Claudia von Boeselager: Elena, it is so wonderful to welcome you back to the Longevity & Lifestyle Podcast for Round Two. Thank you so much for coming back on.
Elena Letyagina: Thank you for having me, Claudia. I love your podcast. Big fan. Really happy to be here. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Thanks so much. So I'd left for our Round Two to catch up, first of all, on what you've been focusing on over the last month since we recorded last and what are some of the highlights that you've seen? 

Elena Letyagina: Well, one of my areas of interest is gut health, as you know, but recently I've been focusing a lot on the female hormones, in particular, work around the perimenopause. Because what I'm seeing at the clinic is more and more women coming in, they age between 35 to 40, having all these interesting symptoms without necessarily being able to explain what's causing them, and very often perimenopause or change of hormones play a role in it. So I started focusing really into the female hormones and on the production and the transportation and sensitivity of the receptors.

So a lot of the dietary changes and lifestyle changes and supplementation to work around that, to keep it balanced. So that's a really exciting area. And I think we need to own our hormones and actually live according to our cycle, right? And this is something upcoming. Definitely. So that was one of the biggest, really, shifts in the last couple of months for me.

Then I've also completed now seven modules of the IFM course, and I'm preparing for the exam and hopefully I'll be a fully certified, functional medicine practitioner, this is quite exciting as well. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Super exciting. Congratulations for getting so far. For those maybe not familiar, could you just explain briefly what functional medicine actually is and what are the different modules? Like, what do you actually cover in the course? 

Elena Letyagina: So the functional medicine, it is a science, it is a medicine and a lot of doctors will be practicing it as well as some of the naturopathic doctors and nutritional therapists. It's looking at the cause of any imbalances. So rather than - in the conventional medicine, which I massively admire, conventional medicine will try to find the name for the disease. So name it and tame it. So you name the disease, oh that's the IBS, and we tame it, so take this type of pill. You have a headache? Take Nurofen, etc. So this is the conventional medicine. Which works really well in the acute situations and in infectious situations. However, it fails us on the chronic and the preventative side quite a lot.

So a lot of people are struggling with some symptoms which are not necessarily defined by disease. So, like, let's say having a low energy, just not feeling like yourself, or maybe feel a bit of a bloating, a bit of a muscle ache, if you go to the conventional doctor there's nothing they can do for you because they're just not trained to deal with this, right? And the functional medicine or functional medicine practitioner would be looking at the causes of the potential imbalances. So you're not in the pathological range yet. It's not a disease state. It's still an imbalance. Let's say some things, suboptimal liver function could be an imbalance or some digestive inflammation could be an imbalance. 

And then once it's identified, you can support it with the dietary changes, with the lifestyle changes. Working with the sleep and your stress. Supplementation will play quite a big role in it. So functional medicine is really the new era of health care, really. Just because we're dealing with such a massive amount of chronic illnesses and autoimmune conditions and metabolic dysfunctions. Right? So it should be integrated in the conventional medicine from my point of view. 

Claudia von Boeselager: I mean, I totally agree. And as you know, I used to suffer from all these chronic issues, which just kept piling up, which I thought was, you know, just such a joke because I thought I was being healthy, but I had, you know, the chronic sinusitis, chronic fatigue. And you could just tell that the inflammation in my body was such that anything was, sort of, triggering some sort of chronic issue and, you know, sort of mid-thirties to think that you're having all these chronic illnesses. What is the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years going to look like. I mean, it looked pretty bleak and miserable. 

So yeah, that's why I love our conversations and learning so much from you as well. So thank you so much for that. 

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. Very welcome. In general, if you have any symptoms, whether it's headaches or migraines or something's aching, any single symptom, it's really a message your body's sending that something needs to change before it's cascading down and just causing full-blown disease, like, down the line, right? And that's the problem when people just start normalizing that, oh, that's my new normal. I'm just feeling tired every morning. Or I'm feeling tired after 4:00 PM or I'm craving sweets. I'm not feeling as much energy, or I don't want to play with my kids in football because my knee is hurting. It's just normalization. And very often they say, like, oh, I'm just getting old, which is absolutely not the case. And it's just a sign that something is off and this is the sign just do something about it? 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yes. And, I mean, I need to also listen sometimes as well, because I have a tendency to ignore and I have a pretty high pain threshold, but I think that that's actually really, really wise words that if your body starts telling you something, like, really listen to it and rather catch it early and go full throttle at solving it than letting it accumulate, et cetera. But then I also believe that a challenge is finding the right practitioner that understands about the functional perspective in terms of what is the underlying cause, because I think if you go into a traditional doctor and have that seven minute consultation, they'll be like, oh, you know, you're fine. Yes. Okay. You're fine. But do you want to live in the fine state? No, you want to live in the optimized state? 

