So I'd love to know from writing your book, what was kind of the main piece of research that you discovered where you hadn't really maybe thought about it before? You're just like, wow, that's really fascinating.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things I think which should have stood out.

I mean, one thing which is quite interesting, you know, everyone's familiar with the main kind of like landmarks in life, you know, puberty, you know, menopause, people are now talking about the andropause, you know, for men in sort of midlife, but There's some other kind of hidden changes which people don't really know about.

You know, for example, there was a fascinating study which came out, I think it was like last year.

And it kind of revealed that, you know, there's two other time points, 44 and 60, where aging kind of really seems to accelerate.

And I think that makes sense to like a lot of us.

You know, we get to a point in midlife where suddenly it's like, gosh, OK, I actually visibly do look older.

So can you talk me through what that is?

But let's start off with something David told me about called low age eating, that's low AGE.

This is basically related to these toxins called advanced glycation end products or AGEs.

Essentially, they're formed through a number of different reasons.

So every time you basically eat too much sugar, you kind of trigger this reaction in your blood called glycation, which is where proteins, sugars and fats all kind of react together.

You get the formation of these toxins called AGEs.

and they basically drive every aspect of aging so they bind to things like collagen and stiffen them out which is why we get wrinkles over time but we also know that they get into the brain and they basically kind of prompt the changes in the structure of these different proteins which can ultimately lead to neurodegenerative diseases So eating too much sugar is one main cause of getting too many AGEs.

But we've also learned another cause is basically how we cook.

The recommendation is 30 grams per day and most of us are getting less than 20.

But also they get a lot of this stuff for free and a lot of the stuff that they're pushing and a lot of the knowledge that they're pushing is basically come from their sponsors, you know? so this book is a really important science-backed antidote to all that stuff just to get some clarity and so then sticking on the theme of establishing what the bad guys are first before we talk about how we can make things better for ourselves we've talked about processes what about some of the ingrediential i don't know if that's even a word uh ingrediential bad guys things like fructose and obviously sugar is just the devil um what are some of the

others Definitely.

I mean, I think the interesting thing is a lot of us are simply eating too much too often, which is one of the biggest things.

And I think the real reason if you get to the core of why ultra processed foods are so, so damaging is they're so addictive.

You know, no one eats just one cookie.

Right.

And that's the whole problem at the end of the day.

And also, if you could recommend just one of them as the most important one for people to spend their money on, which one would it be?

You know, in life, there's only two choices when it comes to our eternal destination.

Heaven or hell.

Heaven or hell.

There is no in-between.

I said this last week.

There is no alternative.

Now, we don't hear much about heaven or hell in sermons these days.

I know Pastor Brooks spoke a little bit about that last week, right? But personally, I have not heard a sermon.

I mean, if you go online, you'll find it.

But a face-to-face sermon, I haven't heard one for a very long time.

And I remember when I got saved, the preacher spoke about hell.

And he gave such a vivid description of hell.

Because there was a piece you probably saw it yourself in The Guardian at the start of the year where apparently a number of studies were being criticized by other scientists Because apparently detecting, particularly the nanoplastics, is kind of at the limit of our technology at the moment.

Oh, definitely, definitely.

And there's big issues of contamination.

So I think we do need to take a little bit of this with a pinch of salt at the moment because there was, for example, there was a really, really big study which caught a lot of attention two years ago.

They looked at post-mortem brains, the brains of people who died and people with dementia.

And they found that people with dementia seem to have more plastic in their brains than those who died and hadn't had dementia.

But then that maybe that was criticized because people were like, OK, you know, they hadn't actually properly, you know, control for the amount of background plastic.

Okay, and what kind of steps can you take, given that we might just be inhaling this stuff?

Because because there was a piece you pretty sort yourself in The Guardian at the start of the year where apparently a number of studies were being criticized by other scientists because apparently detection, particularly the really the nanoplastics is kind of at the limit of our technology at the moment.

Oh, definitely, definitely.

And there's a big issues of contamination.

So I think we, you know, we do need to take a little bit of this with a pinch of salt at the moment because there was, you know, for example, there was a really, really big study which caught like a lot of attention two years ago.

They looked at post-mortem brains, the brains of people who died and people with dementia.

And they found that people with dementia seem to have more plastic in their brains than those humans.

you know, who died and hadn't had dementia.

OK, and what kind of steps can you take, given that we might just be inhaling this stuff?

[laughs]

And I think, and I think that the answer is that football is, is culture, and it's historic.

And Tasmania was the second place outside of Melbourne that football was played.

It's a foundation state of football.

It's been played here for 160-odd years, which is why this desire for a Tasmanian team of the Devils is so part of the people's hearts because it's been played here for so long.

You know, in times of, of celebration and grief During wars, et cetera, people would gravitate to their local football club rooms, um, here, you know, in particularly in regional areas to celebrate births, deaths, marriages, and commemorations, et cetera.

So the, um, the football has played a really important role in the cultural DNA of communities, particularly in regional communities.

So, like, talk us through what the changes are going to be and how that makes you feel.

So,

you know, it's really, it's kind of, you know, it's been part of the DNA of the club and, you know, four of those cups that we've got were won during the Tasmanian era.

So it is a really special part of the club's history and a quarter of a century is a long time.

And so we do need to celebrate that in a meaningful and appropriate way.

So this weekend, as you know, it's doubly important because it is the first time that we've played Melbourne for premiership points here.

So that's significant in and of itself.

A whole bunch of Dees fans have been knocking down my door for tickets, as you might imagine.

It's like a Hawthorne theme park up there in Launceston, isn't it?

And David, in terms of good nutrition, does it become more or less important as we age?

Definitely becomes more important.

I mean, I think it's, it's a really sort of interesting space.

I've been sort of reporting on this and researching this book over the last kind of few years and speaking to, you know, hundreds of sort of aging scientists over the last kind of few ...

And there's really this kind of paradox in that, you know, on the one hand you've got like so kind of this collection of influencers who's really sort of obsessed on like the biohacking, like can we live to 200, all this kind of stuff.

But then on the other hand, you've actually got healthy life expectancy is actually sort of on the decline, you know.

And you've got all the rise of like inflammatory diseases in, in the young.

Um- David, what would you say in terms of the research that you did around dietary patterns? Are there any specific, um, components of those dietary patterns that you saw that were particularly prevalent?

What do most people not know about it, and if they do think they know about it, misunderstand it?

So in my book, I basically define what I call these 10 different types of nutritional stress, which affect the rate at which we age.

And there's some which people will be more familiar with, so the importance of getting enough omega-3s in your diet, at least through, either through basically having oily fish or taking supplements.

But some which people are maybe less familiar with, such as how you cook.

How you cook on a regular basis plays a big role in, in the rate at which you age.

So we're increasingly finding that rather than grilling or roasting or cooking a lot of our meals at high heat, having more meals where, which are slow cooked, so if you think stews or things like that, is really important to healthy aging, and there's a number of reasons behind that.

Some other key reasons, actually, the timing of when we eat is really, really important.

Where do you stand on, on, you know, personal responsibility? At what point does choice become an unfair word?