Beyond willpower: The biology of hunger | Sarah Kennedy

Weight-loss drugs that target the hormone GLP-1 have rapidly reshaped the conversation around obesity, appetite and personal responsibility. But alongside the rise of powerful synthetic injectables, researchers are also exploring whether the body’s own appetite signals can be harnessed more naturally. At the heart of the debate is a simple question: are we eating too much because of weak willpower, or because of biology? 

As new approaches emerge, the challenge is to balance effectiveness, safety and long-term sustainability in tackling one of modern health’s most persistent problems.

In this interview, Sarah Kennedy, founder of Calocurb, a New Zealand company which has developed a plant-based compound designed to naturally stimulate GLP-1, discusses the science of appetite control and how it compares to injectable drugs. 

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Transcript

Sarah Kennedy: 0:00

If you go from ten donuts to eight donuts, it's going to make very little difference. It's not your fault when you break a diet, but it is your fault to what you eat. So that's where hopefully by controlling those hunger signals, you can make better choices.

Peter Bowes: 0:22

Weight loss drugs are everywhere these days. The impact of Ozempic is undeniable. But is there a natural alternative? Hello again. Welcome to the Live Long podcast, I'm Peter Bowes. This is where we explore the science and stories behind longevity. Sarah Kennedy is the founder of Calocurb, a New Zealand company that's developed a plant based compound that naturally activates the body's own GLP-1. So let's find out more about it. Sarah, it's good to talk to you.

Sarah Kennedy: 0:54

Thanks, Peter. It's great to be on.

Peter Bowes: 0:56

I guess we should start by explaining GLP-1. What does it stand for?

Sarah Kennedy: 1:00

Glucagon-like peptide. So GLP-1 and it's an appetite suppressing hormone and it's naturally produced in your body. We all have feedback or hormonal feedback mechanisms in our body. And GLP-1 like about 3 or 4 other appetite suppressing hormones. What they do is when you eat goes down into your stomach and then you get digesta or digestion happening, and then it goes into your intestine. And as it goes into your intestine, it activates these appetite suppressing hormones, one of which is GLP-1 that goes up to your brain and tells your brain, hey, you're full, you should stop eating. This happens about 45 minutes after you eat. And interestingly enough, it's often why, you know, if you you know, we eat too fast. I don't know if you ever remember your mother saying chew ten times, slow down. And of course, in modern world, we eat too fast. So obviously sometimes eat too much because it takes about 45 to 50 minutes for these signals to go to your brain. So if you've eaten too much and you know, they're one of those times where you go, oh, I shouldn't have eaten so much. It's actually that's when your GLP-1 plus others has gone to your brain and say, stop eating. But. And it also does a of things. It slows your stomach down, but it is a natural hormone that we produce in our body.

Peter Bowes: 2:35

So we're going to explore more about what it is and what your company is doing. Essentially a natural alternative to to boosting the the impact of GLP-1. Before we do that, let me just ask you about how you became interested.

Sarah Kennedy: 2:51

I will shorten it quite a lot. I originally graduated as a veterinarian and practiced for about five years. Why? I always think that's interesting in the space I'm in now is that during our training, we do a lot on nutrition because all animals are usually performance animals. If you think of racehorses or anything like that, or are production animals like cows, sheep, beef, and you're wanting them to produce more wool or produce? A huge part of that is nutrition. So our study in nutrition was a lot. So that was as a veterinarian and I moved into health and nutrition over the last 30 years. And so really have specialized in that.

Peter Bowes: 3:39

Do you think I talked to a lot of doctors for this podcast, and they tell me how little education they had, especially while getting their qualifications to be a doctor on nutrition. Do you think as a veterinarian, you actually understand more of, or at least were educated to a higher level than some medical practitioners treating are these days.

Sarah Kennedy: 3:59

Well, absolutely. And we didn't have specialized like a doctor was to treat a disease. You know, a dietician is to look at your diet nutritionist. So we didn't have specialized channels with that. And of course, so much, as I said, with an animal is about performance, how do I make it go faster, better higher, or how do I make it produce more? And just about always that comes down to diet and actually fascinating. For a few years I did the underwater SeaWorld here in New Zealand. So but like in feeding the fish and quite interesting. Before I came, they gave them a lot of chopped up raw fish. And as I said, that's probably not a complete nutrition for them because in the sea they will eat the whole fish, you know. And the digester and the intestines and things like that. So we looked at a of ways to how to imitate what they would be getting if they were actually in the sea. So yeah, it was fascinating. So you're always looking at that.

