The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 049 - Anti-ageing, Hormones & Healthy Living - John Stirling & Dr Louise Newson

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

In this podcast, Dr Louise Newson chats to John Stirling, the technical director of Bionutri. John speaks openly about his experience with immunotherapy treatments for his melanoma that was diagnosed when he was in his 20s. This experience started his real interest into disease prevention and healthy living. He is currently writing a book about anti-ageing and talks openly about different ways of slowing the ageing process. Many of these methods include reducing inflammation in the body and improving health. Dr Newson and John talk about the important role diet, exercise, supplements and hormones have when it comes to improving our future health.   John Stirling's Three Take Home Tips for Disease Prevention and Anti-Ageing: Stress can be a huge factor - manage your stress and find time every day to have some quiet time to yourself. Don't over-complicate your diet, keep it simple but nutrient rich and don't overeat. Get moving! Gentle exercise such as a daily walk can be very beneficial.

Welcome to the Newsome Health Menopause podcast. I'm Dr Louise Newsom, a GP and menopause specialist, and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Wellbeing Centre here in Stratford-upon-Avon. So today I've dragged into my clinic, someone called John Sterling, who's the technical director of a company called Bionutri, who I've known for around about a year or so, and he's got a brain bigger than most planets and is super knowledgeable about most things. So I'm really delighted to have you here today. Thanks, John.

Thank you. So one of the things that you're really doing a lot of research and writing a book about is about anti-aging, which is something that's, as you were saying before we recorded, has been around for a long time, but it's becoming really topical now. And there's all sorts of different anti-aging treatments. and different remedies and even different ways of eating, different ways of living. Some of them seem quite far-fetched. Some of them seem realistic. So it would be really interesting just to pick your brains for the next 20 minutes or so if that's possible.

Yeah, you're welcome. So tell me a bit about your background and why you're interested in anti-aging. Self-interest, I don't want to get old. As simple as that. No, it was something that fascinated me when I was a kid. Oddly enough, I saw a movie called The Picture of Dorian Gray. Yes. And as a young kid, it was really impressionable. I thought, oh, it's fantastic. This guy is staying young, but his pictures getting old in the attic.

And it was that kind of fascination, I think. It grew from that. And I just sort of gravitated towards biology. That was one of my, as a young kid, my father was a pharmacist, my uncles were doctors. And so it was in the family, but I have more interest in biology and chemistry. And, you know, it was just carried on from that. And really the turning point was when I was diagnosed with cancer when I was young. Because how old were you when you were diagnosed?

I was 29. and to be diagnosed with cancer at 29. And it was a disease I always considered to be something that affected old people, not young people, always old people. But to cut a whole story short, I ended up in Germany at an experimental hospital using immunotherapy. And because of my background time when I was diagnosed, I was actually doing environmental science.

an applied science diploma. So the head doctor, the hospital, saw my interest in his work. He talked to me and I got into the whole thing, and he offered me a job in the hospital. Initially, it was sweeping the floors. No, it wasn't. And so I worked in a laboratory.

I was doing black chemistry and euro analysis and what have you on a daily basis. In the end, I started. started lecturing to patients that were coming in from overseas, like yourself, getting people coming from all over, and talking about the treatment, the regime and what have you. But one of the interesting things I noted when I was there that people who underwent the treatment,

particularly the hypothermia and fever treatments, the high-temperature treatments and so on, and the biological preparations that they were using. to treat the patients, start to look younger. You know, and if you consider the cancer, generally speaking, is a disease of old age, except for my age, I was 29, there was something that fascinated me again. I grabbed the hold of me and sort of took me back to this whole thing about anti-aging.

So it was a whole sequence of events from, you know, from a young kid seeing a movie to being diagnosed with cancer, to ending up in Germany. working there and seeing the results, the end result. Yes. And then just take you back to the immunotherapy that you had there. What is that? What does that mean?

