The Longevity Blueprint: Gut Health, Metabolic Energy, and Stress Control

In this episode of Living a Life in Balance, Abdullah Boulad sits with Dr. Simon Feldhaus, Medical Doctor at The Balance, to explore the link between the gut, brain, and overall health.

Dr. Feldhaus shares how functional and micronutrient medicine can prevent disease, slow aging, and support the body’s natural healing ability. He explains how stress, sleep, diet, and mindset influence our biology and why empathy and education are key to true wellbeing.

🔗 Tune in for a grounded conversation on prevention, vitality, and the future of health.

About Dr. Feldhaus: Simon is a highly qualified specialist in general medicine with certifications in Phytotherapy and Interventional Pain Therapy. He has been trained in both modern and complementary medicine, allowing him to utilize a breadth of experience in both fields. His therapeutic approach focuses on Regulatory Medicine, Orthomolecular Medicine, Mitochondrial Medicine, Phytotherapy, Complementary Oncology, Integrative Sports Care, and Health Prevention.

For further mental health information and support, visit The Balance RehabClinic website: https://balancerehabclinic.com/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and the Gut-Brain Connection
• 2:25 What Motivated Simon to Become a Doctor
• 4:12 Medical Training and Functional Approach
• 6:09 Empowering People Through Education
• 8:37 What Is Functional Medicine?
• 12:08 The Role of Empathy in Healthcare
• 15:05 The Body’s Self-Healing Potential
• 16:18 The Mind, Brain, and Gut Axis
• 24:03 The Power of Gratitude and Positive Thinking
• 28:08 Toxicity, Micronutrients, and Environment
• 33:04 The Microbiome and Mental Health
• 41:35 Gut Diversity, Diet, and Individualization
• 49:05 Autoimmunity, Allergies, and the Gut
• 52:32 Genetics vs. Epigenetics
• 59:00 Chronic Stress and Biological Aging
• 1:02:21 Fight-or-Flight and Modern Disorders
• 1:14:33 Information Overload and Stress in Children
• 1:25:08 Sleep, Brain Detox, and Recovery
• 1:32:17 Therapeutic Sugars and Brain Energy
• 1:59:51 Longevity and the Future of Prevention

Transcript

Simon Feldhaus 00:00:00  Most of patients with mind disorders, they have to be treated with the gut not only by talking but doing some bacterial treatment. And together we expect to have about 500 different bacterias inside. But we know only 80.

Abdullah Boulad 00:00:14  How can we get addicted to stress?

Simon Feldhaus 00:00:17  Adrenaline, cortisol. They activate the fight and flight system and you can get clearly addicted to this chemical reaction. If your body weight of 70 kilos, you will produce 70 kilos of ATP every day. Wow. You can't imagine how much energy your your body is really producing. This is a wonder of nature. And at the end, to be honest, longevity is nothing more than prevention. And this is a large field of science which is not open.

Abdullah Boulad 00:00:49  Welcome to the Living a Life and Balance podcast. My name is Abdullah Bullard. I'm the founder and CEO of the Balanced Rehab Clinic. My guest today is Doctor Simon Fieldhouse, house general practitioner, integrative medicine specialist and one of Switzerland's leading voices in longevity and anti-aging. In this episode, Simon shares his personal journey leading to combined classical medicine with complementary preventative care.

Abdullah Boulad 00:01:16  We explore how chronic stress, poor gut health and over medication have become the dominant health issues of our time and why true healing begins not with a prescription, but with understanding how the body actually works and empowering the individual. Simon explains how he uses microbiome testing and mitochondrial support and individualized supplementation to treat the root cause of physical and mental symptoms, from anxiety to fatigue, poor sleep, and even early cognitive decline. We also dive into the science of energy production and the groundbreaking potential of therapeutic sugars like galactose in supporting brain health, especially for those dealing with Alzheimer's, diabetes or burnout. Simon also debunks some of the biggest misconceptions around longevity, and shares evidence based steps we can all take to age with grace. I hope you will enjoy, Simon.

Simon Feldhaus 00:02:24  Hello.

Abdullah Boulad 00:02:25  What motivated you to do what you do today?

Simon Feldhaus 00:02:29  Well, it started just in early childhood with the age of three. I have photos where around. Walked around with some some medical stuff. Things. Now it's just it was inside of me helping people to stay healthy or to cure if they are ill.

Simon Feldhaus 00:02:45  So my motivation is just not to treat patients. My my my own motivation is to help patients or educate patients. However, you will call that To get an A in a possibility and a state of knowledge to stay healthy or to help them at first. To cure something. And sure, if there is an illness where you're not able to do it by yourself. Then there comes the second part where activity has to be treated. And then my my job will be to treat you. But my primary idea is not to treat patients, but to educate them, to get them in a new state of knowledge, to stay healthy and to cure them by themselves, not by giving any any medications.

Abdullah Boulad 00:03:28  So you have always wanted to be a medical doctor at the age of three.

Simon Feldhaus 00:03:34  That's that's exactly that. No one there was no influence from from my parents. Even my father was a doctor, too. But he never he never said something like, I want you do the same. You have to go after me or something.

Simon Feldhaus 00:03:46  No, nothing. He was a role model, but sure. Yeah, I've seen that. And especially in his case, he did in his these early years. He was one of the first ones using natural medicine and acupuncture in a classical house doctor system. And I saw that there's more than the classical medicine, and this was clearly an influence. But the point of it was inside of me not being other jobs.

Abdullah Boulad 00:04:12  You grew up in Germany and studied in Germany. Yeah. How how was it for you to practice medicine and study medicine in Germany?

Simon Feldhaus 00:04:22  Yeah, I'm from Germany. I lived in Germany. And my, my, my whole education and the university studied was in Germany. And then I did a practicum between the study. It was in Switzerland for four, four months. And I go back and did all the doctor's examinations and everything like that. But then I would like to start in Germany. But the point is that in these times, a long time ago, but to be honest, same as today, the surroundings for Thinking holistic, doing more than giving tablets or medications or whatever was not in Germany.

Simon Feldhaus 00:04:58  Possibility. There were there were some few ideas, but at the end. No, because if you did that, no one paid for that and everything like that. No one wanted that. And in Switzerland to this times it was very open. And this was the idea is more natural because they are living in the in the mountains. They use the herbs from the mountains. That's why I switched to Switzerland in 1999. I started there my my really working because it was more optional for me to use all the things I want. Not only classical medicine, but other parts too. That's why I switched to Switzerland. And from this on, I'm living in Switzerland and doing my job. The development thoroughly is something like going in other ideas of Europe medicine too, that more big Pharma medicine is on the topics and all the things beside that I was slightly going down from the government, not from the people. The people. They want this holistic thing. They want things from nature. Yeah, but the government and the insurances, they go down with paying.

Simon Feldhaus 00:06:02  So. So you have to pay by yourself. That's that's the end.

Abdullah Boulad 00:06:05  At the end. Someone has to pay for it.

Simon Feldhaus 00:06:07  That's the point. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:06:09  So directly or indirectly. Yeah. And that's that's possibly why there is always a limitation. I mean, we know the insurance costs that they increase year by year. So where is where is the limit and where do the individuals need to be empowered to take care about themselves also financially about their health? In some countries I can I can see that in the UK, in the Middle East, in the US or any third world country, they know they need to finance for themselves or the tribe or the families. They have to collect the money to allow someone to get treatment. Yeah. But I see this also very often that in Germany, in Switzerland, let's say those developed countries with functioning insurance, they everyone relies on, on insurances for, for, for their treatments to be paid. Yeah. Has this been also coherent with your experience?

Simon Feldhaus 00:07:07  Absolutely.

Simon Feldhaus 00:07:07  And I think this this is a one is a problem, a misunderstanding of insurance. Because normally I do insurance to not use that. If I do insurance for my car at the end of the year, I'm not driving a car against the wall to get the money back from the insurance. So normally insurance means I do everything to not need them. Yeah, but in reality, I pay every month about whatever 400 francs at the end I have 5000 francs input. So at the end of the year, I want that back. This is something like in mind, which I can understand, but presently it doesn't work. So. So we have to empower everyone to to look at themselves I like.

Abdullah Boulad 00:07:47  I like the empowerment. But what does it mean for an individual to be empowered? Yeah, well.

Simon Feldhaus 00:07:54  It's the understanding of staying healthy. It's the understanding that waiting for an illness is not a good idea. So. And only I'm feeling good does not mean I'm healthy because some of the illnesses, to be honest, most of the illnesses are developing under a stage where we don't know that we don't feel anything, there's no pain and we have not something like a car, a red light or oil pressure warning which says, oh, you have to look because if you don't, there will be an engine cut down thoroughly.

Simon Feldhaus 00:08:24  We don't have that. So we have no possibilities from ourselves just to to see am I am fine or are there any developments in my body which should be addressed before I get an illness?

Abdullah Boulad 00:08:37  What do you practice? Can we say it's kind of functional medicine? can you explain to us What's your understanding of what exactly?

Simon Feldhaus 00:08:47  So that's the same as in other parts in our society and our times. Everything has to get new names. And now it's called functional medicine. And that's why I'm saying yes, I'm doing that. But but it's the same that 20 years ago where we said that complementary, holistic or whatever we called it. I think that the term of functional is okay because it focuses on the function of the systems in the body, and that means all it means from the psychological thing. There must be it must be working. It's from the chemical thing. It's from the, the, the physical things. So we address the body's abilities to do networking functional things together. And this is the main part.

Simon Feldhaus 00:09:33  And for me the main topic and this is what we what picks us away from the classical medicine. Because classical medicine does the same. It looks like the function of your heart, of your liver, of your lung. And then we measure the function of the lung. You can measure if the heart is pressing and everything like that, but they miss the connections between the things. They just look at one. And it's okay if you have a heart disease and one of the vessels is close. It's very important that there is a special doctor who is able to get in this very, very small vessel to open the back again. And it will functionally be again, clearly. But for chronic diseases and most of the things for acute medicine, you need these specialized things. But for the most of the chronicle things, it's the the working together. The functional medicine means that we look together. If every connection between organs systems is on a possible optimal way, it's not ever possible to do it in every patient, and clearly not.

Simon Feldhaus 00:10:37  But the idea is trying to get the connections between all these systems in the best way to focus, to or to address the idea of my personal life. And that means it must be individual, because your system and my system is not the same. So why should we do exactly the same things? And if we get someone who is who wants to live with marathons and doing sports sport, he has a completely other lifestyle, so it's not possible to do the same as I do. So we have addressed his special functional things. And so this is what I think. It's an individual medicine which focuses on the on the network of the body and the connection from all system. And I mean all in real, all from psychological things together with chemical things, together with physical things. And you have to to try. And this is hard work, not so easy to try to put all that together in one system. And then then I can try to play with that together with the patient To get all these network things working.

Simon Feldhaus 00:11:43  This is all. But it's quite difficult and the most part it needs experience. You can't do that after one year teaching.

Abdullah Boulad 00:11:50  How would you understand the body and how it works? Because everybody is different and every every every patient, right.

Simon Feldhaus 00:12:00  Easy to stay on a healthy lifestyle. But the.

Abdullah Boulad 00:12:03  Problem. Adapt it. How do you understand the functions of of of a body.

Simon Feldhaus 00:12:08  Yeah. That's that's a very, very good question. And this is exactly the most difficult part of all to get this understanding or let's say idea, because you are not able to prove all these things. Yeah, we know there is a connection between gut and brain. So if someone has a psychological issue, whatever we have to look if the if the gut system is connected to and but the connection is not measurable, we cannot we cannot measure how much connection is there. But we know there are gut bacteria or something like that. So we can do some, some, some measurements. and then the point of all these things is, which is the normal range.

Simon Feldhaus 00:12:48  So, so this will be very difficult if we address that later. What is the normal values of something like that. And that's what I mean. This is not what you can do on a, on a complete science based thing okay. The number is ten. Your number have to be eight. Why? Perhaps my number is eight, but us 12. And this one addressing is not only bye bye completely cleared science. This has extremely much to do with experience. And then there comes the thing which is thoroughly, from my opinion, in our classical medicine system it's lost. We call it empathy. It's it's the love to the patient. It's the emotional connection to every.

