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#108: Dr. Wolfgang Brysch: Bridging traditional medicine & modern science for longevity - nutrition, inflammation & aging
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In this episode of The Kate Hamilton Health Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Wolfgang Brysch - renowned medical doctor, scientist, and co-founder of iüLabs - to explore the science behind healthy aging, inflammation management, and mitochondrial health.
With over 30 years of experience in pharmaceuticals, biotech, and medical innovation, Dr. Brysch shares cutting-edge insights on how traditional medicine and modern science intersect to optimize well-being.
We chat about the power of plant-based nutrition, energy metabolism, and supplementation to support longevity. Plus, Dr. Brysch breaks down the impact of chronic inflammation, daily routines, and sleep on overall health - and shares practical, science-backed strategies to help you age gracefully. Whether you're looking to boost your energy, enhance your nutrition, or understand the latest advancements in health science, this conversation is packed with actionable takeaways.
👉 Don’t forget to visit iulabs.co and use code HAMILTONHEALTH20 for an exclusive discount on recommended supplements!
Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Welcome to The Kate Hamilton Health Podcast
[00:13] Meet Dr. Wolfgang Brysch – His background in pharmaceuticals, biotech, and medical innovation
[03:09] The Science of Nutrition – How natural compounds impact longevity and disease prevention
[05:24] What Is Inflammation? – Understanding its role in aging and chronic disease
[07:15] Inflammation & Aging – How to manage inflammation for better health and longevity
[13:36] The Diet-Health Connection – Nutritional strategies to support energy and vitality
[20:55] The Power of Sleep & Daily Routines – Why consistent habits are key to longevity
[26:03] Digital Wellness – Managing screen time, notifications, and stress
[28:23] Supplements & Aging – The role of targeted supplementation in optimal health
[29:55] Healing from Within – How the body repairs itself and the role of pharmaceutical interventions
[32:17] Practical Supplement Advice – What to take and when for best results
[35:14] Mind-Body Connection – How mental and physical health go hand in hand
[37:17] Lifestyle Shifts for Longevity – Simple yet effective changes to improve overall well-being
[44:40] Final Thoughts – Key takeaways from Dr. Brysch’s research
[47:12] Closing Remarks – Where to learn more and how to stay connected
Links & Resources:
- Connect with Dr. Wolfgang via his website here
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with friends who might benefit. For more health and fitness tips, follow me on Instagram and TikTok @katehamiltonhealth.
Music b LiQWYD Free download: hypeddit.com/link/xxtopb [http://hypeddit.com/link/xxtopb] Promoted by FreeMusicPromo [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbycji-eySnM3WD8mbxPUSQ] / @freemusicpromo
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Kate Hamilton Health Podcast. So in today's episode, I chat with Dr. Wolfgang Brisch. He is a renowned medical doctor, scientist and innovator in the fields of nutrition, health and longevity.
Dr. Brisch's Career and Philosophy
00:00:24
Speaker
With over 30 years of experience in pharmaceuticals and biotech, he has led groundbreaking research on healthy aging, inflammation management and mitochondrial health. Dr. Wolfgang is also co-inventor of 26 patents and has collaborated with leading institutions like the Max Planck Institute to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and and modern scientific advancements.
00:00:47
Speaker
His work focuses on translating complex scientific research into accessible, actionable advice for the general public. And that's exactly what our conversation is about.
Nutrition and Longevity Science
00:00:59
Speaker
His approach combines plant-based nutrition, cutting edge longevity science, and practical health strategies to help optimize their well-being and age gracefully. So this conversation, we chat about longevity and inflammation.
00:01:13
Speaker
We talk about energy and cell energy and how we can fuel that through our lifestyles. We talk about nutrition and we talk about that bridge between traditional medicine and modern science.
00:01:25
Speaker
And if you were interested to learn a little bit more about the supplements that Dr. Wolfgang recommends and promotes. You can check his website out, iulabs.co, and you can actually get a 20% discount if you use the discount code HAMILTONHEALTH20. It's a really, really positive, proactive conversation that I think you will be able to take some serious, actionable steps towards improving your health from listening to it.
00:01:53
Speaker
So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
00:01:58
Speaker
Wolfgang, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here to talk about all things in your area of expertise. Yes. Hi, Kate. Great to be there. Before we get going and dive into all these amazing topics we're going to talk about, do you want to share a little bit about you, your background and your story?
00:02:17
Speaker
So, from our background, I'm a MD ah or medical doctor, studied medicine in Germany and Göttingen and part of it in in Cambridge, UK. And after my sort of internship in in medicine, I went into basic research, neuroscience and cancer research at a Max Planck Institute in in Germany.
00:02:38
Speaker
then co-founded with colleagues, a biotech company in the cancer for new cancer therapeutics, and then later went into chronic inflammation, inflammatory diseases, chronic inflammation.
00:02:52
Speaker
And through that sort of came naturally through what the science is saying to the topics of aging, chronic inflammation and aging. And I'm sort of with with one hat that I've felt on, I'm developing a pharmaceutical drug against inflammatory diseases.
00:03:09
Speaker
And as a trained physician and sort of hardcore scientist, of course, I was initially and little bit arrogant towards things like natural compounds, things like that.
