Ep 410: How to be sure you’re doing the right thing for your health – with Paul Burgess

Does the amount of conflicting information out there on health have you frustrated? Wish someone could clarify everything for you when it came to diet, exercise and what your body needs for optimal health?  Paul Burgess is the founder of a global telehealth practice, Paul Burgess Functional Medicine Ltd and the Owner of Paul Burgess Wellness.  He’s also the host of The Paul Burgess Show podcast since 2014, is the author of two books, and is the creator of the 3×5 diet plan.  In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Paul Burgess on what it takes optimize your health faster and longer.

Resources From The Show:

• Paul Burgess Functional Medicine Website
• Paul’s Book – The 3×5 Diet
• Paul’s Podcast – The Paul Burgess Show

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Podcast Transcript

JANNINE: [Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix podcast where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds and fit physics or life. Hey, health junkies, Dr. Janine Krauss here. I am looking for some help from you all. And what I’m looking for is some inspiration, some inspirational stories that I can share of men and women, defying aging and defying it by crossing things off their bucket list that maybe they thought they could never do, maybe coming back from an injury, starting something new, like skiing at 40 years old. Whatever it may be, I want to know about these stories and I want to interview folks. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone you know, doesn’t matter. I want to help inspire folks out there that you don’t have to follow social aging norms. You can defy stuff. You can get better as you get older. You can make so much progress at any age. You can build muscle at any age. You can have a stronger heart at any age and you can crush all those things you want to do on your bucket list. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you have to give up on yourself and your dreams. And this is something that I want to share and inspire folks with. And so if you have a story or someone you know, email us at info@doctorspelledout. So d-o-c-t-o-r-j-k-r-a-u-s-e-n-d.com. Let’s spread the word about how amazing life can be as you get older and all the cool things that you can do. Alright, health junkies. I’m counting on you. Let’s get some emails in and let’s get some awesome stories on the podcast. 

Hey, health junkies. On this episode of the HealthFix podcast, I’m interviewing Paul Burgess. He is the founder of a global telehealth practice known as Paul Burgess Functional Medicine. And he’s also the owner of Paul Burgess Wellness. He has over two decades of experience in treating patients and realizing that really what people need right now is the certainty. In their choices that they’re making about their healthcare because there’s too much conflicting information out there. Amen, brother. I hear you on that one. And we’re going to talk about it today. Now Paul also has a podcast just like me. It’s called the Paul Burgess Show. And it’s been on since 2014. He’s also authored two books and is the creator of the 3×5 diet plan, which we’re going to talk about a little bit today. And so really, Paul and I, we’re all about what we can do to make this world a healthier place, a happier place. And boy, one that folks are empowered and feel certain about the choices they make in their healthcare. So let’s introduce you to Paul Burgess. Hey, health junkies. Welcome to another episode of the Health Fix. I have Paul Burgess on. He’s just, we’ve just had such a great conversation already that I know you guys are going to love this podcast. But nevertheless, he is the owner of Paul Burgess Wellness. And he has over two decades of experience in treating patients and gosh, you know, we are going to, to like, blow your mind with some stuff today. So I’m just going to get to it. Paul, welcome to the HealthFix podcast. 

PAUL: Thanks. I’m, I’m interested to see what we’re going to talk about because you’ve just built it up so much that now I’m scared. And I want to make sure I can do that. Oh, you can deliver. You can deliver. I mean, in our two seconds of intro of talking about oxidative stress and peptides around menopause, that’s like, we’re going to definitely dive into that folks. And then we’re just going to dish up about the functional medicine space and helping folks. And clearing up some of that conflicting, confusing information out there. But before we get to that, how the heck did you end up in the functional medicine space? What brought you here? 

PAUL: Yeah, I asked myself the same question. But, you know what, I’ve always had an interest in health from a very young age. And someone asked me this question recently, or I knew they were going to ask me the question. And so I was thinking about what would be the answer to it, the real answer. And this will kind of follow on to some other things we want to speak about later. Because I don’t know what really got me interested in health at a young age. And so I had to think about it and came up with the, what I think is the answer. So, I was born in the 1960s in London. It was still quite a, I must say, regimented. But it was a strict upbringing in that, you know, kids were seen and not heard. And you did what your parents told you and there was no crushing it. And it was very much like, that’s how my parents were brought up, especially my father, post-war. All that kind of thing was very, you know, that you don’t mess about. Not like today, might be slightly, right? And there was also to come with that, there was not a huge amount of appreciation and emotional support and love. Because that’s just not the way it was shown in those days, right? So, 60s, early 70s, kind of where, what my experience of that was. And then, as I look forward, it’s like, okay, well, I’m trying to, I’m trying to caught value from people. I’m trying to get people to see my value in life. Right? And I want people to love me and I want them to care for me because that’s kind of a thing that I was potentially missing, right? Yeah. I bet you weren’t expecting this sort of answer. Anyway. So, but at least, right, where’s it come from? Where’d you get your motivation from? And so, health was a massive thing for me because it was like, okay, if I can be as healthy as possible. And, you know, vibrant and passionate and get what do lots of things and help lots of people. And they’re all going to give me good feedback and it’s going to make me feel better about myself and so on. Right? And so, that’s where it kind of came from at an early age, I think. And then, I was always into health and fitness. But I went into finance, went into investments as a youngster. And ended up starting the biggest independent financial advisors in the city of London. And it was horrible. Hated it. Right? Just the stress and the compliance and just the whole lifestyle was just coming from someone who was interested in being healthy. It was the, it was the polar opposite of that. And so, that didn’t suit me very well after 12 years of it. It finally came to the decision. And then thought, right, let’s do something I’m passionate about. Let’s do something I really care about. And that I would do even if I wasn’t paid because that’s the gig, right? JANNINE: Right. 

