INTERVIEW
Professor Tim Spector
The microbiome expert, 65, talks about the health scare that made him overhaul his lifestyle and the secret to his 35-year marriage
Tell us about the two wake-up calls that put you on the path to a happier and healthier life.
The first, my father’s death from a heart attack aged 57, didn’t really hit me until the second: my own ‘mini stroke’, at 53. It was the last day of a skiing tour in Italy. I started feeling nauseous and dizzy and by the time we got back down from the mountain I had double vision. I’d suffered a ‘minor occlusion’ that blocked off a tiny vessel supplying muscles and nerves in my eyes. Weirdly, my blood pressure also shot up and for three months I wasn’t able to work. Until that point, despite the family history, I’d felt invincible, but I’d gone from healthy to very unhealthy in the blink of an eye.
How did you deal with it?
Before, I’d been an epidemiologist studying populations. But, afterwards, my research became more selfish. Aside from radically changing the way I eat, my activity level and my sleep regime, I did what I always do when I don’t know enough about a subject: I wrote a book about it to totally immerse myself, which resulted in The Diet Myth. My latest book, Food For Life, came from the same desire for knowledge.
And what lessons are you passing on to us?
Primarily, that choosing the right foods is the most important thing we can do for our health.
You co-founded ZOE, which now helps more than 100,000 subscribers to optimise their gut health. Why is it so popular?
Because it’s not a diet plan to help you squeeze into a bikini in six weeks’ time, but more a sustainable way of life and a new way of thinking about food. Our science shows everybody’s response to food is unique. The more you know about your own biology, especially your gut microbiome, the better equipped you are to live and age well and to fight diseases.
What is the microbiome? Why does it matter?
It’s a collective term for the micro-organisms that live in our gut and are vital to our digestion, immunity and brain health, and we know from analysing thousands of poo samples that everyone’s microbiome is different. You can bolster it with fermented foods like yogurt, kefir and sauerkraut and by eating foods from 30 different plant sources each week, including virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, coffee and dark chocolate. It a lot easier than it sounds.
Has adopting the ZOE plan affected your own health?
Massively. I’m around 9kg [1st 6lbs] lighter than I was when I had the mini stroke, I have more energy, I sleep better and my mood has improved. Amazingly, my biological age is now pegged at below 50 – 15 years less than
