Peak Health, High Stakes: How Leaders Stay Sharp with Dr Jack Kriendler

On this week’s episode we have a guest that we’ve been genuinely excited to bring on - Dr. Jack Kriendler.

Jack is a physician, entrepreneur, and visionary in the field of performance health. He’s the Founder and CEO of WellFounded Health, the world’s first health service dedicated to founders, CEOs, and their investors - people whose personal health and decision-making have far-reaching ripple effects.

His approach combines cutting-edge science, personalised medicine, and a deep understanding of what it means to live and lead well - especially when the stakes are high and the pressure is constant.

Before founding WellFounded, Jack created London’s renowned Centre for Health and Human Performance (CHHP), and he’s worked with elite athletes, tech leaders, and executives around the globe.

In today’s conversation, we’re diving into the midlife health traps high achievers face, the real metrics that matter for longevity and vitality, and how you can start making smarter, sharper decisions about your health - right now.

https://wellfounded.health/

3 Spaces left for Ibiza Retreat: https://themidlifementors.com/retreats/

Transcript

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The Midlife Mentors: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the midlife mentors with me James and me, Claire. We've got a lovely, amazing guest with us today. But we were actually just being very, very British. And the immediate question, Will you start every podcast well, I do actually. But I think the last time I spoke about it was when it was a

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The Midlife Mentors: I get this from my mum, and I know my mum sometimes listens to this, podcast. Bless her. So it's awful. But I always talk about the weather, but it is rather hot, and I love it. Mum talks about the weather and the traffic conditions on the M. 20 on the M. 25, going through the Dartford tunnel all the time. Love you, mum, but actually it is. I mean, it's gorgeous. I love this heat, but it's lovely and hot here in London today. Mrs. D.

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The Midlife Mentors: just head down. You've been doing lots of workshops, which is a great one this week. I mean, it was a big, big audience, big corporate audience, talking about understanding Andropause and the feedback from that was amazing, because so many people like, I didn't really know this thing was going on for men. This is so amazing to have this information. So yeah, I really really enjoyed that, and we've had a few more bookings for our retreat in Ibiza, which is all around.

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The Midlife Mentors: you know, if you are lost and struggling at midlife, and we know that your self identity starts to shift and change at midlife as do our hormones. All that, physiologically, psychologically, if you're just feeling a bit lost, our retreat is for you. We only take 10 people on, and there are only 5 spaces left, so we would love you to join us. I'll put the link in the show notes for that.

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The Midlife Mentors: But without further ado, let's introduce our wonderful guest. Yes, we are thrilled to be joined by Dr. Jack Kreinler, of well founded. And we met Dr. Jack actually an event that we weren't quite sure what it was. It was in the new King's Cross development, and it was an amazing health tech event, and that's where we met you for the 1st time, and there were loads of amazing speakers there. So welcome, Dr. Jack.

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drjackkreindler: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been it's a great honor to be on your show.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, thank you. It really really was. I have to say I'm going to be really honest. James is like, there's this event, and it looks really amazing. And I was like, Well, I'm really not sure. So I just rocked up. I don't think I'd been very well or something, and then I kind of rocked up and wasn't sure, and I was just. I had the most incredible time at that event. The breakout sessions on those workshops. Everything was just. It was wonderful. So thank you so much for inviting us on that.

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drjackkreindler: Tools.

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The Midlife Mentors: Thank you.

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The Midlife Mentors: So, Jack, will you stop saying this? Just give us a little bit of background for anyone that that might not have heard of you, and tell us a little bit about well founded, what it is, and what kind of led you to to found well founded? And yeah.

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drjackkreindler: My background is actually not medicine. Originally, my background is technology. So like from the age of about 15, I was playing around with computers, human computer interfaces, ux ui, kind of all those design and product things. And that helped me pay my way through

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drjackkreindler: school and medical school. So didn't come from the most financially privileged background. So that was kind of my. My 1st employment was well before I was ever qualified as a doctor, but my mum was very, very keen for me to not become a designer. There was a chance that I would have been the 1st intern at Pixar. Believe it or not. That's 1 of my claims. Yeah, yeah, I but my mum said, there's no way you're going to

