How to optimize the Gut-Brain Axis for Peak Performance, Daily Routines & Key Supplements

Hello and privet, longevity friends. I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, and welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, where I invite pioneers and thought leaders in all things longevity and lifestyle to give us the strategies, tools, and practices to live better and help us reach our highest fullest potential. Today's guest is gracing us with her presence once again for round 2, Elena Letiagina, founder of Gut Philosophy and a registered nutritional therapist with a data-driven personalized nutritional practice. Elena is on a mission to educate and empower people about the role of gut health and overall well-being and uses a range of functional and genetic testing as well as wearable devices to reinforce positive changes. Elena is also the principal nutritionist at a London-based medical clinic and is currently completing advanced training with the Institute for Functional Medicine, or IFM, and holds a qualification in nutritional therapy from the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. Elena is a member of the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, BANT, and is accredited by the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, CNHC. Longevity is an area of Elena's special interest. In this episode, we cover some essential topics around gut health, including the pandemic of chronic diseases, the gut-brain axis and how to optimize it, how to address common complaints around gut-related disorders, alcohol's impact on your health, kids' gut health, why not all healthy foods for gut health may be for you, specific supplements and foods to support gut health, favorite daily routines for optimal performance, top tips to support peak performance in the year to come, and much more. And as always, before we begin, please hit subscribe to the podcast to get your weekly dose of longevity and lifestyle inspiration and share it with those who could benefit from the advice. I would also love to hear from you, so feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think, or reach out to me on Instagram @longevityandlifestyle. Please enjoy.

Elena, it is so wonderful to welcome you back to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast for round 2. Thank you so much for coming back on.

Thank you for having me, Claudia. Love your podcast. Big fan. Really happy to be here.

Thanks so much. So I'd love for our round two to catch up, first of all, on what you've been focusing on over the last month since we recorded last. And what are some of the highlights that you've seen?

Well, one of my areas of interest is gut health, as you know. But recently I've been focusing a lot on the female hormones, in particular work around the perimenopause. Because what I'm seeing at the clinic is more and more women coming in, the age between 35 to 40, having all these interesting symptoms without necessarily being able to explain what's causing them. And very often perimenopause or change of hormones play a role in it. So I've started focusing really into the female hormones and on the production and the transportation and sensitivity of the receptors. So a lot of the dietary changes and lifestyle changes and supplementation to work around that to keep it balanced. So that's really exciting area, and I think we need to own our hormones and actually live according to our cycle, right? And this is something upcoming, definitely. So that was one of the biggest really shifts in the last couple of months for me. Then I've also completed now 7 modules of the IFM course, and I'm preparing for the exam, and hopefully I'll be a fully certified a functional medicine practitioner. This is quite exciting as well.

Super exciting. Congratulations for getting so far. And for those maybe not familiar, could you just explain briefly what functional medicine actually is and what are the different modules? Like, what do you actually cover in the course?

So the functional medicine, it is a science, it is a medicine, and a lot of doctors will be practicing it as well as some of the naturopathic doctors and nutritional therapists. It's looking at the cause of any imbalances. So rather than in the conventional medicine, which I massively admire, conventional medicine will try to find the name for the disease. So name it and tame it. So you name the disease, oh, that's the IBS, and we tame it. So take this type of pill. You have a headache, take Nurofen, etc. So this is the conventional medicine, which works really well in the acute situations and in infectious situations. However, it fails us on the chronic and preventative side quite a lot. So a lot of people struggling with some symptoms which are not necessarily defined by disease. So like, let's say you're having low energy, just not feeling like yourself, or maybe feel a bit of a bloating, a bit of a muscle ache. If you go to the conventional doctor, there's nothing they can do for you because they're just not trained to deal with this, right? And the functional medicine— a functional medicine practitioner would be looking at the causes of the potential imbalances. So you're not in the pathological range yet. It's not a disease state, it's still an imbalance. Let's say something suboptimal— liver function could be an imbalance, or some digestive inflammation could be an imbalance. And then once it's identified, you can support it with the dietary changes, with the lifestyle changes, working with the sleep and your stress. Supplementation will play quite a big role in it. So functional medicine is really the new era of healthcare, really. Just because we're dealing with such a massive amount of chronic illnesses and autoimmune conditions and metabolic dysfunctions. Right. So it should be integrated in the conventional medicine from my point of view.

I mean, I totally agree. And as you know, I used to suffer from all these chronic issues which just kept piling up, which I thought was just such a joke because I thought I was being healthy. But I had the chronic sinusitis, chronic fatigue, and you could just tell that the inflammation in my body was such that anything was sort of triggering some sort of chronic issue. And, you know, it's sort of mid-30s to think that you're having all these chronic illnesses. What is the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years going to look like? I mean, it looked pretty bleak and miserable. So yeah, that's why I love our conversations and learning so much from you as well, Elena. So thank you so much for that.

