Change Work Life

Health vs hype: using data to make smarter health choices - with Emma Tekstra

• Jeremy Cline/ Emma Tekstra • Episode 205

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#205: Emma Tekstra is an Actuary and Global Health Consultant who focuses on the data and science of the human body. She explains the difficulties behind making lasting health changes, the motivations people have for improving their health, and how to live a healthier life.   

What you’ll learn

  • [02:25] What an actuary is and how Emma became a Health specialist. 
  • [7:28] The different motivations people have for improving their health. 
  • [11:06] Personal experiences to identify before you think about lifestyle changes. 
  • [12:54] How to start living a healthier life. 
  • [15:45] What to do if you’re feeling lonely. 
  • [16:03] How to reflect on your life circumstances. 
  • [19:44] What improvements you can make to your life. 
  • [22:37] How to measure the success of life changes. 
  • [26:26] Why it’s so difficult to make health changes. 
  • [27:16] How to avoid improvement plateaus. 
  • [29:16] Universal truths that benefit everyone. 
  • [33:52] How to apply critical thinking to lifestyle advice.

Resources mentioned in this episode
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For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/health-vs-hype-using-data-to-make-smarter-health-choices/


Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you, red wine is good for you, red wine is bad for you. When you have your own health or fitness goals, how do you figure out what diet or lifestyle changes to make when faced with this mass of contradictory information? That's what we're going to talk about in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline and this is Changework Life. Hello and welcome to the Changework Life podcast, the show that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach and in each episode my guests and I bring you tips, strategies and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. I used to listen to a BBC podcast called Just One Thing. Each week the late Dr Michael Moseley would explore one thing you could do to improve your health and fitness, ranging from eating fermented foods and learning a foreign language to walking backwards or brushing your teeth whilst standing on one leg. Now I'm all for learning about different ways to stay healthy, but the sheer weight of information out there is both overwhelming and often contradictory. Dr Moseley, for example, said the only supplement he took was vitamin D during the winter, whilst other podcasts extol the virtues of taking magnesium. How do you make sensible this? How do you figure out the diet and lifestyle changes which are right for you? To help us find some answers, I'm delighted to be joined this week by Emma Textra. Emma is an actuary and global health consultant who focuses on the data and science of the human body. She's the author of How to Be a Healthy Human, What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Health and Longevity. Emma, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So I'd better start with the disclaimer that this podcast is for education and entertainment purposes and nothing we say is going to constitute health advice. Always consult the appropriate health professional. Right, now I've got that out of the way, let's establish a little bit of credibility for the listeners, especially for a topic like health. What's made you an expert in this area? Well, as you said, I'm an actuary by background and for those that don't know what that is, we deal with risk a lot, a lot of data, very good with data. But I qualify, just maybe a little bit of my background, a little bit of a saga here. So I qualified actually in the UK, so I am British, and I worked for several years in a pensions consulting firm and for a year before that, I was actually in Australia working in the personal computing industry. But once I qualified, it takes a number of years of evenings and weekends to become an actuary. I got a bit restless, didn't like the UK weather and decided I wanted to move to the US. So in 1998, I moved to New York and started working for one of the big three global consulting firms and insurance brokerage in their international division. I was working with multinationals on their pensions and other employee benefits and HR issues around the world. And then I moved to California a couple of years later and took on a lot of different roles in my 25-year corporate career, but I get bored really easily. So my role always has an element of innovation about it. I'd be developing new services, new technology for our clients and their employees, meeting the different needs of clients. And I really love to mentor and develop younger colleagues. And one of my roles was actually creating an offshore support center in different countries and developing onboarding and training programs. And I myself, I'm constantly reading, I am always learning and growing. But I think it's important to mention one of the things that drove my career changes was more of a personal nature. So 15 years ago, my older son was diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD at age five, and he had all sorts of different health problems. He actually, it's his birthday today, he actually turns 20 today. His original prognosis was really poor. They wanted to put him on drugs. They said he'd probably never leave home. And by the way, he's doing really wonderfully at a major college in a different state to me studying aerospace engineering. So I sort of healed him myself through some of these alternative methods. But I actually took two months of unpaid leave at that time when he was diagnosed to research and figure out what was going on with him and what he needed. And really what I learned about the healthcare system ended