Abdullah Boulad 00:13:29  Patient and.

Simon Feldhaus 00:13:30  Absolutely.

Abdullah Boulad 00:13:30  The fact.

Simon Feldhaus 00:13:31  And then you have to, to, to be aware who is my opposite. My patient. My partner there. And this is done by by talking the anamnesis, the.

Abdullah Boulad 00:13:41  The the assessment.

Simon Feldhaus 00:13:43  Assessments and the text time. This is not possible in five minutes. I can't get any idea of your system in five minutes.

Simon Feldhaus 00:13:50  Not possible. That needs time. Time, time that needs experience. And it was. It was and it is. No it is. It's a try and error system. Sometimes I do think it's okay, but I after two weeks no. And then again experience you learn from.

Abdullah Boulad 00:14:05  That experience and kind of creativity like trying to connect some dots and and try and error. Yeah. Because medicine is not a straight fact. I mean, 100 years ago you would have, with the knowledge you have had was different than 50 years ago or now. And in 50 years from now again, they will think about what we do today. Oh, wow.

Simon Feldhaus 00:14:27  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:14:28  What have they been doing.

Simon Feldhaus 00:14:29  You know.

Abdullah Boulad 00:14:30  But I it's it's funny I look at the body as something extremely, extremely capable of healing itself. And we need just to understand where is the right balance again, where the body is still capable to renew, to, to, to heal whatever whatever stressors come around during our life the toxins, food, environment, etc. and when it's too much for the body and then it gets problematic.

Abdullah Boulad 00:15:05  But but the body in in the first place can clean, can heal, can can restore.

Simon Feldhaus 00:15:11  Yeah, that's exactly what what in all the times was something like self-healing energy. And it's sometimes it's like esoteric, which is not I mean, if I get a wound here and it will be close by my body itself, this is the self-healing property. But if I, if I have not enough sink, it would it won't close. So so there's then the balance in this very small element. And so it goes on. And absolutely that's my thought through the self-healing possibilities of, of any organism animals too. Yes, it's quite high, but suddenly our life gets threatened so that, that that your ability is going down because of whatever.

Abdullah Boulad 00:15:54  So functional medicine is to support the body to heal itself in an optimal way. and, and this is, this is, again, very individualized from one to another. And the other thing you mentioned is like also the brain. So is the brain more a mental construct or a physical construct? And you also mentioned the gut brain connection here.

Abdullah Boulad 00:16:18  And how is this connected to each other.

Simon Feldhaus 00:16:20  Yeah, this is one of my personal special key questions. And it's not it's not possible to answer that correctly because no one really knows if you could. If you got very deep and only chemical ways you can. You could say you think or you have or have you have in mind something, but only this is a chemical reactions between two nervous cells connecting each other with fibers. And if the connection is good, your mind is okay. If the connection is bad, your mind is not okay. So so the idea of treating that is not discussing the issues, giving you some chemicals to restore better function. So if you would, you could try to go down to a complete chemical idea of mind, which I don't think it is, but a part of this is correctly if if the cells in the brain are not able to connect to each other, will be very difficult to think so. So energy is necessary in the brain and it's the energy of the cell.

Simon Feldhaus 00:17:23  It's called ATP. Adenosine triphosphate is a very small molecule which every cell needs to work on a chemical way. The muscle cell, the brain cell, the immune cells they needed. So so it's it's all that it's there's a mind, there's a soul. Wherever you will call all these things and there's a chemical base which is necessary to that. And then you put together the connections that the brain is not only there because it's connected to the body. And then we have our modern brain, the big one here. And then we have our reptilian brain that's in here. And the upper part of them, spinal cord, which is the crocodile part of us. And this keeps us alive. The brain here, it keeps us thinking and motivating. But this one here is what we where we breathe, where our blood pressure is working. Something like that. And this is working under consciousness. And then we have the connections which we start to develop. In my times in, in university, never, never.

Simon Feldhaus 00:18:27  I could say there's a connection from here to here. It would be thrown away from the university because the only connection was from here to here. Since the big vagus nerve is the 10th nerve of the brain, which is connecting the brain to the to the gut by the movement. And now we know this is what science did, that this nerve is possibility to get information from here to here, which I if I would, had said that an examination of the university, I was thrown away because at that time there was only one connection up, down. This is the first connection. But then comes more. We know that the, the, the power of, of thoughts is, is, is really prominent. And this is called which is thoroughly most of people and even doctors or therapists are doing completely wrong. This is the meaning of placebo. Yes, because placebo is not giving you something to, to to try to, to put you out. Because I give you something which is nothing inside.

Simon Feldhaus 00:19:29  And placebo does. I'm healing because of my word. Placebo is the idea of I want to treat you because I want to treat you not I want to give money or something in my mind, in my in my emotions, in my inner power. I want to help you. And that's why I say I give you this with my thought of, I will help you. And this is in your mind. You get this, okay? He will. It will work. And then don't care what is inside the pill. This is the idea of placebo. It's the real working idea of the connection between us for mine to mine.

Abdullah Boulad 00:20:07  And how I believe.

Simon Feldhaus 00:20:08  How you believe. Because I convince you with my thoughts. And it's not. I try to put you out. I really want that. And then your thoughts are starting. And this is the real placebo medicine is what is your mind doing with your ideas. And it's strongly.

Abdullah Boulad 00:20:25  I heard that because I believe in something and that, let's say a placebo effect.

Abdullah Boulad 00:20:32  We still release some chemicals which have the the right effect on our body. Yeah we do. Can you tell what this exactly happened?

Simon Feldhaus 00:20:41  This is exactly. I mean, the science, the placebo science is one of the interesting science overall. If everyone in the medical field would get deeper in this, we get much more better results. And the most impressive thing is the open placebo. I give you a medication and you know there's nothing inside. You know there is nothing inside. But you accept that I want to treat you and you feel that it works and this will work. This is the real working issue of every medication. And then comes the chemical idea, which is not, depending on your thoughts, pain medication. There is something inside which will work if you believe that or not? But. And this is science. It's not my ideas. It's science from the whole working idea of a medication, 10% is this chemical one, 90% is you. Despite what I'm doing, if there's something inside or nothing inside, that's why the most of the chemical medications have this very, very small effect.

Simon Feldhaus 00:21:43  This is medicine. But there's one big thing to issue. And this is the the bad sister and it's called nocebo.

Abdullah Boulad 00:21:52  Yes.

Simon Feldhaus 00:21:54  The opposite happens. Not I'm helping you, but I get you in danger because of what I'm saying. If I give you a medication, I said this one is your side effects will be you will have this this. And I will address you very directly with this. You will get this negative effects. And in placebo medicine we have the things that someone was closed in a in a the room where refrigerator is for restaurants where you put on put in the meat. Something like that. And the door was closed and he was inside this room and he has seen outside. This -18 degrees in this room?

Abdullah Boulad 00:22:33  Yes.

Simon Feldhaus 00:22:33  And the door was closed. And he has seen that inside. I'm here -18 degrees. But at the end the machine was blocked. There was no it was five degrees plus in the room, but the people inside -18. He came out with frozen hands.

Simon Feldhaus 00:22:52  They were completely frozen, which is not possible by five degrees. But the mind said -18 degrees. This is nocebo. This is the bad sister of placebo. So we shouldn't use nocebo. But if we choose, that's what I mean. What is the mind? The power of our mind can do both harmful or helping, and we should only address the positive things. We should avoid these negative things which With thoroughly. Nowadays, everything goes to nocebo. The medicine based thing is nocebo. I make you fear for everything. Completely wrong idea.

Abdullah Boulad 00:23:31  I mean, that's huge. it's like it's like, medicine can cannot work. We cannot rely on that. So, I don't know, the percentage is what our brain may affect our body in this case or our thoughts, not the brain our thoughts can affect. and that's real. It's just. How can we address that? How can we stay motivated, be positive. is it positive talking to to oneself? What can we do?

Simon Feldhaus 00:24:03  That's actually what I mean with empowerment of the people.

Simon Feldhaus 00:24:05  This is what I mean with education of the people. This is what I mean to help people, human beings, animals. It's a little bit difficult with understanding, but at the end, it's nearly the same. It's to. To address to the to the people. Okay. Believe on your minds. Then you have to see on your chemical things. It's not only possible thinking if you have vitamin D deficiency, you can think whatever you want. You have this deficiency. You have to cure that. But at the end, be confident to yourself and don't rely too much on all these negative impacts which coming from. And this has to be honest, most of them is from mass media press. Because if you go to any any news, I did that in Switzerland for the for the last four weeks. There was never ever any positive facts in the news TV shows. Never. Only this one is dying. There is someone falling from a tree in China and he died for his. This person.

Simon Feldhaus 00:25:08  That's very, very bad. Surely. But why should I know that? That in China someone is falling from a tree and died? What is the idea of putting that in the news in Switzerland. But there was no thing. Yes, in one city in Switzerland, three children are born and they are healthy. Not this positive thing. Never ever came in the news. Only this one. No, brother. And we have to empower the people to positive thinking. Yeah, there will be some things. Yes, but who cares? Stay on your positive thinking. And this is very difficult to help patients because the system won't. The system is going on. Everything must be bad.

Abdullah Boulad 00:25:50  I think if I think about it that way, the the two things we can do is to try to focus on what we can control and whatnot and, and stay away from, from from what we cannot control because it will just only influence us in a negative way, potentially. And the other thing is to practice more gratitude, just to focus on what we appreciate in our life and our body.

Abdullah Boulad 00:26:14  But also there is a practice I came across also many years ago to to say thank you to our body, to each part of our body. It's kind of a mindful activity, training to be grateful for who we are that our hands are, our are allowing us to, to, to, to, to touch and our feet, moving us and and so on. So that's, that's, that's the training I think we can, we can do beside to be grateful for for our surrounding, what we have, what we are with whom we spend our time with.

Simon Feldhaus 00:26:52  Try to live in the here and now. Yeah. And enjoy your life here. Don't think about the the things ten years ago. They are gone. Why should I fear what is in ten years in the in the future? I don't know I can, I can change it. If there is anyone pressing a button and then or atomic atomic bomb will explode. Yes. Okay, then I have to address it in ten years.

Simon Feldhaus 00:27:12  But why should I worry? And this is a chart. My thing is what I say to patients. Don't worry. Just. Oh don't worry. Stay here. What? You said it's the same. Stay in here. But it's.

Abdullah Boulad 00:27:25  Very difficult. It's difficult. I mean, it's like I don't think about the pink elephants.

Simon Feldhaus 00:27:30  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 00:27:31  If if this is. Yeah. That's your. That's your true. That's your reality. And you cannot just switch it off because someone is telling you you have to come to their own realization. That's why we're mental health treatment works. You have to work with professionals who can guide you through that process. Certainly. So. So chemicals and our toxins affect our psychiatric or mental state as well as you are mentioning. And what how is it affected what what's in our environment or in our chemistry biochemistry affecting.

Simon Feldhaus 00:28:08  This is exactly the the second point of functional medicine is that to be aware, there are clearly chemical physical connections, good ones and bad ones. Bad does mean it's not.

Simon Feldhaus 00:28:24  You will die because of that, but it could affect your whole system, your health, whatever. Mind, chemical, heart on a negative way. So the idea is not doing too much of these bad things. And yes, we have we have environment medicine which is in nowadays getting more and more important. How is the environment and natural surroundings we are living in? affecting my health, starting from toxic metals which are inside the traditional chain everywhere from from from lead to arsenic to to quicksilver to whatever. And you don't see that the food, it looks fine, it tastes fine. You don't be. You are not able to say or to see or to feel rice. Most of your rice Food has arsenic inside. That's because of production area in Asia. But that doesn't mean you don't eat rice. That doesn't mean be aware of. There are some toxic things in life. So clean the body. That's the idea. Not, not do not nothing, but just okay prevention. So we have to clean some things.