PAUL: And so, and then I looked at the health space. And back then, because many, many years ago, it was like the just started to see things about health on the TV. And in the news a bit more and people get a bit more conscious about it. And it was kind of that wave of starting to people started to look after themselves in conjunction with the junk food. So that was an interesting dynamic. And then from there, it progressed from, you know, spending a lot of time as a personal trainer, one to one with people. And then, well, this isn’t working because we’re just dealing with superficial symptomatic stuff. Let’s get into some real deep understanding of root causes. We send migrated into function medicine and then, you know, now we’ve got a global company that treats patients all on the world. And, and yeah, it’s all fantastic. So that’s kind of what happened, I think. 

JANNINE: Well, you know, I mean, even though it’s not the story that that folks often think about, you know, it’s one that makes sense. And kind of how, you know, I would see my kind of evolution of it too, just kind of deep, going further and deepening, you know, that interest in terms of why, why are people not getting better with the superficial stuff? You know, why are, what’s in the psyche behind health too? You know, and why are we, you know, gravitating towards quick fixes when in reality, we might do better with looking at what’s the actual situation here versus putting band-aids on stuff. 

PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I think culturally, as children, we are taught that the doctor is the, the authority on health. And when you’re ill, your parent takes you to the doctor, the doctor gives you a pink liquid to take and the symptom goes away. So you’re all right. That’s what it is, right? And doctors are wonderful people. I’ve said it many times. I’ve got no problem with them. If you have an accident, you have an acute issue, you burst the appendix. They will save your life 100%. But at the same time, the whole system is set up to treat symptoms, not root causes. And, you know, for example, cancer patients, treating cancer, you’re treating the symptom, cancer is the symptom. The root cause is generally a combination of many things like toxins and molds and maybe heavy metals and pathogens and other things that will be treated. And then, you know, the root causes will cause mutations within cells that then accumulate to be much more difficult for the immune system to deal with. So you treat the cancer, you kill it. But the root cause is still going on, which sadly is why people get repetitive bouts of the illness. And so, no point in doing the symptom stuff. Let’s look at the root causes of things. Obviously, you know that better than I do, but it’s kind of that’s where the focus became because that’s the only way you get people better. Keeping them managing their sickness doesn’t do anything for anyone. It just gets them through another day until finally the sickness just gets the better of them. And the quality of your life through that time is really poor because the fatigue just gets worse. The brain fog gets worse. The sex drive is non-existent. The ability to enjoy life just disappears and just drag your butt through the next day. But at least my blood pressure is under control and I’ve got low cholesterol cause I’m taking the statins and my diabetes is okay because of the metformin. But actually, the quality of life is just sucks. 

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s what I see over and over again. We’ve got handfuls of supplements for checking the boxes, right? Blood pressure, cholesterol, you know, metformin for the blood sugar. And then there’s the next thing that’s for the next and then you’re like, at some points in my life, I felt like a glorified drug dealer at. And that’s probably where a lot of docs will turn towards functional medicine because we’ll get to that point where like, oh my god, I’m literally prescribing things I never thought I would do more medicines than I never ever thought I do. And am I helping? 

PAUL: Well, do you know what that really honestly, unless just quickly dwell on that right? So I’ve got a company that trains people to be to be practitioners. I don’t train them in functional medicine, I train them how to build their business so they can treat more people and 40% of the attendees on these courses are doctors are general practice that have tried it for many, many years and realized this is not helping. You know, we’re just we’re just keeping the plates spinning, but we’re not making them better into the same people I’m sitting all the time. And we are running out of prescriptions to give, you know, it’s kind of like it’s so much of this stuff. I just want to help people genuinely they want to make a difference. And so many of them are stuck in that scenario, especially when it comes to things like the, you know, they have to practice evidence based medicine within their license. And so you can great give them it for me, but you can’t actually look at Berberine or chromium or anything else that could potentially balance your blood glucose because that might not be in a license that someone’s got. And therefore you can’t really talk about that stuff, but I can talk about the pharmaceutical and that’s fine. And so it’s a real complex scenario and my view is like, how do we get the patient better quicker for longer? That’s what we want to try and focus on. And doing the root cause stuff. It kind of is the only way to do it, right? 

JANNINE: Absolutely, absolutely, because we get to literally what have it behavior routine led up to this. 

PAUL: Yeah. 

JANNINE: So what is it? And sometimes mindset too. And I’m sure you’re working on that as well within the practice. 