Peter Bowes: 5:04

Yeah, that's really interesting. So GLP-1, as I say, you can't avoid it these days. It is everywhere. Everyone's talking about it about the impact of the synthetic injectables especially, which is not what you're doing. But let's just set out why this explosion in interest. I think so many people have seen the positive impacts of essentially boosting their GLP-1. Is it fair for me to start with this understanding that we don't naturally produce enough? Or is it that we are not patient enough to wait for the natural effects of GLP-1 before we start eating again? What is the baseline? Where are we starting from?

Sarah Kennedy: 5:47

Yeah, it's a really good point. And I want to take you back to evolution. In evolution. We needed to go out and hunt. We were forced out to hunt. We had feast and famine. And you're controlled by your hormones. Well, it started appetite. Your hunger centers are actually in your hind brain, which is your primitive brain. And so when you reduce your calories by 25%, your hunger doubles over four months. And that was a way to get us out of our caves and to go hunting, you know, because otherwise we'd just lie in our caves going, ah, you know what? Nah. So it was to get us out. So that was a hormonal response. So we still have that. And whenever you reduce your calories, your hunger is going to increase. Your hunger hormone called ghrelin will increase. Now in the modern world, we're surrounded by food, easily absorbable food, easily digested food. We're surrounded. So as soon as we get that hunger noise, we can fulfill it straight away. So it's not that we don't have enough. It's just the modern world that we live in. And often as we get it's called a brain gut axis. And often as we get older, that brain gut axis, it just, you know, just wears down or it's a food that we eat. It's a lifestyle we keep, you know, younger people have a far more attuned brain gut access. But as we get older, like a lot of things, you know, it ages. So how do we help restore that? And what the GLP-1 synthetic injectables do,they are injecting in a synthetic so identical to the GLP-1 we produce ourselves. But it is a synthetic hormone and it's been changed slightly, so it lasts for seven days. Normally GLP-1 will last for about two minutes in your body and you're constantly firing it off. So as you go down your intestinal tract. But when you inject in probably at about 3 to 4 thousand times the level of the GLP-1 synthetic hormone. Of course, it's in your bloodstream all the time because remember, it last for seven days. So you're bathing your body in this. And so it takes out all food, noise or just about all food noise. So you walk past that muffin, you walk past, you don't have those hunger signals. And that's in fact what it's doing.

Peter Bowes: 8:25

So what are you doing? What essentially your company has produced now is a natural alternative. You mentioned the word. I mentioned the word synthetic. There's nothing synthetic about what you're doing. First of all, how did you come to this and why is it potentially a good alternative for some people?