Well, people think of immunotherapy more in current thoughts. In those days, keeping minds quite a long time ago, so I'm showing my age now, it was embryonic. It was crude vaccines, making crude autogenous vaccines from the patient's own blood and their own tumour. So it's trying to get the body to fight against the tumour from within. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, hypothermia does that.

Or if you give fever therapy or injection with bacteria, increasing a natural immune response, it's non-specific. But what it would do, of course, it would just send the immune system into overdrive and any tumours and cancer cells will get whacked by it. Which is really interesting because at that time it was quite controversial. Oh yeah, absolutely.

It was considered quackery. Yes. And I remember reading something about you and then when you came back to England it was very hard to get the medicines over here, wasn't it? Well, it was Australia actually. I was it Australian, sorry. Yeah, and I worked with the government beforehand too. It's another part of my sort of history.

And I brought back a suitcase of biological preparations from Germany. Yeah. And I declared it to the customs guys because I used to work with them at one stage. And they jumped up and down all over the place and they saw all the ampules and injectables. And fortunately, I asked who was the duty doctor at the time. And it was a doctor I knew. Amazing. I'd work with.

So I said, call him over. And he came home, so what are you doing here? And I told him, I said, I got all this stuff and he said What the hell is all that? And I sort of gave him a little bit and he said So you want me to sign it off to you? I said, oh, I'd appreciate it if you would

And he did Wonderful I got in And You know, one thing led to another And I was on national TV And stuff like that Because they interviewed me before I went to Germany

I was skinny, pale Yes Looking It was my type of cancer, was it? It was melanoma, and it was stage three when I was diagnosed. Which not many people have long-term survival from, do they? Well, melanomas are very aggressive cancers, like pancreatic cancer. Life expectancy, generally speaking, when it's spread as short.

And mine had gone into my lymphatic system, so, you know, 99% mortality rate within two years. So anyway, I'm... responded very well to the treatment, fortunately, because melanomas tend to be very immunos responsive. Good luck for me, that was. And I responded well to it, and I ended up working at the hospital for three and a half years, which was good because the booster treatments I got for nothing. Yeah. It left to pay for.

It was an upside. But it was good also. You could not gain that experience anywhere, really. I mean, it was just one of those fluke things about circumstance took me into that position. I ended up doing stuff that I really wanted to do as a young kid, you know? It was kind of crazy, really.

And seeing people get well, not all of them did, unfortunately, a lot of them died because everyone who came there was a terminal patient. But we had some quite stunning responses at times. You know, people with very advanced tumours. respond to the immunotherapy program and the hypothermia. It's quite something, isn't it? And it sort of, it has come around in a full circle now. Yeah, hypothermia is not quackery at all.

No, and immune... Yes, absolutely. And immunotherapy is really up and coming, isn't it? Well, of course, now they say it's far more sophisticated and all that stuff was, you know, very... Well, you have to start somewhere. Absolutely. And Professor Franz Gourlach was the head of the Microbiology Department

and Franz Gerlach was a very respected, world-renowned medical microbiologist, and he was in charge of the vaccine laboratory, and he was a fantastic scientist, you know, and learned a lot from him, just observing him and listening to him. Yes. And meeting people like Professor Wernizabal, who had the distinction of being Adolf Hitler as one of his physicians, but he was a great oncologist.

and a very intelligent man. He was a biological medical scientist, you know. He had a brain that was different than most. So, you know, rubbing shoulders for these people was... Quite a privilege, I'm sure. Yeah, absolutely, you know. So that really sparked your interest even more, I'm sure. It did, and I don't think I should say this on recording,

but I used to be a fan of Cliff Richards when I was younger. And, of course, Cliff was always that Peter Pan of Pop. Yes, absolutely. And he had a fascination of keeping young for obvious reasons because of the job he had. And I used to say to people, you know, I want to be a Cliff Richard, you know, never get old. So it just sort of went from there really. And then when I started up a healthcare company, it gave me the ability to sort of experiment more. we set up a manufacturing company as well

with a laboratory and a medical doctor in charge of it and what have you so yeah expanded from there from a very young age as a young kid with this sort of crazy obsession to where I am now

