Kind: captions
Language: en
g'day everyone welcome to day five of
the gut check series here with zoe my
name is dan churchill i'm a chef and a
host of the epic table podcast and you
may have seen me with dr william lee in
a previous episode of what we're doing
with this wonderful gut check series
talking all goodness around how to apply
the food that we talk about on zoe based
on your own recordings to help you guys
optimize the best thing for your health
going forward today i'm joined by two
pretty
amazing individuals both in respective
expertise at their fields i'm joined by
professor paul franks and raphael ballet
now is that valesa how i pronounce it
correctly is my french correct it's it's
vala
you're close you're very close
my apologies i've always said i love to
kind of you know really execute well in
a french accent take my australian to
one step further but gentlemen i'm
really excited to have the community of
zoe join us today because we're covering
a topic that
is of just so much regard right now and
something that has such a profound
impact on our health uh the choices in
food that we have but ultimately it's
one thing that we can truly control and
something that is quite cheap to do so
it's very accessible for all of us now
before we begin uh raphael will be great
to get a big bit of background on who
you are your role and uh your
relationship with zoe so mate do you
want to kind of give us a bit of
background on this lovely french accent
and who you are
sure so i'm currently a sleep researcher
at the university of berkeley in
california so i'm west coast based but
i'm originally from france and i got a
phd in france in neuroscience so my
expertise is more in uh sleep than in
you know glucose and diabetes but i
think i became really more and more
interested in that topic in recent years
and so i had this opportunity to work
with zoe and and professor paul franks
on that specific study
about sleep and glucose and so that was
a really great opportunity for me
it's wonderful yeah i think the the area
of sleep is just so profound and we know
over the last
12 months particularly even 18 months as
obviously the world's gone into
lockdowns we've had more time to focus
on this area it's um it's been amazing
to see the transformation people have
placed on their sleep because they
effectively said i can now have the time
to do so i don't have to get up and go
to work i can work from home but uh
health has been such a you know big
topic as well so that's awesome uh
professor paul mate you you yourself uh
have been involved in a number of
written work uh particularly with
matthew walker himself as well mate do
you want to give a bit of a background
on your amazing pedigree
yeah so i've been a professor um
at two universities for the past 11
years one
is lund university in sweden which some
people would have heard of and the other
that i think everybody would have heard
of is the harvard school of public
health in boston
my background is is really in genetics
actually that's my where my training was
from cambridge in the uk uh 20 years ago
um but since then i've been focusing a
lot on this topic called precision
medicine and within that concept we have
uh precision nutrition which i think
we're going to talk a bit about today um
and how that really features in the
concept of of sleep and and general
well-being
absolutely yeah absolutely it's actually
really interesting to see
um i've always loved when i say
professor researchers
jump around to different locations and
do their own thing because you can see
that each university and faculty have
their expertise in their field and um
following what you've done made is
pretty exceptional because i know a lot
of work goes into just the behind the
scenes of what we get to read later on
so i appreciate what you what you've
done and uh definitely interested in the
precision nutrition i want to start the
conversation talking specifically about
sleep i know there's a lot of research
that we've seen and even zoe's looking
to really crack down on for our
community particularly around the
responses to glucose our hormones and
relationship to how much sleep we are
getting
so i want to begin by saying that
maybe maybe you with raphael we can
discuss maybe just some key factors that
we we do know about sleep and the things
that we should be targeting um to look
to optimize our overall daily energy for
sleep are there key factors you can just
kind of list off briefly
sure um so you mentioned hormones and
and we know that sleep uh is involved in
regulations of hormones that regulates
your appetite and your hunger and so
two of these hormones that i think are
important to mention
one of them is called leptin and what it
does is that it signals to your brain
that you're full and that you no longer
want to eat
and we know that if you sleep deprived
individuals for a few days you get a
decrease
of leptin in the bloodstream so in other
words it takes more time for you to feel
that you're full and that you no longer
want to eat
and by contrast we know that there is a
second hormone it's called ghrelin and
it really sounds you know these hormones
really sound like called from the
fantasy books or something like that
uh but ghrelin does the opposite effect
so it tells your brain that you you need
to eat more you want to eat more and
what we've seen is that if you sleep
deprived people for a few days you have
an increase of ghrelin by
almost 30 percent in the bloodstream