Elena Letyagina: It is actually a huge problem. And, like, the clients I'm seeing they would be saying, oh, my blood tests are normal. Oh, my doctor said nothing is wrong with me. Or they would say that it's in your head.

And this is actually quite frustrating. And in particular, when a client comes in with clearly blood results off of the charts. Something's in red, something is suboptimal, and the doctor will say, oh, let's just keep an eye on it. It's such a common sentence. It's actually quite shocking. Oh, your cholesterol is slightly high. Okay. But that's normal, you know, it's your good cholesterol which is high. I think it's shocking. And I think people should really demand the answers, like, what's causing that? Could you explain it to me? What may be happening if it continues to be high. Or low. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Also, can you explain for listeners not that familiar, as we know blood test results, most people will have seen, you know, some sort of blood test results in their lifetime, but that normal range that's given, can you tell us a little bit of the background of that and why we shouldn't just be looking at this normal range? 

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. So basically the normal range is based on 95% of population and it's a standardized rate, right? And as a population, we're becoming progressively sicker and sicker. So actually a normal range now, it would be absolutely abnormal 30 years ago. So looking at the normal range, it's just cutting off any pathologies. Like, let's look at the blood glucose, right? So the optimal range is 4.6. Your blood glucose should be 4.6, 4.7. That's your cutoff point. The normal range is 5.6. If you're 5.1, your fasted glucose is way too high.

This is the moment when you can do something about your diet, right? And the doctors, they don't care about your suboptimal glucose. They care whether you're diabetic or not, they don't have time to deal with your symptoms, right? If you're diabetic, you get Metformin. Off you go. Come back later when you have some other issues and we'll give you another pill. This is really the approach just because they don't have time. And they're dealing with the pandemic of chronic disease. 

However, if you don't know your optimal ranges, roughly, have a look at the middle. You want to be in the middle somewhere. It's a really rough estimate. Some of the markers would be slightly higher or slightly lower, but just aim at the middle.

If you see that you're really close to the bottom end or top end of the normal range, you'll probably start sliding. And this is why you - really important to have bloods done every year. You can see the trend. For some people, having high cholesterol is quite normal. So if you're always 5.2, 5.3, maybe this is your norm. But if you've never done your blood results and suddenly you're 5.6, you don't know what we're comparing, right? So you do need to have these bloods done regularly. And also do aim to be somewhere in the middle. 

And if it's a good indicator, you want to be on the higher site. And if it's bad indicator, you'll want to be on the lower side. If it makes sense. Like, if it's a good cholesterol, you want to be slightly high. If it's a bad cholesterol, you want to be slightly lower. This is really a rough, ideally you want to look at the optimal ranges, but for that you need a practitioner. And, as you mentioned, it's actually quite difficult to find a decent practicioner. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. And a functional medicine practitioner as well from IFM, it's basically the gold standard, right? 

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. 

Claudia von Boeselager: In finding someone. And I think nowadays in the world, a lot of practitioners are available via Zoom, which I think is really, really helpful. So I definitely recommend reaching out to them. 

I'd love to dig a bit deeper into the gut-brain access, Elena. Can you talk more about that? What it is. And how gut health can affect our mood and then focus.

Elena Letyagina: Okay. So, very often, people will be experiencing some sort of cognition or mood or anxiety issues. Not necessarily linking it to their gut health. For some people, it could be quite obvious. Oh, I've been constipated and my mood is really bad, right? And for other people, it's not as obvious. But the gut enteric system, which is the nervous system of the gut, and your central nervous system, they actually develop from the same tissue when they are in utero or when we are, like, foetuses.

So it is a really strong connection. They're connected by the vagus nerve, but also they're connected by multiple messagers. And actually your gut sends more messages to your brain than the other way around. So if something is not quite right in the gut, very often you may be experiencing some sort of mood disorders, anxiety, maybe depression. Any other issues. So when we're dealing with mental health, we do need to be addressing gut health specifically. That would be one of the really important foundations to address.

Claudia von Boeselager: I'd like to actually just highlight that point because my personal view, coming out of the pandemic if we hopefully are, I think that the biggest pandemic is actually going to be around mental health, you know, and different age groups have different things. I've seen with the isolation has done to my parents who are older versus, you know, teenagers. I have a friend with teenager kids who got into, sort of, video gaming and are completely addicted and have almost lost social skills because of it, et cetera, et cetera. And obviously people suffering from depression and all the rest of it. 

What are things that someone could do at home, if they're feeling, sort of, mental health issues, let's say? Where would be a good place to start to address gut health issues to see if that could be a trigger around mental health.