You're welcome. And like, in general, if you have any symptoms, whether it's headaches or migraines or something is aching, any single symptom, it's really a message your body is sending that something needs to change before it's cascading down and just causing full-blown disease, like down the line, right? And that's the problem with people just start normalizing that, oh, that's my new normal. I'm just feeling tired every morning, or I'm feeling tired after 4:00 PM, or I'm craving sweets. So I'm not feeling as much energy, or I don't want to play with my kids in football because my knee is hurting. It's just normalization. And very often they say like, oh, I'm just getting old, which is absolutely not the case. And it's just the sign that something is off. And this is the sign just do something about it.

Yes, and I mean, I need to also listen sometimes as well because I have a tendency to kind of ignore, and I have a pretty high pain threshold. But I think that that's actually really, really wise words, that if your body starts telling you something, like, really listen to it and rather catch it early and go full throttle at solving it than letting it accumulate, etc. But then I also believe that a challenge is finding the right practitioner that understands about the functional perspective in terms of what is the underlying cause? Because I think if you go into a traditional doctor and have that 7-minute consultation, they'll be like, oh, you know, you're fine. Yes, okay, you're fine, but do you want to live in the fine state? No, you want to live in the optimized state.

It is actually a huge problem. And like the clients I'm seeing, they would be saying, oh, my blood tests are normal, or my doctor said nothing is wrong with me, or they would say that it's in your head. And this is actually quite frustrating. And in particular, when client comes in with clearly blood results off the charts. Something is in red, something is suboptimal, and the doctor would say, oh, let's just keep an eye on it. It's such a common sentence. It's actually quite shocking. Oh, your cholesterol is slightly high. Okay, but that's normal. You know, it's your good cholesterol, which is high. I think it's shocking. And I think people should really demand the answers, like what's causing that? Could you explain it to me? What may be happening if it continues to be high or low?

Also, can you explain for listeners not that familiar? As we know, blood test results— most people will have seen, you know, some sort of blood test results in their lifetime, but that normal range that's given, can you tell a little bit of the background of that and why we shouldn't just be looking at this normal range?

Yes, so basically the normal range is based on 95% of population, and it's a standardized rate, right? And as a population, we becoming progressively sicker and sicker. So actually a normal range now, it would be absolutely abnormal 30 years ago. So looking at the normal range, it's just cutting off any pathologies. Like let's look at the blood glucose, right? So the optimal range is 4.6. Your blood glucose should be 4.6, 4.7. That's your cutoff point. The normal range is 5.6. If you're 5.1, your fasted glucose is way too high. This is the moment when you can do something about your diet, right? And the doctors, they don't care about your suboptimal glucose. They care whether you're diabetic or not. They don't have time to deal with your symptoms, right? If you're diabetic, you get metformin, off you go. Come back later when you have some other issues and we'll give you another pill. This is really the approach, just because they don't have time and they're dealing with the pandemic of chronic disease. However, if you don't know your optimal ranges, Roughly, have a look at the middle. You want to be in the middle somewhere. It's a really rough estimate. Some of the markers would be slightly higher or slightly lower, but just aim at the middle. If you see that you're really close to the bottom end or top end of the normal range, you probably start sliding. And this is why it's really important to have bloods done every year. You can see the trend. For some people, having high cholesterol is quite normal. So if you're always 5.2, 5.3, maybe this is your norm. But if you've never done your blood results and suddenly you're 5.6, you don't know what we're comparing, right? So you do need to have this blood done regularly and also do aim to be somewhere in the middle. And if it's a good indicator, you want to be on the higher side, and if it's a bad indicator, you want to be on the lower side, if it makes sense. Like, if it's a good cholesterol, you want to be slightly high. If it's a bad cholesterol, you want to be slightly lower. This is really rough. Ideally, you want to look at the optimal ranges, but for that you need the practitioner. And as you mentioned, it's actually quite difficult to find a decent practitioner.

Yeah. And a functional medicine practitioner as well from IFM is basically the gold standard, right?

Yeah.

And finding someone, and I think nowadays in the world, a lot of practitioners are available via Zoom, which I think is really, really helpful. So definitely recommend reaching out to that. I'd love to dig a bit deeper into the gut-brain axis, Elena. Can you talk more about that?

What it is?

And how gut health can affect our mood and focus?