and so
this kind of inverse relationship
between leptin and ghrelin
what it does is that ultimately when
you're sleep deprived you're gonna eat
more calories
uh than if you sleep and it's not just
about you know trying to compensate for
the fact that you're awake longer
because on average people that are sleep
deprived will eat about 300 kilocalories
more per day which is more than simply
what you just burn
by being awake and so that's why we know
that this is one mechanism by which we
know that sleep deprivation can lead to
obesity
and also you know
metabolic metabolic disease
yeah it's very interesting first and
foremost the way you pronounce ghrelin
is so much better than i've ever been
able to pronounce and i'm sure professor
paul can agree with me but um it's it's
a very interesting dynamic the
relationship between what our hormones
are meant to be doing their signal
calling and we can see that obviously as
uh the important relationship that
leptin and ghrelin do play and telling
us when we are either full or when we do
need to eat more so when those receptors
and the relationship between those
messengers actually is obviously out of
balance as you said we are likely to eat
more now if we look at i think the
research paper you're referring to is if
we look at that you're eating extra 300
calories a day if you would just i i
believe sleeping under six hours and
please jump in raphael when i'm uh when
i mean correct here but it's understood
yeah four to five hours for a few days
right so if you're doing that over the
course of a week uh then unfortunately
you're looking at an
increase in a full day of eating just
simply uh by you know not sleeping
correctly so if you're someone who's
trying to be really conscious of you
know making sure your energy is right
you're not losing you're maybe looking
to lose a bit of weight just by simply
not sleeping enough you're after you're
having an impact on your overall signal
cause it'll let you know when you are
too full and therefore you end up eating
more and as a result uh you have a full
extra day of eating that you didn't even
know about
and i think it gets worse because it's
not that you just want to eat more of
that you know avocado toast or very
healthy salad you want to eat more of
very high calorie kind of junk food
and we know that this is because in the
brain you have an overactivation of
regions that are involved in reward and
reward seeking so you're essentially
more likely to
to want to buy you know that kind of
junk food that you would never want to
eat if you are if you are actually like
well arrested so you know all not all
the calorie created equals i think you
could say and when you're sleep deprived
you're more likely to aim for the very
high calorie very you know sugary uh
kind of bad you know junk food
absolutely and i find what's so
interesting as well is trying to find
that realistic expectation of us all to
get enough sleep and you know i'd be
lying if i'm telling you right here that
i i get more than seven hours a night
every single night of the week i think
we've got to be realistic about the
situation but it's more or less
highlighting the importance that we
should play uh on actually just focusing
the fact to do as best as we can to get
to above that seven hour eight hour mark
as realistic as we can now in saying
that as well it's like one it's always
one thing to get the sufficient amount
of sleep and obviously make sure that
our hormones and everything else are
being optimized the next thing is
actually talking about the time in which
you are sleeping and trying to make up
sleep now
if i'm someone who slept for say five
hours one night and say i wanted to
sleep in the next day just to make up
for it can i actually make up that
amount of sleep that i lost the previous
day
i wish i could say yes but sadly we have
some studies i didn't do these studies
but we know we know you know that there
are some studies showing that you can
not
perfectly catch up on sleep so it's not
like a one you know one-on-one
relationship
i mean sure you can you can compensate
and you know that's what most people do
in the weekend you know like teenagers
will sleep
until noon to try to catch up for that
sleep deprivation during the week and so
you can catch up to a certain extent but
you would never be able to fully catch
up and we know for example there was a
really nice study a few years ago that
showed that
when it comes to the metabolic
dysfunction
that comes with sleep deprivation you
can never really catch up on that so you
can you can even even though you're
trying to compensate you cannot really
catch up on you know uh accumulated uh
dysfunction caused by sleep deprivation
during the week
so ultimately if someone says oh i know
i had a big week but i'm just going to
wait until the weekend to catch up on it
or say you went out friday night
unfortunately just sleeping on sunday
will not
simply allow you to make up for what you
previously did now professor paul what
does this mean with our relationship
with responses to you know
fat and and uh and glucose with the
blood mag because these these these are
telling things we obviously do on zolly
we look at the ways that people can
truly understand how their fat and
glucose responses are and we look
obviously then to take that into account
to improve that
now this is something that i think is
often oversight and obviously you've
done a lot of work in this space but how