Elena Letyagina: That's a great question. So I would say start from the diet. So you want to see a lot of colors in your diet. So when we're experiencing any brain-related problems or mood disorders, very often it could be driven by the neuroinflammation, which is basically inflammation of your brain. It's not a full-blown inflammation. It's a low grade process, which is just ,sort of, sitting there and creates a little bit of a toxicity in your brain. And creating, like, some of the, oxidative stress we call it, but basically it's an oxidation really toxic inflammatory environment in your brain. 

So, to counteract it, you want to be thinking about antioxidants and those are found in anything which is really bright. Bright red, bright yellow, bright orange, bright purple. White would be also the color, like if you have fennel or onions, those are the white ones. You want to be thinking about the bright colors in your diet. That would be number one. 

I would say number two would be removing some of the pro-inflammatory triggers. And a lot of the food actually have these pro-inflammatory qualities. Things like vegetable oil. If you're getting takeaways very often, the chances that you're getting a massive amount of pro-inflammatory oils is really high. Most likely, you're actually getting these oxidized oils, which are causing damage and causing inflammation, including to your brain. Right? 

So removing the vegetable oils. Removing some of the processed carbohydrates, removing excess sugar would be number two. Just getting these bright colored vegetables. That's the first step. Removing alcohol would be quite important, especially, like, with isolation. It's very often getting to alcohol and having a glass of wine here and there that's our stress coping technique, right? 

That's absolutely normal. And you see throughout, especially like working moms who need to homeschool kids. I mean, I don't blame them, right? So you'll be having this glass of alcohol, maybe two, every day. And again, this just creates a massive amount of inflammation. So if you start experiencing these symptoms, start thinking what can I remove in terms of pro-inflammatory things? And what I can add as anti-inflammatory, right?

And they're, like, healthy fats would be anti-inflammatory. High quality proteins would be anti-inflammatory. Brightly colored vegetables would be anti-inflammatory. And maybe, like, regulating your snacking behavior, like, again, snacking and going to the kitchen all the time and eating all the time is quite common. It's just a stress management technique, right? This is how you're coping with stress. 

It's actually quite hard to adjust to behaviors, right? So you need to deal with the stress separately. You need to find the ways to eliminate stress, whether it's sleep or yoga or meditation, talking to your friends, whatever it is. But it is hard when we've dealt with this whole COVID situation and staying at home, it's actually quite hard.

But from a dietary perspective, definitely a few things you can do. 

Claudia von Boeselager: So useful. Thank you so much. Two topics from that I'd like to just ask questions on. One is around children and gut health. And you said around mood swings and things like that as well. I mean, obviously children are children and sometimes it's tricky, but personally I feel like children are not tested enough to see the state of their gut health. If they're lacking nutrients or minerals or vitamins, things like this as well. I mean, what type of testing or child-specific dietary recommendations would you have or is it the same as adults or how do you view that? 

Elena Letyagina: So testing for the children is a little bit tricky because you don't want to go through the full-blown blood tests with them, you're probably going to traumatize them quite a bit. So testing-wise, it's actually quite hard to test. You can do the urine test and look at the organic acids, let's say, or some hormones if you would like to. But it's more specific. In general, I probably wouldn't test a child. Or maybe genetics, if there are certain things which you think maybe, like, ADHD and things like that, you want to be maybe looking at the genetics as well. Looking at the methylation could be a good place to start. So that's just a saliva swab. So that's quite easy for the children. 

Talking about the diet, the diet would be the same optimal diet as I would recommend to adults. And if listeners have any kids who go to the school, they would absolutely know that the school food, unfortunately, something is just not great, I have to say. This is hugely frustrating. The amount of sugar they get, the amount of vegetable oils they get. It's actually quite frustrating. Some schools are trying to get more vegetables in the diet. However, there's so much room for improvement. 

So given that the school diet is not great, we really need to do our best at home to make sure that your kids are having enough vegetables, having enough good protein, having enough fat.

And a lot of children are actually fussy eaters, so it's actually quite difficult to get all these vegetables in them, like, trying to make them to eat kale or spinach. So you need to be really creative around maybe some smoothies or hiding it or putting it in the sauces. There are some ways to do this, but for the children, I mean, you're absolutely right. The diet has a huge impact on their behavior, especially with the activity. You need to remove sugar most likely, and the amount of sugary snacks kids have, it's actually quite shocking. I would never comment, obviously, to other moms, but it's actually quite shocking what the kids are having. 

And high sugar, I'm sure you know about it, but it actually reduces your brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So it basically makes you a little bit silly. So you do need to be thinking about it when you're giving these high sugary snacks. Even at school, they were getting cakes and puddings for desserts. That's outrageous.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. A big topic of conversation as well. So thank you for shedding light on that. 