Simon Feldhaus 00:29:27  but to be aware, there are things from environment medicine. It's the toxic metals. It's electromagnetic fields, whatever. But again, to be sure, individualized. You can have three people living in the same house eating completely the same food. One is more affected from the toxic metals, the other two nothing. So it's completely individualized. That's not why to say everyone is in danger because of. But it's something like okay. Be aware. There could be sometimes. Perhaps you should do something like a cleaning thing for your body, which you do the same by your car changing the oil. You do that? So? So why not staying healthy on that point? For me, the most important thing nowadays it's the really thing with the micronutrients, vitamins and trace elements, because the nutrition we have, even if we try to go to biological produced food or whatever, it's it's extremely difficult. And in some parts, vitamin D, omega three acid, it's clearly possible to fulfill the needs of the body with our idea of nutrition and system.

Simon Feldhaus 00:30:39  and again, you don't feel that this is the only possible thing is to measure that in the blood. It's not possible by by looking at you. If I can say you have any, any deficiency. But if the deficiency is there, things won't work. I mean, for the connection in the brain is looking at health of mind or thoughts or whatever the brain needs. Omega three fatty acids. This is. This is extremely important for function, not only in the brain, but if we focus on the brain. Omega three fatty acids are the main issues of brain function. And if your levels are down, it's not enough there. So if the car has only one litre of oil but it needs ten, the engine will get a problem sometimes. So we have to fill up this oil level. And in earlier times it was nutrition and but now we are too much people and to to not not enough good food. Then we did the supplement cod liver oil was my parents. My grandparents did it.

Simon Feldhaus 00:31:40  It was not so tasty, but they used that. And nowadays we can use it on other parts. So so some things have to be supplemented because we are not able with our nutritional system, because of the mass production and the huge amount of people we have to address. And this, this deficiency is a big point, not only in mind, but truly in mind. Two but it's for heart, for blood pressure. For we have we have huge amount of silent inflammation, inflammation disorders, rheumatic disorders or something like that. And they need anti-inflammatory things. And this is vitamin D and omega three. And the point is it's not only idea I can measure that. And if you measure that you will find that 80% of the people around, they do not have enough of them. And so the solution is use that some, some supplementation. and yes then that's fine. And surely I would, I would like that everyone could be only by eating healthy, but socially it is not possible nowadays in our system.

Abdullah Boulad 00:32:50  I mean we talked about now also the God brain connection and and also the chronic inflammation in our body. How how is our microbiome affecting all this?

Simon Feldhaus 00:33:04  This is probably one of the of the most impressive developments in science. And it's yeah, we can say it's daily growing. The knowledge is daily growing. It's I don't I don't see any field in the last ten years. Whereas so much knowledge occurring and growing and getting new land in the field of microbiome setting. but again, we are on this level from this, to be honest. but the understanding that's what I think is growing about the importance and the, the the connection, the, the the how they talk to each other, the connections from from the bacteria's not only in our gut, but we are now focusing our gut because it's the easiest way to address. We know there are microbiomes in nearly every organ we have microbiomes in the lung. We have microbiomes in in in the stomach. We have microbiomes nearly everywhere where we where we. But we could address that.

Simon Feldhaus 00:34:10  Not so good. So the easiest way. Now is that why we're talking from the gut. And surely it's the most from the numbers. It's the most count of bacteria. So. And again we call that symbiosis. We are living together. They're living inside of us in the gut. And they're living there. And they they do things for us. And so we should do things for them. So we get together in the symbiosis. And it's it's very easy. It's a win win situation. So if that works, it's a really win win situation because the bacterias are doing things which our body is not able to do. They if you talk about digestion, you eat something like a carrot or you're a beef or whatever you meat and it comes in your, in your stomach and there comes the acid and it comes in your gut. And then the bacterias, Years. They they change the nutritional thing. That's why one of the most important things is perhaps we shouldn't talk too much about eating. We should talk much more about digesting.

Simon Feldhaus 00:35:10  Because if my digestive system is making, I'm eating a perfectly done, deal better quality, high level carrot. But my gut is completely divorced. And then we have we have some some wrong bacterias inside. Then they're making from this perfect carrot completely dust. Blah. And then it was no sense to eating this perfectly carrot. If my digestive system is not doing that correctly, the opposite. I'm not eating the perfect carrot, but my digestive system is on a perfect level. Then it gets more out of this current than the other one. Get the best carrot from world, but has a low digestive system. So this is the chemical thing. They produce vitamins which are not inside the food. They're just producing that here. And they're giving us the vitamins. this is the first thing by digestive system, then the connection from the gut bacteria, which is the Ta to this, what we now know ten years ago. Yeah. You know, it's the connection from gut bacteria to immune system. This is one of the major connections.

Simon Feldhaus 00:36:23  And there we know, but not all details. But it's clear without the bacteria in the gut, there is no immune system functional in the body. We would die. So the major important thing is the connection. It's something like the bacteria and the gut. They train our immune cells how to work properly, how to do their job is something like in military, the young soldiers, the new white cells, they have to go to a training camp where they learn how to fight. And the trainer who does this training, this is the gut system. So this is important for the functional of the immune system. But now we get more and more connections. We know that there are they talk cross talks these bacterias they talk to organs. We are not clearly sure how they do that from the brain. We know a part that these nervous, the tense brain nerve, the vagus nerve that the bacterias are able to use this cable. It's really a cable to get information from here to here, because we know that from animal where we cut down this nerve and then the connection is lost.

Simon Feldhaus 00:37:40  and it goes on a deep way that there could be influencing really mind issues. So if you if you have a patient with the depressive disorder Sorta mood depressive things and you get this gut bacteria. And to put this gut bacteria in a healthy subject, he will get depressive. So you can transfer the blues. This is called that doesn't mean that every depression is coming from the gut. Doesn't mean. But it could be that in this patient, the main issue of his depression disorder is the problem of his gut system. If you only treat this patient by behavioral therapy and mindful thinking, you won't treat them correctly because you get not the root cause in this patient, but doesn't mean in every patient. And this goes to schizophrenic disorders too. We know autism. We know that people with autism disorders, they have a completely other idea of bacterias inside. We are not sure if it's the cause or it's it's another. This is new science. But there are things and we get some first Interesting results. If we help this gut system to get in a I don't want to say normal because no one says what normal is.

Simon Feldhaus 00:39:00  In another diversity system. Let's take it like that. If we help them to get a little bit more diversity in his gut, the autism changes or H as the hyperactive hyperactive children, something like that. They have a huge amount of long bacterias. If you change them, the behavior system is changing too. So we know these these connections, they are they are extremely interesting. And we try to learn even more how we put this in a holistic concept. That doesn't mean it just gives you some probiotics and you will be cured. No, but in the system and in the therapeutic field, I personally think that most of the of patients with mind disorders, they have to be treated two, not only two with the gut, not only by very easy, not only by talking, but doing some bacterial treatment and together. Never, never divide things. We have to do a network together. Yeah. And these connections, the knowledge is growing. Nearly every week there's a new study of this is connected with this.

Simon Feldhaus 00:40:12  And we have a new connections. And then we have that. And to be honest, and this has to be said honestly, we are starting to think to know. We know because we we expect to have about 500 different bacterias inside, but we know only 80. There might be 400, which we do not know what their function. Because the problem is to measure that it's very difficult. We only can measure bacterias we know. So if there is a bacterium inside we haven't seen, we cannot measure that. We have first to detect that wherever and then try to find out if it's in the gut, too. And this is a large field of science which is not opened.

Abdullah Boulad 00:40:52  Then I think also it's about the combination of these bacteria. You know, how can you say just this one bacteria is linked to a disorder, but it's it's a complete network, possibly. Yeah. And and then also do you think over. Over time and over over history the, the microbiome or the diversity in our today's microbiome has decreased.

Abdullah Boulad 00:41:21  So could this also be the source of, many disorders we see today or auto immune system disorders or allergies and so on.

Simon Feldhaus 00:41:35  Absolutely. This is clear. There's no discussion about that. But now comes to the point how exactly no one knows. So so we are starting to get knowledge about that. And again, first you have to see it's a network. It's not only the gut bacteria, it's everything. But we know something more about the gut bacterias. We have something like good ones and bad ones, which I don't like the name because bacteria are not bad, they're just doing some things. If they are too much of them, they are doing some things which are not so perfect for us. So. So it's not killing them, but getting on a balance. It's again, it's again the balance. but yes, we know that during our the development of human beings, our society modernizing, we know that we there are we can go to gut analyzers. So we measure the bacterias and the gut.

Simon Feldhaus 00:42:25  And this is done by, by, people in the Amazonas which live like we think about, which was living in Stone age time hunters and collectors of food. And then we have some in South America which are farmers. The next development, which No, no, it's not better than that. It's more than a list. And then we have modern life America. And then we we checked the diversity and we see that the diversity is lost. The people which live as hunters and collectors, they have completely other bacterias. But now comes the point is that does that mean it's a bad development? No, because if you're living here or in America and you eat what we eat here, it's not the same food. Then the hunters and the collectors in the Amazonian forest. Yeah. So why should our microbiome be the same then that in the in the forest? It could not. It has to be a development because of our nutrition. So it's not that that's that's the point of normal.

Abdullah Boulad 00:43:32  Yeah. Maybe we don't need it.

Simon Feldhaus 00:43:34  That's the point. We don't need some of these bacterias. And if you change your eating whatever and then you say, okay, now I'm changing to vegan food and now you will eat two months, so only reaching food. And then I do a new gut measurement. You will be a complete, complete change of gut system because you don't eat meat as a region. So if you don't eat meat, you don't eat animal proteins. So you don't need any bacteria in your gut which will digest animal proteins. Why? What should they be there so they will be gone. So your gut comparing to mine I'm eating meat. You're not. And we compare our gut system. It won't be the same but completely here.

Abdullah Boulad 00:44:17  Is that can develop. It must change over time. It might also also if I, let's say move from one country to another and have a different environment surrounding, but maybe also the people around me may affect that.

Simon Feldhaus 00:44:31  If you have a dog at home, your gut system will connect with the gut system of the dog and your microbiome will be another microbiome.

Simon Feldhaus 00:44:40  Then your colleague. One house beside with no dog. So this is the point of normal. If I do the analysis, what is normal, wrong or right? Never can say that. Okay? That's what I mean with connecting. And this is functional medicine at its deepest points. You cannot do it's just a measurement of these bacterias which is totally done too much outside. I do that control. Yeah. You get the results okay. This is red red green red red. So only the red bacterias. They are not normal. That's wrong. You have to do. No. Why? Because your lifestyle you're eating. It's. This is normal for your lifestyle. It's red because it's not the the the average. But in your case, it's normal. This I have to know as a doctor who is interpreting this, this results very difficult. But then now we come to for me the most important point. But we know two things. The one is the real diversity, how the difference of the bacteria.

Simon Feldhaus 00:45:40  And this is this is connected to the to the milieu inside the gut. Something like you want to live in a house because we have nice furnitures and something like that. And if this one is okay, you will leave the house. So the third thing is get new furnitures in the house. You will stay here. So that's what we do for the bacterias. We have to get the milieu in the gut to a healthy system and this has to be sour. That's why fermented food and everything like that, which was earlier times good, is one of the major issues. So that's the easy part. And now comes the most important part. What we do know, and this is science. We have some specialized bacterias which really have clearly directly therapeutic effects on whatever immune system information. But mind two we have bacterias where we know that if I give them to you, not my. My idea is not. They stay in your body for the next years. I give them to you as a treatment.

Simon Feldhaus 00:46:43  Yes. You use these bacterias powder they get in your gut, and now they start to interact with your gut and your brain. And this bacterium system helps you to treat your whatever anxiety. And this works very properly. Or you are very stressed like a burnout or something like that. Or children which hyperactive hyperactivity systems. And we use these special we call that strains. This is a very specialized thing in bacterial strain. And we use these strains as a therapeutic approach. Then it's not my idea to change your gut microbiome with these strains, but using your microbiome with the strains as using your connections from the gut to the brain to help you in the treatment process of anxiety, stress, mind problems or everything like that, together with all the other things. But as we're going in a very deep connection, and the connection from the gut to the brain is really very, very deep. For me, this is one of the major, important treatment options in psychiatric medicine. To use the gut as a combination of all and as the sciences is growing every day.

