How The Science of Food Can Fix Your Health Problems

Cold open

00:00:00 Aleksandra King: In this episode of Beyond the Boardroom, we're going to be speaking to Nicola Vaughan, who is one of the UK's most uniquely qualified nutritionists. A former aerospace engineer with a first-class physics degree, now applying that same scientific precision to helping people like us heal chronic health issues, fix their metabolism and just feel human and energetic again. She has a really rare gift of making complex nutrition really, really easy to understand. No fluff, just real answers grounded in scientific and genuine knowledge. I think you're going to enjoy this one.

Interview

00:00:36 Aleksandra King: Nicola, welcome to Beyond the Boardroom.

00:00:39 Nicola Vaughan: Thanks for having me.

00:00:40 Aleksandra King: So like I said, I've got a little intro for you that I've put together, trying to do you justice for all the things that your big brain and your beautiful knowledge of nutrition. But I would also like to know how you would see yourself. How would you introduce yourself?

00:00:55 Nicola Vaughan: Okay, so I am a nutritionist, I'm a scientist as well, so I find that what I love the most is this unique blend of how the body really works, how we can understand when things are going a little bit wrong, and how to correct it with nutrition. So that's my job, as a bit of a health detective, as a nutritionist. And yeah, I enjoy finding out about how nutrition can really influence somebody's wellbeing, for the good.

00:01:28 Aleksandra King: Yeah, I love that. You've got your science backed there. There's a lot of, dare I say, nonsense out there at the moment. There's so much misinformation, there's such an overload of information, that the world of nutrition– if you even try and find anything out, there's just all this conflicting stuff. You just– it's overwhelming to know.

00:01:50 Nicola Vaughan: A lot of noise.

00:01:51 Aleksandra King: What should we be following? What should we be following, as of 2025, summer– what should we be doing? And that's why I brought you in, because I love evidence-based, scientifically proven facts.

00:02:06 Nicola Vaughan: Okay. And I think we have to consider there isn't a one-size-fits-all for everybody as well. We're all unique, we all have our different health goals, what we want to be achieving with our health. We've got our different journeys, our different terrain, our different upbringing. Everything has to be personalised, really. So there isn't like a one-size-fits-all. But that's not to say that there are absolutely some minimum standards, some minimums, some non-ex– kind of non– non-avoidable things we have to be doing, right? Which I think a lot of us perhaps don't know about, which is great to kind of spread the word about a little bit more.

00:02:48 Aleksandra King: Well, we'll go into those minimum things. So what I've done to make sure this is of maximum benefit to our viewers is I've looked up the most popular, the most commonly asked, over and over questions that people really, really, really want to know about nutrition. So these are the things we're all typing into Google all day long, all the time, all over the world. Okay, so we're going to flick through these– help me– one by one, we're going to knock those babies out.

00:03:16 Nicola Vaughan: Okay.

00:03:17 Aleksandra King: Okay, so the first and biggest question, which I can relate to, is: why am I exhausted all the time? And is food the reason? Can it be the reason?

00:03:27 Nicola Vaughan: Oh, great question. And isn't the world walking around– people walking around feeling absolutely flat. Food absolutely plays a huge role, what we eat plays a huge role.

00:03:38 Aleksandra King: And so 100%, is food one?

00:03:40 Nicola Vaughan: Well, it's probably food, it's probably a little bit of stress, it's probably a lack of sleep is involved. Food is absolutely– nutrition is absolutely essential. And when we think about how the body works, we need energy production, we need to make sure that we've got good kind of circulation going round, we need to have steady supply of energy over the course of the day. That's probably the number one reason why people will feel completely flat, is that they've not got those building blocks, they're not fuelling themselves with enough iron, enough B12 to make our red blood cells.

00:04:17 Aleksandra King: Uh-oh. Right. The first thing we said to each other, just the viewers know, this morning is, well, what did you eat for breakfast? And of course you had–

00:04:25 Nicola Vaughan: I had eggs. I had eggs and I had a protein coffee in the morning as well.

00:04:32 Aleksandra King: The standards are so high.

00:04:33 Nicola Vaughan: The standards are not that high. And I did a workout as well.

00:04:36 Aleksandra King: I know.

00:04:37 Nicola Vaughan: But it's just about reframing your day.

00:04:40 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:04:41 Nicola Vaughan: Reframing your day, going to bed well so that you can do all of these things before, you know, morning, in the morning.

00:04:47 Aleksandra King: I'm fuelled on probably, like most of the public, two coffees already, quite strong, and nothing else. How am I functioning right now? Am I digging into my reserves? Because I've got the energy, but I'll probably go flat, won't I?

00:05:01 Nicola Vaughan: You're running on probably quite a lot of adrenaline as well. Adrenaline, cortisol, so your stress hormones are keeping you going. They're going to be firing you. Well, it's not probably sustainable, it won't keep you going for very long. Whereas we need to have steady supply of energy over the course of the day, and the best way we're going to do that is making sure we're incorporating good quality protein with every meal. Protein, good fat, good healthy bit of fibre, wherever we can. And breakfast is often the meal that people really– they either neglect, or they don't really think about.

00:05:43 Aleksandra King: Yeah, but isn't it good? Because you hear all this stuff on the internet like, oh, fasting, oh, don't eat after 8:00 at night, or 7:00, or 5:00 in the afternoon or something, and then keep not eating until like lunch. There's all that stuff.

00:05:55 Nicola Vaughan: And I think timing is everything.

00:05:56 Aleksandra King: Timing is everything.

00:05:57 Nicola Vaughan: I think the fasting piece is really interesting, and you've kind of touched on two things there: the should you be eating later at night, and do you have breakfast in the morning. They're two separate things, really. If we think about it, we do need to have a period of not eating. Not eating is almost as important as what we eating.

00:06:19 Aleksandra King: Interesting.

00:06:20 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, so we do need to give our bodies a rest, our gut a rest.

00:06:23 Aleksandra King: Hours, do we need to not eat?

00:06:25 Nicola Vaughan: So ideally we should shoot for 14 hours, between 12 to 14 hours overnight without eating.

00:06:31 Aleksandra King: Wow, that's quite a long time.

00:06:33 Nicola Vaughan: Well, I– yes, we're designed to do it, though. We're designed to do it. And we're giving our body that really good period of rest. We can turn on so many processes to clean things up, to cellular repair, to rest the microbiome, all the kind of internal housekeeping actions. They happen when we've not got a state of fed, we've not got food that our body's needing to break down.

00:07:00 Aleksandra King: Yeah.

00:07:00 Nicola Vaughan: So there's the kind of not eating too late at night, definitely no snacking later on in the evening, sitting down on the sofa and eating crisps, you guys, the popcorn. Not helpful.

00:07:10 Aleksandra King: Not helpful.

00:07:10 Nicola Vaughan: Because we're constantly providing our body signals. If we consider that food is signals, nutrition is information, really. It's not just grazing and it's energy, it's providing the body with signals of, well, I need to do something with this. What it's going to be triggering hormones to be released that will have different impact in the body. So stopping eating after your last meal and trying to bring that last meal as early as you can. Not eating your last meal at 9:30, 10:00 at night, and then going to bed really late and then not being able to wake up in the morning.

00:07:46 Aleksandra King: I hear you. Okay, so we've already established: if you're feeling tired, food is almost certainly part of the issue.

00:07:53 Nicola Vaughan: It's part of the problem.

00:07:55 Aleksandra King: We need to be fasting for 14 hours, let's say around there, to give our bodies a break. And we need to be having like a good protein– protein for the breakfast.

00:08:06 Nicola Vaughan: Breakfast, yeah.

00:08:07 Aleksandra King: So those are just normal facts, and those are pretty scientifically based.

00:08:11 Nicola Vaughan: They're scientifically based, they're non-negotiables. Getting protein with every meal.