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drjackkreindler: allowed to become a cartoonist. That was her. Could you imagine I could have been something at Pixar, anyway, when we run the A versus B experiment in the next life? Then we'll see who.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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drjackkreindler: But I had a brilliant opportunity to study medicine at Ucl and physiology before medicine, and so ended up as kind of dual, qualified, triply qualified once in the tech side of things and then in physiology and medicine, and after that combined those things into a sort of parallel career in building

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drjackkreindler: interesting health technology companies here in the States and

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drjackkreindler: building my medical career and interesting practices. So after some lucky wins on the tech side, I started what really was more, of a sort of an exemplar institute not really designed to be a big business, that's all. That tech stuff was fine. But I really wanted to try and bring people together who I was inspired by the most in medicine and physiology and performance science. And that's where I started the center for health

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drjackkreindler: human performance and well founded, really is the kind of global, remote, always accessible branch, as it were, of the center for health and human performance. It's the new brand. It's friendlier. It's 19 years on. And that's why what well founded is so it's an extension of the work which we did down there in the basement of Harley Street, in our lab.

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drjackkreindler: and it's extended that to helping folk all around the world to really get the very best out of their bodies and brains, for however long they've got, maybe a bit longer. But we can talk about the difference between health span and longevity later on. I guess. Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so well founded. It came out of that center for human health and performance. But is it essentially is it helping founders because you identified that Vcs often put a lot of pressure on founders of particularly tech and health tech companies. And so they need that kind of support to help them avoid burning out.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, I mean, historically, we've had 2 broad ends of the spectrum. One is the super. 6. So how do you combine elite sports science, and that really amazing multidisciplinary, clever medicine that you get when things have really gone wrong, and that can help people who've maybe got 150 days to live, or need to have surgery right through to the other end, which is the elite of elite performers, and in the middle are people who are leading busy.

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drjackkreindler: tough, busy working lives, and they're burning the candle at both ends and a bit like me are starting crazy companies, and they've got all the pressure on them, and etc. And all of those things. And so the founders, health program which we deliver sort of grew out of just more and more of our clients doing really well, becoming investors, and saying, Hey, that stuff you did for us! Can you do it for our portfolio of founders?

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drjackkreindler: So that's the Founders health program. And we've delivered that to 300 of the top founders from amazing Vcs, including Baldern and Mosaic and Atomico and

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drjackkreindler: couple in the States, and we run that really as a sort of like a give give back for good, not so much for profit, kind of program, more research than anything else. But yeah, it's been an amazing pleasure to be able to inject some of that healthy leadership and performance DNA, that we've done historically for the last couple of decades and give that to young founders.

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drjackkreindler: and it makes a difference. I don't know if it's going to make a difference in number of ipos that that portfolio gets. But so far so good, it makes sense. It's a tough job. It's an extreme environment. People don't get the training that they do in other tough jobs in extreme environments. So why not give it to them? Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: I think that's great. I think that's great. Now, you've obviously worked with some of the world's most high performing people for decades. What are the common patterns you see in terms of burnout or health decline

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The Midlife Mentors: particularly around around midlife, I guess, bearing in mind our audience.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, me being part of that audience.

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drjackkreindler: So I mean, look, it varies, and it very much varies according to what kind of personality type you are, I mean, we tend to work with some of the people who tend to be the most ambitious, the least good to themselves, probably

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drjackkreindler: dedicating and sacrificing an awful lot of their energies towards their business and away from the things that you know a

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drjackkreindler: a health retreat Guru would probably invest in. And so, you know, you do get the kind of classic failure points in sleep classically overload overwhelm people kind of

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drjackkreindler: call that burnout, you know, as a kind of a phrase. What that actually means can mean a lot of different things to different people, physiological, psychological, hormonal mixture of all of the above, you get a kind of classic failure to look after your metabolic physiology, your fitness from a cellular level, and then all the musculoskeletal fitness aspects as well.

