some kind of vinegar on it, you know, red, red wine vinegar, olive oil and vinegar, maybe bullsammy, although there is sugar sometimes in bullsammy. It can be quite sweet because it's great based. You know, my mum used to toss lettuce in oil and vinegar. Just, you know, you're natural like chip shop vinegar. You must have known something. That would have been passed down by her mum. You said red wine vinegar, but I'll add red wine. Well, it probably does help, actually. That's probably why I don't like the taste of red wine, because I put it to my mouth and it smells like Andy's apple cider vinegar. It smells. I know I can't come and hang out with you and Nick Hudson, can I?

40:51No, how can you say no to wine? I can be the driver. You say I'm so handy. We had a lovely dinner last night. I drove home. You know, Andy's asleep in the front seat. I get a stomach one o'clock in the morning. Like, he said an hour's sleep. I'm the one that's got to be, you know, there's some benefits to having a wifey that doesn't drink. Trust me. But it also sucks if you're the only one drinking wine. He doesn't seem to mind. He doesn't mind. He doesn't mind. He's kind of got used to it now. He has got used it. Yeah, I'd like to be able to share a bottle of wine with him, but I just don't like the taste. So it is what it is. You haven't tried. I don't think you've tried all the wines. Quite often. I mean, he had the guys we were with last night. This guy is a real wine buff. I mean, he invests in wine. He knows his wine. Whenever we go around there, Andy knows he's in for a treat. You know, this is not even sort of shattered enough to pap or whatever. This is stuff that, you know, like, is the weekly shop kind of expense. And so if it's extraordinary,

41:56he presents it in this beautiful glass. So Andy had this last night. And I always like to have a little sniff. You know, I just like to sort of swirl it around and kind of, you know, see what they're drinking. The warmth that came off this wine last night. I mean, it was like somebody had put a hair dryer up my nose. And it just, it just smelled warm and smooth and all the rest of it. And my friend Neil is like, oh, would you like a glass? It's like, no, because I wouldn't like it. Like, okay, I'll try it. And then I go to taste it. I'm like, oh, it's horrible. Why would you do that? Oh, it's horrible. Give me more chocolate mousse. I don't want any more of that red wine stuff. Do you think like the Vikings a thousand years ago were healthier than what we are today? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think they had infections, didn't they? They didn't have antibiotics. They, um, I think they probably had some... Well, I mean, I'm referring to diet. Oh, diet. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, what did they eat? Just like animals. Anything they could catch. Um, any planty stuff was seasonal. So you'd have nuts in the autumn. You'd have berries in the

42:57autumn fruits in the autumn. Um, that's about it. Uh, and the rest of the time, it was whatever you could catch and kill and preserve. Um, well, there was this sort of, you know, if you can't preserve the meat, then you've just got to eat a lot now. And then you're not going to eat for a wee while. But you've got to have this ability to be able to store fat and then to unstore fat. And we don't kind of respect that very much at the moment either. We just want to be the same weight all the time. Um, so we're fighting against how we actually should be living. We should be going into the autumn winter at our, at our peak weight, um, you know, fattening up in, in that kind of period and then coming out of it a little bit leaner. But we just want to be the same weight all the time. Um, I heard a very interesting argument. Uh, when you get very old, um, it's better or healthier to be fatter than it is to be thinner. Uh, because, is that correct? Oh, yeah, hugely. So, yeah, there are studies that will, will show that. Yeah, I looked at one, gosh, within the last

44:00couple of years, there was something on BMI and longevity. Um, and the absolute worst group to be in is underweight. Um, and then it's sort of normal, particularly low end of normal. Don't want to be obese because that's an indication of probably other things might be metabolic disease type 2 diabetes, which is going to impact heart health and, um, being increased risk for other chronic conditions. But you do not want to be underweight because you're going to get something when you're older and you've got nothing to fall back on. So you get pneumonia, you get a flu that sort of becomes a bit more serious and develops into pneumonia. And you're going to lose weight quite rapidly because you're going to be quite ill, you're not going to feel like eating, your body's going to be fighting the illness like crazy, using up more energy than it normally does. Um, my mum developed appendicitis in her 70s, um, was carrying a reasonable amount at the time, you know, probably 20 pounds,