Okay. So very often people would be experiencing some sort of cognition or mood or anxiety issues, not necessarily linking it to their gut health. For some people, it could be quite obvious, oh, I've been constipated and my mood is really bad. Right. And for other people, it's not as obvious. But the gut, enteric system, which is the nervous system of the gut and your central nervous system, they actually develop from the same tissue when we are in the uterus when we are like fetuses. So it is a really strong connection. They're connected by the vagus nerve, but also they're connected by multiple messengers. And actually your gut sends more messages to your brain than the other way around. So if something is not quite right in the gut, very often you may be experiencing some sort of mood disorders, anxiety, maybe depression, any other issues. So when we're dealing with the mental health, we do need to be addressing gut health specifically, that would be one of the really important foundations to address.

I'd like to actually just highlight that point because my personal view coming out of the pandemic, if we hopefully are, I think that the biggest pandemic is actually going to be around mental health. You know, different age groups have different things. I've seen what the isolation has done to my parents who are older versus, you know, teenagers. I've friends with teenager kids who got into sort of video gaming and are completely addicted and have almost lost social skills because of it, et cetera, et cetera. And obviously people suffering from depression and all the rest of it. What are things that someone could do at home if they're feeling sort of mental health issues, let's say, where it would be a good place to start to address gut health issues, to see if that could be a trigger around mental health?

That's a great question. So I would say start from the diet. So you want to see a lot of colors in your diet. So when we experiencing any brain-related problems or mood disorders, very often it could be driven by the neuroinflammation, which is basically inflammation of your brain. It's not a full-blown inflammation. It's a low-grade process which just sort of sitting there and creates a little bit of a toxicity in your brain and creating like some of the oxidative stress, we call it. But basically it's that oxidation really talks toxic inflammatory environment in your brain. So to counteract it, you want to be thinking about antioxidants, and those are found in everything which is really bright— bright red, bright yellow, bright orange, bright purple. White would be also the color, like if you have fennel or onions, those are the white ones. You want to be thinking about the bright colors in your diet. That would be number 1. I would say. Number 2 would be removing some of the pro-inflammatory triggers, and a lot of the food actually have this pro-inflammatory qualities, things like vegetable oil. If you're getting takeaways very often, the chances that you're getting a massive amount of pro-inflammatory oils is really high. Most likely you actually getting these oxidized oils which are causing damage and causing inflammation, including to your brain, right? So removing the vegetable oils, removing some of the processed carbohydrates, removing excess sugar would be number 2. Just getting these bright colored vegetables, that's the first step. Removing alcohol would be quite important, especially with isolation. It's very often getting to alcohol and having a glass of wine here and there. That's our stress coping technique, right? That's absolutely normal. And you see it throughout, especially working moms who need to homeschool kids. I mean, I don't blame them, right? So you'll be having this glass of alcohol, maybe two every day. And again, this creates a massive amount of inflammation. So if you start experiencing these symptoms, start thinking, what can I remove in terms of pro-inflammatory things and what I can add as anti-inflammatory, right? And the healthy fats would be anti-inflammatory. High-quality proteins would be anti-inflammatory. Brightly colored vegetables would be anti-inflammatory. And maybe like regulating your snacking behavior, like again, snacking and going to the kitchen all the time and eating all the time. It's quite common. It's just your stress management technique, right? This is how you're coping with stress. It's actually quite hard to adjust your behaviors, right? So you need to deal with the stress separately. You need to find the ways to eliminate stress, whether it's sleep or yoga or meditation or talking to your friends, whatever it is. But it is hard when we dealt with this whole COVID situation and staying at home. It's actually quite hard.. But from that perspective, definitely a few things you can do.

So useful. Thank you so much. Two topics from that I'd like to just ask questions on. One is around children and gut health, and you said around mood swings and things like that as well. I mean, obviously children are children and sometimes it's tricky, but personally I feel like children are not tested enough to see the state of their gut health, if they're lacking nutrients or minerals or vitamins, things like this as well. I mean, what type of test or child-specific dietary recommendations would you have, or is it the same as adults, or how do you see that?