PAUL: Yeah, it’s a massive part of healing because behavioral medicine, right? So where do the beliefs come from in the first place? It’s paramount because that’s what dictates your behaviors and your behavior will dictate your outcome. And so if you’re talking about from a health perspective, the behavior around this person that regularly exercises and gets the bed on time and hydrates properly and eats a whole food diet and has great connection with their family and their community. Where did those beliefs come from that they are important? And on the other side of the coin, the person that eats the junk food, smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, watches the television, doesn’t do any exercise. And then says, well, diabetes runs in my family. Well, no, it’s a learned habit that’s mulling in your family. And that’s why you’re all presenting with the same disease because none of you are doing the exercise eating the food, going to bed early, etc. So where did that come from? Well, my parents always did this. Okay, cool. Let’s have a look at why is they did that and why is that you feel this is okay? And let’s talk about the belief because a belief is a feeling of certainty and it’s very difficult to get someone to change a belief because you’re going against something that they have pinned their identity on. So you have to be able to know how to get someone to question their own belief. Just the slightest bit of questioning, the slightest possibility that there may be another way of looking at it. And as soon as you can do that, then they’re happy to look at alternatives. And so you can’t have the same beliefs that you had that got you in the problem in the first place. Take a load of medication or supplementation and think that I can continue doing the same things I was doing that got me in the problem because it doesn’t work. And years and years ago, we don’t hear it anymore because we deal with it very early on, but years ago we used to hear quite commonly, okay, how long do I have to do this for? Before I can get back to my old diet. 

JANNINE: Yes. Yes. 

PAUL: Okay, let’s have a talk about that then. And you know, no matter where the beliefs come from, how to question them and how to make slight differences in your approach to them is really fundamental to people’s long term healing and changing their lives, right? No one wants to be in that position where nothing ever works. They’ve tried it all, they’ve done this, they’ve done that, nothing ever works. The doctor says, I’m fine. They’ve looked at my bloods, they’ve looked at the scans, they’ve looked at the urine and everything other said, there was nothing wrong with you. So, why do I feel like this? Well, we’re not really sure here’s some pro-Zach. And that’s not belittling it, that’s just like a lot of times that’s what happens. And so we’re looking at going, okay, they can’t find out what’s wrong. Let’s have a proper look at some other things that we know can be a issue. And I think where the beliefs come from and the behavior is one of the big things about that. 

JANNINE: Yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely agree, I absolutely agree. I mean, we get, let’s say wired from early on, like you had said, the pink liquid that makes the, you know, the flue go away or whatever, you know, whatever it may be. And so now that moves into like, I’m looking for someone else to take care of my health situations. And, and, you know, it’s not me. We’ve taken that so far away in those beliefs. You know, that is true when you mentioned beliefs. I mean, that’s probably the hardest thing that I work up against too is those preconceived notions of, I’m sick. I must go to the doctor and the doctor is going to give me something or a treatment of some sort. And, and then when you try to go, you know, in my office, and I’m sure you ran up against this too, like you just said, you know, like how long do I have to eat this way before I can go back. There is no going back. This is your new life. Welcome to your new life. And I think a lot of people are like, oh God. 

PAUL: A lot of people are — I’m not up for that, I’m not up for that. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

PAUL: I’m not prepared to do that. And a lot of people justify it. Right. Well, I don’t care if it’s going to take 10 years of my life. I want to eat the burgers. I want to smoke the cigarettes. I want to do that. Yeah. I’m here for a good time. Not a long time. You go, oh, really? Okay. Let’s see how you feel about that on the last day. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

PAUL: Because I would suggest that people on the death bed would give every penny they have and every penny they can borrow for one more day with their family. And so it’s a very, very important perspective to have when you come to longevity, right? Because if you look at some of the blues zones and some of the areas where people live to 100 plus, but are healthy. They are not sitting there at 93 years old saying, I’m done. Get me out of here. Right. I’ve seen interviews with people where at 93 they’re saying, I’ll do another 93 years if they’ll have me. Imagine having that. Imagine having that love for life at that age, whereas most people you’re going to see in a care home, you’re going to see disabled or in some real state being held together with pills and potions. Until they finally check out because they’re done. And you don’t want to be in that position. So beliefs at an early age, knowing how to construct the right framework to being healthy is massively important. And if you’re 50 and you haven’t done it yet, fine, we can still make changes and they’ll be good. But you have to put the effort in. You know, a lot of people are like, I’ll just take the pill and keep doing what I’m doing. And they aren’t the sort of patients we treat. Because you’re never going to change those sort of unless they get some real pain from somewhere that motivates them to change. But you know, obviously, just people that are listening to this aren’t that type of person. People that listen to these kind of shows are proactive. They want to find out new information. They want to find out what ways they can change lives in a positive way. In a way that lasts, not just a quick fix. And their beliefs and where they come from, you know, it’s important that one of the things the biggest thing that we do is we want to create certainty that what you’re doing for your health is the right thing for you. Which means people wake up practically daily and go, what’s the best diet for me? Do I need to take supplements? If I do which supplements, how do I get my sleep better? Why is my memory so bad nowadays? Where did my sex drive go? I etc, etc.., they’ve got all of these questions in the head, right? And what do they do is they go online because that’s where we find the answers to everything nowadays. And they go, well, I fixed my washing machine looking on YouTube, so I must be able to fix my health. Same thing, right? And then they end up finding out from their search that this is how you, this is the best diet to have. Great. Carnivore is the way forward. If you do not eat, if you eat vegetables, you will die. Yeah. And here is all of the reasons why it’s very compelling. I’ve got all the research and it’s, look at all the studies. Look at all the people that have benefited. This person’s all-termian completely reversed because they started eating just meat. Actually, that’s not true. What happened was you took away the irritant or the amyloids. If they started vegetables again, all of their symptoms will come back. So you haven’t cured anything. You’ve just taken away an irritant in the short term. But it’s very compelling. Let’s go into carnivore. The next video there, what she’s like, you have to be vegan. If you eat meat, you will get cancer. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