Simon Feldhaus 00:48:09  Yeah, it's very, very interesting. I like that.

Abdullah Boulad 00:48:11  I love the idea too, in what direction this is going, because certainly much better than just suppressive medicine. so to to help the body again to, to to develop and heal itself so that that would be the goal here. And on the level of immune system and because there are different theories about the like they read from allergies to Alzheimer's, where today you could read. yeah. Alzheimer's is kind of also, degenerative, disorder or the body is attacking itself. And so but also on, on, on, on, let's say allergies or are they because of our microbiome, where is the origin. Is it the lifestyle. Is it. Well how can we understand the the immune system.

Simon Feldhaus 00:49:05  Again a very very, very important questions where the answer seems to be clear. No one knows, to be honest to say every patient has to be new looked at and you will find patients where it. It's nearly clear that the real cause was first the gut changement of the microbiome.

Simon Feldhaus 00:49:26  Because of that you develop the allergy. But again you will find patients with allergy where it the gut was not the first, but it's part of the game but not the root cause. So in the difficult and this is this is again in my job at the end trying to find out is that the really root. So I have to address that first. Or is it something like in the development of the disease your gut changed too. So I have to get the gut to but not the real cause because perhaps in your case it was aluminium or it was shock or whatever. So the difficulties how deep is the connection from gut to. But for me personally, I I've never seen in my history of, of being a doctor, I've never seen any patient with a immune connected disease, whatever we call that, without any gut problem or I'm going as deep as I say that for me, there is no treatment of any immune disease without the gut, but not only with the gut, but never I do any treatment without the thing with how much is the immune system integrated in cause of Alzheimer's disease? This is very difficult.

Simon Feldhaus 00:50:40  And this is the science is growing. there will be some influences because of inflammation. It's more like a that it's not that the immune system is directly doing things, but inflammation could be a point. And the autoimmune diseases. Yes. this is quite more the thing. But again what is autoimmune? It's losing a balance between friend and and enemy. So our own and opposite. So the main function of our immune system must be changing or seeing. Okay. This cell is good. It's my one. And this cell is a bad one because it's a cancer cell or it's a bacterium or something like that. And we have to see about okay, this is fine, I take that or this I have to fight against and the possibility of the immune system to get exactly between this both sides. This is a big issue. And there's a big thing which changes the way our immune system stays in the balance between fight, flight and accept that it's harm. It's not a problem. And this one can be okay.

Simon Feldhaus 00:51:45  That's why increasing allergies is going there and the gut is connected to that. But I don't think that it's we have to be aware not to over optimizing things again and not to go too deep in things. It's connected. It's connected. I do more think that Alzheimer is is dementia. Alzheimer is only one part of dementia. Alzheimer itself, for my opinion, is a clearly cell damage problem in the brain where this over accumulation of these proteins happens because of under producing energy in the brain cell. And then but there are other Dementia issues were completely other parts are important, so we have to be very, very individual.

Abdullah Boulad 00:52:32  When I hear all about the microbiome and the individualised care, certainly the question comes up. Genetics versus epigenetics. is, is genetics our ancestors, influencing us today, or is the lifestyle of how we live and how we are exposed to nature and to others affecting us more?

Simon Feldhaus 00:52:57  Yeah, that's a very good question. to be honest, no one is able to say really he knows anything about that because again, there's development science.

Simon Feldhaus 00:53:09  But at the end, if you look a little bit, what is nature? What is nature doing? And and nature does nothing, nothing unnecessary. Everything which nature does is good. Not everything is good for human beings, but everything which nature does is correct. Nature does not know, does not make these mistakes. Nothing. So we have genetics. This is the thing is inside. It's the patients. It's a written book. You have a book that's written the text or something. You plan. You can see. Okay. It stands here. This house has to be like this with this windows and everything. This. It's written down and it's clear. And this is the genetics. And they are clearly the base of all. And perhaps ten years ago we thought that we are we are just fixed on this genetics. If they're standing, it's like here you have red hair. You will be red haired. There's no change. And this obviously is wrong because we know about now that epigenetics how is life? How is what I am doing in my life influencing the way how, let's say, a little bit unscientific.

Simon Feldhaus 00:54:15  The body reads the book. So we have a book we both read that perhaps your understanding of the book is completely other than my understanding. So we have the same text, the same idea. But perhaps you think more in like that matter, and I do think more in that matter. So the interpretation of the written text. This is the epigenetics. And this can completely change all how deep the change can really be. This is not known. Now we are getting knowledge. But if it's really possible to change all who knows what we know that it's really possible to change huge amount of things. We know that from twins study. We have twins which are genetically completely identical, and then we divide them. And one is living in America and the other one in Japan. After five years. They are not genetically identical. They are completely genetically on the reading. On the book, surely? Yes. But they don't see like twins. They are completely other because the the life. And then we go to generations and it changes more.

Simon Feldhaus 00:55:20  And this is why. This is why it's very easy. Because exactly why that happens if we stay in the same surrounding. Yes. Bit of a bit. But if I leave the surrounding to a complete another surrounding it, it would be not a good idea that I'm fixed to my genes which are in this surrounding constructed because my family lived every time here. But human beings are the idea of moving around the whole world, and so you have to be able to change things which nature did in the idea of development of this genetical things. And because of that, we can see what are the, the, the options for human beings to be everywhere to develop. And that's why we are not fixed to origins, the lifestyle, the way we do. And it starts by, by, by eating behavioural stress or whatever is affecting the way how genes are Are understood by the body's metabolism or something like that, and that that's positive or negative can be both. But for me it's more or less to.

Simon Feldhaus 00:56:28  To be on a positive thinking way. So it's more or less it's, it's more important what you are living and how you are doing than what your genes are saying. That's why I am not very fan of these genetic testing, which are always done because we can do we have all informations of our genetic profile. So I can do a control in your genetic profile and can say every gene in your body. What, what will it be. Yes, you will be prostate cancer and you will because of your genes. But at the end, because of your lifestyle, you are not. And this is the changing point. That's why, for my opinion, we have some clear genetic things. The thing with the the blood group or some thing with the genetic. Severely genetic issues. For for the blood or something like that. This cannot be changed by by lifestyle for you, perhaps for the next generation. But most of the risk genes. Let's talk more about the risk genes. They could get a risk for developing whatever.

Simon Feldhaus 00:57:38  These are completely influenced by lifestyle. And this for me it's a positive way. If you do it in a positive way, don't care about genes. And then we come to the thing with placebo and nocebo. For me, the gene testing is more nocebo getting fear, getting negative influence than placebo. I talk more about do an interesting lifestyle and then it's fine. Sometimes the genetic testing can help to get some weaknesses. And then I can help you changing the lifestyle in a special way to get rid of these weaknesses. And in this case, some testing can be okay, but I don't like the complete genetic testing which is done now.

Abdullah Boulad 00:58:21  For me, it's beautiful. So it's not our life is not set in stone. It's, It's empowering. We can influence we can influence ourselves right now, but we can also influence our next generations with, with, with how we live today. And give this further. Yeah. so that's that's pure empowerment.

Simon Feldhaus 00:58:43  Absolutely. And and this is what, what I think it has to be used to, to, to empower the people, to help them to develop, not to get in fear of any of any illnesses and.

Simon Feldhaus 00:58:53  Oh, God. But just just get okay, do like that. And then this one and this will be fine. And this is okay.

Abdullah Boulad 00:59:00  Most probably a big part of our epigenetic is the stress, the lifestyle, the how is stress affecting us. And in today's world, how we work, how we how we how we go through life.

Simon Feldhaus 00:59:14  For me, this is one of the most important things in my daily practice. the the way how people are dressed with dress is a huge amount of, of influence. A very short time, just as we are talking about genetics and epigenetics, one of the interesting parts of stress in here is that every cell which divide us into new cells. So for development, they have to to copy the genetics. And then they divide them to two noise cells. And the genes are setting on the chromosomes which are just small books, something like that. And they are protected at the end of every chromosome. It's like an X at the end there are caps and they are called telomeres.

Simon Feldhaus 00:59:54  This is a protecting agent so that the text in the book is safe. Even if I divide that. And we know that in aging the telomeres are shortened. And if they are if they are gone, this cell cannot be doubled anymore. So telomere shortening is one of the major agents in aging and losing information. And what we know from science is that stress has a huge negative effect of development of the cutting down the telomeres. So chronic stress cuts down the telomeres. So more cells more earlier lose the protection of the gene information. This is the first part of stress. This is more or less a long term effect of stress or depending on when it starts.

Abdullah Boulad 01:00:38  What effect has that on on our body or life?

Simon Feldhaus 01:00:41  Premature aging. premature loss of function. chronic diseases? illnesses. Dying is a little bit too much to say, but but more getting more problems in lower ages than must be. Perhaps. Sometimes it's development of, of, some diseases which could be a little bit more than without that.

Simon Feldhaus 01:01:06  So it's, but it's more loss of function. Yeah. So it's, it's for me, it's a preventive thing. It's just we should try not. Not because of living longer, but living healthier in the same time. and we know that that stress has a extremely negative effect for the shortening of the telomeres. This is the basic. But at the end, in the classical days, we have the idea of what is stress addressing in the body. And this has to be looked again much more holistic and together networking than it is outside. Because if you read newspapers or books or whatever, most in the newspapers, it said, yes, stress is a psychological disorder. You just have to to, to relax in your mind, which is absolutely correct. But it's not the whole point. We have we have to address it. Stress is a whole body thing. We have a mindful thing, but we have a chemical thing, a physical thing. And from the basic theories of stress, It's something like psychological, physical or chemical high influence of the body where the body has to react to it to get back to a homeostasis balance.

Simon Feldhaus 01:02:21  So it's something which gets you out of your balance mind balance, but chemical balance, physical balance, whatever. So if you go out 30 degrees temperature with a with a cold mantle and you overheat, this is stress for the body because of heat. And then the body has to react against heat. If you get stressed by your boss, you have to have a psychological stress. So so everything is stress. But the main idea of stress in the body is coming from the Stone age time. And this was the lion will just now eat me. So stress and the body is a fight and flight situation. I have to fight or I have to go away. And that's why we have the stress organs and the stress hormones and all the things which is connected to stress. And this sets the whole body, metabolism, mind and everything like that in the fight and flight mode. There's an animal which tries to eat me. What I have to do, I have to fight as much, or I have to run away as fast as I can.

Simon Feldhaus 01:03:22  And that developed by nature. And this is what we talked earlier about the reptile part of our brain. This is not in our mind because if there is a line coming to to chase me, if I would wait until my brain. okay. This animal, this looks like a line. It could eat me. What should I do now? I'm dead. So the body starts by. By seeing there's something developing in here. And sometimes it's a little bit experience based. If I have seen a line before or not. But the body itself starts directly in the fight and flight mode, meaning we have adrenaline. This is a very, very specialized hormone from the adrenal gland. It's a very small gland beside the kidney. and we have the vegetative nervous system, which goes to the fight and flight mode, and it's called the sympathetic nervous system. And this all these things, we have the cortisol with the third one. And all these things get the body and the mode of fight, meaning muscle activity must be high, blood pressure must go up because I have to get blood in the muscles.

Simon Feldhaus 01:04:28  Blood heart function goes up. The pulse rate goes up to get even more blood through the vessels to all these organs. To get in the fight and flight mode, we need the muscles. We need the lungs. If I run away, I need the air to breathe. I need the hard power to get my blood pressure. What I do not need in a situation to fight and flight is digestive system. Because I cannot stop. I have to go to toilet when you go again. So? So that's why no bladder, no gut movement. So these organs will go down there. The function will be cut to zero in this situation. And this is always done by the stress system, the body. This is not by our thoughts, it's just under consciousness. It's just it's just done because of the things and it cannot be influenced. Even if you think positive, your reptile break brain goes to fight and flight mode. You can get positive influences by mine truly. But at the end it's a chemical point of stress.