45:00um, lost it almost all in, in a couple of weeks, two to three weeks, um, because her appendix had kind of become problematic and attached a bit of the stomach and it was complex operation and lucky to still still be here and all the rest of it. Had she not had, you know, good few pounds to fall back on, um, you know, imagine if she's sort of 110 pounds or something at five foot two and then lose in 20 pounds, she's in serious territory, you know, you then frail and you've got other complications that go with that frailty. So definitely, I mean, it's difficult. This is just, you know, so for example, for me, this is my natural weight. I'm wondering, you know, it's been my natural weight for 30 years. Is there any point at which I am just going to start putting on weight? And if not, I'd start following my own advice, start mixing, um, trying to get the fats and carbs into quite deliberately, put on more weight, you know, when I start heading towards mum's age or whatever. Does that apply also to being very muscular? Um, that is a good question, actually. I know

46:02sarcopenia is not helpful. So I know you need a certain amount of muscle. And so long as he's not done anything crazy along the way and he was missing a universe or I have to assume he was drug tested and wasn't taking steroids and performance enhanced in drugs and that kind of thing. So he's not done anything too bad. Then I would say preservation of as much of the muscle that you've built up over life as you can preserve is going to be a good thing. Now, not least because one of the most dangerous things is you get older is to fall. And when I used to do some conferences with CrossFit and speak at their conferences, I was really impressed with the work that they were doing with elderly people. So they would have classes, um, particularly with elderly people where the goal of the class was not that you win the CrossFit Games, but that you could get up off the floor. You could get out of a chair. So you have to imagine the scenario that you've fallen and you've broken an arm and you're 75, 80, 85, 90. Can you still get up off the floor or get to

47:08somewhere where you could actually get to the phone or get to the alarm or to be able to alert somebody in some way such that you weren't just left there for a long period of time with a broken with a broken limb. So one exercise in the class might be right, you've broken your right arm, how can you use your legs and your elbows and your other arm to get you up, you've broken your leg, can you do the same, um, getting out of the chair, you know, you're looking at older people and they get to the point that just using the arms to push themselves up or using, you know, not using your arms folded and just using your legs to lift up or whatever, that becomes problematic. So and just not falling in the first place, a good um skeleton, a good sort of bone structure, good muscles on that bone structure, good solid sort of awareness of your body and your body strength and your your position of your body in the environment around you, not being clumsy all the rest of it. Those are life changing things, you know, the number of times a fall is the beginning of

48:10the end for an older person. You must have heard it, we all know someone my uncle had a fall in the McDonald's in Toronto in Canada, I mean barely a few weeks later he was gone, you know, he's in hospital for the problems of the fall, then he gets an infection, then the complications of the infection, then suddenly I don't have this lovely uncle anymore, bonkers. I interviewed a former powerlifter, a he gives the absolute worst dietary advice, but he's not there to help with your diet, he's there to help you pick up weights so that you can, you know, lift heavy weights. I think he was recommending like five liters of milk per day, but what he did say and I've never forgotten, he said he doesn't want to get to the age of 85, 90 years old and require a walking stick. I'm not a huge fan of extreme exercise, so the people doing iron men and marathon and then a 50k bike, you know, I can't even remember what the iron man is, I just see those guys,

49:16you know, particularly the ones who've been car-bloading and we know some of them in our world, you've mentioned one of them in this podcast, you know, they end up with type 2 diabetes because they've been car-bloading this extreme exercise for a very long period of time. I know quite a few extreme exercises and I was interviewed on a podcast by one just last week where they don't just end up with type 2 diabetes, they end up with heart bypass or heart surgery stents and we're not talking at old age either, I know a few people in their early 50s who've ended up having major heart surgery, who've been running marathons for the last sort of 20 to 30 years, so I think there's definitely a balance in exercise, I don't think it's extreme exercise, it's definitely not being sedentary and it's definitely doing something weight bearing so that you're protecting your muscle, which is also protecting your skeleton. That's what I was leading to, so a combination of muscle and a bit of fat is very helpful for a year old one day. Yeah, yeah, it is, but you're super young,

50:23so don't worry about it. No, but does that apply to women also? Yeah, it's across the board, yeah, and like my mom, it's the same, she didn't have the 20 pounds, she probably wouldn't be here now, and there was a recent award ceremony and, you know, I hate that whole parade and looking at all those women thinking how long did that take you to get the body and to get the personal trainer and to do the diet and to get the face and to get the hair and to get the Botox and to get the dress and, you know, get the pose and all the rest of it, like surely you could have done something better with all of that time than preening for that one moment when you have the photograph, and then it's, you know, blown up all all the way around the world, but I think the really noticeable thing about this year's award ceremony, and we haven't even had the Oscars yet, we're having the warm-ups, relatives to some of the other years, is just how much thinner and thinner and thinner the women are getting, and they're not all in the 20s either now, so I don't want to name any names,