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drjackkreindler: and and you get failures, you know, chronic failures in nutrition and all of the sequelae of that. So and then, of course, you know, you just

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drjackkreindler: you get failures in just putting simple things like getting the right checks done at the right time in your life, you know. Kind of. I'm all right. I'm a Superman. I'm a superwoman. I can manage this. This is no problem. It can wait. It can wait. And then so you kind of get the stochastic failures of. Oh, dear! Something bad I could have caught earlier is cropped up. So it really very much depends on midlife, like

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drjackkreindler: what your weak points are and what your kind of approach is. Some people obviously are super eagerly about it. You know they're constantly looking and scanning, and other people are much more kind of ostrichy, and they

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drjackkreindler: so. But you know, like there's no changing the big, the big pillars of what you really need to do to be kicking ass into your 8th or 9th decade of life.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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drjackkreindler: It just starts manifesting in different ways around our age. I guess.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, yeah, which kind of leads us onto the other question is that midlife is that point in our life where the cracks do start to show a bit, and whether that's in like our health relationships or that self identity piece, why would you say, Jack, that that is particularly obviously in relation to high achievers.

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drjackkreindler: Relationships. Yeah. Relationships. Well.

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drjackkreindler: apparently you can only be married to one thing, which is usually a spouse. But if you're married to lots of things, which is, you know, your your partner, your family, but also your job, but also other ambitions, you know, like classically.

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drjackkreindler: one of the things that we see in extremely high performing people in the medical profession is that they actually have 3 jobs. They have a kind of a clinical job. They have the job of them being a parent and a partner, and they have a job, maybe in research and management. And these sorts of things. There's 3 jobs, you know, like, there's only a certain number of threads and relationships that you can maintain and nourish. And you know

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drjackkreindler: there's no such thing as a free lunch here. You know, the deeper that you build bonds and relationships with. Usually, as time goes by, not an ever wider net of people, but kind of deepening the relationships with the great fish that you've caught luckily enough in your life that you want to swim with until until the end. If you don't make investment in that. It's not going to accrue, just like not making great investment in your company, or

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drjackkreindler: or in your stocks and shares, or whatever it is that you're investing in. So I mean, what can I say? It's a classic sort of supply demand, resource management issue. And we see a lot of stress and strain, especially as you hit that kind of nadir where all the cool things and the firsts have been done. And then you're in that domain of, okay. We've been

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drjackkreindler: married for X many years. Kids have left the house or these sorts of things. And then you kind of realize, well, what did I invest? What did I really

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drjackkreindler: invest my time in? And is that the thing that's going to support me for the rest of the stretch?

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drjackkreindler: So yeah, a lot of our work does end up being kind of. I think it was Florence Nightingale that said that a

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drjackkreindler: a doctor is part

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drjackkreindler: part physician, part philosopher, part priest, and I think my great friend Jordan Schlane said slightly, something slightly different, which was part part physician, part bartender, part priest.

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drjackkreindler: But the reality is that we do spend quite a lot of our time now. And you know, in the same boat as the people we look after, actually thinking about meaning, purpose, relationship. You know. What do you want to leave behind legacy dying with 0 bucket lists in the various domains of your life? You know architecting for both a healthy and a secure future. And la, la! So it doesn't sound much like molecular pathways, but it's.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, it's this is part of what medicine is, you know.

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The Midlife Mentors: I think, also what I was just thinking about then when you were speaking, which is a lot of truths. And it's stuff that we come up against all the time and challenges that we see with midlifers is that we are kind of told that we can have it all

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The Midlife Mentors: so we can we can have. And in balance, and everything's going to have that same level of energy and the same level of care. We can have the deep fulfilling relationships. We can have the huge success and the status, and we can have the great relationships with our children. We can be healthy, we can all of these things. But

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The Midlife Mentors: yeah, like you just said, I love that statement. You know we can. We can only be really married to one thing at a time. And so I think part of the work that we do often is to help people understand where their energy is going or whether that's

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The Midlife Mentors: actually. And they're complaining about the other areas of their life. But they're not putting any energy into that. And they're wondering why they're failing and why they don't feel fulfilled in that area of their life. It's because we have a finite amount of energy, really. And it can't be spread across the board. And actually, the reality is, we can't have every area of our life working at that top level, if

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The Midlife Mentors: you know, because, like you said, we can only be married to one thing at a time.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah. But you know, like, I think part of it is a little bit like, if you're on an expedition. Okay? And you're always going to be in energy deficit, just like in this case, you're going to have an energy deficit or a thread deficit and the number of threads that you can keep going as far as relationships are concerned. And where do these epically long expeditions fail? They fail when you're not aware of

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drjackkreindler: how hard it's going to be for yourself and for the other people in the expedition, and you don't communicate it. So you don't say where you're well, even worse than not being able to say it is not even knowing.

