Elena Letyagina: Hi Claudia! Thank you for having me. I'm very excited and yes, I would love to share all the tips I know and to have.

I grew up in Russia. I was born in the very industrial area of Russia in the Urals, like in South Urals. So since early childhood, I was exposed to different pollution and environmental toxins, but obviously back then, I wouldn't know about it, but it all played the role in my health and had an impact.I left Russia precisely for that reason, because I just couldn't stay in this ecologically poor area. At the age of 22, I moved to London to study finance and I was working in finance for many years before changing my career.

Claudia von Boeselager: With toxins, I think we're so much more aware of them now. So, did you always have an interest in healthy eating and lifestyle? Was this something your parents role model-ed for you?

Elena Letyagina: So growing up in Russia in the 80s, diets were quite important in all the meals were home cooked in general, not only in my family, but like in general population, we didn't have restaurants. Really. We didn't have any takeaways.

So people were forced to eat at home. And in general, if you think about Russians, it's quite healthy, a lot of fermented foods, perhaps kombucha at the age of five, it was always growing my windows.

Claudia von Boeselager: The superfood!

Elena Letyagina: Exactly! We had the sauerkraut or that's German name that we had own sort of version of it, pickled vegetables.

So in general, the diet was relatively healthy. My parents actually are doctors. So I was always exposed to this side of the story where you medicated, where you're taking antibiotics for every single cough and cold. I was aware of the healthy eating. Yes, but I never thought that you can literally change your health by changing your lifestyle and diet until later in life.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you tell us if you have any particular morning routine to start your day as a success?

Elena Letyagina: So morning routine and evening routine, actually, both of them are crucial. So when I work with my clients, now, this is one of the things we always work really closely.

So you do need to have a proper morning routine. A few things I've been doing now consistently. And the first one, when I wake up and never check my phone straight away, because it puts you into the very stressful mode, right. It sort of activates your brain in an unhealthy way. You see, hundreds of emails there, you feel like you need to reply to everyone. You have this WhatsApp chats popping up.

So the first thing I do when I open my eyes, I meditate for five minutes. You don't need to meditate. It's just going to do a deep breathing exercise, but that sort of relaxes you and it sets you up properly for the day.

Then I stand up, open the window and get the exposure to the light. When the light hits your eyes, it travels into your brain and it suppresses melatonin. So it regulates your circadian rhythms and you get fresh air because during the night you accumulate a massive amount of different toxins and CO2, which is something I do every morning.

Hydration is another one. Very important. I tend to recommend drinking at least half a liter. If you can, especially, if you're having coffee.

Claudia von Boeselager: And then just normal water, or do you put something in the water?

Elena Letyagina: I like just normal water. Some people don't like drinking water, then they can just put some lemon in it or some fresh mint or orange juice, whatever make them drink this water, but generally normal water, room temperature, filtered water, properly filtered, none of those plastic containers, properly filtered water.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk about your meditation practice? I think it's an area that more and more people are really looking into, but there's so much different information out there. And you said five minutes and typically some people say you have to do longer . How do you master those five minutes to make them really worthwhile?

Elena Letyagina: So well, five minutes. That will be my recommendation to the clients but obviously I work with the , different people. Some people they don't even want to hear about meditation and some people will be meditating two hours per day. So I do have clients on a very wide spectrum.

So five minutes, this is just, just to get you ready if you want to have a proper meditation practice. You'll need sort of 10, 15 minutes to lay down and you obviously have deep breathing and relaxing. I'm actually using Braintap . This is what I'm using for my own meditation. but what it does, it actually stimulates it's as a video and audio stimulation and gets your brainwave into the right frequency to calm you down or to relax to properly relax you. So that's, that's the tool I'm using, but you can just do proper meditation and put any music. There are so many apps you can have, it's really a personal preference. So whether you prefer a guided meditation where they tell you focus on your breath, relax, or just the music, or maybe just the sound of nature, like raindrops, really your preference right?

The important idea is that you just need to be able to completely relax and get any thoughts out of your busy brain. And this is hard. If you can master it for five minutes every day, you'll be, it will be easier to get into this state when you do it regularly, but do it for one week, two weeks totally worth it. It has to be at least three weeks of practice. And then you start understanding actually, if I'm stressed out and I just close my eyes and have deep, deep breaths, you'll see how stuff's coming down, like how your heart rate will drop and how calm you will become. Become.

Claudia von Boeselager: For the people interested - BrainTap. How do you spell that?

Elena Letyagina: BrainTap, TAP

Claudia von Boeselager: TAP and that's the brand name?

Elena Letyagina: Yes, this is the brand name, the BrainTap. It's quite an expensive investment. The BrainTap yeah, that's correct. So braintap.com. That's a, it's a headset. It's quite an expensive investment. So it's really, for people who are very serious about it, it's not something for people just to try because it may be a waste of money, but then if you're serious about it, if you do it regularly, this is just something it's a next step to try.

Claudia von Boeselager: Because you mentioned about the brainwaves and tetha and things like that.

Elena Letyagina: Correct, more advanced. And I do check it with my OURA Ring, so, OURA another health wearable. I would be strongly recommanding and I literally, I recommend it to every single client I see.

Claudia von Boeselager: I have one myself!

Elena Letyagina: You know what I'm talking about. It's probably one of the best wearables on the market to check your readiness scores, to check your stress markers, and then to check your sleep phases, which is absolutely crucial for your wellbeing. So the brain tapping. So there are different ways, frequency, of your brain, right? So we have a beta or you have theta and then have Delta, which is a deep wave.

So depending if I put the theta training on my BrainTap headset, I can see on my OURA that I wasn't in the wave. I just go straight into the theta state. Fascinating. Yes.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, I love that stuff.

Elena Letyagina: Frequency changing to theta.

Claudia von Boeselager: The brain frequency is changing, super exciting space, neurofeedback. I'm definitely going to look into that. Thank you. And you talked about exposure to sunlight now , being in London and winter, what is considered sunlight? The clouds are gray - is it still enough?

Elena Letyagina: Yeah no it's not enough? No, it's not. I mean, it's still better than nothing. However, some people will be affected by it more than others. I'm sure you've heard about the seasonal affective disorder, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah I have it, yup.

Elena Letyagina: You know about it. So for those people, you do need to have a light in the morning, which will be simulating the daylight and you need to have an exposure to this every morning. And I've seen clients who it made wonders for their sleep quality people who are struggling in particular during the winter or darker months, they're struggling with their sleep quality - five minutes of exposure to those lamps make a big difference.

Claudia von Boeselager: Thinking of the word successful, who is the first person that comes to mind and why?

Elena Letyagina: This is a hard one, because you know what, for me to definition of success has been changing over the last few years .Who comes to mind? It's me. It's such a subjective definition. Isn't it? So before, when I was in finance and I was surrounded by high achievers and people just dream by achievements, by, by getting certain amount of money, so that's how I measured success. But then at some point when I was becoming sicker and sicker, month after month, I thought what's the point? I can't really enjoy my life. And now, yes, maybe monetary wise, I'm not getting as much money as I used to be in banking. But the rewards from working with clients, sharing my knowledge and spreading health is so much worth it, and then I can spend time with my family and do something for myself. I'm really getting the balance.

So to be honest, this is the best. Wake up in the morning and you're grateful for many things and you feel healthy. This is success. That's what's happiness, right. You can't really measure it..

Claudia von Boeselager: I totally agree. And you had mentioned gratitude there, and I think it's Tony Robbins who says that gratitude is actually the 180 of depression. So if you're feeling gratitude, you can't be depressed. It's really focusing and really feeling the gratitude as well. It's one of the health benefits right?

Elena Letyagina: You're absolutely right Claudia. I would say to anyone who's having problems with anxiety or depression or mood swings, you should be practicing it.

It's actually sometimes in my program. So when I write the programs for clients, I would say three things you're grateful for when you wake up first thing in the morning and you open your eyes ready to meditate, have a deep breath or just list three things you're grateful for. They could be absolutely basic. Like I'm grateful I have food today can be huge and fundamental. I'm grateful for my health and my family or having a laugh in my life. We're especially now with COVID people in January feeling a lot of anxiety. And so literally just focusing on small, tiny things really make a big difference. Cause gratefulness doesn't come natural to us, to humans. Fear comes natural and worrying and anxiety, but feeling grateful for small things. It's just, it's not very natural. It's important to cultivate it.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, I totally agree. And I came across this fabulous journal. It's called the Five Minute Journal. They have an app as well. Downside of the app is obviously that you're on your phone, but it's setting up your day for those three things you're grateful for and what would make today great. And then you do five minutes in the evening as well. I'll link it in the show notes , but I find it a great tool. Yeah, it's really great. I use that. I should use it every day, but we'll get to it.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love. So for instance, I have one of these Japanese acupressure mats that my family nicknamed the torture match, but it allows me to sleep amazingly. So I absolutely adore this thing that everyone else just can't imagine...

Elena Letyagina: I used to have it as a child. We call it the really it's a scientist applicator by cousin sofa. It has a different name, but that's, I completely forgot about it. And I just go to the Amazon the other day,
One of my ridiculous habits, I'm taking cold showers everyday.

 Claudia von Boeselager: Ice Man philosophy?

Elena Letyagina: A little bit, a little bit. Wim Hof is o bviously - a cold shower it's cold shower was a cold exposure. It's a controlled stressor.. Any controlled stressor are great for us, if it's a chronic stress, then it's not great for us.
But if it's controlled one, like a little bit of fasting, a little bit of certain phytonutrients found in vegetables, a little bit of high intensity training, a little bit of cold. It's actually quite great for us. And it's great for Longevity, right? Cold showers I started to take it, I think, last summer. And it's a great season to start! So do you know what I can love, give it up. I just feel amazing afterwards.

 And I'm not doing it like Wim Hof.Wim Hof is doing it like, for what? For three minutes up to three minutes. Right? Cause there is no way I'll stay for three minutes

I'm doing it for 20 seconds, but this is like the high you're getting the natural high is great.

Claudia von Boeselager: It's really amazing. I find too, I'm such a softie in this. I like my warm showers or hot showers even, but after coming across Wim Hof as well at the end of the shower to put it cold. And it's literally one arm in the other arm in and then out again.

But what I, what Wim Hof teaches is it's the breathing and you breathe through it. So if you take deep breaths, you feel the cold, but it doesn't affect you as much.

Do the breathwork before,

Elena Letyagina: r One before. Right? So you, while in the hot shower you prepare yourself, you do the breath work and then the cold water not supposed to breathe under the cold one. Cause you can, youcan just pass out .

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh really? Clearly I'm not doing it right.

Elena Letyagina: You get yourself sprayed. And then you just no you said correctly so that you have to breathe through it but just not over breathing. Cause it can get lightheaded.

Claudia von Boeselager: What's the physiological benefit actually of cold exposure?

Elena Letyagina: It stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system.
And then, I don't know if you know much about sympathetic and...
Maybe you

Claudia von Boeselager: can explain a bit for those that aren't so familiar?

Elena Letyagina: So we have 2 types of nervous systems.. Sympathetic one, it's fight or flight. So this is something a lot of people constantly found, like when you're getting angry, anxious, mood swings. It's actually good to have it a little bit, cause it makes you really productive.

Then you have parasympathetic. This is rest and digest when you can relax, when you can digest your meals properly. So it has to be a balance between those two States and unfortunately in the modern world, actually, a lot of it's shifted towards sympathetic drive. So you're constantly in this fight or flight mode.

Which is not healthy for anything because it's affects all the hormones in our body. So when you have cold exposure, cause it's only short, like if you take it for too long to get hypothermia, which we want to avoid, but if you take it for a short time, it actually provides stress to the system and it calms you down afterwards.

So your parasympathetic system stimulated your vagus nerve, which is the main part of the parasympathetic system get stimulated. And you have this benefit. So I would definitely recommend it to everyone at least to try it. Or maybe like you just do one hand then one leg, it's still something right.

I get braver and braver. But I think

Claudia von Boeselager: there's so many benefits. I have a friend actually, who now lives in Dublin, a medical doctor, and she swims in the Irish sea every day in this temperatures. I think in Russia and places like that, people go on New Year's Day dipping in the cold freezing waters.

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely. And other the way, when you go to saunas, it's also a controlled stress, right? So you could go to something very hot. It's also quite good for you. It's good for your mitochondria for energy production. So, if you can combine both, you go from hot sauna into the snow or into the ice cold swimming pool. This is the best actually I love doing this, but now everything's closed.
Dreaming

Claudia von Boeselager: of the time after COVID.

Elena Letyagina: In

Claudia von Boeselager: the last five years Elena, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life?

Elena Letyagina: The last five years. So I would say because actually a lot of my changes were happening the last last, the last five years, I would say two things.

Actually, your diet is absolutely fundamental to making sure that you having a proper nutrition, which support all the different functions in your body, but also drives you towards the optimal health and performance. And the second one is self care and being able to find time for yourself and do relaxation. So I started to do much more meditation, relaxation, and I'm working with the nervous system much more in the last five years.

Claudia von Boeselager: Let's talk about your journey to forming your company, Gut Philosophy. When did your interest in nutrition come up?

Elena Letyagina: Do you know what? I came to nutrition completely, I wouldn't say by coincidence I'm so it was my part of my journey, but as I mentioned, I was working in the financial sector and really busy, stressed out lives. Then I got pregnant. And then while I was on maternity leave, I thought I'm feeling a little bit bored. Maybe I should just study something just for myself just to learn something. And I thought it was literally between yoga and nutrition, back then. And then I thought I'll just learn a little bit more about nutrition.