PAUL: Here’s all the studies. Here’s all the proof. Here’s all the anecdotal, you know, I was like, really? And the next one is a different diet. This one, you have to eat fish. This one, you musn’t eat soy. This one, you must eat soy. Soy, you must have extra gem. But we’re going to benefit from that. It’s like hang on. What am I, what am I going to follow? 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

PAUL: And so what happens is they follow all of them for a short period of time. And they try them all, nothing work. Because when they don’t do it for long enough and two, they’re probably not suitable. And it’s the same with every aspect of health nowadays. We’ve got too much generalized information available by YouTube, Instagram, Google, whatever it is you want to look for. And the one thing to remember, if anyone’s listening and they really want to dig into it, none of those people that are speaking to you, including me right now, none of them know you do personally. They do not know your age, your sex, your height, your weight, your current stress status, your current hydration, your sleep, your historic infections, what your vaccines have been from from birth. They don’t know what your toxic load is. They don’t know what much mold you’ve got. They don’t know what your liver’s functioning like, what your hormones are like. And they know nothing about you. So that information that you are seeing online is 100% irrelevant. But if you cannot get any value from it, I don’t care what it is, how compelling it is, how many followers that person has got the only way that you can get relevant information is when a practitioner who knows what they are doing. Assesses you properly and then gives you the right guidance based on your own body. Even as a twin, identical twin, you’re not the same. Right? So it’s massively important. And this is why people are getting so confused and getting nowhere, buying, you know, a few years ago, Alavira was the curable right? Alavira deficiency and you got to eat that that’s just going to fix yours. No, it’s not right? So getting out of this pattern that gives you this confusion, because you can’t you can’t win in that case, right? You’re always going to be confused and finding someone that can help you. That’s the only way forward if you’re serious about taking care of your health. 

JANNINE: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you’ve hit on one of my biggest hot topics that I have as part of my practice. You are your own best doctor. And you and I serve as guides. We’re here to help you to, you know, get through the muddy waters and get out on the other side knowing what your body needs specifically, which is huge. Because yes, I too hear the carnivore, the, you know, you name it plant and then now the push for plant based stuff over and over again. I shake my head because it’s like, you know your body. What is your body like? And most people are like, but so and so has like you said, 4,000, 4,000,000 followers. 

PAUL: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. So here’s a great one, right? There’s a, there’s a particular proponent of the carnivore diet. I’m not going to mention the name, but they’ve got like a million plus followers. He was a, I think he was a Chiropractic N.D., anyway. And so he talks a lot about it and written lots of books and he was very staunch. Has to be meet and then he changed a bit and said, oh, actually. If I eat a bit of carbohydrate, I might, I do feel a bit better and then it changed to nobody must be white rice in a pressure cooker. So we’re talking about like, why are you making these nuances that really aren’t that important? Right? And then it was actually, it needs to be honey. No, actually, it needs to be something and it changed based on whatever was. So you know, you know, suit him for that time, right? And I don’t give a crap. If you want to do carnivore, do it. But let’s see, you’ve got a million followers. There are a particular cohort of, uh, Genotypes called [inaudible] genotypes. There’s a [inaudible], three, four and a fourth one. And that in combination, they take up about 25% of the world. I am an [inaudible] three, four. Right? So 25% of the world had this genotype and a high saturated fat diet, be it keto, be it carnivore, whatever it is, you want to call it. It is really bad for us because saturated fat in us has this inflammatory response. Doesn’t fix our insulin sensitivity. It makes it worse. It doesn’t reduce inflammation. It makes it worse. It doesn’t improve our liver function. It makes it worse. So knowing that is really important. Most people don’t know their own DNA in their genotype. Why should they? It’s not their thing. But if you’ve got a million followers, it means 250,000 of them are probably in an [inaudible] genotype. And if they then go and follow blindly follow your advice, it’s going to make them pretty sick and long term, given us some really big complications. Knowing the right practitioner that’s able to know what’s going on with you, have the right testing done and really build something of value is massively important, which is where you, you and I and others come in and do it properly. 

JANNINE: So that brings me to something that I’m curious about and some of the folks, let’s name might be curious about too. What is your take on DNA testing and using it for some guidance. What’s your take on all the different types of testing? How do you approach it with with your clients? What do you guys do? 