up changing the whole trajectory of my work career. So I ended up moving into the health practice of the consulting firm I was working for, and really dedicated myself to focusing on improving the health and wellness of our clients' employees around the world. You know, I gotta say, I really enjoyed what I was doing. Every day was different. I worked with colleagues all over the world. It was very collaborative. We had a lot of doctors on staff in all different countries. It was really great to see how they all compared and how they looked at the world and healthcare between each other. You know, it was actually like working for a startup within a huge company as we were building up the global health practice from a lot of disparate local operations. And they'd been mainly focused on just brokering basic, simple health insurance, and we needed to expand them into more strategic consulting. But then, you know, I've got to mention COVID hit in 2020, you know, and initially we all pulled together. You know, I'd been to Wuhan, China a few years before. We had an office there. I worked with those guys regularly. It was a crazy, busy time figuring out what was going on and getting information to our multinational clients. But then I found something changed. I won't get into it too much here, but I didn't agree with the unscientific recommendations being made to our clients, particularly in the U.S. The actuarial and clinical data didn't support the stance the firm was taking, relying on or two doctors just in the U.S. and ignoring all these other opinions. And so I felt that we weren't helping our clients. We were actually making things worse. So I struggled on for a couple more years trying to bring evidence and reasoning to the leadership. Initially, I felt like I could exert more influence in the big corporation working with some of the biggest companies in the world, but it was taking a toll on my own health. And so I decided I needed to write a book, you know, that the reasoning and evidence couldn't be contained on a PowerPoint slide with three bullets, you know, that leadership in corporate America tended to want to rely on. So in March 2023, I left the company. You know, I dedicated 25 years to them for the most part. And I love them. I love the company. I love the people I've been working with. But I felt that I just, you know, I had a higher purpose. I needed to speak out. And so I wrote the book and I'm using that to help people understand now what really generates health with all of the scientific evidence all sort of laid out, touching on a little bit of the history that got us to 2020, but what to do about it as an individual. And then because I come from a corporate background, what employers can do about it for their employees. I think one of the important takeaways there for the listeners is whilst you haven't done a formal medical qualification as such, becoming a doctor, becoming a nurse, you've had a career which has been looking entirely at data and most latterly health data. And so that's really why we're having this conversation, because it's all about a data driven approach to this kind of subject. Someone might want to improve their health or improve their fitness for all sorts of different reasons. So we're speaking in January. Losing weight is an obvious one, a very typical New Year's resolution. Someone else might have a specific goal in mind. Maybe they're looking to run a marathon. Maybe they've just got this general desire to stay healthy before someone looks at lifestyle changes they might make. How important is the intention, the goal, what they're looking to achieve? Yeah, I mean, I think it is important to have some sort of clarity of intention in life in general. We're in January, as you say, setting personal goals each year for yourself and your family. It's just part of a positive human experience. In business, we say if you don't know where you're going, all roads will lead there. We should always be striving for something or life just gets boring. But I personally feel we should be striving to improve ourselves, whether that's learning a new skill, becoming a better friend, or indeed improving your health. But I do feel that we sometimes take the need for clarity too far with health sometimes. Health often is overlooked. Well, that's not my biggest problem right now. I want to focus on changing my job or making more friends. Sometimes health gets overlooked until something serious happens, like a serious illness or a heart attack or a mental health breakdown. I try to meet people where they're at, whether they have a clear reason for improving their health or not. I want to educate people and help them connect the dots to other aspects of their life that might be frustrating. This show is all about work life, and I've seen many cases where people are quick to put the blame on work when, actually, there's an underlying health problem that's being ignored or labeled as something else. I actually like to think more in terms of human flourishing rather than simply good health. You might not have any discernible health condition, for example, but you're fed up. You have no motivation. You dread Monday morning. Yes, of course, it could be a bad manager that's contributing or you're in the wrong job, but I'd say address what may be going on with you first before you make any big decisions. I've got a whole chapter on mental health and the underlying root causes of symptoms like anxiety, depression, even conditions labeled as bipolar, ADD, OCD, even schizophrenia. Deficiencies and toxic overload are big ones, but even a minor head injury, falling out of bed, can lead to problems, food sensitivities, microbiome imbalance, undiagnosed thyroid conditions, even a lack of sleep. I'd say, yes, you need to have a goal, some clarity, but I don't think that that particular goal needs to be always completely health-connected