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drjackkreindler: like what's happening to you. So like a failure of self-awareness, then a failure of empathy towards others, situation, and a failure to communicate is the crux of these things going wrong because there's no way that you can climb back up off a cliff that you've

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drjackkreindler: crash to the bottom of in a relationship. It's way harder, but it's almost.

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drjackkreindler: There's almost no mountain too hard to climb in a relationship. If you're if if you're really respecting

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drjackkreindler: yourself and the others around you, and communicating and say, this is going to be tough.

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drjackkreindler: you know, like, and then being able to not be so single tracked about it. But listen to the other people that are going to be affected. Share load, and that's a lot of the stuff that we learnt in our

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drjackkreindler: expedition to the South Pole, where we took a bunch of people.

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drjackkreindler: took a bunch. Sounds like a bunch.

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The Midlife Mentors: That'll come at now.

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The Midlife Mentors: Some people went to the South Pole.

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The Midlife Mentors: Minibus drove down there.

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drjackkreindler: It was. Yeah, it was quite a bustling.

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The Midlife Mentors: This.

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drjackkreindler: It actually turned out to be the largest expedition in history to the South Pole. I didn't realize.

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drjackkreindler: and we skied. You know half of us did the coast of the Pole, and the other half did the last degree the last 100 or so miles. And and it was really interesting, like

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drjackkreindler: when mapping every single thing, from every heartbeat to all the blood, glucose, and all of that stuff, but also every single morning and night, asking about how people felt and doing. Like all these kind of like questionnaires that measure stress in people in really tough, tough environments. The

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drjackkreindler: the the key thing was communication, you know, if you were able to communicate and share load.

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drjackkreindler: people did great, despite the incredible physical adversity of those of that kind of hyper endurance setting. So yeah, I mean, maybe that's good medicine. Learn how to feel, learn how to speak. It doesn't sound very technologically advanced.

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The Midlife Mentors: It sparks question for me. Actually. So I'm thinking about high performing types that you work with, probably like a type personalities. And obviously, as you alluded to. There. There are lots of metrics you can look at for health, right? You can look at blood, glucose levels, heart rate all the rest of it.

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The Midlife Mentors: But how do you find they? And what do you look for in terms of when you're communicating what we might term those in inverted comma, softer skills. So values communication, empathy stuff like that. How do you sell that concept into them?

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drjackkreindler: Hmm!

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drjackkreindler: Well, we make them do it

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drjackkreindler: because a little bit like somebody that doesn't want a colonoscopy. Sometimes you've got to

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drjackkreindler: want to use the analogy. We've got to really look inside. But like you do. And it's it's like.

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drjackkreindler: it's hard for some people, especially those that you know type A's. They know I'm I'm a i'm a type, a so like, I kind of know that. Oh, yeah, you know, who's this person who's not got any clue about how to build businesses or

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drjackkreindler: yeah doesn't know

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drjackkreindler: 0 clue about signs or whatever. And you get all these kind of classic ego things coming in the way. But until you just start having that mentoring, that coaching, that for some, it's therapy for some it's psychotherapy, you know. It's proper. It's proper digging deep. You don't

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drjackkreindler: really uncover

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drjackkreindler: what it is that you need to. And so I think that's part of it is kind of like for the for the founders of young companies, the program that we do the founders health program, this kind of research based

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drjackkreindler: package of stuff that we do. It's almost like a boot camp. About a 3rd of it is not physiological. It is about elite performance coaching. It's about understanding how to build healthy self and team in extreme environments. You know, it's what we give to special forces and elite athletes and and expedition leaders and stuff. And they they have to go through it. And we use this methodology that we think has got the best evidence base out there. We didn't invent it, but we

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drjackkreindler: we deploy it, and it helps you understand who you are, what makes you a leader? What makes other people want you to be in that lead role and understand how to get the best out of that crew. That company literally company

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drjackkreindler: breadfellows, companis. You know, the Latin for company means people who break bread together.

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drjackkreindler: So that's a absolutely critical part of healthy self, healthy leadership, if you want to.