can we look at how does this affect
those kind of responses in general
yeah so the work that we've done so the
the work with zoe is is this predict
trial which you've i'm sure already
introduced people to but you know it's
very large study very very detailed
measurements
and with that um we're able to uh study
all kinds of components of particularly
diet and lifestyle and
in this case sleep in relation to energy
metabolism so the
stuff in our bloodstream that allows us
to move around and do things with our
bodies require energy for that
now you know it turns out that um as
raphael has already explained that
sleep's not very good for your energy
metabolism it messes up certain hormones
in your body and those hormones interact
with metabolites like glucose um to
influence the way in which our bodies
work
so what we found in the predict trial is
that people who
tend to have disrupted sleep or have
what's called a late sleep offset which
means that they tend to go to bed a bit
later than they would normally from time
to time so they have these variations in
sleep that push their their bedtime
routines a bit later and they get up a
bit later that influences the way that
they respond to their breakfast the next
day
and so we gave people um a bunch of
different breakfasts all of very
carefully measured uh macronutrient
content in the form of breakfast muffins
um and then we assessed how different uh
types of energy within those muffins
mainly fats and carbohydrates and to
some extent proteins and fiber how that
and then influences um our blood glucose
levels and what we showed is that when
you have this kind of sleep disruption
where you go to bed late and get up late
then that
is particularly problematic for your
blood glucose when you have a very high
carbohydrate breakfast a very glucose
rich breakfast and to put this into a
sort of real world setting to take take
it out of this carefully controlled
clinical trial concept context let's
think about what people do often when
they've had a really bad night's sleep
one of the first things people tend to
do is to take
you know an energy drink right that's
that's not at all uncommon particularly
younger people
you take an energy drink to uh to boost
your energy right the problem with that
is you can really send your blood
glucose levels off and that of course
isn't if you keep doing that it's not a
good thing in the long run that's
ultimately what can lead to damage to
the vessels in the body
and may lead you to developing diabetes
which of course uh none of us want that
so so that's really a a really
interesting finding that we we pulled
out of the predict trial that is about
to be published um that really shows how
sleep and breakfast meal composition
interact to affect our blood glucose
levels
it's very interesting
it's uh i think it gives us all a bit of
a
a second guessing if you will into if we
do have a night out what we should be
actually eating in the morning to
optimize you know as best as we can and
we all want to go out and have fun with
our friends and socialize just got to be
conscious now of some of these things
because we're talking about you
mentioned diabetes these these are
diseases that unfortunately aren't just
singular to themselves you know we've
seen that diabetes has the ability to
also relate to things like alzheimer's
uh we've got the chronic diseases in
general um cardiovascular heart related
like they're all
unfortunately to some degree um related
to the lifestyle choices that we have
and make play every single day now in
saying that did you in the research do
we do we actually i know this is a
probably not a question that
we want to encourage just out of pure
interest if we do have a night out is a
in the research a composition that we
should be aiming for
based on uh what would be the best
response for our body um yeah with
respect to still trying to optimize
performance or
diminish any
how do i say negative effects of the
night before as best as possible
so i'm going to give you a very sort of
public health response to that and then
i'll let raphael give you the life hacks
that he knows about when it comes to
sleep so
so you know
my view of you know generally speaking
when you talk about people's health in
society is as you say you've got to be
realistic right we're not all going to
live like uh
you know sort of monastic lifestyles
where we're very very disciplined about
how we live some people will do that
some people like to do that most of us
do like to have a night out do like to
indulge here and you know there and
occasionally so so and i think actually
that's what life is about right it's
about having enjoying yourself and not
always sticking to a very rigorous
routine so i think we have to be
realistic about that sure um
and of course there are um you know
if we're gonna take uh in in some senses
from away from our health then we should
i think double down on other elements
that we'll give to our health and and so
um you know it does make sense
particularly in the context of the
research i've just described to say okay
if we have had a bad night and it may
not be because we're indulging it maybe
because we have small children and they
disrupt our sleep or we work night shift
or you know there are any number of
reasons we fly transatlantic these kind
of things then just make sure the next
day you're not having a very sugary
breakfast okay double down on the
quality of your breakfast the next day
