Neuro-longevity, evidenced based approaches for nervous system health with Damian Kristoff

Want your patients’ brains to feel younger for longer?

In this episode, we explore neuro longevity through a practitioner lens with chiropractor and naturopath Damien Kristof - challenging the idea that better brain health comes from adding more hacks. Instead, Damien unpacks a clear hierarchy: heal the nervous system from the top down and inside out, remove interference, and let the body do what it’s designed to do.

Drawing on decades of clinical practice and lessons from Blue Zones like Icaria and Sardinia, we examine why purpose ignites the brain, community keeps it resilient, and daily, natural movement consistently outperforms punishing exercise. Nutrition still matters - but it’s the unsexy fundamentals that protect mitochondria and calm inflammation: adequate protein, fibre-rich and colourful plants, and stable blood sugar.

Together, we map seven pillars that shape health span, not just lifespan: purpose, engagement, movement, nutrition, community, spirituality, and finance. You’ll hear why spirituality provides nervous system perspective, how financial security reduces chronic stress load, and why social connection is one of the most under-prescribed neuroprotective tools. We also tackle Australia’s “last twelve years” problem and how habit-first, systems-based care can help patients age better, not just longer.

From a clinical standpoint, Damien reframes nutrients as messengers and building blocks rather than fixes, explains the value of tracking trends over ninety days, and shares simple, practical strategies to support vagal tone through posture and breath. For targeted support, we discuss calming nervines for wired-tired states and spotlight emerging evidence on saffron for neuroinflammation and mood support.

The key takeaway for practitioners: build a life—and a care plan—that protects the nervous system first, then layer in supplements and herbs with precision

Connect with Damian: Damian Kristof | Wellness Professional

Shownotes and references are available on the Designs for Health website


Register as a Designs for Health Practitioner and discover quality practitioner- only supplements at www.designsforhealth.com.au

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DISCLAIMER: The Information provided in the Wellness by Designs podcast is for educational purposes only; the information presented is not intended to be used as medical advice; please seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional if what you have heard here today raises questions or concerns relating to your health

Transcript

Framing Neuro Longevity

SPEAKER_00 0:11

This is Wellness by Designs and I'm your host Amy Skilton and today we have the pleasure of Damien Christoff who is both a naturopath and a chiropractor and an absolute wealth of knowledge that I can't wait to speak to. Damien's clinic in Sandringham, Victoria has been running for over 14 years now, and he has chiropractors, chiroassistants, massage therapists, and a nutritionist, in addition to being a practicing chiro and naturopath himself. And he is also one of the biggest brains in the biz. He has his own uh website where you can get Damien on Demand and also his own podcast, 100 Not Out, which has been going every week for the last 13 years. So, Damien, what an honor to be having a conversation with you today and welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Oh, Amy, that's beautiful. Thank you. I'm honored to be here myself. So thank you very much for having me on your podcast. And I'm looking forward to today's chat. It's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, us too. And we were just saying before we hit record, we could speak for hours on any number of things. So we're going to try and stay on track today. And we're really going to be focusing on neuro longevity or longevity, but certainly through a lens of neurological health, which is just one of many topics we could arguably deep dive on. But where I would like to start with you today, Damien, is you do speak to people a lot about the role of the nervous system. And we understand the nervous system through a number of lenses, including, you know, the physiology of it. But I think you're uniquely positioned as a chiropractor also through the lens of how the nervous system is functioning optimally or not. And the way you go about sharing that with people in a day and age where people are like, just give me the pill to make things better. How would you explain to someone the connection between longevity and nervous system health?

