How to maximize health in your later years | Professor Claire Steves

wearing a hearing aid actually prevents or released delays the onset of dementia that's amazing so you're saying that just being able to hear better more inputs brain stimulate more may affect how you present but also actually helps your brain function welcome to Zoe science and nutrition where World leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health [Music] Claire thank you for joining me today it's a real pleasure to have you on the podcast why don't we start like we almost always do with a quick fire round of questions from our listeners and we have some very simple rules you can say yes you can say no or if you have to you can give us a one sentence answer but you're not allowed more than one sentence and we know that all scientists find this really hard um so do your best are you ready to go yeah go for it so Claire are most of us doomed to many years of poor quality of life before we die no well that's a very reassuring start once we're in our 60s or older is there anything we can do that can really improve our long-term Health yes all right see it's going to be positive all the way today is it possible to reverse age-related poor health oh interesting sometimes am I like that absolutely you are of course um in fact that's where a lot of people go all right another great question here can the microbiome influence age-related conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's yes probably though we haven't got all the evidence we need yet what's the one thing that I should do to keep healthy in later life Wow you make it difficult Jonathan one thing well probably if I was going to do one thing is to keep as physically active as I can and last question I have does chronic inflammation earlier in our life play a role in aging yes undoubtedly brilliant and I think we definitely want to get into all of those topics um just before we do I wanted to say you know what a pleasure it is to have you on the podcast so many of our listeners will have used the Zoe covid study during the pandemic um and what they may not realize is that Claire was absolutely critical as we crazily put that together in the first few weeks because Claire with Tim basically figured out all the questions that we needed to ask people right at the very beginning before we understood anything really about covid about how we should try and understand what was happening with people's health and sort of their background health conditions uh so Claire it is wonderful to have you on the show it's great to be here down here and I was just thinking actually uh as I did that that of course I was locked away you know in my house like so many people and you were actually out you know in these um uh in these Wards and visiting people in residential homes who were very old um and quite frail and that at this point basically we had no idea whatsoever about what was going on uh or even what the disease was and and so you were sort of my picture into the into the front line well that's right I mean it was it was was such a difficult time and we we're still feeling it now actually and right at the beginning of the pandemic I was quite concerned about the lockdown to be honest and I remember saying to my husband I'm not sure whether or not the pandemic the illness itself or the effect of lockdown are going to be the greatest on Aging overall and certainly even patients I saw yesterday still saying that actually the social isolation the inactivity that lockdown brought for them really made a difference to them and their development over the last couple of years um and I think that's certainly true but you're right um Jonathan we were also obviously in settings where very sadly people um older people or frail people were getting covered and we saw the range of different symptoms that people could get and of course the sort of Devastation that it that it brought on everybody within the care home sector um at that time when they were so isolated from family members and Claire maybe we could just sort of start at the beginning so like what is aging what's happening in in our bodies you know as we age because this is your area of specialty but it's slightly mysterious I was thinking about this this morning and it's one of these words like we all understand it you know you learn it as a small child but like what is it so interesting when we look at almost any function be it cellular albeit a sort of complex function like being able to walk or do specific tasks or even breathe out in a lung function test we see that over childhood to early adulthood our performance improves and then we get to about the 40s and it sort of plateaus Sometimes some features actually continue to grow for example your ability to use words and so on interesting maybe a measure of wisdom but most things actually then start to Plateau off in terms of the functional performance the maximum function people can reach and then gradually Decline and actually how they do how they change is very individually specific so one person might actually reach that Plateau later decline less another person may reach an earlier decline quicker also there's a bumpy road it's not it's not sort of uniform how people change over time so um that's why actually what we see in populations is that individuals get more different from each other as they age so there may be some 80 year olds who are completely fitted to fiddle uh able to really engage in every way that they used to when they were 40 and others that are really quite um have lost their independence and are functioning dependent on others and claired to all those different functions you have do they tend to decline in the same way because you know I could think that maybe my physical health might um deteriorate faster than my mental health or you know I guess lots of people listening to this caller thinking what they're