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drjackkreindler: you know. Burn the candle at many ends for as long as as long as you possibly can, and anyway, none of this stuff is particularly new, you know. The the real thing is is that

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drjackkreindler: if you're if you're running your own business or you're in a startup or something. You don't get given those tools classically. But, as I said, if you're in real mission critical environments where there are maybe lives at stake and things like that. This is bread and butter. This is 101 stuff. You would never get sent to the front line with a very expensive gun, and just go, hey? Come back in 18 months time, and if you've done well, we'll give you a bigger gun.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, just

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drjackkreindler: just crazy. It's not the 1st World War anymore. That's not how special forces work. It's not how leaders of big companies get trained. It's not how

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drjackkreindler: elite athletes or yeah, Formula One or drivers and

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drjackkreindler: teams role. It's it's, you know, like we're kind of in a weird place with those of us who are running our own businesses, especially in startups, where there's those extra pressures to kind of create a billion dollar company overnight.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, yeah.

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drjackkreindler: We need the training

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drjackkreindler: we really do. And hopefully, a bit of that secret sauce is what we try to give.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, I love that you have such a holistic approach. It's so deep into the psychological tools as well. Because it's so so important, you know, and it's I know we find in our work that sometimes be hard to convince people of that. People like what they can measure right? And the effect it's like, Oh.

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The Midlife Mentors: if I if I work out in the gym for 4 weeks, I can feel and see the results. But if I'm working my mindset. How do you measure it? Apart from yeah, you do that qualitative research about check-ins and all the rest of it. But it's great to hear you doing that? It's that self-awareness piece you were talking about, isn't it?

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drjackkreindler: It all works together. I mean, you can't tell somebody. Oh, you know your energy levels are low because you haven't done the psychological work when your thyroid functions through the floor. You can't, you know, like you were talking a little bit about Andropause, or hormones and things earlier.

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drjackkreindler: If your hormones are through the floor

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drjackkreindler: doesn't matter how much meditation you do. It ain't going to help. Well, it might not make it worse, but it's not going to be. It's not going to fix the problem. You know. There's

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drjackkreindler: human flourishing starts with your metabolism.

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drjackkreindler: and it ends in meaning. And that whole

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drjackkreindler: ladder, complex, overlapping Venn diagram from metabolism to meaning

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drjackkreindler: has to be taken into account. If you really want to flourish in life, it's not just about

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drjackkreindler: the psychosocial stuff. It's not just about the biomolecular stuff. It's a whole intersection of of the law.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I love that. So, Jack. So for someone in their forties or fifties, juggling, business, family personal change, what are some of the high impact things they could do to start shifting their health trajectory.

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drjackkreindler: Leap.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yes.

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drjackkreindler: Some people say, like, what is, what's the the funny thing is is that a lot of people ask like you do, because our minds are wired, and marketing has done this.

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drjackkreindler: What do you think of what should I be? What's the one big thing? Okay? The real question to ask is, what do I need to know

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drjackkreindler: to know what I need to do or take? Okay, so like, are there some little stray cells floating around there that you could easily catch and save yourself an early demise. You know that means one of the best things you can do is have a great, a great doctor that can do deep screening for age, appropriate. Catch the right stuff at the right time, be it cardiovascular or cancer checks. And these kinds of things, right.

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drjackkreindler: blood measurements, physiological measurements. Again, like assessing your life, your goals, your relationships, how they're projecting out. It's another form of like asking the right question before then doing something. But a simple question is okay

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drjackkreindler: of the things which you commonly find. What are the big ones that help someone in their forties and fifties, and the most powerful regenerative medicine clinic that anyone can afford to go to in the world is the one that you can visit for 8 HA night

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drjackkreindler: like without fail. Now, if you're not

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drjackkreindler: coaxing that physical entity to adapt to its environment and remain fit, if you're not fueling that with the right substrates the right nutrients, macros, and micros, not too many, not too few. If you have raging cortisol levels because of overwork and overstress, and so on and so forth. And you're not like

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drjackkreindler: having enough hugs and enough chill around. Sleep is just going to

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drjackkreindler: tide you over. It's not going to be properly restorative and regenerative. But I would say, that's 1 of the things which you know, forties and fifties. We've kind of forgotten how to sleep, because we've spent all of these lives sacrificing all these time, sacrificing our lives for our kids often or our businesses, but start to reinstigate that as a sacred time.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, that is a really, really key. That's a really key thing.