PAUL: So for a start, everybody will get a very comprehensive blood test. So around 120 markers, which is pretty pretty comprehensive. And the reporting we use is very different to a standard report. So if you go to like a quest lab or lab core or something like that, you will get maybe two, three pages. And you will just get a lot of lines of data with a range and it’s a high or low and that’ll be it doesn’t really give you anything of use. Two or three pages of it, a report, a standard report for us is around 90 pages long. So it’s extraordinarily complex, but not in a way that you don’t understand it. So it takes all data and it tells us, firstly, we use an optimal range. And then we know that different blood markers will interact with different outcomes. So for example, most people will look at cholesterol as a cholesterol, but actually it affects your insulin, it affects your insulin resistance, your blood glucose management, it affects your hormones, it affects all sorts of things. It’s entirety and then how it presents itself as body system issues. So it’s way more accurate. We predict a counter in people way before the doctor’s have picked up. One of the common one of the stories I tell a lot is a 40 plus year old male comes in has a has a blood test done and two markers were elevated. One was creatinine and one was monocytes. So creatinine will tell you about some acidity and some muscle atrophy kind of thing and monocytes are a immune marker that will tell you if someone’s in a cute phase of any infection has a chronic infection. Both within the doctor’s range. His PSA, which is the prostate antigen, was low. So in the range. But for us, his monocytes and creatinine were elevated because it was outside of optimal. And so I want to look at the whole picture. His age lifestyle everything else. I said to him, look, go to your primary and just get a prostate examination done just a housekeeping. I think it’s quite important. So, okay, fine. I suppose there’s nothing to worry about. Let’s just go and double check it. So he goes to the doctor doctor says you don’t need an examination. I’ve seen your results. Your PSA is fine. PSA is like the least useful prostate diagnosis marker. There is. Anyway. So the guy says that I’m here now. Any chance you could just do this quickly. And so he does the exam and he actually doesn’t feel quite right. Let’s get a scan done. And a short story. Stage two. And a courtman to the physician treat him at the time he was absolutely fine. There was no problems. So the reports we use allow us to see things. Way in advance. So we’ve got much better understanding and chance of turning them out. So bloods. Then you’ve got everyone is going to do a toxicity report. We want to find mold chemical chemical toxins environmental toxins and heavy metals. Because we will have accumulated them over the years. Right. I don’t care if you’re 20, 30, 40, 50 years old. You will have accumulated a toxic load. Many of which are DNA damaging cancer causing Alzheimer’s causing. And so removing those things is vital. And then potentially we’ll do DNA and we will do viral and bacterial panels. Let’s see if you’ve got any one of nucleus and a lime, any side to Megalovirus or all the things that we know all come together to create big problems within our health. Once we get the full picture. That’s okay. Let’s start removing things. The DNA is an interesting one because I started doing DNA tests 15 years ago when it was very new and and and pretty much useless. It gives us any value. Or your sensitive carbohydrate. Oh really? Well, I kind of always knew that because if it’s on my bread, I get I put on two pounds. Or whatever it is. So, but now the kind of popular ones like 23 and me and ancestry and all that kind of things that give you the fancy stuff like, oh, you’re going to have blue eyes or you’re going to have earlobes or you’re going to have this or that the other. They’re they’re all interesting in a way, but we will extract the raw data and then run that through other reports, which actually gives us a much more usable profile on that person. So it could be that, you know, vitamin E might not be good for that person. As much as that’s a great antioxidant and everyone said, yeah, vitamin E, vitamin C, you’ve got to take them. They’re very good for your state of stress, which I think they might talk about. Some people too much of it can be bad. Right. So we can nuance it in. We can really dial it in. And there’s lots of other ways we can do things. We do have one. One area that we will, if we do your DNA, we are able to then compound a specific supplement for you, which deals with all of the SNPs that we see in your DNA that we know can be improved by potentially. Certainly vitamin or or phytonutrients or things like that. So there’s a lot of things that that we do. And the other thing is for me, if you’re working with me, it’s for a year. It’s not a one and done. It’s like, right, you come in and I see every two weeks and we work on all of this stuff. And we completely refurbish everything. So yeah, that’s kind of how it all works. And it’s fascinating to me because everyone’s individual and everyone’s a new case, right? Everything’s just new every time. It’s brilliant. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it because of the individuality, but also because of the year. And that’s kind of the thing that I’ve been working with with folks too. It was like, yeah, I do six months short ends and then year and then I’m pretty much like after that, we just hang out for life, you know, to help optimize you, you know, in. 

PAUL: Yeah, because you’re in there, you’re in their life, like through a year. And I’m really glad that you said that because most people or most practitioners would go like, we’ll do a consult and then a follow up in a month or in three months. Go and take all of this stuff that we said and it’s a really complex program. Here’s a big report. Go into all that and come back in three months. It’s way too complex and people can’t comply to it because it’s not their job to understand that and to what did they say about that thing? Do I do this at lunch time or is it with a meal or am I supposed to do that plunge then or what you know, and it’s like every two weeks have to see them. They put in small bite-sized pieces that we know they can accommodate and then we review what happened. Because I don’t know how you’re going to react to this piece of advice. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

PAUL: Because you’re an individual, right? So they took that thing for gut health and it gave them all sorts of real problems. Stop taking that. But these two hundred other people to get and were flying. They’re fantastic on it. Okay, but unless we monitor you very closely, we don’t know. 

JANNINE: Right. Right. 

PAUL: So you have to work with that one. 

JANNINE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let’s let’s go back to that topic you’re mentioning kind of you mentioned gut health and try something and then then you don’t feel well, but also like the same thing with oxidative. You know, antioxidants and we’re doing with oxidative stress. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about oxidative stress because a lot of folks, you know, are are clued into that high oxidative stress inflammation, inflammation, that whole concept. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about how we are individual with oxidative stress and how that plays out in different ways that you’re working on it in your practice. 

