Nourishing Performance with Phoebe Leibling

Foreign.

I'm Charlie Redding.

And I'm Laura Sidall and this is.

The tribathlon podcast.

10% faster race finishing in sprint cyclists, which is amazing because it's this idea that you're actually allowing the body to perform at a higher level.

That was Phoebe Liebling and this episode is nourishing performance. Hey, Sid, how are you doing?

I'm very well, thank you. How are you? I hear you've been. You've gone from the south coast in Cornwall to now to now the lakes in the north.

I am, I'm. I'm covering the UK at the moment. I had a brilliant week in Cornwall. The weather was fantastic. Got some. Got a couple of good rides in. Bit of sea swimming.

Was it. Was it busy down there? Was it packed?

The busiest I've ever seen it. It honestly was. So we, we always leave at about 5 o' clock in the mornings and on that strategy, we've never had anything more than a sort of six, you know, five and a half hour, six hour drive, nine hour drive. And then.

Wow.

Literally all of the. All of the businesses were saying that they were completely melted after about five, you know, like, literally it was. It was chocolate. I mean, in St. Agnes you never really feel it too much because it's kind of. People don't tend to come.

Well, I'm figuring it's the G7, isn't it, at the moment. Did you have fallout from that in terms of blocked roads and extra people down for security and stuff?

We didn't have any fallout from it per se, but certain bits did, yes. So apparently there is. There is 5,000 police officers on a boat off Falmouth at the moment. And. Yeah, and there's. All the schools in St Ives are.

Shut and we're pretty sure my parents, my grandparents used to live down there when they were alive, in Karbis Bay, literally above the hotel where the G7 summit is taking place. And so in all the pictures where that shows sort of from the ocean, looking into the hotel, you can see where my grandparents used to live in the background. And Mum and Dad now have that flat and we're convinced, like some secret agent or some celeb. Well, it's only a flat, so it's not that exciting. But like somebody quite important is in the. Is in the flat because I think they canceled all the bookings and had it like just as some mysterious name.

So you've got James Bond staying.

Exactly, yeah. That's what we're pretending anyway. Yeah.

So, yeah, so it. Yeah. And clearly it's causing certain amounts of chaos, but not to St Agnes.

It still completely baffles me and I don't, I don't want to go down a political route here, but it does completely baffle me. Why? I mean, I love, I love Cornwall. I love Karbis Bay. But it's quiet, it's untouched. Although I know the hotel has developed monstrosity now than what it used to be when I remember as a kid. But it just makes no sense to me why they picked that place. Unless there's some.

Well, the only thing we said, friend.

Of a friend, backhand that owns the hotel, we.

The only thing we said was there is only one road in and out of Karbis Bay. But maybe that's why.

Possibly maybe that is why. But you're right, but it doesn't.

Anyway, one of the guys that owns a. One of our favorite places in St. Agnes is the Taphouse and it's a, it's a Hawaiian themed pub. It's so cool. We love it.

Sounds awful and.

Fantastic. It's. It serves my favorite Hawaiian beer well. Yeah. So from the whole Kona thing, but you're in Cornwall, why do you want.

To go to Hawaii?

Because. Well, because I've never been to Hawaii, but it is, it's just a really cool surfers bar bar. And he's, he's the same guy's just opened a pub called Kona in Falmouth and I'm. I'm really keen to get down there, but that's had to close because of all these police officers.

Oh yeah, yeah. Okay. So is this guy, is this guy from Hawaii, is he like obsessed with Iron man or something?

No, no, no, he, he is, he's just a surfer. He's a surfer. Exactly. So. So yeah, I assume he's been to Hawaii surfing, but I actually haven't asked him.

I think I would pick Cornwall over Hawaii most days.

Would you? Well, I've never been to Hawaii, so.

Well, I'm associating Hawaii with, with triathlon rather than like, maybe if you go to like Maui or one of the smaller lessons, less triathlon, egoed islands.

Well, I would definitely like to. It's definitely on my bucket list to go explore and if I can combine it with either seeing the Ironman or even better being a part of the Ironman, then that would be amazing. But yeah, so now I've gone from Cornwall up to the Lake District. So I've ditched the family. The family have all gone home and I am on a think on my Think week. So I'm supposed to be on a conference in New Orleans and I use that kind of week to think about the business. And when I do it, I fly out to. Whether it's New Orleans or wherever, it's always in the States. And I'll have a day beforehand where I hire a bike and I'll just go off and explore. I've done kind of Malibu, I've done Palos Verdes, I've done Miami and, and I listen to books and kind of just get my brain into the conference mode. And so, yeah, but I can't go to New Orleans. And so I thought, well, I'm going to consume the content virtually this year, but I'm just going to disappear off up to the Lake District. And so today I was cycling the Fred Whitton route, which is apparently Britain's toughest sporty, I think, 113 miles, 12,000ft of ascent.

So can you, can you confirm or deny that it is the. Can you confirm or deny that it is the toughest sportiform?

Well, I can't say I've done them all, but two of the toughest that I have done and I think the one that they say is potentially the other toughest is the Dragon ride in Wales, which is longer at 142 miles. But I didn't put my foot down on any of the hills on that. And I've done the struggle on in Yorkshire, which is really steep, and I didn't put my foot down on any of the hills on that twice. I had to put my foot down on climb today. It was brutal. Yeah, it is.

I wondered what you meant at first when you said put your foot down. I thought you meant like powered up the hill at some effort, but no, you mean actually stopped? You weren't going anywhere?

I was going to fall sideways.

Did you not do the shoelace technique or were you already doing that?

What was the shoelace technique, where you.

Zigzag weave from side to side up the road?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was doing that already, but these were very narrow, extremely steep roads and. Yeah, so it was. But it was absolutely stunning. I haven't been to the Lake District since I was about 15 on my Duke of Edinburgh Award bronze, I think, and it was beautiful and it was kind of. It was. It wasn't too hot, thankfully, because I swept bucket loads as it is, so precision hydration were helping me out all the way around and yeah, it's been fantastic.

I'm intrigued, though, this, this conference. So is the Conference still going on, but virtually. Or have you just decided to use the week that was planned to go to the conference?

Yeah, it is. So the conference is virtually, but what they're doing is. So it's live, but it also goes on demand from Wednesday. So basically I skipped all the conference content today and just listen books and then I'll be stacking that on demand stuff. So I will be doing more of the content in the afternoons and the evenings. I won't be doing another long ride quite like that.

Yeah, because. Well, presumably it works quite well because you could get up in the morning and do something and then by the time New Orleans wakes up and the conference hits the time zones, well, it's.

Actually all UK time, so you can, you can tell it what time you want the content and because they're not speaking live, okay. It's streamed live and then. But it goes on, you get the on demand version as well. So. Yeah, and yeah, I'm. So I'm, I'm staying next to Coniston water which means I can do some open water swimming. I've. I'm gonna go and do a few legs of the Bob Graham Round. I'm certainly not going to do all of the Bob Graham Round, but. And I've done the Fred Whitten, so I've seen like a phenomenal amount of the lakes already today.

That's pretty good. But you didn't fancy stopping off in Leeds and watching the triathlon at the weekend?

Well, funnily enough, I stopped in Leeds to charge my Tesla on the way up and, and I totally, I'd been meaning to watch the triathlon and then literally as I'm sitting there charging, I was like, oh crap, I forgot about the triathlon. So I was watching the finish on my phone whilst in lead, sat in my car while it was charging.

So they probably don't have, I can imagine they probably don't have charge points for Teslas in round Hay park in Leeds, I'm guessing. Could have been tricky.

Probably not, but it was. But yeah, that was, that was a, an amazing race, wasn't it? I mean, what was your take on Alistair Brownlee's disqualification? Because to me it looked like a push down.

But you know, it was funny because I was watching the coverage and they were talking about something happening like with the lead changing and someone missing a turn. Boy. And as they were showing the coverage I was like, oh yeah. And someone just got dunked that and sort of started laughing going, oh yeah, the joys of open water swimming. And I, at the time I thought, oh, obviously the person who dunked will have just. It looked like they were just trying to swim over the back of them. But that's all I saw because obviously someone had cut, you know, if they'd cut your paths. It happens all the time in open water, so. And in races you're swimming, you have to swim over the top of people and stuff like that if people cut up your path. So when it was then announced during the race, and I'm assuming it was that incident and it was Alistair and he got disqualified, look, I can see both ways. I think it's quite harsh because as said, and as he said in mess tweets, that shit happens all the time in those races. There's elbows, not intentionally, but there's elbows being swung. You get your goggles knocked, you get, you know, you get a rogue hand pulling your shoulder. Like, I've had it done. And like I said, if you're trying to pick the best line or get on feet. I've had to swim over the back of people. I've not, not. You don't intend, you're not intentionally dunking them and that's maybe what it looks more like. But you have to swim over the back of them. And like we practice. You practice that in training. You get into situations with your training buddies where you are swimming over the back of people, you're pulling a leg like intentionally to make it worse than what it is in a race. But look, yeah, you know, I think for him it was just he, as he said it was really, it was quite sad, really. Not the disqualification, like, you know, that's whatever the judges want to have their opinion of what happened, whether it was intentional or not, we're never going to know. And Alistair's probably not going to say that. And he said it wasn't and that yeah, worst had happened to him 10 seconds before and 10 seconds after kind of thing. You know, it's just I think he's, I have full respect for him to wanting to give. You know, he loves racing. He loves ITU or we should call it WTS racing now. He was double Olympic champion. He wanted to give it another crack, but unfortunately he's been struggling with injury and isn't at fitness to compete. And that probably hurts for him more that he can't. You know, he probably knows fit. If he was fully fit, he'd be capable of challenging at the front, but he's not. And that probably is hard to take. But you know, let's celebrate the Fact that Alex Yee had an absolute cracker of a race and has been having great races this year and is in form. And yes, we don't know how dynamics will play out in Tokyo. And yes, the bikers is definitely not going to let. They're not going to want Alex Yee or Morgan. Morgan Pierce, I think he said Morgan Freeman or Morgan Pearson in the, you know, in the front pack, on the swim or the bike. And they're going to make that very hard for them because they know that come the run, they're not going to stand a chance against him. I mean, it just looks. Alex just looked effortless on that 10k run. It was really. I mean, he destroyed them. He won by minutes sort of thing, which is just crazy in that level of racing.

And, you know, that's got to bode well for. I mean, you can't look at that performance and not. I mean, the selectors must be. There must be a slight element of. Well, yeah, but do we, do we take Ali because of his kind of, you know, the, the fear he puts into other.