00:08:15 Aleksandra King: Non-negotiables. Okay.

00:08:16 Nicola Vaughan: And I feel breakfast does need a bit of a rebranding exercise, because we go for foods that are often really lacking in protein. We're not setting ourselves–

00:08:28 Aleksandra King: Cornflakes.

00:08:29 Nicola Vaughan: Cornflakes, a croissant.

00:08:32 Aleksandra King: I lived in France for a while and yes, I loved my croissant in the morning for breakfast. It's delicious. But it's not–

00:08:38 Nicola Vaughan: Pain au chocolat.

00:08:39 Aleksandra King: Pain au chocolat, croissant.

00:08:41 Nicola Vaughan: They're fantastic foods, they're delicious as a little treat, maybe on a weekend.

00:08:45 Aleksandra King: Have got good, like, bodies, you walk around and they look good, [unclear] know if they eat those every single day.

00:08:50 Nicola Vaughan: All right. Okay. Yeah, but I think that we– and when we think about our children as well, setting them off to school.

00:08:58 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:08:59 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, with not having a good– I mean, we hear this term blood sugar balanced meals, right? And what this is really meaning is that we're giving yourself food that is going to be giving your body a steady level of energy for hours to come, and we're not going to have like a blood sugar spike from just a bowl of cornflakes, or even worse, jam on toast and that's it. Keeping some protein in there.

00:09:27 Aleksandra King: My kids actually had oats. I did put the oats on for them.

00:09:30 Nicola Vaughan: Okay, okay.

00:09:31 Aleksandra King: Oats with a bit of nut butter stirred in, maybe.

00:09:35 Nicola Vaughan: Nice. And properly cooked, not those packets but the hardcore, the real– the real deal.

00:09:42 Aleksandra King: Okay, so the next question, popular one.

00:09:45 Nicola Vaughan: Mhm.

00:09:45 Aleksandra King: How can I tell if my metabolism isn't working? So if you have these blood tests and the doctor say, but you're fine, there's nothing really wrong with you– how do you know if it's your metabolism?

00:09:56 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, so well, first of all, the blood tests– we need to recognise that standard blood tests that we do are based on a normal population, right? They're based on data that's coming in that's normal. Normal's not optimal. Normal's not firing super well, everybody's doing really great. So–

00:10:16 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:10:16 Nicola Vaughan: I always– I mean, I review a ton of blood tests that come through where people are saying, yeah, but the doctor says my bloods are fine. Yeah. And you look at it and go, right, okay, there's stuff going on here that's not optimal. But going back to the question, how can you tell, regardless of any blood tests, and there are some real telltale signs. And the first would be if eating makes you tired. So if you have a meal and you need a bit of a nap after a meal, that's the classic sign really, that you're not– that you're verging towards insulin resistance, verging towards metabolic dysfunction.

00:10:57 Aleksandra King: Gosh.

00:10:58 Nicola Vaughan: We should feel energised from food, and yet so many people, they have a meal and then they have a bit of a crash, they have a bit of a slump, an energy slump, they sit on the sofa and maybe have a bit of a nap.

00:11:08 Aleksandra King: Wow.

00:11:09 Nicola Vaughan: It's a real sign that your body is not metabolising that food particularly well. So that's probably the number one.

00:11:16 Aleksandra King: Never occurred to me, something like that.

00:11:19 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, feeling sleepy after eating, that's not normal.

00:11:22 Aleksandra King: Not normal.

00:11:23 Nicola Vaughan: Not normal. And maybe if you're finding that you're putting on more weight around the middle as well.

00:11:29 Aleksandra King: Bloating?

00:11:30 Nicola Vaughan: Not necessarily bloating. Bloating is a bit different, but–

00:11:34 Aleksandra King: Temporary.

00:11:35 Nicola Vaughan: And more transient.

00:11:37 Aleksandra King: Yeah, we hope.

00:11:38 Nicola Vaughan: No, I'm talking more like we've started to put fat around the middle, fat around your waist. And it's not just a case of, well, I'm getting older, my metabolism is slowing down. No, it's just we're not supporting your metabolism in the right way, so you're putting down fat due to hormone changes that are going on, tied into metabolic health. So that kind of fat accumulation around the middle is also a sign that metabolism is not working well.

00:12:09 Aleksandra King: Accumulation on the middle, you can't say it's because I'm ageing.

00:12:13 Nicola Vaughan: No, no.

00:12:15 Aleksandra King: I love that, because it sort of frees you of the ageing person that's like, oh, hang on, ageing, don't you try and give me that fat around the middle.

00:12:22 Nicola Vaughan: No, we absolutely can address that, for sure. Hormonal changes especially for women are going to be influencing where fat is going.

00:12:31 Aleksandra King: Pesky hormones.

00:12:32 Nicola Vaughan: But it's not inevitable.

00:12:35 Aleksandra King: Okay, so is it possible to look healthy but be metabolically ill, sick?

00:12:42 Nicola Vaughan: That's a great question, and 100%, absolutely. I mean, many, many signs of metabolic dysfunction, many ways in which it will show is not necessarily by our physical appearance. There can be stuff going on at a cellular level or hormonal level that will be tied into metabolic dysfunction and your metabolism not working well. And there's even– there's a phenotype called TOFI. Have you heard of it?

00:13:10 Aleksandra King: No.

00:13:11 Nicola Vaughan: Thin on the– thin on the inside, fat– no, hold on, let me get this right. TOFI, thin on the outside, fat on the inside.

00:13:21 Aleksandra King: Thin inside–

00:13:21 Nicola Vaughan: Thin outside, fat inside. Essentially it's a skinny phenotype. You're skinny but you have got fat around your organs, fat on the inside. You may have very low muscle mass.

00:13:34 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:13:35 Nicola Vaughan: Muscle is a very, very important metabolic organ, really helps us be metabolic superheroes, muscle tissue. So you can be very, very skinny and metabolically not very well. You could be suffering with things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a– you would not visibly necessarily show any signs on the outside. You don't have to be overweight to suffer with PCOS, and yet it's the number one cause of unexplained infertility for women, and it's tied into metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance, which is tied into what we're eating.

00:14:16 Aleksandra King: What we're eating. So what we're eating can really be problematic and cause disease. I mean, we kind of know this but we don't really grasp it.

00:14:24 Nicola Vaughan: Like we don't.

00:14:25 Aleksandra King: Until we get ill, and then we go, oh no, should I change my diet? And then you hope it's not too late. So can you rewire your metabolism? Can you alter it, or do you have it for life? Like, is that– you're born with it, oh, she's got a great metabolism.

00:14:38 Nicola Vaughan: Oh, absolutely changes. Absolutely, we influence this. We influence it by what we're eating and how we're moving.

00:14:46 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:14:46 Nicola Vaughan: I touched on muscle tissue being a really, really helpful metabolic ally for us. So by incorporating changes to the [unclear: way in?] which we exercise, focusing on building skeletal muscle, really important for our metabolic health.

00:15:01 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:15:02 Nicola Vaughan: I preach about it all the time, whenever I'm working one-to-one or in group programmes, it's all around not just what you eat but how you're moving your body, and that will be impacting your metabolic health, 100%.

00:15:16 Aleksandra King: 100%. It's not a given, you're not born with it. Okay, and that's it. So let's just clarify this once and for all, okay. Why isn't this calorie counting working? What is it, this whole thing about calories? If you watch all these other podcasts, this ZOE podcast, this podcast, that podcast– let's just settle this right now.

00:15:38 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, let's settle it.

00:15:39 Aleksandra King: Let's settle it.