00:03:20
Speaker
Nutrition,
Inflammation and Aging
00:03:21
Speaker
I think in six years of medical school, we had about 10 minutes education in nutrition. truth it poor Through my work in science, I was sort of reading all the scientific literature on aging, on inflammation, and came increasingly across very good research on natural compounds, on nutrition, on all of these things.
00:03:42
Speaker
And that's... After a certain time, it clicked and said, well, there's there's more than I know to to this. And that's where sort of my journey in into natural compounds, lifestyle things began about 15 years ago.
00:03:58
Speaker
This is so fascinating because what I do very much is like a step-by-step approach to changing our lifestyles to getting a little bit healthier. So what I have noticed in society is that we're so deep into our processed food society, high stress, fast living society, that there's a huge gap between the scientific or, you know, the medical, this is good, this is bad versus what people are actually able to do. So it's got so great to hear of, you know, someone like yourself bridging that gap a little bit, being like, OK, look, this is what inflammatory diseases are. This is what's causing it.
00:04:34
Speaker
And this is what you can do about it in a day to day kind of way. Yes, actually, and I think it's great the work that people like you are doing because by and large, the medical profession is really failing in doing this this educational work. and And as I said, were we're we're not really trained to know these things, at least...
00:04:54
Speaker
ah in the stone age when i studied medicine. And I think that that's sort of it's coming full circle. it's It's really people like you, it's the public, it's people who want to have better lifestyles or or do something that sort of put pressure on us to get our act together and be more concerned about these things.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I think it's a true win-win situation. Definitely. And with the kind of object in mind being the people that everybody is trying to to help get healthier.
00:05:24
Speaker
And I think that's the most important thing. But when we talk about, you said inflammatory disease, could you define what inflammatory disease is? Like what are inflammatory diseases? Well, classical sort of chronic inflammatory diseases are like arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases, all kinds of autoimmune diseases, psoriasis. All these basically diseases are driven by inflammation.
00:05:47
Speaker
And what is emerging in science is now that and also neurodegenerative diseases like even like Alzheimer's, dementia, there's a big debate, but it's becoming pretty clear that at the outset before it becomes really noticeable, it's a chronic inflammation in the brain that that is sort of going on for years and years.
00:06:11
Speaker
And that's sort of the Alzheimer, the dementia is the end stage of this sort of chronic inflammatory stress on the brain. so Am I right in thinking that all disease is caused by inflammation in the body or is that incorrect?
00:06:25
Speaker
the majority are caused by inflammation or inflammation is a major driver of the disease. For example, if you have pneumonia, the cause, of course, is a bacterium or or a virus.
00:06:36
Speaker
But then the body reacts with inflammation, as we all know, when we have a cold or something like that. which is a very healthy reaction of the body. This is the how the body with inflammation is how the body deals with external assaults, whether it's a bacterium, whether even if if we have a cut in the finger, it gets inflamed around the edges of the wounds that causes the healing.
00:06:59
Speaker
That's a very healthy reaction. But when it becomes chronic, when it's sort of the the inflammation doesn't go away, then it starts not just healing, but it starts to attack our tissues, our organs.
00:07:13
Speaker
And what is also emerging and and pretty clear now that inflammation is a major driver of aging, of all aging so the symptoms and hallmarks of aging.
00:07:25
Speaker
That makes so much sense that yeah inflammation, the way it's supposed to be in its natural, like, you know, when we're at our most natural, it is helpful. It's similar to stress that, you know, stress is helpful when it's necessary. And it's the chronic stress that causes us so much absolutely absolutely issues. It's the same thing with inflammation.
00:07:44
Speaker
Right. And it's all of these things, if you look sort of at the core of things, all of these things are interconnected. ah we You were talking about chronic stress. And with chronic stress, what we can really see is that inflammation markers in the blood, biomarkers go up.
00:08:00
Speaker
So, I mean, in in classical medicine, we used to think in sort of in little sort of boxes. There's inflammation, there is stress, there is this, there is that. But in the end, it's all very much interconnected.
00:08:13
Speaker
Also with lifestyle, you cannot say, well, <unk> I'll just eat junk food and only processed food and do something else, take some drugs to take care of my inflammation. That doesn't work. Our systems inside our and our bodies, were is like they're like an orchestra, aren't they, that are all working?
00:08:30
Speaker
Absolutely. Interconnected. So I suppose then my next question, which I'm sure lots of people listening are going to be thinking as well, what causes inflammation? If we disregard things like like an infection or something like that, and for example, driving these chronic and ah inflammatory diseases and and especially aging, if we don't have a sort of a specific disease, but we all age, it's what's called oxidative stress. It is that our energy system, because everything, sort of all our metabolism, all our organs, all our muscles, our brains,
00:09:03
Speaker
are driven by energy, by biochemical energy in the form of what's called ATP. This is the sort of the energy currency of the cell. And the cell makes ATP, this energy from our food, from glucose, from fats, to a lesser extent, from protein. And what this energy is produced within our cells in these little, of what what we call organelles, like mitochondria.
00:09:29
Speaker
These are sort of the little powerhouses of the cell, and they convert basically our food into this energy, into these these little packets of energy called ATP.