Simon Feldhaus 01:05:26  And then your body is in this situation. But normally it's about 15 minutes because you want the fight against the animal or you're dead. Yeah, normally it's not about ten 15 hours. You're running away from a lion. So this system was done for a short time and there is no problem. The problem is if this metabolism idea or fight and flight is not 15 20 minutes, but ten hours, 12 hours, one week, three weeks, whatever. Repeating in a short time. Because again, we are not thinking that there was a Stone age man running through the jungle. There was a line. He went away. He survived. And this next era. Okay. Where? Where can I find the next line? He was okay. I've done. Now. I'm fine. Let's hope there's no line. But he won't see. He won't search a new line to get the next fight within the next five minutes, which is our life now. The problem is not the idea of stress. The problem is the balance and the dosage of stress and the possibility how much it is.

Simon Feldhaus 01:06:32  Because after the stress reaction, the body goes to the rest and digest system to get new energy to fulfill. I just fitted the line or run away. Then I'm exhausted. All my my sugar levels are down because I used everything in my muscles, so I have to. I now have to regenerate to restore new energy. I have to put out the lactic acid and the muscles which I produced by running away. Just just getting a new idea. And this needs time. So we have the stress level. We have the restoring level. Then we are on a good level okay. No stress. That's fine. If if this restoring part is reduced or shortened or whatever, and there comes just the next one okay. Once perhaps. Okay. But every time, then we lose the time for the body to to regenerate, to recreate, to restore, to get back to a normal function. And this is the major problem. And that comes the point as everywhere it's individual, there are people, human beings who are able to get more fight and flight in the shorter times, more resilient.

Simon Feldhaus 01:07:40  And that is called resilience. Exactly. And other ones are not. But I can see that it's not because. yes, you are you not or me not. You can see that. And you cannot say you are so the most the most Important problem for me in our times is if you are experienced and you say, yes, I have quite a resilience, I can do that. This situation for me is no stress. It's okay. You are not allowed to say that any other human being beside you has the same ability as you, and so you are not can say no, this is no stress. What are you doing? This is no stress. No for his. For this person it can be maximum stress. But yourself you don't feel it. So it's not possible to to say it for another people.

Abdullah Boulad 01:08:33  But possibly also because I get more resilient with something I'm used to do, I'm more exposed to regularly rather than if something is novel to me. Yeah, absolutely. So I can I cannot handle.

Abdullah Boulad 01:08:47  But what's what's is scary here is, I mean, we have been made to, to escape a tiger maybe once In a while and then you are in this rest and digest mode or restoring mode. But but today it's chronic and many, many people live it again and again every day, whether in their jobs, in their partnerships and their whatever they do and over years or decades or all their life. So this is certainly having an effect on our health and our where is this what what disorders can can lead this chronic stress to.

Simon Feldhaus 01:09:29  Yeah, exactly. This is the problem again to balance the dosage because and this is not depending on what I'm feeling. It's just if it's there. That's why for me, the the naming of positive stress is the wrong naming because it, it it looks like positive stress. Yeah. Okay. I do three times because it's positive then. And that's not stress is the situation that the body has to fight, not really against the animal, but again. And then the point is, what I said is the organs which are not necessary for fight and flight.

Simon Feldhaus 01:10:03  They are going down. Immune activation got, special hormones and fertility. In the case of fighting with a line, you don't think about making babies. So? So all the system which is for for producing new babies is cut down. And if it's only 15 minutes, who cares? But if it's, as you said, daily, weekly, monthly, every day, then it affects all these metabolism things, organs and metabolism which would be necessary for restoring, coming down, repairing. So inflammatory disorder, immune deficiency. It's a very easy thing. Everyone knows that cortisol is quite difficult. So if I if I say patients okay come on. You will get for the next three weeks I give you a tablet with cortisol. He always say, are you silly? No, I won't take cortisol. Why? Yeah, we know cortisol makes diabetes. Cortisol makes fat. Cortisol is the immune depressant. Right. But the cortisol the adrenal gland of the body produces is exactly the same as the tablet. So if I have stress regularly daily I'm producing my cortisol tablets by myself.

Simon Feldhaus 01:11:18  So I have the same effects of cortisol tablets but produced by my body immune immune deficiency that can be over and under. So. Infectious diseases or autoimmune diseases. Inflammations. We have got problems from from easy things like like depression but to bad things to, to inflammatory bowel disorders. we have hypoglycemia. Much more sugar in the system Normally in the fight or flight situation, I will burn the sugar by my muscles because of fighting with the lion. But the normal stress is not fighting with the line, but fighting with my job there. I don't burn the sugar down in my muscles, so the sugar is high level in the blood. So fat accumulation. Diabetes. One of the major parts of high level sugar is the. The sugar is going to the small cell antennas, and it's something like a creme brulée on the cell level. And so the information flow is blocked. that leads to misinformation in the body metabolism, all what we call civilization diseases, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, chronic diseases, inflammation, all diseases are connected to chronicle stress because of the over dosage of the stress hormones, which normally are good ones, but they are not produced to be continuously working in the body only 15 20 minutes and then going down.

Simon Feldhaus 01:12:54  And and what we are doing is chronically stress and then we seek and we talked about that. We do stress in the evening we go to a heavy load of sports in the sports center, and we go on the on these bicycles, and we do a pulse rate of 119 for 20 minutes to 10:00 in the evening. And then we go to bed with high level of adrenaline and cortisol because of my bicycle sports. And then I go to sleep where I do nothing but the blood levels, the blood sugar levels on the fight and flight. But nothing is done with the sugar. So what does the body? The body does not. Oh, the sugar I don't need. Oh, let's do that in some wherever it takes in the stores. So this, this is what the, the Chronicle diseases which we call civil artery Diseases. Is most of the cases connected to stress and some things like infertility, everything like that, which is not an illness, but but a situation that's fascinating.

Abdullah Boulad 01:14:00  you know, we know it, but still we we expose ourselves to it very, very often until we, we, we experience pain or disorder or something.

Abdullah Boulad 01:14:11  But but also what's also fascinating to me is that it doesn't matter if something is real or not real. It's affecting us and our stress levels. Like, for example, if I if I would watch a horror movie or and people dying or reading something which affects my mood and emotions and feelings and anxiety levels.

Simon Feldhaus 01:14:33  So this is a major point. There's a direct connection between the eyes and our reptile brain and the stress system. The most important impact to get in the fight and flight mode. Are the eyes. Because in stone edge time you're wandering around the forest and the first thing you see is there's something which hasn't to be there. The leaves are doing like that. There's some movement. I see a brown thing there. It's not oh, there's a line. But you see, something is changing. It's not what should be there, something like that. That's the idea. And now comes the point of nowadays everything which is not it should not be here or it should be other or I see dead things, horror movies or whatever, which is not, which is here beyond our consciousness.

Simon Feldhaus 01:15:25  This is the most important thing. It's it's not depending on I like horror movies. Horror movies are fine. Doesn't doesn't make any sense. It's just beyond this thing. Seeing these horror things, seeing dying people or whatever it is, goes directly to fight and flight. And one of the interesting points is the the the the number of information per second. So if it's if it's something and I tell the patient the thing of my history as I was a child, there was one of the the films I looked at. It's called the Maya. It's something like a very, very child film. And it's it was done by hand. It was colored by hand. And you see this, this pea flying around and some very easy music. And this was the film I have seen. And it was slowly, but now we see something like Madagascar, computerized in a computer generated comic movie, and the information per second is about 1 million higher than the information in earlier times of these hand-painted movies. And we give that our children, at the age of six, sitting them on the iPad, they're looking these films with incredibly number of information per seconds in the eye of these children's beyond consciousness, generating a huge amount of fight and flight mode.

Simon Feldhaus 01:16:54  And this is continuing what you said with horror. Whatever. And we should never forget that the main impact is on the eyes. And this is the point, what you have to address in our children's system for our young generations to help them to get aware of the the problem of information connected stress. And I don't feel stressed because it's a it's a it's a movie, it's a comic. But at the end in the body.

Abdullah Boulad 01:17:24  Can we get addicted to stress in a way that we, we seek it again and again just to feel something?

Simon Feldhaus 01:17:32  Absolutely. I mean, adrenaline and and and cortisol is. yes. that's why some, some of the sports activities in high level sports. They do it because of the adrenaline kick you get in this situation. Not only sports, some some of these strange activities human beings are doing which are very, very dangerous to get this, this adrenaline kick and this is this is interbrand. This is a chemical point. This makes really the same cells where you can address with whatever cocaine or something like that, because all these drugs are doing nearly the same, but in a much higher level truly, but are doing exactly the same adrenaline, cortisol.

Simon Feldhaus 01:18:13  They activate the fight and flight system. Right. And you can get clearly addicted to this chemical reaction of yes, I'm I'm like that. And and it's not like addiction, like heroin or something like that, but in a, in a line of psychological thing. Yes, absolutely. And then you search that because it's without that it's boring.

Abdullah Boulad 01:18:34  I mean, this leads to the question, what can we do on a lifestyle change. Behavioral change maybe chemical influence. Yeah. To. To avoid that or to. To to be to be in a more optimal balanced state.

Simon Feldhaus 01:18:52  That's for me. It's the most important point is education. Just just telling the people, telling the parents for their children that it's you can grow up children without setting them for comic on on a tablet. They can they should go back to. In my childhood, we had these things. We were outside in the garden. We played, we did things in, in the ground. We we put things in nature. Education of, of human beings, of stress is not only the thing you feel because of your boss or whatever.

Simon Feldhaus 01:19:27  And we have to go to back to this 80% of rest and digest mode every day, and we should address that. Surely everything is something like slow down your life, but it's so easy. Sad, but no one did it. So it's just. It's not only slow like slow. It's just the idea of are getting in this rest and digest mode and being being honest to yourself. The most important part is to be honest to yourself. And to be to say, I can do that, but I do not must do that now. So okay, I do it later because now I'm going to and the easy thing some basics. If you sit together and eat a meal, there is no iPad, no phone, no newsletter or whatever. You sit on the table with the other ones, whatever, whoever is on the table and you enjoy sitting with these people on the table. Eat together, talk together, but never do whatever. You could do that. But you it's not. You must know lust don't do it or these easy things has to be re innovated in lives because they are lost.

Simon Feldhaus 01:20:42  If I see in hotels around what are they doing? They are sitting together in the evening lunch and everyone.

Abdullah Boulad 01:20:48  Has the iPad.

Simon Feldhaus 01:20:49  Or iPad before they eat. No one talks for me. It's oh my God.

Abdullah Boulad 01:20:54  Is there a percentage? How how much per day? We should. We should rest and digest versus being active from.

Simon Feldhaus 01:21:02  From the medical natural physiological side, it's 80% less than digest. This is surely in our society quite difficult. So so it's not. If you do that, you get ill. But the idea should be like that. And you should always think about where can I get in these modes? And sometimes it's only five minutes, but five minutes are better than no five minutes. So we start with we cannot change the thing in 24 hours. Never ever. But you can start with short things doing that And convincing yourself it is possible. And sometimes it helps if you see how other ones are doing that. I was two weeks in Africa and this was mind changing. Yes.

Simon Feldhaus 01:21:45  Just the African wives. They what they are doing. If you look at the the the women who is cleaning up the floor in the hotel, I would think. Okay. In Switzerland, the same would be done in 20 minutes. Here it was four hours, but at the end, who cares? It was done in four hours. Perfectly. Why should it be done in 20 minutes? It works. So? So this was for me. It was very, very, very impressive. I know that, but I didn't know. No, but it worked.

Abdullah Boulad 01:22:13  It changed over optimization in the Western world. Probably. Yeah, exactly. When I think about stress, I also think about detoxing from stress. And our lives have been kind of designed to, to restore that. So if we if we think about the day you work all day, the night is to kind of detox or restore. And then then there is also the week and is also here to restore or vacations are also here to restore a little bit longer.

Abdullah Boulad 01:22:43  And but, but then we take these stressors into our vacation so we don't rest and digest. We still are active. We want to explore because our brain cannot shut down and and restore properly.

Simon Feldhaus 01:23:00  Yeah, this is the main thing. I mean, the holidays are holidays. Surely if you are like that, you can do whatever sports and that that the point. But searching at twin kicks in holidays again, why not just just trying to get the holiday where learn to do nothing. It's quite a point, learning to do nothing. And our children didn't learn to do nothing. They are not able to do nothing they have to do. After five minutes sitting there. And we have to learn to do nothing.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:37  Yes. We cannot name it. What?