really scared about is the reverse right the physically maybe that's okay but their mental capability declines do these two tend to sit together or are they all are all of these things sort of like that you're sort of coming off this Plateau you're describing sort of getting worse than in your 40s are they all completely independent no so very interesting they don't change all the same and they don't change the same in individuals so so in other words some people may have a particular problem with their bone health and that accelerates fast that that problem accelerates faster than their cognition and so on and we've looked at what you know what actually drives what actually is similar across um these different patterns and we've seen that actually the genetic factors that are related to change in aging over time are actually quite small and they're very different between different organ systems um but they're there are some environmental factors that really are shared between different organ systems so in other words there seem to be some things within our environment we're using twin studies to pick this out that um Drive organ aging across all systems and that's and also the environmental component to change over time is really important and that's why I've shifted my emphasis of my research onto trying to really unpick what are those environmental factors that we could change maybe and improve um Aging for older people you're saying that one of the things that you do and I guess um this is through this massive UK twin study that you're the clinical lead on is trying to understand why do people age and at different rates and I think you're saying that actually our genes turn out not to be as big a part of that as maybe you had thought yeah that's right so genes contribute quite strongly to that Peak that each one of us can achieve say in our 40s 50s whatever um but it doesn't really contribute that much to how we change after that so what you're saying is you know if I'm going to be a great violinist or a great author or just really strong in the gym like the genes are an important part of that but then how much I maintain that or how much I deteriorate as I get older it's no longer really about the genes that's what is that right Claire that's right and also what is it well because I think everybody's saying like well that's great you know I mean I would say there's a lot of people on this call who have definitely hit their 40s you know some maybe you know well past that so they're all interested probably most of them are interested in okay so how do I maintain this good news because your genes you can't change so what are the factors that are then influencing it yeah so well I guess the two biggest factors probably that we know about and and it's not so easy necessarily to change them what what the first one is physical activity physical fitness doing stuff using your body even standing up more being less sedentary actually that's a really big driver and it's a really interesting to me that it's not just a driver of physical health and bone health um it's also a driver of a healthy immune system and it's also a driver of a healthy brain oh that's amazing so I I think that's probably not what most of us are expecting I think there's I think we all know that we should do more exercise right like I think he'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard this but I think generally we associate that with your physical ability but you're saying it's not just that it also affects things like your immune system which you would think had nothing to do with whether or not you know you were being Physically Active is this something that has been known for a long time or is this more recent sense no no this is quite recent science actually there's studies which which have shown really in the last 10 years that actually um physical activity really those sort of strong physical activity changes your immune system makes it much more similar to younger people a team had a look at the um total body physiology and also the the immune cells in the blood of um people who did a lot of cycling um very regularly so they're a very Physically Active older adults and um they saw that their um blood cells their immune cells were similar in performance to very much younger people and very different from most sedentary older adults and they sort of came up with this idea that actually maybe all the Aging that we see around us is not necessarily because of Aging it's because of increasing physical inactivity which then drives changes and I think that's partly true and it certainly um seems to be that physical activity in physical fitness even it doesn't mean going to the gym and being sort of super sort of athletic about it necessarily but it is really good driver of Health across the board that's really interesting and so beyond you sort of mentioned bone health and physical health and immune system does physical activity affect anything else beyond that well so certainly and and and this is what I saw within my PhD when I was looking at cognitive aging so I was looking at why some older adults their cognitive function really changes very um much even though they don't necessarily have dementia and over 10 years we saw that the strongest driver was actually physical performance right back at the beginning um and that not only affected their cognitive performance on tests but also you could see very clear differences in the brain structure and function of those individuals that performed more physical activity at the beginning um than those that didn't that's um I think really exciting I'd love to talk a bit more about it um one question that came up a lot actually from listeners that you haven't really touched on yet is around the microbiome and you know the question is you know what role if any does the microbiome you know these trillions of bacteria in our gut have on Aging