focus on more fibrous and wholesome
breakfast foods and and i i won't try to
pretend that will fix um a problem if
you have a chronic
you have chronic sleep disturbance but
it makes sense to to not add to the
problem by over indulging in in you know
cocoa pops and
and coca-cola and other types of energy
drinks so um so that's my general uh
comment on that but i think rafael
probably has a whole bunch of life hacks
that he can tell you about
it might mean you can go a bit deeper
now that's a very good point
one thing that i could add is that
if you had a bad night uh you should not
double down on caffeine also uh you know
to try and compensate for that just
because we know that caffeine can lead
to this vicious cycle in which because
you ingested a lot of caffeine that day
you're gonna have trouble you know
falling asleep and getting good quality
sleep on the next day and so when you're
gonna wake up the following day you're
gonna be even more tired which will lead
you to you know want to drink even more
caffeine so it's kind of a vicious cycle
and so you know as as paul said i think
if you had a bad night it's not the end
of the world just try to be just know
that you know your brain is gonna want
you to eat a lot of
high calorie food your you know your
reward system is going to be a little
bit biased so you have to be very
careful about that and try to you know
basically stick to your usual routine uh
do not increase the amount of coffee or
caffeine that you drink
and try to avoid of course like you know
very
bad uh
nutritious breakfast like you know
sugary uh treats or
or you know
kind of yeah energy drinks i think is
the worst case
it's interesting because i was reading a
review recently and i was talking about
the uh
the correlation between individuals who
are
not eating sorry who are sleeping uh
insufficiently so again within that five
hour range and what they're typically
eating and i you know it's uh still up
for debate the relationship whether it's
causality or just a relationship but
it's uh it is noted that people who are
eating less that's sleeping less are
choosing to have the highest sugary
refined foods uh and unfortunately that
includes those energy drinks and some
highly processed ingredients and this is
where you know we're very
very much educational on helping people
get more dietary fiber as you said
professor paul and making sure we
increase our abundance of of uh whole
food plants as fast as possible and
ultimately controlling the control is
pretty important um one question i do
want to quickly touch upon though
and this is uh i know we kind of talked
about the the eight out say the eight
hour
sleeping cycle i'm going to direct this
to you dr rafael we're talking we're
talking about how
even though you may get that eight hour
eating window so sleeping window my
apologies
it also has an effect on when you are
actually sleeping based on your slow
wave and your rem sleep so
i don't want to go too much into detail
on that but just want to highlight the
fact that obviously we discussed if
you're trying to sleep in and you go to
bed later versus also maybe going to bed
too early and waking up early how this
has an effect on those two uh huge
aspects of why we actually want to sleep
and then in turn how that can affect um
obviously our again what we said
previously with what the choices of food
we are having so
um just i think i want to quickly
highlight rem is your prevalence in
which people begin
at the end of the night so rem stands
for rapid eye movements and uh it's
because
you have these crazy you know eye
movements and you can really see them
like if you look at babies or you know
even pets uh and so them is
mostly at the end of the night and
that's typically when you have these
very vivid dreams also
uh and so yeah you don't have a lot of
ram at the beginning of the night but
you do have a lot of rem sleep at the
end of the night by contrast uh what we
call deep non-rapid eye movement sleep
mostly occurs at the beginning of the
night and this is when we can see if i
put electrodes on your head then i would
see some huge slow oscillation slow
waves in the in your electrical brain
activity
uh and this is
so this deep non-rapid movement slip is
very important for like body restoration
and typically it's not really associated
with any dreams so you kind of lose
consciousness during that time and so
so i think it's a really interesting
interesting and important point what you
just said about like you know when you
go to eat how when you go to sleep how
will this affect like different stages
of sleep that you get
because you know i know that some people
will be like oh i'm going to wake up at
5 00 a.m so i can get you know a good
start on my day and i can do workouts
and then but the thing is that if you do
that and
if you do that
you may still you know get your seven
maybe even eight hours of sleep which
sounds fine
but the real issue is that you're gonna
cut off a lot of the rapid eye movement
sleep that mostly occurs at the end of
the night so even though you still get
the seven hours of sleep maybe the
proportion of rem sleep that you got
during that night would decrease from 20
percent which is you know the usual for
most people to 10 percent
and this is not something you want
because we know that rem sleep is super
important for mood and also for the
cardiovascular system
so you know
i think it's very important to have to
keep that in mind