Sarah Kennedy: 8:45

So great question. This started 15 years ago, all primary research in New Zealand is sponsored by the government, and we have government institutions, and we had a group of very talented scientists who believed that they could find a food extract, sorry, a plant based extract that suppressed appetite. So they put in for a grant and it was actually called food for appetite control to the government and got a $20 million grant back to explore that. Now, the reason they thought they could find that is in some historical reasons, in the times of famine up in the Scottish Highlands, they chewed very, very bitter heath berries to suppress their appetite. In fact, I think it was Charles II actually gave them to his mistresses to lose weight in the Kalahari Desert. They chew very, very bitter cactus before they go out hunting. And that was actually the basis of hoodia. And so there was historical. And then there was some recent work done on with lavaging or washing out. Working with mice and washing their stomachs out with bitter extract. So they got the 20 million. And then what they needed to then do was prove that we have bitter taste receptors right down through our gastrointestinal tract. And when they're stimulated, they produce appetite suppressing hormones. So they took 300 biopsies from right through the gastrointestinal tract. And they proved that we had these bitter taste receptors called TAS2R, which means bitter taste receptors, I suppose is about 25 of them. And when stimulated at different places in the intestine, they release different hormones. Now this is a fascinating because it's once again, evolution. This is a secondary mechanism of the body to try and prevent us from eating something that could be toxic. So bitter is often associated with toxic. So if you eat it in your mouth, you have taste receptors on your tongue. You're going to spit it out if it goes to your stomach. You're going to stimulate grill in the hunger hormone, which will make you want to eat more. So you'll try and dissipate if it is a poison. If it goes into your upper digestion or upper digestive tract, you know, that's where I said before. It will stimulate the release of three appetite suppressing hormones CCK, GLP-1, which we all know. And the third one being PYY because it's saying to you, it's too late. I can't get you to spit it out. I can't get to meet him. I can tell you to stop eating. And it is highly evolved and it's very hard to switch on. Very hard to switch on because remember, it's the secondary. You wouldn't want it to switch on with everything because if you had a cup of coffee, you'd stop eating. So there's a whole lot of things. So very secondary. So they took these biopsies, proved what they did. And then they grew out this model using cells. And they tested in this robotic automated robotic. They tested over a thousand different extracts and pharmaceutical compounds. And not surprisingly, only one worked. And that was a hop. So hops a hop extract. So hops like you put in beer, the bittering agent you put in beer. And because the science group was plant and food research, then they breed all of the hops in New Zealand. They then tested another 50 variety of hops and got the one that they called the Eureka. So when hops was used on these L cells. This is where the little receptors are on these L cells. It promoted the release of these hormones so they could show that it worked in the laboratory. They then took it into the first clinical trial. And this was a big trial. And it was expensive trial because although it's only 20 men, you had to cannulate them all or put in take bloods from them every. Oh, I think it's every 20 minutes and you're measuring the hormones in the blood. So what they did was they gave Calocurb. well, it didn't actually even have a name there. Then they gave it an hour before an eat to your full meal and an eat till your full snack. Sorry, an eat till your full lunch and an eat till your full snack. And then they measured the bloods and they could show that we increased CCK. So Cholecystokinin and GLP-1 by 600% and PYY by about 400%. So important, those two because when you eat, you increase them by 300%. So it's twice what we'd call postprandial or post-meal levels. We increased it. So in order to get a behavioral change as we were looking to do, you have to be above 400%. So as I say to a lot of people, anything will stimulate GLP-1. Eat an apple and a stimulate GLP-1. It's a natural hormone, but to super stimulate it, you have to have something, you know, something like a Calocurb. So 600%. And we got an average of an 18% reduction in calorie and take over. I think it was 2.5 hours. So it not only it raised the appetite suppressing hormones and reduce calories. So to give you a comparative a semiglutide, which is say ozempic will reduce on average about 25% of calories per day. We do around 18%. How does it do it? It obviously reduces hunger. It reduces craving. It slows the stomach motility down. And you get this reduction in calorie intake.

Peter Bowes: 15:21

So the net effect then is similar. Is it fair to say that the super stimulation that you talk about is roughly equivalent to the effect of the synthetic injectable?

Sarah Kennedy: 15:34

Well, I think it's higher. It's about 24%. You know, we're about 18. However, the difference being is twofold in the fact that when you have an injection, it lasts for seven days. You take this so you have high GLP levels. When you don't actually even need them, you have them when you're asleep, you have them all the time. We do it. If you take it an hour, an hour and a half before a meal with us. It will last for 4 to 6 hours, but it works with your body versus overriding it, I suppose, as you could say. So we are, and we are actually upregulating your cells or your L cells. So we are helping them. I kind of think of my little taste receptors like little. They're not their little receptors, but we're helping them to work. So we're improving your gut brain access versus when you have an injectable, you're downregulating them because whenever you use a synthetic hormone, your body goes, well, you know what? I don't need to produce anything because you know you're giving it to me and all hormones do that. So there is a difference. We are super stimulating your body to produce more to reduce your calories, which makes you. Yeah. And but it helps you upregulate.

Peter Bowes: 16:56

And Calocurb is taken in capsule or tablet form?

