#468 Nutrition for a Longer Life: 2 PhDs Explain What Works

Siim Land (0:00)

How much you eat, what you eat, and when do you eat? Which one is the most important? Which one is the least important?

Greg Potter (0:05)

I think a lot of people benefit from higher protein intakes. I think where the protein is coming from is really important.

Nic (0:10)

Going to a podcast and getting, coffee is bad without any context or whatever.

Greg Potter (0:15)

Unless it's my coffee.

Nic (0:16)

Yeah, unless it's my coffee, of course. Okay, Greg, Siim, thanks for being here. So, because there might be a group of people that don't know who you are, I'd be curious if you guys could give me a bit of background on, I guess, your educational background, just a few minutes on that and generally, yeah, I guess just generally who you are.

Siim Land (0:48)

Yeah, Greg, you can start.

Greg Potter (0:50)

Thanks, Siim.

Hello, everyone. I'm Greg. In terms of educational background, I did my undergrad in Sport and Excise Science at Loughborough University. And around that time, I first started coaching people to, worked primarily with 100 and 200 meter sprinters. And then also really deepened my interest in science. And I did a project that was sponsored by the Physiological Society that was looking at relationships between skeletal muscle fiber composition and sprinting and jumping performance. And then continued down that path, doing exercise physiology masters at the same university, carried on coaching. But around that time, I realized that I wanted to broaden my understanding of the various factors that affect long-term health and performance. And so I was looking at PhD opportunities and found one, the University of Leeds, which is basically about the intersection between how we sleep, our biological rhythms, how we eat and our metabolic health. And about halfway through that, I started working with various different businesses. One in particular was the Content Director at a digital health platform called Human OS. And since that time, having graduated in 2018, I've been involved in many different projects, but most relevant to today, co-founded a nutrition business in 2020, which was called Resilient Nutrition. I was the Chief Science Officer there, and I was in charge of all the science education staff and formulating the products. And nowadays, I'm the CSO of a North American Supplement Startup, which is trying to help people live longer through careful selection of nutrition schools. And over the years, I've coached people across a big spectrum, everyone from high-functioning athletes to people with complex chronic health conditions. And in terms of other projects, I do a little bit of public speaking. I work with a data science business, which is trying to build predictive models to forecast change in chronic disease risk based on variables such as blood data. And I also help out with various different science communication projects, which is largely on an ad hoc basis. And I help a business that runs retreats. So I'll pause there, but the common theme that runs through everything is, how do you help people sustainably support their long-term health and performance through personalized interventions?

Nic (3:28)

Yeah, that's great. Honestly, I didn't know some of that background about you, Greg. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Siim Land (3:35)

Yeah, I'm Siim, and I have a background in anthropology, which I studied many years ago.

And anthropology is just a study of humans in general, that it involves many different aspects. And yeah, after studying anthropology, I started to do content online full-time. And yeah, I've been doing YouTube for eight years, or actually nine years by now. So yeah, I'm a pretty long-term YouTube content creator. I've written multiple books, not on just nutrition, but also just health and fitness, and nine books by now. So yeah, I've been researching nutrition for over 10 years. At this point, I'm involved with a few companies as well, that are gonna be launching later. But yeah, it's in the realm of health span and longevity optimization. So yeah, that's kind of the short story.

Greg Potter (4:46)

Only nine books, you slacker.

Siim Land (4:49)

Well, the tenth one is coming out later, soon. Then I can say that I'm finished.

Nic (4:58)

On average, how long does it take you to write a book?

Siim Land (5:03)

It depends on the book. Let's say, my longest book, The Longevity Leap, which was the last one, took me eight months. It's like 500 pages. But I was writing pretty much eight hours a day for eight, nine months. And the other ones might take a bit shorter. So maybe four months.

Nic (5:29)

Yeah, that's a lot of work. Yeah, ten books, nine books. I don't know if I'd have that in me. That's pretty impressive.