which is so interesting but I think when people think about the term anti-aging there's a lot of people that just think it's about looks and appearance so there's quite a few people that will have anti-aging treatments, but that's really cosmetic treatments, isn't it, about how they look? But that's not really what you're looking at, is it? No. In the book, I actually make reference to this. It's sort of like a mechanical approach to a biological problem. Ageing is a biological phenomenon. It starts within, and it's a collection

of your genetic material, your lifestyle, and everything else, and you know, how you accelerate your aging process, you can influence it. And there are many ways you can influence that, dietetically and, you know, supplements and, you know, biological treatments and etc. I'm not against a superficial treatment, personally, you know, I think if a person has a facelift, the ideal thing is that they should follow it up with an anti-aging biological program to maintain the benefit of that longer. Because a lot of these things, you know, I've got a shelf life.

You face lift gives out on you after a few years and you're back there again and things don't look as good second time around. Well, this is the thing. But it's also, like you say, it's looking within, isn't it? And looking at what we can and can't modify, we can't modify our genetic profile, but we can... Influence.

Yeah. Influences. Yes, absolutely. And we can implement it by the way we decided to live our life as well, can't we? Which is really important. And when we're talking also about, anti-aging. It's not just about looking younger and feeling younger, but it's also about preventing disease, isn't it? Absolutely. And that's the main thrust. That's what's really important.

You know, we can sort of joke enough about how people look and how tight their skin is, but actually, if we can prevent disease, and, you know, as doctors, we're very much trained, or I was very much trained, is this is the disease, this is the treatment. Give this treatment, the disease will improve or will be maintained. But actually, there's so much more now about preventative, you know, and wouldn't it be lies to prevent so many more diseases? Oh, absolutely. We know, even with cancers, now the commonest cause of cancer is obesity. I think obesity is overtaken smoking, which is shocking, isn't it? Terrible. Really shocking, and I'm not even going to talk about it because I won't stop talking about it, but the way that some of the food industries

have influenced that and are influencing us in such a huge way is really outrageous. But we need to start thinking about anti-aging disease prevention before we get old, before we get disease, don't we? Absolutely, the younger you can do it. I mean, I was 29 when I was diagnosed with cancer. And cancer is a disease of old age. So that's an accelerated situation. I was aging prematurely.

You know, if you look at it in biological terms, I was getting old before my time. Yes, yeah. And the cancer was a manifestation of that. Phenomenal. Yeah. So the anti-aging thing really is about disease prevention. So what are the main things do you think that we could do to our lifestyle to try and reduce ageing?

Well, I'm very keen on fasting. Of course, it was once considered fattish or quackery even, you know. But the reality is humans have always had the ability to go for periods of time without food. I mean, you know, we evolved that mechanism. It's a survival mechanism for times of scarcity. Absolutely. So we have that mechanism. Also, when we're ill, the body uses a lot of energy

to digest food and break it down and dispose of it and so on. When you go on a fast, your body's got the ability to convert its attention to the problem. It's not very scientific, this explanation. But that's what it does. But is there more repairing that goes on in ourselves? It is. It accelerates repair. And you can see things in blood chemistry, for example.

You know, people's ESL levels change. They've white blood cell count changes and so forth and so forth. And you can notice things like skin conditions start to clear up. Okay. That's really interesting, is it? Yeah. As well. So I've done a bit of that over the years.

after I had the cancer, you know, as a preventative really, to try and reduce the recurrence. Because, you know, one of the problems with melanoma is it can come back 30 years later and it can be related to the original. Yes, yeah. So always on guard as far as that.

And it's quite a vogue now, isn't it, to have time restricted eating. Yep, absolutely. And for people who are trying to lose weight, are trying to reduce the surge of insulin, it can be really good. And it does make sense. You know, some people skip breakfast, some people have an early evening meal.