00:09:41
Speaker
And the efficiency of how these mitochondria can do this is decreasing over time as we age. When we say about when we're sort of in our early 20s or something like that, the we so we say the energy producing capacity of our mitochondria 100%. we're 50, it's decreased to about 75%. the time we're 70, it's about 50%.
00:10:01
Speaker
decreased to about seventy five percent by the time we're seventy it's about only fifty percent And on the one hand, the body sort of slowly loses its ability to turn food into valuable energy.
00:10:16
Speaker
And when this process gets sort of less efficient, there are byproducts produced, which is which are called these free radicals. You probably have heard of those. Yeah.
00:10:26
Speaker
These are sort of highly aggressive molecules, which are a byproduct of energy production. And when when were everything is working fine, the these free radicals can be neutralized very quickly through systems in our body, mainly to and through antioxidants. That's why antioxidants are sort of touted to be so so positive, which are also in in natural food.
00:10:51
Speaker
So, to cut a long story short, usually it usually starts with reduced energy, more sort of these aggressive waste products and these reactive oxygen species, if they are not neutralized quickly, they give a signal to the cells and the our immune system to start inflammation.
00:11:09
Speaker
And that's basically the immune system then reacts, even though there is no bacterium around, they they just get us a danger signal. And they start to do this inflammation. And this inflammation then is what's called basically all over. It's not just where where we have a cut in the finger or where we have an an infection, but it's and what's called a subchronic inflammation.
00:11:29
Speaker
We don't really feel that normally, but there is something going on. And that is slowly sort of attacking our organs, our tissues, et cetera. And can this show up even if, you know, we haven't developed any inflammatory diseases yet, can it show up as we're getting sick more often?
00:11:47
Speaker
Yes. As this increases, our sort of our resilience to infections, to whatever, of course, goes down. We're we're not as resilient to deal with that. And we can also see that in the blood. There are certain biomarkers. That's what it's called. One is ah called CRP, C-reactive protein.
00:12:06
Speaker
And this is a a signal or a marker in our bloodstream that signals whether there's inflammation, even though we don't feel anything. If this value goes up, it's also correlated to a higher incidence of disease, of heart disease, of other diseases.
00:12:23
Speaker
And the thing is that even though everyone has this sort of this increased, what's called subchronic inflammation, then individually, from through genetics or whatever, we have our weak spots.
00:12:34
Speaker
Every one of us has some, as we age, certain amount of inflammation. And then basically where this manifests in which organ, whether it's in the joints or in the brain or something like that, that reflects our individual weak spots where we basically genetically, some people are more prone to get Alzheimer or get dementia, some get arthritis, some get autoimmune diseases.
Dietary Impact on Health
00:12:59
Speaker
So that's really our individual weak spots that sort of manifest then in the different diseases. That makes so much sense. So I suppose this all stems from cell energy.
00:13:12
Speaker
Right. your Your mitochondria in your cells. Our entire metabolism, the the integrity of our body that the cells even keep together, that we just don't sort of fall apart, is all maintained by constant energy.
00:13:27
Speaker
So when we are eating, we should really be thinking about fueling ourselves in this way. That is absolutely what it's about. And the problem that we have with modern diet is that we're overfueling.
00:13:42
Speaker
I mean, yeah by evolution, humankind was always sort of short of food supply. And that's basically our genetically programmed to get our, when whenever we get our hands onto a High caloric food, that's what, I mean, we like sugar, we like fat. That was essential for survival.
00:14:02
Speaker
But in modern societies, and especially as you were mentioning, in processed food, we're just getting an overload of this energy. Too much sugar, which in nature is not available in these huge amounts, appears like...
00:14:15
Speaker
going through the savannah in Africa, there's our sugar on every corner. So our body is not is not sort of made up for that. So if we we overload with sugar, we get all these increases. Our fat storages and even fat tissue to a large extent then again sends out inflammation signals to the body.
00:14:34
Speaker
And the danger is really high with processed foods because they hide all these things in there that we don't even notice. So it's very much about how much we're eating and also what we're eating.
00:14:46
Speaker
Exactly. i mean, you you cannot eat your way into diabetes with salad. I think it's the the amount of really very energy dense foods like sugar and with without any fibre.
00:15:00
Speaker
Are we talking about calories? We are talking about calories and and especially sugar has a certain danger potential because it's the energy that the body can process most easily and that it prefers.
00:15:12
Speaker
And if we just dump too much in it, then we get all these kinds of me metabolic overload, which we have fresh foods. It's almost impossible to to do this because nature balances these things.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah. If, for example, someone is eating 2000 calories a day, eating 2000 calories with pizza and chocolate can be done in one sitting. Whereas if you're doing that with salad and lean proteins and high fiber foods, it is. Yeah.
00:15:37
Speaker
It's a, but it's a pretty big achievement really, isn't it? hard Right, yeah. We need this energy for the body to function, for our muscles to function. And what a lot of people or don't realize is that the organ that has most energy demand is our brain.
00:15:55
Speaker
When we're at rest, the brain is about 2% of our total body weight, but it consumes at rest 25% of all the energy that the body burns. 25% just go into the brain.