What I thought nutrition was about is literally which vitamins, minerals in different foods and how they impact our diet. Obviously nutrition has nothing to do with that all a little bit to do with that. But there's so much more to that. So what to do, I saw, I became, I started the online course.

Initially I needed to do the science foundational course before being able to enroll a proper qualification. So while I was doing the chemistry and anatomy and biochemistry courses, I thought, actually, this is something I really love. And do you know what, what it was? Um, 10 at school, not 10, maybe 15.

They did do a profiling at school. They tell you, what are you, what's your brain sort of, how would you predispose to. And do you know what came out? Microbiologist! And that was like, really, I love going to their microbiologists. I'm going to walk in finance. And I'm thinking it's actually interesting how your predisposition towards science was clearly there.

And so I got back after the first pregnancy I got back to the, to the bank, I used to work, I was tired, exhausted, small baby, feeling guilty all the time. You know, the drill, how all new mom's feeling. And then I got pregnant with my second baby. And this is the point when I thought, I don't think I'm coming back because I'm not happy there this is why, your question about happiness and success are relevant.
And I started to study this course and I thought. Maybe I can make a career out of it. And when I finished it and I realized that I completely changed my health and my family's health and my, my parents who are doctors and they're scientists.

And I was sending them different research. And actually even now, because my mom is a gynecologist, they will know I'm sending her different research pieces on the microbiome, on BPMs, on all these things. And she's in a way now, functional medicine practitioner herself.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, amazing. You've converted her as well!

Elena Letyagina: Yeah, this is what was the question. The question is getting to gut philosophy. So basically after the second child, second child. Exactly. And this is how I thought I'm going to make a career out of it.

And once I finished, I started practicing literally from day one. I started to seeing clients from day one. Yeah. Let's never look back really.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you tell me about the time when the specialist doctor thought that putting you on long-term antibiotics was the answer.

Elena Letyagina: Yes. So that's probably the darkest side of time, of my life.
So when I was working in the bank and my health started to deteriorate now, I'm not surprised because obviously it was all nighters. I was finishing at midnight every single day. It was sleep deprivation, even though I was in my mid twenties. So you could sort of fall through a little bit, cause you were still very young, but the, all the health effects were accumulating.

And I was suffering with them. Chronic sinus conditions. I've developed asthma, I've developed respiratory infections. So I was having, I don't know, maybe 10 colds per winter, every single day with complications and the doctor, the specialist that's still back then, who actually had the surgery. He did the surgery for me.

So I'm very grateful to him. However, he did say there is no way of managing something like that because you got this condition quite young. So the only way to manage it would be having antibiotics for three - four months, three times a year. Like low dosages, and maybe steroid drops all the time and I thought this is not right.

And actually to be honest, he did say, well, maybe you should investigate and see someone. And there is some research suggesting the dairy sensitivity could be the cause. And he referred me to a professor who actually a scientist and he thought of, but the only thing that come out of this consultation, maybe you should try eliminating dairy and see what's happening.

Claudia von Boeselager: And take long medication...

Elena Letyagina: And take long-term medication. Nothing happened there didn't help me. Well, now I know that I was intolerant to gluten, but then my own sort of approach to my health. It was very multifunctional. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go off gluten. I'm just saying certain people will be intolerant to other things.

And yes, I did have intolerance because my gut microbiome was completely destroyed really with all the multiple antibiotics, I was taking six courses of antibiotics per year. So, and over multiple years, it's this, you just, it's not fun.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk a bit about the effect of antibiotics on the gut and the intestine? And obviously there are cases where antibiotics are completely necessary and you know, what are ways to repair the gut after taking antibiotics, if it's really needed?

Elena Letyagina: So you're absolutely right saying that antibiotics are life-saving and when you have to take them, you have to take them. However, in our modern world, we are taking antibiotics for any small reasons as a prevention towards something, or if you're not sure whether you have a viral or bacterial infection, very often they will be prescribed. And there are some stats showing that actually, I think it's 30% of all antibiotics prescriptions are not necessary. So that's quite a scary number because that antibiotics through the meat and animal protein we are eating through the, through, we also working out all these bacterial species with the constant sanitizing and washing our homes with the bacterial sprays, antibacterial sprays.

So antibiotics to our gut microbiome. So just, just for people to understand the gut microbiome, it's a new organ. Now it is a new endocrine organ. So it's an organ producing hormones and vitamins and energy for us. It has a far-reaching effects on our health. It's linked to anxiety, depression. Any issues with your microbiome would be linked to overall obesity, certain cancers, anxiety, depression, a lot of different and unpleasant diseases. So having a diverse microbiome is very important. By diverse. I mean, as many different species as possible, I love comparing to the Amazon forest. So if you have an Amazon forest, you want to have a bit of spiders, a bit of snakes, little butterflies and tigers, but the antibiotics would be a single pill of antibiotics.

It's a nuclear boom in your, in your Amazon forest. It wipes out everything. Obviously, everything w ill be growing again, right. And species will come, come back. But not all of the spiecies coming back. There are some studies showing that certain antibiotics are worse than other antibiotics. So some of them there will be quite mild.

So like a small bomb. So part of it will be to grow quite quickly, but some of them it's absolute nuclear bomb will completely wipe out. Um, after two, three, four years, people do not have the same composition as they had before antibiotics. It's actually quite scary because we keep losing it, but we're also passing it down to the next generations.

So we are passing down this impoverished microbiome to our children who would have all the issues with allergies, asthma, atopic dermatitis, and all these things just because their microbes are not as diverse as they should be. So I'm not saying don't take antibiotics, but I'm just saying, think about next time, like when the doctor prescribed the antibiotics, are they really necessary?

And if they are, are they sure that this particular antibiotics will be targeting this particular pathogen? Because a lot of people don't check that particular bacteria wherever they have at whether it's the UTI or it's your chest infection or ear infection, they don't check for it right, they just give you the wide spectrum antibiotics, which wipe out the wide spectrum of good bugs.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. And I find that really scary because even just recently my pediatrician with one of my daughters the doctor was very keen on filling in and giving her already the course of antibiotics before we got the test results back for the UTI urinary tract infection. I was at a loss to understand why you would start taking antibiotics before actually having the test results. And I was semi pressurized into being a "responsible parent" and giving the antibiotics straight away. And low and behold, two days later, the test results came back and it was negative. And while I agree that sometimes antibiotics are a must and they can be life saving, I had H pylori and that is the only way to treat it with a course of antibiotics for a week. However, the importance of rebuilding the healthy gut microbiome is so essential. Could you talk a bit about that?

Elena Letyagina: So if you've taken antibiotics first of all, you have to take probiotics while you're taking antibiotics, not at the same time, at least two hours apart, but also making sure that your diet is rich in the plants because plants they have fiber and nutrients, and this is what will be feeding our microbes. You have to repopulate them, but we are capable of repopulating ourselves, but it's also important to feed the right ones with the right fiber.

So, you know, that very often people after antibiotics, they'll be like, Oh, I just want to eat. I'm just craving sweets all the time. Or I just want to have bread and cakes. It's precisely for that reason. Cause dysbiosis would be causing these biases is just a loss of balance in the good and not so good bugs in our gut.

So the not so good bugs, they will be sending chemicals, which come to our brain and asking us to eat something sweet. It's actually, it's very clever. So ensuring that your diet is rich in plants in fiber is very important that you have healthy fats is very crucial because only that's a very important for our microbiome and also taking probiotics for at least two months after you stopped antibiotics, this is, would be an important measure.

Claudia von Boeselager: Healthy fats- can you define that for people not familiar what that is?

Elena Letyagina: The whole fat dilemma we've been scared in seventies when the studies show that a high fat diet will cause heart diseases and everything. Now, obviously we all know that it's not the fat, but it's more processed carbohydrates and sugar was causing the issue. So healthy fat, these are things like fatty fish, like salmon, olive oil, extra Virgin olive oil, coconut oil to some extent, maybe not every day, then nuts and seeds. That would be your healthy fats. And I wouldn't say that there are unhealthy fats. All fats are fine, but certain fats are slightly better and more beneficial. So fats from animal protein, maybe not so good in high quantities.
Trans fats, it's not even a real fat, right? This is a synthesized structure of the fat was changed by heating it. So trans fats are found in anything which comes in the box for you, like ready meals, cakes...

Now there's less trans fats, but they still exist. It's more certain fats like refined vegetable oils. Those are prone to oxidation. Those could be a little bit more inflammatory. So like a sunflower oil, something everyone cooks with.

Claudia von Boeselager: What do you recommend to cook with?

Elena Letyagina: I would recommend definitely cooking with olive oil.
So some people say but olive oil has a very low smoking point, but this is the point where after heating the oil starts converting into not great chemicals. However, the smoking point for olive oil 180 degrees. So as long as you cook on the stove or you bake something, not above 180 degrees, it's absolutely fine to use olive oil. But I would definitely recommend it to anyone with inflammatory conditions, autoimmune conditions do not use vegetable oils.

Claudia von Boeselager: We talked about about ways to improve gut health in general. I'd love to even just take a deep dive into the health risks and issues that come from a non healthy gut. Maybe you can talk in a little bit more detail about some of the health issues that you see in your clients or see in people who have unhealthy or not perfectly healthy gut microbiome.

Elena Letyagina: It's a great question. I would say gut health and healthy microbiome virtually affects the majority. The majority of the modern diseases will be linked to microbiome in one way or another. There are two ways to look at it. So you have something which is linked to digestion . So if you feel bloated, if you have reflux, if you have constipation, diarrhea, stomach pain, you would think, Oh actually, maybe there is something wrong in my gut.

And you definitely would have some sort of imbalance in your gut microbiome. However, there are some diseases which have nothing to do with the gut or looks like they have nothing to do with the gut. Like things like eczema, allergies, migraines, headaches, skin issues, right. Psoriasis, autoimmune conditions.
It feels like why would have anything to do with the gut, but actually yes, it does. And it's directly linked to these diseases as well. So if you have any of what I've just mentioned. So usually, so it's anything to do with the skin very often has implications in the gut. So things like chronic frequent infections, whether it's UTIs, whether it's chest infections or cold, that will have ramifications. Things like joint pains. This is again like, why would I have it? But yes, joint pains, Eczema, psoriasis, all of the autoimmune conditions can be linked to the gut.

Claudia von Boeselager: Could you explain that a little bit more how that link is? So because of a missing bacteria or causing inflammation in the body that then is targeted in the joint, or how does that really look like?

Elena Letyagina: You just hit the two main ones. So, if you think about the immune system, where do you think the immune system is? Well, people think about our lymph nodes, right? But we know that more than 70% of it is resided in the gut, like the lymphoid tissue in the gut. And why is it there? It's there for it to be trained by the toxins. When we eat, we obviously get some pathogens coming through the gut and they need to be dealt with by our own bacteria and by our barrier, which is the lining of our gut and the immune cells just underneath this barrier is there to protect us as well.

So the moment this barrier gets disrupted by toxins or diets high in carbohydrates, in chemicals, in alcohol, in stress, antibiotics, medication, so many issues can affect this barrier. The barrier gets affected the microbes, the toxins, the undigested food particles leak into the bloodstream and they over activate the immune system.
And when the immune system is overactivated it starts attacking, or it may start attacking some other tissues. So if it attacks thyroid tissue, you get auto immune thyroiditis. If it attacks your pancreas cells, you get type one diabetes. If it attacks your intestinal cells, you get Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

So depending on what tissues attacked you getting the auto-immunity right. If attacks your brain, you're getting the auto-immunity in the brain. So it's really coming to the, having this healthy microbiome and healthy, intact gut barrier to prevent from developing these conditions.

Claudia von Boeselager: I wonder if you have one of these conditions and you are able to greatly improve your gut microbiome, are some of these conditions reversible? Have you seen cases of this or is there research?

Elena Letyagina: Unfortunately the auto-immune condition is not reversible. It is chronic condition, but what you can do, you can manage the symptoms really effectively. It can go into remission for longer periods of time. So you cannot say that you can fix your auto-immunity. That would be just wrong. It's a wrong claim, but you can support the systems of auto-immune conditions. And some people can reduce the medications.

Let's say like Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, this is the ultimate condition for steroids. So people on the medications who look after their diet, changing taking nutrients, they can reduce the medication. So they reduce the reliance on it. And you cannot say that you can completely get off them, but I know that some people do so they go completely off medication after certain interventions gets into the remission. It doesn't say that they don't have it anymore cause antibodies will still be there. But the reliance on the medication and the symptoms are not there.

Claudia von Boeselager: And they suffer a lot less, which leads to a better quality of life.

Elena Letyagina: Correct the quality of life will be improved.

Claudia von Boeselager: And longevity as well. I'd like to talk about testing and the testing process. What do you recommend, or what are the most effective tests in finding a baseline or current condition of your gut? What does the testing process look like?

Elena Letyagina: I would always start with a blood test. I think blood test is absolutely basic and fundamental test to have. You need to see whether you're deficient in certain minerals, because the blood test tells you which organ is dysfunctional. It will tell you also whether you have issues with the gut, there are some markers or patterns to show that something is happening in your gut.
So you would start from that and then if you want to look a little bit deeper into your microbiome, or if you have a specific digestive symptoms you want to know instigate, then we can look at the stool test, at the functional stool test. The stool test would look at how well you digest and absorb , how diverse your microbiome, do you have any parasites? Do you have any pathogens? Do you have any inflammation present? It's actually quite a comprehensive test to look at.