51:26but a couple of actresses who are now in their 60s, who are just looking so thin, and it's like, you know, what do Courtney Cox from Friends famously say, you know, there comes a day when you've got to sacrifice your butt for your face or something, you know, you're going to have to put on a bit more weight there to... She looks terrible. I know, but I mean, maybe she knew that that's what you should be doing, but she hasn't gone and done it yet. They all looked, you know, they'd look skeletal, it's almost like women are not allowed to take up any space in this one, it's like the guys are supposed to look like Arnie and take up as much space as possible, and the women are supposed to look like sticks and not take... You know, it's quite euphemistic for sort of men and women in the world and our roles generally, it's like, I just... I want next show, I want all the women to get together and say, right, are we agree girls, we're just not doing this? None of us are going to do the diet, none of us are going to do the personal training, we're not going to do the Botox, we're not going to do the fake tan, we're not going to get the hair, the makeup, the deor, dress or whatever, we're going to turn up in our favourite outfit that makes us feel the most

52:29comfy, the most happy, and we're going to wash our hair and we're going to look nice and we're going to smile and just look natural or whatever and just like blow all the photographers away, wouldn't that be great? You don't look that great, you don't look that healthy, you know, why is the world talking about Sydney Swini at the moment? Because she looks like a real woman, she's not looking skeletal, I know she's very young and I hope she sticks with this kind of... I've got curves and get over it, you know, I'm a real woman, you know, I really hope she doesn't ever just follow all the rest of them and go sticking sex. Is she the one who became famous because of that, I've got good jeans and... Yeah, yeah, yeah, and upset everyone, which I like straight out, because it's just so anti-woke and all the way up, we're going nuts, going, oh, it's so, yeah, I can't, you know, exploit a tip for whatever, it's so sort of 1980s, you know, and isn't it terrible? It's like, it's the woman, she looks great in jeans and it's, she's a model, it's her job, she's an actress

53:33as well, but you know, it's her job to sell jeans, good job, you just sold loads of jeans and let women be whatever they want to be, stop judging them, pitching on them. I think it was, I think it was Tim Locke's years ago said to me, the purpose of eating a low carb diet and basically eating healthy is not to lose weight, but it's to get your body to its default weight. And I think it does, yeah, I think it does actually, yeah, I mean, it suddenly gets it to a natural weight, it gets you to a natural hunger, you don't feel hungry, it's kind of almost like being on those fat jabs, but you're not on those fat jabs. So when people sort of say all the food noise has gone, it's like, I haven't had food noise for 20 years, you know, if you eat meat, fish, eggs, dairy, veg salad, blueberries or whatever, dark chocolate, red wine, you don't get food noise, you get food noise when you start having crispy cream donuts, you know, they are the crack cocaine

54:40of the fake food world, you know, if there's a lot in front of you, I challenge you just to have one. It's all just done deliberately, so all of that can go and then yeah, your body is just, it will tell you when you're hungry and there's days when I'm thinking, oh, you know, it's three o'clock and, you know, I just, I just feel like I need something and I'll just go and get a chunk of cheese and then I'm just fine for another couple of hours. I just listen to my body and it tells me what I need when I want it. How bad for you is pizza? Once in a while, probably not that bad, if it's, if it's your own pizza, I dated somebody once, he used to like make pizza. I was actually really nice. So he's making his own dough base and it was a sort of whole meal flour dough base. I think he thought, you know, whole meal bread is better than white bread kind of thing. So it was a whole meal flour dough base and there was nothing unusual in it. It was just kind of flour and

55:42sort of oil and whatever else and then he'd put tomato, natural tomatoes on it and he'd put cheese on it and mushrooms maybe because I mean, kind of build it up and because it's that fat carb combo, you've got the cheese on the bread, you've got that carb combo. It's delicious and if you can get the crispy crust and if you like thick crust or thin crust, if you get it just how you like it, it is that fat carb combo. So it's just absolutely delicious and fantastic. Every now and again, it's not going to do you any harm. If you start feeling you're craving it and you want it every night, you want to come back from having it. Anything that you start craving, you just got to say, I need to pair back from that because I don't want to go to that place where I actually feel addicted to that substance. So just just recognize it and then step back from it. For me, pizza is a really good quality hotburn. Okay, because you're back in that sort of carb thing, you're feeding the bad guys. Candida, if we're back to that sort of the most bad