00:16:07
Speaker
Of course, if we are running or doing heavy work, then more goes to the muscle, but the brain is really sort of very energy hungry. And that's why, for example, this inflammation and the the dysfunction also then precipitates in in in later age in reduced brain function, dementia, things like that.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, which will bring us on to the topic, I suppose, of aging and how to age effectively. And I think it's just important to note as well
Quality of Life vs. Longevity
00:16:35
Speaker
that in relation to these autoimmune diseases, I would imagine they didn't exist very much 100 years ago. this is ah like and so as much as people want to argue online about processed food versus not processed food, something has changed. Maybe it's a mix of our stress, maybe it's a mix of our society and our processed nutrition, but...
00:16:54
Speaker
We can't deny the fact that these are now happening. Absolutely. Most of our sort of modern chronic diseases, diseases of aging did not exist that much in the past.
00:17:04
Speaker
I mean, people didn't get that old. And when we look at the past, the the average survival was like 30, 40 years. But it was because we had a high infant mortality and child mortality.
00:17:16
Speaker
People who made it to their forty s and 50s and sixty s were relatively healthy if they sort of made it that far. If you look at at old scripts or so, they didn't talk about all these diseases of aging that we see nowadays, even though there were old people much fewer, but there were old people around.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah. And with, I would imagine, better qualities of life because they weren't living, but not being able to live properly, which I think is what what we're going to talk about now in relation to aging, because there is a huge difference between living longer and living, like like actually living it. And that's what we, I suppose, need to know.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yes, it's it's the difference what we call about sort of there's lifespan, which is just the years and health span. How long of sort of how much of our life are we living in relatively good health?
00:18:10
Speaker
And surprisingly, even though like, of course, towards the end of our lives, very often health is deteriorating, maybe the last two or three years.
00:18:20
Speaker
And with increased lifespan, the proportion of the end of life sort of suffering years or months has not gone down. So we live longer, but we are we have longer periods of suffering.
00:18:35
Speaker
And the the whole goal must be to basically to expand the health period of our lives. Yeah. Because that's what makes life worth living.
00:18:47
Speaker
And it's funny that, you know, we're talking about this because this is actually one of my biggest fears personally. I don't think it's death that I fear. It's suffering, that illness, that suffering. There's a real fear of mine. And I i would imagine ah for a lot of people.
00:19:00
Speaker
So what can we do? How do we start making changes towards healthier aging? I suppose. So in in scientific experience and experience in sort of in in lifestyle and dealing with lot of also people with chronic disease, etc., what I think is very central is this energy metabolism.
00:19:18
Speaker
So if we keep if if our cells are able to really have a good energy metabolism, they can deal much better with a lot of things. They can fend off diseases. The body stays healthier.
00:19:30
Speaker
And there are a lot of very different things or parallel things that we can do. course, one thing you're talking about is healthy nutrition. Very, very important. From my perspective, the easiest way, if you ask yourself there, I mean, a gazillion health tips of of what you should eat, what you should not eat.
00:19:48
Speaker
But a ah rule of thumb is, I think, but to go by is the less processed this the food is, the better it is. doesn't matter that much what you eat, but eat less processed.
00:20:00
Speaker
And when you look at the label, sort of my my rule of thumb is if I look at the ingredients list and I imagine if my grandmother wouldn't know the ingredient that I see there, it's not good for me.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yes, that's a good one. If it can't be made by your grandmother, yeah, 50 years ago. Yeah, right. That's a very easy ah way to check things. Less processed, then you're already sort of that, I would say, you've gone 80% of optimal already if you if you do this simple but simple thing.
00:20:29
Speaker
and Then the other thing is also it's not just food to to maintain allergy metabolism. For example, you can slow down the sort of aging of your mitochondria by exercise.
00:20:41
Speaker
Very important. Exercise sort of keeps your cells healthy, gives sort of signals to your cell cells to stay energy healthy and things like that. Also, the positive effect of your food, of your diet will be much better if you do exercise.
00:20:55
Speaker
Sleep is extremely important. We are in a society that is largely suffering from sleep deprivation, which is a huge stressor and ah very detrimental to a lot of systems in in our body.
00:21:10
Speaker
And that's measurable. So what do, in relation to sleep? You hear so much at this seven to nine hours. What is the tried and tested? What what should we be aiming for with sleep?
00:21:22
Speaker
I think that's the good consensus. One thing is as we age, a lot of us tend to need a little less sleep. So we are moving towards the more the seven hours. When I was young, I slept longer. I don't feel tired with less sleep now, but it's still around the seven hours.
00:21:41
Speaker
And it's very important for the quality, also the quality of sleep. It's not that just the time you spend in bed. but it's the quality of your sleep. Often like nowadays, of course, we we have a lot of things that that keep us from good sleep. Like people go to bed with their smartphones. So but before they even sort of try to get to sleep, they go on social media, they get the news, which are usually bad news and and worrisome news nowadays.
00:22:07
Speaker
Light makes a very much difference, especially the screen light, the blue tone of of the light is is a signal Blue light is a signal through our eyes to our brain that now it's day.
00:22:21
Speaker
The blue spectrum of light is what we see in the morning after of sunrise. So it it signals to our brain, now it's time to wake up, and we do that late at night. So we should, for example, at least half an hour, ideally an hour before we go to bed.