Claudia von Boeselager: Are these tests generally found, are most medical professionals aware of this or is this more specialist areas like what you cover?

Elena Letyagina: I would say it's more alternative medicine unfortunately it's not that wide spread in the US maybe it's a little bit known. Here in the UK people just don't know about it. You can go to gastroenterologist and do a stool test and it will test some of these markers, but the functional tests, they also do the microbiome and they look how diverse it is.

They're not very accurate yet , because we just don't know who lives there. So we're still very far from actually knowing the complete picture. Science obviously developed really fast. And every year these tests are changing and still gives you a very good idea, whether you have a dysbiosis and how severe it is.

Claudia von Boeselager: Sounds really useful. Let's talk about supplements. Do you recommend them? Do we really need them? Is this a long-term strategy? How do you view supplements?

Elena Letyagina: That's another great question. Because at the moment, I think a lot of people just buying whatever is marketed to them and just taking... The amount of clients I see, who would be taking 15 tablets per today, it's actually quite scary. So supplements just to answer to your question. Supplements definitely have a role in the overall strategy. However, the two important things to ask two important questions to ask, why are you taking the supplements? What are you trying to correct? And if you're correcting an imbalance or deficiency, the second question is why do you have this deficiency?

Let's say, if you are deficient in iron, why the deficiencies coming from, is it because you are vegan and not eating enough of iron rich food? Is it because your absorption of iron is impaired? Is it because you have a parasite who's eating this iron or is it because you have internal bleeding, which is quite sinister and your losing your blood this way.

So it's very important to understand why for any mineral, if you're deficient why are you deficient. Now with genetic testing, we would know that we are predisposed to certain deficiencies just based on your genetics. And then you can justify well actually I do need higher amounts of vitamin D than other persons, because I have this particular variant in my gene, or I do need more vitamin B because my methylation cycle is suboptimal. So it's really, you ask yourself, why are you taking it? Is it because when I told you that's a great idea, or are you trying to actually address something?

When I'm developing the supplements program for the clients, it's always comes to the objectives - what are we trying to correct here?

You have to review the supplements after maximum 12 weeks, normally eight to 10 weeks, you need to review it. People would be taking the same supplements for years, actually, quite scary. There's not enough, unfortunately, education and a lot of marketing from the nutraceutical companies pushing the supplements.

I consider supplements like crutches when you have an injury and you can't walk. So while your leg is healing, it's like crutches, your using the supplements until you correct any deficiencies quickly, but then your diet and your lifestyle, you should be taking the majority of them from your diet.

However, in some cases, people do need to take supplements. Then again, it's very individual.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think you hit on a great point about getting to the root cause of what is actually the reason for it. And I think in Western culture, it's very much - I have a headache. I take a pill. I think in Eastern medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, it's much more well, what is actually the reason behind it? Let's get to the root and actually cure that. What I understand from your work, that's very much your philosophy, right? Really digging in.

Elena Letyagina: Definitely well this functional medicine because my qualification was based on the functional medicine approach and I'm studying functional medicine now, and I'm applying functional medicine in work with my clients.
So it's absolutely that you have to understand why, what's happening. Why is it happening? The most classic example, when you have reflux and you come to see a GP and they just give you antacids, it's saying like, oh, you have too much stomach acid. Here's you antacids.

You shouldn't take them more than two weeks. And the number of clients that I think who've been on the antacids for four, five, six years is insane. And all they do they're suppressing their stomach acid. So what it's leading to, it's leading to overgrowth of pathogens in the intestines. They cannot break down their proteins because we do need our stomach acids for all of that.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think it's, unfortunately, the way society has developed in underestimating the power of the human body to actually heal itself and to have the right nutrients and microbiome amongst other things to, to just fix itself. I mean, if you think back hundreds of years, we didn't have access to all this medication and nutrients that are available now. So I think it's just changing the philosophy around improving longevity and around letting your actual body do what it's made to do and what it's able to do.

You call yourself a data driven or data driven, nutritional practice. So what does that actually mean? Data - you think a lot about numbers . Can you talk about that?

Elena Letyagina: Yes, definitely. So why do lab data, because it's allows you to motivate your clients in the right way. So by data, I mean, anything, whether it's your blood test results, your stool result, your urine test or it's your health wearables, so things like OURA ring, or if you have any glucose monitoring wearables or any other Fitbit, Apple watch, anything your wearing which allows you to measure biomarkers.

So why it's important? It's a motivational tool, really? It's just to show how well you're doing, because when you come to see me and you struggle with the symptoms, and then you go on the program, you address your dietary changes, you change your lifestyle a little bit. How do you know how well you've done? How do you measure? You can measure subjectively by saying like, Oh, I feel five out of 10, and now I'm feeling nine out of 10.

But you also can look at the blood test results, where were you were and where you now? This is an objective measure, right? And same with the OURA ring, I'm working a lot on sleep optimization for myself and for my clients. But how do you measure it? Because if you don't know how well you sleep, how long you deep sleep, how are you going to measure it? Just by, oh I'm feeling great today? No, not really. So you have to see the data. And then when you see the data, like actually my deep sleep improved from 40 minutes to two hours and a half, this is a proper achievement. This has have a massive impact in your health, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: I'd love to deep dive into sleep for a minute. I used to have the philosophy in my twenties you can sleep when you're dead, which is clearly I'd be dead. I'll be dead pretty fast. I think if I kept that up and obviously I had a huge amount of energy and , things change along the line . I think more and more realization is coming around the importance of sleep.

But it's very different. I have a friend, if she doesn't get her eight hours a night she won't manage. That's her Holy ritual. Whereas some of the people are okay on say six hours. You were talking about deep sleep versus light sleep or REM sleep. Could you talk about the different types of sleep and ways to improve it what people should be looking out for?

Elena Letyagina: Sleep is probably one of the most underestimated therapies, unfortunately. And because we live in this world where we're all driven by results, by achieving, by productivity, we literally don't have time to relax or sleep. Unfortunately. So people who think they can get away with four or five, six hours of sleep they're wrong.

Genetically it's only a very small proportion of people can do that. The majority, they're just driving inflammation, they're driving the destruction of their brain in the longterm. So you need to sleep at least seven hours, ideally eight. So your friend is absolutely right.

Sleep you can think about it as there are five phases of sleep. But if you think about it from a more general level, it's three phases. So you have deep sleep, which is between 13 to 23% of total sleep. Also depending on the age. So if you are, let's say 40 something person and you're sleeping one and a half hours of deep sleep per night. That's actually not bad, but it could be improved. And then you have light sleep, which is around 50% of your total sleep. And then you have rapid eye movement, which is REM phase of sleep, which is between 20 to 25. It's really individual. What I see people tend to suffer with one phase or another. So like let's say, if you really, if you did sleep is really great. You may struggle with REM. And then if you REM is optimal, your deep sleep probably is not great. You need to have a balance, but it has to be your optimal composition. It's really dependent on the person.

This is how I work. I look where we stand. We start improving the morning routine, evening routine. We may introduce some supplementation for sleep. We do a lot of things to help with the circadian rhythms. And then we see whether your sleep is being optimized or not.

Claudia von Boeselager: I see from my OURA ring tracking that my REM sleep is always in the red. It's between two and 7%.

For people not familiar , what is REM sleep versus deep sleep versus light sleep? And why do we actually need all those different phases of sleep for the body?

Elena Letyagina: During the deep sleep, this is the phase where you're pretty much paralyzed. Like it's like in a way it's, you are paralyzed. And in the deep sleep, a lot of hormonal balancing is happening. This is your regeneration. If you care about longevity and anti-aging, this is where your human growth hormone is getting released. And when you really rejuvenate yourself and your cells, cellular regeneration is happening.

Rapid eye movement it's the sleep exactly how it sounds when your eyes move rapidly when you're dreaming. So the dreaming is also important for the cognition, for the brain health. Both of these phases are important.

Claudia von Boeselager: With light sleep is that also an important factor?

Elena Letyagina: People tend to have a lot of light sleep. It is very important as well. Light sleep is more a transition between your deep sleep and your REM sleep. So you can't just transition this straight away. So you go into the light, then you go into REM, then you go down. It goes in like a cyclical curve. You go light, then deep then light again, then REM, then light, then deep. And you've also cycled like five, six times per night. They need to be optimal for us to be healthy.

Claudia von Boeselager: How do you get to optimal? What hacks do you generally recommend to your clients? Obviously everybody's a bit different, but is there a general approach you recommend to optimizing sleep?

Elena Letyagina: So there is a general approach, but then there are a lot of different things you can do. So the general approach is really optimizing and nailing down your bedtime routine. You need to have a routine. Anything which is interrupting your circadian rhythms are also very important to sort out.

So things like not watching any screens two hours before bed, and if you do then wearing blue light blocking glasses, then making sure that your room temperature is quite low, see that you have some fresh air, ideally if you can. Then not using any stimulants. Exercise will be one of them, not having any caffeine after 2:00 PM, not having alcohol ideally four hours before bed, not exercising intensively three hours before bed. So you just need to have one, two hour before bed, where you can really relax. So whether you spend this time reading or relaxing or taking a bath or meditating, wherever it is, this is important. If this is not working, then you need to dig deeper and see why you're not sleeping. Do you have hormonal imbalances and those are very common.

If you have any hormone imbalances, whether it's blood sugar and insulin, or it's cortisol, the stress hormone, or it's your sex hormones, like around PMS and female cycles, you need to regulate them together with addressing your sleep. So those needs to be fixed as well.

Bedtime routine and just completely putting this in place and following it and going to bed at the same time, waking up, ideally at the same time, maybe wearing a sleep mask, if you have to having blinds in your room. So all of these things there are so many of them. I will be working with all of them just get to this optimal sleep.

Claudia von Boeselager: I saw a TED Talk once about what happens with blue lights to your brain before sleep and the activity. I love with neuroscience they do the scans of the brain and you just see the tremendous amount of activity by having that blue light exposure. What wearable devices do you most recommend?

Elena Letyagina: For the blue light specifically?

Claudia von Boeselager: No, in general for your clients for optimal health?

Elena Letyagina: I think blue light blocking glasses for people who work on computers at night, it's absolutely a must.

Claudia von Boeselager: Is there a specific one you recommend?

Elena Letyagina: I do. So there's BLUblox, B L U B L O X, BLUblox. And the TrueDark, those two brands I love. And I know technologically they're quite advanced. You cannot get really good blue light blocking glasses in the opticians on the high street, unfortunately they won't be as effective technologically.
Then OURA Ring would be my absolute must. So if you had to choose three things, I would go with blue light blocking glasses, OURA Ring, and something for meditation, whether it's an app, whether it's a headset, whether it's something stimulating your vagus nerve, something to calm you down, it's up to people to decide.

Claudia von Boeselager: From a longevity perspective, what factors would you say play a role and what would you recommend to do about them?

Elena Letyagina: Gut factors you said?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah.

Elena Letyagina: Okay for Longevity. What is longevity? So it's different definitions for different people, right? So there are certain cellular mechanisms which are happening as we age, but also we are quite a sick people. In general, we have different inbalances and different diseases.

So those needs to be addressed. And then you can also support your different cellular mechanisms . From the gut perspective, I would say fasting would be a great idea for longevity. There are some studies, there is Valter Longo do you know Valter Longo, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yes, The Longevity Diet.

Elena Letyagina: Yeah the Longevity Diet, the fast mimicking diet, it's one of the most researched longevity diets. It's recommended that you do like once a month or if you're quite healthy then maybe once every three months, but you only have to do it if you don't have any imbalances. If you're hormones are great, if your digestion is spot on... A lot of people jump on this wagon without actually addressing some mineral deficiencies or lack of vitamins. Like literally people are deficient in vitamin D or their levels are not optimal. So you can't really talk about longevity until you address all of that.

Claudia von Boeselager: I definitely fall in that category because I am a big fan also for fasting. Dr. Jason Fung has an excellent book, The Complete Guide to Fasting. And I'll put all these books and recommendations in the Show Notes. And just the longevity effect or the positive effect on repairing your DNA.

I think it's either Dr. Peter Attia, who is also very much an expert in this space, that recommends doing a three-day fast once a month. And I think, you know, people hear fasting, they think you're starving yourself. Maybe you could define or clarify what is the difference between fasting and starving yourself?

Elena Letyagina: Fasting is literally going without food. Just on water for certain periods of time. Intermittent fasting has been really popular and different ways of doing this. So you can do one day of eating wherever you want, next day, you cutting calories down to 500 calories day. It's called alternate day fasting.

Then you have intermittent fasting where you have eating windows where you can eat within six hours or eight hours or 10 hours. It's really very individual. And you can do it once a week or every day or twice a week, depending on what you can do. So having some sort of fasting from time to time is quite beneficial.

However, for people with any imbalances in thyroid issues, if you have auto immunity, you shouldn't be doing it, people with eating disorders or history of eating disorders, people with adrenal issues, females, with cycle irregularities, if you're pregnant or if you're struggling with fatigue, or if you're lactating, you cannot do it.

Anyone who's above 65, it's not recommended. And obviously not for children. It's actually, a lot of people are excluded from this recommendation. Right? So my recommendation would be sort yourself out. Sort your health out, make sure that you don't have any hormonal inbalances. That your blood is absolutely great. And then you can go and optimize and strive for longevity. But just don't start doing something which actually may harm you.