And then just quickly on alcohol. Is there any certain wines or something that you have seen are less inflammatory, or any certain alcohols for that matter, for people that, say, like the occasional, and I highlight occasional, drink? Is there anything that you've seen as not so inflammatory?

Elena Letyagina: Unfortunately, the short answer would be no. If you think about alcohol and gut, and alcohol and sleep, and its indirect effect on the gut, it's probably one of the most damaging factors. And the more I work with clients who have been going off alcohol and the more I see the changes in their health, the more I'm convinced there is really no safe dosage of alcohol, unfortunately. 

It has to be a balance, right? If you want to go and celebrate something and have a glass of champagne, absolutely by all means, do it. However, if you relying on a glass of wine every day, it's probably excessive. And then you need to start thinking, why am I doing it? Am I bored? Am I stressed? What is it? Is there any other ways to relax? 

And as we age, as well, our livers are already quite overburdened by a lot of different toxicants, right? And having extra alcohol, it's actually quite damaging. So sorry to disappoint you. It is a big one and people say, like, oh, but the red wine and it has some polyphenols in it. And it has them for resveratrol. Yes. But the damages of ethanol by itself probably outweighs the benefits of any polyphenols you're getting. And you can get polyphenols from other things as well, so - 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, and more alcohol-free spirits and things are coming to market be it an alcohol-free gin or alcohol-free tequila, I've friends working on something there.

What do you think of those? I mean, if there's no alcohol in it, then in theory, it's not as damaging, right? 

Elena Letyagina: Well, I actually, I'd love to see what's in there because how do they do this? Right, so it's really hard to comment without actually seeing the ingredients. I would say, one of the tricks you could do is having a drink in the alcohol glass. Like, whether it's the champagne flute or whether it's a wine glass, just pour non-alcoholic drinks in there. It's a bit of a placebo effect, but it really works. That's what I'm seeing. And people are, like, actually, yes, it works. And now they sell kombucha in the champagne bottle. So it actually feels and looks like champagne.

Obviously doesn't taste like one, but at least it gives you this sense of celebration, right? If you are someone who's following an alcohol-free diet or going off alcohol for some time. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, or even for a phase. Exactly. Some people do the Dry January, so. 

Elena Letyagina: Yeah. 

Claudia von Boeselager: For people trying to better understand if they have gut-related issues, can you talk about some of the common complaints around gut-related disorders?

Elena Letyagina: So in terms of the gut-related symptoms, probably the most common one would be bloating. Oh, I feel bloated after the meal. It gets worse towards the end of the day. I wake up bloated. My bloating is highly uncomfortable. That's probably the most common one. Then I would say it's constipation and diarrhea or some sort of IBS symptoms, really common as well. And then anything to do with the stomach, like a belching of feeling nauseous and full after the food. That's probably one of the top three symptoms as well, in terms of the gut health. 
And if you're experiencing any of these symptoms, you definitely need to support your gut health. That's a very clear sign. 

Claudia von Boeselager: How would you recommend addressing them. Doing testing then, or finding a functional medicine nutritionist? 

Elena Letyagina: Not necessarily. You can definitely do it at home. So in the functional medicine, we have this protocol where we start from removing the triggers. So thinks like you would be removing pro-inflammatory foods. If you have any parasites or pathogens, you would be removing those. Reducing the stress would be really important. That's your first phase of this gut healing program, let's say. 

The second phase would be replacing some of the digestive enzymes, supporting your stomach acid production, supporting your pancreatic enzymes. Those are quite crucial. And you can do that home, there is no secret to it, like. A simple chewing your food and just sitting mindfully would dramatically improve your stomach acid production for example. 

And then just supportingyour microbiome diversity would be a next phase of the protocol. I mean, you can do it all at the same time or you can do, have sort of a staggered approach to it.

So having some fermented foods and making sure you have enough fiber in your diet, and you have the diversified sources of fiber, that's your third phase. And then really rebalancing, then, the sort of retaining your health. Because going through this gut healing program, it's great, but then can you actually keep it this way for the next year or so? 

So your life needs to be quite balanced as well. Because the gut health would be really linked to everything else. To your sleep, to your stress, to your relationship. Your whole life would be plugged into your gut health. And that's quite interesting. So you can not address just your diet. You need to be looking in this, your sleep and your movement and dealing with your stress. And it's a holistic approach, really, to gut health. 

And you certainly can do it at home. You don't need a practitioner for that. You don't really need to test unless you have some severe symptoms, but if you have a bit of a bloating and it's just not feeling too great. Start from the basics. Chew your food, remove the pro-inflammatory foods. Remove the alcohol. 