56:46of the bad guys, Candida really does love bread. But I mean, if you're going to get hotburn, at least get it from something really good like pizza. Something that you like. And do you know what? I mean, if you get into this habit of taking apple cider vinegar on a regular basis and taking. I'm going to grab that. Yeah, and not doing the opposite, not trying to do the ant acids and the meprosols and that kind of thing. If you stop all of that, that's like step one, step two, start doing the opposite. And you might well be able to get to the point that you're enjoying pizza and not get in any reaction to it. Well, I'm going to go have now off to we've recorded because I had some banana bread earlier and the only reason why I had banana bread is because we've got a little boy and we had bananas and some of my wife made a banana bread to use up the the remaining bananas and it is delicious. But you don't have to have it. If it's causing you problems, then you need to be very nice. Yeah. And and and stuff that is bad for us. He's very nice. We're back to that. What do you want to achieve and what do

57:48what you prepare to do to achieve it? But you also like banana bread, don't you? Do you? I can't remember when I've last had banana bread or whatever. Really? Yeah. I find bananas bananas are a fun day. They are triggers for hot bean. Yeah, they're very high in glucose, very high. I mean, a medium large size banana or something, you know, you've got 20 grams minimum carbohydrate there. Fruit always have fructose and glucose and the glucose is the one that goes into the bloodstream. Bananas have got more glucose than fructose but they're all still not too far away from 50-50 kind of thing. But remember, you've got a teaspoon of glucose in your entire bloodstream at any one time, which is just four grams. So let's say your banana is 10 grams of glucose, it's probably going to be more. You've just chucked into the bloodstream more than double what it had and it was quite happy, more than double what it needed. And it's just then got to call upon the

58:52pancreas to release insulin to get the sugar out of the bloodstream. Then it goes, get stored away and then you need it for energy and it starts bringing it back and then you might crave another banana because it kind of didn't quite get your glucose back to where you wanted it to be. Maybe it dipped a little bit low and then you want another piece of banana bread. Yeah, so when we start eating carbs, we find it quite difficult to stop because getting back to that perfect level where the glucose is just where the body wants it to be is actually quite tricky when you start eating glucose. It's a little easier when you just leave it to the body to use the pancreas to put insulin and glucose gone to get that level right. In my defence, I don't eat any fruit though. So I'm going to take bananas and bread and I'm going to have them together. Yeah, I'm going to put them together, but I'll balance that out because I'm going to make meatballs tonight. Okay, yeah, meatballs are good. Meatballs are especially, I mean, presumably with mints from the butcher or something. Yeah, that's good because it's not people in our world eat

59:57steak all the time a bit too often and you want to be eating other bits of the animal as well. So mints is actually really good because it's actually mixed up a lot of things. It's pork mints also. Yeah, pork mints also. Yeah, and you use egg to keep it together. Okay, that's very nice. Yeah, that's how Andy makes burgers. He uses beef mints because beef cows help the planet pigs not quite so much. So my good friend, Farmer Angus, who I think you might know, he's got a well-known of, he's got a farm not too far away from me and he's got some of the best raised across-fed cattle. Incredible, incredible quality. But it's slightly more premium, but as he argues, is it actually more premium? Yeah, because he's doing another job, isn't it? Yeah, looking after the top soil, looking after the planet. Yeah, but I mean, if meat is better quality, then you're consuming better quality nutrition also. Yeah, I'm not interested in American meat,

1:01:02which is from cattle that are in concrete sheds, being fed, soy and they should be out grazing the land. It's not like you haven't got a lot of land over there, just use it better. Put the cows out of the sheds grazing in the fields. All right, so I get your newsletter every week and you're currently doing a series on how to, what is it? How to analyze a paper? How to read a paper? Yeah, how to do what I do, basically. Yeah, and then you can do it and then you don't need me. Ash, I'm hoping you still do need me because otherwise I can't afford to take. So please, hopefully, still let just say, no, okay, I know how to do it now, but I'll just leave it to her and give her like a dollar a week or whatever it is. It's not so much, hopefully. So how can my audience read your, your newsletter end for you? Wait, read my stuff, yeah. So on next, I'm just at Zoe Harkham, which is I see my first name is just up on the screen and it's just second name, H-A-R-C-O-M-B-A, my website is ZoeHarkham.com. And there's quite a lot on OpenView.

1:02:07I think I've even got a tag saying OpenView or freeView or something. So if you don't want to pay anything, then just go and read the OpenView stuff. Just quickly. Zoe, is there a little thing on the E? Is it just Z-O-E? Yeah, yeah, it's Z-O-E, they call it an umlaut on the E. And it's Greek, it's a Greek name, means life. I think if you don't have the E, the umlaut on the E, I think it's Z-O-E, or it can't be pronounced so I know. Well the Americans do it like that. Yeah, they do don't they say Z-O-E, or Z-O-E, or yeah, whatever. Anyway, with that on that note, Zoe Harkham, thank you for joining me in the trenches. Thank you for having me. Forgot everything you had planned for this weekend because you are sitting on your couch and

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