PAUL: Well, do you know what, let’s let’s bring it around to menopause and women’s health and things like that. Right? Because because I think and I know that. Pre menopause, way before is where you can do the most benefit so that when you hit perimenopause menopause postmenopause is so much smoother sailing affair. Right. And oxidative stress is very simply an imbalance between oxidative oxidation and anti oxidants. Oxidants are as it sounds pro oxidants are going to damage cells. I don’t want to get into the detail of it because it becomes too complex, but so you damage a cell breathing. Combustion of oxygen does that. It is a pro oxidant. Then when we get these clever little things called antioxidants. And they kind of soak up this oxidation and keep the balance. A lot of people talk about it in the term of free radicals where these molecules are bouncing around the body and then they’re looking for a positive charge. So they’re going to steal it from a from another cell. But to do that, they break the cell. So that’s what causes aging. Like you said, inflammation. So it’s this balance of pro oxidation and antioxidants. But at the same time, if you just pile yourself with that antioxidants, then that’s not a good thing either. Right. So it’s going to be balanced properly. The trouble is our life and modern world is all set up to be a pro oxidant. From the environment we live in, from the pollution, the food that we’re eating, the pesticides, the stress, the screen time, the poor sleep, the money worries, the just life is a pro oxidant. And it’s very easy not to look after yourself. In fact, it’s way easier. Right. It’s way easier to eat the convenience food because it tastes great and it takes me two seconds to make that in a microwave. Whereas if I’ve got to cut the vegetables and then boil them and then cook the salmon and then open the avocado is like, what time for that? I’ve got other things to do. Convenience food just gives you more time to go back to your stressful life. That’s all it is. And that means that the life in general is set up incorrectly. Right. So this massive pro oxidant state that we get sold into from quite a young age, because we need to be successful. We need to be driven. And this is the only way we can make something about life. And then we accumulate all of the toxicities and everything else that a body gets. But time we get to early 40s. There’s very bit been done. Right. It’s very bit of damage been done. And so it’s about unraveling that and keeping that oxidation down so that your cells can renew the way they should do. So it’s not aging. It’s anti-aging is keeping you younger. It’s keeping you more metabolically flexible in a way that is right for you. And so once you’re in that position, your body deals much better with fluctuations or hormonal fluctuations or energy fluctuations or whatever it is, it just deals with it better. And so when people can start focusing on what are the things that cause upstative stress? How can I manage them out of my life? That in and of itself can make a matter of difference to people. And so knowing what they are, you know, you can Google search it if you really want to, but the things that we know are not great for us. But we said the pollution, the stress, the poor food, maybe poor quality water that you’re drinking, the people that you’re hanging around with, all of those things are going to really add more problems to it, as well as the toxins in you and the mold and that kind of thing. But I think that’s quite that’s a really good place for people to start if they look into improve their experience of of menopause. 

JANNINE: Awesome, awesome notes, incredibly helpful because I think we get lost in the weeds with going down some more higher advanced rabbit holes. But speaking of something advanced that I do think could be beneficial is peptides though. Because, you know, I’ve talked with a lot of women, you know, we talk about gut issues, we talk about all those and probably the biggest peptide I’ve talked about on the podcast is BPC 157. But there are others and I be I’m curious what are you using with folks? What are you using with with even the pre-menopause menopause women and men too? I like [inaudible] pause stages and things of that nature and what are you using? Give us a scoop. 

PAUL: So I think BPC 157 is great. I think there are other things that you can use as well for gut health. But you also want to look at the two different kind of ways that peptides work. One are signaling peptides, which are telling the body to do something. And BPC 157, which is a natural product found in gastric juice is there for healing, right? The other thing that can be useful  promote growth hormone. So whether it be CJHC-295 or [inaudible], any of those that promote the production of a little bit more growth hormone can be quite useful because it’s a youthful hormone. And it’s different to taking growth hormone because when you take growth hormone, you’re going to use suprophysiological doses, which means more than your body could naturally produce. That’s when you start getting into trouble because signaling your brain to produce more is one thing. So it’s always going to be monitored and kept within a healthy range, taking it externally is going to push you way out of that range and then you get the bad things happen. So growth hormones, I think are quite good. And also then you get bio regulators, right? So things that are going to be adding to your existing organs, for example. So years ago, they used to call them glandulars and there would be things like pig thyroid. And it because it was a similar makeup, it would be thyroid that you were taking desiccated thyroid was off in the case. Desiccated liver was another one very popular. But nowadays you’ve got peptides like that. And so you got peptides that can help with ovaries. So when you’re gluten, you’ve got thyroid ones, three gen, and then the other one that I was going to mention to you, which is complete escape me for adrenals. Glandort. 

JANNINE: Ah, okay. 

PAUL: And so when you look at site, okay, some of them are signaling and some of them are bio regulators. And then when you put combinations, depending on that person’s state of affairs, it can really be useful for transitioning into a much more. Pleasant experience. But again, as we get older, these hormones or these bio regulators, they tend to start just to decline, right? Because that’s the way life is. We’re at a place now where we can support that better. So we don’t need to have everything fall off a cliff at 50 or 60 years old. We can we can support their natural production. And we can even bump in a few little extras to make it more youthful. And if we can do that without being crazy and tipping it over the edge so that we get all these bad side effects, and we can just keep things in the in the normal ranges, the youthful ranges, then actually it can be really useful because it makes us feel better. We are more productive, we get more out of life. And you if you compare someone that’s doing it properly and then somebody’s not doing it at all. The most important thing is that quality of life is completely different. 

JANNINE: I agree.