You may consider an elimination diet, just going off gluten or off dairy for four to six weeks, just to see if you're feeling much better. And then start cooking the foods rather than going for takeaways or restaurant, let's say. 

Claudia von Boeselager: That sounds really great. What are your favorite fermented foods and your favorite fiber-rich foods?

Elena Letyagina: My favorite fermented foods, that's a good one. I quite like miso. A love soy sauce. I love miso paste. I cook a lot with miso paste. That's my favorite one. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Any particular brand that's really good? 

Elena Letyagina: Well, for those who live in the UK, I'm buying it in whole foods. I don't remember the brand, I'm afraid, but it's basically organic miso paste. You have to go for organic just to avoid all the GMO, right, found in soy. Then kefir. I quite like kefir, you can do it very easily at home. All you need to do is just to buy some kefir grains and just put some organic milk and just let it ferment on your tabletop. That's quite easy. 

And then kombucha for all the celebrations, right? This is your replacement of champagne, or, like a, sort of replacement of champagne. 

Claudia von Boeselager: I love it. And fiber, what are some of your favorite fiber-rich foods? 

Elena Letyagina: I would say probably linseeds and flax seeds. Flax seeds would be my favorite type of fiber because they have lignans, basically it's like a phytochemical, and it's great for hormonal support. It's great for gut health. Just getting, like, one to two teaspoons of flaxseeds daily or in your yoghurts or in your soups, in your salads, is a really good idea. But I mean, fiber is found everywhere. As long as you eat your veg, as long as you eat your legumes, you're probably gonna hit your fiber. But you need to be quite consistent and have it every single meal.

Claudia von Boeselager: Are there some healthy foods that actually aren't so good for us? Maybe some people are sensitive to certain foods. What have you seen in your practice? 

Elena Letyagina: This is a great question because some people would assume, oh this is amazing, spinach is great for me and strawberry is great for me, but if they have, let's say, some histamine issues. They would be actually experiencing some reactions. And this is where you may need to send a nutritionist for that, actually, because this is something it's quite difficult to figure out. I had this fantastic client of mine who has been experiencing issues and symptoms for over 30 years. That's a lot. Starting from the childhood. And they're becoming progressively worse, lots of cramps, like, lots of, sort of, allergic reactions to many foods.

And she was excluding the foods. And in the end she ended up with a very tiny amount of food she could eat. And then what happened, it actually was something to do with histamine, like, and mast cell activation disorder, but basically her immune cells were producing a bit too much histamine and reacting to histamine found in foods. And she couldn't really deal with this amount of histamine. 

So following a really simple, low histamine, diet for 10 days completely resolved her symptoms. I was absolutely shocked because I thought after 30 years of suffering, I really doubt that I will be able to help here. And then she said after three days, it was much better. After 10 days I'm sleeping through the night. There are no symptoms. I actually cannot believe that it helped. And I was like, thank God. This is where you really need to understand what's happening. When you're having the IBS, a lot of fiber will be quite damaging for you, right? So if you'll start eating a lot of broccoli and beans and cabbages, you may be suffering quite a bit. It actually will be creating more damage to your lining. So you have to be careful. 

And because it's so personalized, it's literally going into every single food and deciding how much of this food you can eat. If someone cannot tolerate broccoli, maybe they can tolerate, like, one tablespoon of broccoli and some people tend to have these limits so that will be able to tolerate a little bit of certain foods. And this is where you need to establish a baseline and then diversify your diet slowly. But definitely, like, things like high fiber foods or foods that are high in histamine, like things like meat and spinach and fish and leftovers - I love leftovers. But for some people they may be triggered in some symptoms, right? So it's really personalized. And that's an interesting part of it, right?

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. And I guess this comes back to the point you made before about really listening to your body and, you know, if you want to eat really healthy, but, you know, some things trigger symptoms, it's really just going, okay, it might be broccoli. Let me have a little bit of it, see how I feel tomorrow. And like, you know, mentally make note. You get so caught up in life that you forget to listen to your actual body. 

Elena Letyagina: Absolutely. 

Claudia von Boeselager: But if there are some things that's, kind of, saying, okay, I have to take a smaller dose or just avoid it for a while until I get better as well.

Elena Letyagina: Mentally taking note is hard. It's better to write it down. Because, like, some symptoms, they go like up to two days. It's really hard to remember what you had. Especially if you go out, you don't even know what you had, right, on your plate. So this is where I need to write it down. Especially for someone who's struggling with the gut issues, yeah.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. Even for a certain timeframe. Cause I think some people will think, like, oh, for the rest of my life to write down every meal, like, I'm not going to do it, but even if you just say, okay, I'm going to focus on it for a week or 10 days. 