00:15:39 Nicola Vaughan: So calories are accounting for it like an energetic value for food, okay? That's what calories is. And I suppose if we were a perfect thermodynamic engine, calorie model would work quite well, because what you put in versus what you expend out, you would say, okay, there's a perfect thermodynamic input and output, it's fine. But our bodies are so complicated. They are dependent upon hormones that'll be influencing different ways in which energy is stored versus energy is burned. So it's much more complicated than that. And if we look at a pure calorific model, like, I don't know, like an avocado, super calorific, piece of white toast, hardly any calories to it. Does that mean that the piece of white toast is better for you, with a low-fat spread and a zero sugar jam, very, very low calories? Yeah. And yet avocado, salmon, eggs way higher in calories, but they–

00:16:49 Aleksandra King: What– [unclear: steak?] Amazing.

00:16:51 Nicola Vaughan: What the body will do with the food is very different from what it would do with your simple kind of white toast and jam. So we've got to think about the what you're putting on your plate as information that you're providing to the body, to say, I'm going to do something with this. And in the case of, if it's just calories from carbohydrates, your body will say, okay, we're going to have some insulin, which is a hormone that's secreted when we get a lot of this kind of carbohydrate foods in the body, but I want to store that as fat. So it will store that as fat rather than saying, okay, this is going to be helping me make skeletal muscle, this is going to keep me satiated for longer.

00:17:35 Aleksandra King: Okay, so I don't know if you've heard of Eliud Kipchoge? So he's like world-class marathon runner, absolute legend, two-hour marathon.

00:17:44 Nicola Vaughan: Yes.

00:17:45 Aleksandra King: So he– well, I watched what he eats on one of those little documentary things, and of course he has his beans and rice and all the lovely proteins and everything, he has that late at night. But actually after his morning run– actually no, before his morning run, before his morning run he has a tea and he has a bit of toast, which is on this white bread with jam. He has that. It's like the wrong food, but then he goes for his 15k run. So that's utilising, it's the information. I'm sending you an information to say, we're going to go here, we're going to burn that, then we come back and then we have proper food, and then he's got all this process. So there is a place for, let's say, the naughty food, whatever you want to call it, I don't know.

00:18:28 Nicola Vaughan: Well, we shouldn't kind of demonise food really. Not all that bad, right?

00:18:32 Aleksandra King: It's not all that bad, that's what I'm saying. For him, he's going out, he's burning it, he's running, burning that.

00:18:38 Nicola Vaughan: But we don't generally– we are absolutely, but we– most population will be eating and sitting, eating and then commuting in a car, or eating and sitting behind a desk, not burning it.

00:18:50 Aleksandra King: We're not burning it.

00:18:51 Nicola Vaughan: We're not. And when we burn it, when we move our skeletal muscle, again we're sending signals to say, right, what we've just eaten, I want that, I need that, I want that to be burned, I want that to be used. So it's one actually a really healthy habit stacking thing that people can start to do after eating is just moving after eating. Don't sit after eating, move. Go for a 15-minute walk, do some air squats in your kitchen. You'll be sending messages to your body to say, I've just eaten, I want to burn that, please don't store it.

00:19:27 Aleksandra King: Yeah, please don't. I don't want to store that right now, please don't store it.

00:19:31 Nicola Vaughan: Store it. Because you know where it will be stored as– it will generally be stored as fat, F-A-T.

00:19:36 Aleksandra King: Yeah, F-A-T. So snacking, that's helping us getting stuck in fat storing mode. It's basically the snacks, the biscuits, every biscuit 50 calories, 100 calories.

00:19:47 Nicola Vaughan: Yes. And when we think digestive biscuits, what are they mainly? They're mainly carbohydrates, which is sugar. So the body doesn't need it. And I suppose there's a few different problems to snacking. One is we're not giving our body a rest, we're not giving it any kind of fasted state, micro fasted state. Not talking about like 12 to 14 hour of a night's fast, but going three to four hours without eating is really important for digestive processes to have a cleanout, to be able to kind of push things through.

00:20:24 Aleksandra King: To chill.

00:20:25 Nicola Vaughan: To push things through, to metabolise them, to break things down. It's really important. If we're constantly grazing, or every hour or so we're just having another little something, all of that is being providing information to the body, as I mentioned, it's saying, do something with this, do something with this.

00:20:43 Aleksandra King: Yeah, but you know what, the information problem is having, like, my husband. He's the information problem, because he puts the biscuits, he buys the crisps, he buys all this stuff. He's so, like, he loves all that stuff, and it's everywhere. And then I see the information, the information is there's digestives there, and I can't help but pick one up because I'm walking past. It's like, I wouldn't– I just would not put that in my house ever.

00:21:02 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah.

00:21:02 Aleksandra King: But it's there. It's there.

00:21:04 Nicola Vaughan: And you know, these refined carbohydrates, yeah, they are a perfect– they've been designed, the big food companies design these to be super palatable, yeah, highly addictive, perfect mix of, in the case of a crisp, a bit of carbohydrate, a bit of fat, bit of salt.

00:21:23 Aleksandra King: Oh, so it's not just the salt, it's the sugar, it's the fat, it's the carbs, it's everything. So it's addictive.

00:21:27 Nicola Vaughan: And it's known it's addictive. There is an addiction to these ultra-processed foods. So the best thing to do is just not to have them in the house. Replace them. If you're feeling that you need a pick-me-up, go for something with protein and fat, go for some nuts, go for some biltong, dried meat, something that will actually provide you with good building blocks rather than just sugar.

00:21:52 Aleksandra King: So another question people asking, this one is about glucose, but it's not necessarily for the diabetic, because obviously if you have diabetes the glucose spikes are very dangerous. And it's just an everyday person, is a glucose spike or two dangerous or not? How serious is that? I mean, you've got these things that monitor the glucose spikes. Should we be doing that?

00:22:10 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, I love encouraging people to try a continuous glucose monitor for a couple of weeks, four weeks if you can. It's a really interesting individual experiment for people to do, where you're able to see what your blood sugar levels are doing after eating different things, after exercise.

00:22:33 Aleksandra King: It's science.

00:22:34 Nicola Vaughan: It's science.

00:22:35 Aleksandra King: Science, it's great.

00:22:37 Nicola Vaughan: I don't become too fixated on it. It's perfectly– it's a normal physiological response to have a spike after eating something that contains carbohydrates. That's normal. And we don't want to fear the glucose spikes. We do however want to make sure that we have a healthy climb back down again to a healthy glucose, blood glucose range. So the where we kind of find these wearables really helpful is just saying how much time are we spending in that healthy range. Because if we're not, if we're taking a long time to come back down into range, back down, that's a sign that maybe your body isn't using that glucose very well.

00:23:20 Aleksandra King: Okay.

00:23:20 Nicola Vaughan: If you've got crashes afterwards, maybe it's a sign that actually extreme thing. We want to be able to just come down nicely.

00:23:28 Aleksandra King: So we need the science, we need the wearable for it, and we want to know about that kind of thing.

00:23:33 Nicola Vaughan: Super helpful. And we're all individual.

00:23:35 Aleksandra King: Super helpful.

00:23:36 Nicola Vaughan: But I do feel that we place quite a lot of emphasis on tech and on trying to kind of see, is it helpful. Like, your intuition is probably quite needing to be working quite well as well. But I find these CGMs really interesting self-experiment.

00:23:59 Aleksandra King: Tell you something. So I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, which is like an autoimmune hyper– hyperthyroid–

00:24:06 Nicola Vaughan: Thyroid, yeah.