and you need to find the optimal
schedule for you you know we everyone
has kind of a different prototype some
people likes to go to bed earlier and
wake up earlier some people likes to you
know go to bed later so you need to find
what's best for you and try to keep to
the schedule when it when it comes to
you know sleep quality i think
consistency is key and so you really
want to go to bed and wake up at the
same time every day even on weekends and
that's that will really like tell your
brain
that you know this is when i sleep now
you know do whatever magic you're doing
when i'm sleeping make sure that i'm
getting my deep sleep my rapid eye
movement sleep but you know this is yeah
this is how i want to do it
it's a great takeaway it's like you know
obviously get as much sleep as you can
based on you know what's happening
control what you can i don't have kids
yet so you know i can't speak to those
who have parents and you know newly
borns and whatnot but ideally try and
keep into routine think of your sleep as
a routine it should be so that's a great
takeaway
professor paul mate i think something
that i'm really excited to talk to you
about specifically i know you touched on
it earlier was you know glucose
regulation and of course precision
nutrition and and this whole thing that
we've got going on mate do you want to
give a bit of a background on that
because uh when the team introduced me
to this i was extremely excited
yeah i you know so
i'll start by saying that um it's an
incredibly tricky equation to solve uh
what food is right for you as an
individual as opposed to having
more population level guidelines around
diet
and what we found and we've you know
been working on this uh with with zoe uh
with tim spector and others um over the
last few years is that um having set up
this very very big and comprehensive uh
precision nutrition trial
is that
actually the standard nutrition
guidelines which you might refer to as
back of pack information so when you
look at what's on the back of the pack
and then you relate that to nutritional
guidelines that one size fits all
approach to to public health and diet it
it is of value right so that's the first
thing to say we shouldn't disregard that
we shouldn't say that that none of that
makes any sense and it's not
evidence-based medicine it is
um but what we also showed this is in a
nature medicine paper that was published
about a year and a half ago
is that there's a lot of other
information that you can use
to guide predictions around how you will
respond
to different types of food
and that's what precision nutrition is
it's really trying to understand for you
um what kind of guidance is the best
guidance not not what's right for
society for populations as a whole
what's right for you and so we did this
big trial very detailed measurements 100
people from the uk and the us
and what we're able to do is to to show
that we can predict for you as an
individual with pretty high certainty
which types of foods will minimize your
blood glucose variations when you eat
the food but also your blood lipid
variations and we're really interested
in those two things triglycerides in the
blood the fatty particles that can when
at high levels for a long time can lead
to atherosclerosis or vessel disease and
heart disease and then blood glucose
variation which can also lead to damage
to the vessels and arteries and cause
heart disease but ultimately can lead to
diabetes and diabetes has lots of nasty
complications associated with it beyond
heart disease
so so we showed that a few things so one
is that we can predict which types of
food are best for you as an individual
but we also showed that there are some
people who have what we call glycemic
dips um and so ultimately when you eat
food your blood glucose is going to go
up because you're putting energy into
your mouth it's going through your gut
and it's going to come out into your
bloodstream at some level so your
blood glucose and your lipids will go up
if they're in the foods you're using
but some people's peak and then it comes
right back down again it actually goes
much lower than it was when they when
before they're eaten and that's what we
call glycemic dipping and that's a
really important phenomenon because what
that does is it drives your hunger later
right so these people who have these
real excursions with their glucose dip
down low they actually they tend to be
hungrier they tend to eat more later and
they tend to have a shorter duration uh
between meals so it's not a good it's
not a good feature of your metabolism
and that's one of the i guess one of the
missions of zoe is to really try to
understand what what food does to your
individual blood glucose variation and
how tailoring your diet to make it more
optimal or minimize these excursions
because these excursions matter they're
not only important for your overall
health in terms of your biological
health but they're also important in
terms of how you feel whether you're
adequately um
sort of satisfied with the food that
you've eaten and whether you have
cravings or not these kind of things so
that's been a big
focus of the research that we've been
doing and for those who are in the
academic world they may have read the
papers that have been published on this
in nature medicine nature metabolism and
so on but but this is the type of work
we've been doing and we're really
interested in just trying to improve
health overall uh through more targeted