00:22:38
Speaker
Ideally, don't look at screens anymore. Or you can basically, they look very funny, but I also have those. There are glasses that you can put on also over your normal glasses that have a very orange tint to it, and they filter out the blue light because or our sleep,
00:22:55
Speaker
Our brain basically to induce sleep and to, for example, release melatonin, we need to cut out blue light because in natural light, when the sun is going down, as you know, and towards dusk, you have a sort of an orange, yellow, orange light.
00:23:13
Speaker
And that's evolutionary what our brain is used to. And in conversely, basically, you can do a lot for a good sleep in the morning. When you get up in the morning, at least try to get 10 minutes, 15 minutes of daylight, outside daylight, not just through the windows, but really, the and even if it's an overcast sky, it's much brighter than any light inside.
00:23:37
Speaker
And that signals to your brain, now it's day. And then basically it resets the clock, the so-called circadian clock. The brain knows when the day starts and it knows when to get tired in the evening.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I suppose the more consistent you are with this, your body will adjust. Absolutely. this This is something that often I cannot keep because I'm i'm traveling, things like that, but it's to have sort of set sleep times and then usually you wake up naturally. So to have this this routine, if you have trouble sleeping, this is a great help to have sort of a narrow window when you go to bed, a narrow window when you when you usually get out of
Lifestyle Choices and Health
00:24:17
Speaker
bed.
00:24:17
Speaker
I find this really helpful because i have three kids, so I like to get up before them so that I get, you know, a solid one to two hours, bit of work focus, get, you know, get ahead of myself before they get up, before I have to get them to school.
00:24:30
Speaker
So and it's been difficult in the winter, getting, trying to get up at 5.30 in the dark is difficult. It's getting easier because it's bright kind of by 7 a.m. here now and it gets much easier in the summer, but then it's harder to go to bed when it's like in Ireland, it stays bright until like 11 p.m. in the, it like by the,
00:24:47
Speaker
We have that in Berlin too pretty much in the summer and you don't feel like going to bed when it's still a nice summer night. People are outside having barbecues and you're like jumping into bed. ah sex But at the minute, what I do is I go like midweek, I go to bed. I put my seven-year-old to bed.
00:25:02
Speaker
He's my youngest and I go to bed at that time. And what I've been getting my clients to, I've been advising my clients in relation to phones because I think very much like we are, we're addicted to them. So I don't think, like I know for me, I can't leave that on my bedside locker.
00:25:16
Speaker
and not pick it up and check Instagram or do something. I do it without even thinking, and that scares me a little bit. So what I will do is my, and I use this for my alarm. So my phone goes over the other side of my room.
00:25:29
Speaker
It's also a really good hack for getting out of bed to turn off the alarm in the morning. So you can't press snooze if you have to get up and get it.
00:25:37
Speaker
I usually like when, when it's around like an hour before bedtime, i just go into flight mode. And most mobile phones have these apps. I've only discovered it. I thought you had to download an external app, but I have an iPhone. Anyone who has an iPhone listening, they actually have.
00:25:52
Speaker
If you go into the screen time section, you can knock yourself out of your apps at certain times and you can choose which apps to keep available, like, you know, your clock or whatever, you know, but it that means that if you automatically go to click into Instagram, you can't.
00:26:04
Speaker
because it'll be like, oh, no, wait, I'm locked out until 7 a.m. m It's great. It's really working for me because it's just, it's fighting those automatic things that I'm doing without realizing it Yeah, and where basically what I'm doing is with all my electronic media, with my phone, even with my computer, I usually turn off all automatic alarms or messages. So if I don't actively go to my phone or to my computer, look into the mail, I don't see if a mail comes in.
00:26:31
Speaker
That's how we are. i mean, not different. So if I see it, if something blinks up, I have to basically... yeah almost magically go to and and look what it is. And if I don't know- even that notification, that little, isn't it isn't it red or is it blue?
00:26:44
Speaker
I don't know. I can't think off my head, but that little notification is like is designed to make us, to for that dopamine in our brain to be like, oh, what is it? So that's basically nutrition, sleep, sports and movement is extremely important.
00:26:59
Speaker
And then, of course, what I also over time, I was very critical and and s skeptical about this initially, is especially when you get older, is supplementation with certain things.
00:27:11
Speaker
Because it is absolutely true what a lot of nutritionists say, that basically you can get everything you need with a good, healthy nutrition, which is Good for if you're 20 or 30, that's perfectly fine.
00:27:24
Speaker
I think with with mothers, it's a little bit different. we We men completely underestimate what a huge sort of physical demand and stress childbearing is and childrearing also.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah. I know that that a little bit. So, I think if if you're pregnant or so, some supplementation can also be beneficial. But as we age, it's even more difficult to get enough of some some key nutrients, even with food, because as I said in the beginning, the capability of our body, of our energy systems,
00:28:00
Speaker
to convert that is going down. So in young age, basically good nutrition can cover all these things. But from the evolutionary point, humans are only sort of genetically programmed to have an optimal health with just natural food to the age of around 40, because after that, we are not necessary for procreation anymore.
00:28:23
Speaker
What does that mean then supplement wise? What things are we are we going to be less likely to be able to get from our food as we get older? Certain vitamins, especially some of the B vitamins, B1, B3, B2, B3, B12, are very important for the energy metabolism.