Testing for the children is a little bit tricky because you don't want to go through the full-blown blood test with them. You're probably going to traumatize them quite a bit. So testing-wise, it's actually quite hard to test. You can do the urine test and look at the organic acids, let's say, or some hormones if you would like to, but it's more specific. In general, I probably wouldn't test a child, or maybe genetics if there are certain things which you think maybe like ADHD and things like that, you want to be maybe looking at the genetics as well. Looking at the methylation could be a good place to start. So that's just a saliva swab. So that's quite easy for the children. Talking about the diet, the diet would be same optimal diet as I would recommend to adults. And if listeners have any kids who go to the school, they will absolutely know that the school food, unfortunately, something is just not great, I have to say. This is hugely frustrating, the amount of sugar they get, the amount of vegetable oils they get. It's actually quite frustrating. Some schools are trying to get more vegetables in the diet. However, there is so much room for improvement. So given that the school diet is not great, we really need to do our best at home to make sure that your kids are having enough vegetables, having enough good protein, having enough fats. And a lot of children are actually fussy eaters, so it's actually quite difficult to get all these vegetables in them. Like, try to make them eat kale or spinach spinach. So you need to be really creative around maybe some smoothies or hiding it or putting it in the sauces. There are some ways to do this, but for the children, I mean, you're absolutely right, the diet has a huge impact on their behavior, especially with the hyperactive kids. You need to remove sugar most likely, and the amount of sugary snacks kids have, it's actually quite shocking. I would never comment obviously to other moms, but it's actually quite shocking what the kids are having. And high sugar, I'm sure you know about it, but it actually reduces your brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So it basically makes you a little bit silly. So we do need to be thinking about it when you're giving these high-sugary snacks. Even at schools, they were getting cakes and puddings for dessert. That's outrageous. Exactly.

Yeah, a big topic of conversation as well. So thank you for shedding light on that. And then just quickly on alcohol, is there any certain wines or something that you have seen are less inflammatory, or any certain alcohols for that matter, for people that say like the occasional— and I had an occasional drink— is there anything that you've seen is, is not so inflammatory?

Unfortunately, the short answer would be no. If you think about alcohol and gut and alcohol and sleep and its indirect effect on the gut, it's probably one of the most damaging factors And the more I work with clients who've been going off alcohol and the more I see the changes in their health, the more convinced there is really no safe dosage of alcohol. Unfortunately, it has to be a balance, right? If you want to go and celebrate something and have a glass of champagne, absolutely, by all means do it. However, if you're relying on a glass of wine every day, it's probably excessive. And then you need to start thinking Why am I doing it? Am I bored? Am I stressed? What is it? Is there any other ways to relax? And as we age as well, our livers are already quite overburdened by a lot of different toxicants, right? And having extra alcohol, it's actually quite damaging. So sorry to disappoint you. It is a big one. And people say, like, oh, but the red wine and it has some polyphenols in it and it has some resveratrol. Yes, but the damages of ethanol by itself probably outweighs the benefits of any polyphenols you're getting. And you can get polyphenols from other things as well.

So yeah, and more alcohol-free spirits and things are coming to market, be it an alcohol-free gin or alcohol-free tequila. I have friends working on something there. What do you think of those? I mean, if there's no alcohol in it, then in theory it's not as damaging.

Actually, I'd love to see what's in there because how do they do this, right? So it's really hard to comment without actually seeing the ingredients. I would say one of the tricks you could do is having a drink in the alcohol glass, like whether it's the champagne flute or whether it's a wine glass, just pour a non-alcoholic drinks in there. It's a bit of a placebo effect, but it really works. That's what I'm seeing. And people are actually, yes, it works. And now they sell kombucha in the champagne bottle, so it actually feels It looks like champagne, obviously doesn't taste like one, but at least it gives you this sense of celebration, right? If you are someone who's following alcohol-free diet or going off alcohol for some time.

Or even for a phase. Exactly. Some people do the dry January. So for people trying to better understand if they have gut-related issues, can you talk about some of the common complaints around gut-related disorders?

So in terms of the gut-related symptoms, probably the most common one would be bloating. I feel bloated after the meal, it gets worse towards the end of the day, I wake up bloated, my bloating is highly uncomfortable. That's probably the most common one. Then I would say it's constipation and diarrhea, or some sort of IBS symptoms would be really common as well. And then anything to do with the stomach, like belching or feeling nauseous and full after the food, that's That's probably one of the top 3 symptoms as well in terms of the gut health. And if you're experiencing any of these symptoms, you definitely need to support your gut health. That's a very clear sign.

How would you recommend addressing them? Doing testing then, or finding a functional medicine nutritionist?