I don't think. I don't. Sadly, I do not think as much as good as he is, I don't think he puts the fear into other competitors anymore. I think Alex Yee will be putting more fear into the rest of the field with the way he ran than Alistair in his. Because, yeah, like I said, and Alistair, when he's full fitness. Yeah, but he hasn't been at that full fitness for a couple of years to compete at the top because he's been doing a longer course. And I think he pretty much said that that was his last WTS race. He pretty much, on social media sort of handed the, handed the spot to Alex and said, you know, the GB team have got a great team and Alex deserves to be there. And so I think he's sort of pretty much stepped down. I wouldn't be surprised if he says to the selectors, you know, yeah, you know, I'm not. I don't want to be picked sort of thing, or I'm handing, not handing resignation in, but, you know, just take. Taking that decision away from them. You know, I think it's more fascinating looking at the US selection on the women's side and also funnily, if you look at the women's race, which is also a fantastic race, you had four Brits in the top seven. All seven Brits were in the top 20. And out of that seven Brits, only one of them is going to Tokyo.

Which is just mental it is crazy. And Lucy Charles Barkley was racing, wasn't it? And this was her first race in this format, wasn't it?

Yeah. And she pretty much set the race up. Sophie Caldwell got her first WTS podium, which was awesome. She came third. And Jess Learmouth, coming back from injury, came second. And we know Jess is going to Tokyo, but. And then it was Maya Kingman, who's from the Netherlands. She got her first WTS win, which was awesome. But Lucy basically set that race up for them. She absolutely destroyed the field in the swim, probably more so than anyone was expecting. And that meant that a break of just six women came out the water really completely clear of the rest of the field. And then a quick transition from Jess and parrying on the bike split that six into two threes. So you had Jess, Maya Kingman and Sophie Caldwell up the road and then. And they were clear, and that was your podium. And then Lucy rode with Taylor Spivey and Victoria Lopez. And then Flora Duffy did an amazing leap from a chase group on the bike to catch those that make them a four. And that probably helped Lucy because she didn't have to. You know, it's her first draft legal race. We know she's got power on the bike, but she hasn't raced in those race dynamics. But because there is only a group of four of them, it probably helped her get around the bike because she wasn't having to deal with a big package going around dead turns and going around corners. And she pretty much, I think. I think I sort of said, got on the job training from being guided by Flora Duffy and Taylor Spivey, probably being told. Told what to do and where to go. And look, she definitely pulled away. She was taking turns, but. And it was probably harder for her. She lost. You know, she'd lose times on the corners. She'd have to, you know, have to sort of power back up to get on there. But the thing that impressed me the most about her was her run. Like, I honestly thought she would get left behind. You know, everyone would run past her in the run, but she actually outran. I think she had the seventh fastest split. So, you know, as a debut goes amazing. I think it was quite a brave decision from British triathlon to give her that opportunity in such an important race with her being untested over that distance with, you know, she. In the nicest possible way, she could have brought down the whole field, but she didn't. And she had a great day. But. But I think, you know, I think what's Exciting was well Maya Kingmer but Jess Learmouth coming back off injury. Sophie Caldwell had got her first podium which is really like it's been on the cards but it just shows what she's won for the future. We had a couple of younger British girls in their first WTS races. They had really great races. Flora Duffy just she won't be making the same mistake again and get left behind in the swimming that's for sure. And she's just to me still probably the race on favorite but going back to selection quality America is you've got one spot left on the American team for the women and you've got two athletes who if the Olympics had been last year would have been your dead set picks for two spots on Team usa. On their team Taylor Spivey and Katie Zaferes. But due to automatic qualification spots having been taken by Summer Rappaport and then Taylor Knibb in the last races you've now got two of the best athletes in the world fighting for one spot and it's going to be heart rate breaking for one of them because last year you would have said they were both medal contenders in the Olympics and now only one of them is going to make it and that's a real dilemma who you're going to like. Taylor Spivey has been consistently top five front pack swimmer. She was in that in Leeds. But Katie Xavier is a bit like Alistair. You know she has won world championships, she's won races, she's proven it big on big days but at the moment she's just slightly off form. So yeah that's going to be an interesting one to play out in the next few days but it was great to see racing back in Leeds. I find it a little bit. So I'm going on there. I find it a little bit controversial that WTS can have a race in Leeds with international athletes coming from all over the world to race without quarantine. Well they were bubbled but they didn't have to do the 10 day quarantine. And then you've got crowds of however many in Leeds. No masks, no social distancing. Yet Ironman UK announced to all the pros that anyone coming from international has to quarantine for 10 days before the race. So basically rules out any non UK athletes racing. Ironman uk.

Yeah, that is that. It does seem strange that there's different rules for different distances in the same sport.

Money I think is probably the answer.

I'm sure, I'm sure you're right but.

It'S you Know, it is a struggle. Like I'm in UK as they announced it with this huge Pride prize purse. But then they're not helping any of the athletes get there, so. Yeah, anyway, but it was good to see racing. Indeed, that was for sure it was.

And speaking of racing, you've had your first race since.

Well, that was ages ago. We don't need to talk about that.

No, no, no, I want to know, I want to know what it was like. Because that's the first race you've done for how long?

Yeah, I mean, 18. 18, 19 months. But that's no different for most people. I mean like I, as I was finding out most people who are now about racing, it's the first race a lot of people have. You know, people haven't raced for 18 months, two years. Um, so how. It was great. It was great. It was great to be a race. I think the event organization did a amazing job in the circumstances. Again, we were all tested and had wristbands to say we were tested and that meant we're only, only people that were tested could get in certain areas. So yeah, I think they, they did a really. I mean it's a beautiful place. It was simpleton in Austria. It was a stunning course, I think in non Covid time. Well, the race has been around for years, so it's a very experienced team. In non Covid times it'll be really epic race. I mean I was surprised at how big the infrastructure was for the race at the moment. Like thinking just, you know, with COVID it would be pretty, pretty low key. But they clearly have a great team. Like there was a big TV screen up that you could watch. It was live streamed on Australian Austrian tv. There was big like grandstands for people to watch the finish shoots. It was completely closed roads which was amazing. It was like one, one big lap on the bike course and at one point the first 25k was down a freeway and they like completely closed the road. It was amazing. And then the run was really pretty sort of down the canal either side and round the and through the center of town. So yeah, really definitely a race I would recommend people put on their list for next year and given all the.

Injury issues you've had over that 18 month period. Because I know for a lot of people they've had, you know, some of them have not raced for 18 months because of COVID But actually you've had a lot of injury issues in that time, haven't you? So how did. Was everything feeling good and you kind of Feeling like you're getting back to your best?

Uh, yeah, everything was fine. Yeah, it's definitely a step in the right direction. Definitely not at my best yet, but yeah, it was a good, a good progress. Marker down.

Fantastic. Okay, well, it's good, it's good to hear that you're racing again and I'm, I've got my first race in a couple of weeks time so I'm really looking forward to it as well.

What is that? What's that one?

That is the outlaw.

Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm looking forward to getting racing again. Anyway, we've chatted for long enough probably. So let's dive into the interview with Phoebe Liebling. Phoebe Liebling is a Harley street nutritional therapist, runs the business Natural Nourishment and is a self confessed data geek when it comes to anything to do with our health. So in this interview you'll hear about how you can improve both your performance and, and your health through your diet, through the right supplements and through different types of recovery. And of course what we'll also cover is which ones that is supplements and recovery are a total waste of your time and your money. There is so much great content within this interview. There's we touch on collagen, cbd, good gut health, how to tell whether you've got good gut health, cold water treatment, loads and loads and loads of stuff, debunking a few myths and also focusing in on the things that can improve our performance, including one simple one that was shown to give cyclists a 10% performance enhancement. So I know you're going to enjoy the conversation with Phoebe Liebling of Natural Nourishment. So Phoebe, welcome to the Tribeathlon podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to chatting to you about improving our diet, our gut health and loads of other stuff that we can, we can talk about. So let's kick things off. For those people that don't know anything about you, can you tell them sort of what your job is, what your role is and how you also got into being what you are today, what I am.

So thank you for having me. First of all, and I am a nutritional therapist, which just to differentiate from, I guess the terminology, people sometimes get a little bit confused about exactly what I do and, you know, whether I'm qualified to do what I do because there are lots of all these terms going around about nutrition professionals and I'm slightly different from a dietitian and a nutritionist in the sense that I'm a functional medic which means that I look at somebody and yes, I use their diet as my kind of primary therapeutic tool so I can adapt how that sort of what they're eating. But I also take in all of the other elements that we know impact somebody's health and well being. So their environment, their stress state, their sleep, all of the other bits that make us who we are. And so I will come in and I will be very nosy and I will ask them about all of these different things and I will get them doing different lifestyle habits I might like. We'll probably talk about change the way that they're exercising or when they're exercising or how they support their exercise. And I'll also kind of delve deeper. So I'm a bit of a data magpie. I want to know not just sort of the foods that are on your plate, but I also want to know about your micronutrients data. So what's going on with your vitamins and your minerals and your antioxidants and how your cells are functioning right down to that microscopic level that no one else really cares about. But to me it's like the most fascinating thing. So yes, that's, that's what I do on a day to day basis. And then that kind of is complemented by I dabble in the world of supplement formula formulation and making products for people and doing all that kind of stuff, teaching other practitioners to do what I do just to keep my days varied.

And how did you get into that role? You know, did you kind of study this sort of thing at university or, you know, how did you, how did you get into it?

So my story does kind of start at university. I originally was an environmental scientist and that's what I did my undergrad degree in. But I grew up in a very food centered family. Food was our sort of way of showing love. And my mum and I were this crack team who would always make these amazingly bountiful meals for between two and 20 people. It didn't really matter how many people were around the table. And then when I went to university, my undergrad, I picked up a horrible digestive virus and it was misdiagnosed, totally mismanaged, over medicated and left me a bit of a shell of a human being by my kind of four year down the line. Mark cut a long story short, after seeing multiple consultants and them not really talking to each other and doing all that medication stuff, I saw an acupuncturist and then I saw a naturopath and they were the ones who pieced me back together. And so I went, this is what I'm going to do. And I jumped in and literally went and found a place and started my postgrad about for three days later and never look back.

Fantastic. And how long have you been running the business as it currently stands today?

So I started out on my own six years ago, so we're just, you know, pretty, pretty steady now. It was a, it was a climb up to, you know, build up client base and that kind of thing and not diversify into many different bits. But yeah, now I've been established for about six years and you're.

Because obviously this is a, a sport based podcast. What about your own sport? I understand you're a bit of a swimmer, but so what keeps you fit in healthy?