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The Midlife Mentors: I love that love that. And you're right. You say, culturally, we've lost it right there. It's almost now like how many hours a day. Can you grind and hustle? You see these influencers? And they're like, Yeah, my alarm is off at 3 30, then it's a thousand press ups. Then a cold bath then, and you're just kind of like, wow! By 5 Am. I've already done 10 h work, and you're just like.

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drjackkreindler: I need to go to sleep by watching those Instagram.

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The Midlife Mentors: Exactly.

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drjackkreindler: But you know, look, as I said, that we talked before. If you really are super ambitious and you want to change the planet, your sleep will be compromised. You will be probably on planes. You will.

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The Midlife Mentors: And.

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drjackkreindler: Be missing hours. You you'll have irregularities in your sleep as you time shift and and things and things like that. But oh, I do apologize! Hang on! I had it on. Do not disturb, but I'm getting called by somebody.

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The Midlife Mentors: Got this through. The filter didn't cut this back.

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drjackkreindler: I don't know how that's happened. It's all on. Do not disturb, but I hope you can.

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The Midlife Mentors: Someone calling your mobile, and your Mobile is linked to your laptop. That's what happened.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, but that's also on. Do not disturb.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, wait!

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drjackkreindler: No, it wasn't on the server. That's why.

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drjackkreindler: Can we?

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, we'll edit that. Don't worry.

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drjackkreindler: Where was the? Where? Where? Where were we? At.

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The Midlife Mentors: So I can edit that

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The Midlife Mentors: You were saying, how about you saying that's fascinating like about the sleep?

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The Midlife Mentors: And oh, we're talking about the grind and hustle culture. And you're saying, Yeah, sleep will be compromised. Yeah.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah. So

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drjackkreindler: if you are going to burn the candle at both ends in order to achieve something great, you will be pushing yourself again. I don't want to like tire out this expedition thing, but if you are climbing Everest, if you're trying to ski to the South Pole, if you are trying to do something, you know, really weird. You are going to be using up a heck of a lot of energy. You won't be sleeping like you will

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drjackkreindler: be in the Amman Hotel. It just won't be the same, I mean honestly minus 40 degree. Sleeping bags are not the same as a thousand ply Egyptian.

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The Midlife Mentors: Really.

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drjackkreindler: I absolutely promise you that. But you know it's it's there's always a balance, and

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drjackkreindler: if you can embed this core

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drjackkreindler: point in your in your Circadian rhythm in your in your life, and you can really make sure that that is protected as best possible. I think that's it has really interesting effects, because

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drjackkreindler: by protecting your sleep, but by making it like church or mosque, or synagogue, or temple, or whatever it is that your religion is or not by making it sacred. You

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drjackkreindler: suddenly get into a position where you're

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drjackkreindler: breaking up the day from the intensity of doing to the chance of repairing and recovering.

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drjackkreindler: and and a lot of things, a lot of rhythms fall into place thereafter.

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drjackkreindler: If you are the kind of person that bounces out of bed at 4, 45 in the morning you put your face in iced water with some cucumbers, and then you go and do a big workout, and that's how your body best resonates cool, but the point is, do it at the same time with some frequency, and I used to essentially not sleep. I mean that is.

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drjackkreindler: I mean, I hope not aged me too badly at the age of nearly 51. But

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drjackkreindler: we, you know we had 120 h weeks in hospital. And then I was tinkering, tinkering away on my computer, trying to build stuff at the same time. And it was. It was probably a decade of

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drjackkreindler: be sleeping half the number of hours that I should have done. And I do feel now that that is the biggest lift that I can tangibly feel.

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drjackkreindler: yeah, is is getting that stuff right when I can, and I'm not.

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The Midlife Mentors: I'm really interested, actually using you as a guinea pig. Now, how quickly did it take you to kind of get back into a decent circadian rhythm.

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drjackkreindler: Well, I'm still not great, I've got to admit, you know, with all the travel, but I do hold that time sacred for me. It used to be. And this is quite a common feature, actually, of people like us, I guess, who are

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drjackkreindler: doing too much

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drjackkreindler: is that we would regard night time when everyone is asleep, as the time when the less immortals amongst us were having to give up, and we were the ones that then had space to do things. And that is basically the shift that's been made, which is that it's gone from. Right now I can get on with some work

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drjackkreindler: to.