Yep. I think having... I do all of that. Yeah. Which is fair. I do too. But having time where you're not eating, because we're constantly a snacking nation, aren't we? Wherever you go out, the shops are empty, but the cafes are full. And it always amazes me that it's three in the afternoon or 10 in the morning

and people are having full-blown meals. And I think, gosh, it's not a meal time. Yeah, absolutely. Well, humans prefer a simple diet, an un-eathing. an uncomplicated diet. You know, complex feeding, constant feeding, overeating is the cause of a lot of problems. Absolutely.

You know, cancer is a disease of excess, you know, as well. So certainly looking at that, simplifying our food as well. Yeah, yeah. And there are things you can take orally, which has been proven in a laboratory, but also in some human studies, to affect or modulate various longevity markets in the body.

You know, we know about trauma and all that sort of thing, you know, lengthening those and improving your longevity. And so there are ways of doing it dietetically without toxic side effects. Yes. Because one of the things is you've got to be very careful in the quest for longevity that you don't also increase the longevity of a cancer cell. Absolutely. Because that is one of the problems.

that no one talks about, really, in the anti-aging business, is that some of these things that you can give, I won't name them, but there's some of them, whilst they may affect positively the longevity markers, they also have a dualistic effect or biphasic effect and extend the life of a cancer cell. So you can make it immortal, immortalised cancer cell. that isn't what you want.

No. So, you know, just taking a whole bunch of stuff that you read about and everything else can do more harm than good. It's like taking excessive antioxidants. Yes. You know, free radicals that we produce, which are linked with aging, are also a protective mechanism. Yes. We need them. And chemotherapy works partially by the cytotoxic effect, but by causing a burst of free radicals of the cancer cell.

which bumps it off. Yes. Now, if you're taking loads of antioxidants, which some people do, particularly Americans, you actually dampen down the benefit. Very interesting. You also dampen down your body's natural defense mechanism as well. Which is the opposite.

You want to boost an actual defence mechanism, isn't you? Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a threshold. Where does that sit? How do you make a tablet or a product that you can take, that everyone on the street can take, that you know is going to be within that reference range.

And that's the difficulty. Anyone can put a whole bunch of stuff together on the tablet. But knowing the upper and lower reference range in which these things operate in biochemically and physiologically to affect a biological outcome is very, very difficult. It's not easy to do. And I've had, you know, 40-odd years of running a business doing just that sort of thing.

And even still today, you know. Still hard. So there isn't any anti-aging supplement that we could go and buy and safely take? At the moment, I think there are all the things around that make claims for it and all the rest. I'm not saying they're dangerous. I'm not saying they don't help or anything like. But I think it's the same with any supplements, isn't it? It's being really careful what it is, what it's.

claims have been made because often they're not based on good data, but it's also seeing not just what they contain, but how much of whatever they contain. And I think for me, when I prescribe a medication, because it's regulated, we know what it is. And I can give you two of the same prescription and it will have identical in. Whereas the more I learn sometimes about food supplements is you could buy the same package two months apart and they might have different contents. So you have to be really careful. Yeah, quality control is a big issue. There are a lot of good companies around.

Absolutely. I use competitors' products personally. I don't have a problem with that, and I trust them, and quality is good. Interesting thing is I've said this for years, and because, you know, I'm in the industry that I'm in, I used to be criticised by the competitors by being too anti. supplement. I wasn't anti-supplement, but it was the use of them and where to use them and the timing of the use of them and the situation to use them.

Because I see oversupplementation as the same as overeating. It has the same stimulatory effect. And this is what a lot of these people don't understand. Yes. You take this stuff in excess and they say, oh, it's water-side where your body flushes it out. Yeah, but it's got to go through a process. before that happens. And that's the time in between is what we don't understand.

And there are some of these things that can increase, you know, take very large doses of vitamin B6, that can accelerate the growth of some tumours. I've seen that, saw that in Germany, when I was working in a laboratory situation in a hospital where women were in there and had menopausal symptoms and were taking B6 as a diuretic. and so on in very large doses and their tumours were rampant, you know, get them off the stuff.