yeah so very interesting so as um we developed through you know childhood our microbiome shifts very significantly as we change our diet then it tends to sort of become um your own personal microbiome that can you know is actually different from other people's but it stays stable stays with you throughout your sort of um 20s 30s 40s 50s then we see a sort of like as people start to age and start to become frail there are changes that happen within the microbiome and it was quite difficult to pick out actually at the beginning whether or not that was because the body is changing and the host therefore us yeah becomes slightly less of a a good place to live for these microbes or is it that actually there's an interaction where the microbes are also driving health and the answer is probably actually both and we see now some new studies coming out there intervention studies showing that actually you can change the microbiome and that changes associated with health and I think some of your own research on the twins has been looking at microbiome and aging is that right Claire yeah that's right so we were one of the first that sort of you know looked at in the community population um the relationship between microbiome um parameters of features in the microbiome composition in the in the guts this is in stool um and the development of Frailty and we saw that even in sort of quite early stages we could see differences and actually within twin pairs we could see that frailer twins had a um a microbiome which was distinct from their sisters who were who were not frails so one of the things that we're really interested in trying to understand aging is to look at identical twins and non-identical twins as well who share genetics but they don't share lots of factors around an environment and they they actually don't share a lot of their gut microbiome we see that they've got microbiome on average about sort of 17 of the variation in the gut micro biome is down to genetic factors so the majority is not down to genetic factors it's down to environmental factors like diet which is amazing isn't it so you're saying there's just such a tight only 17 of what you see in the microbiome is is controlled by their genes this is surprising isn't it compared to what you would have expected when you thought about genes controlling us you know 20 years ago yeah I mean I'm not sure whether it's surprising I mean when specific elements of the microbiome they're a bit more heritable than that and there are lots that are less heritable so it's on average 17 but the point is is that actually your genetic factors don't necessarily Drive what's within you um that actually environmental factors and things that happen to you along the course of Life are probably really important and we we know that from right earliest early studies looking at um even mode of delivery say for example for individuals can change the microbiome you know how many antibiotics they receive during life all of these kinds of things their environmental factors so it's not that surprising that genetics doesn't Thrive the microbiome very much but it does go to show that you know we can't focus all our attention as we thought perhaps in 2000 um on genetics to understand disease and so you were saying that as a result you could have two identical twins who later on in life look quite different is this right Claire and then you were explaining about the microbiome differences could you just sort of bring us back to that yeah so um I've been very interested in understanding using twins why different people might age differently and so we we have within the cohort some individuals where there where one twin is slightly frailo or has a particular disease whereas another twin is is less frail or doesn't have that particular disease and so we're looking at the biomarkers that we collect um in them beforehand to see which ones can explain the difference in how they how they age um and indeed we've found differences in microbiome between individuals and the specific um groups of microbes that we found that were associated with um being more robust yeah are also actually the exact same bugs that we see are associated with adherence to diet like the Mediterranean diet um so this is coming back to this sort of idea that the the gut microbiome is shaped by um uh the diets that we eat and that it is related to aging but it's then taken sort of like some other intervention studies that we and others have done to show that actually we can change some of these outcomes for individuals if we deliver microbiome interventions um so we've got a very exciting trial that we've not yet published but it's just going to be coming um uh you know out in the early in in the spring um which basically shows this within a small number of individuals and we need further larger studies to really show this but I think it's really exciting and what is a small study show show Claire so it shows that prebiotics that people take people have taken against uh matched against the placebo that looks exactly identical um where we compare um cognition Within in individuals taking the placebo or taking this Prebiotic we can see in just 12 weeks of difference in their outcomes in terms of their cognitive function that's amazing so so just to make sure I've got this you're saying you're looking at all of these pairs of identical twins they have the same genes but actually you're seeing you know one of them is um ending up frailer you said than than the other um you're then looking at their microbiome and you're seeing that they've got these very different um bacteria and then the question is is that is the bacteria partly causing this or is it just a as a result of the Frailty and you're saying I think you're saying it can work in both directions but there's some really exciting evidence and you're you're talking about a new study you're about to publish that shows actually