Not necessarily. You can definitely do it at home. So in functional medicine, we have this protocol where we start from removing the triggers. So things like you would be removing pro-inflammatory foods. If you have any parasites or pathogens, you'll be removing those. Reducing the stress would be really important. That's your first phase of this gut healing program, let's say. The second phase would be replacing some of the digestive enzymes, supporting your stomach acid production, supporting your pancreatic enzymes. Those are quite crucial, and you can do it at home. There is no secret to it. Like, a simple chewing your food and just sitting mindfully would dramatically improve your stomach acid production, for example. And then just supporting your microbiome diversity would be your next phase of the protocol. I mean, you can do it all at the same time, or you can have sort of staggered approach to it. So having some fermented foods and making sure you have enough fiber in your diet and You have the diversified sources of fiber, that's your third phase. And then really rebalancing them and sort of retaining your health, because going through this gut healing program, it's great, but then can you actually keep it this way for the next year or so? So your life needs to be quite balanced as well, because the gut health would be really linked to everything else, to your sleep, to your stress, to your relationship. Your whole life would be plugged into your gut health. And that's quite interesting. So you cannot address just your diet. You need to be looking at this, your sleep and your movement and dealing with your stress. And it's a holistic approach really to gut health. And it's something you can do at home. You don't need a practitioner for that. You don't really need to test unless you have some severe symptoms. But if you have a bit of a bloating and it's just not feeling too great, Start from the basics. Chew your food, remove the pro-inflammatory foods, remove the alcohol. You may consider an elimination diet, just going off gluten or dairy for 4 to 6 weeks just to see if you're feeling much better. And then start cooking the foods rather than going for takeaways or restaurants, let's say.

That sounds really great. And what are your favorite fermented foods and your favorite fiber-rich foods?

My favorite fermented foods. That's a good one. I quite like miso. I love soy sauce. I love miso paste. I cook a lot with miso paste. That's my favorite one.

Any particular brand that's really good?

Well, for those who live in the UK, I'm buying it in Whole Foods. I don't remember the brand, I'm afraid, but it's basically organic miso paste. You have to go for organic just to avoid all the GMO, right? Found in soy. Soy. Then kefir. I quite like kefir. You can do it very easily at home. All you need to do is just to buy some kefir grains and just put some organic milk and just let it ferment on your tabletop. That's quite easy. And then kombucha for all the celebrations, right? This is your replacement of champagne, or like a sort of replacement of champagne. I love it. And fiber.

What are some of your favorite fiber-rich foods?

Fiber. So I would say probably linseeds and flaxseeds. Flaxseeds would be my favorite type of fiber because they have lignans. Basically, it's like a phytochemical, and it's great for hormonal support. It's great for gut health. Just getting like 1 to 2 teaspoons of flaxseeds daily on your yogurts, in your soups, in your salads is a really good idea. But I mean, fiber is found everywhere as long as you eat your veg, as long as you eat your legumes, you're probably gonna hit your fiber, but you need to be quite consistent and have it every single meal.

Are there some healthy foods that actually aren't so good for us? Maybe some people are sensitive to certain foods. What have you seen in your practice?

This is a great question because some people would assume, oh, this is amazing, spinach is great for me and strawberry is great for me, but if they have, let's say, some histamine issues they would be actually experiencing some reactions. And this is where you may need to see a nutritionist for that, actually, because this is something— it's quite difficult to figure out. I had this fantastic client of mine who has been experiencing issues and symptoms for over 30 years. That's a lot, starting from childhood. And they're becoming progressively worse— lots of cramps, like lots of sort of allergic reactions to many foods. And she was excluding the foods and At the end, she ended up with a very tiny amount of food she could eat. And then what happened, it actually was something to do with histamine, like a mast cell activation disorder. But basically her immune cells were producing a bit too much histamine and reacting to histamine found in foods, and she couldn't really deal with this amount of histamine. So following a really simple low histamine diet for 10 days completely resolved her symptoms. I was absolutely shocked because I thought 'After 30 years of suffering, I really doubt I would be able to help here.' And then she said, 'After 3 days, it was much better. After 10 days, I'm sleeping through the night. There are no symptoms. I actually cannot believe that it helped.' And I was like, 'Here you go. This is where you really need to understand what's happening.' Or when you're having an IBS, a lot of fiber will be quite damaging for you, right? So if you start eating a lot of broccoli and beans and cabbages, you may be suffering quite a bit. It actually will be creating more damage to your lining. So you have to be careful. And because it's so personalized, it's literally going into every single food and deciding how much of this food you can eat. If someone cannot tolerate broccoli, maybe they can tolerate like 1 tablespoon of broccoli. And some people tend to have this limit, so they would be able to tolerate a little bit of certain foods. And this is where you need to establish the baseline and then diversify your diet slowly. But definitely, like, things like high fiber foods foods are high in histamine, like things like meats and spinach and fish and leftovers. I love leftovers, but for some people they may be triggering some symptoms, right? So it's really personalized, and that's an interesting part of it, right?

Yeah, I guess this comes back to the point you made before about really listening to your body. And, you know, if you want to eat really healthy, but you know, some things trigger symptoms, it's really just going, okay, it might be broccoli. Let me have a little bit of it, see how I feel tomorrow. And like, you know, mentally make notes. You get so caught up in life that you forget to listen to your actual body. But if there are symptoms, it's kind of saying, okay, I have to take a smaller dose or just avoid it for a while until I get better as well.