00:24:07 Aleksandra King: Disease thing, which I'm now in remission for, thank God. But the only reason why I found that was because of the wearable. It's because I tracked my running stats, my heart rate, my VO2 max, which is how my body processed oxygen, my running speeds, the paces, also my weight on the scale. And all that together showed me a picture that despite very, very good training, pretty decent nutrition– I mean, I'm not the best in the world but I'm also not terrible, I don't love sweets and all that rubbish– but I noticed all those going down. So why is my VO2 max dropping when I'm training and I'm training so hard? And I thought, I'm just being not training hard enough, or maybe I'm ageing and I'm just supposed to get slower, and all these things. And of course the intuition, there was also things saying something's not quite right. But really those stats. And when I went to the doctor, an NHS doctor, he was like, just stop, stop looking at these stats, you're just stressing yourself out, it's just stress, there's nothing wrong with you, you're so healthy, look at you, you can outrun all of us, and all that sort of thing, when I shouldn't have actually been running. But when I went to my endo, she said, look, the wearable, it's actually good– do you monitor– because something like your heart rate is so important, to know what your regular heart, resting heart rate is and what an abnormal heart rate is for you. Like you're saying, everyone's different. So there is a place for it, I guess, medically, from what she's–

00:25:31 Nicola Vaughan: Absolutely. And it will be picking up on your recovery, your stress, and these are all signals your body is under some kind of strain.

00:25:39 Aleksandra King: Mhm, invisible strain.

00:25:41 Nicola Vaughan: Yes, invisible strain, but they are– yeah, there is– it can be very, very helpful for people just to monitor.

00:25:48 Aleksandra King: Totally helpful, because also with a metabolism, with like your running speed, your body won't give you the muscle if there's something wrong with you. It's not going to be put, because muscle's expensive for the body. So my muscle mass was going down, I think, and now that I'm in recovery and I've– let's say we don't get over it forever, but basically I've, I've, I'm on the other side now. You see the muscle mass is improving, you see the running speeds are improving, and your body's saying, okay, well, I'll give you some more muscle back, we'll make that, and we'll let you have a bit more, the whole running speed comes back like, we'll let you go a little bit faster now. Yeah, and you think, okay, so therefore I'm on the right track now. But we don't want to mess that up with only two coffees and then go back to those old patterns.

00:26:29 Nicola Vaughan: You need to– and a lot of it comes down to sending your body safety signals.

00:26:34 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:26:34 Nicola Vaughan: Through nutrition. And stress plays a role in this as well. But sending your body signals by eating the right things that are saying, I'm good to make thyroid hormones, I'm good to build muscle, here are your building blocks.

00:26:51 Aleksandra King: Yeah.

00:26:52 Nicola Vaughan: And we don't get the building blocks through supplementation. We can, but it's not ideal.

00:26:56 Aleksandra King: It's not ideal.

00:26:57 Nicola Vaughan: You want to be getting the building blocks, these amino acids that are essential, these fats that are essential for building your hormones, for making your cells work well in the body. All of this comes from the nutrients that you're putting on your plate, and the way in which you're digesting them, the way in which you're eating them.

00:27:15 Aleksandra King: So it's really, we kind of take the information from the wearables, but we then have to think about really making sure that our plate is– yeah, adjusting and breaking the old habits. And then even someone like me not going back to the bad habits, or if you do temporarily, to bring yourself back and go, I'm going to have the protein breakfast tomorrow. I didn't have today, tomorrow's a new day, tomorrow going to do it, and try and adjust.

00:27:46 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, be interesting to know how you feel throughout the day, in not having a good– whether you feel kind of jittery, or if you start to feel a bit hungry kind of mid-morning. You should be able to eat breakfast– we should be able to eat breakfast at 7:00, say, and go through till 1:00.

00:28:06 Aleksandra King: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:07 Nicola Vaughan: And that's good.

00:28:08 Aleksandra King: 100%. Okay, so what is the healthiest way to eat? Because of this whole plant-based thing. Okay, do we want to eat less meat, do we want to eat more meat, do we want to eat plant-based? If we want to eat less meat, what's the healthiest way to eat less meat? This whole topic, okay, which is a crazy one, and people are typing it and they want to know, what are your thoughts on this plant-based and meat? Good for you, not good for you? How much?

00:28:34 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah. Well, I should say, put my bias out straight off. Okay, I'm an omnivore.

00:28:40 Aleksandra King: Yes, I eat everything, same here.

00:28:43 Nicola Vaughan: Okay. Proud omnivore.

00:28:46 Aleksandra King: Yeah.

00:28:46 Nicola Vaughan: I'm a proud, proud omnivore, I'm not fearful of meat at all. In fact it's very important, very important for me where I am in my life, perimenopausal woman, 100%. Putting muscle on, working for my longevity, busy working iron stores up, keeping– I am keeping my B12 up. Really important. There are some people who, I feel, unless it's a very, very well-thought-through, well-supplemented plant-based diet, then it's not for everybody. There are certain demographics who really do need– arguably we all need a lot of these minerals and vitamins that you find in so beautifully packaged forms in animal-based foods. So there are– and if somebody is suffering with anaemia, for example, I would say, where are you getting your iron from, where are you getting your B12 from, if you are following a plant-based diet.

00:29:57 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:29:57 Nicola Vaughan: Because we know that accessing some of these really, really important nutrients, like choline as well, for the brain, for detoxification pathways–

00:30:08 Aleksandra King: Choline.

00:30:08 Nicola Vaughan: Choline, I mean, the choline is abundant in eggs. If somebody's finding, a following a plant-based diet and they're suffering in any kind of way with fatigue, with heavy menstrual bleeding maybe, so you've got iron losses going on, whether you are suffering with hormonal fluctuations, older age needing good quality protein, I would say just think really carefully about whether plant-based is the right thing for you. The brain, the brain needing omega-3 fats, for example, and we get them so much better when we're eating oily fish rather than eating plant-based sources of these omega-3 fats.

00:30:53 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:30:53 Nicola Vaughan: So there are certain demographics who perhaps a plant-based diet is not ideal for. That being said, plants I'm all for. I love my cruciferous vegetables, I love a bitter salad, there's a definite place for plants. But I think that sometimes it's to the detriment of what are we missing out on. And certainly for many people trying to hit those protein targets is really difficult. Eating sufficient protein for our brain health, for our muscle health, for our overall wellbeing, is quite hard to do if we're not eating animal sources.

00:31:32 Aleksandra King: I'm with you, I love, I love meat, I couldn't give it up. So this obsession with eating clean, is it a good obsession or not?

00:31:42 Nicola Vaughan: That's a great question. So eating clean, by which we are meaning– eating– are we meaning there just eating more plants, or are we meaning eating organic, or are we eating–

00:31:55 Aleksandra King: Let's take this from the internet sphere. Okay, eating clean.

00:31:59 Nicola Vaughan: Eating clean. Who knows what people mean by eating clean? I don't know. Maybe it means just zero processed foods, maybe it means no sugar. I actually don't know. That's a problem in itself.

00:32:09 Aleksandra King: I think it is a problem in itself, what does that mean.

00:32:12 Nicola Vaughan: Love the concept of going back to basics, right, of eating whole food, eating whole food, cooking from scratch, avoiding packets and barcodes and boxes and foods that have got many ingredients. So there is this concept of ultra-processed foods which are ubiquitous now in our environment. We've struggled to go anywhere without seeing foods that have got– you look at the label on the back and half of the ingredients you won't be able to even pronounce. They aren't items that you would have be able to go into your cupboard, pick out those ingredients and make whatever it is that you have found.

00:32:50 Aleksandra King: Let's be honest, we don't read those labels.

00:32:52 Nicola Vaughan: Which is fine– and we should, because I feel that when we can start to recognise what are some of the ingredients, these ingredients which are emulsifiers, they are preservatives, there's no place for those in our– well, let me rephrase. They have become such a dominant part of our diet, and yet they are nutritionally often devoid of many of the nutrients that we need to be healthy. They will have vitamins that have stripped out of them.

00:33:25 Aleksandra King: So what are they then? What are they, just filler foods?