Elena Letyagina: Oh yeah, absolutely. We're talking about one week, just to pinpoint if something's clearly reacting to something clearly.

And if you can't pinpoint, this is maybe a time to go and see someone. And there are some tests to see if you have a food sensitivity. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. Really helpful. Can you talk about some of the key supplements and foods to support gut health? 

Elena Letyagina: Okay. So in terms of the foods, I would start, I already mentioned brightly colored vegetables and any plants. Those are quite, the big winners. Then anything to do with the phytonutrients and those are basically chemicals found in things like herbs or berries. In any plants, really, they will have some phytonutrients. So focusing on those and focusing on the different colors is really crucial because these phytonutrients are supporting your gut health. 

Probiotics, whether it's foods or supplements. Before supplementing with probiotics, it's really important to understand why you're supplementing, what you're trying to achieve, because different strengths will have a different effect. So I wouldn't be just taking probiotics without understanding what's happening, but taking the probiotic foods, those are found in fermented foods. That's a different story.

You can have kefir, yoghurt, miso, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, if you can tolerate those. And we're talking about tiny amounts, but quite regularly. Every day, almost, like, or five, six times. That would be a really good step for the gut health. 

And fiber, which is found in legumes and grains and nuts and seeds and fruits and veg. Just getting enough fiber. This is food-wise. Supplements-wise, it's a little bit, depends on what you're trying to achieve, but digestive enzymes are quite helpful for a lot of people, I would say. But then again, you need to make sure you don't have stomach acid issues before taking enzymes. Then anything with the antioxidants, things like curcumin or green tea extract, things like that, that would be - resveratrol - those are quite helpful for their anti-inflammatory properties. 

And then another thing is, like, really good quality protein. This is such a basic thing and a lot of people, they are getting enough protein, but they cannot assimilate it, for different reasons. And if you cannot assimilate protein, it's really hard to get your gut lining nice and healthy.

Claudia von Boeselager: And can you just specify by high quality or good quality proteins, what are some of your top picks? 

Elena Letyagina: So if you're talking about animal protein, I would definitely go for grass fed red meat. Maybe not every day, maybe two, three times a week. For a high quality fish, ideally smaller sizes, just because the bigger fish they tend to be quite, unfortunately, full of toxins and heavy metals.
Mercury is one of them. They have, like, some other dioxins and horrible things. So smaller fish, so things like sardines, anchovies, mackerel. This is a high quality protein. Eggs, organic eggs would be definitely my top choice for protein. 

And in terms of the plant protein, soy is great, but we do need to look at whether it's organic or not. So having soy, again, maybe not every day, but from time to time, is a good idea. And any legumes like lentils, beans, just a majority, like, different types of legumes, a variety of legumes would be quite important as well. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, that's really great. And one tip, I actually learned from the 4-Hour Body body from Tim Ferriss for people who do suffer sensitivities with beans, and I know that there is the issue with microplastics, but having the canned beans, at least helps with some IBS-like symptoms as well, but there are the microplastics in them, so it's not ideal, but I think that a lot of people try to avoid beans because of it, but it's a pity because there are benefits. So it's, kind of, weighing that. 

Elena Letyagina: And again, if you're reacting to beans it's most likely your microbiome was not great, or you're having, like, some issues with the gut lining. So just going back and removing some of the inflammatory foods and slowly building it up may be helpful. 

Claudia von Boeselager: For people looking to make 2022 the best year yet, Elena, and we know that health plays such a huge role in that. What are some of your top tips for peak performance? 

Elena Letyagina: Just recently I've done something which I think would be interesting for other people to hear. I've looked at the Wheel of Life. I'm sure you're familiar with that. You can just Google "wheel of life".
It's a circle, basically, which splits your life into the different segments. And what I think is really important to understand is that your health will be linked to every single aspect of your life. And understanding how balanced your life is, is really important. 

So those segments would be, like, family and relationships, money and career and personal growth and physical environment and your health, love, and fun and recreation will be also there. It needs to be a balance, right? So if you're satisfied with your career and then relationship and finance, but not satisfied with your health and, let's say, fun, right, for people who are working a bit too hard, then this is not a balanced life. And most likely it will be affecting your health somehow.. And again, if you are satisfied with your family and you're having fun and you're having travel, but you're not having a personal growth and you feel you're not satisfied in that area, that may be impacting your health as well. Right? 

So just getting this Wheel of Life. Figuring out where you sit with it. And working towards a more balanced approach. I think it's quite important for 2022. I mean, January, it's a new beginning. Some people want to do something new. I think it's a good tip. 