Mentally taking note is hard. It's better to write it down because like symptoms, they go like up to 2 days. It's really hard to remember what you had, especially if you go out, you don't even know what you had right on your plate.. So this is where you need to write it down, especially for someone who's struggling with the gut issues.

Yeah, yeah, even for a certain time frame, because I think some people think like, oh, for the rest of my life to write down every meal, like, I'm not going to do it. But even if you just say, okay, I'm going to focus on it for a week or 10 days—

absolutely, we're talking about one week just to pinpoint if something is clearly— you're reacting to something clearly. And if you can't pinpoint, this is maybe a time to go and see someone.

And there are some tests to see if you have a food Yeah, really helpful. Can you talk about some of the key supplements and foods to support gut health?

Okay, so in terms of the foods, I would start— I already mentioned brightly colored vegetables and any plants. Those are quite the big winners. Then anything to do with the phytonutrients, and those are basically chemicals found in things like herbs or berries, in any plants really, they would have some phytonutrients. So focusing on those and focusing on the different colors is really crucial because these phytonutrients are supporting your gut health. Probiotics, whether it's foods or supplements. Before supplementing with probiotics, it's really important to understand why you're supplementing, what you're trying to achieve, because different strains will have a different effect. So I wouldn't be just taking probiotics without understanding what's happening. But taking the probiotic foods, those are found in fermented foods. That's a different story. You can have kefir, yogurt, miso, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha if you can tolerate those. And we're talking about tiny amounts, but quite regularly, every day, almost like 5, 6 times. That would be a really good step for the gut health. And fiber, which is found in legumes, in grains, and nuts and seeds and fruits and veg. Just getting enough fiber. This is food-wise. Supplements-wise, it's a little bit depends on what you're trying to achieve, but digestive enzymes are quite helpful for a lot of people, I would say. But then again, you need to make sure you don't have any stomach acid issues before taken enzymes, then anything with the antioxidants in it, like things like curcumin or green tea extract, things like that, that would be resveratrol. Those are quite helpful for their anti-inflammatory properties. And then another thing's like really good quality protein. This is such a basic thing. And a lot of people, they're getting enough of protein, but they cannot assimilate it. For different reasons. And if you cannot assimilate protein, it's really hard to get your gut lining nice and healthy.

And can you just specify by high quality or good quality proteins, what are some of your top picks?

So if you're talking about animal protein, I would definitely go for grass-fed red meat. Maybe not every day, maybe 2, 3 times a week. For high quality fish, ideally smaller sizes, just because the bigger fish, they tend to be quite unfortunately full of toxins and heavy metals. Mercury is one of them. They have like some other dioxins and horrible things. So smaller fish, so things like sardines, anchovies, mackerel— this is a high-quality protein. Eggs, organic eggs would be definitely my top choice for protein. And in terms of the plant protein, soy is great, but we do need to look at whether it's organic or not. So having soy again, maybe not every day, but from time to time is a good idea. And any legumes like lentils, beans, just a majority, like different types of legumes, variety of legumes would be quite important as well.

Yeah, that's really great. And one tip I actually learned from The 4-Hour Body from Tim Ferriss, for people who do suffer sensitivities with beans, and I know that there is the issue with microplastics, but having the canned beans at least helps with some IBS-like symptoms as well, but there are the microplastics in them, so it's not ideal. But I think that a lot of people try to avoid beans because of it, but it's a pity because there are benefits. So it's kind of weighing that.

And again, if you're reacting to beans, it's most likely your microbiome is not great or you're having like some issues with the gut lining. So just going back and removing some of the inflammatory foods and slowly building it up may be helpful.

For people looking to make 2022 the best year yet, Elena, and we know that health plays such a huge role in that, what are some of your top tips for peak performance?