Claudia von Boeselager: So it's so important and what I hear you saying is really understanding in what condition you are now, if there's deficiencies... Do you have any good metaphor for thinking about, you know, people do fasting for weight loss and other reasons as well, but...

Elena Letyagina: So, yeah, I love metaphors actually. So I usually compare our bodies either to cars or to houses. If you think about gut health as a foundation of everything, this is what I called my company Gut Philosophy because it's absolutely fundamental to your health because this is where the absorption and the simulation of nutrients is happening and where your diverse microbiome resides.
If you're gut health as the foundation of your house and your building this beautiful house, but you actually decided that, Oh, actually I want to decorate it and maybe buy a new sofa, but your foundation is completely rotten . Maybe you have some mold growing on it. Maybe some cockroaches leaning back, but you only care about the curtains and paint on your walls and the new sofa.

This would be your intermittent fasting and longevity. If I'm going to do it you need to have a really strong foundation and the gut health will be your foundation for that. And then you can have an amazing house with the beautiful interior, and then you can do all sorts of dieting and fast mimicking diet and intermittant fasting, but only if everything else is working properly.

Claudia von Boeselager: That makes complete sense. I think that's where a lot of people who try these and realize that it's making them tired or it's not working. I've had also phases, myself included, feeling very lethargic, looking back if there's deficiencies there, you really need to get that foundation in place first and working with someone like you to figure that out. So that's really great.

I want to change gears a little bit and do some rapid fire questions. What are some bad recommendations that you hear in your profession, in your area of expertise?

Elena Letyagina: Do you know what? I'm still struggling with calorie counting. Every time I hear calorie counting I'm having a nervous tick. Until now people still talk about it, even the practitioners.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk about that? Because I think what is so interesting and it's coming up more and more with functional medicine is that medical training does not include nutritional training, but actually the food is the medicine you give your body every day. So there was a huge gap in knowledge about that . So can you talk about the change in philosophy around calories, away from the calorie in calorie out?

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. So this calorie counting, it obviously comes from all the dieting and different diets and the weight loss marketing companies. Calories it's just, it's just one characteristic of things. It doesn't tell you does it have vita-nutrients? Does it have enough fiber to support your gut microbiome? Does it have enough healthy proteins? Does it have enough minerals? It doesn't tell you all of that. This is just some random number, which is not even representative of the real value of this food. And then people obsessively focusing and saying like, Oh, I eaten this yogurt and it's 120 calories, but I'd rather having this protein bar, which is 200 calories. They're really not thinking right I think. So every time I have a client talking about calories. I'm literally spending 10 good minutes just getting this idea out of their heads, but then they come back again and they, again, talking about calories and I was like...
This is a concept which really dies really hard, especially people who are trying to lose weight. Very often you see clients saying like wow I would like to lose weight. And their weight approach. If you have weight gain and you can not shift weight, it means you have imbalances and let's sort them out. It's, again, going back to this foundation of your house, let's sort out your foundation and then your weight loss would be just the positive side effect of this.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think that some people who've successfully done the ketogenic diet or keto diet where they actually are eating healthy fats, but calorie dense are so surprised how much weight they actually lose. So it's really changing that mental model around calories and the calorie and how the body absorbs different types of foods. So thank you for expanding on that.
What are some of the learnings or insights that your clients you work with have found the most valuable? So you just talked on thinking around calories. What are some other areas?

Elena Letyagina: Did you know that actually, you can explain all the complex science behind things really well for clients to get it. But I think what really changes the behavior of people is the data. So seeing the results and seeing, oh actually I'm sleeping so much better. And practical things, how to actually implement it? Because any doctor can tell you, Oh, you have this, this and this, and this is what you should do. But then if you don't know how to do it, you're never going to get to your final destination, right?
You just get stuck thinking how, okay, so I know all my data, but what do I do about it? It's actually literally teaching people how to get more veggies in their diet or how to optimize their sleep or how to being able to relax. I think this is what's the most valuable for the people.

Claudia von Boeselager: So you really go that extra mile with your clients and not just do the analysis and get the data, but actually come up with a very clear action plan to achieve results. Is that right?

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely. This is the whole idea of therapy, right? Because this is a plan. This is the plan developed with the client because I cannot prescribe someone to eat certain things. And this person is not on board if they're not willing to change. So you really need to get a client on the same page with you, just get them really motivated about the change. And then you create this plan. Because to be honest, it's not me doing the hard work. It's all the clients, because it's them who needs to change their diets, change their attitudes, change their beliefs, their behaviors. And this is the hard part. So to be honest every time people come back and say like, Oh, I've done everything in the program, I'm actually amazed every time I'm thinking , Oh my God, this is tremendous. Well done guys! That's easy. You just analyzing things. And this is what I love to do. I'm just advising them, but they doing all the hard work.

Claudia von Boeselager: You're able to point to and then you have the information on the data as well to encourage success.

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely and I would go back to the details as well. Like if you need to have, let's say you go for gluten free brands so I would advise on which two or three brands, which are better. If it's a plant based meal, I'll tell you which one will be better. So it's literally just getting this knowledge because it will take them hours of research just to get to the point, right? And for me, because I know that, right? So it's easy and I love sharing that.

Claudia von Boeselager: And that's amazing because I think that's where a lot of people trip up as well. They're like, I know I should do this, but there's just so many brands or it's so overwhelming. So to have that clarity and direction is so helpful as well.

Elena Letyagina: Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: How has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours?

Elena Letyagina: My favorite failure? Well, I wouldn't consider it as a failure, like quitting a career in finance and this is the career. I always liked mathematics, right? So that was something I was passionate about. Yeah, it sounds strange. But yes, I was actually, I was enjoying it. So I have a mathematical and economical degree and degree in finance as well. So I've been working so hard for that. And I've been working in this great, incredible bank with great, incredible people. And then I decided to change my career in my thirties, it was just quite late. And this is the time where a lot of people already established in their career paths. And I changed it quite late in a way I wouldn't say it's a failure like now absolutely sure that I've made the right choice. But when I was making this choice, I felt like a failure a little bit. I had two young kids. I was writing my assignments at night and researching things. And I thought, okay, this feels like a failure because all my colleagues, all my friends they're now have a great titles and I'm a student really. But as I said, I wouldn't call it a failure, it just felt like a failure, but it was a necessary step.

Claudia von Boeselager: And it's brought you to where you are today and what you said earlier in the conversation how much you love helping people and making such an impact, right?
There's actually a great speech by Steve jobs. I don't know if you've seen it. The Stanford commemoration speech from 2005. you can watch it on YouTube. It's about 15 minutes and he talks about three experiences in his life. But one of the phrases he uses is connecting the dots. So it's only when you look back. And then you realize through those difficult times or those changes, it was the only way to get me to where I am today. So it's really a case of connecting the dots.
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? So distractions, invitations, you talked about self care and taking time for yourself?

Elena Letyagina: This is a brilliant brilliant question. Because establishing healthy boundaries is so important. When you're younger, you just feel, you can't say no to your boss or you can't say no to your friends. And when you become older and you start prioritizing things, you just don't have time for everything. So sometimes yes, you do need to say, sorry, I'm not joining you for this social occasion or I'm sorry, I'm not going to work on this project with these deadlines just because it's going to push me too much. So it's actually recognizing your own capacity, mental and physical as well. It's so important. And being able to say, if I'm going to do that, it's probably will trigger me and get me unhealthy state mental or physical. So it just, it's hard to learn to say no, but it's definitely possible. And like now, especially when I'm trying to optimize my sleep during this COVID when we're out and when the social occasions will be happening again, like every day, I'm pretty sure I will be very selective because to be honest, I don't want to compromise my sleep. I work so hard to get to the stage where my sleep is optimal now, and I want to improve it. I don't want to disrupt it or like having alcohol, for example, that's something I give up after the first lock down. First lock-down I couldn't give it up, but after the first lock-down I gave it up and yeah, this is something that's, it's so much better.

Claudia von Boeselager: And I think it's such an amazing space the art of saying no gracefully or saying it well. And I think it was an interview I heard once with Derek Sivers. He said that you know, what your schedule is like in the moment, but if you get an invitation for say six months out and you're like, Oh, sure I'll accept all these invitations. But if it's not something that if it was for next week, Tuesday, where you would say yes, hell yeah, he says, to it because you know how busy you are right now, it should be a no. And it's also, I guess, valuing your own time. And this is, as you said yourself, something that I have also really worked on in the last years, as well before the FOMO have to do everything.
And I embarrassingly remember nights of going to three different parties and what was I thinking? Didn't enjoy it. Everyone was annoyed at me because I was coming and going . And for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea. And I think it's what you said around self care and actually having that time to sit and not too much input, but actually have time to think it's just so fundamental for wellbeing.

Elena Letyagina: And also choosing people who you feel positive to be around. If someone invited you to a party, but you know, you're not going to enjoy too much. Just say no. Right. It's absolutely the right. It's like, you have to be around people who are your tribe and energize you, energize you, who support you, who believe in your growth and not those who drag you down and criticize you. Absolutely like choosing your friends is very important.

Claudia von Boeselager: I like that. Yeah. I've forgotten who said it, but that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Don't know if you've heard that quote?

Elena Letyagina: No I haven't that's a good one.

Claudia von Boeselager: So think about who those five people might be -choose carefully. Do you have a favorite quote or piece of advice received that was a real game changer for you?

Elena Letyagina: There were so many. I used to have in my notes, I have different quotes, which I laugh when I put them in one place. I'm struggling to find the definitive one. There's the one which I put on my necklace. And this is something I did after my first child. And it's by Omar Khayy am, it's one of his poems and it says, be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. Like after giving birth, you have this profound epiphany. And I thought, this is it. You really need to treasure this present moment. And this is just something to remind me to not live in the future. Don't have anxiety and fear about the future. Don't overthink your past. What's done is done. Just really focused on today. Appreciate you're there. This is something I've been working quite a bit.
So I'm trying to schedule daily walks, which is really hard when I'm working like full full time and homeschooling. But I'm finding, trying to find this time when I'm by myself in the park, appreciating the nature, whatever the weather is. And just like really living in the present.

Claudia von Boeselager: The power of now. Yeah. There's some work out there that is really fascinating and something I'm working on myself, but it's amazing how much calmer and focused and happier you feel if you just actually stopped focusing on worrying about the future and worrying about the past and just actually be. They should teach you this at school.
So before we close and thank you so much, this has been so fun, for people who want to dig into gut health and nutrition for longevity further, or for general lifestyle, what resources or books should they start with?

Elena Letyagina: So for people who would like to really understand about gut health, if you really into science-y like reading the research articles would be a little bit hard. I think for general public, just some books which are written by scientists would be a good idea. So the most recent ones, I like Fiber Fueled. It's a good book . The author is an American author, his a gastroenterologist. He has incredibly difficult name.

Claudia von Boeselager: I'll put it in the Show Notes, I'll find it.

Elena Letyagina: Fiber Fueled is a good one. And then Tim Spector, who's our UK scientist based in Kings college. So his book is just recently out. I have a great respect for him. It's called Spoon-Fed. Everything about the diets and why they're wrong . So this would be a good one. So really anything which is written by the medical practitioners would be my advice. Please don't read the books written by influencers, bloggers, or anyone from... there has to be written from the people who actually know what they're talking about.

Claudia von Boeselager: That's good advice. It goes without saying any advice, tips, we give it's as always, after speaking with your physician and medical professional, before you stop any medication or change exercise and diet.
Where can people, and of course I'll link all of these in the show notes for everyone, but where can people learn more about what you're up to? What would you like to share with people? Maybe Twitter, Instagram, your website?.

Elena Letyagina: Yeah, Instagram. I don't have much time for Instagram anymore, but I do post stories. So it's @gutphilosophy. @gutphilosophy, my Instagram account, and I have a website where I do put some of the new recipes. Really helpful for people to see how we can do things easy and quick. Yeah. And I'd love to have more focus on my Instagram account, but yeah. Not, not much time,

Claudia von Boeselager: Not enough hours in the day. Exactly. Do you have a final ask or recommendation or next step suggestion, whatever it might be for my audience, any parting thoughts or message?

Elena Letyagina: So that would be in general, we really can change health and symptoms to better by addressing your diet and lifestyle. It's important to get tested. So we cannot underestimate the importance of getting your blood tests done. Just the regular blood tests with the GP.
Always get the copy of the results. Don't just rely on the receptionist saying like your results are fine. They probably would be suboptimal in some respect. But then it's also finding someone who will interpret those results for you, or maybe just dig in and do it yourself, looking at the functional medicine optimal ranges.
And so this will be important, but I think what's important. We are in charge of our own health, not the NHS. So we really need to take care especially now with COVID. This is happening to.. So the risk, the people in the risk groups are those with the lifestyle diseases really, right? So it's, uh, problems.
This is largely driven by lifestyle diseases. So those things are preventable and this is why I'm so passionate about. We can prevent these things, just get tested. See where your imbalances are, correct the imbalances. Read the books from the scientist, read the health blogs and yeah, just take control of your health.

Claudia von Boeselager: Amazing Elena. Thank you so much. So many wonderful and inspiring pieces of information in here. Thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. .

Elena Letyagina: Hi Claudia! Thank you for having me. I'm very excited and yes, I would love to share all the tips I know and to have.

