#509 Siim Land: Health Optimization, Supplements & Longevity — What the Science Actually Says

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome back to another episode of the Detached Podcast. Today, we're going to go through an episode to try to demist some of the things that you see in the longevity industry. As we know, it's so noisy. So welcome on the podcast. I'd love for you to introduce yourself.

Siim Land (0:17)

Yeah, thank you. Hi, I'm Siim Land. I'm an anthropologist and author.

I've been writing books about health for the last 10 years, and I have a YouTube channel where I make content about different topics of health. And yeah, you could also consider me, I guess, an enthusiast in itself, in longevity, who tries to optimize their own health and get good results with it.

SPEAKER_1 (0:46)

So you said 10 years. When I was looking back and doing a bit of research on you, I noticed the passion really started for 12 years. You're researching, right?

Siim Land (0:56)

Yeah, I started my blog, I think, around 10 years ago, but I got into health as a thing that I do for myself for only 12 years ago, maybe a bit earlier even than that, maybe 14, 15 years ago. But yeah, the initial interest started around that time when I was in the military in Estonia, the mandatory service of military. I was interested in fitness, so I did exercise a lot and started to pay attention to nutrition and diet. And yeah, doing my university, when I was studying anthropology, I started my blog where I initially just wrote about whatever I wanted to write about, different topics of what I'm doing for myself and different experience I did. And then over the course of time, I've evolved into a YouTube channel, which I've now done for the YouTube itself. I've been doing that for eight years, I think, or maybe nine years.

Not exactly sure, but yeah, I've moved from just general health optimization towards longevity science nowadays.

SPEAKER_1 (2:14)

So what kind of household did you grow up in to manifest into this passion of research and longevity? Was there any link to that?

Siim Land (2:24)

Well, I grew up in this small island in Estonia, and grew up in the countryside with just spending time outside with different animals and dogs. And our household wasn't particularly like health conscious, it was just a very regular household. My mother was an English teacher, and my father was a policeman. So a very humble background in that sense. The only thing that I do think contributed to my interest in longevity was my grandfather.

My mother's father who died to colon cancer when he was 36 So I never met him. And I did want to take my health more seriously. Around this university time, I had this realization that I might not have good genes. So I'll have to be more careful with my health.

I'm 31 right now, so 36 is pretty close. Obviously, I'm a lot healthier than my grandfather who smoked and that increases the risk of colon cancer.

SPEAKER_1 (3:28)

But he died when he was 36? Oh, wow.

Siim Land (3:32)

Yeah. So I just wanted to be more preventive with my health, and that's why I got interested in more than just fitness. So I was doing, I guess, some like not professional bodybuilding, but I did some competitions as well in Estonia, and this junior bodybuilding league. So that was like the fitness side of things. I was interested.

SPEAKER_1 (3:59)

Were you natural or naughty?

Siim Land (4:01)

No, no, I mean, I was obviously natural.

So it was just, yeah, I was mostly in the fitness side of things. So like muscle and strength training. And then I wanted to get into more preventive health and longevity after this realization.

SPEAKER_1 (4:18)

Wow. So at that period of time, when you first started researching and kind of trying to optimize your health, was there anybody around you at that time that questioned your choices to follow this health journey?

Siim Land (4:33)

Well, my mother was, I mean, she's just a regular person. She's not particularly interested in health that much. She obviously still tries to pay attention to what she eats nowadays and things of that. But things that I did back then might have been weird for her.

When I was into the fitness, counting the calories and macros and things of that, it looks weird for a regular person, and it looks like some eating disorder or something of that. But as a fitness competitor or fitness enthusiast, you're just doing it because you love the sport. So yeah, those things might look weird.

And I was also doing fasting, which can also for some people look like eating disorder. But it's just, you skip breakfast, and then you have lunch and dinner. I ate twice as much food in those meals, so I wasn't starving myself. But it's just the idea of skipping a meal for the average person looks very weird. Nowadays, she's super used to it. She knows it's just what I do. But yeah, initially in my early 20s, it looks weird for the parents.