Biohacking & HealthSpan

Metabolic disorders such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome or obesity, are a sign of our times. They are an outstanding consequence of our modern feeding behaviours, and their incidence has been steadily rising in the last few decades. Obesity can actually be considered a global epidemic - the World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, at least one billion adults are overweight and 300 million are obese, and the prevalence of obesity is also rapidly increasing in children.

These metabolic disorders are more than meets the eye. They have insidious consequences that in the long run can be significantly damaging. In fact, the rise in human obesity is closely linked to the increase in other chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, neurodegeneration, and certain cancers.

Of all the colours in the light spectrum, blue light is one of the most damaging simply because we overdose on it with all of our technology…all day and often much of the night for many of us.

You have heard me speak on this before. How we need to block the blue light at night to allow melatonin levels to rise. My concern is that we are not waking up to this fact fast enough. Working in an intensive care unit is as bright as bright can be. We often do not have the lights dimmed down too much at night. I worry for our poor patients….who get sleep deprived and starved of natural sunlight. If I had the money and power (dreams are free!) I would make hospitals one level only with retractable roofs. Then, every day, when it is not raining, I would open those roofs for at least 15 minutes to give patients and staff access to natural normal sunlight. And it might sound crazy, but I think they would heal better, faster and be FAR better off emotionally.

The development of the human cerebral cortex has been linked with multigenerational consumption of oily fish containing essential fatty acids, in particular, DHA and EPA. A decline in proportionate consumption over the last century correlates with the marked rise in lifestyle-diseases, and perhaps even a dumbing-down of the population. Without essential fatty acids (DHA and EPA), humans fall prey to a host of debilitating and lethal chronic diseases, including the big C.

Our focus today is on two long chain Omega-3 essential fatty acids known as EPA and DHA. They are essential because our bodies can’t manufacture them so we must obtain them exogenously, i.e. in our food (1). And when we don’t get them, we're in a whole lot of trouble.

Think of all the microbes in our gut - it’s pretty impressive the way our gut is thriving with life. There are trillions of microbes from at least a thousand different bacterial species living together to make up an incredible ecosystem - the gut microbiota. And those microbes aren’t just hanging out in the gut, waiting to be fed; they are actually very important for our physical and mental health! We live in symbiosis and we need each other equally.

The gut’s potential impact on physical health becomes obvious if you recognise that most of our immune cells originate in the digestive system, placing it as a key player in our immune defence arsenal. But the gut also has a (surprisingly) huge impact on our mental health. That’s because the gut and the brain are intimately connected. Anyone who’s ever been in a stressful situation has felt it: our mind takes hold of our body - we feel it in our heartbeat and we feel it in our gut.

We’ve all felt our hearts race during tense situations or exciting moments, and we’ve all used our thumping chests as proof of a good workout. So we know firsthand that our heart is tuned in to our mental, emotional, and physical states.

These states are communicated to our heart by our autonomic nervous system which regulates many organs and unconscious processes in our body. It can be divided into two branches that have opposite effects on the heart: your sympathetic nervous system kicks in during stress (like exercise) and ramps your heart rate up. Your parasympathetic nervous system slows your heart down when it’s time to relax and share a meal with the family.

I'm a Nutritionist and Ketogenic advocate, and my partner and I eat Keto six days per week but allow ourselves a carb day every weekend. We practice intermittent fasting and we weight train three to five times per week. We have both been in nutritional ketosis for six months now and it has supercharged our lives!

I've personally experienced a great improvement in body composition with a drop in body fat from 22% to 12%. Keto has given me increased mental clarity and focus, and it has brought with it a real sense of systemic calm. My blood sugar remains stable all day long and I no longer crave carbohydrates.