In terms of the health, while you mentioned that January is a Dry January, right, for many people. I think trying some sort of elimination diet, and seeing, like, how you feel, could be a good idea. Like, some people go for Vegan January. I wouldn't change diet dramatically, but I'm saying, like, literally, go off alcohol. Or if you're eating too much takeaways, just reduce it and try home cooked meals. Or if you're having too much sugar, just try to go off sugar. It will be quite hard, but it's possible.
So just, if you want to start nice and fresh in January, try some sort of elimination diet, and, like, getting rid of toxic relationship is also some sort of elimination diet as well. Through the gut-brain health, you will be impacting your gut quite a bit if you're having a lot of stresses coming through relationship, right? 

So elimination would be my second important tip. And then, just in general, just if you want to have a slightly healthier diet, pick up two to three points and go for it. Whether you start having more vegetables with every meal, or whether you try some fermented foods, or maybe you reduce the amount of times you go into the restaurants, right?

Or whether you maybe throw away all your vegetable oils and replace it with olive oil. So literally just getting two or three little objectives and completing them would be quite powerful. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Great tips. Thank you, Elena. 

To move on to some rapid fire questions before we close, what are some of your favorite daily or weekly routines and practices that help you perform at such a high level?

Elena Letyagina: Definitely cold showers. And some sort of meditation. I'm trying to do meditation, probably should do more of it. And breath work was quite a game changer for me. And I'm doing the breath work when I'm walking. Like, if you walk into the clinic, I'll do some breath work as a walk. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Like what? Can you share - 

Elena Letyagina: So you basically, 'cause your steps would be your count, so you just, you can do the box breathing. So you breath for four as you walk. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Hold for four. This is the box breathing. And it's quite a balanced type of breathing 'cause it activates and calms you at the same time, like. So just having these little moments of mindfulness is actually quite powerful. But you need to get into habit and it's quite hard to get into habit. But cold showers, breath work, some sort of meditation, crucial. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Excellent. In the last five years, Elena, what have you become better at saying no to, be it distractions or invitations, in order to free up time for the things that are most important? And what new realizations and/or approaches have helped? Or do you have any other tips?

Elena Letyagina: Saying no to, and finding the personal boundaries, is really hard, and I'm still working on it. I'm definitely much better, since I have young kids, I'm definitely much better in not checking my emails first thing in the morning and not, sort of, rushing to answer people first thing in the morning, and focusing one hour in the morning, having a breakfast of my kids, getting them ready for school, or having some sort of family time. 

Same thing in the evening. When I come back from the work, I usually spend one hour, one and a half hours, before I put kids to bed. I'm not checking my phone and this was quite a big change for me because before we just want to answer to everyone, right? You just want to be really helpful when you're there to answering all your hundreds of emails.

And now it's actually having this time for yourself makes you more productive. 

Claudia von Boeselager: And happier and healthier - 

Elena Letyagina: And happier and more balanced. It's all about balance. I think, like, the older I become, or younger - like, chronologically older but biologically younger, you want to be creating this type of balance. This is why I think, like, this Wheel of Life was so fundamental for me because you start understanding actually life is not about family and work, it's, there is so much more to it, like. I scored quite low and fun and recreation, I was like, what? I'm actually not satisfied with the fun in my life and it's quite easy to change, right? But I didn't have this realization. And the moment you change it, you can feel how your, all the other efforts in your life become a bit more balanced. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. So the top tip of the day is the Wheel of Life thing. I did it a few years ago and I feel like I'm definitely going to redo it after this as well. 

Elena Letyagina: I think it's important to redo it, right? 'Cause you want to see how you're progressing with it as well. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, as well. Exactly. 

What has been your most exciting purchase, Elena, over the last six months? 

Elena Letyagina: I quite like Sensate. That was one of the purchasesa I really enjoyed. It's basically a little round vibration device, but what it does, you place it on your chest, and as it vibrates, and you listen to the music at the same time, it actually stimulates your vagus nerve and creates this sense of relaxation and it actually really works, surprisingly. And so, before going to bed, especially people who are dealing with anxiety or struggling to fall asleep, I highly recommend to you using this device. And obviously it's not sponsored or anything. I just love the brand. It's really helpful. 

Claudia von Boeselager: So basically it's to calm the mind for people who have, like, anxiety or stress, or that racing mind issue. 

Elena Letyagina: Because it's a bit of a meditation with the music, but the vibration is really soothing. And it's literally, on the physical level, it will be simulating your vagus nerve through your bone, through your chest bone, right? 

So it vibrates and it stimulates your vagus nerve, right? And creates this sense of deeper relaxation. And Oura Ring is, did you say six months? I had it for one and a half years now, but I've got the new version of it. I'm generation 3 now. I'm still loving it. I really think it's one of the best investments a person can do.