you can shift the microbiome and then see it actually affect the things that you look at in terms of aging and Frailty and and mental cognition is that is that right Claire yeah that's right and and interesting that when we've done this we've done it in the early stages of the development of the condition and I think that's really important because some of the um studies trying to affect the microbiome right in very late stages of Frailty development found it much more difficult to change things so I think if that if there's a message that comes from that it is that we need to be acting and and changing our aging early enough yeah not it doesn't have to be um right back in our 20s but you know we need to be thinking about things ahead of time and starting to change things sort of when we're 50 60 70 rather than waiting till we're really frail and I think look that's that's really interesting I'm sure everybody's listening is thinking okay so um you know I'd like to make sure that I'm not frail I want to make sure that I um I don't get some dementia you know I'd like to be of high quality of life for as long as possible um uh while knowing that I can't ultimately probably postpone death um what evidence is there to show that sort of aging and The Chronic conditions that come with age can be avoided or slowed down rather than just it's gonna happen and you're sort of sort of locked into this so that's interesting because of course there are some conditions where it's an either or it's a true binary so you have it or you don't have it you know um and these we call diseases um and they're what medical science has been really good at treating diagnosing and treating and and and that's one of the things that we've done well at in the 20th century really um but there's another set of conditions which um are more indolent and gradual yeah which is around sort of things like um you know muscle functions so the development of something called sarcopenia so thin muscles and and poor muscle function which is much more subtle and really difficult to sort of say this is when it's happening um and those things that develop really gradually um uh you know those things potentially we can change the rate that they develop much more simply so I think so I think it kind of depends on what sort of condition you're talking about got it but I think you were saying in a sense if we intervene earlier so you don't wait till you're 80 and you're in a really bad um way if you intervene earlier actually you know we we can really see these um you you can really make a change is that is that right Claire yeah so I think what your question was saying this is saying is it are you just putting it off or can you change the development of it over overall yeah and I think so in some things like for example Alzheimer's is a good case in point you know we know that there are some for example genetic factors which are um lead to an increased risk of Alzheimer's um but we also know that if someone has that genetic risk they can very significantly delay things by taking care of physical activity taking care of um of other other conditions um making sure their blood pressure is controlled and their cholesterol is controlled and their vascular risk is controlled as well so we know that we can we can really push the boundaries of something like that which is you know you know uh it has a sort of Fairly fairly strong genetic component um whereas um other conditions like um our ability to walk up the stairs you know that's something where you know if we do it right we could actually Escape that problem completely got it so you're saying there are some things that maybe it's a disease that ultimately we may not be able to to avoid um and there are others you're saying that maybe actually we're always going to be able to have you know for example the physical capability to walk up and down the stairs there's actually no reason to think that you couldn't maintain that sort of forever throughout your life that's a hope yes well I I like that it sounds um very positive um and how you know you've talked about physical activity you've touched a little bit on on the microbiome what are the like the other modifiable factors that you know there's evidence for that they can really affect the you know the rate at which we uh age and you know whether there's poor health as as we age so I think the third thing that's really interesting and there's a lot of growing evidence is around infections yeah um and it's really interesting and Hot Topic around covid-19 for example I mean we've seen an illustration of how um a people who have had covid-19 especially write early in the illness had an increased risk of then going on to get cardiac events um diabetes diagnoses um things like this even when you adjust for risk factors for covered in the first place um and that in a sense what I think that does is that actually illustrates what happens in all infectious diseases actually and when you look at something like influenza you see the same things um which are mainly a short-term risk but there isn't a risk that goes on for several months after an infective episode and so I think um this is something that is very interesting and I think you know probably affects lots of Aging systems and I certainly see within my patients that say having recurrent urinary tract infections is something that really kind of adds and drives the development of conditions like dementia as well got it that makes sense so so Claire you've touched already like a couple of times on sort of Alzheimer's and Dementia and I'd love to talk a bit more about this and you know at a at a personal level you know it's something that's really touched my family as I suspect it has for many people who are listening so um my grandmother got Alzheimer's um she got it pretty early she was in her 60s it came on quite rapidly you know I think anyone who's experienced it's a