Speaker 3 01:23:39  It's not nothing. Yeah. Is there? Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:23:42  It's. It's what? What type of activity is that?

Speaker 3 01:23:44  Yeah.

Simon Feldhaus 01:23:44  It's something that's just being here. But surely it's not. You cannot think about nothing. It's a red elephant. But, but but learning to do.

Simon Feldhaus 01:23:54  It's just not. We don't not have to have to. Every time the the the games in your in your system sometimes it's just just enjoying the nature, seeing around which beautiful nature we have here, interesting people around me, talking with the people around me, getting aware of them. Who's there? I mean, again, in Africa, if you work, the next one is how are you? Okay. Yeah, okay. I did that in Switzerland. I just go to her, to her, to her street. And I said, the next one. How we get in?

Speaker 3 01:24:25  Oh, how are you here?

Simon Feldhaus 01:24:28  Hey, why are you asking me that? So? So just just connecting to other people. Just very easily. With no idea. Just talking. How are.

Speaker 3 01:24:36  You.

Simon Feldhaus 01:24:38  Coming back to very easy things in life? This should be some of our of oracles for everyone. For me too. I have to learn that again too, because I'm not perfect in doing.

Abdullah Boulad 01:24:47  We have to remind ourselves.

Speaker 3 01:24:48  Again about that.

Abdullah Boulad 01:24:50  But a big part of the day is not just work. hopefully. So it's also the the winding down in the evening and the night and the night sleep. How is are we getting enough sleep? And is sleep deep enough and restorative enough for these days?

Simon Feldhaus 01:25:08  Yeah. Again, this is thing, thing from the nature. The sleep is not only done because of it makes sense. Like your time is gone away. It's really the idea of a sleep is of restoring the system. and we know even more in science. Sleep was longer time. Not very scientific based. Only measuring that there would be sleep. But what exactly happens during the sleeping time was not very, very much science based. But now we know more. And the most thing we know, we call it lymphatic system. It's not lymphatic, but lymphatic system. It's from from the greater meaning if you are sleeping and the sleep is something like a very, a very variety of systems. So we are not sleeping just one level.

Simon Feldhaus 01:26:01  We are going in deep sleep, low level level, high level. So it's like a wave and this, this very developing strange things in sleep. This is very important. And the lymphatic system does mean if your sleep is like that, the lymphatic vessels in the brain go up and they go white. And so the cleaning, the chemical cleaning of the brain. Of toxic negative substances we accumulated over the day is much higher. It's just washed out by your own possibilities of your own body. If you are in a good sleep mode where you get in these phases of sleep, REM phases and everything like that because of the diameter of the lymphatic vessels in your brain. So it's a clearly proven, scientific, proven, measurable detoxing effect from chemical things on the brain. But that only works if your sleep is not like if your sleep is like it should be up and down, up and down. And you see that in young children, if you look at them in the night, sometimes they are just awake and then they fall in sleep again.

Simon Feldhaus 01:27:15  This is because they are not perfectly adapted to this sleeping system. And in the level of very not deep sleep, they just get surely awake. And when it's a good idea not to being in the room as a parent exactly in this moment, because then it's awake and then it comes the deepest phase of sleep. And then like that, we call it the REM phase, rapid eye movement phases where you see eye movements. We think that this time could be connected to dreams. Really? No, we don't know because we can't ask. But we think. But it's very important to get these, these waves. So not like like a sleeping like that. And this is the the healthy sleep. The healthy sleep is extremely activity and part of the brain. The brain during sleep is extremely active. Most of the people think that the brain is something like it's not. It's extremely active in different cases. The detoxing way is active. But again, we are we are just there are things where we set during the day.

Simon Feldhaus 01:28:15  They are they are overworked during night in the brain. That's why we dream something like that. But again, there are more, more, more cell regenerations actively, and the body is set to the rest and digest mode for the whole body. So the the brain and the, the reptile brain gets the whole body in this restoring mode by the vagus parasympathetic system. Yes, this has to be done. And that's why we need these different phases of sleep. And that's why if your sleep is disturbed and disturbed is not only the the the time of hour, how much you sleep, but especially the quality of these varieties of sleeping phases. If they are not as they should be, your sleep is not asleep. You are not awake. That's okay. And let's say psychological. You thought I was sleeping. It's fine. Yes, it's better than not sleeping. But it's not a good sleep even if you are not awake. And that's the point we are. We are not able with nothing. No medication in the world we have is a sleeping tablet.

Simon Feldhaus 01:29:26  There are no sleeping tablets. We only have medications which gets you in the state of not being awake. But nothing of this medication is getting you in the sleep mode. They are just cutting you down in the deepest phase. It's possible something like a narcotic state, but then you lose these phases with these medications. And that's why the sleep doesn't do anything besides psychological life. Sleep. And this is very important to get in this rhythm of sleep, to get all these things. And this is a very, this very, very difficult. And that's so difficult that we do not we are not able to do any medication. Who is doing like that beside one melatonin, but the other ones are not able because to be honest, no one is really able to know.

Speaker 3 01:30:10  How.

Simon Feldhaus 01:30:11  The brain does do this. What we know is there are special parts of the brain which has to get the other part of the brain, our consciousness in this state of narcotic. And this is an extremely active process for one part of the brain to get the other one in the narcotic process.

Simon Feldhaus 01:30:30  So energy consumption rate of this area is high. If you are in a state of not enough cell energy, we talked about this ATP chemical agent, which is produced if you are in a state where this is not enough produced in the brain, this brain area, which helps the other area to go in the sleep state has not enough power. And so your brain gets not in a narcotic state in the sleep state. So you have lack of energy, makes lack of sleep. Most of the people think, I'm so tired, I must sleep because I'm tired. If the part of the brain which should make sleep is tired and has not enough energy is not awake, you won't sleep even if you are completely exhausted because of lack of energy of this. And this connection to all of this is so difficult that to be honest, no one really knows that. While that's why it's not possible, and I think it will never be possible to get any medication which gets this kind of sleep we would call healthy sleep with this up and.

Speaker 3 01:31:39  Down.

Abdullah Boulad 01:31:40  The natural way of.

Speaker 3 01:31:40  The natural world.

Simon Feldhaus 01:31:42  And that's why we should try to do everything to help the body, to get in this state by lifestyle, not doing silly things before we go to sleep. Calming down before we go to bed. Not doing something. Looking these films and everything like that. And then five minutes after I go to bed with the impression of whatever film did. And then thinking, yes, now I have to sleep. So now do it. Yeah. I'm ready. It's now too. I will sleep.

Speaker 3 01:32:11  No.

Simon Feldhaus 01:32:12  It's really not possible. We have to be aware that sleep is a wonder of medicine.

Abdullah Boulad 01:32:17  You also mentioned the ATP for for for the brain cells. So what? How can we how can we make sure or have have enough energy source for our brain so it can regulate itself and put put the other parts or each other into it?

Simon Feldhaus 01:32:33  This is one of the key points exactly in in in. Again, if you have a sleeping disorder, it's just not only I give you some ATP and you will sleep solely, it's not so easy.

Simon Feldhaus 01:32:43  But as a part of a holistic treatment you have to address these things too. If you do not address, it's very difficult. So what we are doing is we are trying to help to get more energy in the brain. one is everything you just like fed because if you do high short chain sugars, carbohydrates, white bread or sweets or whatever, it makes like it and it's gone away. If you eat something like fat cheese or anything like that late in the evening or some nuts in oil. We have the fat which is long term giving energy. So so we call that a late fat piece of meat. I don't mean a complete meal, just short.

Speaker 3 01:33:26  Thing.

Simon Feldhaus 01:33:26  To nuts in olive oil. Or if you like that cheese, or if you like that, some pork meat with fat around. So depending on what you like. Just fat, small part. So you have some some back energy for the for the night too. This is for for normal life. And don't eat too much carbohydrates in the evening.

Simon Feldhaus 01:33:44  that's the most ideal if you have sleep disturbance. If you are still having or already having a problem, we use it looks like silly things under you, and you understand that that energy is the point of sleeping. We use therapeutic agents from specialized sugar, not the normal sugars which you use in the evening before you go to sleep to get your brain enough energy for this idea. It sounds a little bit silly giving sugar, but it's even. But it's not the sugar we used. It's not the the sugar from from, apple juice or something like that, which again, uses the insulin and then causes stress. It's a therapeutic sugar called galactose, which is especially for the brain. But to to combine that with some fat things in the evening and very, very old known things, which is commonly forgotten, is a natural substance called lecithin. It's a plant oil or not only plant, it's it's in the egg yolk in the in the yellow of the egg. It's inside too. But you can use that from vegetarian sources too.

Simon Feldhaus 01:34:49  It's not necessary to use, but the yellow part of the egg is one of the healthiest thing nature ever has developed for any human being. And my grandparents, in that time, there was in the advertisement and the TV used lecithin and they all used lecithin. It was common known, but it's completely forgotten that we have a very important natural substance to help these things. So it's not so difficult. But avoid short chain carbohydrates, fast acting sugars.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:23  In the evening.

Speaker 3 01:35:24  In the evening.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:25  And the axe, would you suggest to be eaten in the evening or the.

Simon Feldhaus 01:35:29  I would put forth both morning and.

Speaker 3 01:35:31  Evening.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:31  Morning.

Speaker 3 01:35:32  And evening. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:33  Okay. Okay. Interesting.

Simon Feldhaus 01:35:35  But most important evening. But if you like two in the morning.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:40  So yeah it sounds I think for many people strange to you need energy for the evening to get sleep.

Speaker 3 01:35:47  Yeah. It's not coffee. Yeah. Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:50  many may starve in the evening and go into.

Speaker 3 01:35:53  Yeah.

Abdullah Boulad 01:35:54  Which is, which is a bad effect at the end.

Speaker 3 01:35:56  Yeah.

Simon Feldhaus 01:35:57  That doesn't mean if you sleep fine you have to do that. But if you have a problem in sleeping, then you should try these things to get in these in another mood of how can my brain get in this completely? It's really the point that most of the people, because obviously it looks like a little bit strange in the sleeping state. The brain part of the brain is extremely active. It's not the sleeping status. Everything is cut down. This is done by a narcotic thing. If you go to operation and you give the medications, so you you go deep in an narcotic issue to, to get the treatment. With these medications, I get you in a deep sleep area where nothing is active, because then a machine has to get your breathing because we cut out any action in the brain, but you are sleeping, you will breathe and your pressure will go down. So these parts have to be active. So it's not possible to be in a zero state. That's why most of the brain is active during sleep.

Speaker 3 01:36:57  Yes.

Abdullah Boulad 01:36:58  But I also imagine that I mean, ATP is not just for the brain in every cell. So there are energy deficiencies or energy disorders as well. How? How do you see that and what's common?

Simon Feldhaus 01:37:13  For me, this is one of the most, developing illnesses in modern times. It's the the lack of energy on the cell level due to different courses to overusing to to bad lifestyle, which causes defects of these things, to infection or whatever we are doing. we are seeing huge amount of patients, all these fatigue problems. However, you will try to call these, systems. They are, they are we say lack of energy is is not all. But without energy nothing is. So so it's not everything every time. But if you have a problem of cell energy production, it will be very difficult to address other things to get on a better state. That's why the the energy level production problems, is a big issue. And this nature has done that. We have in every cell there's this a protect producing agent which is called mitochondria.

Simon Feldhaus 01:38:20  This is a very small part inside every cell of the human being. Animals too. this is a very small thing in every cell, something like a heat. Often where you where you put the wood in, which is the carbohydrates, the proteins or the fat, and then it is burned, not really fire. It's a chemical way. And the end is not heat, but the product of ATP, a chemical agent. This is the energy which is in the body, because this chemical agent can be transported to everywhere or used directly in the cell, wherever. And then it can be used as an energy cell for any chemical reaction. So this is the very easy chemical base of human beings of life. And we need this ATP without the ATP. Energy reactions are not possible. So this.