I grew up in Russia. I was born in the very industrial area of Russia in the Urals, like in South Urals. So since early childhood, I was exposed to different pollution and environmental toxins, but obviously back then, I wouldn't know about it, but it all played the role in my health and had an impact.

I left Russia precisely for that reason, because I just couldn't stay in this ecologically poor area. At the age of 22, I moved to London to study finance and I was working in finance for many years before changing my career.

Claudia von Boeselager: With toxins, I think we're so much more aware of them now. So, did you always have an interest in healthy eating and lifestyle? Was this something your parents role model-ed for you?

Elena Letyagina: So growing up in Russia in the 80s, diets were quite important in all the meals were home cooked in general, not only in my family, but like in general population, we didn't have restaurants. Really. We didn't have any takeaways.

So people were forced to eat at home. And in general, if you think about Russians, it's quite healthy, a lot of fermented foods, perhaps kombucha at the age of five, it was always growing my windows.

Claudia von Boeselager: The superfood!

Elena Letyagina: Exactly! We had the sauerkraut or that's German name that we had own sort of version of it, pickled vegetables.

So in general, the diet was relatively healthy. My parents actually are doctors. So I was always exposed to this side of the story where you medicated, where you're taking antibiotics for every single cough and cold. I was aware of the healthy eating. Yes, but I never thought that you can literally change your health by changing your lifestyle and diet until later in life.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you tell us if you have any particular morning routine to start your day as a success?

Elena Letyagina: So morning routine and evening routine, actually, both of them are crucial. So when I work with my clients, now, this is one of the things we always work really closely.

So you do need to have a proper morning routine. A few things I've been doing now consistently. And the first one, when I wake up and never check my phone straight away, because it puts you into the very stressful mode, right. It sort of activates your brain in an unhealthy way. You see, hundreds of emails there, you feel like you need to reply to everyone. You have this WhatsApp chats popping up.

So the first thing I do when I open my eyes, I meditate for five minutes. You don't need to meditate. It's just going to do a deep breathing exercise, but that sort of relaxes you and it sets you up properly for the day.

Then I stand up, open the window and get the exposure to the light. When the light hits your eyes, it travels into your brain and it suppresses melatonin. So it regulates your circadian rhythms and you get fresh air because during the night you accumulate a massive amount of different toxins and CO2, which is something I do every morning.

Hydration is another one. Very important. I tend to recommend drinking at least half a liter. If you can, especially, if you're having coffee.

Claudia von Boeselager: And then just normal water, or do you put something in the water?

Elena Letyagina: I like just normal water. Some people don't like drinking water, then they can just put some lemon in it or some fresh mint or orange juice, whatever make them drink this water, but generally normal water, room temperature, filtered water, properly filtered, none of those plastic containers, properly filtered water.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk about your meditation practice? I think it's an area that more and more people are really looking into, but there's so much different information out there. And you said five minutes and typically some people say you have to do longer . How do you master those five minutes to make them really worthwhile?

Elena Letyagina: So well, five minutes. That will be my recommendation to the clients but obviously I work with the , different people. Some people they don't even want to hear about meditation and some people will be meditating two hours per day. So I do have clients on a very wide spectrum.

So five minutes, this is just, just to get you ready if you want to have a proper meditation practice. You'll need sort of 10, 15 minutes to lay down and you obviously have deep breathing and relaxing. I'm actually using Braintap . This is what I'm using for my own meditation. but what it does, it actually stimulates it's as a video and audio stimulation and gets your brainwave into the right frequency to calm you down or to relax to properly relax you. So that's, that's the tool I'm using, but you can just do proper meditation and put any music. There are so many apps you can have, it's really a personal preference. So whether you prefer a guided meditation where they tell you focus on your breath, relax, or just the music, or maybe just the sound of nature, like raindrops, really your preference right?

The important idea is that you just need to be able to completely relax and get any thoughts out of your busy brain. And this is hard. If you can master it for five minutes every day, you'll be, it will be easier to get into this state when you do it regularly, but do it for one week, two weeks totally worth it. It has to be at least three weeks of practice. And then you start understanding actually, if I'm stressed out and I just close my eyes and have deep, deep breaths, you'll see how stuff's coming down, like how your heart rate will drop and how calm you will become. Become.

Claudia von Boeselager: For the people interested - BrainTap. How do you spell that?

Elena Letyagina: BrainTap, TAP

Claudia von Boeselager: TAP and that's the brand name?

Elena Letyagina: Yes, this is the brand name, the BrainTap. It's quite an expensive investment. The BrainTap yeah, that's correct. So braintap.com. That's a, it's a headset. It's quite an expensive investment. So it's really, for people who are very serious about it, it's not something for people just to try because it may be a waste of money, but then if you're serious about it, if you do it regularly, this is just something it's a next step to try.

Claudia von Boeselager: Because you mentioned about the brainwaves and tetha and things like that.

Elena Letyagina: Correct, more advanced. And I do check it with my OURA Ring, so, OURA another health wearable. I would be strongly recommanding and I literally, I recommend it to every single client I see.

Claudia von Boeselager: I have one myself!

Elena Letyagina: You know what I'm talking about. It's probably one of the best wearables on the market to check your readiness scores, to check your stress markers, and then to check your sleep phases, which is absolutely crucial for your wellbeing. So the brain tapping. So there are different ways, frequency, of your brain, right? So we have a beta or you have theta and then have Delta, which is a deep wave.
So depending if I put the theta training on my BrainTap headset, I can see on my OURA that I wasn't in the wave. I just go straight into the theta state. Fascinating. Yes.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, I love that stuff.

Elena Letyagina: Frequency changing to theta.

Claudia von Boeselager: The brain frequency is changing, super exciting space, neurofeedback. I'm definitely going to look into that. Thank you. And you talked about exposure to sunlight now , being in London and winter, what is considered sunlight? The clouds are gray - is it still enough?

Elena Letyagina: Yeah no it's not enough? No, it's not. I mean, it's still better than nothing. However, some people will be affected by it more than others.
I'm sure you've heard about the seasonal affective disorder, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah I have it, yup.

Elena Letyagina: You know about it. So for those people, you do need to have a light in the morning, which will be simulating the daylight and you need to have an exposure to this every morning. And I've seen clients who it made wonders for their sleep quality people who are struggling in particular during the winter or darker months, they're struggling with their sleep quality - five minutes of exposure to those lamps make a big difference.

Claudia von Boeselager: Thinking of the word successful, who is the first person that comes to mind and why?

Elena Letyagina: This is a hard one, because you know what, for me to definition of success has been changing over the last few years .Who comes to mind? It's me. It's such a subjective definition. Isn't it? So before, when I was in finance and I was surrounded by high achievers and people just dream by achievements, by, by getting certain amount of money, so that's how I measured success. But then at some point when I was becoming sicker and sicker, month after month, I thought what's the point? I can't really enjoy my life. And now, yes, maybe monetary wise, I'm not getting as much money as I used to be in banking. But the rewards from working with clients, sharing my knowledge and spreading health is so much worth it, and then I can spend time with my family and do something for myself. I'm really getting the balance.
So to be honest, this is the best. Wake up in the morning and you're grateful for many things and you feel healthy. This is success. That's what's happiness, right. You can't really measure it..

Claudia von Boeselager: I totally agree. And you had mentioned gratitude there, and I think it's Tony Robbins who says that gratitude is actually the 180 of depression. So if you're feeling gratitude, you can't be depressed. It's really focusing and really feeling the gratitude as well. It's one of the health benefits right?

Elena Letyagina: You're absolutely right Claudia. I would say to anyone who's having problems with anxiety or depression or mood swings, you should be practicing it.
It's actually sometimes in my program. So when I write the programs for clients, I would say three things you're grateful for when you wake up first thing in the morning and you open your eyes ready to meditate, have a deep breath or just list three things you're grateful for. They could be absolutely basic. Like I'm grateful I have food today can be huge and fundamental. I'm grateful for my health and my family or having a laugh in my life. We're especially now with COVID people in January feeling a lot of anxiety. And so literally just focusing on small, tiny things really make a big difference. Cause gratefulness doesn't come natural to us, to humans. Fear comes natural and worrying and anxiety, but feeling grateful for small things. It's just, it's not very natural. It's important to cultivate it.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, I totally agree. And I came across this fabulous journal. It's called the Five Minute Journal. They have an app as well. Downside of the app is obviously that you're on your phone, but it's setting up your day for those three things you're grateful for and what would make today great. And then you do five minutes in the evening as well. I'll link it in the show notes , but I find it a great tool.
Yeah, it's really great. I use that. I should use it every day, but we'll get to it.
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love. So for instance, I have one of these Japanese acupressure mats that my family nicknamed the torture match, but it allows me to sleep amazingly. So I absolutely adore this thing that everyone else just can't imagine...

Elena Letyagina: I used to have it as a child. We call it the really it's a scientist applicator by cousin sofa. It has a different name, but that's, I completely forgot about it. And I just go to the Amazon the other day,
One of my ridiculous habits, I'm taking cold showers everyday.

 Claudia von Boeselager: Ice Man philosophy?

Elena Letyagina: A little bit, a little bit. Wim Hof is o bviously - a cold shower it's cold shower was a cold exposure. It's a controlled stressor.. Any controlled stressor are great for us, if it's a chronic stress, then it's not great for us.
But if it's controlled one, like a little bit of fasting, a little bit of certain phytonutrients found in vegetables, a little bit of high intensity training, a little bit of cold. It's actually quite great for us. And it's great for Longevity, right? Cold showers I started to take it, I think, last summer. And it's a great season to start! So do you know what I can love, give it up. I just feel amazing afterwards.

 And I'm not doing it like Wim Hof.Wim Hof is doing it like, for what? For three minutes up to three minutes. Right? Cause there is no way I'll stay for three minutes .

I'm doing it for 20 seconds, but this is like the high you're getting the natural high is great.

Claudia von Boeselager: It's really amazing. I find too, I'm such a softie in this. I like my warm showers or hot showers even, but after coming across Wim Hof as well at the end of the shower to put it cold. And it's literally one arm in the other arm in and then out again.

But what I, what Wim Hof teaches is it's the breathing and you breathe through it. So if you take deep breaths, you feel the cold, but it doesn't affect you as much.

Do the breathwork before,

Elena Letyagina: r One before. Right? So you, while in the hot shower you prepare yourself, you do the breath work and then the cold water not supposed to breathe under the cold one. Cause you can, youcan just pass out .

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh really? Clearly I'm not doing it right.

Elena Letyagina: You get yourself sprayed. And then you just no you said correctly so that you have to breathe through it but just not over breathing. Cause it can get lightheaded.

Claudia von Boeselager: What's the physiological benefit actually of cold exposure?

Elena Letyagina: It stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system.
And then, I don't know if you know much about sympathetic and...
Maybe you

Claudia von Boeselager: can explain a bit for those that aren't so familiar?

Elena Letyagina: So we have 2 types of nervous systems.. Sympathetic one, it's fight or flight. So this is something a lot of people constantly found, like when you're getting angry, anxious, mood swings. It's actually good to have it a little bit, cause it makes you really productive.

 Then you have parasympathetic. This is rest and digest when you can relax, when you can digest your meals properly. So it has to be a balance between those two States and unfortunately in the modern world, actually, a lot of it's shifted towards sympathetic drive. So you're constantly in this fight or flight mode.

 Which is not healthy for anything because it's affects all the hormones in our body. So when you have cold exposure, cause it's only short, like if you take it for too long to get hypothermia, which we want to avoid, but if you take it for a short time, it actually provides stress to the system and it calms you down afterwards.

So your parasympathetic system stimulated your vagus nerve, which is the main part of the parasympathetic system get stimulated. And you have this benefit. So I would definitely recommend it to everyone at least to try it. Or maybe like you just do one hand then one leg, it's still something right.

I get braver and braver. But I think

Claudia von Boeselager: there's so many benefits. I have a friend actually, who now lives in Dublin, a medical doctor, and she swims in the Irish sea every day in this temperatures. I think in Russia and places like that, people go on New Year's Day dipping in the cold freezing waters.

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely. And other the way, when you go to saunas, it's also a controlled stress, right? So you could go to something very hot. It's also quite good for you. It's good for your mitochondria for energy production. So, if you can combine both, you go from hot sauna into the snow or into the ice cold swimming pool. This is the best actually I love doing this, but now everything's closed.
Dreaming

Claudia von Boeselager: of the time after COVID.

Elena Letyagina: In

Claudia von Boeselager: the last five years Elena, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life?

Elena Letyagina: The last five years. So I would say because actually a lot of my changes were happening the last last, the last five years, I would say two things.

Actually, your diet is absolutely fundamental to making sure that you having a proper nutrition, which support all the different functions in your body, but also drives you towards the optimal health and performance. And the second one is self care and being able to find time for yourself and do relaxation. So I started to do much more meditation, relaxation, and I'm working with the nervous system much more in the last five years.

Claudia von Boeselager: Let's talk about your journey to forming your company, Gut Philosophy. When did your interest in nutrition come up?