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drjackkreindler: That was a dumb move, you know. So yeah, you have more resilience when you're younger. Which means that that day that you haven't had a night of sleep you can still function as well as anybody else.

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drjackkreindler: But now it's a different feeling. You actually viscerally feel that when you get into what we call middle age.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah, I mean, I can feel if I haven't had. If I've had a couple of bad night's sleeps, which obviously with hormones and everything that's happening quite frequently at the moment, but I can feel like drunk, and I don't drink. I can feel like drunk or hungover the next day, like really have noticed a massive shift in when I don't have good night sleeps. So it's interesting.

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drjackkreindler: I think, actually talking drink. If I'm not mistaken, 4 h of sleep deprivation is the same as being over the drink drive limit. There's some anecdote.

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The Midlife Mentors: It is research like that. They did it with with long distance, low truck drivers in America and found and found that like I can't remember the exact, but certain amount of lack of sleep would impact them as much as drink driving.

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drjackkreindler: Exactly.

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drjackkreindler: Yeah, right?

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drjackkreindler: It's true. Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: Jack, you're probably like closest to definitely you're close to this than than we are. But I feel like there's there's some amazing medical and technological advancements that we're seeing now. But it feels like potentially a threshold of something great as we're seeing, you know, AI tech medicine combined. What excites you about what's coming down down the road.

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drjackkreindler: All of it.

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The Midlife Mentors: All of it. Yeah.

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drjackkreindler: It's you know, I as much as I love the

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drjackkreindler: the holistic and the meaning of life, and so forth. Some sometimes Nature doesn't play

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drjackkreindler: very fair hand. And so that's where tech biotech and so forth are

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drjackkreindler: really able to to help us

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drjackkreindler: do better than nature on its own. I think there

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drjackkreindler: is an incredible amount of overhype going on that

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drjackkreindler: I don't know whether it's a mixture of cynicism, or just a very deep and innate understanding of how

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drjackkreindler: human beings, at very least of biology works. But there are some things that are promising

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drjackkreindler: stuff that is just not going to happen. However, the the coolest things that we're seeing is

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drjackkreindler: in the realm of being able to

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drjackkreindler: address one of the biggest, biggest things in human health, and that is metabolic and obesogenic disease, which is heart disease, diabetes, and all of the inflammatory things that happen as a result of having too much insulin or too much sugar in your system. Too many calories, really, and they are what people have.

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drjackkreindler: you know, now called the Fatcherhabs, the Victozas, the Ozempics, the Wegovys, the Manjaras. This, this kind of this class of drugs called the the glp one s. Or the gips, and I've been kind of fascinated by that stuff for about

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drjackkreindler: for a very, very long time, you know. 40 years ago they were discovered in the mouths and the saliva of these strange lizards, called Gela monsters in the Nevada Desert, and it's taken a very long time for that to become

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drjackkreindler: pub in the public eye and popular and so forth. But

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drjackkreindler: the massive environmental toxin that we're all exposed to called excess calories has killed 2 parts of our gut. In fact, it's probably screwed up our appetite and our metabolic set point in the womb, actually. And so we're kind of born with this destiny to have all of these obesogenic related diseases which

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drjackkreindler: end up with us, having heart attacks and microvascular disease of the brain, which contributes also to not just microvascular dementias, but also Alzheimer's dementia. Like the number of things that getting fixing that

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drjackkreindler: problem, doing that kind of gut hormone replacement therapy, the number of things that that fixes is

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drjackkreindler: going to change

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drjackkreindler: so much of medicine and chronic disease that together with, you know, there's another class of drug called Sglt, 2 s. Another one called Pcsk. 9 Si won't bore you with them, but essentially things that affect metabolism. Cardiometabolic illness, I think, are

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drjackkreindler: going to be pretty fully

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drjackkreindler: resolved outside of obviously the things that you need to do from a physiologic perspective, keeping fit and sleeping. And

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drjackkreindler: yeah, right

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drjackkreindler: nutrition and everything. You have to fix that stuff, too. But it's possible to fix it now without having

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drjackkreindler: the kind of discipline that a bodybuilder has to look after every minute of their day. It's like it's like outsourcing the behavioral change and the discipline to a jab that you take once a week. I

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drjackkreindler: I mean, I think I 1st prescribed this

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drjackkreindler: 9 years ago, and we've only done it 4 times since. I think in our work because we've spent so much time fundamentally fixing people's behaviors. But

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drjackkreindler: it is absolutely remarkable. That's 1 of the things we really really are interested in from a what's happening next and alongside that.