nutritional guidelines
yeah i'm really glad mate personally i
i've actually never heard of glycemic
dipping before so to share that as a
markup potentially a
problematic you know issue is is amazing
and now the fact that we can identify
this particularly with the work to do
with zoe in you know our cgm's and
whatnot which uh you know is really
exciting i love the fact you highlighted
the fact that no one is the same and i
know it sounds like we know that but by
looking at the back end of the packet
obviously it's conforming us to the idea
that we all want the same rdi the same
recommended daily intake of certain
things such as dietary fiber
carbohydrates etc
what i love is that i'm so big on bio
individuality trying to find the right
thing that works for you we know that
due to that amazing uk between registry
study between those uh wonderful twins
identifying the fact that despite being
identical they had two different guts
you know gut makeups which is
extraordinary to think the dna is the
same and then to see that their gut
microbiome is vastly different just and
when you saw the lifestyle factors that
they both had i know i'm pretty sure
were you involved with that study as
well professor paul
sorry which one was that
is the uk twins registry study i think
tim was uh tim spector uh
so we've certainly uh so some of the
research we've collaborated on where uh
tim has used the the uk twins uh
registry but not i haven't worked with
him on the
on the microbiome study that you're
talking about of course we've done that
within predict that has yes but not the
overall registry that he's been
publishing on over the years
it's just so interesting to see that and
take that and now you're applying the
same concept to the fact that we're
looking at glucose responses and how
we're all different and how it's
important for us to really identify that
and i think one thing that i've
highlighted is um
you know we you look at a banana for
example or an apple and
these dips that you're talking about or
the different levels of
peaks will all be different between
individuals now
what do you in your research and when
you're looking at glucose
what do you see is something that is a
key takeaway for people to truly
understand obviously the obvious ones is
refined sugar we should obviously avoid
as as a whole but are the things that
people have to really cautious of that
we don't know yet and have have been in
published papers that are not as obvious
when it comes to consuming foods as a
generalist view i know we're talking
about trying to be as individuals as we
can but as a generalist few are the
things that you found that are very
interesting that maybe people don't know
yeah um but let me just just speak to
the point you made about use example of
bananas and apples and actually there's
a
in in the world that i work in there's a
sort of banana and cookie effect which
is often talked about which comes from a
famous paper publishing chinese team a
few years ago um so actually
it isn't that um that i will have a very
very different response to you uh when i
eat a banana or an apple or a cookie um
but i may have a more exaggerated or a
more suppressed response than you and
that that i think is important because
otherwise people tend to think that
we're so different we're all so
different we're not all so different and
that's why standard nutritional
guidelines mean something right because
we're not
different um but on the other hand
there's a there's a there's a huge
margin there that isn't taken care of
with standard nutritional guidelines
nevertheless you ask me the question you
know what what what are the general
recommendations i think
we live in a very exciting time because
of course we're all interested many of
us are interested in health i won't say
everyone is but many of us are
interested in our own personal health
um but we're also talking a lot about
the environment these days and and
actually you know um one of the really
remarkable things is that you know every
day we consume food and that that does
have a huge impact on our health and on
the environment and if you combine both
of those together what you would
probably recommend is to move more
towards plant-based diets because
generally speaking the consumption of
energy and the production of greenhouse
gases is much less with plant-based
foods so so it's a very very general
rule of thumb lean into plant-based
foods and steer away from even if
they're plant-based processed foods and
and most people will benefit from that
and some people will benefit more or
less and some people will do much better
with certain combinations
of those foods than others but as a
general principle leaning into
plant-based and less processed foods is
definitely
good for ourselves and good for the
world
absolutely right yeah get more dietary
vibrant sorry go on go on dr raphael
sorry no i just wanted to add one point
to this is that so far we've mostly
talked about you know going back to
sleep obviously which is my uh my feel
but so far we've mostly talked about how
you know sleep impacts food and you know
our reaction to food but i think going
back to your point we could also look at
how
what you eat impacts how you're gonna
sleep
and um i know of some studies that i've
shown that if you eat too much fat or
too much refined sugar for dinner in the
evening you're gonna have a hard time
falling asleep and you're gonna have a
worse sleep quality and