PAUL: Not everyone needs it though. I’ve got a patient in Miami, 74 years old, he will be next week. Fantastic guy. In the gym five days a week, runs a very comprehensive business, very busy, travels a lot. Has got the testosterone levels of a 30 year old. I mean, and he doesn’t take any of the supportive hormone, he doesn’t take hormones for sure, doesn’t do even peptide or anything like that. He just just bang on his diet on his training on his food on his on his supplements. We’ve done his supplements for the last three years. He did his body stats the other day and he rang me about I got to do this. He said, I’ve got to get it right. I don’t want to misinterpret it. But basically was something like he was a 12.5% body fat, 87% muscle mass. And it was the best he’d been in the last eight years. He was 74 coming up. And so, and he’s loving life, but he just flew to Scotland recently, played golf at Saint Andrews, then he was in Napa doing his wine tasting everything else. And the guy is having a fantastic life right. And people couldn’t live that. It doesn’t take fortunes of money to do it. It just takes the right guidance and the application of the information. And so when women come into this part of their life, which is really stressful for a lot, a lot of them. It’s a huge benefit. If someone can be guiding you through it and taking taking you by the hand to just say, look, this is how we want you to try and improve things so that you don’t have such a severe reaction. The other thing that I want to say really quickly, I know we’re kind of running out of time, but it’s also right now. This is the first time that we’ve had women in corporate positions of power. Right. So that first generation where people started really building their career 20, 30 years ago prior to that, they weren’t really in that kind of C-suite position, they’re the corporate boardroom position. They’re now running companies, their MDs, their chat, women, their CEOs, everything else. And all of a sudden they’re hitting that menapausal stage, which has been way worse because of the stress and the sleep issues and maybe the alcohol and whatever it is they’ve done to get to where they are. And then all of a sudden, it’s so hard to keep doing their job properly. And unfortunately, their male counterparts are like, what’s the matter with these persons? Just like, get a grip. That’s not a reality. And supporting those people by either saying, look, this is going to come at some point, do your best to please health as possible prior. Or so, there are some things we can do now to make this a better transition for you. I think that’s hugely important for those women in those positions because it’s really stressful for them. 

JANNINE: Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, I mean, oftentimes most of the people that I see that have the worst symptoms are the women who are type A, high power positions, CEOs, entrepreneurs, things of that nature where yeah, they hit a wall and then it’s like, I need to function and I need to function fast. And it’s like, 

PAUL: I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be talking about and why am I like sweating so badly on stage in front of these 300 people that I’ve always spoken to for the last 10 years, what’s going on? But also, we know, alpha female, hard charging, do what it takes, all of that creates massive oxidative stress. Right, and so we’re back to that problem. And if you try and tell, you know, common, someone does a long, long haul flyer, they fly from London to California. I think I’ve got a meeting, I’m going to fly over there, I land at 4 a.m. I’ve got a hotel, I just got a gym, I’m going to get straight into the gym as soon as I land, do my workout and I’m straight into meetings. Really, okay, let’s see how that’s going to work out for you because yeah, you might do it. And you might, you know, you might, you’re stimulants to get yourself through that. So you’re taking coffee or Red Bull or whatever it is that you need to get that thing done and go, right, can’t be seen as less than in front of my colleagues. That’s a short term view because your productivity will just get worse and worse. And when you can actually take a step back and go actually, I’ve got a long haul flight. I’m going to take a night flight so I can sleep and I go out the other end, I’m going to go to the hotel, get as much sleep as I can and get myself on the right time. We talked about the time zones prior to the game myself on the right time zone. Do what I can to relax, do some breathing meditation kind of thing. And then when I think I’ll be ready, I’ll go and do my meetings. And then I’m going to finish early because I need to do more self care. That way you can do that for much, much longer. And I think it’s an important point. Put in yourself first. Is by far the most charitable thing you can do. Right, so you do what it takes for you to be healthy first. You do your own exercise. You do your own diet stuff. You do your own meditation. You do your own, you get asleep when you need to get it. Do your own thing first. Because then when you are trying to be the best you can be for your children or your spouse or your colleagues, the very best version of yourself turns up. If you put yourself last, cause you think it’s, it’s a, it’s a good thing to look after everyone else first. You’re tired, you’re miserable, you can’t think straight, you’ve got no value to others. And then you rock up and go, what is it you want? Because I’m really fed up and tired and I can’t think straight. What, what, what do you want me to do for you? That’s not valuable for anybody. So put yourself first, look after yourself first and everyone else will benefit. 

JANNINE: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that being said, putting themselves first, we got to talk about how do they get in touch with you. We got to talk about your consultations, your free ones, but also a little bit about the three by five diet. Because I, I’m curious about what that is after we’ve talked about not going down any specific diet. Tell us, tell us how that works. 