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drjackkreindler: I mean, that's a class of drug like insulin glp-one S are called Peptides, and people talk a lot about Peptides. Now people are

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drjackkreindler: doing all the things that bodybuilders used to do, and more, and they're pouring peptides into themselves and going into weird clinics where they're prescribed experimental molecules that are not drugs, that doctors are not. They can't. You can't prescribe something that isn't a drug. It's just

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drjackkreindler: a molecule that you're saying works. And because you've got a white coat, you're saying it's safe. But the class of molecule of Peptides is super interesting because they're very specific. They don't have as many off label off target effects because they're quite specific in what they do. They usually biomimic what the body normally does rather than a drug. That kind of

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drjackkreindler: smashes, a power pathway blocks it enhances it whatever, but has loads of off target effect, and they're nowhere near as expensive as the complex biological things which

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drjackkreindler: take ages and huge bioreactors to produce. So it's going, I think, peptide therapeutics, both from a preventive perspective. But also a treatment perspective are going to become the predominant

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drjackkreindler: new class of medicine. As time goes by, and learning how to tweak those and change those in combination as we get older is going to be huge on the fluffier side of things, if you want to call it that. There's huge interest, obviously, now in understanding how heat and cold and light and clean air and

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drjackkreindler: pure water things you can fix in your homes things you can put in your homes things you can buy now, as consumer devices, not hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of experimental laboratory kit that looks horrible. All of that stuff is also coming through as well to again biomimic. What we get in nature red light, I mean, why do we like sunsets? Why do we like sunrises?

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drjackkreindler: It's red light.

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drjackkreindler: you know. It doesn't burn us, but it gives us all of that wavelength of energy that actually affect our cells. And it doesn't just make us feel good. It makes us feel good because it's doing something to the cells almost instantly. And so, yeah, there's a greater and greater wave of understanding of what nature does for us, and finding tech that is able for us to

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drjackkreindler: turn our very artificial homes into something that maybe biomimics nature a bit, including music. We were born and evolved in a soundscape of noises, not little speakers that are coming out of this thing.

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drjackkreindler: And I think what I what I call neuro acoustic therapy. Is going to feature, I think pretty well in every living room, in every you know, TV room will become like a healing room.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: Oh, I love the sound of that.

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drjackkreindler: And it doesn't have to be expensive, either. You'll find there's there's a lot of super interesting companies like Olo. It's a Finnish company, the sonic apothecary wave path

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drjackkreindler: from Ucl and and a

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drjackkreindler: some amazing stuff out out of the founders of compass pathways. The Psychedelic Research Company

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drjackkreindler: in this neuro acoustic space. So I I mean, I could go on forever about the cool things. But.

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The Midlife Mentors: Going to check out hero acoustics. I love the sound of that.

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drjackkreindler: We love the sound of that? Yeah, exactly.

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The Midlife Mentors: Yay, perfect.

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The Midlife Mentors: I do love the idea.

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drjackkreindler: To that one.

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The Midlife Mentors: Kind of bringing bringing nature into our living rooms, especially living in the center of London like we do. But it's been really, really fascinating. It's been fascinating, Jack. Thank you so so much. If people want to find out more about you, or about well founded, or where should they go? Where should we point them to.

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drjackkreindler: Oh, sure, yeah, we don't do a tremendous amount of marketing, but you can follow me on Linkedin. You can follow wellfounded on Linkedin. We've got a free weekly dose of interesting quirky stuff that has a different view in our little newsletter on there. So yeah, follow me on, Linkedin, and follow the well-founded Newsletter. Yeah.

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The Midlife Mentors: Or visit the website, even if you want to have a look@wellfounded.health. But yeah, it'll be a pleasure to answer all the questions that we very often get answered.

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The Midlife Mentors: I know it's frustrating that we, you know, sometimes don't have a little bit longer. We could talk to you for absolutely ages. Maybe we'll get you back on again, Jack. But we'll put the links that Jack's just mentioned as well in the show show notes that you've got easy access to those. And again, thank you so much, Jack, for coming on our podcast.

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drjackkreindler: Thank you.