Sarah Kennedy: 17:00

Yeah. Very tiny capsules. That's all 100% natural. There's three ingredients. It is the hop extract. And some of your listeners might say, well, hops, you know, can I just drink beer? Unfortunately, no, you can't because beer when it goes into, you know, when it goes into beer making, it's heated. So it's actually isomerized or changed the hops. So no, that won't work. It would be great if it did, but no, it doesn't work. And then ones that say naturopath may ask me, well, what about the phyto estrogens and hops? We use a hop extract which takes out all of the biological matter. All of the phyto estrogens. So you are just left with an extract which is in a very small capsule. So hops a small amount of vegetable oil, which helps it to dissipate, I suppose, and a tiny amount to rosemary, which is a natural preservative. They are in a delayed release capsule as well. So they go down, they go. They bypass the stomach and they go into the upper digestive tract, which is where they break down. And what happens is, you know, as I said, you know, a natural hormone will last for two minutes, but it goes down. I kind of liken it to a ping pong or a pinball machine. It goes down right down through. And it's knocking those bitter taste receptors as it goes. So it's keeping that and it works for 4 to 6 hours. And we know that from other clinical trials we've conducted. We have conducted another three human clinicals, but that's a very quick 15 year history. I was introduced to it in 2017. Often, well, when the government has something like this and they get it to a stage where it could be potentially commercialized. They look for partners to commercialize with. And I was shown this, and I had never, ever seen something with that amount of science. And this was remember before Ozempic before everything. that amount of science with that amount of what it actually did and with that amount of response. So I was literally, I said, you know, I want it. I think it's fantastic. And that's when we started to, you know, develop the name. Everything about it.

Peter Bowes: 20:14

This is the live long podcast. Our guest is Sarah Kennedy, the founder of Calocurb.

Sarah Kennedy: 20:19

Prior to this, everyone thought weight was about willpower. You haven't got willpower in exercise and that is not correct. It is a hormonal circuit. And we had that in our primitive brain and we still have it now for survival. You know, it made us go out and hunt. So doesn't matter how much you override it, if you're reducing your calories, it will tell you to go. And that's that incredible thing that they called food noise. They've done some amazing experiments in rats when they can show that they can stimulate these hunger hormones. And rats are almost, well, like humans do anything to get to food. So it is a hormonal circuit we have. And, you know, the GLP-1s are fantastic, has given an enormous amount of hope to people. You know, we're Calocurb, but once again, it is a tool in the toolkit. You know, you have to look at everything else, what you eat when you eat those types. If you go from ten donuts to eight donuts, it's going to make very little difference. It's not your fault when you break a diet, but it is your fault to what you eat. So that's where hopefully by controlling those hunger signals, you can make better choices.

Peter Bowes: 21:47

Is it possible that for some people, there could be a scenario where there's essentially a dual treatment that's using the synthetic GLP-1 and also the the natural alternative? Could they work alongside each other?

Sarah Kennedy: 22:01

We sort of say there are three potential usages. The first one is what you talked about as an alternative. You know, if you can't take the side effects, you can't afford it. You don't want to inject yourself and maybe only want to lose, you know, 10 to 20 pounds. You know, and, and that's an alternative. The second one is, as you rightly said, is in combination. In fact, I'll just go back to the first one. A lot of doctors now start them on Calocurb and then after a month, if they say, oh, you know, I just want more. They'll put them onto the synthetics as well. But the thing is, to your point, the second one in combination is extremely useful because you can keep your dose of the synthetics down to a starting dose, and then take Calocurb and where you may see a breakthrough hunger in like day four or day five. You won't get that. So you can stay on a starting dose. Now remember for that, that's going to reduce side effects and it's going to reduce cost. And the third one that I say is not an if it's a must, it's an absolute must is when you are titrating off. Remember, when you're titrating off, you have suppressed your natural GLP-1 production to zero. So when you come off, people just say there's this overwhelming desire to eat. And I was reading an article the other day, actually from the BBC, and one woman described it as all I could think about was food. Now, why that is, she doesn't have her GLP-1. You've got to kickstart that into action because it's gone on holiday. It hasn't needed to do anything. So when you're titrating off and I'm not sure if you've seen the latest article from the British Medical Journal, they've just released that in December, 100% of people regain their weight in 18 months. So there has to be something that people can titrate onto and kickstart that brain gut access. And as I said to you, up regulate it. So don't down regulate it so you can come off Calocurb. And what you've done is kick started that brain gut access.