Anything that involves me bouncing around I will do, is the answer to that question. I absolutely love to swim. I grew up. Well, my mum is still an outdoor swimming nut so we have always swim outside and she swims on Hampstead every single day of the year whether they have to break the ice for her or not. And her and her friends are mad. They don't wear wetsuits or anything like that. They wear scuba booties when it's really cold and that's it. So I've always been a swimmer, but I've also dabbled a lot in running. I am completely and utterly besotted with reformer Pilates. I also do things like calisthenic training, lots of bodyweight stuff, some really heavy weight training just because, you know, gotta be strong and yeah, pretty much anything that anyone will throw at me. If there's a new craze when it comes to fitness and activity, I've got to try it. So I've done the versa climber. I've done all of that too. Didn't, didn't really enjoy spinning, but I just, I say that my body is not particularly designed for a bike, but I think that's just because I'm not very good at cycling and where.

And so you're not. So you obviously. I think you do do your swimming outdoors generally, don't you? But not when you're breaking ice.

No. I think I was hardier when I was a youngster, so we were only allowed in when we were sort of like single to double digits when it was sort of March. But me and my sister would be first in to the outdoor pools and the lidos and everything. And now I'm kind of sneaking my way in towards the end of April and kind of still shivering A little bit. But yes, I am a big fan of the sort of big open air lidos or the sea. There's a feeling of freeness isn't there when you're in open water. And during good old Covid time my mum and I would go out to a place in sort of outside Watford. We'd leave at 5:45 on a Saturday morning and go out swimming in the Merchant Taylor School lake which was getting us our fix whilst all the pools are closed.

But yeah, and I suppose that's a good place to start really. What, what are you, what are your thoughts on this whole cold water momentum in terms of, you know, the whole Wim Hof stuff, You know, is it as good for our health as we're being led to believe? You know there's a, there's a big wave around, you know, cold water treatments or cold showers. What are your thoughts on that in particular?

So cold water is absolutely fantastic and I think, I guess the simplest way to sort of summarize what it's doing is when you immerse yourself in cold water you give your body a shock but it's a managed shock. And so what it does is it sends things like your immune cells around the body to check that everything's okay. So but it also makes your blood vessels dilate so you absolutely flood the body with oxygen. Your heart has to work harder and obviously this is the idea that you don't just leap into freezing cold water if you aren't used to it because you can actually shock the body too much but you're getting everything to work more efficiently. The heart muscle gets stronger, your lung capacity increases, you're going to increase the number of white blood cells that you're producing which are your sort of first line security patrol forces. A part of your immune system. We know that you produce endorphins as a result and these are the same ones that you would experience in like a loving relations which is why it becomes kind of addictive. It's also very anti inflammatory so it's going to kill things like arthritic pain. And there's so much wonderful research behind the benefits to mood. So you can now actually if somebody had a diagnosis of depression, lots of GPs will prescribe open water swimming as a form of therapy because it does create this sort of mood enhancement and there's a social aspect to it because there are certain kinds of people who will go and throw themselves into cold water. So if you find yourself joining a community it's kind of like the early morning Dog walkers, everyone's going to say hello, whether they've met you or not. And there's going to be a sense of we're all in this together. So, yes, it is just as good as they say it is. And if you can't get to somewhere where you can do actual cold water swimming, proper cold water immersion in a shower is a good place to start. And yeah, take a deep breath and make some noise when you do it the first time and then gradually you'll get used to it and again, it's quite addictive.

What about for post exercise? I always remember seeing Andy Murray getting into ice baths. Is it as good post exercise as. I also remember reading something more recently where a lot of the benefits they thought that came from ice baths aren't necessarily the case. So what are your thoughts on that?

I think that again, lots of these things, when they first get spoken about, they are sort of heralded as the be all and end all. And so maybe it is true that some of the actual kind of hype about the ice baths isn't quite correct. But at the same point, this idea of oxygenation that's going to get rid of lactic acid, it's going to help with muscle recovery and it's going to kill that potentially overexcited inflammatory state that you can get in somebody who is exercising really intensely. But no, things like ice baths cryotherapies are really sort of. It's a hot topic at the moment for the same reason. It's definitely not going to be a negative if you are doing those things. So I still put weight in cold water immersion, ice baths, cold therapy after exercise, it will do those oxygenation things and it will help with that muscle regeneration. So, yeah, I give it a thumbs up.

And I remember seeing a friend of mine on Facebook saying that she'd just been for cryotherapy, which I think, am I right in saying it was something like minus 100 degrees or something? And I can't imagine she's in there for very long. Is it, you know, is that just essentially compounding all of those same principles that you just talked about?

Absolutely. And yes, you are in there for sort of like two minutes at a time. It's similar to say when somebody's doing something like altitude training, you're forcing the body to regenerate because you're putting it under pressure. So it's just this idea that you are, you are giving that shock to the body and it will mean that it goes around and when you do exercise to any Kind of level that causes that micro damage in your muscle cells. If you can get your body to sort of work on that more quickly then your recovery is going to be improved. So that's sort of what it's doing. But yes, it's definitely not one for the faint hearted and it is very, very tried. I have tried it, I've tried everything. I've done the, I've even done the cycle. When you go into I think an infrared sauna and you do like the flotation tanks and you do the ice baths altogether and my God, you feel great afterwards. You feel exhausted but it is intense.

Wow. Yeah. I'm surprised you don't snap in half with a sort of getting hot and then cold. It feels like, it feels like you'd be. Yeah, that does sound like some sort of torture. So what about. So let's. I think probably a good place to start. You spend a lot of time talking about the gut health, don't you? What can you give people an idea of what signals a healthy gut? I mean there's so much talk around the importance of the gut and how it's like a second brain. I suppose that's a good place to start. Why is gut health so important and how can we tell whether we've got good gut health or bad gut health?

Well, I guess there's a very basic sort of place to begin. Your gut is the interaction between your external and your internal environments and it's the place where you're going to harness the raw materials to make energy. If your ability to absorb nutrition is compromised, you've already lessened your body's just general capability to work well because it's not going to be running on enough fuel. When it comes to things like whether your gut is healthy or unhealthy or happy or unhappy, we will get a little bit bloated sometimes because we've either eaten too much, we've eaten on the run or it's just we've eaten something that's a little bit more fermentable like a certain kind of carbohydrate or a legume or a bean or a pulse that just has something in it that's going to make our gut bacteria have a bit of party and that, that's why we'd be a bit bloated. But there's a difference between that passing and say feeling like you are really distended, already full immediately after eating, getting things like acid reflux, funny, odd sort of fermenty tastes in your mouth or burping a lot, or actually having loose bowel movements, being constipated, or just not feeling like you can go every day without issue, which, I mean, even to the point that somebody will say to me, I can't go until I've had my coffee. And I say, well, that's a gastric irritant that's causing a spasmodic release of the intestinal muscles. That's not a healthy bowel movement. So if your body can evacuate its waste effectively without force, and you can kind of. You can interpret that when you put food in, it's a happy environment that it's going into, then I would say that's a, well, working, happy digestive chat. And if there's an element that sometimes is a little bit wonky because you go out and you eat something that you wouldn't normally eat, but then you go back to normal, happy sort of stasis when you're kind of doing normal things, then again, that's probably fine. It's just, you know, whatever you put in was a little bit off piste. But, yes, there are lots of different bits where your gut can be unhappy and sometimes it just needs a little bit more care and attention about how you're eating or what you're putting in together. And then it.

So it sounds to me like, for athletes out there, regardless of level, that if their gut health is not good, it could be a significant performance enhancement by just sorting out that gut health, couldn't it? Because they'd be, for example, absorbing more fuel from what they eat. Is that correct?

Absolutely. So, yeah, if you're. If you're adding more petrol into your tank just by simply sorting out your gut, then there you go. And I think you touched on the idea that the gut is the second brain, but it's also part of your immune system. It's that first bit. So one of the things that I can see a lot with athletes is they're pushing so hard that actually they're. Which we'll probably go into this in a bit more. In a second, their stress response is becoming a little bit trigger happy. They then don't absorb as much nutrition as they need to. And not only do they find. They might not find that their performance actually suffers because an athlete, you kind of just push through and you will perform anyway, but they start to notice that they pick up coughs and colds more frequently, or maybe their skin isn't as good as it should be, they feel a little bit drier, or their sleep isn't as sleep or mood balance is a little bit off. It's more like the sort of accessory symptoms that they notice first because they are in the mindset that they will compete at their like 100 percentile level come rain or shine, whatever's going on. But it's just the other little indications, the superficial bits, that the body starts to tell you that something isn't quite as it should be.

And I dare say it's also a bit like that principle of. I remember somebody saying to me, if, you know, if you like. I think this was an analogy used with sleep. You can get by on not enough sleep for days or even weeks and months. But it's like driving your car at a very high revs level. You know, if you drove around everywhere in first gear, the car would be absolutely fine for a week or two or three, but it's not going to last you a very long time because the engine is going to blow up a lot quicker.

But yeah.

So what can people do to try and improve the quality of their gut health?

So the first thing I would say is if you are getting a feeling of being bloated, then primary thing is to always make sure that your eating environment is kind of optimal. So sit down to eat, even if it's only that you've got 10, 15 minutes, just make sure. And I get very sort of silly about this. I'm like, okay, well you need to make sure that you sit down, you've got a nap and you've got a knife and fork and you don't have to do this forever. But what people forget is that your sensory perception of food, your digestion, actually starts before you put food in your mouth. So be aware that you're going to eat. And that can sort out most people's gut signaling because it's that chain reaction of kind of seeing and sensing food before you actually start chewing. And then everything else starts to, you know, flow. Think about maybe adding in some fermented foods into your diet because things like probiotic bacteria, especially for athletes, what you tend to find is that they get a little bit of extra intestinal inflammation just because they're turning over their cells a little bit more quickly because of this sort of more intense lifestyle that they're leading. So fermented foods are naturally rich in those live bacteria. And also because they have that sort of slightly tart, astringent taste to them, they trigger your saliva. And again, that kind of chain reactions things down into the lower gut and it's sort of supporting in the short term but also recolonizing in the long term. If you're really struggling with your bowel movements and they're kind of fluctuating backwards and forwards, look at your gastric irritants. Are you responding badly to alcohol? Are you responding badly to things like dairy products? Maybe eggs, Maybe it's to do with coffee or other stimulants, Even things like Matcha tea? Because they are. Because they are these intestinal spasmodics. They can just mean that your sort of gut muscles start to contract in slightly more sort of. It's not in a consistent wave, which is what you're aiming for. You get these kind of little flashes and then you get. Sometimes you go into bathroom quite quickly, sometimes you feel like you're a little bit constipated. Think about going for more cooked foods rather than raw foods because again, they're a bit more soothing. And water, make sure that your water intake is optimal, which hopefully for most athletes, they've got that under control. But again, if you are competing a lot or drinking a lot of water, check that your salt. So your electrolytes are again, optimal because they are your. They are your controlling mechanisms for where fluid is going in the body. And again, if you've got too much fluid going into the colon too quickly, it could be that that's what's causing spasmodic bowel movement release or the opposite. If you don't have enough going in, that can be making you constipated. So a few things to think about there. Just, you know, chuck them all in.