Nature Cures And Nervous System Basics

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Oh wow. That's such an amazing question. It's got so much in it, isn't it? Yeah. Wow. So, Amy, I think if we take it back to a couple of philosophies, which I think are really important. Um, I think one of the things as nutritionists and naturopaths, we must always remember is that nature cures. So it's very important for us to remember that um if we can maintain health in nature, then our body will do much better. And then the second philosophy to understand, and there might be a third one too, the second philosophy I think to understand is that the power that made the body heals the body. And so keeping in mind that if we take away any kind of interference that enables or disables the body from healing itself, then we do a good job. And so it's wise for us to help people take away whatever it is that's causing them problems. So whether it's a subluxation in the vertebral column, whether it's a digestive discomfort, you know, that's been caused by inappropriate foods, you know, whether it's a neurological um insufficiency as a result of uh deficiency and I don't know, let's say B6, it's contentious. So let's talk about, you know, how do we how do we help people remove whatever it is that's causing subluxation in their life? And uh, and and and that enables the body to heal itself, you know. And then the third thing is that remembering that the body heals from above down and then inside out. So it heals from the head to the gut and then from the gut out or from and so like if you're to topically manage a skin issue, you haven't dealt with the internal mechanisms of the problem. Um, and it'll continue to be an issue until you get the internal stuff right. So it's the same from a nervous system perspective. The nerves are the deepest components to the whole of the body, so it's as deep as that. So if we went to the surface first and went to the gut first, potentially we could be missing out on um helping the nervous system assist in the repair of the human body. And obviously, it's not the nervous system that conveys these messages, every single cell within the body is intricately linked to each other independently of the nervous system. So every cell speaks to its neighbor through vibration and energy that's not measurable through the nervous system. So we have to remember that from a chiropractic perspective, if we talk about the nervous system, that's limiting our capacity to heal people. From a nutrition perspective, if we talk about nutrition only, that's limiting the ability of the person to heal. So we've got to remember um that there's a cellular function, like a cellular level. And we, you know, that's that the feeling you get from a hug, um, that's the energy, that's the vibration. Um, we need more of that. That's going to help people heal. That's that's something different.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Oh my gosh, I feel like we can just turn the mic off right now because it probably sums up everything we need to know. And it's as simple and as complex as that at the same time. And there's this multi-directional feedback from every system, organ, tissue, cell to each other, which you know, I think in some ways, just starting makes a difference. Uh, but certainly when you think about it from a more holistic perspective, you're in a unique position as a chiropractor and a naturopath to really look at what's informing what and the hierarchy in which communication occurs and can make the most difference. How do you approach that in clinic? And is it always, you know, one particular way, or how do you determine with clients where to start and where to take them?

From Gut-First To Spine-First Insights

SPEAKER_01 5:54

As a naturopath and nutritionist, I always went gut first. Always. It just made the most sense to me. You know, that's what we can affect really well. Everything that we provide for our patients has to enter through the gut and has to go through the mouth. Um, we don't have access to intravenous, um, unless you do now. Maybe some people do, um, but not easily. And um maybe transdermal, but mostly what we do is through the mouth and through the gut. So for me, it was always that. What I learned uh in probably the first 10 years of practice was that the people who came to see me that were the healthiest were the ones that also had a really healthy spine. And so when I was measuring it, I used to use this thing called a bioimpedance machine. It was the old VLA 50. Um, and used to have like, yeah, resistance reactions measures and then a phase angle and had all this sort of stuff. And every single person, regardless of how they were, whether we're managing digestive dysfunction, chronic disease syndrome, um, whether it was heart disease, whether it was diabetes, it didn't really matter. Every single person that saw the chiropractor that was referred to me from the chiropractor always had a higher phasing. And I was always like, what is this all about? So I ended up doing a little bit of study on that, nothing that got published, but I did it in um New Zealand College of Chiropractic when I studied there. I said, I want to do a test on all the people pre and post-adjustment, and let's just see what happens as a trend over time. And we saw some things, which is really fascinating. I can't explain it. I don't really know why. But it occurred to me that we needed to help people be out of pain and be in more comfort. Um, in other words, we needed to help people be at ease and in ease, not dis-ease. And so I I then started to weave in in the early part of people's care, um, an introduction to chiropractic care so that they could see that this is a long-term thing. Um, most people that see a chiropractor end up seeing a chiropractor for the rest of their life, you know. I people see a chiropractor for a long period of time because they know that it's gonna take them a long period of time to get their spine healthy. And my message to naturopaths and nutritionists is you want to see people for a long period of time. You don't want to try and fix them in two weeks, you don't want to try and fix them in three months, you don't want to give them a 90-day care plan and say, you know, that's all we're gonna need. Because that would be a lie. That's that's not true. People need you for the whole of their life because there's external influences that are unhealthy. Um, there could be foods that they eat uh on a recreational basis that you know can challenge them, they might be not sleeping really well. There's a whole lot of environmental factors that influence the way which somebody who comes to see you uh is expressing their life and their health and well-being. So when somebody wants to engage with you, they actually want to engage with you for a long period of time. And it's your job to actually help them stay around for a long period of time. So when I was in practice, um I went through a phase in my life where everything was kind of protocol driven. Um, and it was protocol driven um through I think probably good intention from the people that set up the protocols, but then it became very business driven um to the extent that uh from time to time you might get a call up and say, Hey, I noticed that your sales were down in this particular space recently. And I was like, hang on a second, what do you mean? I'm not working for a supplement company here. Um, I'm I'm looking after my patients. And it was then that I realized that potentially protocols weren't the best way to go. But what that meant is that people were spending a lot of money on supplements, not necessarily spending a lot of money on the advice that I was providing. So they then felt that the results should come from the supplements. And then as a result of that, that means that the trust then becomes with the company that you're selling the supplements on behalf of rather than the trust coming from the advice that you might be providing as a practitioner. And so I had to kind of reinvent the way in which I practiced to make my information more valuable than the supplements. And so I was finding that people were spending a lot more money on supplements than they were my information, my consultation fee. And then as a result of that, people would then burn a hole in their pocket and they couldn't continue to see me uh long term because they couldn't afford to see me long term. But people wanted to see me long term, uh, which is the reason why people go and see all of us, because they want us to be their coach. They've just got to be able to afford us for the long term.