Peter Bowes: 24:27

And with Calocurb are there any you mentioned side effects which are more generally quite well known in terms of the synthetic injectables, but with Calocurb, are there any side effects? And also, are there any interactions with perhaps nutritional supplementation that people might be using for other reasons that they should be aware of?

Sarah Kennedy: 24:47

Sure. In around 5% of people they will get a laxative effect. And what we say to them, that's why we have a starting dose that literally it's only four days, but you start on one and then you go one and then you go on to two. If you are that 5%, we just say drop your dose down. And I always say to them, you're what we call a super taster. You know how we mapped out all of the taste receptors in the gut? Around about 5% of people have from 1 to 25 taste receptors instead of 1 to 19. So I always say, you're lucky you would have survived an evolution. But you're also lucky because you can take a lower dosage. So yes, a laxative effect. But that will go not for the super super tasters, but it will go in 2 to 3 days for other people. And it happens like straight after. So it happens about an hour after you've taken it. It's the reason we always say take it on an empty stomach because you want it to go through to the upper duodenum so if you have or your upper gut, if you have food in your stomach, it may get stuck in your stomach. And we want it to go to your upper duodenum. The interesting thing is we've done human bioavailability on, Calocurb and less than 1% is absorbed in the bloodstream. And of that 1%, less than 5% of that 1%. So 0.001 is metabolized in the liver. And why that's important is it will not affect any other drugs you take, because some supplements can slow down your liver processing or increase your liver processing. So but it doesn't if you're taking other supplements, I'd just probably take them half an hour apart. The reason being is you kind of want. You don't want anything competing for it on the gastrointestinal wall. That's all I'd say.

Peter Bowes: 26:45

Is the goal always going to be or mostly going to be for most people to eventually not be using anything like this and to get to that ideal weight and stop. Or is there a scenario for some individuals that some additional external assistance is always going to be needed to maintain that optimum weight?

Sarah Kennedy: 27:06

You know, we, we, our vision is modernizing human consumption. And, you know, as I said, the world we live in, we are surrounded by readily available foods, but we have a hind brain that's telling us to eat. So I think, yes, we will have nothing but use it for things when you think you're really going to need it, like I'd say over holiday time, you're going to be surrounded by a lot of food. This is not going to stop you eating. It's just going to stop you eating as much. You're going to feel full faster. So a lot of people say to me, oh, you know, I take it for a cruise or, you know, I've been overeating, so I'm going to take it for a while just to get myself back to where I was. I mean, I take it every day, but I probably take it once because I intermittent fast.

So I'll take it in the morning, say at about 9: 27:58

00, and then I won't need to eat till 12 or 1. You know, I can walk past those muffins. I can walk past that morning tea because I'm okay. And then when I eat lunch, I won't overeat. And in fact, as I said to you, one of the human clinicals we did was in women. It was a 24 hour water only fast. And we gave Calocurb at 16 hours and 20 hours. So the last eight hours of a fast, which are when you are going to be at the hungriest. And we measured hunger and cravings and women, we got 100% decrease in increased hunger. So there were no more hungry than the control group. The, you know, the control group than they were at 16 hours. We got 120% decrease in craving. So they were craving less and they were at 16 hours. And then we gave them a rebound or an ad libitum meal at 24 hours. And they ate 14.5% less. So that was 14. That was four hours after the last dosage.

So if you think if I take my curb at 9 or 10: 29:11

00 in the morning, I'm going to I'm going to not be so hungry and I'm going to still eat a smaller lunch and I'm going to be satisfied with it, you know. And I usually won't take it in the afternoon because, you know, I'm okay. But if I'm going to eat dinner later, say I'm going out to dinner and I'm, you know, going to go to a cocktail hour or something beforehand, I'll take it then, because I just don't want to eat all of the, you know, all the things that have been passed around. And I don't want to get super hungry. So yes, the good thing about it, you can come in and out of it. It's not for it's not for seven days. And once you know what your dosage is, you know, come in and out of it like that.