Lots to think about. And I think we need to kind of come back to these. I mean, we've certainly. So let's just touch on the electrolytes thing because we've done a previous podcast with Andy Blow from Precision Hydration where he was talking about the importance of electrolytes, but I haven't really picked up on electrolytes from a sort of gut health perspective. So let's just. What are your thoughts? How does having the right amount of electrolytes influence your gut health?

So again, it's more about controlling where fluid is moving within the body. So for people who aren't aware, electrolytes are just minerals with an electrical charge, but they create concentration gradients across membranes, and if they aren't in the right levels, then you're not going to get fluid moving where it should be. This tends to be a combination. It's not just about electrolytes when it comes to your gut. It's more about a combination of electrolytes but also specifically magnesium levels and the kind of fiber that you have. So your fiber is divided into two main categories, soluble and insoluble. Insoluble being a kind of like, brushy stuff that sweeps things through the colon. And then your soluble being the kind of sticky bits that will actually absorb water. If you've got low electrolytes and low soluble fiber, you're going to get a little bit backed up because water's not going in, but there's also nothing to absorb it and draw it into the colon. Whereas if you get good levels of electrolytes, then you'll find that your water and fluid is moving where it should be. Magnesium, I touched on specifically because it's really important for that intestinal contractility, but also enough relaxation, because if you're really tense in the colon again, you're going to become constipated because you need this squeeze and release, squeeze and release. And because athletes and those exercising are using a lot of magnesium as part of their actual just physical exertion, they can find that perhaps that then leads to them not having such happy gut. So, yes, electrolytes are important for where the water should go, but also make sure that your soluble fiber is there to absorb the water. And if in doubt, add more magnesium, because even those who aren't exercising are usually depleted.

So. So that's interesting. And is there a particular type? Because there are different types of magnesium that you can. Supplements you can get. Are there particular types of magnesium supplements that people should look out for? Or, you know.

If you are somebody who is struggling with slow bowel movements, you might find magnesium citrate is particularly helpful because that's going to actually encourage a little bit of additional movement through the digestive tract. If you've got the opposite, then obviously you don't want to go for a magnesium citrate. Something like a liposomal. Magnesium is a really good one. You encapsulate the nutrient into a little kind of fatty phospholipid envelope, and that means that it's utilized in a different way. So that will primarily go more to liver function and nervous system function. Doing something like Epsom salt baths, obviously, is fantastic because you're going to absorb magnesium directly into muscles, which will help with muscular recovery, recovery in exchange for things like lactic acid out into the bathwater. But also it's going to have that osmotic laxative effect, so it will draw fluid into the colon. So it's quite a nice one. It's a very balancing and quite gentle one. For people. So that's. I probably say Epsom salt baths are the best one to do for somebody who's exercising a lot. And then maybe look at additional supportive magnesium, either as a sort of magnesium ascorbate, which means that it's bonded to vitamin C. So that's going to be useful as another antioxidant when it breaks apart. Citrate if you have got slow mount bowel movements or something like a glycinate or malate if you need a little bit of additional kind of systemic support. So maybe you are a bit headache or something like that as well, or you get additional aches and pains and you just feel that magnesium in extra doses would be helpful.

Brilliant. And are there any other supplements that you immediately. I mean, there's a list of things that I want to talk about, but are there any other supplements that you think are really good things for athletes, particularly people that are maybe training, you know, for doing lots of high levels of training that you think that they should be looking into.

So it would depend on the kind of training that you're doing. But there's obviously a lot of support for Things like either BCAAs or essential amino acid support. Looking at things perhaps say like creatine, especially if you're a plant based athlete, because you're not going to be getting a lot of from your diet. So you need to make sure that you're getting enough to support your overall energy metabolism, but it's also a critical energy carrier for your nervous system and for your brain. So say if people feel like post race they're a bit foggy or they don't have that mental clarity, it could be that their body is just looking for those kind of additional nutrients. So that can add in. Endurance athletes definitely need some kind of liquid probiotic support because again, that's going to guard the intestines from that inflammatory cascade which we know can happen. I would think about also looking at additional antioxidants either in the form of something. I know that you're a big fan of wheatgrass, which we all talk about, but something like a chlorophyll or a chlorella or an algal supplement, Omega 3, whether it's in a plant based form or a fish oil form, and things like your vitamin C, vitamin E combinations, because they're going to be the ones that scavenge the free radicals, these oxative species that we produce more of when we exercise, which if left unchecked can then go on to cause damage to our cells or mean that we get things like aches, pains, niggles, all of that kind of stuff. So flood the body with those kind of primary phytonutrients and then it just means that you're not going to get any of those problems, which is always a better way to be.

Absolutely. And so with that, before we sort of drill down into some of those that you've talked about, we do sort of come from the approach of most. If you're training sort of 10 to 15 or 10 plus hours a week, you're going to have a depletion in some of these areas. So you should just take like probiotics and omega 3 and other vitamins. Or do you think people should really try and be much more scientific about it and try and track all of what they're consuming and try and be a bit more scientific about where the gaps are?

I think that there's a space for both. I'm definitely not somebody who throws in supplements willy nilly. I think that a food first approach is very important. But the thing about tracking is sometimes you can slightly miss the mark because, say if I was to subjectively assess someone, they could track everything they're eating. But if you've got slightly lower lowered digestive efficacy, then you're not actually going to absorb all the stuff that you necessarily put in. So it's also about looking at the synergy between things like stomach acid and combinations of different nutrients and the bioavailability of them. So are you genetically predisposed to not absorb and utilize plant based iron as effectively as the person sitting next to you? So yes, you're eating lots of spinach and you've got all of your legumes, beans and pulses, but you physically cannot absorb or utilize 100% of that or 80% of that. So we might need to add a little bit extra, bearing in mind that you are doing all of this output at the same point. So yes, tracking is very helpful and I love the scientific side of it. But again, you might need somebody to interpret it and top you up as well.

And how do you do that? How do you learn sort of that element?

So either you can come to somebody like me and we'll go, oh yes, absolutely, we can pick you apart, or you could do something like a genetic panel, because what you're looking at there is enzyme pathways and all of the metabolic processes that happen in your body are dictated by the efficacy of enzymes and they're things that you would inherit. So if we look at somebody who, I don't know, you could have a supposedly optimal level of vitamin D, but if you've inherited what we call a VDR receptor, so vitamin D receptor, snp, single nucleotide polymorphism, your actual requirement will be higher because your utilization of vitamin D will be lower. So this is where things like you can do a 23andMe panel, which would then need to have the data interpreted by somebody else. And there are lots of other options out there. But this is. If you really want to biohack, then you need to go down to your genes and work out exactly what's going on. But then again, layering on top of that there is the fantastically interesting field of epigenetics, which is to say that your genetic code doesn't necessarily dictate what is going to happen, because your environment, your lifestyle and your dietary choices will influence which of those genes is actually expressed. So you don't treat, in inverted commas somebody based on what their genotype says, but you relate what their genotype says with any symptoms that they're experiencing or any kind of other indicative pieces, link those together, and then kind of create an output based on all of that information.

Right, I see. So it's definitely more complicated than just sort of getting one of these sort of DNA testing things. They send back saying, you know, do this, don't do that, or avoid these and enjoy those. That's not going to be. It's. It's clearly much more scientific than.

Yeah, it's kind of like saying, if you come back from your GP and they've told you that your cholesterol is high, you are going to get heart disease. We know that that's not the case, and we know that actually dietary fat intake and cholesterol levels are far less important than the amount of sugar in your diet and your stress levels. But at the same point, it's a piece of the puzzle. So it's useful information, but you still need to look at the global picture in order to actually create something that is overwhelmingly useful.

Okay. Okay, brilliant. And you mentioned probiotics. Within all of that, you said that they were really important for people, you know, particularly athletes. Why is that? And, you know, is there any. I remember hearing you say on another podcast about some research that was done on both cyclists and probiotics and. Sorry. And runners on probiotics. So why are they so important?

Well, again, so there's the fact that they will harness nutrients for you in the gut, but they also create this environment where you can, where your digestive system is particularly happy, and they signal to and from your nervous system, if you have got good probiotic diversity, you will have lower inflammation in the digestive tract. And the study that I mentioned previously was on the lab four strain probiotics, and they use them in endurance cyclists. And they saw the most incredible. I think it's like 10%, 10% faster race finishing in sprint cyclists, which is amazing because it's this idea that you're actually allowing the body to perform at a higher level. Um, I guess the. The most obvious example of endurance athletes sort of having the negative side of intestinal information is the classic Paula Radcliffe, her moment during the marathon, which is this idea that when you actually push the body that hard, it will just evacuate through the bowels, which obviously was not a particularly good period of time for her. But at the same point, it's quite a perfect example here. So using probiotics prophylactically in somebody who's doing intense exercise will support the nervous system response, enhance performance, because it's going to make the digestive system more effective and also guard against inflammation. So, yes, different strains for different people, but it's a really good option, just as a flatline thing, to make sure that your microbial diversity is as good as it can be. And supplemental probiotics can help with that. Or just fermented foods, making sure you're having lots of them and diverse prebiotic fiber in your diet, which basically just means having lots of different fruits and veg.

Right, okay. And you mentioned the Paul Ratcliffe moment. I think that one of the things that's been a very common thread through this podcast and previous interviews is that plenty of athletes get gastrointestinal problems during particularly Ironman races, which are obviously long races. Is there anything. So probiotics sound like a good starting point to try and solve that problem. There are other things that they can do that is things to avoid, like energy gels or something like that, or anything else they can do to kind of make sure their gut doesn't give them those sorts of issues on race day, for sure.