Rethinking Protocols And Over-Supplementing

SPEAKER_00 10:20

That's what it is. I think that's a really good point. And I I do remember the the golden age of protocols. It was like spoon feeding, you know, here's what to prescribe. And it's unfortunate, yeah. And I mean, I think as a as a fledgling practitioner, it's always nice to have a framework and, you know, and train your brain into thinking about these different elements. But it's essentially recreating a system, an alternative, you know, paradigm to allopathic medicine, but very much the same approach of here's just something to deal with the symptoms, or here's pills and potions and things to sort of clear things up in acute care. Now, I love that we have got such powerful things that can help it with acute illnesses or acute discomfort. But yeah, we're lucky in that way. But it is very much uh, this is one, I guess, one of the challenges as practitioners where we're having to educate people about looking after your health is not a one and done thing. It's not a set and forget thing. It is something that we make in our daily choices and our habits, which, you know, is so much more powerful than a pill ever could be, and ultimately should really allow most of what we have to take supplement-wise to fall away and leaving, you know, leaving perhaps the essentials there, which I think, you know, in terms of educating clients around that, that is definitely an aspect I don't think we get trained on in college. Certainly not enough. Um but that leads me to something you just said before about removing interference. So removing all that which is in the way of our natural born right of to be healthy, you know, almost without exception, our body is always, you know, not gunning for just survival, but thriving. And it's most often like things that we're doing or not doing that are getting in the way of that and that don't include a missing supplement. Um, and even beyond physical health, I think it's easy for us as practitioners to focus on the body, even though we're meant to be holistic and be looking at, you know, energetic, spiritual, you know, community and things like that. And one thing I found really interesting about the way you practice is you've really got probably more than seven, but we discussed really seven core pillars that you look at for clients and no doubt hold dear for yourself as well as far as your quality of life. I'd love you just to share with me what they are and maybe dive into a couple of them and the way you apply that in practice.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

For sure, for sure. Well, there's not more than this. There's there's seven.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Okay.