in the traditional sense of the world. Okay, so that's helpful. One doesn't necessarily need to think specifically, I want to lose, I don't know, 10 kilos in weight or I want to run a marathon in a particular time. It can be a general goal to sort of improve one's lot, not just from a health perspective, from a general life perspective. Okay, so someone is considering making some lifestyle changes and we've established that specific goals aren't necessary. Are there other factors that someone needs to bring into the equation before they start thinking about what changes they might make? So I suppose I've got in mind age, gender, ethnicity, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's perfect. Yeah, I mean, you really have to identify and acknowledge where you're coming from, what's your starting point, really honestly and rigorously. So that might be your current level of health, and I mean that broadly, mental, physical, but also socially and spiritually, where are you at in life? But yeah, not just looking at whether you're overweight or underweight or a couch potato. Those are important aspects, but do you get a lot of colds, do you get flu every winter, do you have bad skin or stomach problems? How much time do you take off work because you're not up for it? Ill health has been normalized these days, but it's really not normal to miss work once a month or a week every winter, or you crash every day at four. So identify where you're coming from, but like you said, actually, you should also think about your strengths, your background, any cultural leanings. There's many different ways to improve your health. So many places to start, so many modalities to try. It's definitely not a crash diet or dragging yourself out of bed at 5 a.m. to pump iron every day if that's not your thing. You need to start really small with something that feels like a reward, a positive, an improvement, not a chore. And yeah, so your background, your agenda, your cultural leanings, all of that is going to be important to something that's going to be the best place for you to start. All right, so let's start with someone who maybe doesn't have a very specific goal, but they've started January with a feeling of, I want to eat a bit more healthily, I want to feel a bit more healthy, I want to have more stamina, I don't want to feel like I'm, I don't know, struggling to get upstairs, or I've got this big hill which I walk up every day and I'm always, or maybe not every day, that's maybe that's the problem, and I'm always puffing and panting. Where does someone even begin? I mean, there's so many possible different interventions, if you like, or changes that someone could make. So where does someone even start before thinking, all right, I'm going to start here? Or does it even matter where they start? In some ways, it doesn't. I mean, I just say, you know, do something. But yeah, I mean, it helps to think through, you know, what else is going on in my life? Because, you know, healthy, it's very broad. You know, I mentioned human flourishing, and I talk about four dimensions, and I think it's possibly helpful to sort of see, you know, which of these dimensions might also be part of my issue. So, you know, one dimension is definitely your physical health or biological health, we might say, your metabolic health, your immune system, are you getting a lot of colds, your musculoskeletal integrity, you've got aches and pains, your nutrient and molecular balance, you know, what are you eating? The second dimension is more about, you know, psychological, emotional health, mental health. But that, you know, that's pretty broad, it includes, you know, your temperament, are you an anxious person? You know, what, you know, do you have problems with resilience and your coping skills? Your attitude, how's your attitude every day? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? You know, what's your general outlook on life? And then the third dimension might be, you know, social health, is this an issue for you? You know, have you got, you know, have you got good connections at work, you know, good relationships? And then if you're doing any kind of schooling, you know, those kinds of relationships, but in your family, you know, do you, you know, are you estranged from all your family, you know, and do you have relationships in the community? You know, there's so much science confirming how important social connections and relationships are to your overall health and well-being. So you know, that, that might be a place to start. But then the fourth dimension, I call it the spirit. spiritual health. So that's really your purpose, your belief in something bigger than yourself, your reason for being. If we're not living our purpose, it can manifest itself in all sorts of frustrations but also physical and mental health issues. So coming back specifically to diet and lifestyle, I haven't met anyone, including myself even now, who didn't need to improve something about their diet and lifestyle and that ended up actually helping them in those other areas of human flourishing as well. And so it helps them figure out what they might need to address at the same time. So then maybe you decide what's your biggest weakness. Are you living on fast food, for example? Or what of those aspects ties in with other aspects you need to make a positive change in your life? So if you're feeling lonely, for example, maybe a little isolated, then maybe a cooking class is for you to get with some other people or join a hiking group, perhaps. I think if we're really taking a step back, the very first step, I would say, is probably to get quiet with yourself, away from technology and just think. I love the concept of away days. I think it came from the UK when I first heard about it, but I don't mean the work variety, all those are really good, to where a group of work colleagues