Elena Letyagina: Do you know what? I came to nutrition completely, I wouldn't say by coincidence I'm so it was my part of my journey, but as I mentioned, I was working in the financial sector and really busy, stressed out lives. Then I got pregnant. And then while I was on maternity leave, I thought I'm feeling a little bit bored. Maybe I should just study something just for myself just to learn something. And I thought it was literally between yoga and nutrition, back then. And then I thought I'll just learn a little bit more about nutrition.
What I thought nutrition was about is literally which vitamins, minerals in different foods and how they impact our diet. Obviously nutrition has nothing to do with that all a little bit to do with that. But there's so much more to that. So what to do, I saw, I became, I started the online course.
Initially I needed to do the science foundational course before being able to enroll a proper qualification. So while I was doing the chemistry and anatomy and biochemistry courses, I thought, actually, this is something I really love. And do you know what, what it was? Um, 10 at school, not 10, maybe 15.
They did do a profiling at school. They tell you, what are you, what's your brain sort of, how would you predispose to. And do you know what came out? Microbiologist! And that was like, really, I love going to their microbiologists. I'm going to walk in finance. And I'm thinking it's actually interesting how your predisposition towards science was clearly there.
And so I got back after the first pregnancy I got back to the, to the bank, I used to work, I was tired, exhausted, small baby, feeling guilty all the time. You know, the drill, how all new mom's feeling. And then I got pregnant with my second baby. And this is the point when I thought, I don't think I'm coming back because I'm not happy there this is why, your question about happiness and success are relevant.
And I started to study this course and I thought. Maybe I can make a career out of it. And when I finished it and I realized that I completely changed my health and my family's health and my, my parents who are doctors and they're scientists. And I was sending them different research. And actually even now, because my mom is a gynecologist, they will know I'm sending her different research pieces on the microbiome, on BPMs, on all these things. And she's in a way now, functional medicine practitioner herself.

Claudia von Boeselager: Oh, amazing. You've converted her as well!

Elena Letyagina: Yeah, this is what was the question. The question is getting to gut philosophy. So basically after the second child, second child. Exactly. And this is how I thought I'm going to make a career out of it.
And once I finished, I started practicing literally from day one. I started to seeing clients from day one. Yeah. Let's never look back really.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you tell me about the time when the specialist doctor thought that putting you on long-term antibiotics was the answer.

Elena Letyagina: Yes. So that's probably the darkest side of time, of my life.
So when I was working in the bank and my health started to deteriorate now, I'm not surprised because obviously it was all nighters. I was finishing at midnight every single day. It was sleep deprivation, even though I was in my mid twenties. So you could sort of fall through a little bit, cause you were still very young, but the, all the health effects were accumulating.
And I was suffering with them. Chronic sinus conditions. I've developed asthma, I've developed respiratory infections. So I was having, I don't know, maybe 10 colds per winter, every single day with complications and the doctor, the specialist that's still back then, who actually had the surgery. He did the surgery for me.
So I'm very grateful to him. However, he did say there is no way of managing something like that because you got this condition quite young. So the only way to manage it would be having antibiotics for three - four months, three times a year. Like low dosages, and maybe steroid drops all the time and I thought this is not right.
And actually to be honest, he did say, well, maybe you should investigate and see someone. And there is some research suggesting the dairy sensitivity could be the cause. And he referred me to a professor who actually a scientist and he thought of, but the only thing that come out of this consultation, maybe you should try eliminating dairy and see what's happening.

Claudia von Boeselager: And take long medication...

Elena Letyagina: And take long-term medication. Nothing happened there didn't help me. Well, now I know that I was intolerant to gluten, but then my own sort of approach to my health. It was very multifunctional. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go off gluten. I'm just saying certain people will be intolerant to other things.
And yes, I did have intolerance because my gut microbiome was completely destroyed really with all the multiple antibiotics, I was taking six courses of antibiotics per year. So, and over multiple years, it's this, you just, it's not fun.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk a bit about the effect of antibiotics on the gut and the intestine? And obviously there are cases where antibiotics are completely necessary and you know, what are ways to repair the gut after taking antibiotics, if it's really needed?

Elena Letyagina: So you're absolutely right saying that antibiotics are life-saving and when you have to take them, you have to take them. However, in our modern world, we are taking antibiotics for any small reasons as a prevention towards something, or if you're not sure whether you have a viral or bacterial infection, very often they will be prescribed. And there are some stats showing that actually, I think it's 30% of all antibiotics prescriptions are not necessary. So that's quite a scary number because that antibiotics through the meat and animal protein we are eating through the, through, we also working out all these bacterial species with the constant sanitizing and washing our homes with the bacterial sprays, antibacterial sprays.
So antibiotics to our gut microbiome. So just, just for people to understand the gut microbiome, it's a new organ. Now it is a new endocrine organ. So it's an organ producing hormones and vitamins and energy for us. It has a far-reaching effects on our health. It's linked to anxiety, depression. Any issues with your microbiome would be linked to overall obesity, certain cancers, anxiety, depression, a lot of different and unpleasant diseases. So having a diverse microbiome is very important. By diverse. I mean, as many different species as possible, I love comparing to the Amazon forest. So if you have an Amazon forest, you want to have a bit of spiders, a bit of snakes, little butterflies and tigers, but the antibiotics would be a single pill of antibiotics.
It's a nuclear boom in your, in your Amazon forest. It wipes out everything. Obviously, everything w ill be growing again, right. And species will come, come back. But not all of the spiecies coming back. There are some studies showing that certain antibiotics are worse than other antibiotics. So some of them there will be quite mild.
So like a small bomb. So part of it will be to grow quite quickly, but some of them it's absolute nuclear bomb will completely wipe out. Um, after two, three, four years, people do not have the same composition as they had before antibiotics. It's actually quite scary because we keep losing it, but we're also passing it down to the next generations.
So we are passing down this impoverished microbiome to our children who would have all the issues with allergies, asthma, atopic dermatitis, and all these things just because their microbes are not as diverse as they should be. So I'm not saying don't take antibiotics, but I'm just saying, think about next time, like when the doctor prescribed the antibiotics, are they really necessary?
And if they are, are they sure that this particular antibiotics will be targeting this particular pathogen? Because a lot of people don't check that particular bacteria wherever they have at whether it's the UTI or it's your chest infection or ear infection, they don't check for it right, they just give you the wide spectrum antibiotics, which wipe out the wide spectrum of good bugs.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. And I find that really scary because even just recently my pediatrician with one of my daughters the doctor was very keen on filling in and giving her already the course of antibiotics before we got the test results back for the UTI urinary tract infection. I was at a loss to understand why you would start taking antibiotics before actually having the test results. And I was semi pressurized into being a "responsible parent" and giving the antibiotics straight away. And low and behold, two days later, the test results came back and it was negative. And while I agree that sometimes antibiotics are a must and they can be life saving, I had H pylori and that is the only way to treat it with a course of antibiotics for a week. However, the importance of rebuilding the healthy gut microbiome is so essential. Could you talk a bit about that?

 Elena Letyagina: So if you've taken antibiotics first of all, you have to take probiotics while you're taking antibiotics, not at the same time, at least two hours apart, but also making sure that your diet is rich in the plants because plants they have fiber and nutrients, and this is what will be feeding our microbes. You have to repopulate them, but we are capable of repopulating ourselves, but it's also important to feed the right ones with the right fiber.
So, you know, that very often people after antibiotics, they'll be like, Oh, I just want to eat. I'm just craving sweets all the time. Or I just want to have bread and cakes. It's precisely for that reason. Cause dysbiosis would be causing these biases is just a loss of balance in the good and not so good bugs in our gut.
So the not so good bugs, they will be sending chemicals, which come to our brain and asking us to eat something sweet. It's actually, it's very clever. So ensuring that your diet is rich in plants in fiber is very important that you have healthy fats is very crucial because only that's a very important for our microbiome and also taking probiotics for at least two months after you stopped antibiotics, this is, would be an important measure.

Claudia von Boeselager: Healthy fats- can you define that for people not familiar what that is?

Elena Letyagina: The whole fat dilemma we've been scared in seventies when the studies show that a high fat diet will cause heart diseases and everything. Now, obviously we all know that it's not the fat, but it's more processed carbohydrates and sugar was causing the issue. So healthy fat, these are things like fatty fish, like salmon, olive oil, extra Virgin olive oil, coconut oil to some extent, maybe not every day, then nuts and seeds. That would be your healthy fats. And I wouldn't say that there are unhealthy fats. All fats are fine, but certain fats are slightly better and more beneficial. So fats from animal protein, maybe not so good in high quantities.
Trans fats, it's not even a real fat, right? This is a synthesized structure of the fat was changed by heating it. So trans fats are found in anything which comes in the box for you, like ready meals, cakes...
Now there's less trans fats, but they still exist. It's more certain fats like refined vegetable oils. Those are prone to oxidation. Those could be a little bit more inflammatory. So like a sunflower oil, something everyone cooks with.

Claudia von Boeselager: What do you recommend to cook with?

Elena Letyagina: I would recommend definitely cooking with olive oil.
So some people say but olive oil has a very low smoking point, but this is the point where after heating the oil starts converting into not great chemicals. However, the smoking point for olive oil 180 degrees. So as long as you cook on the stove or you bake something, not above 180 degrees, it's absolutely fine to use olive oil. But I would definitely recommend it to anyone with inflammatory conditions, autoimmune conditions do not use vegetable oils.

Claudia von Boeselager: We talked about about ways to improve gut health in general. I'd love to even just take a deep dive into the health risks and issues that come from a non healthy gut. Maybe you can talk in a little bit more detail about some of the health issues that you see in your clients or see in people who have unhealthy or not perfectly healthy gut microbiome.

Elena Letyagina: It's a great question. I would say gut health and healthy microbiome virtually affects the majority. The majority of the modern diseases will be linked to microbiome in one way or another. There are two ways to look at it. So you have something which is linked to digestion . So if you feel bloated, if you have reflux, if you have constipation, diarrhea, stomach pain, you would think, Oh actually, maybe there is something wrong in my gut.
And you definitely would have some sort of imbalance in your gut microbiome. However, there are some diseases which have nothing to do with the gut or looks like they have nothing to do with the gut. Like things like eczema, allergies, migraines, headaches, skin issues, right. Psoriasis, autoimmune conditions.
It feels like why would have anything to do with the gut, but actually yes, it does. And it's directly linked to these diseases as well. So if you have any of what I've just mentioned. So usually, so it's anything to do with the skin very often has implications in the gut. So things like chronic frequent infections, whether it's UTIs, w hether it's chest infections or cold, that will have ramifications. Things like joint pains. This is again like, why would I have it? But yes, joint pains, Eczema, psoriasis, all of the autoimmune conditions can be linked to the gut.

Claudia von Boeselager: Could you explain that a little bit more how that link is? So because of a missing bacteria or causing inflammation in the body that then is targeted in the joint, or how does that really look like?

Elena Letyagina: You just hit the two main ones. So, if you think about the immune system, where do you think the immune system is? Well, people think about our lymph nodes, right? But we know that more than 70% of it is resided in the gut, like the lymphoid tissue in the gut. And why is it there? It's there for it to be trained by the toxins. When we eat, we obviously get some pathogens coming through the gut and they need to be dealt with by our own bacteria and by our barrier, which is the lining of our gut and the immune cells just underneath this barrier is there to protect us as well.
So the moment this barrier gets disrupted by toxins or diets high in carbohydrates, in chemicals, in alcohol, in stress, antibiotics, medication, so many issues can affect this barrier. The barrier gets affected the microbes, the toxins, the undigested food particles leak into the bloodstream and they over activate the immune system.
And when the immune system is overactivated it starts attacking, or it may start attacking some other tissues. So if it attacks thyroid tissue, you get auto immune thyroiditis. If it attacks your pancreas cells, you get type one diabetes. If it attacks your intestinal cells, you get Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
So depending on what tissues attacked you getting the auto-immunity right. If attacks your brain, you're getting the auto-immunity in the brain. So it's really coming to the, having this healthy microbiome and healthy, intact gut barrier to prevent from developing these conditions.

Claudia von Boeselager: I wonder if you have one of these conditions and you are able to greatly improve your gut microbiome, are some of these conditions reversible? Have you seen cases of this or is there research?

Elena Letyagina: Unfortunately the auto-immune condition is not reversible. It is chronic condition, but what you can do, you can manage the symptoms really effectively. It can go into remission for longer periods of time. So you cannot say that you can fix your auto-immunity. That would be just wrong. It's a wrong claim, but you can support the systems of auto-immune conditions. And some people can reduce the medications.
Let's say like Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, this is the ultimate condition for steroids. So people on the medications who look after their diet, changing taking nutrients, they can reduce the medication. So they reduce the reliance on it. And you cannot say that you can completely get off them, but I know that some people do so they go completely off medication after certain interventions gets into the remission. It doesn't say that they don't have it anymore cause antibodies will still be there. But the reliance on the medication and the symptoms are not there.

Claudia von Boeselager: And they suffer a lot less, which leads to a better quality of life.

Elena Letyagina: Correct the quality of life will be improved.

Claudia von Boeselager: And longevity as well. I'd like to talk about testing and the testing process. What do you recommend, or what are the most effective tests in finding a baseline or current condition of your gut? What does the testing process look like?

Elena Letyagina: I would always start with a blood test. I think blood test is absolutely basic and fundamental test to have. You need to see whether you're deficient in certain minerals, because the blood test tells you which organ is dysfunctional. It will tell you also whether you have issues with the gut, there are some markers or patterns to show that something is happening in your gut.
So you would start from that and then if you want to look a little bit deeper into your microbiome, or if you have a specific digestive symptoms you want to know instigate, then we can look at the stool test, at the functional stool test. The stool test would look at how well you digest and absorb , how diverse your microbiome, do you have any parasites? Do you have any pathogens? Do you have any inflammation present? It's actually quite a comprehensive test to look at.