horrible thing for um for everybody both you know for the person who's experiencing it to start with and then just for the whole family outside and and I know that you know my father who is in his 70s now I think this is like I think he's most scared of actually it's not um dying it's this idea that he will he will get Alzheimer's he's incredibly mentally active he's still working full-time all of these things and so um I think that I also share some of this fear it feels like one of the scariest things that um that might happen to one because you realize there's this big difference between you know the point that you die and actually you could have this whole period before where um it's not only that it's terrible for you but you can see you know the pressure on your family is is so high um what is your research tell you I guess about whether there's anything we can do about you know Alzheimer's and Dementia more broadly maybe start to help us understand what's going on perhaps but then is there given that is there anything we can do about it yes I share with you um sort of like the the anxiety about this but also not so much anxiety but you know really wanting to try and do something both to help individuals that I see as my patients and also to try and do research to sort of underpin things a little bit and work out how we can change things so dementia is an umbrella term which which um describes um where someone has because of a cognitive change a change in global cognitive function is no longer able to carry out activities that are required to be independent yeah and that has to be going on for at least six months and it needs to be progressively changing so that's the sort of clinical definition of dementia but of course um there are multiple things that can cause that and the three main causes of dementia um in this country are Alzheimer's disease um vascular dementia and Lewy Body dementia and Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body dementia share similarities and they are to do with protein deposition within cells um uh in the brain which then are neurotoxic over time and then they affect the brain cells and they tend to um affect certain areas of the brain first so in Alzheimer's the area of the brain that's affected first is really the para hippocampus and hippocampus these are areas that are our recording systems for memories um and they're also interestingly involved in spatial location as well um and so the things that go first in Alzheimer's disease usually are the short-term memory so you can't remember what was said five minutes ago or ten minutes ago but you can remember your pasts you know your childhood really well but the recording system is broken as it were um and so that is that that's the sort of like because of the areas of the brain that are affected first and so we see it within different dimensions we see slightly different patterns um but the thing is that that cognitive change happens quite a long time after the disease process is actually starting within the brain okay and so this is the problem is that by the time you actually have um those short-term memory loss problems um you know it could be that that's something that you perceive which is actually more related to sort of anxieties and other pressures but actually um if if it is because of a dementia it's often been there for seven seven ten fifteen years um now that's where this whole issue around what can we do to prevent it sort of comes because the proteins that are laid down in the brain we think that they're um we don't know exactly why they're laid down and there's some really interesting hypotheses that actually say that they might be laid down in response to to bacteria actually um there uh yeah so I mean it's not this area is not really understood but this might explain partly why actually just busting and getting out those proteins doesn't seem to be um the clear solution that people were hoping 10 years ago it would be so the question is um what can we do well we know that systems and the Brain already clear those proteins okay and those systems are immune cells but they're also the system of flow around the brain that helps um uh this in a sense the brain to clean itself out and that's helped very strongly by you know good sleep architecture so it's one thing we haven't talked about today is sleep and how actually sleep might be one of the things that we could do to help increase the ability of our brains to cope with these proteins that gradually develop over time and then immune system again the real importance there of good dietary uptake and then of course we've got to support the brain in other ways to be as active as we can and so making sure that our hearing and our vision are optimized actually early on is really important so there's some new evidence coming out now that says that um uh you know um wearing a hearing aid actually prevents or released delays on the set of dementia yeah that's amazing so you're saying that just being able to hear better more inputs brain stimulate more um you know it may affect how you present but also actually helps your brain function and so does that tie into because I guess what you haven't mentioned there but or maybe you're just getting onto this is this idea of like um your brain sort of being like a muscle and having to do stuff so if it's like thinking it's struggling with something new you know it's interacting like you know it is that real science or is that just like nonsense that people you know talk about on the internet how um you know what what is it what does the real science tell us Claire yeah no it's so so there's definitely I mean so it's really interesting because there's definitely evidence that doing um cognitive tasks does it work can really improve the performance and change brain structure actually as well really interesting but what's curious about it is is it is it sort of like your