Removing Interference And Seven Pillars

SPEAKER_01 12:58

And and so, and I say seven because my partner from my podcast, Marcus Pierce, he will he argues that there's eight. And so we have this like hilarious little argument. Kind of, you know, he wrote a book, a beautiful book, um, called Your Exceptional Life. And it's a cracking book, and a lot of people use it to get there. And and, you know, to wherever there is, but it's like to to find um what's insufficient in their life. So they work on, you know, in his book, eight things, but I reckon it's seven. So um the reason why I say it's seven is because I really believe that family and friends are one in the same. And um, because you get an opportunity to be with family andor friends, to be with the ones that you choose to be with. And obviously, you may be given some family that you don't want, but you don't have to spend a whole lot of time with them. Um, and you can choose to flood your life with people that fill you with positivity. But when we look at longevity, and you know this, Amy, I've been traveling for the last 10 years, I've been going backwards or forwards to the blue zones in Europe. So over to Sardinia and Icorea. Um, Icaria in Greece uh is a really small island where there's about six or seven thousand people that live there, but they have about 50% less heart disease, 30% less dementia or diabetes, I think it is, and then 20% less dementia. So it essentially what that means is that they live these exceptionally long lives. And people, um, there's you know, there's anecdote, and in fact, there's there's fact, there's you know, research that shows that people have gone back to Icaria to die at the age of 57 um with terminal um diagnosis from lung cancer, um, leaving New York City to go and pack up and just go and die on their plot of land and then living to 104 years old. You know, and so there's there's evidence of that, and and it's it's an amazing, you know, kind of story. That story is about a guy, Stamatos Mariatos, and like it's it's incredible. So there's these fundamental um principles that kind of guide that. And then if we look at Sardinia, it's an island of about 1.4 million people. There's 13 different blue zone villages that are scattered throughout Sardinia. Um, none of them are on the coast where all the beautiful beaches are and all of that sort of thing. They're all in the mountains in the highlands, um, up near the the last remaining wild horses run free um in all of Europe um are actually in Sardinia. And so you've got this beautiful kind of juxtaposition between this seaside village resort style living and then this shepherd life up in the mountains. And they also have seven principles, which is amazing. And you could easily dissect that seven and make it eight, or you can make that eight, seven, and it comes back to the people that you surround yourself with. So when we look at it and people go, what's the secret? What's the secret? We go, well, these are the top three things that you kind of need to maintain um your health and well-being. And when we break it down, it ends up being your neurological health and well-being. So purpose. Purpose is number one. So without a purpose, without a reason to get out of bed, there's no, there's nothing that will um keep you going. You need a purpose. If you haven't got anything to keep you going, um, you'll just run away. You'll just fall away. You can take all the supplements you like, get all the adjustments that you want. Um, I don't even think you can exercise all you want because it, you know, if you're running rudderless and purposeless, you kind of you'll get there fast, um, which is sad. The next thing um would be engagement. So you've got to maintain engagement. Uh, and so for me, that engagement piece is you know, not only being purposeful, but having conversations with people and keeping your brain sharp and um, you know, contributing to your environment, your your community, your society. Uh, and that engagement piece combined with the purpose piece uh maintains neurological health from a brain perspective, you know, whether it's suduco or whether it's words with friends or whatever it is, I I mean that's part of it. But getting out into a quadrangle and chatting with your mates, and you know, at five o'clock in the afternoon, all the men meet, and all the women meet over there, and all the women tell stories of the husbands, and all the men tell lies to each other. Like it's hilarious. And so they kind of do all this sort of stuff. And that that beautiful um community piece that keeps their brains active and engaged forms part of their purpose because they tend to their garden, they tend to their well-being, they might play bowls or bulls or or or you know, whatever. Um, they might still be doing karate. You know, we got taught karate in a little village uh called Siolo in Sardinia uh by a 90-year-old man, you know, who's who's a black belt teaching us karate. It was amazing, you know. And so there's that movement part, which is the third pillar, which is movement, not exercise, it's movement. So you don't need to go and you know, rip out, you know, muscle ups and wall balls and um you know you don't need to go and do all that uh hard intensity exercise. It's not that it's bad, um, but essentially just by and large, you know, if you're moving uh and then you're getting down and squatting and you're tending to things gardening or whatever it is, or maybe you're walking around the local um parklands and picking out rubbish or whatever it is. But if you're getting up and down and and you're moving, uh, then that's your third tenant or your third pillar for longevity. And it just turns it just happens to be that that's so neurologically important that if you if you can get your mind around those three things, uh, because I haven't even mentioned nutrition yet, because nutrition probably comes in at about number four five. And so nutrition in the longevity stakes is really, you know, kind of more than halfway down the ladder, um, particularly when you consider what's the most important purpose, engagement, then movement.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah. Wow, that's so powerful to look at it in that way, because again, anyone who is interested in natural health, I'm thinking of anyone in the general public, their first port of call probably would be going into a health shop and be, you know, I'm looking for something for anxiety, or I'm looking for something, you know, for low moods or for better sleep. And although we're going to talk about, you know, herbs and nutrients that are amazing for the brain, if you do lack purpose, if you don't have something that gets your self out of bed other than a full bladder, you know, and and a community with which to engage and contribute, but also equally be nourished and supported by, you know, diet does make a difference, but it doesn't make as much of a difference, you know, when you in the face of those other things, if they're missing um or insufficient. And I know you mentioned family and friends, and I guess that's sort of part and parcel of that community, people that you love and that love you.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

And if that's number four, number four, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

I mean, we are social beings, we wither away in isolation, it really affects our mental health for sure. And I think there was also finance and spirituality. Would you consider those? I mean, they sound separate, but do you consider them separate or no?