get away from the office, maybe to an outdoor area to plan and reassess goals and priorities and things, but do it as an individual. I try to do it once a year. Take pen and paper or a journal, something like that. I recommend doing it in nature. That will really get your creative juices flowing. Plenty of science is out there on the benefits of being in nature for physical and mental health reasons, but also for creativity. So take a few days or weeks before planning it. If you've got kids, get them picked up from school by somebody else, get a whole week away, sorry, a whole day away, and then think of some categories that you're going to cover. So work life, career, social life, family, just general priorities, health, eating, diet, fitness, community, whatever you brainstorm in the days leading up to it, jot that all down, and then go away for your day and spend an hour on each category, just thinking through, digging really deep. As you get going on one thing further down, the day, to start with, this might be a little bit awkward if you've never done it before, but as the day goes on, you start thinking about one thing, you go, oh, yeah, now I've got an idea for something else, and so jump back. I had a journal, and I'll have a page for each category, and so then I might jump back to different categories to jot things down. So you'd be amazed. If you let your mind wander and get really quiet with yourself, the ideas will come, and you might make some decisions that day. That would certainly be helpful if you go home with some decisions, but don't worry about it if you don't. You might have jotted down ideas that you need to go and explore or research. You might think, oh, I think it'd be great to join a hiking group or any of those in my area. So just jot down ideas and come to the end of the day, but I think that will be the really first step is don't talk to anybody else. Just get with yourselves because the ideas are usually inside ourselves. This is absolutely fascinating, and I love this idea. It's almost like you're conducting your own personal audit of almost everything. So you've got the four areas you mentioned, which I'm sure could then be broken down into different areas, but it's almost like taking the time and space to visit all sorts of different areas of your life, not those which you'd necessarily immediately think to be health-related, but all relationships, exercise, wealth, happiness, purpose, all of that, and just, yeah, taking some time to take stock and build up that picture of you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, not to take away from having a coach like you. I mean, that's fantastic. You put those ideas, but I think probably even in your coaching, you'll say, you know, you're just there to sort of help people find what's inside themselves and what direction they want to go inside themselves. Completely, yeah, and certainly aspects of that I will look at in the coaching that I do, albeit it tends to be focused on work and careers, and perhaps this is giving me pause for whether I should start looking at things a bit more holistically, and if my clients are game for it, encourage them to look a bit more holistically at lots of other things as well. All right, someone has been through this exercise, and as you said, there's always improvements that someone can make. I suppose one of the questions that someone is going to have is figuring out what those improvements could be. So, when it comes to diet, for example, what are some of the things that do constitute an improvement? So, there might be, I don't know, received wisdoms, so more fruit and veg, less red meat, less carbohydrates, that kind of thing, but then you get into the, oh, more red wine is good for you. Oh, actually, more red wine is not good for you. Oh, a bit of coffee is good for you. A bit of coffee isn't good for you, and you're this poor person who's kind of standing in the middle being bombarded. So, I mean, with your background of sort of data and, you know, making data-driven decisions, how can someone who doesn't have that background make a data-driven decision on what they do, especially if they don't necessarily know what questions to ask? Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I do love data, but I think we sometimes get too hung up in the data, right? You can have an annual physical and take some blood tests, but there's plenty of poor health that doesn't show up in standard blood tests. So, I think the important thing is just to take a step from all that soul searching. As I said, your intuition should ignite. You know, we all have intuition. We've just been taught to ignore it or it gets drowned out by media messages or technology or what our friends are telling us. You know, we know intuitively if we're spending all day at a desk, it's probably not good for us. We know a large part of, you know, when we're not eating well, if we start to look at labels and see lots of ingredients we can't pronounce or, you know, we just know they didn't grow on a farm, you know, I think we don't want to ask the questions about how badly these things affect us over the long term or how our mental health problems may be related to what we're eating or not eating or how much we move or sleep. So, I don't think it's a lack of questions necessarily that's the problem, but I do think that there's a problem of information overload, like you say. There's just so much conflicting information out there, you know, and it leads us to throw up our hands and say, well, no one really knows anything, you know. So, you have to be a little bit of a critical thinker to sort through some of the hype and the marketing messages. There's a lot of companies out there, you know, they start to make a big profit on what it is that they're selling. So, you know, and that includes conventional healthcare, by the way, and big pharma, which