So it is looking at a lot of the time looking at those supplemental things that you're using across the races. So if they contain things like sweeteners or artificial agents, that kind of stuff, that is going to be horrendous for a body that's trying to work really hard. And a lot of the time I will now see people coming in, they go, oh, yeah, but they use stevia or they've used xylitol, and that's much better than it being sucralose sweeteners in themselves like that. So the things that end in oil, they are sugar, alcohols, they are horrible for the body to break down. And actually if you give them to a lot of people on a normal day, they'll find that bloated and distended and stomach upset. So then if you add in doing an ironman at the same time, your body doesn't really have the propensity to sort those out at the same point. We're both fans of the 33 fuel products. Yeah. So go for those kind of things. And as well, I would kind of look at potential, I guess, irritants for the gut lining. So I tend to get people to avoid coffee. I would not make them fully gluten free because they don't need to be. But at the same point we do know that gluten and wheat containing grain or wheat based grains cause a little bit of opening in the intestinal membrane. And this isn't everyone. And what we see on scanning imagery is it's just about that person's level of tolerance as to how quickly those junctions knit back together. So if you're going in for a really big race, go sort of lightly gluten free, use naturally lower gluten grains like rye for a little bit, have brown rice, have quinoa, have millet, have oats, as opposed to going for really hard hybridized wheat. Just to give everything the opportunity to calm down. Again, if you are training really intensely, things like dairy proteins and egg protein can irritate some people. And because they rely on those enzymes within annual probiotic bacteria in the mucous membrane of your digestive tract, if that's ever so slightly compromised, that can mean that you get a little bit gassy or you do need to go to the toilet a little bit more. This is not going to be for everyone. It's about having a look at those potential triggers within your diet and seeing if it is you and sort of going, actually, you know what? I find that if I have sort of bread or sort of those kind of pastas quite soon before a race, I do find them more irritated as opposed to if I have like a brown rice meal, just play around with those.

Testing is the, is the key, isn't it? And that's what we've heard time and again from, from professional athletes. So if like me, your pre night, pre race meal is a big bowl of pasta, we should be looking at maybe gluten free pasta. Should we?

Yes. But again, gluten free pasta comes in many guises. So it's about making sure that you're picking one that is a naturally gluten free pasta. So I tend to go for brown rice pasta because I find buckwheat pasta bit sticky. So going for something that is just pure brown rice as opposed to one of these ones that's like a white gluten free pasta that's got corn and quinoa and all this kind of stuff mixed together. Go for the stuff that's simple or just go for something like a really nice black rice or red rice. Because when we talk about those antioxidants that are going to be oxygen oxidative species eradicating all those colourful pigments in the grains are going to be your antioxidants. So more color wherever you can get it is always going to be a really good idea.

And if you're like many people when you're like. I'm just thinking back to when I did Ironman Italy. I was perfectly sorted for getting a big bowl of pasta that was really easy. But if I'd asked for. Because obviously you know you're staying away. If I'd asked for a rice based gluten free pasta I might have struggled. Is there a, is there a kind of happy medium that you could. That's kind of an easy go to meal that would be a great carb loading pre race meal that you can think of.

I mean a root vegetable of any kind will always be naturally sort of gluten free. But again if it's more about making sure that you've got good nutrition in, if you've done the bits before that have lessened your sort of predisposition to being inflamed intestinally. So you've had your probiotics, you've done all your other stuff and you know that you're kind of on a good track. Having, having a good quality glutinous pasta isn't going to completely backside you. So it's. I would be, I'd be more concerned if somebody wasn't fueling up properly before a race because they're going well. She's told me that I can only have this really random grain product that has to be wet, swept out by angels and then served on a certain silver platter. Um, no, I would, I would go for something that you know is going to give you adequate fuel for your race and just make sure that you're coming from a really firm foundation to start off with and then your body will be able to cope with the pressure.

But if You're. If you're subject to. To kind of gi issues, you might sort of avoid dairy and things like that. Just to kind of try and avoid exaggerating it.

Yeah.

And especially just after the race as well. If you've just done that really intense race and then you have something like a beautiful but very cheese, like, very cheesy pizza, which some of my friends I know will go straight for. Yeah. You'll find that you probably run to the toilet quite quickly after that. So.

But when you've been racing for 11 hours visualizing this pepperoni pizza, it may be that maybe that's a problem worth dealing with. Certainly that's exactly what I did. It was straight for pizza after the race, although I did have a slight issue with the translation of pepperoni. I'd been visualizing this lovely pepperoni pizza. It turns out pepperoni in Italian is pepper. So this lovely vegetable pizza turned up and it really wasn't what I had in mind. So I threw my toys out the pram.

Now, can I please have an entire salami on top of that? Thank you very much.

They did sort that eventually. Now, you mentioned within that alcohol irritating the gut. Is alcohol a big problem for the gut?

It is if it's already upset. So, again, these things. I think you touched on it previously about the idea of pushing a car too hard. When I try and describe people sort of health to them, I talk about it in terms of tolerance and elasticity. So if you're. Your body is an elastic band, you want to live in a situation where that band isn't taut. So if you throw a stressor at it or a burden of any kind, it's got enough spring back to deal with it, bounce that away and come back to its happy internal environment, which we call homeostasis. If you're constantly putting pressure on the body or there's an element of inflammation which is making your elastic band tauter and tauter and tauter. Then when you add in something like alcohol, you haven't got any tolerance to stop that from being a negative. Whereas if you were nice and fluid and flexible, you add alcohol and you go, oh, yeah, that's fine. We can deal with it because we've got plenty of antioxidants hanging around and my liver's functioning wonderfully. And it's just a little thing that happens during my day. So it's more about the unique individual and how much pressure they're putting on themselves. Because depending on where you are in a training schedule or how intense you are competing Your exercise could actually be that one thing that keeps you taught the whole time. Whereas if you are somebody who's more of a recreational competitor, it could be that you do a bit of intense exercise. But actually it's more that your stressful lifestyle and job are the things that are going to be your things that are putting your elastic band taught. And it's just working out where you need to put in those supportive mechanisms to keep you fluid and flexible and not have things like alcohol be a negative impact because we all like to have a drink now and again.

And you also mentioned about wheatgrass. Now I've mentioned wheatgrass a few times on the, on the podcast. I found that I took it for many years just as the powdered form didn't get any ailments at all. Stop thought what decided that maybe it was because I was just, you know, much healthier than I was when I started that, so decided to stop taking wheatgrass. And then a couple of years later I noticed that actually I'd started picking up colds and bugs again and reintroduced wheatgrass. And touch wood, I've not had another ailment since. Now, is this all in my head? Is this the best placebo ever or is there something to having wheatgrass and things like spirulina as well, which kind of gets packaged in the same sort of form.

So there's definitely something behind it. What I would say is you, you can't out supplement a bad diet. So they would always be, I'd always start with somebody getting a foundation of a good varied, diverse diet in which I know that you have. So that's fine. Your wheatgrass is a wonderful addition on top. The benefit of these things is you are going to that first bit of the food chain and you're also harnessing a plant at its most endeavorous point of growth. So you're getting that first bit because wheatgrass is usually harvested within like the first seven to ten days of sprouting. And that's the bit when the plant is using everything it's got to stimulate growth. So in terms of the bio. Bioavailability of the nutrients inside it, that's when you're going to get the really good stuff as opposed to eating something a little bit later in its life. This is also why sort of sprouting nuts and seeds and grains and all that kind of stuff is really useful because you're getting the most nutritive part without the kind of the encasing fiber which we get when you kind of actually try to have Them sort of before they started that I always would tend to go for if you can get it, the fresh stuff because that's going to be more nutritious. And if you can get the kind of the fresh frozen wheatgrass, absolutely fantastic. The reason that chlorella and spirulina also get land in there because they're these algaes. It's the chlorophyll, it's the antioxidants, it's those phytopigments again, they're coming in. There's loads of research behind wheatgrass specifically. It's still at the relatively preliminary stage. From the stuff that I've read recently, it's still kind of like the mouse rat situation in the, and the in lab things, but it's very promising and there's a lot of potential anti carcinogenic stuff because it's so rich in oxygen and all that kind of stuff. But yes, definitely for me, big thumbs up for the wheatgrass, spirulina and chlorella, all of those things, as long as they are in addition to an already abundantly wonderful diet, rather than a, I'm not going to eat my broccoli, but I'm going to have lots of algae and do they.

Am I right in saying that they contain reasonable levels of protein as well? So does that mean that they're a great thing to have if you're switching to a vegan diet, for example.

So the thing about plant based protein is yes, they will be said that it's, they are abundant in amino acids, so your protein building blocks. But we aren't anatomically the same as a plant. So you wouldn't be able to purely rely on spirulina or chlorella or wheatgrass solely for your protein intake because you need to combine different forms to get that complete amino acid profile that you would get from something like an animal protein where you're very obviously eating what you're then going to go on and make anatomically from those amino acids. We used to think that you needed to combine all the different plant based proteins in one meal. You don't need to do that. You create what's, it's the, it's an amino acid pool. So think of a paddling pool. You chuck all of your necklace bits into it and over the course of a day or over the course of a couple of days. And then when you need to make a protein structure, you go and pick out the ones you want and then you recreate it. But yes, with plant based proteins it's about combination. And so yes, they are fantastic, but they can't be used by themselves. And just because we're touching on them. If you are a vegan person, athlete, whatever, B12 is a big one. You cannot use things like algaes for your B12. They are what are known as B12 analogs. So they are the same shape as the keys, but they won't turn the lock. And actually if you only have those and you don't supplement your B12, you can block your B12 receptor sites and you can make yourself quite unwell. So unfortunately there is no question that if you aren't having any animal products at all, you must, must, must, must, must supplement with a proper B12 supplement and the algae won't do the job for you.

That's brilliant advice, thank you. I've spoken to a few athletes now that are vegan and some recent guest was Matt Pritchard who is the dirty vegan chef and also like stupidly long endurance athlete. And he was saying he actually saw an improvement in his performance after switching to a vegan diet. Is there any reason why that would be the case? You know, is there any explanation as to why a vegan diet might actually improve endurance performance?

It can be due to a lot of different things. Lowered inflammatory state is one of them. Also, if you are increasing the diversity of your diet, things like your gut bacteria will naturally improve. So it depends on how you do plant based diets. So you can be a terribly unhealthy vegan or you can be the world's most incredible vegan and it's just about which tack you take and how again endeavor you're going to be about it. If you remove any food group from your diet, you need to be ever more conscious of the fact that you've left quite a big hole. So what you then put back in will need to be more abundant to make up from what's lacking. You can definitely do it and you can definitely be huge, hugely and abundantly healthy. And a lot of people will find that. The one thing is just to be aware, like I said previously about the genetic predisposition. So it would be things like your iron. Some people just physically cannot utilize plant based iron and those kind of bits. Making sure that your omega 3 status is good, making sure that you're getting the right kinds of fats within your diet. But it's just about being conscious. And if you are then like, like Matt, you might find that your performance actually skyrockets.

And if you are thinking about switching to a vegan Diet, is there any way of telling whether you're going to be okay with plant based iron or again, is it just. You will find that you end up with problems because of an iron deficiency.