00:28:41
Speaker
What we can also do is have natural substances that that are anti-inflammatory that we may not get enough with normal food. We do get ah lot of so-called secondary plant compounds, which are very, very healthy, very anti-inflammatory through our natural, through vegetables and and fruits.
00:29:01
Speaker
But you can then supplement them. For example, substances like ah curcumin, turmeric are well-known, quercetin, resveratrol, a lot of these compounds that are all plant-derived but in higher concentrations can then sort of supplement. And the the emphasis is supplement a good nutrition.
00:29:22
Speaker
Just fill up those gaps. Supplements are no substitute for a good nutrition. It's very important. They're not... doing you any good or much good if you don't eat good nutrition in parallel it to that.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's to boost what you're already having. Right. it's It's to boost what you already have and that that can counter sort of certain aging processes, slow them down and also counter the propensity or the for diseases to take hold. So, you can you can stave off diseases or disease processes You cannot really cure a disease.
00:29:58
Speaker
At least that's also by law. Only drugs are allowed to cure diseases. My experience also, even though i'm I'm in drug development myself, no single drug cures a disease.
00:30:10
Speaker
The only thing drugs do, and that's very helpful, they can reduce the stress and the load of disease that the body has to deal with. But the final healing is only by the body itself.
00:30:23
Speaker
It's only by the body itself. It's all within. Yes. And that's, for example, take an easy thing. take If you get an infection with bacterial infection of the lung, you get pneumonia, you take antibiotics, they get rid of the bacteria, but the lung is still inflamed.
00:30:39
Speaker
The healing of the lung once the bacteria are gone is by our own immune system. It's not by the antibiotic. It doesn't heal. It just takes away the overload, the stress, the aggression of of whatever disease. So that we can survive the infection, basically, instead helping hand.
00:30:56
Speaker
Right. It's a helping hand. It it's sort of it it it gets us over the hump. But the healing is always by our body. This explains, I suppose, you know, if you I've actually recently just had the flu, it was the most so horrific experience.
00:31:09
Speaker
i and I don't think I'd ever had the real flu. And I ended up going on antibiotics and I had to take steroids as well. And, you know, it really he shook me because I would I really was like, oh, I thought I was healthier, stronger immune system. just shows. him But it it explains that afterwards you still feel quite weak. You still you know, you're still coughing after you're finished your course of antibiotics, but you are healing.
00:31:30
Speaker
Right, exactly. And that's where sort of good nutrition, all these things, and also supplementation can help. Basically, it doesn't heal anything, but it helps your body being sort of in a position to heal itself.
00:31:44
Speaker
and A prominent example of that is what what we now experience with long COVID. People are sort of are healed of COVID. There's no no virus in them anymore. The tests are negative, but they struggle with long COVID. This is these after things and and all the the drugs that we have don't really work in long COVID.
00:32:04
Speaker
Systems that support the the metabolism and the resilience of our bodies, of our immune systems, that's what can really heal these things. Okay. That's so interesting.
00:32:17
Speaker
In relation to supplementation, before we move on from supplementation in a practical sense, because I've actually been toying with what I should be supplementing myself. And, you know, you hear loads of different things and I give different advice, obviously depending on different clients, but it's a good multivitamin, like a good quality at the minute I'm taking a good quality, natural multivitamin.
00:32:36
Speaker
Is that a waste of money or will that fill the gaps perhaps?
Role of Supplementation
00:32:41
Speaker
Partly. There are other things that you can add and that's basically what what we're trying to do is find sort of more more comprehensive combinations of things. That is some vitamins, but it's also natural, what's called secondary plant compounds, natural compounds like curcumin, like resveratrol. And basically these are all like what what these B vitamins do, what what some plant compounds do and some other natural compounds.
00:33:08
Speaker
Each of them improves like one metabolic, one or two metabolic steps in this in this chain reaction of energy metabolism. In my experience, it doesn't make much sense to get mega dose of a vitamin that just is at one point.
00:33:24
Speaker
You increase the sort of one step of the, it's like an assembly line for a car. If you want to build more cars, it doesn't make sense to just supply more tires, 10 times more tires. It's on the assembly line, if you if you supply 10% of every piece of the car,
00:33:42
Speaker
then you get 10% more carbs, but not if you supply 10,000 times. And that's what what a lot of people don't understand in supplementation. They take some mega doses of the the new hot vitamin or or natural compound, but that's just at one point. And you have to really support the this complex machinery of metabolism at different points. And that's sort of a synergistic effect that really gives a much better end result.
00:34:09
Speaker
So are we talking about loads of different vitamins? Like loads of different, like... yeah load Not loads, but even small amounts, but at the right sort of, at the right combination that really... So not loads of different doses of different things. Like it do you have a product that covers all of these?
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, we have a product is that is for the energy metabolism that is sort of also for for mental clarity. i mean, it's generally, it's called Vitalizer. It's supporting generally the energy metabolism.
00:34:40
Speaker
But the most noticeable outcome is also that you notice in your brain. As I said, the brain is really energy hungry. And people report sort of they are less tired, they um have more clarity, things like that.
00:34:54
Speaker
And also what you can feel is sometimes that that you get more sort of stamina and endurance when you're running or something like that. But the mental effect is the most convincing and stunning and coming from neuroscience, sort of that's really where also we put a lot of effort in to understand, to to to support brain metabolism.