00:33:29 Nicola Vaughan: They're filler foods, they're convenient, they are super palatable, they're foods that are designed to satisfy our cravings for something that is going to be high in fat but high in sugar, high in salt at the same time. So they're our classic fast foods, prepared ready meals that are easy to throw in the microwave, heat up, and there you go, you've got a meal. And yet they won't have a lot of the nutrients that we really need.

00:34:02 Aleksandra King: Yeah, sorry for interrupting, but I'm in marketing, and it's just so sad how marketing was utilised to give us, give people, give the world food that's just so awful for the planet and awful for us. And the marketing behind it is so good. It's me, which is why I really believe in, as a marketer I only want to market what I believe in, that it is a, I'll stand by that, it's great, it's a good product. I don't want to ever market a ready meal.

00:34:34 Nicola Vaughan: Or, yeah. And it's really hard because they're targeting, they're targeting the demographics that are very vulnerable.

00:34:42 Aleksandra King: Yes, right.

00:34:43 Nicola Vaughan: They're targeting, well, children, picking for the breakfast cereal that has got the in a hurry plastic trinket in the box that is going to be an exciting thing to open.

00:34:53 Aleksandra King: The law, really.

00:34:54 Nicola Vaughan: It really is, and should be, to kind of acknowledge how addictive these foods are as well.

00:35:00 Aleksandra King: Yeah, or give us warning labels, like with cigarettes, you show the throat with cancer. Like, why don't you show them colon cancer, or show big warning that it's addictive, or could cause cancer, like 70% of people eating this get cancer. I mean, I don't know, something like that. Just warn us, please warn us.

00:35:16 Nicola Vaughan: And taking them away from vulnerable places.

00:35:20 Aleksandra King: Yes.

00:35:21 Nicola Vaughan: Taking them out of hospitals where people are there to get well, whereas the cafeterias in hospitals are full of these kind of–

00:35:30 Aleksandra King: Yeah, shouldn't be allowed. It's really simple.

00:35:31 Nicola Vaughan: No, shouldn't be allowed.

00:35:33 Aleksandra King: Yeah. Okay, so there's a lot of diets going on that are out there on the internet, and influencers talking about them, things like keto, gluten-free– I don't know if you call that a diet– dairy-free. So let's start with keto. Yes or no, keto?

00:35:52 Nicola Vaughan: I love a low-carbohydrate diet, I think. Let's distinguish that from keto, because I think that, so the ketogenic diet in its true sense is very, very low-carbohydrate, like 20 grams a day carbohydrate, very low-carbohydrate.

00:36:10 Aleksandra King: Mean in real terms, 20 grams, like what is that, a handful, like is it–

00:36:13 Nicola Vaughan: If you're following a very strict ketogenic diet like that, that has been used medically for putting, epilepsy treatment. So you would really need to be working under the supervision of somebody who is going to be measuring food and literally measuring and checking that the carbohydrate content doesn't go above too much, and it has to be very, very high fat and moderate protein. That's like your true ketogenic therapy type diet, that's really used medically for epilepsy, because of the way in which treatment-resistant epilepsy can, people with these, this very difficult condition, their brains can respond really well to ketones. And ketones is what is the end product of a ketogenic diet, so it's what the liver will make as a source of fuel.

00:37:07 Aleksandra King: Okay.

00:37:08 Nicola Vaughan: So that's what the keto, a straight, straight ketogenic diet is essentially that. However, keto type food, keto diets have become very, very popular and have done for years and years and years. You look at the Atkins diet, for example, that was very famous until the poor gentleman died and then people were like, well, maybe the Atkins diet isn't so great after all. But the Atkins diet as well is a very low carbohydrate diet, not being fearful of eating fat and good, good quality protein in the diet. These are all very healthy diets because of what they're doing to your blood sugar level.

00:37:51 Aleksandra King: Okay. Okay.

00:37:53 Nicola Vaughan: So by restricting carbohydrates, by lowering carbohydrates, especially the kind of carbohydrates that haven't got any fibre with them, so our breads and our rice and our potatoes.

00:38:04 Aleksandra King: Yeah, we want the fibre in the carb, we need–

00:38:06 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, fibre's okay. However, when we eating these kind of foods we are raising our blood sugar levels, and we only want about a teaspoon of sugar in the blood at any one time. It's about four or five grams of teaspoon, that's it, that's your perfect homeostasis level.

00:38:26 Aleksandra King: Those builders that ask me for two heaped teaspoons all the time, and have, drink their Red Bull, they're drinking, but they have several a day.

00:38:33 Nicola Vaughan: About what's then happening, so insulin then comes, because we don't want too much sugar in the bloodstream. Too much sugar becomes quite sticky and damages and leads to ageing and all kinds of metabolic chaos.

00:38:45 Aleksandra King: We'll get to that, ageing.

00:38:47 Nicola Vaughan: We'll get to ageing, inflammaging. So we'll get to ageing. But too much sugar in the blood is dangerous, it's not helpful, it's not conducive to good health. So what happens is our body's really clever, and the pancreas turns on and says, right, well, let's get insulin to come in, grab that sugar and tell it to be put into cells. And that's insulin's job. Now over time, when we're constantly eating foods that are going to be raising our blood sugar, like we do in these, all these carbohydrates that are everywhere in our diet, like our builder with our two teaspoons of tea that we're just sugar, drinking the two teaspoons of sugar, that sugar gets into the bloodstream very quickly, and insulin's job is to come and like say, right, we need to deal with this.

00:39:33 Aleksandra King: Eliud Kipchoge, he's going to run, that's going to run it, he'll burn it off.

00:39:37 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, because you need the carbs. If we're not burning it off, the body just says, insulin will say, like, I want, let's just store this as fat.

00:39:44 Aleksandra King: Yeah, because I was working with a running coach at one stage, and the coach said, look, you need to up your carbs, because you're running too far to justify having so few. So in my case, when I was running, Eliud Kipchoge, longer distances, you need more carbs, right?

00:39:57 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a– and there are, but there are some who are very well fat adapted athletes who run on no carbohydrates, very low carbohydrates. They're tapping into fat storage, and that's perhaps a topic for another day. But I think that going back to the ketogenic diet and why that's so helpful, or a lower carbohydrate diet, is that what are we doing to our blood sugar levels when we're lowering these carbohydrates? We're lowering our blood sugar levels, not hypoglycaemic, we're just steadying them, and we're able then to lower insulin. And that is really important, because it's actually insulin that's associated with so many diseases of prosperity, these diseases that we associate with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer's even, all of these diseases, cancer, many cancers associated with elevated insulin from elevated blood sugar levels.

00:40:57 Aleksandra King: So these refined foods, these, these without fibre, let's say, the sugary ones, they are genuinely behind disease, like genuinely as in scientifically proven, they are genuinely behind disease. So when we have these questions, the headlines, Mail Online, Sun, whatever it is you're reading, Telegraph, that so many young people are getting cancer, why is it so many young people getting cancer? It's these foods.

00:41:24 Nicola Vaughan: It's probably a number of factors, but you cannot say that food has got no impact on it when you look at the diets. Making sure that we are, well, if we look at what are these people eating, what are the people who are being impacted by these diseases, it's not only going to be down to foods, but by certain account nutrition and sugar and excess glucose and insulin is having a major role, without a doubt.

00:41:55 Aleksandra King: Okay, so, okay, fine. So gluten-free, dairy-free, just quickly touching on those two.

00:42:01 Nicola Vaughan: Slightly different, slightly different. There are absolutely cases where people should be avoiding gluten in particular. It can be very damaging to the gut, given that 70, 80% of your immune system resides in the gut.

00:42:18 Aleksandra King: Mhm.

00:42:19 Nicola Vaughan: I always consider whether gluten is playing a role in any autoimmune conditions, certainly.