Lessons From Blue Zones

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, I do. I consider them separate. I think the belief um that there's something greater um than ourselves, I think it takes us away from ourselves, that selfishness. Um I don't think there's anything wrong with being selfish, but uh, and and I don't mean to say but what I want to add to that is that in being selfish, what it should ideally enable you to be is better, um, a better person, like it better for your community, better for your family. Um, that's that's really what selfishness should enable you to do. Like to be selfish, you know, could mean that you spend money on better food or you know, um exercise or trips away, creating memories, uh, those sorts of things. But to be selfish that would exclude um other people's benefits, I think that's probably where we could go wrong. So um the much of that selflessness comes from having um the belief that there's something greater out there um and that we're contributing to that greater good. Um I think that's really um very important. So for me, um I have a religious faith, um, but it's kind of changed, you know, through the years as a result of you know, the way I was educated as a as a young boy, um, growing up to now be 51 years old. I kind of, you know, I've got a faith that there's something bigger and greater out there. And, you know, I'm happy to say that for me that's God. Um, for other people, they might, you know, say that it's Allah or Buddha or whomever, but just the idea that there's something greater out there, grand organized design, um, to have that out there uh is really important. It it it it's it's really important. And some people say it's not important, but it is important. And if you look at the cultures where people lived a long time, all of them have spirituality. All of them. Um, no one um I mean, most people accidentally get old. Um they kind of arrive at old age and go, my god, how did I get to this age? I never wanted to live to 108, you know, but inadvertently there's there's been um a community uh with some degree of spirituality. When we talk about finance, I think what finance enables us to achieve is um a bit more ease, um a bit more comfort. Um there was a great book written called The Comfort Crisis. Um I I listened to that book um a few years ago. And it's a really great book because it kind of speaks to how easy life is compared to how it was, let's say, a hundred years ago, when a lot of the centenarians that are kind of coming through now were growing up, being born and growing up. You know, so if you you know, you move a couple of years into that first 10 years of that centenarian's life, at that point in time, they were probably only just starting to get electricity and just starting to get running water if they were lucky. Um, certainly not potable water, and uh maybe it was kind of coming from a tank. Um, they definitely didn't have refrigeration, uh, and they might have not even had access to gas or kerosene lamps, you know, for many of these centenarians. So um, we now live in an environment where we can determine the temperature in our house. It could be 21 degrees all the year round. Um, we can determine our hot water, we've got refrigerated food, we've got uh fresh milk all the time if we want it. Um, we can have, you know, everything's kind of easy, everything's really good. And so when these people kind of coming through um and things were a little bit, you know, challenging, it wasn't really until later on when the Industrial Revolution kind of came through and they had running water and gas and heating and access to medications and infection control. And if you broke your arm, you didn't die. Um, if you got a cut, you weren't going to die anymore because you can manage those sorts of infections. Um, you know, if we go back to the 1940s um or the early 50s, my uh my father-in-law was playing in a gully trap. Um, and for many people won't even know what a gully trap is, but it's essentially like a like a pipe, a hole that's outside the laundry. And his mum poured boiling hot water down the laundry sink and it went straight into the gully trap and burnt all the skin off his feet. And fortunately, fortunately, he was in um in Queensland at the time, I believe, and the US Navy was in port and they had penicillin, and he was the first person to receive penicillin in Australia, the first child to receive penicillin in Australia, and it saved his life. So we need to thank, you know, medicine for those sorts of things and that acute care, that you know, that management. But that's kind of how people kind of accidentally get old. And now he's 81, and he wouldn't have made it past 10 if it wasn't around that stuff, you know. So there's these amazing things that finance enables us to now have access to. And if we're poor, it's harder for us to access quality food. If we don't have enough resource from a finance perspective, it's harder for us to have heating and cooling and all the things that might provide comfort that enables us to live in a modern society. Um, so I uh, you know, finance is important there because probably the most stressful thing on the planet is a lack of finance these days, because the world revolves around money.

Purpose, Engagement, And Movement

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah, absolutely. And I think certainly um when we have patients investing in us and long-term care and supplements, every practitioner no doubt has that in the back of their mind about what's what's a real priority. Um and, you know, I mean, money can't solve everything. Obviously, you can have endless wells of it, and no amount of that can sometimes change your trajectory either. But absolutely, you know, those those basics that make such a huge difference. And in as you point out, such a short amount of time, I think, for those of us that are a fraction younger, we take it for granted. You know, electricity, you know, refrigeration, dehumidification, you know, vacuum cleaners with a heavy filter, you know, air purifiers, all of that stuff. Um, and good food and food that, you know, you can readily access from down the road. It's all kind of centralized into your, you know, suburb, if you like, you're not having to go out and source it from farmers. And, you know, that brings obviously, there's always a cost though, isn't there? There's a risk and benefit from all of these systems, but but ultimately in in the lens of health, the more resources you have financially, the more opportunities you have to prevent illness, maintain health, and also treat something if it comes up. Um, and as you think better food is a big part of that. And I think before we dive into your favorite children as far as supplements and herbs go, yeah, looking at nutrition as a tool for longevity, I think is something that is worth exploring because 100%.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

I'm glad you came here. I'm glad you got to this point because we look at people like Brian Johnson and um and I don't I with even without mentioning names, you know.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Um they are, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