00:35:14
Speaker
That's so interesting because I think we often, as we get older, we become more concerned about our heart health or, you know, our internal organs. And I think we we quite often forget about our brain until suddenly it's like, oh, i I'm getting a bit forgetful or I'm yeah feeling are you until it becomes a mental health issue. Until we can't remember.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, but I think even in relation to the brain, we often think of the brain more of the mind and mental health and anxiety and stress related mental health issues rather than actual brain health and that there's other, because there's a difference, am I right, in thinking between the mind and the brain?
00:35:53
Speaker
that That's a very deep philosophical question that people have tried to to cope with for the last 5,000 years and I don't have an answer and I don't think anyone has a definite answer.
00:36:05
Speaker
Okay, let me rephrase that because that is a very philosophical question. If we are eating to fuel our brain, is that going to help with r mental health with our mental health in relation to stress, anxiety, depression, as well as functional day-to-day stuff?
00:36:26
Speaker
Right. there There is also increasing science, for example, with the depression. It looks like at least at the moment, 30% of severe depressions are inflammatory based because people didn't know why why do people get it depressed. We didn't know.
00:36:43
Speaker
And it's that, for example, one has found that when people for other diseases like like arthritis got strong anti-inflammatory drugs, in a certain percentage of people who at the same time were depressed, had severe depression, the depression went away.
00:36:59
Speaker
by an anti-inflammatory drug, not a psychological drug. And exactly what you say, if the brain metabolism, if brain energy systems are optimal, our mental state, be it anxiety, be it depression, things like that, improves generally.
00:37:14
Speaker
With some people more, with some people less. That's fascinating. So in relation to, you know, we've talked about lifestyle for preventing, for, you know, maximizing, you know, as we get older, what we can do to help kind of prevent aging, to prevent some of these inflammatory diseases.
00:37:30
Speaker
What about anyone listening listening who's suffering at the minute, who has arthritis or psoriasis or, you know, some sort of autoimmune disease and is in a lot of pain, in a lot lot of discomfort?
00:37:42
Speaker
Is that advice still relevant to or, you know, is it too late at that stage? No, this is also one group of patients or that that we, not with a commercial product, but we we we are involved with, is children with a sort of fatal genetic disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is severe muscle-wasting disease.
00:38:03
Speaker
This is something, this is um' still uncurable. But what we found is that by improving the energy metabolism of these children, not only does their sort of muscle strength improve, which is not that noticeable, but their mental state improves
Integrating Medicine and Lifestyle
00:38:21
Speaker
considerably. I mean, you can imagine if you if you have a sort of a fatal disease and you you know about this, older children know about this,
00:38:28
Speaker
what that kind of stress is. you You know, you're not going to live very long. And it was so astounding to see how their quality of life, their perceived, that their happiness just improves with better energy metabolism, which is sort of, I think, much more prominent or or noticeable in these people.
00:38:47
Speaker
And then that also transfers what you said to people who are already have a disease or are very diseased, that very often what I've noticed is that especially those people have the biggest improvement relative.
00:39:01
Speaker
If you have a lot of stress, if you have a lot of pain or something like that, you know, sort of the improvement is often better than when you're sort of middle-aged, fit, no disease, very sportive, the delta that you can experience, the improvement is maybe not as big as someone who's really suffering.
00:39:18
Speaker
That makes so much sense. With the lifestyle changes you make, are we also talking about anti-inflammatory drugs alongside it? that Obviously that depends case to case, I'd imagine. That depends case to case. As well I said before, you have a sort of a high load of disease, your own immune system may be not capable even with supplementation or so to deal with that. So drugs really can help you reduce this load that the body cannot deal with it anymore.
00:39:46
Speaker
and get the symptoms down. Also, even though a drug may not cure arthritis, but if you're in severe pain, that's not a good state. So it's good to lower this this this disease load and get the body to a to a stage where it even have it has a chance to improve itself, to self-heal to a certain extent.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, because I suppose the objective is for us to be pain-free, to be happy, to be able to experience life as much as we can. And the paths to getting there will be different. And the fallacy is often that we think a drug alone will do this.
00:40:21
Speaker
And not a drug alone usually doesn't do that. It doesn't heal. And the same fallacy is a supplement alone will do this. It's good nutrition. It's all the other things.
00:40:32
Speaker
It's the lifestyle mixed with the medicine. It's so refreshing to hear from a doctor. It's like so unbelievably refreshing to hear because I still think, though, that there's this huge barrier for people. So I work with a lot of people where they find it very difficult to make these changes in their lives.
00:40:49
Speaker
So the approach I would often take is i like, I like what you're saying about eat less processed. You know, that's literally, know, we look at it like a pyramid, bit like most of your diet coming from the base of the pyramid, your whole foods, then layering in a little bit of minimally processed foods that you enjoy, like, I don't know, like cheese or and yeah yeah things like that, yogurt.
00:41:07
Speaker
And then, you know, keeping the processed food to a minimum, because I find that although, yes, eating fully whole food diet is not what a lot of people want to do.
00:41:18
Speaker
or are even if they want to, they find it very difficult to actually achieve. Right. And one thing is ah also that is also important to remember is if you cut it out sort of all sort of fun and indulgence of your life, that's also very detrimental to your immune system.