00:42:25 Aleksandra King: Mhm, because your immune system is reside, it starts in the gut. Tested for that, I think.

00:42:31 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah. And there is such a thing, I mean, the coeliac disease is at one extreme, that is a, you can't have any gluten for that.

00:42:37 Aleksandra King: No gluten, absolutely.

00:42:38 Nicola Vaughan: Absolutely. But we have got non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.

00:42:43 Aleksandra King: Okay.

00:42:43 Nicola Vaughan: So people can genuinely be very sensitive to gluten.

00:42:47 Aleksandra King: And you bloat.

00:42:48 Nicola Vaughan: And we bloat. Gluten can contribute to leaky gut, which is a term that's often used, but essentially gluten is breaking apart these tight junctions, these proteins that are holding your epithelial cells together. Your cells that are lining your gut wall can get damaged by too much gluten. So avoiding grains containing gluten can be really beneficial for a lot of people. And dairy, similar. Dairy, people will be often suffering with either the sugars that are in milk, so lactose, is different to dairy proteins, which is casein. So you can either have an issue with the protein in the milk or the lactose sugars in the milk. However, one way which I love to encourage people to incorporate dairy is go for fermented dairy, because the action of fermenting, so kefir for example, or Greek yoghurts, really helpful, really beneficial. And a lot of people who can't drink milk are fine with kefir because the bacteria have already started to break down some of those sugars.

00:43:54 Aleksandra King: They fermented the sugars. I'm really like, I'm really grateful to my parents now, because as you're talking about these things, and I mentioned the oats and things, this is an– and just normal foods you cook at home, you buy the steak, you have your grains and beans. This is the way that I grew up at home. My parents just did that sort of thing. And I remember going to school and looking what other kids have for lunch, and I would get jealous because they'd have like a Nutella sandwich on white bread, yeah, and they had crisps. And I'd think, why are my parents so boring? They gave me a tomato and they thought that was a treat. So but actually I'm so grateful, because it meant that all those foundational years growing up I had such healthy, beautiful food.

00:44:34 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah.

00:44:35 Aleksandra King: And that must account for something, if you're growing up with a nice– I've tried to give my children the same, of course there's lots of exposure to things, but in general, yes, to lay the foundation of decent food.

00:44:45 Nicola Vaughan: Yes, definitely. Common sense food.

00:44:47 Aleksandra King: Common sense food.

00:44:48 Nicola Vaughan: And when I was making packed lunches, ditto. It was the thing I would struggle with the most was the pressure, the pressure to have the treat from the little packets of crisps that go in, the chocolate that goes in. These foods, they don't add any value, they're not the–

00:45:04 Aleksandra King: Sad, the kids, they do, they feel like they're the one missing out. I get the cucumber, great.

00:45:09 Nicola Vaughan: They're missing out. But we try, and I try and help my children, I have two children as well, and try to help them understand that food, what they're putting in their body, is information for the body. And we need to tell the body, I want to make strong muscles, I want to have a good firing brain, I want to be having loads of energy to run around in my break time. We won't be doing this if we're not providing our body with those building blocks, spiking those insulins.

00:45:39 Aleksandra King: Okay, so on the bloating, we've touched about, because lots of people bloat, it's one of the questions, why am I bloated? But I think we can establish that you could have a gluten intolerance, you need to check your bloods.

00:45:51 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, it could be. Do you know, so many of us are in a state of fight or flight, so many of us are stressed, so many of us eat on the go, we eat in the car or we eat at our desk. And yeah, we need to consider how the body's digestive system is designed to work. And when we're eating and we're stressed, we're not able to secrete stomach acid.

00:46:17 Aleksandra King: Mhm, okay.

00:46:18 Nicola Vaughan: And this is, okay, this is so important. We think about digestion starts in the mouth, we've got to chew for certain, okay. You can't just inhale your food, much as my 14-year-old would like to demonstrate. Mean time, you've got to start to break down the food. But only when we have got really good stomach acid production, when we're not in a stressed state, will we be able to start all of those enzymatic processes of breaking down the food. Bloating often happens due to low stomach acid. So when the food gets into our small intestine, it's just not had a very good start up in the stomach, digestive juices haven't started to really flow, and it's like a cascade that then also doesn't work well, a bit slower down the chain.

00:47:11 Aleksandra King: Yeah, yeah.

00:47:12 Nicola Vaughan: Don't have good stomach acid production, you won't get all those messages to say, right, I now need my enzymes, I now need loads of lipases and amylase and–

00:47:23 Aleksandra King: Never thought about that.

00:47:24 Nicola Vaughan: We never thought about that, when we're eating in a rush. Yeah, and often it's one of the simplest things we can do that has the biggest impact on our bloating, is slowing down digestive processes.

00:47:38 Aleksandra King: Hard to slow down, Nicola.

00:47:40 Nicola Vaughan: It's chew your food.

00:47:42 Aleksandra King: So hard to chew your food well.

00:47:43 Nicola Vaughan: Yes, sit at the table and have that meal with the family calmly. Have conversations, put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls, where al fresco possible.

00:47:52 Aleksandra King: Love it. Yeah. Do we need probiotics? Do we be swallowing those?

00:47:58 Nicola Vaughan: Ah well, that's a great– probiotics have absolutely got incredible research behind them, yes. I'm not a fan of broad strain, like just pop a probiotic for any kind of reason, because there's a lot of research behind particular strains of probiotics being really important for different aspects of health. So there are, for example, psychobiotics, which is a new term, that has looked at these probiotics that directly help the gut-brain axis, so are directly supportive of anxiety, for example. So I wouldn't go kind of popping any old probiotic if you suffer with anxiety, I would look at the specific strains of probiotics that really we know can influence the brain.

00:48:48 Aleksandra King: Shall we go to a nutritionist to check what we need, or shall we, can we go on ChatGPT and go, which one should I take, what do you recommend? I mean, I know people are doing this, they're saying, what diet do you, what do you, how do we know which one we need?

00:49:02 Nicola Vaughan: So you could ask ChatGPT, so I'm suffering right now with anxiety, these are– what I would always start with food. What kind of foods are really going to support me with this? And it will hopefully give you lots of ideas, and then you can look to see, right, am I eating all of these, how am I doing? You can do stool testing to actually look at your microbiome. But what I always consider, it's a very transient place, the microbiome, it's changing all the time. You go on holiday for a week to France and your microbiome will be very different from one week in London.

00:49:43 Aleksandra King: But also ChatGPT still makes mistakes, and it's not going to tailor to you because it doesn't know your blood unless you put all your test results in there. I have been guilty of using ChatGPT for such things sometimes, but it's interesting, the analytics, but it makes mistakes, so you got to be careful, don't you?

00:49:58 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, it would. And I would, I would look for reputable types of probiotics as well, so where you source your probiotics from.

00:50:08 Aleksandra King: Yeah.

00:50:09 Nicola Vaughan: You want them to survive the transit of your stomach acid.

00:50:14 Aleksandra King: Yeah.

00:50:15 Nicola Vaughan: They need to be enteric coated, they need to be have a coating on the capsule so that they get to the gut. We don't need probiotics in the stomach.

00:50:23 Aleksandra King: Right.

00:50:23 Nicola Vaughan: We need probiotics in the gut. So yeah, I would seek, seek advice from a professional.

00:50:30 Aleksandra King: Yes, it's probably the way forward. Okay, let's look at our environment a little bit. When we spoke before in our pre-podcast call that we had, you spoke to me about mould.

00:50:41 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah.