Which I think is really, I mean, it's really interesting, but it's also very worrying for me as a doctor because, as you know, all I do is manipause work. And as you also know, there's a big resistance to women receiving HRT and a lot of doctors are resistant to prescribe it. So women are scrambling to get help and they're going often to try and get supplements. and they'll, when I ask women in my clinic what they take, and they say, no, we don't take any medicine, so I always ask, do you take any supplements or vitamins?

Oh, yes. And they go through this list. Herbal remedies, yeah. And they say, well, they're all natural. Well, you know, they're not. The snake venom is natural as well. But they often have a multivitamin and then a vitamin B complex and then a vitamin something else and a bit of it.

And so when you look at the ingredients, there's getting far too many. And just the naive part of me is thinking, well, they're spending too much money. They should be going on a holiday and enjoying their lives. Because these things are expensive, aren't they? And then you look at the potential for harm for some of these products. And that's what worries me as well.

Yeah, absolutely agree. And here's a point. I made this to my co-author, the book, who's a journalist, a health writer. In American Roberts, heard this before. If antioxidant consumption lived up to all the claims made for it, Why is that the incidence of cancer and heart disease in America is still on the increase? Because the biggest consumers of antioxidants are the Americans. And they take them in bucket loads.

Which is so interesting, isn't it? And I've said this to many people in the industry and they don't like it because they say, Heretic, you're a quack. Yeah. Hang on. No, it's that safety threshold. Again, these things definitely have a biological. effect. They have a biochemical effect. So, you know, you would expect them to have some sort of

side effect if you take them in excess. Yes. And I think even in a simplistic way, if you look at red wine, for example, we know having a smaller amount. You're going to tell me there's a problem. Well, a small amount is good, isn't it? There's lots of reasons. And, but obviously if you have too much, then there's probably. And it's the same with any excess, isn't it? It's in moderation. And it's overdone. People say, oh, you know, everything in moderation. I don't hit it. But it is true. I mean, you know, you can't say it enough.

Yeah, so we know diet's good, maybe some supplements depending, but choose really. Yeah, and exercise and movement. Exercise movement's really good. Yeah, your lymphatic glands require movement. And, you know, if they get all clogged up and stodgy. Yeah, no, that's really good. Because it's good for our, obviously, our heart, a cardiovascular system, but we don't think about lymphatics, do we?

People don't. People often don't even know your lymphitis. glands are there to fight of your immune is it's really important isn't it so to have healthy immunity is really key sleep is really important is very yeah something i never do and i haven't done for yeah but it's really i mean most women that i see when their hormones change they really struggle with sleep it's one of the first things that they find with during their perimenopause and menopause but they often don't associate it with the lack of hormones but we know that poor sleep is associated with the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, depression.

Neurological problems? Yes. And actually we were saying about repair, when we're sleeping, that's when our body does a lot of repair as well, isn't it? Two o'clock in the morning to five. Yeah, so that's the really key. And a lot of women I speak to, waking in the early hours, and they're going downstairs, having a snack because they're, you know, and then they're not having the fasting, they're not having the sleep or the rest. It's really compounding. So before we, finished, you mentioned a couple of times about your books. Tell me a bit about the book that you've nearly finished writing. I'll plug the book. It's called Age well, ageless.

Age well, age less. And it's really designed to provide information. A lot that what I was talking about before was really disease prevention. Yes. But also coming at it from the anti-aging angle. The interesting thing is those compounds that you can use to help influence. the aging process also influence the immune system and disease prevention. So they're sort of work in tandem. And it's knowing how to sort of get that they side by side as opposed to out of step, you know. I see ageing, premature ageing everywhere I go now. You see young guys in their 20s, they're boarding, they've got lines on their forehead.

and they've got all these sort of tell-tale signs. You know, more of them are wearing glasses, aches and pains. They're actually getting diseases of old age. I mean, arthritis in 14-year-olds, that was always a disease of old age. Yeah, well, and diabetes. Diabetes. All over the place, is it? Yeah.