Later on you can test your genetic predisposition. So you can do that as part of a genetic test or it would literally just be the case of if you swapped over to your plant based iron foods and didn't have any animal protein. You'll notice quite speedily. So with a, with a lady, if you're menstruating, you'll notice within about six weeks, six to eight weeks after two cycles whether you're actually absorbing enough iron from your diet to make up for the losses that you would lose through your menstrual bleeds. For men it might be a little bit longer, but again, if you're competing and using a lot of those, using a lot of red blood cells, you'll notice quite quickly that you start to feel fatigued. So again, things like immune compromisation, that kind of stuff, you'll feel a little bit cold, you might feel that pale, you might get sort of coughs and colds a bit more, but you'd notice quite fast.

Okay. Okay, Fantastic. And in terms of. So one of the other supplements that I'm getting or seeing more and more about is CBD oil. What are your thoughts on CBD oil? Is it, is it good for the body, is it good for us mentally? And are there kind of approaches to be successful with it?

Sure. So I think CBD is fantastic because it's a modulator. So when I spoke about homeostasis before, this idea of a internal environment that's just happy, your endocannabinoid system sort of runs alongside all of your other body systems. And we can very easily see that your digestive system is there to do something. It enhances your nutrients, it gets rid of your waste, your nervous system makes you cognitively cute. And if you touch something, you feel that it's hot and then you move your hand away. What the endocannabinoid system does is it modulates and keeps all of those other systems happy. So it's kind of there to sort of say, oh, your mood stability is not so good. Can we try and bring it back into balance? Your appetite signaling has gone a little bit off piste. Your kidney function needs a little bit of help. That's what it's there to do. So I love it because what you're actually using it for, say something. So CBD as well, I should probably differentiate is different from thc, which is a phytocannabinoid, CBD is a phytocannabinoid as well. But the way that they work is CBD enhances the action of your own endocannabinoid system. So it just makes your endocannaboids stick to their receptors for longer. But whereas THC will actually bond directly to one of your cannabinoid receptors. And we don't get that in Europe or in the uk. You can only get that in America. And it's using prescription. So using CBD oil is basically retraining your body to be calmer or to be more effective. So it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. I use it regularly. The way to incorporate it into your routine is to always start with the lowest effective dose. If you can actually affect change with less, then that's better. But also you want to be able to see what your body is doing. So don't override it. Give it a helping hand. If you need a little bit more, you can dose up, but obviously because you're affecting things like your nervous system function, you don't want to take a huge whacking break dose and then find that you've become a little bit woozy because it's not going to knock you out. But it can make you feel a little bit overly Zen if you take a really, really high amount. So I would say for somebody who just wants to play around with perhaps being a little bit more stressed or a bit, they want to improve muscular recovery. Start with sort of 300 to 500 milligrams. Use that before bed and see how it helps. If you are somebody who's really struggling with mood instability or you really can't sleep, then you can go a little bit higher. But again, there are so many contributing mechanisms to why that might be the case. CBD is not going to be your panacea for all if there are other influences there that need to be addressed as well. Also, just to bear in mind that it does need to be detoxified by the liver. So if you're taking any kind of other medications, you should always check with your prescribing physician first to see that there's no contraindications for your prescribed meds and using cbd.

And does CBD oil improve your gut health as well, or is it purely a mental benefit?

No, it's a fully systemic, active thing. So it will improve things like your gut bacteria diversity, because again, it's enhancing, it's enhancing the efficacy of your body as a whole. And if say your nerve system is overwrought, that's going to downplay your digestive efficacy. So if you modulate the nervous system function whilst making the digestive system more effective, then it's going to improve there. But also if you make yourself less stressed and your blood sugar stabilizes, you'll make better food choices, you'll probably eat more diverse fruits and vegetables and that will then feed into having a happier gut overall. So it's all very much interlinked. But CBD is definitely very good for the gut. And if somebody is having IBS style symptoms where they're fluctuating between constipation and diarrhea, CBD is going to help with that, it's going to help calm that over jaggedy system down. And so you can actually find that it sorts that out.

And CBD oil is actually quite expensive, isn't it? So is there, are there better products than other products or you know, is it, is there ones to look out for?

With supplements I will always say the reason you will get what you pay for. So it's actually better to be very targeted and very specific and buy very good quality supplements but take less of them than to buy something of less lesser quality and take loads. So something like a high street supplement from your local chemist is not going to be nearly the same as buying something through somebody like myself or like a practitioner level supplement. It depends on how strong you want to go. So if you want to get a really good quality 300 to 500 milligram CBD oil, you can get those for about 20, 25 pounds. It's when you start to get up to the higher strength. So the 1,500, the 3,000, they're going to be up sort of towards 100 and 150 quid. But this is why also you start off lower, you see what you need. You can always have additional doses on top of what sort of like you can have three, four drops or you can have six or seven drops that you can get a good quality but lower strength product and play around with what you need. And if you need to go higher then you can go higher.

Okay, fantastic. And so for I think the reason I've seen it mentioned quite a lot is particularly for ultra runners and that's because of the muscle recovery I think isn't.

Would be and it's going to balance sort of inflammatory response. There's also an interesting thing about specifically CBD and not thc stabilizing mast cells. Mast cells are what are what you are what release histamine. So part of your muscular regeneration is related to histamine and this oxygenation and breakdown of lactic acid and CBD seems to play a critical role in not allowing the mast cells to get too trigger happy. So that's an interesting one there. But yes, for ultra runners it's going to be this balancing of the inflammatory response to keep it on side because it's very important to have some inflammation. But when we start to see it get over and above what it needs to be, that's when we get the negative impact.

Right. Okay. And so if you were an ultra runner that said, I want to use CBD oil to improve my kind of recovery or would it be just, you know, would it work just having CBD oil the, the evening after your ultra event but then not before and not afterwards? Is that, is that, is a one off hit going to be beneficial or is it something you really need to build up and have kind of a few days before and a few days afterwards to really see any difference?

So I would, I would always look at therapeutic supplements. They're not pills for an ill, so they're not working like a non steroidal anti inflammatory. The benefits of CBD are cumulative over time because this idea of progressively retraining the body to work more to your advantage. So yes, you will see immediate supportive response by using it on the night after a race. But at the same point, if you can have it as part of your routine, you will become less reliant on it. And actually what people will find is if they create themselves a therapeutic program, they could use it at a certain level and maybe increase their dose for a little bit, but then gradually taper off and they won't need to use it the whole time because they've actually created this more efficient body system as a whole and their inflammatory response. So if you were training and then you could, you would, I don't know, maybe you had a race somewhere where you're not allowed to take it into the country, which can be the case. You, if you've used it, you're not then going to find that immediately after the race, you're not going to get the benefits of having taken it for the previous three or four months because your body's actually more tolerant to strain, it's more elastic because you've given it this support previous to the race.

Brilliant. And what about another one I hear mentioned quite a lot is collagen. We've talked about collagen. So first thing is, what's the benefit of, you know, why are more and more people, particularly after running? I've seen it mentioned a lot with running. Why, why are people taking collagen? What's the benefit of that?

So collagen forms the majority of your connective tissues as part of cartilage. You have about 30 to five different types of, of collagen within your body that make up all these different membranes. So if you are doing lots of sport, you're going to be putting a lot of pressure on all the things like your muscles, tendons, bones, all of those kind of things. So adding collagen into your routine just basically means that your body doesn't have to look for those raw materials to repair those structures. So you can eat a protein rich diet, and that's fantastic, but you might actually need this idea of a little bit more input to balance out your output. And that's what the collagen would be doing. It's also a very bioavailable way to get that nutrition in after doing something that's quite intense. So doing a nice long run or an intense swim or a bike ride, wax up your adrenaline, which is why you feel great afterwards. But the presence of adrenaline downplays your digestive tract. And so you're not going to be able to break down your beautiful piece of chicken or your eggs or whatever you're eating to get quite enough protein to your muscles in the time they might need it. So this is just about giving a little bit of an extra edge to the body by jumping in with these individual peptides, which are the short little bits of protein that your body needs.

Okay, brilliant. And what about, is there such a thing as vegan. Vegan collagen?

So no, because again, this is the idea that you're not anatomically the same as a plant, so they don't actually produce collagen. But you can come from the stance that the sort of the cofactors for elastic tissue synthesis do come from plants. So if you were to look at something that's labeled vegan collagen, it will be different forms of vitamin C and that kind of stuff, because they're the bits that your body needs to add to protein to create collagen. It's definitely a little bit of mismarketing because the amount of people that have come to me say, oh yeah, and I've got this vegan collagen powder. And I go, but on the back, doesn't say anything about collagen. It's just Kamikami powder and strawberry extract, which is Great. But at the same point, you could probably get it not in a big shiny package.

Right, okay. And I heard when talking about collagen that potentially you have to take it every day to see a benefit from it. Why would that be the case and is that true?

Again, it's about cumulative benefit over time. So what people probably notice is also the things that they are affecting change on take time to evolve. So your hair, your skin and your nails. The bit that you can see, for example, with your hair is that it's like the old bit, so you don't actually see what's going on in your hair follicle. So by the time you've actually noticed a change, you've probably been doing something for about a month, maybe two months. Same with your nails. By the time they actually get to the bit that you see at the end, the growing surface could be the improved bit. But you don't really get to see that until a couple of months after the fact that things like your internal structures are going to be the ones that get improved first. So you don't actually have a look into your knee cartilage very often and say, you know what, you're looking more robust today, but it will be happening under the surface. Okay.

Okay. And so it is something. And again, is there. Are all collagen products equal? Is there a kind of recommended dosage for people in terms of how much to take?

It would depend on what you're looking at them for. But you have different kinds of collagen, and the ones that you find most widely available are bovine collagen or marine collagen. And so you get types one to three of collagen. They're the kind of the primary ones. The bovine stuff tends to be, I think, about the size of the animal. So big structures, big bone surfaces, things like your gut health. That's what you're going to get from the bovine marine. Think about nice, delicate fish. It's more about hair, skin, nails, those finer structures, they're all going to support things generally. But that's where the two. If you're going to divide them, that's kind of where you would go for. But in terms of bioavailability, absorption, that kind of thing, then they're equal, and you can mix between them. I would say for somebody as a general dosage, I personally would take about a tablespoon of a powder per day. You can now get encapsulated supplements. And there's a little bit of divide in terms of the idea that you need to get the peptide chains to cross the stomach acid. So it's better to take an encapsulated form. But at the same point people will still anecdotally report very obvious improvements from taking collagen powders. So it's an area of discussion for the time being. But as long as it's a really good quality sort of either clean water source for marine collagen or a grass fed organic bovine collagen source, it's going to get the thumbs up from me.