00:50:42 Aleksandra King: There is an issue in the UK with mould. There's also an issue in these fancy mansions. You heard about Gene Hackman and all these things with mould in these, in this, when it's dry in LA. I mean, I don't, I don't know if he was in LA but he lived– I might be wrong, but–

00:50:52 Nicola Vaughan: Well, anywhere where you have air conditioning generally. We think about air conditioning ducts and what have you. Yeah, mould, mould is an issue that I see a lot in my clinical practice as being a major contributor to illness, to poor health. And it's not the mould we see. So when we think about mould, sometimes we as homeowners can become a bit embarrassed. It's not, it's not any sign that your house is dirty. We need to kind of take away the stigma of mould completely. Mould is often very hidden, okay, and it's not the mould that we see that is necessarily the problem. So mould creates spores. So mould most often originates from water, so water damage in a building. Mould will make spores, and spores throw off these mycotoxins into the environment, and these are tiny, microscopic, they're nanometres in size.

00:51:53 Aleksandra King: [unclear] them, or do they go through our pores, or what?

00:51:55 Nicola Vaughan: Both. So we inhale them, so they get into our respiratory tract, we ingest them so they get into our gastrointestinal tract, they penetrate the skin. So we can't get away from it.

00:52:08 Aleksandra King: We can't get away from it.

00:52:10 Nicola Vaughan: It's an onslaught. And not everybody, when I work with people that are suffering with sickness that's tied into mycotoxin exposure, you could have a house of four, five people and only one person may be affected, may have signs that it's bothering them, that their body isn't able to kick out the mycotoxins.

00:52:32 Aleksandra King: Why, why them?

00:52:33 Nicola Vaughan: Well, and this is where I find the world of nutrigenomics really interesting. So your genetics, so how your genes are working, plays a massive role in helping us understand why somebody is not able to cope with a mycotoxin exposure compared to the next person. So it's not like, I'm not looking for genetic mutations, this is like little spelling mistakes that are helping your genes detoxify.

00:53:03 Aleksandra King: Okay, so detox, a natural detox from your own genetics.

00:53:06 Nicola Vaughan: Detox, helping your genes in metabolising things, in helping your genes transport things around the body. Like, we're all, you're very unique to your siblings, very unique to your children. Your blueprint is absolutely just you. And we can test for this, and when you have these tests it goes with you for life. It's a really important, I think, valuable insight into how we work. But why mycotoxins and why mould will affect some people more than others is often due to how they are built, how they work, and their sensitivities. So what areas did they need more supporting than others, why they more vulnerable than the next person? This is the brilliant world of nutritional therapy really, is kind of looking at exposure, looking at nutrients to support them, but looking at genetics, looking at how they're built, how they are working.

00:54:11 Aleksandra King: So the solution would be obviously stop the exposure, but then also heal the body from, detoxify, use the right food and actually address it. And you can test for this, so if someone came to you, you would test for this?

00:54:24 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, it's a urinary test that I use for looking at mycotoxins, so they're excreted in the urine.

00:54:29 Aleksandra King: Doing, yeah.

00:54:30 Nicola Vaughan: It's a really, it's a non-invasive test as well, so it's a really important test to do. And the exposure can be years ago.

00:54:37 Aleksandra King: All right, have to be a current exposure?

00:54:40 Nicola Vaughan: So mycotoxins, if you don't eliminate them, they become trapped in the body. They become trapped, they get incorporated into fat tissue in particular.

00:54:51 Aleksandra King: Oh my goodness.

00:54:52 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah.

00:54:53 Aleksandra King: Get those out, get them out, exterminate that stuff, do it.

00:54:57 Nicola Vaughan: We think about how to get them out. I mean, you touched on a really important point which is you need to get out of the environment. So if the environment that you're in right now is where you've had a water leak, or you've had plasterboard that is, you've seen there's some water damage, or if there's visible signs of, behind posters in student accommodation there's black mould behind it, you get out of the environment.

00:55:23 Aleksandra King: First, get out first and foremost. You need to go to [unclear: Nicola?], get a urine test, and then you test, yeah, that stuff, and you eliminate, going to do something about it. Food is so helpful.

00:55:33 Nicola Vaughan: Food is really helpful. It's, we need to make sure we've got lots of good quality fat because it's stored in fat, so we want to make sure that we're moving around our fat and incorporating lovely omega-3 fats, our oily fish in particular, really helps. And natural binders, things like kale, flax seeds, they're naturally going to bind to the mycotoxins and help with the elimination. We need really good gut health.

00:56:02 Aleksandra King: So yeah, maybe a whole podcast on mould, this is–

00:56:05 Nicola Vaughan: Well, this is very important.

00:56:07 Aleksandra King: It's really important.

00:56:09 Nicola Vaughan: And it's because it's so rarely looked at. It's quite often that missing piece if somebody's been suffering chronically for a number of years with fatigue, mental health, ADHD as well, the development of tics, suicidal ideation, really low mood. A lot of mental health conditions can be tied to a mycotoxin exposure.

00:56:34 Aleksandra King: You're kidding me.

00:56:35 Nicola Vaughan: It's huge, absolutely huge.

00:56:37 Aleksandra King: So okay, so everyone watching, you have any of these, or anyone you know suffers from any of the things you've just said, yeah, go and get a urine test.

00:56:46 Nicola Vaughan: Get a urine test. They're not expensive to do, they're simple to do. It's a urine test that will look for mycotoxins. I'm happy to chat to anybody who wants to look at this.

00:56:55 Aleksandra King: We'll leave your details in the podcast description so people can contact you. But that is, I mean, yeah, it's an–

00:57:05 Nicola Vaughan: Just on how serious mycotoxins can be, because it's under-appreciated. The United Nations, they publish their little, for anyone going out in the field and working on dangerous sites, yeah, they have a little flip chart that kind of has all the dangerous, dangerous things to, and things like that, Ebola.

00:57:26 Aleksandra King: Oh yeah, Ebola.

00:57:27 Nicola Vaughan: Ebola's right up there. Ebola's, yeah, like corn. The next one under Ebola is one of those mycotoxins.

00:57:32 Aleksandra King: No.

00:57:33 Nicola Vaughan: It's that dangerous to our health, really. It's right there.

00:57:36 Aleksandra King: So literally under, you've got Ebola and then literally under Ebola. So they are all over the world, like this is a global–

00:57:43 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, it's, yeah, published by the United Nations, so they, it's, they are recognised of. There's ochratoxin is a main one that I see, aflatoxin. There are, there are tons that are tested. The urine tests that I work with, they test 15 or so of the most common. But yeah, ochratoxin in particular is really damaging to, carcinogenic, it's a whole list of things which is not good for our health, but they affect us in many, many ways.

00:58:13 Aleksandra King: Oh, so we're ingesting things, we're ingesting, maybe we're having too much sugar, we're having those digestives, the packet of crisps comes out, the Red Bull, whatever it might be, and the mould comes in.

00:58:23 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, inhale it, and it's this combination.

00:58:26 Aleksandra King: Yeah, and then you give someone a hectic crazy life and stress and all that, and it makes everything worse, like a spiral.

00:58:32 Nicola Vaughan: And I do wonder if I'm seeing more and more of it now because of all of these other things which are not in place, because of the dietary issues that we've got, because our bodies is already maybe under so much strain. We've always lived in damp environments, the UK is a, loads of trees, it's a damp, old houses, yes, but we see so much more mycotoxin illness now, maybe because the pressures that our body's under, like our detoxification pathways are already choked full.

00:59:06 Aleksandra King: Pollution.

00:59:07 Nicola Vaughan: Pollution, plastics, all of these endocrine disruptors, things that we're inhaling, that we're eating, that are damaging our hormones. Glyphosate, things that are sprayed on our crops. Maybe it's that we're just under so much burden now compared to 20 years ago, and that's why we're seeing so many–

00:59:28 Aleksandra King: We try and eat this, sorry, Nicola, but then we try and eat this food to help us and then they've sprayed it.

00:59:33 Nicola Vaughan: They sprayed it, yeah. They, it's a big issue.