And the whole biohacking model um is it's uh 100% unproven. No one yet has biohacked their way to centenarianism or centenarian, you know, age. Um, the um the suggestion that dying is a disease, um, or the suggestion that uh we can you know decide to live forever, um, all of these sorts of things, or even that that our biological age um is is possible to 140, all of that, all of that is is just um it's it's guesswork. It's it's it's it's not mythical, um, because it might actually happen, but it's a it's at best a theory, um, and it's yet to be proven. So in 50 years' time, if these guys that are my age who are biohacking at the moment, if they make it and I don't, um, I'm happy to be wrong. Um, but I I having witnessed longevity um in a in in a way that um was not done with biohacking, it really resonates with me that you would use food as your medicine initially, which is Hippocrates' um wisdom. Um so we'd use food first, um, which inadvertently, and you and I spoke, Amy, off you know, air before we're saying that to avoid chronic disease, so heart disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer, or you know, as many cancers as we can, um, and then Alzheimer's, which is essentially diabetes of the brain. If we can avoid these things, which obviously happens through better nutrition, if we can avoid these things, then essentially we confer longevity. Now, longevity doesn't mean raising your bat and making it to 100. That's that's not what longevity means. Longevity means seeing your last 12 years out better than what everybody else does. So it's the last 12 years of life in Australia where we suck. Like we're just so bad at it. Um, Australia's fourth or fifth in the world for longevity. Uh, we live a long time, we're a very healthy nation. We've got access to beautiful um food, we've got access to incredible um health care if we want it. Um, and if we need it, we you know, we can be kept alive for a long time. So we live a long time. But in terms of um drugs taken and intervention and time spent in hospital, we drop down to about ranked 40th in the world um for the last 12 years of our life. And that essentially means that we haven't um enabled longevity. Um, we've enabled lots of birthday candles, but we haven't enabled longevity. In my in my world, longevity means being fully functional until you you drop off the perch. Um, and of course there'll be a decline, but you don't want that decline to be the last 12 years of your life. That's a long time. That could be potentially 15% of your whole life. You're just kind of fading away, you know. So it's it's something that you want to pay attention to. And, you know, ideally, you're trying to help people avoid heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. So, yes, have the tough conversations about weight loss. Yes, have the tough conversations about carbohydrate consumption, have the tough conversations about protein insufficiency. All of these things are so important because if we don't, if we don't engage them in exercise, if we don't help them find a purpose, if we don't take them through the journey of finding out what health is really about, what longevity is really about, then we're just gonna sell them some supplements for a short time in their life and then they'll never come back to it again. You know, they'll just burn out. And then you've got to ask yourself, did you really help them? Or did you just kind of ameliorate a symptom that now they can use a drug to kind of manage later on down the track?

Community, Spirituality, And Finance

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Yes, I think conflating lifespan with health span is something that's certainly gotten quite distorted. Um, and you know, just reflecting on what some of those in the biohacking community are doing in the name of living longer is concerning. I mean, I'm all for optimization, but also, you know, getting these basics right is such an important part. And you touched on carbohydrate, like in terms of blood sugar control, avoiding insulin resistance and therefore inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction. And really it's the health of those mitochondria that are determining the cellular health for everything else, right? And making that difference in that last 15% of our life. I think, as you said, the birthday candle number becomes irrelevant. It's about how well are you like what are the life in those years that you have, however many that you actually get. And I think, you know, again, this is a tricky balance, I think, for practitioners because people are so accustomed to the silver bullet approach.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Oh, I know. That's where we've got to be better educators.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

We do, we do. And yes, it's lovely to help people feel an appreciable difference quickly, and our tools are amazing for that, but also not forgetting to, you know, bring in that education piece of actually this is a very short-term sort of this is a rescue. This is the naturopathic paramedic team coming in, and actually, what got you here? We have to undo all of that and course correct for you for the long term. Otherwise, at best, you become an acute symptom management manager every time they come back and their habits bring them, bring them down.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Um, and then you're looking for something like to treat, you know, and to treat someone's almost um, let me say, um condescending. It's you know, you don't want to treat someone, you want to care for someone, you want to be by their side to offer them support, advice, supplements if you need. But if you treat them, it's only ever short-term. Like a treat is something that you can't sustain life on. You know, if you trick or treat, um, you're getting something that's, you know, tasty for a short period of time. That's it. So if your language is to treat a condition, you're not in it for the long term with that person. Um, and so people are going to come to you and they're sick. You want to care for them and you want to take your time caring for them. And you need to explain that we need to manage whatever it is that you've got going on right now just to get you comfortable. But this happened as a result of years and years and years of um abuse that you know didn't really show up, you know, in the early days, but now it is like here it is now, like we've got it. So, in order to unwind it, um, we need to kind of uh work together for a longer period of time. Like the initial period of time that we work together will be intense, but the longer time that we work together will be about rapport and trust and you coming to me to be able to answer your question. So let's, you know, let's when somebody wants to see you because they were referred to you, um, they want you to be part of their healthcare team. Don't burn them off.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Yes, definitely take a bit more of a long uh longer-term mindset, I think. Um, well, certainly we've covered like all of those really vital pillars as far as that goes and things for practitioners to focus on. But if we turn our attention to some of that acute care now and those initial interventions, if anyone feels like this has been an absolute beat up on supplements until now, it's more about put framing them in the context in which they should be offered. 100%. But when it comes to the you know, judicious use of supplements, they can be an absolute game changer, not only initially with symptom management and helping someone feel better, which also improves their, I guess, internal commitment to making changes when they see a result early on, but also correcting some of those deficiencies or correcting neurophysiology quickly in that way can really quantum leap people back on to the right path and make it easier for them to make better choices. So, in terms of nutritional building blocks, you know, what are your handful of favorites that you might use for neurolongevity and why?