routine things that you might do on a computer or whatever tend to train certain areas and certain functions but they don't necessarily have crossover on to other areas and that's why I was really interested in the physical activity effect because physical fitness and performance seems to have effects on the whole brain so it's something to do with cardiovascular but also maybe hormones that produce by muscles as their as they're working and the immune effects that actually change the whole brain um but that we we talked to the beginning about social isolation yeah and being social the active and being engaged with your community these are things that pull on loads of different tasks of your brain so that is really good muscle you know full body workout as it were just being socially active and that's probably what underpins why social activity is so important to maintain a healthy brain let me ask a bit more about that actually because that's interesting I'd assume that the social activity was important because of this sense of um like emotional bonding and warmth you know I'm somebody I get really miserable Claire if I'm on my own you know I'm not really well set up for at home working because I like people around me you know as soon as like my wife comes home I kiss my home I'm like really happy like I'm always wanting a hug you know I'm sort of like I'm I'm uh I'm needy like uh like a like a puppy dog or something like that um and so I think about social interaction I guess as being like I need that warmth but it sounds like you're talking about something a bit different which is well what I'm having you're having a conversation with somebody and it's making your brain have to to work is it actually that second part that is really important to um to sort of keep us healthier for longer fascinating question I'm not sure how I would design a study to really unpick the two of those but there isn't it there isn't a big research study that explains the difference between these two well you yeah interesting there probably are attempts to try and do that but I think it's actually the I mean the nub of the matter is is probably both isn't it um you know being you know having enjoyment I mean for for a starter it's important just just you know why are we here if we can't enjoy and each other and and contribute to enjoyment of others um but yeah no I think there are things otherwise social activity is actually very cognitively taxing um that's why you know you know humans as as mammals I mean it's why we've developed such a big brain is to be socially uh Interactive this is Zoe's science and nutrition so although we've touched a little bit in places on on diet uh I'll have a lot of complaints if we don't talk a bit more specifically around diet and how this ties into this conversation around sort of sort of dementia more broadly um is there any evidence around diet um linked to this absolutely yeah so um there are quite a lot of longitudinal studies that show that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption can be really it can improve cognitive function fewer studies that really show that very convincingly with dementia and few studies that show that um is quite difficult to do except for Zoe um really big intervention studies for long enough that can show outcome changes on outcomes like dementia but there are observational studies like for example the twin study but there are others all around the world actually that that show um uh that um you know the quality of fruit and vegetables is associated with reduced reduced risk of dementia and cognitive impairment later in life and also potentially um you know reducing red meats and um uh and and animal sources of food and actually changing more to a plant-based diet early research coming out showing that that's probably beneficial for cognitive aging got it and um I know this is one of the areas that you're involved with us in fact on the Zoe health study because I think we're fascinated to understand more about what might impact um dementia and I think there's lots of hypotheses right that um improve diet quality improve microbiome Health these things might really um impact it and as as everywhere right the quality of nutritional research has been limited by just the small scale of the studies and maybe the limited quality of the the data and the fact that it's very challenging to follow what people eat over over many years yeah so it's such a challenging area to research actually one of the reasons why it's so challenging is because actually diets are very different in different groups and of course diets that are really good for you that have lots of fruit and vegetables require a certain sort of like educational background to really you know create them and also they require us they do require some cost to change you know there that you know it is cheaper still probably to have a white um you know white red white rice very um uh sort of low vegetable diet um and and that's one of the issues is that many of the studies have found it difficult to unpick these relationships between social factors which drive for example poverty which drives a lot of risk of disease and diet um but I think we could turn that all on its head as well to say that actually diet is something that probably explains a lot of social inequalities in health outcomes um what we need to do is do large enough studies that are really powered and are randomized proper randomized control trials to really get away from that possible confounding right I think that's right and and it's obviously particularly bad in countries like the US and the UK where we do see this massive um difference and um you know a huge amount of ultra processed food you know I think if we were having this conversation in Italy people would be less convinced by what you just said they'd be like well of course they have poverty in just the same way but actually just