Claudia von Boeselager: What do you like about the increased information that's available in the generation 3 versus the generation 2, out of interest? 

Elena Letyagina: So, to be honest, it's a little bit disappointing from, I expected much more from generation 3 because, in terms of the period prediction, it predicts your period now. You could almost see it from your body temperature before. If you were a little bit in tune, you could see when your period was coming. But now it's a little bit more clear. So it tells you this is the date, like a little round red circle in your calendar shows you when you're expecting your period. 

The second change was the heart rate during the day. It is useful. Yes and no, I think. To be honest, I'm slightly disappointed by the amount changes in generation 3, however, overall, because it was such a great product, it's fantastic. It's a great investment. And it's really makes you to start thinking and being more in tune with yourself, and make some changes like behavior changes.

Claudia von Boeselager: Amazing. Elena, what trends and developments in the longevity and biohacking space do you find most exciting that you see emerging? 
Elena Letyagina: Okay, you're putting me on the spot now, like, okay. So most exciting changes. So I think David Sinclair's lab, the InsideTracker, they just came out with the new test for biological age.

They're looking at your blood biomarkers and seeing how you are aging. This is quite exciting, I think. And I'd like to look into this more. What else is out there in biological and biohacking. It's been, it's just becoming so widespread now and people are really buying into it. And this is what's exciting in a way, right? Because everyone's like, now I'm a biohacker. Yeah, let's go and get some greens and get my Oura Ring. It's great. It's just embracing the healthy lifestyle, that's so important. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Personally, I think that what excites me so much is that, what a much better quality of life people can live by making these lifestyle changes, by doing these hacks and things like that as well, which, once you get started, actually aren't even that complicated and you just feel so much better. So, you know, what a beautiful world it will be when it's not talking about having doctors visits and suffering from these chronic illnesses, but actually everyone's in peak state most of the time. So there's so much more positive energy and good things going on. So let's see what the future brings. That's exciting. 

If you could get one message out to the world to, say, a billion people, what would that message be? 

Elena Letyagina: I just read this quote, which really resonated with me. And it said the scariest place in the world would be, one year from now, not seeing any change. And somehow I thought it is all about change and about personal growth really. It doesn't matter which area, whether it's a career or health or family or relationship, as long as you grow, this, sort of, defines the humanity, right? So I would say, just grow. Find the areas you want to grow and grow. Whether it's a new skill, whether it's a better relationship, whether it's a better diet.
Whether it's fixing your health. People should be growing and changing. 

Claudia von Boeselager: I really like that. I heard recently, also, about imperfect progress. And I think that that, especially coming as a perfectionist, it's true. It's just, you know, just step by step and just keep moving forward versus, you know, everything having to be perfect before something can happen. 

We're all human. We all make mistakes and it's just moving forward. So I love that. 
And then for my listeners interested in understanding gut health and longevity better, what are some of the online resources or books that you'd recommend they start with? 

Elena Letyagina: In terms of the longevity books and resources, the authors I love is David Sinclair.

I think Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep is a game changer for a lot of people. And he's got his new podcast now. I love Huberman's Lab. He's absolutely brilliant in terms of breaking down recentreally scientific stuff and explaining to people in a very clear language. He's one of my favorite podcasts out there. So he's brilliant. 

Your podcast is a fantastic resource for longevity, is great for resources and for main authors. Then specifically for the gut health, if people would like to understand the basics of the gut health. There is a Julia - it's called Gut, I think, the book. I can't remember her name, but you will put it in the resources, right? In the links, and I'll get back to you with the name.

So I think if you start with that book just to understand the complexity and the beauty of the gut. And people will be blown away by all what's happening there. That's a good place to start. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Amazing. Where can people learn more about what you're up to, be it social media, your website? 

Elena Letyagina: You can find me on my website, it's gutphilosophy.com. I'm also active on Instagram under the same name, handle is @gutphilosophy. So, yeah. And hopefully there'll be more exciting projects in January. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Very, very exciting. Do you have any final ask recommendation or parting message for my audience, Elena? 

Elena Letyagina: So the key message would be, you can definitely be in charge of your health and every single tiny change will make a difference. It just needs to be consistent.

And another message, if you do have any symptoms, and majority of people do have some sort of symptoms and they just want to feel better, whether it's an allergy or any aches and pains. If you do have any symptoms start researching it. The IFM website is a great source, tells you more about the practitioners, but also about what they do in terms of functional medicine.

You definitely can do something about it. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, it's very empowering. Thank you so much for coming back on today. It's such a pleasure to catch up again. 

Elena Letyagina: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.