are the most profitable industries in the world. But, you know, but I wouldn't get too hung up on it. And again, I would say look inside you and I think you would know where to start. I really do. Okay. So, someone decides to change something, we'll leave aside what that something is. How do you figure out whether or not that something is working? Maybe this comes back to the audit we were talking about. I suppose there's a question of how you figure out what your baseline is and then how you figure out whether you've improved against that baseline. Well, yeah. I mean, in a business sense, we talk about you, you can't manage anything that's not measured, right? So, you do need to track your progress, if only to give you that boost that something's improved, it gives you the encouragement to continue. But many changes, especially to diet and lifestyle, they take a while to show a clear benefit. You know, it's very difficult to prove a negative. I didn't get sick because, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the personal measurement devices, but they definitely have their place. If you're that way inclined, you know, that's one of those background, you know, cultural leading aspects, you know, we talked about earlier, if you're really techie and into tracking devices, then, you know, by all means, you know, go for it. I work with a lot of startup companies that are bringing excellent health solutions to market, particularly in the employee benefit space. I tested one out recently, they're called Cygnos, and they help with metabolic health. If you're diabetic, or pre-diabetic, or even if you have no symptoms, you just want to improve your metabolic health, you know, I have no issues. But you actually wear a continuous glucose monitor, and then it's paired with an app on your phone. And it's, you know, it's really engaging, you track different things, and they make it as easy as possible to track things, even, you know, what supplements you're taking, and how much water you're drinking, things like that. And the objective is to reduce your glucose spikes, because really, you know, diabetics, it's all about the spikes, it's not necessarily the absolute level of glucose. So, it's almost like a game, gamification, you're trying to reduce those spikes, you need to go for a walk after eating or whatever. So, you know, something like this can reverse diabetes with no medication. But you're essentially measuring yourself constantly, you do the program for three to six months, but you use it to form new habits. So, you know, people use their Apple Watch to track their steps or their quality of sleep, and as I've said, I'm not a huge fan of those tracking, you know, I try and stay away from electronics. But I think it is useful to track things for short periods, depending on what you're trying to improve, like, you know, like bathroom habits, if I can even say that, you know, you've got to be going every day, you've got to get those toxins out of your body. So, you know, that could be something that's easy to track, you could, you could assess your energy levels, your clearness of thought, your mental outlook, you know, really anything that you're hoping to improve. If you've been getting lots of coughs and colds and things, and you want to boost your immune system, you know, that's a bit of a longer play, you might need to wait till spring to then look back and say, oh, you know, I didn't get sick this winter, you know, maybe have achy knees, and that's something you heard that drinking more water and hiking three times a week is going to help your knees, but you don't want to assess that after the first week. Because, you know, especially if you overdo it on day one, and you go hiking, your knees might hurt a little bit worse that first week. But you know, so take a bit of time to take a month or so to look back. So yeah, it's kind of a bit of a range. And again, it comes down to you as an individual, what you're going to be comfortable with, am I really into tracking and monitoring something on my phone or my electronics? Or is it more of a longer play? And if it's a longer play, which is probably better, it's better to do that sort of, I don't even want to call it tracking, but just kind of monitoring on a bit of a longer basis. Yeah. And there are some cases where you will notice differences, I mean, especially if, say, you are training for a marathon, then you probably will notice that the, you know, for the first time, three miles might be really, really difficult, but then three miles is really easy. And then after that, you know, it's the longer distances become easier. If your goal is, you know, let's say like me, I'm in my, I'm going to charitably say mid-40s, I'm starting to think, well, how can I make sure that, or what can I do now to try and make sure that I don't suffer problems later in life? But then that's one of those proving negatives, isn't it? That it's very difficult to figure out that it's working. Yeah. I think that's why it's so hard, right? It's because it's so difficult to prove a negative, so you can't say, oh, you know, well, I didn't get, you know, bronchitis, or I didn't get cancer when I was 55 because of the decisions I made when I was 45. It's really difficult to look back and say that. So I think that's what makes it so difficult to make health changes. And what about the idea of things plateauing? So a change, you know, maybe it's an exercise regime, can sometimes have really quite quick effects. So, you know, within a week you might notice, I don't know, an increase of muscle mass or something like that. But then over time, you're kind of putting in the same input, but not getting a similar change in output. I don't know if I've expressed that particularly well, but anyway, I mean, is that a thing that you kind of need to switch things up? Well, yeah, I mean, the plateau analogy tends to be