in general far lower levels of ultra processed food and a lot more people um cooking uh food even if their income is very low that is just much more based on uh you know Whole Foods and so um that is not to diminish the problem which is a huge problem um you know whether you're you know uh you know sort of anywhere in the in the developed world but I guess it suggests it's not in it's not impossible to imagine that you might be able to improve it because I think this is not you know it's not as true across all rich countries and again if you're going to Asia you again see this difference so um in part it feels like we've got ourselves into this absolutely and overall a plant-based diet is consumed by the majority of the world that have a lot less income than in Western countries so it's completely not impossible to change our diet to be much more potentially healthy for a whole range of diseases including potentially dementia but the wherewithal to do that is quite challenging within our current Western environment the pressures are not sort of like balanced in a way which is going to promote equality um of access so I think that so that's something that I think we've just got to do work on actually um as a scientific Community as well as a as a nation amazing I also had a bunch of questions around menopause um and Claire I'd love to understand what we know at the moment about how menopause might play into um aging and these ageless related risks well I wonder whether some of your listeners might be really interested to think about why we have a menopause and the fact that for example we're one of very very few organisms that have a menopause and so the other organisms as far as I remember of groups of whales um killer whales and pilot whales you know that have a menopause but for example dogs they don't have a menopause um horses whatever they they don't and for scientists have sort of thought for a long time why that might be the case and actually back in the 60s this hypothesis a grandmother hypothesis was developed it says that actually the reason why that women have a menopause is because in order for our Offspring to succeed it's actually highly beneficial for women to not have kids at the same time as their kids basically or at least have some space there's some space that happens and so that so basically the whole reason behind menopause is so that really I mean I guess there's a point I'm trying to drive at so that um women can be functionally helpful to their children their daughters who are child rearing and so it's meant to be a functional thing yeah it's a it's a really functional thing um but the fact is that in that process of going through the Medicals there are significant changes that happen to a woman which then you know affect her at that time but hopefully once she gets through that actually she can be very functionally active and so on so it's not so much related to aging I think we've got to think of it as a developmental phase which is actually useful and functional it's not um there for no reason it's very specifically there in humans and we should make the most of it um but that does not say that there are certain challenges that happen as women go through the menopause usually average age is about 50. um uh which just like any sort of like developmental phase just like adolescence takes some adjusting to and has some implications um around um aging later on got it thank you Claire well look at this point I think we would love as always to try and pull this together into sort of actionable advice for our listeners and you know I think well they're always hoping for is sort of what are your top tips to help us age and stay healthy so having listened to this you know I think we're all taking away this view that there's a lot that you can do um you know if you were advising them you know right now on the the things that they should think about doing in order to you know maximize those healthy years what would you be saying so I I think number one as we've said keeping Physically Active doesn't mean going to the gym it means doing those steps I'm a great believer in sort of Step counters but also um just doing one-third more than you did before uh be you know that's that's the first thing the second thing is around diets it's sort of like really trying to change diets to more um high fiber and plant-based sort of sources of proteins probably the best evidence for um for aging overall um and then the third thing is around making sure that our sensory systems are at Tip Top so making sure that we get hearing aids and um and uh Vision visual aids that really help us sort of really interact with life so that we can keep that social interaction um driving forward if I'm allowed another I'm allowed another one one more you can have as many as you want Claire I think our listeners are just you know they'll be write it down right now so I think the the other one is so we talked about social activity and that's why sensory sort of things are really very important but but the other thing is sleep um investing in a good quality sleep is probably very important for aging not just dementia and Alzheimer's but also other sources of Aging I think that sounds brilliant and so Claire I think last question because we have we had this and I just love the question um now we got to sort of towards end here what's the biggest myth about aging that you commonly hear well I think it's this thing it's all uh wear and tear it's it's inevitable all of us know it's not inevitable by looking around us at the differences between people of the same age yeah um now the differences aren't actually driven very much by genetics the difference is driven mostly by environmental factors so find that really robust amazing person that you know and ask them what they do and try and mirror that well for me that's Tim Spector I don't know about you Claire but um you know Tim is