Claudia von Boeselager: Are these tests generally found, are most medical professionals aware of this or is this more specialist areas like what you cover?

Elena Letyagina: I would say it's more alternative medicine unfortunately it's not that wide spread in the US maybe it's a little bit known. Here in the UK people just don't know about it. You can go to gastroenterologist and do a stool test and it will test some of these markers, but the functional tests, they also do the microbiome and they look how diverse it is.
 They're not very accurate yet , because we just don't know who lives there. So we're still very far from actually knowing the complete picture. Science obviously developed really fast. And every year these tests are changing and still gives you a very good idea, whether you have a dysbiosis and how severe it is.

Claudia von Boeselager: Sounds really useful. Let's talk about supplements. Do you recommend them? Do we really need them? Is this a long-term strategy? How do you view supplements?

Elena Letyagina: That's another great question. Because at the moment, I think a lot of people just buying whatever is marketed to them and just taking... The amount of clients I see, who would be taking 15 tablets per today, it's actually quite scary. So supplements just to answer to your question. Supplements definitely have a role in the overall strategy. However, the two important things to ask two important questions to ask, why are you taking the supplements? What are you trying to correct? And if you're correcting an imbalance or deficiency, the second question is why do you have this deficiency?
Let's say, if you are deficient in iron, why the deficiencies coming from, is it because you are vegan and not eating enough of iron rich food? Is it because your absorption of iron is impaired? Is it because you have a parasite who's eating this iron or is it because you have internal bleeding, which is quite sinister and your losing your blood this way.
So it's very important to understand why for any mineral, if you're deficient why are you deficient. Now with genetic testing, we would know that we are predisposed to certain deficiencies just based on your genetics. And then you can justify well actually I do need higher amounts of vitamin D than other persons, because I have this particular variant in my gene, or I do need more vitamin B because my methylation cycle is suboptimal. So it's really, you ask yourself, why are you taking it? Is it because when I told you that's a great idea, or are you trying to actually address something?
When I'm developing the supplements program for the clients, it's always comes to the objectives - what are we trying to correct here?
 You have to review the supplements after maximum 12 weeks, normally eight to 10 weeks, you need to review it. People would be taking the same supplements for years, actually, quite scary. There's not enough, unfortunately, education and a lot of marketing from the nutraceutical companies pushing the supplements.
I consider supplements like crutches when you have an injury and you can't walk. So while your leg is healing, it's like crutches, your using the supplements until you correct any deficiencies quickly, but then your diet and your lifestyle, you should be taking the majority of them from your diet.
However, in some cases, people do need to take supplements. Then again, it's very individual.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think you hit on a great point about getting to the root cause of what is actually the reason for it. And I think in Western culture, it's very much - I have a headache. I take a pill. I think in Eastern medicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, it's much more well, what is actually the reason behind it? Let's get to the root and actually cure that. What I understand from your work, that's very much your philosophy, right? Really digging in.

Elena Letyagina: Definitely well this functional medicine because my qualification was based on the functional medicine approach and I'm studying functional medicine now, and I'm applying functional medicine in work with my clients.
So it's absolutely that you have to understand why, what's happening. Why is it happening? The most classic example, when you have reflux and you come to see a GP and they just give you antacids, it's saying like, oh, you have too much stomach acid. Here's you antacids.
You shouldn't take them more than two weeks. And the number of clients that I think who've been on the antacids for four, five, six years is insane. And all they do they're suppressing their stomach acid. So what it's leading to, it's leading to overgrowth of pathogens in the intestines. They cannot break down their proteins because we do need our stomach acids for all of that.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think it's, unfortunately, the way society has developed in underestimating the power of the human body to actually heal itself and to have the right nutrients and microbiome amongst other things to, to just fix itself. I mean, if you think back hundreds of years, we didn't have access to all this medication and nutrients that are available now. So I think it's just changing the philosophy around improving longevity and around letting your actual body do what it's made to do and what it's able to do.
You call yourself a data driven or data driven, nutritional practice. So what does that actually mean? Data - you think a lot about numbers . Can you talk about that?

Elena Letyagina: Yes, definitely. So why do lab data, because it's allows you to motivate your clients in the right way. So by data, I mean, anything, whether it's your blood test results, your stool result, your urine test or it's your health wearables, so things like OURA ring, or if you have any glucose monitoring wearables or any other Fitbit, Apple watch, anything your wearing which allows you to measure biomarkers.
So why it's important? It's a motivational tool, really? It's just to show how well you're doing, because when you come to see me and you struggle with the symptoms, and then you go on the program, you address your dietary changes, you change your lifestyle a little bit. How do you know how well you've done? How do you measure? You can measure subjectively by saying like, Oh, I feel five out of 10, and now I'm feeling nine out of 10.
But you also can look at the blood test results, where were you were and where you now? This is an objective measure, right? And same with the OURA ring, I'm working a lot on sleep optimization for myself and for my clients. But how do you measure it? Because if you don't know how well you sleep, how long you deep sleep, how are you going to measure it? Just by, oh I'm feeling great today? No, not really. So you have to see the data. And then when you see the data, like actually my deep sleep improved from 40 minutes to two hours and a half, this is a proper achievement. This has have a massive impact in your health, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: I'd love to deep dive into sleep for a minute. I used to have the philosophy in my twenties you can sleep when you're dead, which is clearly I'd be dead. I'll be dead pretty fast. I think if I kept that up and obviously I had a huge amount of energy and , things change along the line . I think more and more realization is coming around the importance of sleep.
But it's very different. I have a friend, if she doesn't get her eight hours a night she won't manage. That's her Holy ritual. Whereas some of the people are okay on say six hours. You were talking about deep sleep versus light sleep or REM sleep. Could you talk about the different types of sleep and ways to improve it what people should be looking out for?

Elena Letyagina: Sleep is probably one of the most underestimated therapies, unfortunately. And because we live in this world where we're all driven by results, by achieving, by productivity, we literally don't have time to relax or sleep. Unfortunately. So people who think they can get away with four or five, six hours of sleep they're wrong.
Genetically it's only a very small proportion of people can do that. The majority, they're just driving inflammation, they're driving the destruction of their brain in the longterm. So you need to sleep at least seven hours, ideally eight. So your friend is absolutely right.
Sleep you can think about it as there are five phases of sleep. But if you think about it from a more general level, it's three phases. So you have deep sleep, which is between 13 to 23% of total sleep. Also depending on the age. So if you are, let's say 40 something person and you're sleeping one and a half hours of deep sleep per night. That's actually not bad, but it could be improved. And then you have light sleep, which is around 50% of your total sleep. And then you have rapid eye movement, which is REM phase of sleep, which is between 20 to 25. It's really individual. What I see people tend to suffer with one phase or another. So like let's say, if you really, if you did sleep is really great. You may struggle with REM. And then if you REM is optimal, your deep sleep probably is not great. You need to have a balance, but it has to be your optimal composition. It's really dependent on the person.
This is how I work. I look where we stand. We start improving the morning routine, evening routine. We may introduce some supplementation for sleep. We do a lot of things to help with the circadian rhythms. And then we see whether your sleep is being optimized or not.

Claudia von Boeselager: I see from my OURA ring tracking that my REM sleep is always in the red. It's between two and 7%.
For people not familiar , what is REM sleep versus deep sleep versus light sleep? And why do we actually need all those different phases of sleep for the body?

Elena Letyagina: During the deep sleep, this is the phase where you're pretty much paralyzed. Like it's like in a way it's, you are paralyzed. And in the deep sleep, a lot of hormonal balancing is happening. This is your regeneration. If you care about longevity and anti-aging, this is where your human growth hormone is getting released. And when you really rejuvenate yourself and your cells, cellular regeneration is happening.
Rapid eye movement it's the sleep exactly how it sounds when your eyes move rapidly when you're dreaming. So the dreaming is also important for the cognition, for the brain health. Both of these phases are important.

Claudia von Boeselager: With light sleep is that also an important factor?

Elena Letyagina: People tend to have a lot of light sleep. It is very important as well. Light sleep is more a transition between your deep sleep and your REM sleep. So you can't just transition this straight away. So you go into the light, then you go into REM, then you go down. It goes in like a cyclical curve. You go light, then deep then light again, then REM, then light, then deep. And you've also cycled like five, six times per night. They need to be optimal for us to be healthy.

Claudia von Boeselager: How do you get to optimal? What hacks do you generally recommend to your clients? Obviously everybody's a bit different, but is there a general approach you recommend to optimizing sleep?

Elena Letyagina: So there is a general approach, but then there are a lot of different things you can do. So the general approach is really optimizing and nailing down your bedtime routine. You need to have a routine. Anything which is interrupting your circadian rhythms are also very important to sort out.
So things like not watching any screens two hours before bed, and if you do then wearing blue light blocking glasses, then making sure that your room temperature is quite low, see that you have some fresh air, ideally if you can. Then not using any stimulants. Exercise will be one of them, not having any caffeine after 2:00 PM, not having alcohol ideally four hours before bed, not exercising intensively three hours before bed. So you just need to have one, two hour before bed, where you can really relax. So whether you spend this time reading or relaxing or taking a bath or meditating, wherever it is, this is important. If this is not working, then you need to dig deeper and see why you're not sleeping. Do you have hormonal imbalances and those are very common.
If you have any hormone imbalances, whether it's blood sugar and insulin, or it's cortisol, the stress hormone, or it's your sex hormones, like around PMS and female cycles, you need to regulate them together with addressing your sleep. So those needs to be fixed as well.
Bedtime routine and just completely putting this in place and following it and going to bed at the same time, waking up, ideally at the same time, maybe wearing a sleep mask, if you have to having blinds in your room. So all of these things there are so many of them. I will be working with all of them just get to this optimal sleep.

Claudia von Boeselager: I saw a TED Talk once about what happens with blue lights to your brain before sleep and the activity. I love with neuroscience they do the scans of the brain and you just see the tremendous amount of activity by having that blue light exposure. What wearable devices do you most recommend?

Elena Letyagina: For the blue light specifically?

Claudia von Boeselager: No, in general for your clients for optimal health?

Elena Letyagina: I think blue light blocking glasses for people who work on computers at night, it's absolutely a must.

Claudia von Boeselager: Is there a specific one you recommend?

Elena Letyagina: I do. So there's BLUblox, B L U B L O X, BLUblox. And the TrueDark, those two brands I love. And I know technologically they're quite advanced. You cannot get really good blue light blocking glasses in the opticians on the high street, unfortunately they won't be as effective technologically.
Then OURA Ring would be my absolute must. So if you had to choose three things, I would go with blue light blocking glasses, OURA Ring, and something for meditation, whether it's an app, whether it's a headset, whether it's something stimulating your vagus nerve, something to calm you down, it's up to people to decide.

Claudia von Boeselager: From a longevity perspective, what factors would you say play a role and what would you recommend to do about them?

Elena Letyagina: Gut factors you said?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah.

Elena Letyagina: Okay for Longevity. What is longevity? So it's different definitions for different people, right? So there are certain cellular mechanisms which are happening as we age, but also we are quite a sick people. In general, we have different inbalances and different diseases.
So those needs to be addressed. And then you can also support your different cellular mechanisms . From the gut perspective, I would say fasting would be a great idea for longevity. There are some studies, there is Valter Longo do you know Valter Longo, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yes, The Longevity Diet.

Elena Letyagina: Yeah the Longevity Diet, the fast mimicking diet, it's one of the most researched longevity diets. It's recommended that you do like once a month or if you're quite healthy then maybe once every three months, but you only have to do it if you don't have any imbalances. If you're hormones are great, if your digestion is spot on... A lot of people jump on this wagon without actually addressing some mineral deficiencies or lack of vitamins. Like literally people are deficient in vitamin D or their levels are not optimal. So you can't really talk about longevity until you address all of that.

Claudia von Boeselager: I definitely fall in that category because I am a big fan also for fasting. Dr. Jason Fung has an excellent book, The Complete Guide to Fasting. And I'll put all these books and recommendations in the Show Notes. And just the longevity effect or the positive effect on repairing your DNA.
I think it's either Dr. Peter Attia, who is also very much an expert in this space, that recommends doing a three-day fast once a month. And I think, you know, people hear fasting, they think you're starving yourself. Maybe you could define or clarify what is the difference between fasting and starving yourself?

Elena Letyagina: Fasting is literally going without food. Just on water for certain periods of time. Intermittent fasting has been really popular and different ways of doing this. So you can do one day of eating wherever you want, next day, you cutting calories down to 500 calories day. It's called alternate day fasting.
Then you have intermittent fasting where you have eating windows where you can eat within six hours or eight hours or 10 hours. It's really very individual. And you can do it once a week or every day or twice a week, depending on what you can do. So having some sort of fasting from time to time is quite beneficial.
However, for people with any imbalances in thyroid issues, if you have auto immunity, you shouldn't be doing it, people with eating disorders or history of eating disorders, people with adrenal issues, females, with cycle irregularities, if you're pregnant or if you're struggling with fatigue, or if you're lactating, you cannot do it.
Anyone who's above 65, it's not recommended. And obviously not for children. It's actually, a lot of people are excluded from this recommendation. Right? So my recommendation would be sort yourself out. Sort your health out, make sure that you don't have any hormonal inbalances. That your blood is absolutely great. And then you can go and optimize and strive for longevity. But just don't start doing something which actually may harm you.