Just recently I've done something which I think would be interesting for other people to hear. I've looked at the Wheel of Life. I'm sure you're familiar with that. You can just Google Wheel of Life. It's a circle basically, which splits your life into the different segments. And what I think is really important to understand is that your health would be linked to every single aspect of your life. And understanding how balanced your life is is really important. So those segments would be like family and relationship and money and career and personal growth and physical environment and your health. Love and fun and recreation will be also there. It needs to be a balance, right? So if you're satisfied with your career and then relationship and finance, but not satisfied with your health and let's say fun, right, for people who working a bit too hard, then this is not a balanced life and most likely it will be affecting your health somehow. And again, if you are satisfied with your family and you're having fun and you're having travel but you're not having a personal growth and you feel you're not satisfied in that area, that may be impacting your health as well, right? So just getting this wheel of life, figuring out where you sit with it, and working towards a more balanced approach. I think it's quite important for 2022. I mean, it generates new beginnings and people want to do something new. I think it's a good tip. In terms of the health, well, you mentioned that January is a dry January, right, for many people. I think trying some sort of elimination diet and seeing like how you feel could be a good idea. Like some people go for Vegan January. I wouldn't change diet dramatically, but I'm saying like literally go off alcohol, or if you eating too much takeaways, just reduce it and try home-cooked meals. Or if you're having too much sugar, just try to go off sugar. It will be quite hard, but it's possible. So just if you want to start nice and fresh in January, try some sort of elimination diet. And like getting rid of toxic relationship, also some sort of elimination diet as well. Through the gut-brain health, you'll be impacting your gut quite a bit if you're having a lot of stresses coming through relationship, right? So elimination would be my second important tip. And then just in general, just if you want to have a slightly healthier diet, pick up 2 to 3 points and go for it. Whether you start having more vegetables with every meal, or whether you try some fermented foods, or maybe you reduce the amount of times you go into the restaurants, right? Or whether you maybe throw away all your vegetable oils and replace it with olive oil. So literally just getting 2 or 3 little objectives and completing them would be quite powerful.

Great tips. Thank you, Elena. To move on to some rapid-fire questions before we close, what are some of your favorite daily or weekly routines and practices that help you perform at such a high level?

Definitely cold showers and some sort of meditation. I'm trying to do meditation probably should do more of it. And breathwork was quite a game changer for me. And I'm doing the breathwork when I'm walking. Like if you walk into the clinic, I'll do some breathwork as I walk.

This is like, what can you share with us?

So you basically, cause your steps would be your count. So you just, you can do the box breathing. So you breathe for 4 as you walk, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. This is the box breathing., and it's quite a balanced type of breathing because it activates and calms you at the same time. So just having these little moments of mindfulness, actually quite powerful, but you need to get into a habit and it's quite hard to get into habits. But cold showers, breathwork, some sort of meditation, crucial. Excellent.

In the last 5 years, Elena, what have you become better at saying no to, be it distractions or invitations in order to free up time for the things that are most important? And what new realizations and/or approaches have helped? Or do you have any other tips?

Saying no to and finding the personal boundaries is really hard, and I'm still working on it. I'm definitely much better since I have young kids. I'm definitely much better in not checking my emails first thing in the morning and not sort of rushing to answer people first thing in the morning. I'm focusing 1 hour in the morning having a breakfast with my kids, getting them ready to school, or having some sort of family time. Same thing in the evening when I come back from the work. I usually spend 1 hour, 1.5 hours before I put kids to bed. I'm not checking my phone. And this was quite a big change for me because before you just want to answer to everyone, right? You just want to be really helpful and you there to answering all your hundreds of emails. And now it's actually having this time for yourself makes you more productive and happier and healthier and happier and more balanced. Like, it's all about balance. I think like the older I become, or younger, like chronologically older, but, you know, biologically younger, you want to be creating this type of balance. This is why I think like this Wheel of Life was so fundamental for me. Because you start understanding actually life is not about family and work. It's— there is so much more to it. Like, I scored quite low on fun and recreation. I was like, what? I'm actually not satisfied with the fun in my life. And it's quite easy to change, right? But I didn't have this realization. And the moment you change it, you can feel how you— all the other aspects of your life become a bit more balanced.

Yeah. So the top tip of the day is the Wheel of Life thing. I did it a few years ago, and I feel like I definitely am going to redo it after this as well.

I think it's important to redo it, right? Because you want to see to see how you're progressing with it as well.

Yeah, as well.

Exactly.

What has been your most exciting purchase, Elena, over the last 6 months?

I quite like Sensate. That was one of the purchases I really enjoyed. It's basically a little round vibration device, but what it does, you place it on your chest and as it vibrates and you listen to the music at the same time, it actually stimulates your vagus nerve and creates this sense of relaxation and It actually really works surprisingly. And so before going to bed, especially people who are dealing with maybe the anxiety or struggling to fall asleep, I highly recommend using this device. And obviously it's not sponsored or anything. I just love the brand.

It's really helpful. So basically it's to calm the mind for people who have like anxiety or stress or that racing mind issue.

Because it's a bit of a meditation with the music, but the vibration is pretty soothing and it's literally on the physical level, it will be stimulating your vagus nerve through your bone, through your chest bone, right? So through a sternum. So it vibrates and stimulates your vagus nerve, right? And creates this sense of deeper relaxation. And Oura Ring, did you say 6 months? I had it for 1.5 years now, but I've got the new version of it. I'm generation 3 now. I'm still loving it. I really think it's one of the best investments a person can do.

What do you like about the increased information that's available in the Generation 3 versus the Generation 2, out of interest?