Peter Bowes: 29:56

One of the big differences, and you mentioned earlier talking about the times when we lived in caves in a very different lifestyle to coming up to modern day where food is all around us. One of the huge differences, of course, is advertising and television and media and how that portrays food and how that encourages to eat more. Bigger is better, seemingly for some outlets. That is a key factor, isn't it? And I don't see any sign of that changing.

Sarah Kennedy: 30:21

No. You know, I think when you can make when that hunger signal is not driving you and you know how many people talk about food noise? I mean, we get thousands of people coming back to us and saying, you've taken the noise out of my head. And once you've got that noise saying, I need to eat, I must eat. It is very, very hard to go past those smells and those shop windows and everything, and you're not going to make right choices, you know, and right choices are just trying to pick something that's healthier.

Peter Bowes: 30:53

One of the things that holds some people back or indeed prevents them from using, certainly the synthetic alternatives is simply cost and availability to them. So how does Calocurb compare?

Sarah Kennedy: 31:06

So we are $89.99. So it's a dollar a capsule basically, and that's a month's supply. So I always say if you're taking the full dose, you know, for weight management, it's 4 a day. So less than a cup of coffee.

Peter Bowes: 31:21

That's pretty cheap then. And you're talking US dollars.

Sarah Kennedy: 31:24

Yes. Us dollars. Right. And really want to say to your listeners, we are still owned by the New Zealand government. They own the technology and I pay them back a royalty, which is great because it goes back into further science the whole time. So everything we do and say must be completely above board and approved by them because, yeah, it's owned by the New Zealand government. And you know, I've yet to see a supplement or a nutraceutical like this with this amount of science behind it. I mean, it is truly, you know, four human clinicals, you know, human bioavailability work and we continue. That's what we spend our money on. I wouldn't mind $1 billion for advertising, right?

Peter Bowes: 32:11

Who wouldn't? You mentioned obviously, research is continuing to move forward. What is the next thing then that you're looking at? What is still creating questions for you? And how do you see this developing in the years and the decades ahead?

Sarah Kennedy: 32:27

Yeah. Well, we've just unblinded our fourth human clinical. And unfortunately, I can't say anything about it, but that was probably until it's published and we're hoping it'll be published in March, April. but extremely promising and extremely good results. It was 150 patients, men and women, a BMI between 25 and 35, six months with a three month follow up and a very low intervention with dietary and exercise. So they were only seen once a month when they were, you know, weighed and Dexa scans and everything. So that's been a huge trial for us. It's been two years. And so that was just unblinded. so that comes out the next one we're going on to what we're really looking to do is in pediatrics. So, 1 in 4 children are overweight. So we would do it over 12. But is there a natural alternative than using an injection to help children or to help adolescents? I'd say, you know, and there's mad times with adolescents. There's hormones going everywhere. And you know, is there something we can do there to help them? So that's one of the next trials we're doing. And that will be done in the US. We do a lot of in-clinic trials. So yeah, we continue. That's literally all the time that we are looking at what we're doing next and spending that money on it.

Peter Bowes: 33:55

Let me ask you this, Sarah. This podcast is all about human longevity. It's about living as long as we can as well as we can. Not necessarily getting to a vast age, but just keeping our health for as long as possible. And weight control clearly is a huge part of that. In terms of your own longevity, is that something you also think about every day as you're looking at these studies, as you're looking at the research and you're planning for the future?

Sarah Kennedy: 34:24

Yes. I mean, for me, you know, weight is a huge part of it, particularly as you grow older. You know, women in menopause will have to eat 200 calories less a day just to stay the same size, you know? And I said, you know, that 18% reduction in calorie intake is around 200 in 1 meal is around 200 calories. So even if you are happy the way you are, you know, and as we grow older, we know we don't want pressure on our joints, our heart, anything like that. So the leaner you are or the leaner you can be, the better it's going to be. As you get older, and the other thing I always think about, and I say to people making better choices, particularly getting older, is protein. We, we degrade our muscles by. I'm not talking on a GLP-1 synthetic, but they degrade by about half a percent per year as we grow older. And you absolutely, you know, you want those muscles. So resistance training and just getting that protein in. I mean, my staff laugh at me because I eat boiled eggs. They're like, that's disgusting. But you know, I found it the easiest.