00:59:37 Aleksandra King: It's a big issue. Eat organic. I mean, I'm trying to find solutions here in this world of, so certainly. So yeah, what can we do? Let's just go positive now. What can we do?

00:59:47 Nicola Vaughan: So there is something called the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen when it comes to environmental toxins. So these are products, vegetables and fruit, that are sprayed. Okay, so the Environmental Working Group publishes a free guide each year, they review it, what are our top 12 foods that are most riddled with pesticide residue.

01:00:09 Aleksandra King: Okay, let's go.

01:00:09 Nicola Vaughan: Okay, I'm not going to be able to tell them off the top of my head.

01:00:12 Aleksandra King: Just give us but some.

01:00:13 Nicola Vaughan: Some on there will be strawberries and apples.

01:00:16 Aleksandra King: Stop it, I love strawberries.

01:00:18 Nicola Vaughan: We love them. Just clean them, clean them before you eat them, wash them really well. If you can't buy organic– no, not everyone can buy organic everything, I'm not suggesting that we do– but wash them. A simple kind of, I get a bowl and just put water, bicarb, simple bicarb and a little bit of vinegar in the water and leave them for 10–

01:00:40 Aleksandra King: In water is enough, you have to–

01:00:41 Nicola Vaughan: No, you need to kind of rub off, not rub off, but just leave, leave them for 10.

01:00:46 Aleksandra King: Rinse is okay, suffice?

01:00:48 Nicola Vaughan: Like, no, not going to get rid of pesticide residues. So yeah, if you can't buy organic–

01:00:53 Aleksandra King: You [unclear] earlier to tell me this information, this is– I bought us expensive.

01:00:58 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, yeah, a bit of bicarb, a little bit of lemon juice, or something to activate.

01:01:03 Aleksandra King: The little lemon juice.

01:01:04 Nicola Vaughan: Just Jif lemon juice and bicarb, put it in the water, it fizzles a little bit, but put your apples in that water, just leave them for 10 minutes or so and then drain them on the side.

01:01:16 Aleksandra King: Oh gosh.

01:01:16 Nicola Vaughan: Grow your own if you can. If you have the luxury of a little allotment or garden or whatever, yeah, fantastic. And find a friend that grows, and you grow one thing, they grow another, and you share it about.

01:01:28 Aleksandra King: Or some of these companies that do like the organic farming, and they can, I love my community farm.

01:01:33 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, community farm, absolutely, yeah.

01:01:35 Aleksandra King: Same. So that is the way forward. Oh, it's just absolutely horrible. And then the pollution, there's not much you can do about that.

01:01:43 Nicola Vaughan: No.

01:01:43 Aleksandra King: Pollution in the streets of the London and all that stuff. So yeah, so we're basically bombarded by all this stuff, and then we can protect ourselves to an extent. We can eat the right food, yeah, we can get our sleep, we can test, we can, if we have been attacked by something like the moulds, we can take something, eat something to eliminate that, right? So we don't have to, it's not all doom and gloom, there are things that we can genuinely do. We can wear our wearables, right?

01:02:13 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah.

01:02:14 Aleksandra King: And we've also spoken about the basics of, try and not eat between these meals, give yourself a break, right, try and have the 14 hours, have the protein breakfast.

01:02:25 Nicola Vaughan: Yeah, protein with every meal.

01:02:26 Aleksandra King: Yes, eat the whole foods. Is there anything else that we should really know, like common sense?

01:02:32 Nicola Vaughan: Common sense, I feel, which is not food related but it's my world related, in nutritional therapy, and that is making sure we look after our frame, our frame.

01:02:45 Aleksandra King: Okay, okay.

01:02:46 Nicola Vaughan: Our muscle tissue and our bones, in particular for women, but you know what, everybody needs to be doing this. I say in particular women because we generally aren't the ones that are concerned about building muscle tissue.

01:03:02 Aleksandra King: Okay.

01:03:03 Nicola Vaughan: And I love the mantra strong not skinny. I think it is so important to give those messages out to our teens, to our girlfriends, to our mums. We need to have good muscle tissue, and after the age of 30 we will, we lose it. It's a really sad, use it or lose it.

01:03:25 Aleksandra King: Lose it or use it.

01:03:25 Nicola Vaughan: Or lose it. And muscle tissue is so much more than just looking good in the gym or just looking good in a swimming costume or something like that.

01:03:34 Aleksandra King: Helps, although that helps, it's quite nice.

01:03:36 Nicola Vaughan: It's so important for us. So not only does it protect our frame, so muscle tissue is constantly going to be providing signals to the bones to grow. We have a new skeleton every 10 years or so, we get a new skeleton. Our bone tissue is not inert, we are building and breaking down bone tissue.

01:03:57 Aleksandra King: New skin, so you're saying we get a new skeleton?

01:04:00 Nicola Vaughan: Get a new skeleton, yeah. So but we only build the bone if we're providing signals to the bone that we need to grow it, and with the best signal is from muscle tissue pulling, making a little stress on the bone to grow. And that's really important as we age. We consider, what are the risks of ageing? It's frailty, it's issues related to kind of body decline, us having a fall and breaking a hip or a bone and then that being the downfall. You lose mobility, you lose the ability to look after yourself. So muscle tissue is really important for skeletal health, but it's also going back, tying it back into metabolic health, like it is a glucose sink. So you're eating the carbohydrates, if you've got muscle tissue there, like Eliud Kipchoge–

01:04:54 Aleksandra King: Yeah, I know who that is.

01:04:55 Nicola Vaughan: Using it, you're going to be taking it in and using it and burning it. So it's really important for that. But also when we think of the context of the way in which our body gets flooded with inflammation, we hear about inflammation.

01:05:10 Aleksandra King: Yes, inflammation is bad for us, it's a buzzword, it's inflammation, it's inflammation.

01:05:15 Nicola Vaughan: It's that because a lot of what we're doing to our body is causing inflammation. It's like a natural process, okay? You cut yourself, you have inflammation, it's an immune response that comes and heals.

01:05:26 Aleksandra King: Good.

01:05:27 Nicola Vaughan: It's good when it can be turned on, turned off, that's when it's good, the up and down. Not constant state of low-grade inflammation that we associate with fat tissue, that is going to be secreting inflammatory messages around the body. Muscle tissue promotes anti-inflammatory chemical messages that kind of counteract all of this. So it's so much more, muscle tissue, I think, would be, being strong.

01:05:59 Aleksandra King: So is that the tip really that you can give people, is really work on your, work on your strength, whether you're a man, woman, just work on that muscle? Everyone should be lifting?

01:06:08 Nicola Vaughan: Everyone should be, yeah. Everybody should be lifting, strength training, resistance training, even body weight exercises. If you're new to it, I'm often asked, oh, where do you even start? You start with just using body weight, body weight exercises, but just having that as your form of self-love. You're looking after your body because you're sending your body these messages that I need my muscle tissue and I need it for all of these really good reasons.

01:06:37 Aleksandra King: Yeah, that's really good. And you just have to fuel yourself right as well.

01:06:42 Nicola Vaughan: To build muscle tissue you need building blocks, you need protein to do that, definitely. But I think often we focus a lot on the nutrition piece, and actually incorporating the right kind of exercise is really important as well, for longevity, for being well, for addressing disease. Most diseases are associated with inflammation as well, so most issues are going to be supported by good muscle tissue.

01:07:11 Aleksandra King: Yeah. Nicola, I mean, I loved, just loved this podcast, listening to you. You just have a way of explaining things just so, so nicely, so clearly. You've just demystified all this noise, like you're saying, noise on the internet, and just essentialised it into what we really should be doing. And thank you so much for your time.

01:07:31 Nicola Vaughan: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been really fun.

01:07:34 Aleksandra King: Thank you.