used in the workout field where you're advised to change it up regularly so that you're always challenging your body. But, you know, I think with a broader health or my human flourishing preference, the mindset should just be simply to be constantly improving. You know, we don't want to get complacent with any aspects of our life. I don't want to say we get lazy, but we're built for purpose. And with the constant bombarding of toxins in our life, and I use that term very broadly to include things like stress, but also chemicals, electromagnetic frequencies from technology, we always need to be striving to take it to the next level. You know, even for me, I'm in my mid-50s and I've been on my health journey for, you know, 15 years. I'm still constantly looking for ways to improve and add new habits. You know, my level of flourishing is actually very high. I've got no discernible health issues. I've got plenty of energy and sharpness. I take no medications of any kind. You know, I happen to use essential oils and quite a lot of supplements and they meet all my needs. But, you know, I'm always, always working to improve what I'm eating, how I'm moving, how often I get out in the sun and in nature. So I wouldn't focus on the plateau necessarily, but strive for constant improvement. So we talked earlier about just starting somewhere, starting with something. And conscious as I am that there is often a lot of conflicting information, what are some of the, I don't know if it even exists, universal truths, something that the vast majority of people in the sort of the health fields agree is probably going to be a good thing to start with or a good thing to do? Yeah, well, yeah, I'm not sure we can say there's full consensus about, you know, throughout the whole scientific community for various reasons. But I do think, as you say, I think there are some universal truths, I think that will benefit everyone. I think most people are going to know most of these, but you are what you eat. You know, it's not just a cute saying, you know, improving what and how you eat is the number one change you can make to improve your physical and mental health. You just can't get around that. You know, you can try and say, you know, you can try and say, oh, well, if I do this, if I go to the gym every day, I can eat what I want. I don't Look at how much you work out or some of those other things you do. If you don't improve the way you're eating, if you don't fix the food, you're not going to improve your health overall. You might look really pretty and have really nice muscles, but food is probably number one. You need to move your body every day. That's absolutely universal. And again, it's not just to look pretty and have all the nice muscles, but deeper. Your lymphatic system doesn't have a pump like your blood system does. Your heart is pumping blood around your body. Your lymphatic system only works with movement, just getting up and down the stairs is moving your lymphatic system. But it's a very important part of your immune system, but also your detoxification system. So if your lymph is stagnant in your body, you are just going to have a lot of ill health. And the best cure for pain, by the way, is movement. Older people perhaps, maybe some of your listeners are maybe younger, maybe you're not ideal with a lot of older people and they're like, oh, I can't go for a walk, I can't go for a hike because my knees hurt. The best cure is movement, hands down. I think everybody would agree on that. Another one is sleep. Sleep is absolutely critical. You need to move away from the badge of honor, especially in the corporate world, oh, I can survive on six hours sleep. That's all I need. It's not true and the consequences are severe. Even one hour less than you should, whether it's seven or eight hours, everybody's a little bit different. But I would say constantly getting less than seven hours a night is going to impact your health. I think everybody would agree on that. If you look at the science of sleep, it's very, very clear what is going on when you sleep. It's not just an inconvenience. There's so much going on in your body when you sleep and your brain is going to be the first thing to suffer. So I think everybody would agree that sleep is absolutely critical. And then human beings need other humans for good health. The science goes back decades on this. One good book your listeners might like is a very old book. It's called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. It's I think even decades old, but it's a great book. We're not talking about on screens. He's updated it actually for modern times as a new chapter, but I don't mean on screens. It's clearly been shown that's detrimental and the benefits are only fully in person. You need other human beings. You also need nature. You need to be out in nature. I'm a faith-based person. I believe it was designed this way. We need to be in nature and it boosts good health. Again, the science on this goes back decades, but it's seemingly been forgotten. We're all living in our concrete jungles these days. Another good book is Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louvre, but it's not rocket science. None of this is rocket science. As I say, I'm sure most listeners would know most of this, but I think people quickly forget these things. They've got a problem, whether it's physical or a mental health issue or even categorized as a work problem. These aren't the first things people look at and they should be, as you say, the universal truths. That's great. In particular, I was nodding along as you were saying those going, yeah, and sleep. I've got an interview about that. I've heard other podcasts where they've talked about the need for social interaction and that kind of thing and just how effective or what an effect that can have on your health. I think it's quite reassuring for people to hear those sorts of, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but then they pass it off. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that. I know that. That's nothing new. But then they don't do something about it. That is true. That is also true. You mentioned earlier in this conversation critical thinking and I don't want to get too into the weeds, but, you know, say you are on Twitter or, you know, your conversations with friends or whatever, and someone talks about something as being, oh, you know, that's no good for you. I'm sure there's all sorts of examples that can come to mind. But people will say, oh, no, you really want to avoid this or you should have more of this or no, no, no, that's wrong without diving into the weeds. And for someone who hasn't got a five year medical degree and looked at all sorts of, you know, body systems and that kind of thing, what are some of the things that someone can do to apply that little bit of critical thinking to what they've heard and come up with some kind of assessment by themselves as to whether this is something that's, I don't know, worth taking account of or not? Well, I think one would be follow the money, you know, a little bit, you know, what is it they're selling? I mean, I talk a lot about I have concerns with conventional health care and in my book I go into a little bit of the history of it and you kind of see where this industry came from and it's the most profitable industry in the world by magnitudes. You know, big pharma, the profitability is something like 75%. I mean, that is, you know, if you compare that to other industries, you know, 30% is a lot of profit. If you look at, you know, the stock market or whatever, you know, 20 to 30% profit margin is great. The biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, there's a lot of science about this, it's 75%. So, you know, look at that and with, you know, with all that money and profitability comes a lot of power. But even aside from that, you know, there's a lot of other things that people are selling. So look at that. But, I mean, the critical thinking is, you know, the body is one system. It all works together and you're an individual. And so there's a lot of, I talk a lot about statistics. Obviously, I love data a lot but, you know, statistics can only take you so far. You are an individual and you can average two things. One example I talk about is longevity. So this will extend your longevity and what is people's lifespan? So if you take that, if you just look at a family and you've got one person died in their 90s, you know, let's say the mother died in their 90s and her sister died in a bicycle accident at age 10, then you average those two numbers, you know, 10 and 90. And you say, well, the average lifespan of that family is like, you know, what does that work out to be? 50 or something. Well, but just think about how, you know, that's not, I mean, yes, it's reality. It's a real number. It's a real statistic. And so people will throw out, yeah, yeah, it's not helpful. Exactly. It's not helpful. So, you know, there's a lot of statistics that are being thrown out by the media, but you've got to dig into where does that statistic come from. And any outsized claim, like you can take this one pill and that's going to solve all your problems, it's never going to, even natural health, even the things that I talk about, you know, it's never one thing. There's never a silver bullet for whatever your issue happens to be. There's never one thing that's going to make you live longer, never get sick, or, you know, there's never going to be the perfect job. So I would just say, you know, you need to understand the context, you know, and again, I cover that in my book. That's really why I wrote the book, to give you the context, understand a little bit about the history of the medical profession, understand a little bit about how the body works together, but then give you the tools to apply that to yourself as an individual. And so then when you're out there looking at those headlines or your friend says something, oh, this worked really well for me, well, that's great, but, you know, their body might be very different to yours and, you know, again, we talked about the cultural leanings and some of your background might be different, you know, maybe, you know, they do like to pump iron every day, maybe they do like the trackable wearables, all of that, and that just doesn't work for you. Don't try and fit yourself into the model of one of your friends or something you've seen on TV, you know, and people don't like this, that I'm saying your health is in your hands and people are like, oh, well, I just want somebody to give me the answer. No, you know, I can't give you the answer, you know, you've got to figure it out for yourself. Sorry, but, you know, it's just the way it is. I had a similar conversation with someone else recently on this podcast where I said there's too many options, I just want to know what the answer is and they said pretty much exactly the same thing. Sorry, love, but you've got to figure it out yourself. All right. So, I think the things I'm taking away from this conversation are, one, do that sort of personal audit, explore for yourself all the different aspects of your life and figure out where you might want to make an improvement. And number two, experiment, try things out, don't necessarily get bogged down by the noise of someone saying, oh, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. If something feels like it might be something that's worth giving a go, then try it out and see if you can get some data on the results. Absolutely. And I would say that something that maybe didn't work for you last year might work after you've done some other things, especially for more serious conditions. If you've really got a serious condition, and this isn't just, you