Peter Bowes: 35:33

I agree with them.

Sarah Kennedy: 35:35

The best way to, you know, keep protein up.

Peter Bowes: 35:37

And resistance exercise. I'm delighted you say that because it's something I talk about a lot. It's probably the number one thing that we can do for ourselves as we get older. To prevent frailty is just to try to to lift weights and to exercise those muscles. And you say you eat eggs. Do you have other preferences in terms of a lot of people clearly take only or consume only plant based protein these days.

Sarah Kennedy: 36:01

Protein is fine. Absolutely fine. You know, and I always say to people, if it's hard to get enough protein in. Use a high quality whey protein drink. You know where you can just sip at it, but you need to get that. What is it? I've forgotten what it is. I think it's about 100g/kg per day. And, you know, I just say and it's some of the hardest to get in. I always think about people eating a sandwich for lunch. And there may be one piece of ham or one piece of cheese in there. And that's that's not going to give you anywhere the protein you need.

Peter Bowes: 36:36

It is a controversial area though, isn't it? And I know it's not your area of specialty, so I don't want to dwell on it. But it's interesting that very recently the United States, they've been talking about the food pyramid and putting red meats and, and eggs and other forms of animal protein very close to the top, which for many people, and certainly a lot of the people I talk to on this podcast kind of goes against the grain, who feel that there should these days be more emphasis on on plant based sources of protein.

Sarah Kennedy: 37:05

Look, protein is protein. I'm not going to argue whether it's chicken or eggs or anything plant based is slightly less absorbed. But you know, protein is protein and your body needs it. So if you can get a plant protein, yeah, I think it's fantastic. And there are some very, very good plant proteins around.

Peter Bowes: 37:25

Let me in closing, Sarah, just look to the future again, in terms of your own personal aspirations as you grow older and your priorities, it's something that I talked to so many people about and always fascinated by the the answers that people give, the things that motivate you to do what you do every day. Obviously, this science is a big part of it, but with your own longevity in mind and the future in mind, what are you striving for?

Sarah Kennedy: 37:55

Oh, you know what? I liked what you said. It is to live longer if you can, but to live the best life you can. And that is about, you know, being able to do the things we want to do, which is, you know, to travel comfortably, you know, to do all of those things. And we need our mobility and we need all of those things. So everything we do is to I mean, I wish I had the bullet proof that I had when I was a, you know, an adolescent. I think we all do. I think adolescence is wasted on adolescence. I think it should all be the, the other way round. But yes, is to live well and to live longer. And obviously, you know, you can tell by this has been what a seven year journey for me with, Calocurb you know, I'm passionate about it. And it's been amazing to bring it to the world, to create a company from literally an extractor and bring it to the world and, and also get back, you know, these thousands of responses from people saying, you know, this has changed my life. This is great. You've taken the food noise. You know, I've lost this weight. yeah, so that's been incredibly rewarding as well.

Peter Bowes: 39:08

If people want to take a deeper dive than we've been able to do in this relatively short conversation, where should they go? Where can they get more information about the science and perhaps understand how what you're talking about will apply to them?

Sarah Kennedy: 39:21

Sure. So on our website, we're Calocurb.com. And they can go there. We'll have all the science there all if they really want to go into the science, it'll have the published papers. And we're always at hello at hello@Calocurb.com -- just ask any questions. We are always there. And our customer service. And if they can't answer it, it'll go to our chief of Science or it'll come to me.

Peter Bowes: 39:59

And I will, of course, put all of those details into the show notes for this episode, along with the links as well. So live Long podcast is where we are, and I'll direct all of that information that you've just given us to listeners and to viewers in that way as well. Sarah. It's been really fascinating. I've learned a lot from this conversation. I wish you all the very best with what you're doing. Thank you very much indeed.

Sarah Kennedy: 40:22

Thank you. Peter. It's been great.

Peter Bowes: 40:24

The Live Long Podcast is a Healthspan Media production. I'm Peter Bowes. You can contact me through our website, livelongpodcast.com, where you'll also find show notes for this episode.

DISCLAIMER: 40:35

This podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. We do not offer medical advice if you have health concerns of any kind or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should first consult your doctor.