basically like this walking advertisement for um uh how we would all like to be I won't say his age I get in trouble but he's a bit older than both of us and um uh and it's pretty impressive of course the only thing is he's never allowed to tell anyone when he does have a cold and I'll let you all into a secret which is even Tim does still get calls um but uh you know it's sort of like it's uh it breaks this idea of him being basically uh Superman and he's pretty close I mean he's in fantastic shape and what's interesting is uh you know he he's clearly following all of the things that you uh describe Claire with a very big Focus obviously on um on the diet and the health of the diet but very physically um active as well um very engaged you know in in terms of the cognition and everything you're talking about so that's that's really interesting um I mean the other thing I think about is my parents who are both working so apparently being a workaholic then is potentially uh good for a long life which seems like the exact opposite of what you know I was I was taught as a child you know the overwork kills you I'm pretty sure that there is sort of that that idea but maybe I'm taking away from this that overwork is is just fine well interesting I suppose it does depend on whether or not it really stresses you out and whether it gives you enough sleep um uh and I suppose you know if you're a workaholic and you're loving it and you're getting enough sleep and you're not too stressed then that's probably ideal that's really interesting they used to talk about this you know like the stress would kill you and give you heart attacks right in the 60s right there's all the story but I think we've now decided this was mainly the diet isn't it or the alcohol or the smoking probably the smoking I'm thinking about that sort of whole Mad Men idea uh more than just work Keen is what causes you stress per se it's as you said it may be unhappy working what do you think yeah that's interesting but you see what was driving the diet what was driving the alcohol what was driving the the smoking um you know could it could it be the other way around actually that yes that that those things were really important but the common driver is stressed and I think you know we see that in stressed animal studies we see that in Social inequalities I think stress is still a big factor but it acts through these other things and it's not something that we can't necessarily try and change for us and for other people got it so what you're saying is you know if the work is driving stress actually this is pretty bad if the work is actually maybe part of what you're enjoying they're giving you purpose in life it could actually be very beneficial absolutely brilliant Claire thank you so much um I really enjoyed that it's such fun to have you on the podcast I'm gonna try and do a little summing up um of of what we covered and we've gone in a lot of places so I'm gonna I'm gonna do my best and and please correct me if I uh if I've got it wrong so firstly we said that aging um is the sort of natural process where most of our abilities are getting better until maybe our our 40s for many of us it plateaus and then it declines at very different rates for different people or you had interestingly a huge focus on physical exercise much more than I was expecting I think you then talked about um you know dementia this is this disease that starts a long time before the symptoms so again there you know you can't just wait till you've got you've got to think about it interesting you then lay it on sleep talked a lot about diet and then I thought the last thing that I I really hadn't heard before was fascinating is you know you can't expect your brain to to work well if you can't hear properly if you can't see properly if you're not interacting with other human beings and I think a very positive sign right a very positive message you really can push out aging a lot a lot further is that is that fair that's very good I'm amazed Jonathan you've managed to summarize it extremely well my wife has been telling me I should really get my hearing tested for last two years and I've been like ignoring her because I'm like I don't really want to admit I might be getting older but now I'm like okay apparently it's gonna affect my health I'm I'm looking into it straight after this podcast fantastic Claire was such a pleasure thank you so much and we look forward to having you back again in the future thank you very much Jonathan great to talk to you pleasure bye-bye thank you Claire for joining me on Zoe science and nutrition today if based on today's conversation you're worrying about aging and wondering how to eat the best foods for your body then you may want to try Zoe's personalized nutrition program your Zoe membership gives you meal and recipe recommendations and scientifically back nutrition advice on how to eat for your best health so that you can feel more energetic improve your gut health and reduce the risk of long-term disease your personalized nutrition program is based on our scientific research and the results of your personal at-home test if you're interested in learning more about Zoe you can head to join zoe.com podcast and get 10 off your purchase if you enjoyed today's episode please be sure to subscribe and leave us a review as we love reading your feedback if this episode left you with questions please send them in on Instagram or Facebook and we will try to answer them in a future episode as always I'm your host Jonathan wolf Zoe science and nutrition is produced by Fascinate Productions with support from Sharon feder yellow hughins Martin and Alex Jones here at summary see you next time [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ZOE

Views: 256,298

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Id: 36rY6ChjFj4

Length: 49min 24sec (2964 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 20 2023