know, oh, I'm kind of healthy and I want to stay that way. This is for very serious conditions, you know, autoimmune conditions, heart conditions, diabetes, all these different things. You can actually reverse them without medication and get off the medication. But you might say, oh, you know, I tried a gluten-free diet last year and that didn't work for me. Well, you know, maybe there was other things going on that you need to try first. You know, maybe you need to move more to detox more and have some of that happening. And then you go back and try it again, and then it might work for you. So I wouldn't say, oh, well, I tried the natural route and it didn't work for me and I'm done. You know, I would say that, you know, medication is never going to make anybody any healthier. Never. So you just got to figure out what's going to work for you. But do the experiment. But yeah, as I say, something that didn't work before, you know, might work after you've done some other things as well. Is there anything in the context of this conversation that we haven't covered that you'd like to? No. I mean, no, nothing specific. I could talk about lots of different things and go down lots of different rabbit holes. But yeah, I mean, that's I think we've covered all the key points. And if there's one thing that I would say you could do today, is that away day, as you said, just, you know, kind of getting quiet with yourself and getting out on a mountaintop would be my preference. Go to a deserted coffee shop if you have to. But I think that would be the key takeaway. Go do it. Great. For people curious to find out more, you mentioned, as we were speaking, a couple of books that they can check out. Are there any others that come to mind apart from your own? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I read a ton. You know, I'm a writer, so I read a lot. I've got a whole further reading appendix in the book. But here's two that I really think will particularly benefit your listeners. One is Willful Blindness by Margaret Huffington. People may have heard of that. She's awesome. Written more than a decade ago. It's not a specifically business book. It's not a specifically health book, but it provides wonderful insight into how we make decisions and the need to think critically about the information coming at us. So I think that'd be really super helpful. And then the second one is called Things That Matter by Joshua Becker. The subtitle is Overcoming Distraction to Pursue a More Meaningful Life. That kind of tells you a little bit about it. But it's a little book. It's a great little book. You know, you might want to take it with you on your away day to get your juices flowing. But those would be the two I'd recommend. Overcoming Distraction. That sounds very, very helpful. Where should people go if they want to find you? So my home base is just my website, emmatextra.com, with a K. I've got a Substack and I'm sending out weekly newsletters. You can certainly sign up for either on the website or at Substack, emmatextra.substack.com. I'll put links to those in the show notes. Emma, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge. Oh, thanks for having me. This was fun. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Emma Textra. I generally find it quite reassuring when I hear the same information or advice coming from different sources. Yes, there's obviously a risk of the herd mentality, but I found it quite comforting that a lot of what Emma said in this interview chimed with things that I've heard elsewhere. Getting enough sleep is important. Making sure you move enough and getting out into the fresh air has health benefits. Leaving aside the specific, diet matters. And I get what Emma is saying about allowing yourself to experiment. I'm by nature someone who wants to know what the quotes right answer is. What I've learned from Emma and other guests is that sometimes there just isn't a right answer or rather if there is, it's not something that someone else can tell you. It's something that you've got to find out for yourself. And I guess a way to look at it is that there's no great risk in trying something and discovering that it's just not right for you. Say you try a particular diet for a month and by the end of the month you notice that it leaves you feeling tired and sluggish and generally just not feeling well. Okay, so that one wasn't right for you. No harm done. Let's try something else. I also really liked this holistic approach to things. We tend to think of different aspects of ourselves as being discrete. We tend to separate health from relationships, from professional working life, from wealth and money aspects, but they're all interlinked and making changes or solving for one isn't necessarily going to solve for everything. A common coaching tool is something called the wheel of life where basically you're encouraged to look at different aspects of your life and rank that aspect on a scale of 1 to 10. The benefit of this tool is that you can look at things holistically, you can look at all aspects and it also gives you some place where you might want to start. Show notes for this episode are at changeyourlife.com forward slash 205. That's changeyourlife.com forward slash 205. And if you're interested in taking this holistic approach to your life and looking at multiple different aspects of it and you'd like some help with doing that, then you can always book an introductory coaching call with me. If you go to changeyourlife.com forward slash coaching, that's changeyourlife.com forward slash coaching, then this is something that we can begin to explore together. There'll be more coming in two weeks time, so if you haven't subscribed to the show, why not? It's really easy. Hit subscribe or plus or the bell icon, whatever it is, and make sure you never miss an episode. And I can't wait to see you in two weeks time. Cheers.