this is mostly because you know if you
have like a very rich dinner like that
with lots of sugar lots of fat you
increase your metabolic demands and what
it what it will do is that your body
temperature will increase and your heart
rate will also increase and these are
the two conditions that you really don't
want when you're going to sleep you
should have the opposite you should have
a lower body temperature so your you
know your temperature decrease as you're
falling asleep and your heart rate
should also go down when you're falling
asleep so you know i think also one
thing to consider is what you eat for
dinner because this is also going to
impact how your sleep and it seems that
at least for dinner fat and refined
sugar are you know probably some of the
worst food that you can eat and i know
that there are you know different
categories of fat um i think you and
paul are you know much more expert than
me on that so i i'm sure that not all
fats you know are as bad some are
probably good but yeah something to keep
in mind
absolutely i was uh as you were saying
i'm very interested obviously i you know
in my line of work i talk about making
sure you optimize sleep through the food
you are actually consuming and
identifying that you're not eating a
main meal with you know an hour and a
half before bed two hours is the last
bite realistically you should be doing
it professor paul have you actually done
any research in looking at the response
time of glucose just before bed and what
happens based on your meal
oh so um well um so you mean look so
it's feeding people before bedtime
looking at glycemic response and then
sitting out the sleep no um
i mean i i'm gonna come clean here so so
i've done an awful lot of research
around diabetes and metabolism and
precision nutrition
my my um sort of foray into the sleep
world has been in the last year and a
half working with
with raphael and with matt walker
and uh so first of all i've been on a
real learning uh journey um through that
work and very excited about that but one
of the things that i've really taken
away from this and i you know i've i've
done uh
very you know love iron man triathlons
and ultra running all this kind of stuff
and my professional life has been you
know all about health and diabetes and
nutrition this kind of stuff
but one of the things that i've
repeatedly done which i think many
people have done is pushed sleep to one
side and said you know the mantra i
sleep when i'm dead
you know i'm going to run longer and
harder or i'm going to eat a little bit
more healthily and then i can get away
with sleeping less and i think that the
one thing that i've really learned from
working with max and raphael is actually
sleep is the other pillar of health
beyond diet and exercise right and i
think um i think people are starting to
come around to that um but but really if
you want to optimize your health pay
attention to sleep don't push it back
don't make it a
the thing you compromise in order to be
able to do other things it really
should help uh enhance your life not not
something that you neglect and i so
sorry so that's my that's my way of
coming clean and telling you i haven't
done a lot of sleep research actually
yeah but so no no
the papers you have done are amazing
mate and like i know you you know clear
auth of this book and done a lot of work
in correlation but i think what i've
been reading some of the stuff done and
and even self wrapping i think there's
so many aspects of our health that um
are still to be discovered but in in the
work that we look at the human body
you've got so many levels i i almost
look at hormones as like a surface level
aspect then you dive deeper right into
at the cellular level of what's going on
at the cells and you know i think you
can look at mitochondria we can look at
the organelles we can look
and that to me and even that's probably
still surface level if we really want to
think about it but
ultimately like you know i i look at
people like yourselves who are leading
the way and helping us conform the right
ideas for ourselves this is all about
trying to help people find you know what
works for them that's what zoe is
ultimately about and you know both
through understanding our sleep patterns
and also through
opportunities like the research you're
doing with precision nutrition we're
able to do that and i'm i'm excited i'm
absolutely excited to know that we're
just honestly at the very start of the
journey it's uh truly exciting in the
fact that we can now like for me for so
long i've said to people how do i know
what foods are right for me
and i've said for so long listen to your
gut
and i still want people to listen to
their gut it's an amazing subjective
means
but now we can actually say try zoe
because ultimately we can give you a
definitive response to understanding
what how your your fat response is going
how your glucose response is going and
also look at your gut microbiome as well
so um i'm pumped i'm absolutely pumped
to be involved with both you guys doing
these kind of works and just be seeing
on the sidelines and reading papers so
what do we um look up i mean i think
we're sort of you know we're in an era
now where the quality of the data is
actually becoming really good right and
certainly
you know i think people have got a
little bit fed up with all of the you
know sort of contradictions around diet
that those that's come out of science or
pseudoscience you know in the past but