Longevity Versus Health Span

SPEAKER_01 35:09

That's so good. I I look at nutrition in two lights. So I've either got the messenger system, so I've got the nutrients that send messages, um, or I've got the nutrients that are kind of building blocks. So there's the nutrients that our body stores and our body, you know, uses to, you know, um create function. So that could be calcium, magnesium, borome, manganese, like all of these sorts of nutrients that our body requires. Then I'll look at the vitamins, you know, essentially, you know, the water-soluble vitamins are messengers. They tell the body to behave in a particular way. So let's say, for example, we need more B vitamins or we need um vitamin A or vitamin C. Um, you know, if we, well not vitamin A, but vitamin C, maybe it's beta-carotene as the vitamin A, but if we need water-soluble vitamins to come into our body, they're sending messages um to different cells within the body to behave in a particular way. And that might mean then that the cells require more nutrition. So the cells may then require more of the fuels that we're consuming, whether it's protein, fats, carbohydrates, broken down to their smallest amounts, you know, the the lipids, the amino acids, um, and the sugars. You know, that's that's essentially what each of the cells are going to need. And then the quality of that then determines the cell's output. So adding micronutrition to that, um, to that macronutrition approach, needs to kind of come from the signaling um messenger component or the building block component. Now, building blocks also create signals. So we know that magnesium triggers um various muscles to behave in a particular way. But an insufficiency in magnesium, because we haven't had enough, um, our reserves, our wells are in maybe running dry or running flat, that in itself, because we didn't have enough of the building blocks, means that we don't have the messengers available, the messages available to make things happen. And so it's using um building block supplementation as well as messages supplementation to assist the body. So taking a really great case analysis or a history to understand where things are faulty, like is it a messenger system that's not working properly? Is it a building block issue? Um, what's going on here? And that kind of helps me determine uh where I start my care. So, you know, if someone comes in to see me with chronic fatigue syndrome, I'm going to be looking at that from a holistic perspective. Is this a neurological cause or is this an insufficiency cause? We've got gastrointestinal permeability, so on and so forth. You know, like I know that from a practitioner perspective, we've all got our own lens on this. That's just the way that I see it. And so um I might start with some, you know, two or three weeks of chiropractic care initially and with some gut things just to kind of support the work that I'm doing from an a nervous system perspective and a digestive and gastrointestinal system perspective before I launch into um other supplementations to help provide energy and so on and so forth. But um I I really find it beneficial to kind of look to see what's, you know, kind of not getting through, what's what's not happening here? Like have I got a buildup of toxicity? Have I got an insufficiency of uh microbiota? Um, do I have um a dysbiotic situation? Um, is there a messenger issue? Is there a breakdown in communication with the vagus nerve? Um and if that's the case, you know, where do I manage that first? Is that a supplement thing? You know, what tablet do I take that's going to help my vagus nerve? And I don't know if there's one, um, but essentially I might look to help manage the vagus nerve through some postural correction exercises, you know, um, get people to lay on their back and, you know, do some deep breathing to kind of help regulate the parasympathetic nervous system. So it might be these sorts of little things that would kind of form this care plan for people that incorporates a chiropractic approach, a naturopathic approach, um, an exercise approach that really um starts to shape and change their lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

And I think in listening to you share all of that, I had a question in my mind about, you know, nutrients versus herbs. And I feel like you did answer that already in the sense that nutrition comes first. They are the building blocks, they are the messengers. And whilst herbs can be incredibly powerful medicines, they don't replace nutrients and they can't overcome a nutrient deficiency or a lack of you know nutritional support. But if we were to, I guess, leapfrog forward a few weeks and you've been working on someone's obviously diet, specifically adding in nutrients that are indicated. What are some of the herbs that you like to include? And I know we're running out of time, so we won't be able to deep dive on this, but just what are your favorites for nervous system support?