PAUL: Right. So many years ago, I had to put a diet together for somebody that needs to be simple and easy, but effective. And so I, and I wrote this protocol for him and I got with it and that was it. And didn’t really think much of it. And people have asked me for years, when you’re going to write a book, when you’re going to write a book, when you’re going to do this, I’m like, really, I mean, it’s busy enough doing other things, writing a book, is not always not on my radar. But anyway, sometimes we bout to peer pressure, right? And I thought, oh, and let’s just just just put this out there and then I can get over it. I don’t need to worry about it anymore. And this is something about the book that’s important. One is it’s only 72 pages long. Two is that all of the information you need is in the first 10 pages. Because I get fed up with reading a book and they’re going, come on, where’s the point? Why have I got to wade through chapters and chapters of things to get to the thing I want to understand? So it’s very simple. You could read the whole thing in one sitting and it’s an easy thing, but you don’t need to buy it. So I’m going to tell you what it says. Three by five diet. You want to improve your blood glucose, you want to maybe lose some weight, you want to improve your sleep, improve your immune system. I find this works for everybody that uses it. Excuse me. And this side effects of weight loss is always a good thing. So here’s how it works. Three meals a day. Five hours apart. Right. That’s three by five. Three meals a day, five hours apart. The reason is it takes about that long for your blood glucose to stabilize and you start to switch between burning carbohydrate for fuel, which you do immediately after your meal. Just to fact for fuel and you need that metabolic flexibility. It’s oxidative stress we were speaking about that really ruins that and we end up only burning carbohydrate. We never burn fat for fuel people who wait on they get miserable or no energy will I can’t stop so three meals five hours apart allows that to happen. Breakfast and lunch made up of protein. Good fats, vegetables. Nothing no rocket science here right this has to be really simple for these people. Protein good fats and vegetables breakfast and lunch. Dinner protein carbohydrate and vegetables. And the first thing is what carbohydrate in the evening you’re mad. Oh no you can’t do that. But here’s the point of it right. If you’ve been eating all day and not eating starch carbohydrates. You are going to use the fuel sources so the storage that you have of carbohydrate glucose and glycogen. Especially if you’re training and things like that and the person you’re all about when I train in the morning. Yeah forget it don’t worry. You’re not training that hard that you need to refuel with carbohydrate trust me. Unless you’re an Olympic athlete which I’ve trained many of. You are not putting the intensity in that you need. Believe me on that one right so. You’re not taking carbohydrate throughout the day so by the evening that your your stores are going to be depleted and you can happily replenish them. More importantly though carbohydrate will increase serotonin which will increase melatonin and that will help you sleep. Right so. Some carbohydrate a night I’m not talking about huge amount of food I’m talking about a portion of right so carbohydrate night makes you sleep better. So so far we’ve got better blood glucose management. And we’ve got better sleep potentially. Then if you look at the. A schedule if you say like okay eight a.m. breakfast 1 p.m. lunch 6 p.m. dinner let’s say. And you get a bit maybe 10 30. That’s a four and a half hour gap between dinner and bed. That allows you to digest your food and not go to bed while you are digesting because it takes about as much energy as a three hour workout to digest a meal right and that’s way if you eat too close to bedtime. Your heart rate doesn’t drop until way way into your sleep. So what you want us to be able to eat a long time before bed get a sleep you get a much better deep sleep much longer sleep and much more restorative sleep you don’t wake up tired. Then the other thing is as it happens if you went from 6 6 30 to 8 a.m. the next day you’ve got a 12 13 14 hour fasting time in there as well while you’re sleeping. So it’s like a combination of balancing your blood glucose some intimate and fasting some better sleep some fat loss all that in one and there’s nothing complicated about it. Because out of all of those things I just said there’s no calorie counting. Because if you’re eating the right foods protein good fats and vegetables for breakfast and lunch protein carbohydrates and vegetables for dinner you’re not going to overeat on that stuff. Now you’re going to eat your to your appetite and that’s it. So that’s it is really simple and if people want to use that I really encourage it because it will save you having to worry about should I be doing this should I be doing that. And you get a diverse range of foods in you which is really important and I think you’re most people benefit from it. 

JANNINE: Awesome awesome. No it’s great and it helps you to kind of choose your own like what you feel best with in terms of that variety. 

PAUL: Exactly and that’s what you have to do. 

JANNINE: Love it. Love it. So let’s tell folks a little bit about your website and your podcast too we didn’t even get into the Paul Burgess show. It’s fun around for quite some time so I want to make sure we give folks the scoop where they can find you best website best place to get to your free consults as well to learn if they’re a good fit to work with you. 

PAUL: Yeah so so the podcast started running in 2014 kind of like way way back when and but you can find all the information out me and kind of all the stuff that we do at the website which is paulburgess.UK. So I’m sure we’ll be in the show notes was very simple paulburgess.UK. There’s loads of free downloads and info and stuff like that and then there’s the obligatory you know make a free call button which you can click and it’s a free consult so you can book and talk about any health issue you’ve got or any issue you think is affecting your health like your beliefs or your habitual patterns and stuff like that. And then we’ll have a discussion around what it is and if we can point you in the right direction we will and if we feel as though maybe there’s some testing to be done then we’ll suggest it and if we feel as though there’s a book you should read maybe we’ll tell you that whatever it is but it’s a it’s a free thing just so we can get some sort of connection with people and help them in whatever way we can. Very simple and all of the social media is there i’m not massive on social media I’ll tell you are probably a 4000 people on Instagram most of them are practitioners so it’s it’s more about dealing with people one to one and getting to know them as individuals and being able to treat that so by all means hit me up make some. Make some arrangements to have a free consult i’d love to speak to 

JANNINE: sounds good sounds good thank you so much for for all of your information i know folks are going to love it they’re going to get some great info out of it and guys it’s paulburgess.uk  B-U-R-G-E-S-S dot UK. All right thanks are coming on look forward to more chats in the future 

PAUL: i’d love to come back and talk more about something of anything because as you can tell i talk lots. 

JANNINE: It’s it’s good stuff though it’s good stuff. 

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