Brilliant. And are there any other things along these lines that people that take their, you know, that want to try and get the best performance out of themselves from an athletic point of view should be thinking about in terms of, you know, that we haven't discussed yet.

I guess there's always the hot topic of protein powders and if people should be using them. And again, I think it's the idea of just making sure that you are giving where you're taking and so. And there's also a huge amount of products out there that aren't as good as they sort of state they are. So if you are going to be using protein powder, if you're going to use a whey based one, make sure it's an organic whey as opposed to a way isolate. Look out for sweeteners, look out for binding agents, all of that kind of stuff. Try and avoid those wherever you can. And if you're going to go for plant based protein, either make sure that you are combining different forms so things like a pea and a rice, or you're having a hemp with something else. And again, try and go for the ones that don't have sweeteners, don't have other additives and they're sort of really, really good quality. That would be my kind of main thing that we probably haven't touched on in terms of what people might be thinking about.

Excellent. That sounds like good advice, I suppose. Yeah, that's something that a lot of people will already be aware of but it's good to know which ones to focus in on. I hear a lot of talk around fasted training. What are your thoughts on that and is that a useful tool to the armoury or does it come with other problems?

So as I guess a general divide, men in faster training, fine. Women in foster training, not fine. We are very much more complex. And if you look into the research behind all of the benefits of faster training, they're all done on men because we are too difficult, because we change all the time. But that hormonal impact and the fact that women do cycle over the course of the month means that their ability to tolerate the burden of faster training tends to be lower. And what they find instead of the beneficial side, like the longevity and the DNA replication and actually lean muscle mass and that kind of thing, we tend to whack up our stress hormone levels and then put on a little bit of belly fat which we don't really want to be doing. Postmenopausal women are different and so they might find that actually time restricted feeding and then doing some fasted exercise in the morning is very beneficial. But yes, no faster training for men, definitely a really good thing. But they have to be careful as well in terms of making sure they're not depleting themselves. But no poor, poor ladies out there. I wouldn't suggest that you start doing faster training. It's not going to be a particularly nice thing for your body.

Okay, okay, that sounds, that sounds like sensible advice that picked up on that there would be a difference between, between male and female. So, so that's, that's really good to know. And I always think when you're trying to eat healthily, you know, you've talked about, we've talked sort of about what could apply to lunch or dinner, haven't we? We've talked about, you know, the roasted vegetables and the pastas and whether it's gluten free pastas or the rices and those sorts of things. The most tricky of the meals though is breakfast in my mind to do it in sort of a healthy way. So for those people that are wanting a really healthy very breakfast that would support their gut, what sort of, have you got any suggestions of kind of meals that they should go to?

So I think also it depends on somebody's preference what they like to eat in the morning. So you can do things like smoothies, but smoothies would need to be vegetable based as opposed to fruit based. Make sure they've got a good quality form of protein in there, whether it's a yogurt, you can use cottage cheese, you can use a protein powder. And when I say lots of vegetables, I am very mean. And I will say 70% veg with one fruit in there. And you sort of like big handful of leafy greens. But get creative, use things like herbs. So parsley and mint are lovely in there. Something like courgette gives a lovely creaminess. Something like cauliflower as well. If you steam and freeze these, then they'll give that kind of ice creamy texture and similarly Sweet potato or squash or beetroot will give the sweetness of a fruit, but they've got more fibre and less natural sugar in them. Make sure to add in something like a really good quality fat. So either put your nuts and seeds in the smoothie or you can actually serve them as a textural topping on top. And that's something that I always ask people to do so they actually chew. Otherwise, if you imagine you can hit your stomach quite quickly with a lot of fibre that it's not really expecting because you're slurping it back. Other options would be the classic kind of oat based breakfasts, which are absolutely fine. It's just about making sure that you balance out your macronutrients. So we will. Similarly to what a lot of people will do with pasta. They will do a base of oats, but then they'll kind of fall down on making sure they get an equivalent amount of protein in there. So think about having about a cup handful's worth of your grain base, but then have an equal portion of something like yogurt to balance out. So you've got protein in there. Small amount of fruit, preferably tart fruits in the morning. So whether that is some berries, maybe it's some pomegranate, you could have some cooked apple which is lovely and sticky and soothing for the digestion. And again, something textural like your walnuts or pumpkin seeds or cacao nibs could go for something like a baked oaty muffin. Maybe you go for eggs, maybe you make a little frittata with lots of vegetables. Or you go really simple and have a really good grain toast with hummus and some pumpkin seeds, a little bit of roasted veg, maybe some rocket. Play around with a few of those ideas, some more portable than others. Overnight oats, just take the porridge with you.

Actually, the overnight oats, I know we've talked about that before, they actually make life so much easier, don't they? Because I will often and take my breakfast with me if I know I've got, if I'm doing some sort of race. But the overnight oats is just. That's. That makes it really simple, doesn't it?

Yep. And again, I will do things if I know that I'm going out. I'm some, I'm a very savory breakfast person. I have no sweet tooth whatsoever. So for me, oats just don't, don't kick it in the morning. So I do things like I will get a really big handful of parsley or spinach or Kale, blend it with a couple of eggs and cook that as a wrap in a pan. Just pour it into a pan and let it seal on both sides. Put some hummus or some pesto. Might sometimes put something like some chicken if I've got leftover from the night before. Lots of rocket, maybe some roasted veg. Roll it all up and that's ready to go. And I will go off on our train in the morning and I will eat it on my way into the office. And that's a really nice way to make basically eggs and veg a portable breakfast.

That sounds like great advice. And when it comes to books on your gut health and on your diet and you know there is probably more books in this area than there are in almost any other area. I should think you could, you could approach. Are there any particular books that you found really helpful for you and find or that you find yourself recommending?

So it's a really difficult one because the thing with books is they either tend to be textbooks or they tend to be something that somebody's written with an element of bias. So they've cured all of their ills with the paleo diet or they think that vitamin C is the panacea for all or you have to be gluten free or you will die. One of the things, one of the books I do encourage people to read is a book by Dr. Mitu Storoni which is called Stress Proof. And it's this idea of looking after your nervous system for your long term health. If you're interested in gut health generally, then the book Gut is a good one to start with, which I have.

Read and is a very good book. I agree with it.

Yeah. So it's kind of like forming a basic understanding of what's going on in your body. If you are interested in the things about sort of grains, then Wheat belly and grain Brain are quite interesting. Trying to think of other ones. How not to Die is a classic one.

How not to Die, how not to Die.

Yeah. So that's a good. There are lots of things out there. But I would say always make sure that when you enter into a book like that that you do so with a pinch of salt. If they do seem to have a particular kind of thought in mind with the way that they are kind of writing it, take it with a pinch of salt.

Excellent. And I love a gadget. So are there, are there any gadgets out there? I mean like in the triathlon world we're starting to see things like super sapiens and there was one I was talking about on the intro of a podcast or two ago called Lumens, which is essentially tracking your metabolism and kind of telling you whether you're eating, you know, at the optimum time before your exercise and, you know, anything like that that you found to be. Any products that you found to be particularly helpful.

So I kind of come off in the stance of looking after the body as a whole. So I use something called a sensate, which is it works on the autonomic nervous system. So it's this idea of making the body more tolerant to burden. So people are measuring things like their heart rate variability, or they're using something like a whoop band or an aura ring because they want to look at their recovery and their strain. If you add in something to sensate, it basically looks like a wireless mouse and it comes on the lanyard and you would use it. It vibrates on your chest whilst listening to some kind of track and it powers down that sympathetic part of your nervous system. So the fight or flight response, which means that your body is more able to tolerate pressure, so it tends to make people sleep more effective, therefore their recovery is more effective. And if your heart rate variability goes up, then we know that that obviously is making you more capable of adapting to stresses and burden that you've got in your body. And a more elastic body is a much happier and healthy body.

That sounds interesting. I shall investigate that. And what are your thoughts on things like whoop bands and Aurora rings?

So I use them again with a pinch of salt. I think they're really useful. But at the same point, people can find that they start becoming more dictatorial than kind of investigative. So if I'm working with somebody who's got some sleep concerns or they are really trying to push their training, I always get them to give me their login details or I just ban them from looking at their information until after lunch. Because if you wake up in the morning and you think you slept in a certain way and then you look at your data and it actually says, oh, you're only like 78% ready. You'll automatically feel more tired. And we know that actually we've got lot more capacity than we really give ourselves credit for. Have you read the book Can't Hurt Me? The David Goggins?

Yes, I have. Brilliant book.

Yeah. So that's probably another one that everyone should read. It will change your perspective on life and training and your capabilities. But feeding into that idea, yes, I do think they're useful as long as you use them as a way to motivate and inspire and track data as opposed to allowing them to play on your insecurities or make you feel more lethargic than you actually are.

Well, it's interesting because actually Sid and I were chatting about this again on a podcast that I can't even think which episode is a recent episode. She's dropped the whoop band for exactly that reason because she was finding that, yeah, she was ending up, you know, looking at going, oh, I thought I slept well, but actually this tells me I haven't. So now I feel tired. So, yeah, so yeah, that's.

Yeah. I wore a whoop band for eight months last year as a part of a sleep efficacy experiment that I was doing with a brand based on an adaptogenic complex. And it was very, very interesting and I really enjoyed it. But then I dumped it because I decided that for exactly that reason I didn't need it in my routine anymore. But I recently got an OURA ring to look at some different data that I just wanted to track for myself. And I've been really enjoying it so far. Not wearing it today because actually it's too big so I've had to send it back. But yes, I'm very much. The app is there on my phone and I will check it at 4pm it it's collecting data in the background and I wear it as a piece of jewelry as opposed to with the boot band when I first got it. And I wake up in the morning and do the thing I tell everyone not to do, which is immediately look at my phone. I'm really excited to see what I've done whilst I've been asleep.

Your ring does really intrigue me. I remember Peter Diamandis, who's a tech investor, amazing guy, talking about he was one of the early investors in it. And it does sound really interesting. And when you think about how important sleep is to us, that does seem like something that a tool that you can use to potentially boost the quality of your sleep. But equally as we did an episode on sleep with Dr. Charlotte Eddleston and she was, she was saying the same sort of thing as you, you know, in that you've got to take the data with a pinch of salt and you know, feel is better than data when it comes comes to that one other book that I was going to mention to you. I don't know if you've read it or not actually, so I'm putting you on the spot here, but I've know, I know that you've talked a bit about breathing in previous podcasts I've listened to. Have you read James Nestor's Breathe or sorry, Breath book Breath. Okay, so that's interesting because some of the advice that you would give ties in with sort of the Wim Hof stuff, but because I've heard you talking about thinking about your breathing to improve your health. What are your thoughts on that? And by the way, I'd really recommend James Nestor's book Breath. It's a very good book. But yeah, what are your thoughts on breath that. On breath.