Educating Patients Beyond Silver Bullets

SPEAKER_01 39:43

I'll look at the nerve enes, you know, really I'm looking to find ways in which we can calm the nervous system generally. Most people are most people are are exhausted. Um, so for me, it's if they're exhausted, I don't want to overstimulate their adrenal glands, you know, really wanting to just calm them down and just to help them um find rest. Um, and I I don't know if anybody listening to this here wears any wearable health tech. Um, I have, yeah, I've got my aura ring. Um, and so for me, when you plot change and when you're looking at change, even from an aura ring perspective, you're looking in 90-day increments. Um, and so if you're looking to see trends, um, you you're really talking, you're not getting a trend until you're looking at 90 days. Like that's a few menstrual cycles for a woman, um, it's a few moon cycles for a man. Like it's you if you you've got to consider that there's cycles that we need to work with. And so you're looking at trends over time. Um and and for for that reason, um, I like to see people improve over time. So I don't want people to feel like they're gonna jump out of bed just because I gave them some B vitamins. Um, I don't want them to think that the magic comes in the in the bottle, like all of a sudden now they're taking this bottle because um, and that's what's gonna fix them. Because then if their expectation is on the bottle, uh then if the bottle doesn't work, then it's a big chink in the armor. And so all of a sudden there's a credibility issue there. And so they go, Well, you said that that was gonna give me more energy and it didn't give me more energy. Um, or they say, You said that was gonna get rid of my cramps and it didn't get rid of my cramps. Um, and so I'm really careful with that because I love using supplementation. I use it almost every day with patients. Uh, it's just selecting, I suppose, whether it's a herbal approach because I know that nutritionally they're fine and that I want to um offer support through some herbal medication, which I I just I just absolutely love. And I used to love mixing all of my herbs. Like I just I'm I miss that. And sometimes I send people up to the naturopaths just up the road because they mix herbs and I'll write a little herb prescription. I'll go, or whatever you want, you know. So like I'll I'll go, this is the five that I want, but or whatever you think is better. And so um I, you know, I I'm not wedded to a particular herbal regime or supplement regime, but what is what is what the patient needs, that's that's where I go.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, you can really tell the more anxious ones carver is a lovely way just to sort of you know chill them out with thania for that adrenal exhaustion. I tell you what I who I am having a love affair with at the moment, though, and that is saffron.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

There you go, nice, beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yeah, well, it just reduces neuroinflammation so beautifully, which allows neurochemistry to function optimally. Um, and I think that in particular has fast become a bit of a keystone in my formulas. Um, and we're so lucky to be seeing more and more research coming out around that, which is also supporting that it is plays a pivotal role in brain health.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

But I think you know, in from an ancient medicine perspective, like to be able to, you know, use this and it was something that was only ever in food, and now all of a sudden we're using it as a medicine. Yes, you know, again it's Hippocratic. So it's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

It is so beautiful. I love that you do take that really holistic and Hippocratic approach. And for anyone who's not familiar with Damien, first of all, have you been living under a rock? But second of all, he does lifestyle immersions overseas. You've heard him mention um Ikaria and Sardinia. I think next year you're taking a group through to Japan and really just immersing people in those places and spaces that are that historical reflection of those pillars that really are the base that form human health outside of all of the tools and hook toolkits that we we get to use. So we'll certainly leave some links down in the show notes for you to check those out if you're interested in them for yourself or it might be of interest to a patient. Uh, but Damien, I'm so sorry. We could talk for another hour, I'm sure, about this.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

We're getting the wrap up from Marcus. He's going, that's enough. We're out of here. Um big shout out to Chantel Oxley uh for helping. For me, you know, get this going. And you know, if it wasn't for Chantel, I don't think you and I would have had this opportunity, Amy. So I'm so grateful for you having me on here. And thanks to Chantel for coming with us to Ikoria. Actually, she came with us to Icaria, and who knows, maybe she comes to us to Okinawa next year. We'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Oh gosh, goodness me, I'm gonna have to check that out for myself too. Well, thanks again for your time, Damien. It was a it was a real pleasure to have you. And thank you to our beautiful listeners for tuning in today. It's been a pleasure to have you also. Remember, you can find all the show notes and other podcasts on the Australian Designs for Health website. I'm Amy Skilton, and this is Wellness by Designs.