we're now at the point where you know
these really big studies really
comprehensive studies are being done now
and you know the national institutes of
health in the us has just prioritized 30
million dollars for precision nutrition
research so it's actually
it's getting to a level now where it's
been recognized as really a credible
area of research and i think
you know of course um i'm a huge
advocate of the work that's always been
doing and the predict trial and it is it
is the leading trial globally on
precision nutrition but there are other
excellent uh studies out there that have
been done many many um very very
talented scientists and i think it's the
community of
researchers and clinical practitioners
for that matter working in and around
precision health start to come together
and the quality of the data improves
that will only be good for for for
society it's very exciting time actually
and with that uh
paul like what do we what do we what can
we see in terms of with that research
and that that funding what are we
excited to see what's going to be
happening with precision nutrition
yeah so i mean
some monitoring is is you know digital
monitoring is a really key thing
actually and the technologies are
improving a lot uh you mentioned cgms or
continuous glucose monitors a moment ago
um you know that
over time they've improved a lot in
terms of the reliability of the monitors
the feedback the the the estimate of
blood glucose that comes out of them
there are even you know apple has uh has
put a lot of money down on on uh you
know optical sensing of glucose um
i i i'm not sure many people in the in
you know really working in in glucose
metabolism so i have a lot of faith in
that method but you can imagine that if
it can be done at scale
and it's reasonably good um that could
be really important too so so
technologies are developing a lot
particularly when it comes to to
monitoring health um so i think that
would be really important when it comes
to prevention of disease and precision
nutrition being a key part of that um
the other part of course you know is you
know are we getting we've got really
good data and if we have really good
data which we're starting to get out of
trials like like predict do we have the
uh the competence to actually process
those data do we have the data analysts
who can do the work and yeah we're in an
era now where machine learning is a
really big thing or deep learning ai
technologies are really really big and
that's that's really come out this
wonderful collaboration that really spun
initially out of the human genome
project 20 years ago that really sort of
triggered this but these collaborations
between physicists and engineers who are
coming coming into medicine and they're
bringing you know astrophysics uh
analytical methods into health and
instead of looking at stars and systems
in the universe they're actually you
know using those technologies to look at
cells and metabolites and features of
our biology so so we're in this
incredible
sort of uh collision between all of
these really interesting things that are
going on at the moment development of
technologies availability of big data
and then really interesting innovative
analytical techniques and when you put
all of that together of course we're
making considerable progress in our
understanding of human health and that's
why it's such an exciting time to uh to
be a researcher in this field and and i
hope it's exciting for people who look
in on that
who want to learn um you know they're
not scientists but they want to learn
about their health so it's yeah there's
so much going on at the moment makes it
super exciting
yeah we're all actually like honestly
i'm so pumped anytime we talk about
sleep or glucose responses and anything
like this that can help optimize not not
athletes or people at a higher level but
the everyday individual it's it's
amazing because we now have quantifiable
data to you know support what we are
talking about and uh gentlemen i i could
speak to both of you for another two
hours and all this topic but i know
you've got other things to do so uh
before we go uh where could people uh
you know find you and what's the best
way to reach out and um yeah let people
know
just at home
sure people can reach me on twitter um
first name last name rafael
yeah i'm on twitter too obviously paul w
franks
you'll find me there um and and uh you
know if if you're a scientist then look
me up on the pubmed and you'll you'll
find you'll find
no end of
publications there to to understand what
we've been doing
i looked up i looked up yourself on
actually i'd even looked yourself up
initially i was looking at papers and i
just had your name there and then all of
a sudden clicked on it and i'm just like
oh god okay i gotta have a an extra hour
of uh reading time which would have
affected my sleep so i've got to put
that to the side for a moment
[Laughter]
i love it mate don't get me wrong i love
it guys i'm uh dan underscore churchill
on instagram if you want to join zoe
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based on the information you've heard
today you can simply go to joinzoe.com
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so gut check series at joinzoya.com
professor paul dr raphael wonderful to
chat to you both today uh looking
forward to seeing more and more research
and talking more about sleep and
obviously things such as pussy's
nutrition uh we'll chat soon
thank you