00:41:37
Speaker
Sometimes we have to to sort of let loose and not every day. But if if you're restricting your your whole life ah too much, it's also little bit depressing and that's also measurable in the blood it with immune markers.
00:41:54
Speaker
Interesting. And it's probably the stress of trying to control it. Yes. I think to to to live and to nourish yourself sensibly is good. But sometimes like if if there is a big party or a wedding and basically you're you're just chewing on some raw carrots and everyone is enjoying themselves, it's not healthy.
Practical Health Advice
00:42:13
Speaker
No, and nobody wants to talk to you if you're doing that either. this process That's it. There's a time and place for everything really, isn't there? So in relation to, you know, people taking the first steps or someone listening who might be like, okay, I'm getting aches and pains. I'm 40 ish.
00:42:30
Speaker
I need to make changes. I need to lose some weight. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I don't even know where to start. I quite often will say start by adding in rather than taking out, crowding out the stuff. So, you know, like you said, like adding in more vegetables, eating more colorful, like say having more vegetables with each meal, making sure you're having a lean source of protein with each meal. You're getting some healthy fats that you're getting, it you know, that you get some people aren't even having three meals a day because they're so rushed through their lives, you know, but getting it back to basics, putting these things in, putting in a daily walk and building there from over over time, because I think quite often we
00:43:03
Speaker
try to be too perfect. We throw ourselves off the cliff to the point of overwhelm and it's far too past our comfort zone. Absolutely. I think that's that's very wise advice because it's just like these New Year's, don't know what's in English. Resolutions. Yeah. New Year's resolutions. I mean, yeah you you basically you decide you'll become the the completely new person next year and it falls apart in week two because it's just too much.
00:43:30
Speaker
And I think doing this step by step and then also noticing that it does you good, like doing maybe just starting going outside for 15 minutes, take ah take a ah lunch, short walk and noticing how good this is. And that sort of givess you it gives you the positive feedback to keep going.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yes, like because when you notice how you feel, it makes you want to do more of it. Right, exactly. And this is ah is ah basically a positive feedback loop instead of sort of punishing yourself, which again is is not good for your mental state.
00:44:03
Speaker
And I think that this conversation has been a really great way as well to view food as fuel to, you know, to energize ourselves, to energize us for life, but also for, you know, for our future as well, rather than looking at food as something that we're restricting or that we're punishing ourselves with or that we're comforting ourselves with.
00:44:23
Speaker
Right. Yeah, absolutely. It's just like if you want to run your car, it's good to fill up the tank, but it's not good to overfuel and let the gasoline run into the inside of the car. and And we are now sort of sometimes we are we are sort of flooding the inside of the car also with gasoline. That's not ah very healthy.
00:44:40
Speaker
Bringing it back to basics. Wolfgang, this has been such an amazing conversation. I think there's so much value from everything that you've shared and really does tie in nicely with, you know, everything I do believe as well and that I share with my listeners. So thank you so much for coming on to talk to me today. great you It was was really enjoyable. And I think you you're also really bringing a lot of value to to people's lives.
00:45:06
Speaker
Thank you. Can I ask you one more question? I like to ask my guests this before they finish ah What does the word health mean to you? Health means to to be in the the best state that you individually or one individually can be at. That doesn't mean absence of disease, especially like working working with, as I said, with these children which have a disease that they they will never be able to shake off.
00:45:32
Speaker
For everyone, there's still this this this concept of health that's the best that that I can achieve. And I have to cope with whatever other things are thrown at me.
00:45:43
Speaker
We can always improve within the boundaries that are given to us. Yeah. what What can I do now? What can I do now? And don't sort of, we all age, there's this there's things sort of get diminished. So if we always, just like in in in other like lifestyle things, so if we always are only looking at the potential optimum, we'll never achieve it. So we'll we'll always feel inferior and not being able to achieve that. And that's a very, very bad state for the mind and and for for well-being.
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah. Focus on what you can do now and just, yeah, I love that. much And be thankful for it. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, it's okay to have goals, but we don't, we, if we're always striving for the next thing, we're we're never, we're never happy.
00:46:29
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So if anybody wants to find out a little a little bit more about what you do, where is the best place to find you on the internet? The best place is at what's called IULabs. It's
00:46:48
Speaker
And that's also a lot of things that I talked about. this There's a lot of information on that website and listen to Kate Hamilton's podcasts. Yes, absolutely. And they'd be able to, if, if anyone wanted to, to this contact details and everything on the website is there for, yeah. it's all like to reach it more yeah Thank you so much for this amazing conversation.
00:47:09
Speaker
Thank you.
00:47:12
Speaker
I just want to say thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It really means so much to me that there are people out there actually listening to what I have to say and to the conversations that I'm having with others. So thank you so much.
00:47:23
Speaker
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00:47:40
Speaker
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00:47:54
Speaker
Also, if you're interested in working with me and my wonderful team, please do you contact me about applying for coaching. So you can contact me at Kate Hamilton Health at gmail.com or on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all Kate Hamilton Health.
00:48:09
Speaker
and you will be able to comp apply for coaching. We can organize to have a chat and see if it's a good fit for you and get you moving towards your goals.