Speaker 3 01:39:10  Has to be.

Abdullah Boulad 01:39:10  Functions as.

Speaker 3 01:39:11  Well. Exactly.

Simon Feldhaus 01:39:12  So everything you do is needed by by ATP. So that is why in every cell we have this generator it's called ATP. Mitochondria come from the biological side.

Simon Feldhaus 01:39:21  This is the living bacteria we have inside our human cell and not human thing, which is mitochondria. And we think it's a theory because no one was there for millions of years. But the theory, there's no arguments empty this theory. So I think it's right. it was a symbiosis of a cell and the bacteria the cell put the bacteria in, but this didn't destroy it. And now we live together as the symbiosis.

Abdullah Boulad 01:39:50  In every.

Speaker 3 01:39:51  Cell.

Simon Feldhaus 01:39:51  In every.

Speaker 3 01:39:51  Cell.

Simon Feldhaus 01:39:52  So we have things inside which are not human. And and to be very interesting, all the mitochondria and everybody is only coming from women. The mitochondria are only coming from women. We men don't do anything with mitochondria. We only give the sperm the genetic information. But the the, the cell, the excel from the women there are the mitochondria. So we are only giving the the genetic information. And the next generation will have the mitochondria from the mother.

Speaker 3 01:40:22  Okay.

Simon Feldhaus 01:40:22  So very interesting.

Speaker 3 01:40:23  I had something if.

Simon Feldhaus 01:40:24  You think about that.

Simon Feldhaus 01:40:25  It's very interesting for development of all who has to look be. so these mitochondria are in every cell and they are important for these production. These are the only ones who are able to produce these ATP by using carbohydrates, fats and, proteins. and then they produce it and then it's, it's used for and very easy. If I try to think this brain cell needs ATP or if I'm awake, I want to do the part of my brain, especially the front part, which is my consciousness. Where where I am. This needs energy to be. Yes. I'm here. Let's do something. If you only have 50% of ATP molecules in this area, surely you will have a problem of getting in full power. Mind if the muscle has not enough ATP? It's just a muscle problem. If the liver has not enough of ATP, she cannot produce all the hormones or detox all the things. So if the white blood cells, they have to move around to fight against viruses. If they don't have ATP, they are slow.

Simon Feldhaus 01:41:37  So if a virus comes, it takes longer. So if immune deficiency or if the the police soldiers, the soldiers, the police and the soldier system so they calm down my immune system. If they have a lack of energy the other soldiers can override them if the military police is weakened. The military can do things which it shouldn't do. So auto immune diseases. Overactive immune system is overactive because of lack of energy in the police, which would prevent overactive. So energy loss does not every time mean weakness. Energy weakness can get to overactivity of other things which should be suppressed by not being suppressed by lack of energy. So it's very, very common. You can you can have extremely different symptoms when you're having ATP problems. And it must not be only tiredness. So it can be stiffness in muscles. If a muscle doesn't have energy it's not like it's like you know that when you are dead after one hour, after one day you are dead. Your your your body is stiff because of lack of energy.

Simon Feldhaus 01:42:58  So muscle stiffness every time tended muscles you have pain and muscles. Perhaps it's a energy loss of muscle. And then if you get more energy, the muscle will be smooth again.

Abdullah Boulad 01:43:10  Can we store ATP? How long is it in the body? Till we need to kind of, refuel?

Simon Feldhaus 01:43:17  So only we can store it for about 8 or 9 hours. So it's we we produce the ATP we need every day. And the turnover rate of ATP producing and using per day in kilogram is the same. You your weight. So if you're a body weight of 70 kilos, you will produce 70 kilos of ATP every day. Wow. Kilos. And one molecule is. So you can't imagine how much energy your your body is really producing. This is a wonder of nature. Thoroughly. We have big problems in our times by not having enough of these things because of lifestyle and huge things which affect negatively these mitochondrial things.

Abdullah Boulad 01:44:03  Or if we starve, for example, or if we do this intermittent fasting, how long this should be?

Simon Feldhaus 01:44:10  this is interesting.

Simon Feldhaus 01:44:12  one could think, okay, starving. Then it's bad because starving makes no energy. That's correct. But the the the interesting thing is that's nature. nature knows that if you are outside, you are a hunter and collector. There will be a day where you don't hunt an animal because you didn't find any. So there will be a starving day. And in the starving situation, the body goes to the rest and digest special survival mode. And this is done by special things and the body called sirtuin. These are surviving molecules and the body when the body gets in the dangerous situation and you never know is it's only one day I don't hunt the animal. Or perhaps it will be two days, so as soon as we go to a starving mode. Nature is setting these sirtuins to life models, and then what is done is the possibility of the mitochondrial to produce energy is doubled. So we regenerate. Mitochondria get older too. And so they have to be built new ones every day in your body. And in the starving situation your body is producing more new, better mitochondria than before.

Simon Feldhaus 01:45:23  So as soon as you get the next meal, you are able to get more energy in a shorter time to refill this leg because of the starving. That's why short, starving faces are extremely important and healthy for our body. If you starve for one month. But these short things we are discussing one day, or the intermittent fasting or the dinner cancelling or something like that. This is what we said earlier. We are constructed to have times where it's no input of food because then the body gets in this special mode.

Abdullah Boulad 01:45:59  Yeah. But then I also think about when we when we start for a longer period of time or eat less than than our body is need we it get access to stored energy levels? Yeah sure. Where we then potentially lose weight or what people intend intend to do.

Simon Feldhaus 01:46:19  Yeah. Well what then happens is it gets more efficient. So if you get a controlled starving thing, we use surely. But the body needs resources. We cannot store ATP, but we store proteins and fat, and then we use this fat to produce the ATP, which is not coming from the food we are eating.

Simon Feldhaus 01:46:38  That's why we are losing fat. We are losing proteins and the starving state. And this is why one part of the longevity community is Discussing this low caloric lifestyle, where you will live about 800 calories per day and should live longer. The theory behind is thinkable because of getting in this special mode. Yeah, but discussion is what makes sense. Is it interesting? But another part. We'll talk later. But the thing is, if you are starving, the body uses other parts of of resources to produce the ATP. He has to produce the ATP too. But the idea where it comes from this, this we use and this we can store we can store fat, we can store, proteins, muscles, something like that. And we use now this storage for producing new ATP. We are not storing ATP, but the resources this clearly can be stored. That's why starving makes sense.

Abdullah Boulad 01:47:35  Yes. But what then happens is we we restore the ATP, the energy levels, but we potentially lack of micronutrients, nutrients which are also needed in the body.

Abdullah Boulad 01:47:47  So there are other deficiencies potentially. We cannot produce automatically from our body.

Simon Feldhaus 01:47:53  This is exactly the problem. This is exactly the problem, especially when you do a repeated long time controlled fasting proteins. And that is okay. But you need for producing energy. These mitochondrial these chemical orphans, it's very complex. It's a very complex process for producing these ATP and these different chemical reactions and these chemical reactions they need. Without that, it's not possible. You have an input protein. If you output ATP between chemical reactions these chemical reactions they need Q10, B12 magnesium. They need these micro elements. If you don't have them enough the producing rate goes down whatever it does. If you have enough or not, if you don't have these elements, it's just not possible. And surely in the starving or in the fasting part, you don't eat that because the vitamin B12 has to be produced, has to be put in it. It could not be produced by the body. So you have to eat it. If you don't eat it, you get in the deficiency.

Simon Feldhaus 01:48:56  And if you reach that deficiency, your energy production rate will will go down. So this is this is the problem part. when you are to a complete stop of input at the beginning, it's okay. But then it's depending on how much B12 you had inside before you get in the leg. And then then it will be not so good.

Abdullah Boulad 01:49:18  But that's why maybe when we think about, this type of medications for weight loss or diabetes, the GLP one, how affect how this is affecting our body, starving our body and, and the use of energy levels and the lack of potentially, nutrients and others. How do you see the effects on our body of GLP one?

Simon Feldhaus 01:49:41  Well, this is a this is a large field of sadness. it's a very. The point is, at the first point. These things work. So if I do this, I will lose weight. And it's very easy because I just do that. I don't have to change anything. It works very easy. The point is, as soon as you stop that, nothing works.

Simon Feldhaus 01:50:04  Which is fair for me, but. Okay, so it works. But no one is really thinking about how. Because it's just not losing weight. It's not. I give you something and you lose weight. That does mean your whole metabolism has to work on another state. And this makes huge changes in huge amount of things in your body, especially these GLP one things. They are produced, they are developed for illness and in a special situation of diabetes. This is one of the really interesting medications. But this is an illness where you have too much sugar. Because of because of. Because of. If you use that in a healthy state, you only have too much fat or whatever. But you are healthy and now you use these substances. They have a great amount of impact in your whole metabolism, which is not normal. And this leads to a huge amount of following problems, not today, but in the next weeks because of a complete change of metabolism, which is not. Your body doesn't want that.

Simon Feldhaus 01:51:11  You are. You just change your metabolism, which is not there. That's why for me, completely silly idea. I mean, in a in a very special state of extremely adiposity us with 200 kilos and everything like that. That's another part. But we are talking nowadays about women with 60 kilos trying to lose ten more kilos like that. Something like it's a lifestyle drug. So everyone takes that now. This is for me, complete nonsense. And it's very dangerous. And we see that we have now effects of very, very, very dangerous side effects. Losing your sight. inflammation of the of the nerve of the eye. immune over activation. Dot dot dot dot dot. We will see following things.

Abdullah Boulad 01:51:58  Are these following things because of the lack of nutrients and and a balanced diet as well or well or just the effect of others.

Simon Feldhaus 01:52:11  Not really clear as science is very low in this area. They all would like to focus on the positive effects. Losing weight. Scientific ideas of what could be a side effect.

Simon Feldhaus 01:52:24  Let's not talk about so much. So it's no interest in this what we see outside. I think it's a combination. There is a, there is because of lack surely. we have great amount of problems with any fat soluble vitamins. Vitamin D, omega three, vitamin E, vitamin A, and something like that. But there must be something like an effect of the substance itself, which is not clear what effect it is. It's a combination.

Abdullah Boulad 01:52:49  Yes. And certainly we don't have enough data and long term experience now with effect.

Simon Feldhaus 01:52:55  I think we won't.

Abdullah Boulad 01:52:56  Yeah, but but that's sometimes also human nature that that something like that is misused. Over.

Simon Feldhaus 01:53:04  Yeah, sure. It's easy. Why should I change anything? Just to injection? And I will lose weight. And it works. The bad thing is, it works.

Abdullah Boulad 01:53:10  Yes. You also mentioned this galactose. Yeah. How can. How is it produced? Where is it from? And. And when is it right for someone like me or you to to be used?

Simon Feldhaus 01:53:24  Again, this is, this is a substance from, from the idea which I said earlier times.

Simon Feldhaus 01:53:29  Nature does not do anything silly. Everything has its idea. So if a baby comes to the world in the first months. Normally it's filled by breast milk, nothing more because normally the baby is by the mother and it's feed completely by breast milk for about six months, sometimes longer, but about for six months. So if the breast milk would contain only classical sugar and if you taste breast milk, it's very sweet because the sugar inside sugar is a very hard, very energy powerful thing. So if the breast milk would be the normal sugar which you use outside, the baby will die because it would be over sugar and it would be something like diabetes. Yeah. That's why breast milk does not have normal sugar in breast milk. It's galactose. The normal sugar is called glucose. Something like galactose looks like the same. But on one part it's just the opposite. So it's nearly the same. But the major difference because of this very small change is no insulin. So if you use galactose you eat that or baby drinks that comes in your body.

Simon Feldhaus 01:54:36  It's a carbohydrate. It goes in the blood. It goes in the cells and it is used for energy. But in a normal level, if you have sugar in the blood and it must go in the cell where it's burned by these mitochondrial things, the cell is something like a room in a house, and you are outside the cell before the door. And to get the sugar in the cell, you have to open the door that the sugar can go in. And the opener for the door is the insulin. So normally you have sugar outside. You need insulin. Sugar goes inside. And if you do it the whole day because the baby is drinking a huge amount of breast milk, then the all times insulin would be coming. That's why galactose galactose goes through the window. It doesn't need the door. It goes through the window, which is slightly open. But to get there, it must be a higher amount of galactose outside to get in. So this is the easiest part. That's why breast milk is high amount of sugar.