So to be honest, it's a little bit disappointing. From— I expected much more from Generation 3 because in terms of the period prediction, it predicts your period. Now you could almost see it from your body temperature before, if you were a little bit in tune, you could see when your period was coming. But now it's a little bit more clear, so it tells you This is the date, like a little round red circle in your calendar shows you when you're expecting your period. The second change was the heart rate during the day. It is useful, yes and no. I think, to be honest, I'm slightly disappointed by the amount of changes in Generation 3. However, overall, because it was such a great product, it's fantastic. It's a great investment and it really makes you to start thinking and being more in tune with yourself and make some changes like behavior changes.

Amazing. Elena, what trends and developments in the longevity and biohacking space do you find most exciting that you see emerging?

Okay, you're putting me on the spot now. Like, okay, so most exciting changes. So I think David Sinclair's lab, the Insights Tracker, they just came out with the new test for biological age. They're looking at your blood biomarkers. And seeing how you are aging. This is quite exciting, I think, and I'd like to look into this more. What else is out there in biological and biohacking? It's been— it's just becoming so widespread now and people really buying into it, and this is what's exciting in a way, right? Yeah, everyone's like, now I'm a biohacker, yeah, let's, let's go and get some greens and get my Oura Ring. It's great, it's just embracing the healthy lifestyle.

Let's Personally, I think that's what excites me so much is that what a much better quality of life people can live by making these lifestyle changes, by doing these hacks and things like that as well, which once you get started actually aren't even that complicated and you just feel so much better. So, you know, what a beautiful world it will be when it's not talking about having doctor's visits and suffering from these chronic illnesses, but actually everyone's in peak state most of the time. So there's so much more positive energy and good things going on. So let's see what the future brings. That's exciting. If you could get one message out to the world to say a billion people, what would that message be?

I just read this quote, which really resonated with me. And it said, the scariest place in the world would be one year from now, not seeing any change. And somehow I thought it is all about change and about personal growth. Really, it doesn't matter which area, whether it's a career or health or family or relationship, as long as you grow, this sort of defines the humanity, right? Yeah. I would say just grow, find the areas you want to grow and grow, whether it's a new skill, whether it's a better relationship, whether it's a better diet, whether it's fixing your health. People should be growing and changing.

I heard recently also about imperfect progress, and I think that, that especially coming as a perfectionist. It's true. It's just, you know, just step by step and just keep moving forward versus, you know, everything having to be perfect before something can happen. We're all human. We all make mistakes, and it's just moving forward. So I love that. Elena, for my listeners interested in understanding gut health and longevity better, what are some of the online resources or books that you'd recommend they start with?

In terms of the longevity books and resources, the authors I love is David Sinclair. I think Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep is a game changer for a lot of people, and he's got his new podcast now. I love Huberman's Lab. He's absolutely brilliant in terms of bringing down really scientific stuff and explaining people in a very clear language. He's one of my favorite podcasts out there, so he's brilliant. Your podcast is fantastic resource for Longevity is great for resources and for main authors. Then specifically for the gut health, if people would like to understand the basics of the gut health, there is a Julia, it's called Gut, I think the book, I can't remember her name, but you'll put it in the resources, right? In the link, I'll get back to you with the name. So I think if you start with that book, just to understand the complexity and the beauty of the gut, and people will be blown away by all what's happening there. That's a good place to start.

Amazing. Where can people learn more about what you're up to, be it social media, your websites?

You can find me on my website, it's godphilosophy.com. I'm also active on Instagram under the same name handle as God Philosophy. So yeah, and hopefully there'll be more exciting projects in January.

Very, very exciting. Do you have any final ask, recommendation, or parting message for my audience, Elena?

So the key message would be you can definitely be in charge of your health, and every single tiny change will make a difference. It just needs to be consistent. And another message, if you do have any symptoms, and majority of people do have some sort of symptoms and they just want to feel better, whether it's an allergy or any aches and pains, If you do have any symptoms, start researching it. The ifm.org website is a great source. It tells you more about the practitioners, but also what they do in terms of functional medicine. Yeah, definitely you can do something about it.

Never give up. Yeah, it's very empowering. Thank you so much for coming back on today. Such a pleasure to catch up again.

Thank you for having me.

It was a pleasure. Hey everyone, it's Claudia von Boeselager here. Before you take off, I hope you enjoyed the episode and learned as much as I did. If so, please hit subscribe so you don't miss out on our next episodes. I would also love to hear what you thought, be it your favorite part, quote, or other feedback from the episode. So please leave a written review on Apple Podcasts or on social media. And if you think this episode will help someone in your own life, share it with them. Together we can change our own lives and the lives around us for the better. Until next week, goodbye, farewell, and choose to live well.