So breath is amazing. I would definitely be reading that book. And I think that a lot of people don't actually know how to breathe properly or they don't realize that they're not breathing properly. We tend to do quite shallow breathing and it's because we're holding ourselves in this relatively sort of hypersensitive or high alert state. And actually one of. And that leads to this idea that our mental and physical selves aren't really working together. And one of the most grounding things you can do is to calm and regulate your breath and that will then bring you back into your own body. And all of a sudden it's almost like you have this sort of increased awareness of what's going on in your body and what you are actually basically doing, as well as turning down your fight or flight response. So you are getting your nervous system back on track. All of your things like your digestive efficacy will actually improve. You will become more rational in your thinking, all of that kind of stuff. So yes, breath is incredibly important and it's something that you can train yourself to do. And I have this interesting or just generally funny conversation with clients quite a lot because I used to, I would get them to do parasympathetic breathing exercises before they ate or if they were feeling particularly stressed before meetings or if they were getting acid reflux. And one of my clients was once in the tube and sent me an email and said, I think I'm on the central line with one of your other clients because I'm pretty sure they're doing parasympathetic breathing next to me. I was like, well, if it makes your commute more bearable, then we can all be doing it.

Well. And is that something that, I mean, you say about doing it before you eat, but is that something that an athlete can use in their kind of in the build up to their training or you know, build up to a race?

Absolutely. Well, again, if you think about the way that we sort of Build habits. If you start to incorporate something into your routine, even just the thought of doing it will induce the same benefits after a while, as opposed to actually doing the routine. So if I get somebody to incorporate parasympathetic breathing before they eat and then they find that they're stressed later in the day, it might just be that their trigger is that we said that when they start, they put their thumb and their forefinger together and they press slightly down on it and then they press in this like in the cycle of when they would breathe in, how long they'd hold for and when they would breathe out. So then if they are going into a meeting or their kids are screaming at them or they're about to start a race, all they have to do is they don't actually have to do the breathing exercise, but they have that trigger. So they squeeze their thumb and their forefing together in that pattern and they feel their nervous system calm down and their pulse rate drops and they feel that they can get more air into their lungs. So, yes, you can, you can use it as you would do, but you can also train your body to do it without you actually having to do it.

And what would, what would the parasympathetic breathing look like? What's the. An example of the exercise, how would that work?

So some people, so the way that I tend to do it is that you breathe in for a count of two, like a slow count of two, you hold for a slow count of four and you breathe out for a count of seven. So you are really elongating your exhale, which again, if somebody is feeling quite stressed or tensed or jittery before a race, you'll tend to shallowly breathe and you'll tend to breathe in more and forget to exhale properly. If you can really elongate that exhale, then you're already going to be getting more of that carbon dioxide out, getting more oxygen in. Some people will actually turn it into what we call box breathing, which is to breathe in cycles of four, four in, hold for four, out for four, it's just what works for you. But I tend to find that the 2, 4, 7, which is more of the classic breathing exercise, works a bit better in terms of actually getting people to click in to the relaxation more quickly, because you can still breathe quite sort of statically and quite quickly. Even if you're thinking 4, 4, 4, it's a little bit too sharp edged, whereas the other one seems to flow a little bit better.

Well, and also James Nestor's book would say that some of the benefit to this is the. Is you actually want to increase the level of carbon dioxide in your body. So the sort of 2, 4, 7 approach is probably achieving that at a better level. I would say think so. Final question, because you've been really generous with your time and there's so much great advice within here for me and for our listeners. What are you looking forward, what are you most excited about?

Just in life, in general life.

And it could be to do with your business, it could be to do with health research, could be anything indeed.

So I am really enjoying the fact that it seems that through Covid time that people have become more aware of the importance of this mental resilience. So I have always kind of been. My big thing is that if we keep our sort of nervous system happy and we keep our mental resilience high, our physical well being will kind of follow suit. And obviously they link together. And from. Well, I've got two retreats coming up in October of this year. One will actually be in the Maldives, fingers crossed if we get there. And the other one will be down in Cornwall. And it's this idea of getting people to tie in and really support this. It's not just about mental wellness, it's about making your body and mind stronger and to work together a little bit better. So they're my kind of two big work projects, apart from, you know, just surviving my clinical calendar.

They sound awesome. Tell me a little bit more about. So how long is each of those and where in Cornwall? Because I'm a. I'm a big fan of Cornwall.

So I can't pronounce this. It's. I think it's Bocconach.

Yeah, that sounds about right. But I don't even know where in Cornwall that is.

Yeah, well, I know that it's about four and a bit hours away from London and I will be going there twice this year because one of my best friends is getting married there in July. But that will be the end of October and it's the 22nd to the 29th and then the one in the Maldives is from the 10th to the 18th. So I will be away, coming back, doing a very quick turnaround and then going down to Cornwall to spread the mental wellness vibes all over the place.

And what does it, what does a typical day look like on one of those events?

So the idea is to get people to reconnect with their environment, to start off with. So we will be doing things like breath workshops, we will be talking about food there will be people like myself doing talks on different things like inflammation and how we prepare foods in different ways. Also talking about how the body actually works. And then there will be additional options so people can do things like bit of biohacking. We'll have genetic testing, we'll have stool testing, we'll have medical sort of. We have the options for people, if they want to do that insight in advance of coming along, we can then obviously tailor their experience more specifically to them. Or if people just want to learn about these things whilst they're there, then me and all of my other practitioner buddies will be on hand to explain. And we will then obviously do consultations with people who want them. We'll be going out hiking and the beautiful scenery, eating fantastic food, all of that kind of stuff. Taking our shoes off and walking in the grass a lot.

Scuba diving in the Maldives.

Oh, yes, there will definitely be some of that.

I'm sold. I'm definitely sold. Have you been diving in the Maldives before?

I have not, but I think that I will definitely manage a bit of open water swimming whilst I dive.

Yeah, it is awesome diving. I did. I did one dive with manta rays just swooping over us for the whole thing. It's just a great part of the world, so. Oh, my goodness, you're going to be spoiled. And just watch out for the blacktip reef sharks when you're swimming. You'll see them. They're only little ones, though, so you'll be fine. But, yeah, no. Awesome. Phoebe, it's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much. For those people that want to find out a bit more about you, those retreats or want your kind of medical assistance, how's the best place for them? Where's the best place for them to find you?

Well, all my clinical stuff and a little bit more about me can be found on my website, which is naturalnourishment me. Or find me on social media, which is underscore naturalnourishment on Instagram and Facebook and all that kind of stuff. But yes, wherever you fancy. Come and come and chat and I'll happily come back.

Excellent. We'll put all of those in the show notes. Phoebe, it's been totally brilliant, so thank you very much.

Well, thank you very much for having me.

So, Charlie, what were your takeaways from your chat with Phoebe?

Well, I thought it was absolutely brilliant in terms of we just covered so many different subjects. I thought the bit about how probiotics were shown to improve the performance of cyclists and runners, but in different ways. I thought was really interesting. I think the whole talk about gut health and the importance of a healthy gut and actually the impact on performance I thought was really, really interesting and I thought it was. It was fascinating how fasted training has its place for male athletes, but she strongly suggested that female athletes shouldn't do fasted training at all. So there was loads of stuff there. I've switched the type of magnesium I'm having now because of what she said, because I. And I've also picked up on the fact that my gut health is not as good as it should be. So I'm going to be going back to spend some more time with Phoebe to try and work out how we can get that fixed. And I've also, since I interviewed her, I've read the Wim Hof book. I don't know if you've read it, Sid, but. And so I've embraced having. I've been every. Every day for the last week and a half, I've been having cold showers and actually I'm starting to get it. It is really invigorating. And Phoebe talked a little bit about cold water and that, so I thought there was loads there and so much more that I haven't mentioned. But I'm certainly going to be taking a few different policies towards my nutrition and gut health and training as a result of the conversation with her.

Yeah, I mean, there's been a big trend towards this cold water therapy and I know it's early days in the research and I don't know enough about it. I know I saw some of the articles on the news last year about how it is hugely beneficial for different mental health issues and obviously we've seen a massive explosion of open water swimming in the UK over the last year with lockdown and I'm going to call them nutcases, but they're lovely nutcases who go and swim in freezing water or oceans around the UK all year round now without a lovely wetsuit. But. Yeah, so I'm interested that you're doing showers and not just dipping in the ocean and using that as your cold water therapy last week?

Well, I was actually going to, but the reason I haven't is because, I mean, the sea was still very cold at the moment and I would have.

Isn't that the point of cold water therapy, that it's cold?

It is, but the problem is then trying to swim for an hour in that cold water is not so easy.

No, but, you know. No, no, no, but you're not. You're not standing in the shower for an hour.

No, no, I know, but the point is I would struggle. I think I would struggle to swim for an hour in that cold water. In the cold water, whereas. But I want to swim for an hour. So I'm using a wetsuit. But I'm.

Oh, no, sorry, I was just. I was just referring to using the ocean as your cold water. So going and just dipping.

Yeah.

Not swimming.

Could have whipped off the wetsuit and then run back into the sea, which I was going to do. And then I never quite built up the mental strength to do it. But I might well give it a try in Connors and water this week.

You see that. That to me sounds much more appealing than trying to stay. Stand under a shower that's cold.

I agree, but what Wim Hof says in his book is that you should start with 30 seconds and do 30 seconds for a week and then go up to a minute and then night. Now I'm actually kind of going further than that and just having. Now I'm now having the whole shower as a cold shower, but yeah, I haven't quite.

Well, it's good. You say you save your hot water bills.

Yes. And. Yeah, and water as well. I'm not in the shower. Anything like. As long as.

Exactly. There we go.

Anyway, right, let's wind this up. But have a great week, Sid. And for those you that have forgotten, there is a precision Hydration discount code associated with this podcast. So if you. If you go to Precision Hydration's website and use Tribathlon 15, then you can have 15% off your first order, whether that's electrolytes or anything else that they do.

Yeah.

So have a good week's training, Sid. And for everybody else, keep on training. If you've enjoyed this tribathlon podcast, please do go to Apple Podcast and rate it and review it. It massively helps us to deliver a better podcast. It helps people find it as well. So, yeah, go to Apple Podcasts, give us some feedback, give us a rating and a review and please share it with your friends because ultimately that's what allows us to keep delivering more and more of these podcasts. And don't forget to download the tribathlon app for more amazing podcasts, but also to help you train, compete and to build your tribe.