And this is all, I think, an expression of accelerated ageing. And so the way to reduce that or prevent it or push back against it is adopting an anti-aging lifestyle, which happens to be a disease preventative lifestyle as well. Side by size. And you need to read the book really to understand. But there's a lot of stuff in there that I think, I would say, I haven't seen written about before.

I'm really looking forward to it. When's it coming out? It depends on my co-author, who's actually the writer. I put all the experience and all the points together, and he's putting it into English. As you can tell, I don't speak English. So it's something to watch for, and certainly when it's out, I will post about it through social media and on my website

because it's so important. I think it's not just about how long we live, but it's how we live and how we choose to live and how we can prevent disease is just so important. It really is. It's exactly that. And, you know, some people are lucky. They've got great genes.

They can abuse their body like crazy, you know. And I've met people like I used to, the guys have played in rock and roll bands with, you know. They should have been dead at pointy. Yes, well, we've seen it. But then it's unfortunately that can catch up with people. And also, you know, not all diseases is due to lifestyle and not all cancers are due to lifestyle either.

But there's a lot that we can prevent and do. So I think thinking more and trying to, think earlier and certainly with a lot of the work that I'm doing is trying to get people to think about their hormones and changing hormones early because we know that certainly estrogen and possibly testosterone in women are anti-aging as well. There's a lot of disease prevention, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes. So it all goes hand in hand. But it's been really enlightening listening to your story and I think it's incredible and I look forward to reading your book. So just before we finished. I'm throwing this out at you

without any warning, but I usually ask for three take-home tips. So are you able to just give three very simple tips to help with disease prevention and anti-aging? Look, everyone goes on about stress being

the cause, you know, it is an issue. It definitely is. Some people can handle stress better than us. I was never into meditation or any of that stuff. When I was diagnosed. I had a friend of mine who was a veterinary scientist. We were both diagnosed as cancer within a month of each other. And he went the route of sort of deep meditation and the

more esoteric stuff and everything else. And he's still alive today and he's done very well in it. And he used to say to me, you should try and slow down, John. He said, you run on a hundred miles an hour. He said, I've never seen anyone run around as much as you do. And I said, no, I haven't got time for that. But over the years I've come around more to his way of thinking as well about that. I think stress management is definitely, you know, for everyone in high-powered jobs, you know, stress, the elevated cortisol, immunosuppressive effect of that, it leaves you open to cancer, it leaves you open to everything, heart disease in particular. So managing your stress, definitely, finding time somewhere in your day.

to just have a quiet spell. Certainly on the diet, but don't complicate your diet. People eat like they're at a smorgasbord, you know? They read a book on health, and it says, you know, you should eat broccoli, you should eat this, you should eat that. And so they stuff it all into one meal. And that isn't how the body works. The body can't handle that.

It likes simplified feeling. So keep it simple and don't overeat. And things quite often follow. quite nicely. Obviously, if you've got a pre-existing medical condition like diabetes and thyroid problems and so forth, you know, you've got to take that into account. Yeah.

And also periodic fasting, you know, water fasting. When I say fasting, I don't mean juice diets. Absolutely. All right? These people say, you know, go on a juice fast. It's not a fast, that's a juice diet. Yes. Fasting is the exclusion of all food.

bar water and rest. So I guess simplified diet. Yes. But make sure what you eat is nutrient dense. Make every mouthful counts. Yeah. And stress management. Certainly time for walking.

Robert does every day. He goes walking with his dog. I spend the time running backwards towards between the kitchen and my writing the book. You know, that's my exercise. But I think it's a lot. movement's very important. Yeah so movement, rest. This Dr Issel said famously, go climb

a mountain and when the BBC made the documentary about his work, the thing that they all found fascinating was that Issel's had all of his cancer patients that were able to walk out walking in the hills and they're... Brilliant. Behind the clinic, the hospital. Yeah, really important. So, well, thank you.

much for agreeing to record today because it's been really fascinating and interesting. So thanks very much. Well, if I've been prepared for it, I would have been better. Oh, no, it's brilliant. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Louise. For more information about the menopause, please visit our website www.menopausedoctor.com.uker.com.uk.