Claudia von Boeselager: So it's so important and what I hear you saying is really understanding in what condition you are now, if there's deficiencies... Do you have any good metaphor for thinking about, you know, people do fasting for weight loss and other reasons as well, but...

Elena Letyagina: So, yeah, I love metaphors actually. So I usually compare our bodies either to cars or to houses. If you think about gut health as a foundation of everything, this is what I called my company Gut Philosophy because it's absolutely fundamental to your health because this is where the absorption and the simulation of nutrients is happening and where your diverse microbiome resides.
If you're gut health as the foundation of your house and your building this beautiful house, but you actually decided that, Oh, actually I want to decorate it and maybe buy a new sofa, but your foundation is completely rotten . Maybe you have some mold growing on it. Maybe some cockroaches leaning back, but you only care about the curtains and paint on your walls and the new sofa.
This would be your intermittent fasting and longevity. If I'm going to do it you need to have a really strong foundation and the gut health will be your foundation for that. And then you can have an amazing house with the beautiful interior, and then you can do all sorts of dieting and fast mimicking diet and intermittant fasting, but only if everything else is working properly.

Claudia von Boeselager: That makes complete sense. I think that's where a lot of people who try these and realize that it's making them tired or it's not working. I've had also phases, myself included, feeling very lethargic, looking back if there's deficiencies there, you really need to get that foundation in place first and working with someone like you to figure that out. So that's really great.
I want to change gears a little bit and do some rapid fire questions. What are some bad recommendations that you hear in your profession, in your area of expertise?

Elena Letyagina: Do you know what? I'm still struggling with calorie counting. Every time I hear calorie counting I'm having a nervous tick. Until now people still talk about it, even the practitioners.

Claudia von Boeselager: Can you talk about that? Because I think what is so interesting and it's coming up more and more with functional medicine is that medical training does not include nutritional training, but actually the food is the medicine you give your body every day. So there was a huge gap in knowledge about that . So can you talk about the change in philosophy around calories, away from the calorie in calorie out?

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. So this calorie counting, it obviously comes from all the dieting and different diets and the weight loss marketing companies. Calories it's just, it's just one characteristic of things. It doesn't tell you does it have vita-nutrients? Does it have enough fiber to support your gut microbiome? Does it have enough healthy proteins? Does it have enough minerals? It doesn't tell you all of that. This is just some random number, which is not even representative of the real value of this food. And then people obsessively focusing and saying like, Oh, I eaten this yogurt and it's 120 calories, but I'd rather having this protein bar, which is 200 calories. They're really not thinking right I think. So every time I have a client talking about calories. I'm literally spending 10 good minutes just getting this idea out of their heads, but then they come back again and they, again, talking about calories and I was like...
This is a concept which really dies really hard, especially people who are trying to lose weight. Very often you see clients saying like wow I would like to lose weight. And their weight approach. If you have weight gain and you can not shift weight, it means you have imbalances and let's sort them out. It's, again, going back to this foundation of your house, let's sort out your foundation and then your weight loss would be just the positive side effect of this.

Claudia von Boeselager: I think that some people who've successfully done the ketogenic diet or keto diet where they actually are eating healthy fats, but calorie dense are so surprised how much weight they actually lose. So it's really changing that mental model around calories and the calorie and how the body absorbs different types of foods. So thank you for expanding on that.
What are some of the learnings or insights that your clients you work with have found the most valuable? So you just talked on thinking around calories. What are some other areas?

Elena Letyagina: Did you know that actually, you can explain all the complex science behind things really well for clients to get it. But I think what really changes the behavior of people is the data. So seeing the results and seeing, oh actually I'm sleeping so much better. And practical things, how to actually implement it? Because any doctor can tell you, Oh, you have this, this and this, and this is what you should do. But then if you don't know how to do it, you're never going to get to your final destination, right?
You just get stuck thinking how, okay, so I know all my data, but what do I do about it? It's actually literally teaching people how to get more veggies in their diet or how to optimize their sleep or how to being able to relax. I think this is what's the most valuable for the people.

Claudia von Boeselager: So you really go that extra mile with your clients and not just do the analysis and get the data, but actually come up with a very clear action plan to achieve results. Is that right?

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely. This is the whole idea of therapy, right? Because this is a plan. This is the plan developed with the client because I cannot prescribe someone to eat certain things. And this person is not on board if they're not willing to change. So you really need to get a client on the same page with you, just get them really motivated about the change. And then you create this plan. Because to be honest, it's not me doing the hard work. It's all the clients, because it's them who needs to change their diets, change their attitudes, change their beliefs, their behaviors. And this is the hard part. So to be honest every time people come back and say like, Oh, I've done everything in the program, I'm actually amazed every time I'm thinking , Oh my God, this is tremendous. Well done guys! That's easy. You just analyzing things. And this is what I love to do. I'm just advising them, but they doing all the hard work.

Claudia von Boeselager: You're able to point to and then you have the information on the data as well to encourage success.

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely and I would go back to the details as well. Like if you need to have, let's say you go for gluten free brands so I would advise on which two or three brands, which are better. If it's a plant based meal, I'll tell you which one will be better. So it's literally just getting this knowledge because it will take them hours of research just to get to the point, right? And for me, because I know that, right? So it's easy and I love sharing that.

Claudia von Boeselager: And that's amazing because I think that's where a lot of people trip up as well. They're like, I know I should do this, but there's just so many brands or it's so overwhelming. So to have that clarity and direction is so helpful as well.
Elena Letyagina: Yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: How has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours?

Elena Letyagina: My favorite failure? Well, I wouldn't consider it as a failure, like quitting a career in finance and this is the career. I always liked mathematics, right? So that was something I was passionate about. Yeah, it sounds strange. But yes, I was actually, I was enjoying it. So I have a mathematical and economical degree and degree in finance as well. So I've been working so hard for that. And I've been working in this great, incredible bank with great, incredible people. And then I decided to change my career in my thirties, it was just quite late. And this is the time where a lot of people already established in their career paths. And I changed it quite late in a way I wouldn't say it's a failure like now absolutely sure that I've made the right choice. But when I was making this choice, I felt like a failure a little bit. I had two young kids. I was writing my assignments at night and researching things. And I thought, okay, this feels like a failure because all my colleagues, all my friends they're now have a great titles and I'm a student really. But as I said, I wouldn't call it a failure, it just felt like a failure, but it was a necessary step.

Claudia von Boeselager: And it's brought you to where you are today and what you said earlier in the conversation how much you love helping people and making such an impact, right?
There's actually a great speech by Steve jobs. I don't know if you've seen it. The Stanford commemoration speech from 2005. you can watch it on YouTube. It's about 15 minutes and he talks about three experiences in his life. But one of the phrases he uses is connecting the dots. So it's only when you look back. And then you realize through those difficult times or those changes, it was the only way to get me to where I am today. So it's really a case of connecting the dots.
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? So distractions, invitations, you talked about self care and taking time for yourself?

Elena Letyagina: This is a brilliant brilliant question. Because establishing healthy boundaries is so important. When you're younger, you just feel, you can't say no to your boss or you can't say no to your friends. And when you become older and you start prioritizing things, you just don't have time for everything. So sometimes yes, you do need to say, sorry, I'm not joining you for this social occasion or I'm sorry, I'm not going to work on this project with these deadlines just because it's going to push me too much. So it's actually recognizing your own capacity, mental and physical as well. It's so important. And being able to say, if I'm going to do that, it's probably will trigger me and get me unhealthy state mental or physical. So it just, it's hard to learn to say no, but it's definitely possible. And like now, especially when I'm trying to optimize my sleep during this COVID when we're out and when the social occasions will be happening again, like every day, I'm pretty sure I will be very selective because to be honest, I don't want to compromise my sleep. I work so hard to get to the stage where my sleep is optimal now, and I want to improve it. I don't want to disrupt it or like having alcohol, for example, that's something I give up after the first lock down. First lock-down I couldn't give it up, but after the first lock-down I gave it up and yeah, this is something that's, it's so much better.

Claudia von Boeselager: And I think it's such an amazing space the art of saying no gracefully or saying it well. And I think it was an interview I heard once with Derek Sivers. He said that you know, what your schedule is like in the moment, but if you get an invitation for say six months out and you're like, Oh, sure I'll accept all these invitations. But if it's not something that if it was for next week, Tuesday, where you would say yes, hell yeah, he says, to it because you know how busy you are right now, it should be a no. And it's also, I guess, valuing your own time. And this is, as you said yourself, something that I have also really worked on in the last years, as well before the FOMO have to do everything.
And I embarrassingly remember nights of going to three different parties and what was I thinking? Didn't enjoy it. Everyone was annoyed at me because I was coming and going . And for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea. And I think it's what you said around self care and actually having that time to sit and not too much input, but actually have time to think it's just so fundamental for wellbeing.

Elena Letyagina: And also choosing people who you feel positive to be around. If someone invited you to a party, but you know, you're not going to enjoy too much. Just say no. Right. It's absolutely the right. It's like, you have to be around people who are your tribe and energize you, energize you, who support you, who believe in your growth and not those who drag you down and criticize you. Absolutely like choosing your friends is very important.

Claudia von Boeselager: I like that. Yeah. I've forgotten who said it, but that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Don't know if you've heard that quote?

Elena Letyagina: No I haven't that's a good one.

Claudia von Boeselager: So think about who those five people might be -choose carefully. Do you have a favorite quote or piece of advice received that was a real game changer for you?

Elena Letyagina: There were so many. I used to have in my notes, I have different quotes, which I laugh when I put them in one place. I'm struggling to find the definitive one. There's the one which I put on my necklace. And this is something I did after my first child. And it's by Omar Khayy am, it's one of his poems and it says, be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. Like after giving birth, you have this profound epiphany. And I thought, this is it. You really need to treasure this present moment. And this is just something to remind me to not live in the future. Don't have anxiety and fear about the future. Don't overthink your past. What's done is done. Just really focused on today. Appreciate you're there. This is something I've been working quite a bit.
So I'm trying to schedule daily walks, which is really hard when I'm working like full full time and homeschooling. But I'm finding, trying to find this time when I'm by myself in the park, appreciating the nature, whatever the weather is. And just like really living in the present.

Claudia von Boeselager: The power of now. Yeah. There's some work out there that is really fascinating and something I'm working on myself, but it's amazing how much calmer and focused and happier you feel if you just actually stopped focusing on worrying about the future and worrying about the past and just actually be. They should teach you this at school.
So before we close and thank you so much, this has been so fun, for people who want to dig into gut health and nutrition for longevity further, or for general lifestyle, what resources or books should they start with?

Elena Letyagina: So for people who would like to really understand about gut health, if you really into science-y like reading the research articles would be a little bit hard. I think for general public, just some books which are written by scientists would be a good idea. So the most recent ones, I like Fiber Fueled. It's a good book . The author is an American author, his a gastroenterologist. He has incredibly difficult name.
Claudia von Boeselager: I'll put it in the Show Notes, I'll find it.

Elena Letyagina: Fiber Fueled is a good one. And then Tim Spector, who's our UK scientist based in Kings college. So his book is just recently out. I have a great respect for him. It's called Spoon-Fed. Everything about the diets and why they're wrong . So this would be a good one. So really anything which is written by the medical practitioners would be my advice. Please don't read the books written by influencers, bloggers, or anyone from... there has to be written from the people who actually know what they're talking about.

Claudia von Boeselager: That's good advice. It goes without saying any advice, tips, we give it's as always, after speaking with your physician and medical professional, before you stop any medication or change exercise and diet.
Where can people, and of course I'll link all of these in the show notes for everyone, but where can people learn more about what you're up to? What would you like to share with people? Maybe Twitter, Instagram, your website?.

Elena Letyagina: Yeah, Instagram. I don't have much time for Instagram anymore, but I do post stories. So it's @gutphilosophy. @gutphilosophy, my Instagram account, and I have a website where I do put some of the new recipes. Really helpful for people to see how we can do things easy and quick. Yeah. And I'd love to have more focus on my Instagram account, but yeah. Not, not much time,

Claudia von Boeselager: Not enough hours in the day. Exactly. Do you have a final ask or recommendation or next step suggestion, whatever it might be for my audience, any parting thoughts or message?

Elena Letyagina: So that would be in general, we really can change health and symptoms to better by addressing your diet and lifestyle. It's important to get tested. So we cannot underestimate the importance of getting your blood tests done. Just the regular blood tests with the GP.
Always get the copy of the results. Don't just rely on the receptionist saying like your results are fine. They probably would be suboptimal in some respect. But then it's also finding someone who will interpret those results for you, or maybe just dig in and do it yourself, looking at the functional medicine optimal ranges.
And so this will be important, but I think what's important. We are in charge of our own health, not the NHS. So we really need to take care especially now with COVID. This is happening to.. So the risk, the people in the risk groups are those with the lifestyle diseases really, right? So it's, uh, problems.
This is largely driven by lifestyle diseases. So those things are preventable and this is why I'm so passionate about. We can prevent these things, just get tested. See where your imbalances are, correct the imbalances. Read the books from the scientist, read the health blogs and yeah, just take control of your health.

Claudia von Boeselager: Amazing Elena. Thank you so much. So many wonderful and inspiring pieces of information in here. Thank you for your time. 

Elena Letyagina: Thank you for having me. .