Simon Feldhaus 01:55:32  And then that's fine. So this is the idea of why galactose is produced.

Abdullah Boulad 01:55:36  So we should drink now every everyone of us should drink a breast milk.

Simon Feldhaus 01:55:40  Would be a good idea. But we do not have enough resources of that. And we would. We want still the baby, the the food. that's why we do not use breast milk. in in nature. It's it's in milk. So in normal milk from the cows. But the level is so low, that because cow is not a baby in cow milk, there's lactose and there's galactose, too. but it's not usable, so we have to produce it by ourselves. So there's no natural source where you can say you eat something with galactose. We have to produce it as an agent for therapy. Yeah. and it can be produced from, from military. We, we get the lactose, we cut them.

Abdullah Boulad 01:56:17  From cow milk.

Simon Feldhaus 01:56:18  Yeah, but it's then it's only the sugar. It doesn't have to do anything with proteins from the milk.

Simon Feldhaus 01:56:24  So it's no, no connected to that. Yeah. But we can use plant agents to from corn syrup or something like that. it can be produced but thoroughly. It's it's a quite difficult process to do that. It's not just if you do normal sugar, you can do it wherever, where, and you do one kilo of sugar for nothing producing galactose. It's a high process thing, which is which costs money. It's very difficult to do that. that's why suddenly galactose is quite expensive. And it's not the idea. It would be an interesting idea, but it's not possible. And I think that's the idea that no one must use galactose. Everyone. but for special situations, we use the galactose. Now, in this situation where energy is this problem to help gaining faster the energy in the system. If I get fat, it gets energy. But it takes a long time to to produce the energy. As soon as I need more fast energy, continuously energy. It's easier to do that with this sugar.

Simon Feldhaus 01:57:27  And that's why we use the galactose as a therapeutic sugar. So we know we don't use that as a classical nutrition, but we use it for therapeutic issues. Some very easy. I need, in the university, I have my master and I now have five days of full power examinations. Then I use the galactose exactly in this days and nothing more. If I have a chronic fatigue syndrome, exhaustion or whatever, I use the galactose for brain energy. If I have a sleep problem, I use the galactose in the evening for the night. So we are using galactose as a therapeutic agent.

Abdullah Boulad 01:58:06  But it could be the ideal source of, as a sweetener if the production costs could be brought down.

Simon Feldhaus 01:58:14  Absolutely. It's a very good sweet. There's only one very rare situation. There's a special illness which is called galactose, which is very, very rare, where a body cannot use the galactose. This is the only way where you shouldn't use that. Yes. But it's very rare in all the other things.

Simon Feldhaus 01:58:32  It's very interesting especially in diabetes because in diabetes we have the problem that the key the insulin is not opening the door correctly. Right. So you have over sugar in the blood. But if you think about that you will not have enough sugar in the cell. So they have too much sugar outside but not enough inside. And there is a special connection to Alzheimer. Then we see there's interesting research in universities that the brain cells of Alzheimer patients have a lack of energy because of a lack of sugar inside. That's why in some researcher areas it's called diabetes type three. If you give these patients these sugars they get new energy in the brain cells. So so we use that for that. And yes it would be a good sweetener. but again it's quite expensive and, and it's very important because we have other sweeteners. And just last week there comes new science. We have other sweeteners. We call it erythritol. And we thought it's a good one. But the new science makes us a little bit nervous.

Simon Feldhaus 01:59:39  We have side effects of agricultural we didn't expect. So yeah, galactose would be an interesting thing, but at the moment it's too expensive. We only use that for therapeutic issues.

Abdullah Boulad 01:59:51  Another big topic is longevity, and I feel there are a lot of misconceptions about and around it, because what's offered out there, how do you see that big field of longevity?

Simon Feldhaus 02:00:06  Yeah, you are addressing one of my favorite topics. I'm looking over that for decades now as the president of the Anti-Aging society in Switzerland. We are doing this for years on a scientific basis, and earlier we call it anti-aging. Now it's called longevity, which I think it's okay because the concept is down. But the problem is now it's a moneymaking system, to be honest. Most of the things on the concepts are more focused on how I get money than on the real point. The idea is okay, the idea is okay, we all get old. Yes, and if you get old, you will face some problems of the old human being because the generation of joints, misfortune of the heart, of the lungs and everything like that.

Simon Feldhaus 02:00:49  This is because of holding of cells and so loss of function. And so the idea everywhere was, okay, let's live longer because normally 1890 years and then it's done. So why shouldn't we live 120 years? And this is in the times of pharaohs in Egypt. They try to use substances like camel milk or whatever or some very, very interesting things to surgeons, to, to get older. So it's, it's a, it's, it's a topic of human beings. but the point is what we have to address really is is it really the idea. So now I'm 80 I have my oldest problem. My joints are old. Is it really ID now living 40 years younger in this state of 80. Because I will get more.

Abdullah Boulad 02:01:42  Problems now.

Simon Feldhaus 02:01:44  Than now. Is it really a good idea? And if I ask my patients, do you have the idea of getting 120 by lying in bed, sitting around a wheelchair? No. So the question is, do we really want live longer times, or do we better have a better quality in life by getting old? We call that the best years.

Simon Feldhaus 02:02:08  That's the years perhaps between 40 and 60 or 70, where the body isn't a good function. Not the perfect function as 20, but in a very good function you can do huge amount of things. And if we if we could do To this from 40 to 100. And then we die in two weeks. I think everyone would say yes. I go with so that the primary concept would be trying to enlarge the time of the best years where you can do what you want. You can be productive, working or not working, whatever you decide, but you are in a good state. And then the not preventable part of really getting old where your cells are not able to think doing as short as possible and then don't don't have to. The problem of of lying in bed and can do nothing and everything like that. This would be the primary concept of anti-aging longevity. Nowadays. It's more or less the concepts are going just yeah, we do something. And so you will be 120 if it's like 40 years, 80, or if no one cares, it's just 120.

Simon Feldhaus 02:03:16  And then there are some some of these guys you fill in the internet, they show one of the most shown is now doing it. They are only eating 800 calories a day or 800. Yeah, if you look at him, you really can see him beside a tree because it's like this and someone is asking, okay, why should I live longer in this state? But it's everyone has to do it by himself. So the concepts are more just just live longer. They are not focusing on quality. They are not focusing on what can I do in the times I'm living longer or something like that. So. So I for my side of you and the science which I can overview for about 20 years now, these are not really concepts which address the thing of better life quality, doing what really is possible. And then yeah, then it's end as fast as possible, but not suffering, but just just ten years more. Despite what you are doing, just to have ten years more on the planet.

Simon Feldhaus 02:04:19  I do think that this is not a correct development. I do think we should more address every. Every every human being. It's an individual thing. What is your goal? What do you want? How are you? What is your feeling? And at the end, to be honest. Longevity is nothing more than prevention. Yes, it's very easy. It's just we prevent things, which shouldn't be. But we cannot stop things which are there. Because when your joint is 100 years old, your joint cannot be in a state of 20 years. It's just not possible because the joint is is used. It's like a car. But we should try as a prevention thing to to prevent people for the unnecessary suffering of oldness. For me this is the idea of longevity. And it could be something like for the social system too. So if we get the people healthier and not being in need of of nursery care or hospital care in the. In the older years, it would be better for paying these things because if we all get 120, but the last ten years, everyone has to be in a in a nursery.

Simon Feldhaus 02:05:30  It's just not manageable. So it's for me, it's a must to get the quality of life and the prevention of unnecessary illnesses. For me, this is longevity.

Abdullah Boulad 02:05:42  So there is no magic pill. Not for now at least. And we are not in the singularity where we symbiosis with machines, where we can then live forever. So, okay, it comes back to, to really lifestyle and prevention medicine. and, and a steady improvement of, of medicine and understanding. It's not about taking hundreds supplements a day and think they will it will they will they will help in that communication Combination were much more complex.

Simon Feldhaus 02:06:15  Exactly that. And we have some knowledge. We talked about the sirtuins, these regenerative substances of the body of regeneration things. Yes, we can optimize things. Yeah. So but but again, it's more the prevention of unnecessary suffering of oldness. But there is no absolutely no key. It's there there are in these centers you have to go to colored boxes. You have to go to to coldness cabins like that.

Simon Feldhaus 02:06:45  It's very interesting for, for the next two weeks. but looking for the next 30 years. Okay. The thing with the machines. Yeah. Okay. That we get some cyborgs. There are developments going in that way but that must, everyone must decide by themselves. If it's my really idea that a part of my body is changed by a machine. For me, it's clear answer, but everyone has to do his own answer. There are developments clearly where things are on the way. If they are really good, okay.

Abdullah Boulad 02:07:24  We will see.

Simon Feldhaus 02:07:24  We will.

Abdullah Boulad 02:07:25  See. The future will bring. Yeah. And but medicine is improving for sure. And, Yeah. Just be open, open minded and.

Simon Feldhaus 02:07:34  Absolutely.

Abdullah Boulad 02:07:34  And work on prevention and awareness. What do you do, sir? I mean, to stay in balance, in your in your life.

Simon Feldhaus 02:07:45  At the end, I'm trying. And truly, we are all humans. There are days where I fail. Sometimes I would like to fail because there are some things.

Simon Feldhaus 02:07:56  Because I enjoy that I fail in those days. But overall, I try to lift these things in my life and to show my children or my surroundings. Trying to live in this field of balance, avoiding fast acting sugars. This is, for me the first point. Basic supplementation. Vitamins omega three. For me, everyone has to use that. If you don't believe measured in your blood and then you see what's necessary, it's very easy. I don't use vitamin pills every time, but vitamin D, omega three, something like that. Sometimes I measure that to see if I need more or ever, trying to be more. More integrated than nature. Just. Just receiving the wonder of of nature. Getting back to walking around, seeing this butterfly and saying, oh my God, nature is wonderful. Just a little bit. Being a little bit more, more down. Not so, not so. I am the best. And human beings are over all the nature. Just just being in the surrounding nature, trying to to to see what's that? And then the main point is that what we discussed, getting in the rest and digest mode as often as possible, as, as deep as possible.

Simon Feldhaus 02:09:19  And this is where you fail and then you you clear okay, I failed, but now I'm getting better. And then it's something like that. It's not so difficult. and it is. And this is the. Yeah, again, it's a mind tame thing. It's a movement. We have to work. We have to to do our perfect would be 30km per day, which is okay. So we are if we are, if we would get ten kilometres per day by moving this would be okay. This is the thing, which is my point. I have to address more the the walking movement and everything like that. but it's, it's it's not so complicated. It's just. But but getting a little bit more in, the field of the surrounding nature, and accepting that as a wonder of thing. And we are part of that. We are part of the nature we are connected to there. We shouldn't. We shouldn't destroy nature. We should go there, and we should try everything not to get in this fast, fast, fast, fast, fast developing state.

Simon Feldhaus 02:10:30  We are all are. And this is by by trying to help my children for the future to be a little bit prepared. From that, I try to let them read books, not only to have these tablets like that, and for me it's just. Being satisfied with what I am. It's not.

Abdullah Boulad 02:10:54  Just content.

Simon Feldhaus 02:10:55  I need more. I need this, I need. I I'm okay, I'm fine. I'm here. I'm here as a family. It's fine. So being satisfied, being content. I'm here. It's okay and not thinking about. There must be more and more and more. More. It's just okay. It's fine. And enjoying the life, enjoying social contacts, enjoying other human beings, discussing with them, talking with them, losing time by connecting people and not doing too much things. Something like that. So it's something like eat half walk, double, enjoy life and love your nature.

Abdullah Boulad 02:11:38  Beautiful. Thank you very much. I wish you all, all your goals to be, to be achieved and in every day's life.

Abdullah Boulad 02:11:48  I enjoyed our conversation a lot. I learned a lot. And I also think, the listeners to to today's episode as well. Thank you very much for coming. And, yeah, thank you, thank you.